Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 21

February 15-16, 2025: One More Love Letter to the Big Easy

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention. So forthis year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ve offered some love letters to what makesNew Orleans so unique, leading up to this special tribute post!]

On a fewmore magical moments my wife and I experienced on our January visit.

1)     A Food Find: It will come as no surprise toanyone with even a passing familiarity with New Orleans that we ate very wellthroughout the trip. But while that was true of the expected spots, especiallythose throughout the Quarter and environs, what really makes NOLA so deliciousis the culinary perfection awaiting in even seemingly out-of-the-way spots. Probablythe best meal we had on the whole trip was at one such spot, Blue Oak BBQ; not gonna say anything else,other than go if you get the chance!

2)     Musical Moments: We experienced plenty of plannedmoments of musical magic on our trip, including a jazz cruise on the city’sonly working steamboat (the Natchez)and a jazz concert at the legendary PreservationHall. But my favorite music (or least music-adjacent) moment was the kindof spontaneous one you can only find in NOLA—I was buying a copy of WendellPierce’s TheWind in the Reeds in a used bookstore, and the employee told me thathis uncle is none other than DeaconJohn Moore, the wonderful jazz musician who guest-starred as Pierce’strombone teacher on Treme!

3)     Great Galleries: For whatever reason, on myearlier visits to New Orleans I hadn’t spent much time in art galleries, butthis time we were drawn to multiple of them as we walked the French Quarter,encountering works by profoundly talented artists in the process. I don’tremember any specifics, but that’s at least partly my point—these weren’tplanned or pre-scheduled visits to places or works we already knew, they werejust impromptu walk-ins that gifted us with beautiful art in compelling spaces.I recommend you do the same if you get the chance!

4)     A Moving Museum: By far the most movingexperience we had on our trip was another entirely unplanned one: not longafter our initial arrival, we followed signs to TheHistoric New Orleans Collection, a museum in the heart of the Quarter. Everythingtherein was striking and impressive, but I’d highlight two exhibits inparticular: the absolutely heartbreaking Captive State: Louisiana andthe Making of Mass Incarceration; and the evocative Prospect.6: Gesture to Home,artist Didier William’scontribution to the city-wide ProspectNew Orleans project.

5)     A Missed but Still Meaningful Second Line: TheSunday during our visit featured aSecond Line, a unique part of New Orleans culture that I’ve never gotten tosee in person (despite loving every one featured on Treme). Unfortunatelythe timing was too tight with our Preservation Hall concert, and after waitingfor a while to catch a glimpse of the Line, we had to leave before it arrived.But every part of the experience still felt meaningful, from walking through ArmstrongPark and Treme to get to our viewing spot, to waiting out there with thefolks preparing food and playing music and adding their own contributions tothe day and city. In its own very real and very moving way, one of my favoritemoments ever in my favorite city (and with my favorite person)!

Anti-favoritesseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 14, 2025: Love Letters to the Big Easy: Literary New Orleans

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention.So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters towhat makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post thisweekend!]

On five ofthe many books through which we can read New Orleans.

1)     TheGrandissimes (1881): I love George Washington Cable’smessy and magnificent multi-generational historical novel so much that I featuredit in that hyperlinked post in my very first week of blogging (and made it thesole focus of the last chapter of mydissertation/first book to boot). I also don’t know any novel that morefully captures its setting than does Cable’s for New Orleans, making it doubly amust-read for anyone who loves the Big Easy.

2)     TheAwakening (1899): Kate Chopin’s masterpiece, which as illustrated by thathyperlinked post I’ve taught many times and always to great effect, isn’tnecessarily about New Orleans—indeed, I’d argue that Chopin’s story could takeplace most anywhere. But at the same time, Chopin was consistently interestedin portraying her Louisiana and Creole communities through localcolor writing, and there’s a lot we can learn about them in this novel.

3)     AStreetcar Named Desire (1947): That hyperlinked post focuses on TheIceman Cometh, because for whatever reason I haven’t written at length inthis space about Tennessee Williams’s iconic New Orleans-set play.I also know it less well than I do other Williams works, or even than I do thefilm adaptation with Brando’sfamous t-shirt. But we can’t talk literary New Orleans without Williams andStreetcar!

4)     TheMoviegoer (1961): As I argued in that hyperlinked post, Walker Percy’s uniqueand quirky debut novel is profoundly interested in where American society and culturewere in its early 1960s moment, and thus is more interested in portraying andengaging with the time layer of setting than the place one. But Percy’s protagonistBinx Bolling spends the whole novel roaming his native New Orleans, making thisbook for many readers then and since an iconictour guide to that city.

5)     TheYellow House (2020): Mostly I want to take this last entryon the list to recommend Sarah Broom’smulti-generational family memoir as enthusiastically as I can. But it also offersan excellent book-end to the first post in this week’s series, as I don’t knowany book that captures all the layers of New Orleans and of the America itreflects better than Broom’s.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 13, 2025: Love Letters to the Big Easy: Fats Domino

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention.So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters towhat makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post thisweekend!]

On a fewiconic moments in the career of the legendary New Orleans rock ‘n roller.

1)     “The Fat Man”: Domino’s first hit under hisdebut recording contract with Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records,co-written with his frequent producer and collaborator (and an influentialartist in his own right) Dave Bartholomew and recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&MRecording Studios on Rampart Street, wasn’t just the first rock record tosell a million copies (although it did hit thatgroundbreaking number by 1951). It also embodies rock’s profoundlycross-cultural origins, on so many levels: from Domino’s own French Creoleheritage (his first language was Louisiana Creole) to Matassa’smulti-generational Italian American New Orleans legacy, from Chudd’s childhoodin Toronto and Harlem as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to AfricanAmerican artist Bartholomew’s time in the US Army Ground Forces Band (anintegrated band despite the army’s segregation in the era) during WWII. It tookall those individuals and all those legacies to make “Fat Man” and get Americanrock music rolling.

2)     “The King”: Over the next couple decadesDomino would record many more hit records and albums, with “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955)and “BlueberryHill” (1956) the two biggest smashes. A February1957 Ebony magazine featuredubbed him (on the cover no less) the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.” But it was anoffhand line from another “King,” more than a decade later, that most potentlyreflects Domino’s status and influence. On July31, 1969, Domino attended Elvis Presley’s first concert at the Las VegasInternational Hotel; during a post-concert press conference, a reporterreferred to Presley as “The King,” and he responded by pointing at Domino andnoting, “No, that’s the real king of rock and roll.” At the same event Elvis tookan iconic picture with Domino, calling him “one of myinfluences from way back.” I’ll have a bit more to say about Elvis and hisinfluence in a couple days; but regardless of any other factors, thisrecognition for Domino from one of the most famous American rockers in historyillustrates just how iconic Fats was within (and beyond) the industry.

3)     Katrina: Domino was known to be one of themost humble and grounded rock stars, and he and his wife Rosemary continued tolive in their home inNew Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward throughout the late 20th centuryand into the first decade of the 21st. Because of Rosemary’s ailinghealth they did not evacuate in the days before Hurricane Katrina hit the city,and in the storm’s chaotic aftermath their home was flooded and Domino andRosemary were feared dead for a couple long days. But it turned outthey had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter, and in 2006 and 2007 Dominomade triumphant returns to the city and the music world: first with his 2006 albumAlive and Kickin’, the proceeds from which benefittedTipitina’s Foundation; and then with his last public performance (and first inmany years), a legendary May 19,2007 concert at Tipitina’s. If there had been any doubt that Dominorepresented New Orleans just as much and as well as he does rock ‘n roll, theseculminating iconic moments laid them forever to rest.

Last loveletter tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 12, 2025: Love Letters to the Big Easy: Treme

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention.So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters towhat makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post thisweekend!]

On fivecharacters through which the wonderfulHBO show charts Katrina’s and New Orleans’s stories.

[NB. Thehyperlinked clips are just relatively random ones from YouTube, not summationsof everything about these deeply human and multi-layered characters.]

[Also NB.Here be SPOILERS, so if you haven’t watched this great show yet, hie theehence!]

1)     Creighton Bernette: I wroteabout John Goodman’s Creighton and his righteous rants about New Orleans andKatrina in thispost, and those rants are what made Creighton famous, both on the show andin the responses to the show. But while those rants were indeed righteous, theywere also fueled by Creighton’s inability to move on, his permanent state ofmourning for what had happened to his adopted, beloved city. In retrospect,everything in this character (and in many ways in the show’s first season)built inevitably to his suicide at the end of that season’s penultimateepisode, as a statement about Katrina’s all too permanent effects for NewOrleans and many of its residents.

2)     LaDonna Batiste-Williams: KhandiAlexander’s fiery bar owner LaDonna’s first season arc embodies a different,even more tragic lingering effect of Katrina: all those families who literallylost loved ones in the storm and its aftermaths, and who never knew (or did notlearn for months if not years) what had happened to them. But while the storyof LaDonna’s brother Daymo wraps up by the end of season one, LaDonna’scharacter endures, experiencing another decidedly different tragedy of her ownwhile fighting to maintain a foothold in a city that seems intent on pushingher and her family out. New Orleans is still trying even in the series finale,but against LaDonna I don’t like even an entire city’s odds.

3)     Janette Desautel: KimDickens’ chef and restauranteur Janette reflects a third, slower burning kindof post-Katrina tragedy—someone who tries her hardest to stay but finds thestorm’s lingering effects too much for her, and more exactly for her career andpassion. Like her on-again/off-again boyfriend, Steve Zahn’s DJ Davis McAlary,New Orleans post-Katrina seems as if it might be more destructive thanconstructive for Janette, a passionate but unsustainable relationship. But intruth, even what would seem to be a significant relationship upgrade (to theNew York City culinary world) can’t ultimately compete, and the show’s endfinds Janette back in New Orleans and back with Davis—and despite ourselves wefully understand and support her in those choices.

4)     Albert Lambreaux: Myfavorite character is Clarke Peters’ Big Chief Albert, a handyman whose truetalent and passion is in the world of Mardi Gras Indians. Albert’sreturn to New Orleans and his decimated house (and to masking Indian) seem formuch of his arc like the acts of sheer stubbornness that his children(especially Rob Brown’s jazz trumpeter Delmond) believe them to be. But thetraditions and legacies that Albert embodies and carries on are too potent tobe broken and, it turns out, too charismatic to be resisted, even by hisfrequently resisting son. Like New Orleans post-Katrina, Albert may be fightinga losing battle—but he makes the fight so irresistibly appealing that we’rewith him every step of the way.

5)     Antoine Batiste: And thenthere’s the first character we meet, Wendell Pierce’s jazz trombonist Antoine. WhileAntoine is certainly affected by Katrina (particularly in the loss of hishouse), in some ways he is the character who seems least by either the storm orthe events of the show’s multi-year arc, who feels the closest in the finalepisode to where he was in the opening one (down to his continued disagreementswith cab drivers). But Antoine’s difficulties finding steady gigs (which mightbe an effect of Katrina, but might be the challenge of a city jam-packed withjazz musicians) push him into a new profession, that of middle school musicteacher, and through that work Antoine becomes connected to the most crucialquestion of all when it comes to post-Katrina New Orleans: what it will meanfor the city’s young people, and especially young people of color. That remainsa painfully uncertain question at the show’s conclusion, but with Antoine atthe front of the classroom I feel better about the answer to be sure.

Next loveletter tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 11, 2025: Love Letters to the Big Easy: The Battle of New Orleans

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention.So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters towhat makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post thisweekend!]

On three striking sides to one of America’s mostinsignificant victories.

The first thing that stands out about the January 1815Battle of New Orleans is that it was entirely unnecessary. Not in the “War:what is it good for?” sense, but quite literally unnecessary: the War of 1812had been ended by the Treaty ofGhent in December 1814, but the various signatories were still in theprocess of ratifying the treaty and word had not reached the British troops whowere trying to take the city and with it the rest of the Louisiana Purchaseterritory. So the attack continued, theAmerican troops led by Major General Andrew Jackson fought back, and theU.S. won its clearest military victory of the war after that conflict hadofficially ceased.

If the victory was thus officially meaningless, however, thecomposition of those American forces was far more significant. I’ve writtenelsewhere in this space about the uniquely multicultural,-national, and –lingual identify of New Orleans, and the army fighting toprotect the city reflected that identity very fully: the relatively small force(it numbered around 8000, noticeably fewer than the British forces) includedFrench Creole troops from New Orleans (some commanded by the former pirate Jean Lafitte),both free African American residents of the city (colloquiallyknown as fmcs, “free men of color”) and slaves who had been freedspecifically to aid in the battle, and ChoctawNative Americans, among other communities.

Moreover, one particular such community is even morestriking and unremembered in our national narratives. Since the mid-18thcentury, a group of Filipino immigrants had settled in a Louisiana townknown as Manila Village, comprising what seems likely to be the oldest (andcertainly the most enduring) Asian American community. Men from the village joined Lafitte’s forces forthe battle, helping to create the truly multicultural fighting unit knownas the “Batarians.” It’s difficult for me to overstate how much would change inour understanding of American history and community if we acknowledged at all,much less engaged at length with, this fact: that in one of our earliestmilitary efforts, our forces included French Creole and Filipino Americans,fighting side by side to defend the city and nation that were and remain theirhome.

Next loveletter tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 10, 2025: Love Letters to the Big Easy: New Orleans and America

[Lastmonth I got to return to myfavorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention.So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters towhat makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post thisweekend!]

On how NewOrleans helps us better engage America’s defining creolizations.

I’vewritten a good bit about New Orleans in this space: from this earlycity-centric post inspired by Mardi Gras and my first visit tothe city; to this one fromthe same blog era on one of my favorite American novels and abook that’s as much about New Orleans as it is about its huge,multi-generational cast of characters, George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1881).Those posts illustrate a few of the many reasons why I believe New Orleans isso distinctly and powerfully American, as I hope will this week’s subsequent postsin their own complementary ways. And as I’ll highlight a bit more in tomorrow’spost, the responses to and aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina likewise reveal someof the worst as well as the best of American history,society, culture, and art; on that final note, I should highlight anothertext I could definitely have featured in this week’s series and one of myfavorite 21st century American novels, Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011).

To saymuch more eloquently than I ever could a bit more about why I’d define NewOrleans as so deeply American, here’s one of the central characters from Treme that I didn’t get to analyze in this post, SteveZahn’s DJ DavisMcAlary. As a radio DJ, and a highly opinionated person to boot, Davis isoften ranting, much of it about the best and worst of his beloved New Orleans(and all of it a combination of communal and self-aggrandizing, convincing andfrustrating). But my favorite Davis monologue, in the opening scene of theSeason 4 episode “Dippermouth Blues,” is far quieter and more thoughtful.Coming out of playing a hugely cross-cultural song, Davis calls it, “A stellarexample of McAlary’s theory of creolization. Tin PanAlley, Broadway, the Great American Songbook meet African American musicalgenius. And that’s what America’s all about…‘Basin Street, is the street, whereall the dark and light folks meet.’ That’s how culture gets made in thiscountry. That’s how we do. We’re a Creole nation, whether you like it or not.And in three weeks, America inaugurates its first Creole president. Get used toit.”

Those ofus who loved thataspect of Obama and evencalled him “the first American president” as a result didn’t have to “getused to” anything, of course. And as for those whom Davis is addressing moredirectly in those closing lines, well to say that they seem notto have gotten used to it is to significantly understate the case(which of course David Simon and his co-creators knew all too well, as thatfinal-season episode of Treme mayhave been set around New Year’s 2008 but was made and aired in late 2013).Indeed, when I was asked by audiences during my book talks for We the People about whywe’ve seen such an upsurge in exclusionary rhetoric and violence over the lastdecade and a half, I’ve frequently argued that backlash to Obama—as arepresentation of so many perceived national “changes”—has been a centralcause. Which is to say, it’s not just that we need to “get over” the reality ofour creolized history, culture, and identity—first the we who love thoseelements need to do a better job making the case for them, both as valuable andas foundationally American. There’s no place and no community through which wecan do so more potently than New Orleans.

Next loveletter tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Cities you’d love on?

February 8-9, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: Aidan and Kyle Railton

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

I couldwrite about my sons in every post and ad nauseum (probably literally for y’all,but #sorrynotsorry), but here I’ll restrain myself and just a highlight a fewof the many reasons why I’m so proud of their athletic accomplishments:

1)     Aidan’sGuest Post on Strava and social media in running;

2)     Kyle’s current role as an IndoorTrack captain;

3)     Aidan’s blossoming connection to the VanderbiltUniversity Running Club, for which he’s already a leader as a freshman;

4)     And Kyle’s commitment to mentoring and teaching younger runners, the subjectof one of his phenomenal college application essays.

Valentine’sseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?

February 7, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: FSU Student-Athletes

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

As I nearthe conclusion of my 20th (!) year at Fitchburg State University, I wantedto share quick examples of a handful of the many amazing student-athletes I’vetaught across those two decades. These folks stand out for their record-breakingaccomplishments, but they also represent the vast majority of suchstudent-athletes at FSU, a school that can’t offer athletic scholarships, thatstill demands an exceptionally challenging balance of its student-athletes, andthat would be infinitely impoverished without folks such as these:

1)     Amy Fahey

2)     AidanHanratty

3)     DianaOkongo

4)     CameronMonette

5)     OliverCookson

6)     JennaMorse

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?

February 6, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: Jaylen Brown

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

On twoinspiring layers to the most recent NBA Finals MVP.

I wrote brieflyabout the inspiring stories behind Boston Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown in thisSaturday Evening Post Considering History column on the Celtics. In lieuof a full first paragraph here I’d ask you to check out that column if youwould, and then come on back for more on what makes Brown such an inspiringsports story.

Welcomeback! Brown’s social and political advocacy and activism are without doubt themost inspiring layers to his career and life, far beyond the basketball court,and were nicely traced in this excellent WilliamRhoden essay for Andscape. It’s not just that he’s so committed to thoseefforts, but also the language and ideas on which they depend—look at the homepage for his 7uiceFoundation, for example, which leads with “A History of Systemic Racism”! I’vewritten before in this space about the 2015-2017 BostonGlobe Spotlight investigationwhich revealed that the mediannet worth for Black families in Boston was $8, a statistic that is as complicatedas statistics always are but that nonetheless captures quite definitivelythe legacies of systemic racism in the city for which Brown plays professional basketball.Brown’s foundation represents a direct and vital response to such histories andrealities, and that alone makes him one of our most inspiring contemporary athletes.

But as hisexcellent HotOnes interview reminded us,there’s even more to Brown than his combination of athletic and activistachievements. A Berkeley grad who was offereda NASA internship, became the youngest person ever to deliveran invited lecture at Harvard when he did so at the age of 21, and in his roleas an MIT MediaLab Fellow co-founded theBridge Program which mentors Boston high schoolers of color who areinterested in STEM, Brown was described by certain scouts as “toosmart” for the NBA before he was drafted in 2016. Obviously thatperspective is caught up in all kinds of limited and prejudicial mindsets thattell us more about those holding them than they ever could about Brown. Butthere’s no doubt that he’s a unique professional athlete in any sport, and fromany time period, one who exemplifies the best kind of Renaissance person that alsocan and should inspire all of us to be our most multilayered and best selves.

Lastinspiring story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?

February 5, 2025: Inspiring Sports Stories: Chubbtown

[For thisyear’s Super Bowl series, I wanted to highlight inspiring American sports storiesand figures, past and present. Leading up to a special pre-Valentine’s tributeto my two favorite American athletes!]

On two contrastingand equally important ways to contextualize an inspiring family story.

I don’timagine I have to convince readers of this blog that sports are more than just adistraction or entertainment, that they connect to all the layers of oursociety and community and history. One of the most striking instances of suchconnections for me is the fact that I first learned about the unique andamazing American community of Chubbtown,Georgia, through a pregame story on the running back Nick Chubb, then playingas a stand-out at the University of Georgia. Chubb has since moved into theNFL, as has , the equally talented defensive lineman Bradley Chubb. Both Nickand Bradley are related to the historic Chubbfamily, one of the oldest-recorded multi-generational African Americanfamilies in our history (with recordsdating back to the pre-Revolutionary days) and the founders of Chubbtown, acommunityof free Black folks established in the mountains of Northwest Georgia in1864, during the depths of the Civil War (and as an escape from that conflict).

Chubbtownis far from the only community founded by African Americans during andimmediately after the Civil War, as anyone who has read Zora Neale Hurston’s TheirEyes Were Watching God (1937) knows; Hurston setsmuch of her novel in such a community, one based closely on her owninfluential childhood experiencesin Eatonville, the first incorporated all-Black city in America. Andremembering such communities overall allows us—or perhaps forces us is the betterphrase—to engage with the 1923 Rosewood massacre,when another all-Black community in Florida was largely destroyed by whitesupremacist domestic terrorists. The late JohnSingleton’s 1997 film portrays both that community and that massacre withnuance and power, and I would say we can’t commemorate the Chubbs and Chubbtownwithout a complementary examination of that story and these frustratinglyfrequent and foundational American historiesof racial terrorism.

At thesame time, we talked a great deal throughout my 20th Century AfricanAmerican Literature course this past Fall semester about not allowing suchhistories to dominate our collective memories of the truly multilayered andoften profoundly inspiring stories of Black history. This year marks the 250thanniversary of the firstrecorded stories of the Chubb family, making their saga a particularly strikingand symbolic such inspiring story in early 2025 (and one that can, for example,complement, challenge, and transcend collective memories focused only on the250th anniversary of white-centered stories and figures from theAmerican Revolution). That story extends far beyond Chubbtown, but it became deeplyinterconnected with this community, one that produced two iconic 21stcentury athletes who can, like so much of the best of sports in our histories,offer a window into better remembering every layer of that setting and story.

Nextinspiring story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Inspiring sports stories or figures you’d highlight?