Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 205

March 18, 2019: YA Series: Rick Riordan

[In a development that I’m sure will shock precisely no one, my 13 (!!!) and about-to-be 12 year-old sonsare both huge readers. They are fans of many authors and books, but for this week’s series I wanted to focus on, well, series—Young Adult series in particular—that they love. Please share your YA recommendations, series or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend post!]On how slight variations in a YA series can seriously change the reading experience.I know these things can evolve over time, but at least to this point in their young reading lives neither of my sons have found the Harry Potter books very engaging (and both have read at least as far as the second book). Perhaps that’s partly because I’m not a fan of the series and we can’t talk about them together, but their Mom is a big fan so that’s certainly not a sufficient reason (and I also haven’t read most of the series I’ll write about this week, so they’re more than happy to get into something on their own terms in any case). Of course there’s our old family friend the windy bus, and I do think there’s not necessarily a great deal of value in trying to analyze personal tastes, and doubly so personal tastes when we’re young and those tastes can and will change (a couple years ago my sons literally couldn’t get enough of the Skylanders; now, not so much). But on the other hand, I do find their lack of Potter interest striking in light of how much they’ve both come, over the last year or so, to love the pretty similar books and series by the hugely popular YA author Rick Riordan.Beginning with his first YA book and the start of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Lightning Thief (2005), Riordan utilized a formula similar to the Potter books (and, to be fair, to numerous other fantasy series, going back at least to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books): seemingly ordinary kids realize that there is a world of magic adjacent to our own and that they are deeply connected to it. While Potter and most such series invent their magical worlds, however, the middle school English and Social Studies teacher Riordan came up with a compelling twist (one based on bedtime stories for his own son): using the stories of Greek mythology and imagining a 21stcentury world in which those Greek gods and goddesses still exist. Percy and his peers are not just magically gifted but are in fact demigods, linked by heritage to that mythological world as well as to the human one (Percy is the son of Poseidon and a mortal mother, for example). In subsequent series Riordan has extended this general concept to Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies and stories. I believe these mythological links have been key to my sons’ enjoyment of the Riordan books (they have read every book in every series over the last year), as they’re right at the age when such myths seem to strike many young people (I know they did for me) and remind us why they have endured for millennia.Mythological links or no, however, the Riordan books also have to work on their own terms or readers like my sons would just turn back to the original myths instead. And to my mind, another choice that has made these books work so well for my guys is Riordan’s use of first-person narration (not a constant across all the series, but the case for many of them including Percy Jackson), and a very funny, personable, and engaging narration at that. Just look at the title of Lightning Thief’s first chapter: “I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher.” Or that chapter’s (and book’s) opening lines: “Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now.” Compared to the more formal, clearly adult third-person narrator of many YA fantasies like Potter and Narnia, Riordan’s first-person narrator sounds like a middle schooler, and indeed quite a bit like my sons. Making it no coincidence that they’ve been so sucked into these characters and their fantastic stories and worlds.Next series tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this post? Other YA lit series, books, or authors you’d highlight?

March 16-17, 2019: Irish American Literature

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to this post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]
On five books that can tell us a lot (individually, but even more so in combination) about the Irish American experience:
1)      James Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-1935): Farrell’s three Chicago-set Studs Lonigan novels are among the best representations not only of the Irish immigrant and early 20th century urban experience, but of the Great Depression’s effects on working class American families and identities.
2)      Mary Doyle Curran, The Parish and the Hill (1948): Curran’s autobiographical novel traces, through the memories of its first-person narrator, three generations of an Irish American family with eloquence and power as they move between Kerry County in Ireland, an Irish neighborhood in a western Massachusetts mill town, and a gentrified Anglo community in that same setting.
3)      James Carroll, American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us (1996): Carroll’s narrative of family, spirituality, and Vietnam is as reflective and honest as any memoir I’ve read, and reveals both the multi-generational fault lines that comprised much of the late 20th century and the continuing impacts of Irish identity and experience on American individual and communal life.
4)      Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (1999): There’s a reason MacDonald’s book was at one time (and may still be) being made by director Ron Shelton into a film—this is a deeply compelling story of one family’s tragic and yet inspiring experiences within the world of South Boston in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and of MacDonald’s attempt to turn those experiences into inspiring activism.
5)      Kathleen Donohue, Ashes of Fiery Weather (2016): I wanted to include one more recent book that I haven’t had a chance to read yet on this list, and Donohue’s acclaimed debut novel is the one. Focusing on four generations of New York City firefighters, with a particular emphasis on the women in the family, Donohue’s book sounds like it combines elements from all these prior works, while very much moving into the 21st century as well (the last generation deal, of course, with 9/11 and its aftermaths). Sounds like a book we should all read to continue building our Irish American library!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish American authors or works you’d highlight?

March 15, 2019: Irish Americans: Macklemore’s “Irish Celebration”

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]On a song that reinforces and yet also transcends cultural stereotypes.One of the difficulties of writing a weeklong series focused on an ethnic community (and I would argue that in America at least Irish Americans are more of an ethnic than a national community and perhaps have always been, although that 2020 census question is no less pernicious for that overall trend) is how easy it is to resort to stereotypical or clichéd images and narratives of that community. Even if they seem to align with historical trends, it’s just such a slippery slope to painting an entire community with that broad brush; so for example I decided not to include a post on the New York City Draft Riots because of the stereotypical narrative of Irish Americans as antagonist to African Americans. “The Irish are not known for their fondness for the coloreds” is one of the only lines in Glory that really gripes my cookies, for precisely that reason; indeed they are not, and perhaps the regiment’s overly demanding Irish American drill sergeant was indeed influenced by that broader tendency, but it seems to me that in a film so dedicated to moving beyond cultural stereotypes, there would be other ways to characterize that important figure in the story.Mackelmore’s “Irish Celebration” (2009), an irresistibly catchy rap song about the artist’s Irish American heritage and family, is far from immune to those issues with stereotypes. In particular, Macklemore rests hard on the image of Irish people as hard-drinkers; the video (the first hyperlink in this paragraph) is largely set in a bar, and the song features lines like “Now with whisky in our veins/Claiming we’re the bravest men” and “Challenge us in football, yeah we might lose/But don’t put us next to a bar stool.” Hell, the chorus itself identifies the entire song as a drinking song, as it includes the repeated phrases “We put our glass to the sky” and “So raise a pint.” Obviously any community has their celebratory times and occasions, and many of those celebrations are linked to alcohol; but in a song that begins with the line “I’m an Irishman,” this central thread of alcohol and drinking seems a bit more culturally defining than it needs to be. Given how much the image of the “drunken Irishman” was tied to anti-Irish and (in the United States) anti-immigrant propaganda, this is a particularly frustrating emphasis to get in a celebratory pro-Irish song from a proudly Irish American artist. Yet at the same time, Macklemore reveals personal histories in the song that complicate and perhaps even transcend these stereotypical issues. He has struggled for more than a decade with addictions, including alcoholism; he entered rehab in 2008, stayed sober for a few years, relapsed in 2011 (the subject of his 2012 song “Starting Over”), and has been working to remain sober ever since. “Irish Celebration” was released during that initial post-rehab period, and Macklemore references these personal histories directly, writing, “Dad sipped Guinness, I sipped Old English/’Til he sat me down at 16 and said ‘Boy, this is what a beer is’/I put down the drink, couldn’t drink like a gentleman/Doesn’t mean I can’t make a drinking song for the rest of ‘em.” There is of course significant irony in a person trying to stay sober writing a “drinking song,” irony not only for the speaker but perhaps also for the culture associated with alcoholism, and Macklemore is clearly aware of and engaging with those ironies. Yet you could also argue that by noting the possibility of alcohol being something more positive, part of a communal celebration rather than an ethnic slur, Macklemore is working to reclaim this oft-maligned element of both his own identity and his heritage. At the very least, he’s thinking through these personal and cultural issues, as he so often does.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?

March 14, 2019: Irish Americans: Gene Kelly’s Films

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]On stand-out moments from three of the legendary biggest hit movies.1)      Anchors Aweigh (1945): Anchors co-starred a very young Frank Sinatra, and it would be interesting to compare it to another, significantly darker (perhaps in part because it was released after the war was over) World War II-set naval film co-starring a slightly older Sinatra, From Here to Eternity (1953). But in truth, Anchors will always be known first and foremost for the famous sequence in which Kelly dances “alongside” Jerry Mouse (of Tom and Jerry fame). Besides being pretty advanced in its combination of animation and live action (more than forty years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ), the sequence foreshadows the kinds of intertextuality, playfulness, and multimedia elements that would come to define post-war, postmodern American art. 2)      An American in Paris (1951): Full disclosure, I watched all of American for a high school project where I used clips from all the Best Picture Oscar winners over a period of the 1940s and 50s, and I can’t remember a darn thing about it other than the very long climactic balletdance featuring Kelly and Leslie Caron from which I drew my chosen clip. But in reading up on this acclaimed and hugely popular musical, what I find most interesting is that it’s an adaptation of a 1928 George Gershwin orchestral piece of the same name. American culture in the 1920s was of course defined in many ways by the expatriate experience, by artists and others (many WWI vets) living in places like Paris yet still thinking of themselves as Americans. The same is apparently true of Kelly’s World War II vet protagonist in the film, and it’d be interesting to think further about the similarities and differences between these two eras and their expatriate communities.3)      Singin’ in the Rain (1952): Not sure I need to say too much about a film so acclaimed that Sight  & Soundput it 20th on their 2018 list of the greatest films of all time, and so beloved that the famous titular dance sequence with umbrellas was just recently part of a very different (and also very popular) pop culture moment. But I will say this: the film’s plot, which focuses on three silent film stars attempting to make the move to “talkies” in the late 1920s, and thus parallels quite interestingly the fraught place of movie musicals in an era of increasing cinematic realism, is one of the more thoughtful and historically nuanced of any film from the period (much less any musical). Indeed, I would say the same about Kelly’s oeuvre overall—in less than a decade he made all three of these thematically complex and historically resonant movies, belying any sense of him as simply or solely a song-and-dance man (unbelievably talented as he was at the dancing). Last Irish American tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?

March 13, 2019: Irish Americans: Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]On O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, and the similar yet often opposing pulls of artistic and romantic passions.In her seminal 1963 text “The Problem That Has No Name” (that’s just an excerpt), the opening chapter in her equally pioneering The Feminine Mystique , Betty Friedan focuses on a variety of complex issues and struggles facing young married women, from media images and gender ideals to the day to day challenges of marriage, parenting, and home. Yet at heart of her analyses, at the core of that unnamed problem, lies a pair of contradictory pulls: on the one hand the desires for family, for marriage, for romantic and human connections; and on the other the desires for education, for career, for individual and professional successes. While there’s no doubt that the 1950s society Friedan analyzes privileged the former over the latter for these young women, I think she recognizes—and I know I would argue—that both pulls are also a part of most individuals, and that their contradictions thus stem at least in part from the complexities of our own identities and lives.Those contradictions and complexities affect all of us who hope to balance family and career, but they are perhaps particularly pronounced for artists, and even more especially in artistic geniuses. While the idea of a “muse” might be somewhat clichéd, it also accurately defines the way in which great artists are so often pulled to do their work, driven to produce by the same kinds of obsessions and forces that can characterize romantic connection and passion. Certainly that seems to have been the case for the Irish American modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe, both in her pursuit of her artistic career and in her lifelong romantic connection to photographer Alfred Stieglitz. That connection, which began in 1916 when O’Keeffe was 28 (and Stieglitz 52 and married), led to a professional partnership and a multi-decade marriage, and did not end until his death in 1946, was captured and preserved in the roughly 25,000 letters sent between the two; My Faraway One , the first of two planned volumes of selected letters, was published last year. I don’t want to reduce O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s relationship to any one issue, no more than one painting or photograph could illustrate each artist’s career and talents. Yet it seems clear that O’Keeffe’s 1929 decision to move back west—she had come to New York in 1918 to live and work with Stieglitz, and they had been married in 1924—and live in the burgeoning artistic community of Taos, New Mexico (at the home and compound of Mable Dodge Luhan) was a true turning point, a moment when the painter chose to follow her craft and muse (which the west unquestionably was to O’Keeffe). When Stieglitz wrote to her that “I am broken” (and sent her the above picture with one of his July 1929 letters), she responded with one of the most powerful statements of that artistic pursuit: “There is much life in me … I realized it would die if it could not move toward something … I chose coming away because here at least I feel good – and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside – and very still.” Their marriage survived and endured, and American art and culture were significantly enriched by O’Keeffe’s works. Not a bad love story all the way around.Next Irish American tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?

March 12, 2019: Irish Americans: Augustus Saint-Gaudens

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]On the artist whose inspiring Irish American and international legacy is written in stone.I’ve already said a good bit in this space about Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Irish American sculptor and Boston Cosmopolitan par excellance: first in this post on his most inspiring work, Boston’s Robert Gould Shaw Memorial; and then in his March 1stMemory Day nomination. Saint-Gaudens has a great deal in common with other late 19th century Bostonian cultural figures: not just in his artistic and cultural community and relationships, such as his lifelong working friendship with the architects Stanford White and Charles McKim; not just as an international traveler who brought inspiration from all those places back to his work on distinctly American monuments and memorials; but also and most especially in his dual and complementary desires for American art and society. Like Isabella Stewart Gardner and so many of her friends and contemporaries, that is, Saint-Gaudens sought both to more fully link America to the old world (in every sense) and to bring it more successfully into its own new world future.Two of Saint-Gaudens’ other impressive public sculptures and monuments exemplify that balance. His “General Sherman Led by Victory,” located in the Grand Army Plaza of New York’s Central Park, took Saint-Gaudens more than a decade to complete; the result weds the old and new worlds explicitly, in its iconography and in its link of a distinctly mythological figure (one sculpted as such) to a highly realitistic one (in both content and style). Far more intimate and yet just as compelling and thematically rich is his “Adams Memorial or Grief,” a sculpture located in Washington, DC’s Rock Creek Cemetery; the sculpture, a tribute to Henry Adams’ wife Clover after her 1885 suicide, casts that real person and American as a mythological figure, one generally known as Grief but also called by Saint-Gaudens “The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding.” In some ways the sculpture echoes dramatically John Singer Sargent’s end-of-life portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner; but in others it weds such a humanistic portrayal to millennium-old mythological narratives, bringing the American present and the world’s past together in particularly striking ways.To me, that connection and combination sums up quite concisely the goals of all these late 19th century artistic figures, and and certainly of Isabella Stewart Gardner and her Museum. There’s no question that Gardner and her fellow Cosmopolitans loved much of what they found in Europe, especially its historical and cultural depth and breadth. But there’s likewise no question that these artists, authors, and activists worked throughout their lives to strengthen America, to help construct an American culture, community, and tradition that could learn from the best of and ultimately rival those in Europe. Such a goal might fly in the face of the new world mythos, and of American ideals and narratives of independence and self-making and the like. But once we dissociate American history and identity from such narratives—and as I have argued many times, there’s very good reason to do so—we open ourselves up to the possibility that Gardner and her fellow Cosmopolitans were right: that one of the best ways to build an American future is to learn about and incorporate the cultural, historical, artistic, and inspiring strengths of the world beyond.Next Irish American tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?

March 11, 2019: Irish Americans: Mathew Brady

[March 17this St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that is apparently a far bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some wonderful Irish American literary voices!]On a couple historical contexts beyond the Civil War for that conflict’s most famous photographer.I’m not sure exactly what the percentage would be, but a significant chunk of my visual perspective on the Civil War comes from the photographs of Mathew Brady (he really did only have one ‘t’ in his first name—who knew?). I’ve blogged before about Bruce Catton’s wonderful American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War , and along with that book’s stunning battle maps, Catton used Brady’s photographs to great effect throughout. Over time I learned that Brady and his assistants posed some of his post-battle photographs, which only makes sense given the striking amount of time it took to take a picture in the 1860s. And I don’t think those details invalidate at all the importance of Brady’s photojournalism (and that of the men who worked with him, such as Alexander Gardner’s photos of Antietam), particularly in bringing home the war’s effects on individual soldiers, on the battlefields themselves, on every aspect of the material world. I’m quite sure that Brady’s photographs had an impact on Americans’ perspectives on the unfolding war, and I know they did on the understanding of this AmericanStudier more than a century later.The war was only a handful of years in a life that spanned most of the 19th century (1822-1896), though, and if we broaden our scope Brady’s professional career also connects to other important historical contexts. The son of Irish American immigrants in New York state, Brady began an apprenticeship when he was 16 years old to the talented portrait painter George William Gage, and through him met Gage’s former teacher, the painter and inventor Samuel Morse. Morse had learned about the new science and art of daguerrotyping from none other than Louis Daguerre himself, and was one of the first to bring this new technology back to the United States. He opened a studio in New York City, and Brady was one of the first students, becoming proficient enough to open his own photography studio in the city in 1844. These details help explain Brady’s own journey toward becoming one of the nation’s first famous photographers, but they also illuminate the bridges between painting (and specifically portraiture), daguerrotyping, and photography. Photography would then continue to influence the rise of realism in painting and the visual arts later in the century, adding more layers to these complex cultural interconnections—which in America would remain closely linked to Mathew Brady for the whole second half of the 19thcentury.Brady’s photographic career also significantly influenced national perspectives on some of our most prominent cultural and political figures. As early as 1850, Brady organized a collection entitled The Gallery of Illustrious Americans , which featured his photographs of such icons as Edgar Allan Poe and Daniel Webster. Brady photographed Abraham Lincoln on a number of occasions, with some of those influential pictures used as the model for Lincoln’s likeness on the $5 bill and the penny. Indeed, before the end of his life, Brady would photograph all but one of the presidents between John Quincy Adams and William McKinley (he missed out on William Henry Harrison, who died after just a few short months in office). In an era when we see and hear more of our presidents and political figures than we could possibly want, it’s difficult to remember how rare that was, even as recently as the famous 1960 televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon. It was really Mathew Brady who first presented Americans with that opportunity, one more striking legacy of this hugely influential Irish American artist and figure.Next Irish American tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?

March 9-10, 2019: Tejano Traditions

[On March 6th, 1836 the Alamo, a San Antonio fort and part of the newly independent Texan Republic, fell to Mexican forces. That battle became a rallying cry for the remainder of the war between Texas and Mexico, and so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of the ways the Alamo has been remembered. Leading up to this special weekend post on Tejano culture and legacies!]On three products of Tejano culture(the cross-cultural Hispanic American community of South Texas).1)      Gloria Anzaldúa: I said a lot of what I would want to say about the Tejano author, scholar, poet, and general badass Gloria Anzaldúa in that hyperlinked post on her groundbreaking, challenging, and wonderful book Borderlands/La Frontera. That book itself exemplifies Tejano culture, from its multilingualism to its numerous crossings of genre borders to its extended engagements with Mexican, indigenous, Anglo, and cross-cultural histories, literatures, religions, and communities. But just as exemplary is Anzaldúa’s homeland, the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas: a region that, as that hyperlinked article notes, suffers from some of America’s worst systemic poverty; that has become a site of border contestations (as I write this post in early January President Trump is planning to visit RGV, and ironically enough Anzalduas Park, in support of his stupid border wall); but that is also a rich resource of all the American histories and stories Anzaldúa brought to life so pitch-perfectly.2)      Tejano music: Speaking of pitch, in 21stcentury America the word “Tejano” is often used specifically to refer to a broad genre of popular music that has developed over centuries and become internationally known over the last few decades. No single artist contributed more to that latter trend than Selena, the Mexican American singer who rose from South Texas roots to become a pop sensation and icon before her tragic murder by a former business associate when she was just 23. But of course any musical genre is much bigger and more diverse than a single artist can capture, and Tejano is even more so, as it combines Latin cultural traditions like the corrido and mariachi music with European-influenced forms such as the accordion-heavy polka (South Texas had significant German and Czech immigrant communities in the 19th century). Embodied by early 20thcentury musical and cultural pioneer Narciso “Chicho” Martinez, this accordion-driven Latin-flavored music was like nothing America or the world had ever seen, and has continued to evolve and influence numerous other artists and genres over the century since.3)      Tex-Mex cuisine: Not sure I have to write much about the culinary glory that is Tex-Mex. But I suppose this much needs to be said: as is often the case with national culinary traditions, what we call “Mexican food” here in the United States is much more accurately described as Mexican American food, as it differs greatly from cuisine in Mexico itself and has evolved in much the same cross-cultural way as American Chinese food (to cite the most famous such example). I could say some more analytical stuff, but honestly I’m just lost in reveries of La Hacienda, my childhood favorite restaurant and to my mind the once and future embodiment of Tex-Mex. That it briefly turned into an Irish pub (which still served some of its Tex-Mex classics!) before shutting its doors permanently and tragically when I was in high school only adds one more layer to La Hacienda’s exemplification of cross-cultural culinary perfection, and also as it turns out segues nicely to next week’s St. Patrick’s Day series!That next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

March 8, 2019: Remembering the Alamo: The Historic Site

[On March 6th, 1836 the Alamo, a San Antonio fort and part of the newly independent Texan Republic, fell to Mexican forces. That battle became a rallying cry for the remainder of the war between Texas and Mexico, and so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the ways the Alamo has been remembered. Leading up to a special weekend post on Tejano culture and legacies!]On two significant problems with an understandable mission statement.It seems that the Alamo historic site has had a difficult last few years, and that there are plans underway (or at least in proposal form) to change things for the better. I learned about those proposed plans from this Save the Alamo mission statement linked on the Alamo’s official website; because the Alamo is held and preserved by Texas’s General Land Office (in conjunction with the city of San Antonio), that statement was written by the state’s current Land Commissioner, none other than Jeb Bush’s oldest son George Prescott Bush. Bush makes a compelling case for why the Alamo’s current situation and environs aren’t suitable to its historic significance (seriously, check out the photo montage in the middle of the statement depicting the “carnival atmosphere that has become commonplace at the Alamo plaza”), and for what might be possible if folks come together to support, help fund, and contribute in other ways to the Save the Alamo campaign. Hard to argue with such historical, conservationist perspectives, goals, and missions.Hard but not impossible, I should say, because I’m here to quibble with a couple of troubling and not at all minor aspects of Bush’s statement. One is captured in a single short paragraph: “No, the United Nations will never have any say in what we do or say at the Alamo. Ever.” Bush is responding to conspiracy theories about the UN “taking over” the historic site, theories that in part play into larger, decades-old conservative fears of UN takeovers of the US. And that’s the problem with this thread within Bush’s statement, which begins in the second paragraph (“You may have heard or read stories about the Alamo recently”) and continues throughout. It’s one thing to argue that local organizations and voices should direct the future for a site like the Alamo; that’s an understandable and sympathetic position to be sure. But the frame here is instead one of an outside (and overtly “foreign”) threat, thus implicitly (and even at times in the statement explicitly) aligning Bush et al with the Alamo’s besieged “Defenders” (capitalization Bush’s throughout the statement) and turning the Save the Alamo campaign into a battle within a war (and not just in the culture wars sense, although that too). That’s both an ironic and a gross frame for preserving a historic site like the Alamo.My other main problem with Bush’s statement is less dramatic, and more a reflection of tendencies I’ve highlighted in most of my posts this week. Throughout the statement, Bush associates the Alamo’s Texas Republic soldiers with all of Texas history and identity, as when he writes in the opening paragraph, “Who we are as Texans started there and who we can be as Texans and Americans still lives there.” In the concluding paragraph he goes even further, adding, “The Alamo defines Texas. There is no greater honor than to reinforce this place and tell its story. Its story is the story of Texas.” Since this was the first battle in Texas’s move toward independence from Mexico, I get part of what Bush is arguing in such moments, although of course the Texas Republic only last for 9 years before Texas became part of another nation, the U.S. Moreover, in each of these stages—as a Mexican territory, as the Texas Republic, and as a state within the expanding U.S.—Texas included at least as many Mexican American inhabitants as Anglo ones, and that remains the case to this day (in South Texas most especially). So the Alamo’s story is only “the story of Texas” if we make sure to include the attackers alongside the defenders, something that Bush’s statement certainly does not suggest. Which is to say, the contest over collective memories of the Alamo continues to this day.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

March 7, 2019: Remembering the Alamo: Phil Collins?!

[On March 6th, 1836 the Alamo, a San Antonio fort and part of the newly independent Texan Republic, fell to Mexican forces. That battle became a rallying cry for the remainder of the war between Texas and Mexico, and so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the ways the Alamo has been remembered. Leading up to a special weekend post on Tejano culture and legacies!]On a couple takeaways from a very strange 21st century story.I’ve long waited for an opportunity to blog about Phil Collins, and finally with this series the chance has presented itself. Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie, and backwards to boot—I had never given Phil Collins the slightest bit of blog-thought (although “Land of Confusion”might be worth a post down the road, now that I’m doing such thinking) until my colleague and friend Irene Martyniuk sent me this late June 2014 BBC story about Collins donating his ginormous collection of memorabilia related to the 1836 Battle of the Alamo to a San Antonio museum. I initially wrote about Collins’s collection as part of a weeklong series on collectors, but couldn’t resist the chance to share the story, and the contexts it helps us think about, one more time.For one thing, note Collins’—or at least the story’s—conflation of cultural and historical versions of the battle. Collins says that he has “had a love affair with this place [the Alamo] since I was about five years old,” the age when he saw “the 1950s TV series Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier ” (King was a 1955 live-action film edited together from episodes of the TV show, but I think we can allow a 5 year-old some latitude in memory). It’s probably likely that most of us are first drawn to history through cultural rather than historical texts, but there’s still some significant slippage in Collins’ statement—neither the TV show nor the film, nor for example the John Wayne film of five years later, would have connected Collins to “this place” itself, but rather, as my week’s series has highlighted again and again, to versions of it just as constructed as the one he gradually assembled in his Swiss basement. And certainly none of those versions were likely to have included the Mexican histories and stories that comprised a significant part of the battle as well and that I discussed in Tuesday’s post.For another thing, and one relevant to many different aspects of American memory and history, there’s the distinction but also the overlap between private and public collecting. The two would seem quite different, both in purpose (Collins assembled his collection to make himself happy, while a museum does so to share its artifacts with and inform the public) and relatedly in audience (Collins’ collection was limited to whomever he invited to his Swiss basement, while a museum’s is ideally open to whoever can travel to, afford, and otherwise access it). But on the other hand, most every prominent American collection came into existence because of the efforts, the choices, and even the personal interests and quirks of individuals, and I think it’s fair to say that there are few if any museums about which we couldn’t say the same. Phil Collins doesn’t seem to be in the same discussion as Isabella Stewart Gardner or George Catlin (P.T. Barnum, maybe—I kid, Phil fans, I kid!), but maybe a century from now we’ll see his donation and collection in the same light. Last Alamo memory tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?