Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 341

September 29, 2014: American Collectors: Isabella Stewart Gardner

[There are few practices more AmericanStudies, but also more complex, than that of collecting historical, cultural, and artistic treasures and memorabilia. This week I’ll highlight and analyze five such collections and the collectors who assembled them. Please share collections and museums of interest to you for a collected weekend post!]On the inspiring life and the legacy inside my favorite American museum.On the surface, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s life would seem to exemplify an upper class experience of Gilded Age America. Born into a wealthy New York family, she married into an even wealthier one—her husband John “Jack” Gardner was the descendent of generations of Boston Brahmins on both sides of his family—and benefitted from those connections immensely: traveling extensively throughout Europe and Asia, befriending numerous painters and artists, serving as a patron to many of them as well as to organizations such as the Boston Symphony, commandeering the Boston social scene for many decades, and so on. It was not a life without significant losses—her only child, a son, died at the age of two; she outlived her beloved husband by more than a quarter-century—but certainly it was a life of great privilege and all that comes with it; as Bruce Springsteen put it, “a life of leisure and a pirate’s treasure / Don’t make much for tragedy.”Indeed they don’t—but the key question to ask of Isabella Stewart Gardner is what she did make of her life, and the answer is on multiple levels very inspiring. In her private life, Gardner followed her passions and loves without (it seems) the slightest worry about what was considered proper or how she might be perceived—some of those loves were stereotypically highbrow (Venice, the opera, priceless art and antiques), but others were anything but (Red Sox baseball and Harvard football, boxing and horse racing, entertainments and adventures wherever and however she could find them). In response to the rumors and gossip that often sprang up around her, Gardner simply noted, “Don’t spoil a good story by telling the truth” and continued to live her life. Even more inspiringly, her relationships with the artists and authors she befriended were far from simply financial or one-way streets—John Singer Sargent, the painter to whom she was particularly close (and on whom more tomorrow), considered her a lifelong friend, and his painting of her from two years before her death is one of the most sensitive and powerful portraits ever produced in America.Gardner’s legacy, as embodied in and exemplified by the Museum, is more inspring still. Literally every aspect of the Museum—known at its 1903 opening as Fenway Court—represents Gardner’s own design and inspiration, from its Fenway location to its use of a transported three-story Venetian palace, the arrangements and specifics of each room to the courtyard’s precise details of colors, flowers, and more. Gardner’s willbequeathed a substantial amount to the upkeep and expansion of the Museum, with the requirement that it maintain her vision and choices. And most importantly, that vision was anything but a Gilded Age stereotype: she hoped that the Museum could serve “for the education and enrichment of the public forever,” and openly and passionately hoped that all Americans could have the chance to visit the Museum and experience its artistic, cultural, historical, and educational environment and effects. Such goals are perhaps not unlike other Gilded Age figures’ Gospel of Wealth, of philanthropic giving coupled to vast fortunes—but in Gardner’s case, she offered not just her wealth but every inch of her identity and perspective, of what she cared about and what she most valued. You can feel that gift in every inch of the Museum.Next collector tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Collections you'd highlight?

September 27-28, 2014: September 2014 Recap

[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]September 1: Fall Forward: 2014 NEASA Conference: A series on plans for the fall starts with the (still) upcoming New England American Studies Association conference in Bristol, RI!September 2: Fall Forward: Scholars Strategy Network: The series continues with the public scholarly community I’m very excited to be joining this fall.September 3: Fall Forward: Toronto Talks: A pair of complementary, challenging (still) upcoming book talks, as the series rolls on.September 4:  Fall Forward: FSU Strategic Planning: A couple of important takeaways and topics from an institutional service project I’m helping with.September 5: Fall Forward: A New Teaching Challenge: The series concludes with a new course that has me back on my toes, in the best sense.September 6-7: Crowd-sourced Fall Plans: The autumn plans and goals of fellow AmericanStudiers—share yours in comments!September 8: More Cville Stories: Mr. Jefferson’s University: Another series on Charlottesville histories begins with the surprising, telling details of UVa’s early days.September 9: More Cville Stories: The Black Knights: The series continues with race, segregation, and the building in which I attended high school.September 10: More Cville Stories: Barracks Road: On the subtle ways we’re surrounded by history, if we only know where to look, as the series rolls on.September 11: More Cville Stories: Fry’s Spring: Four exemplary stages of one of Charlottesville’s oldest sites and spaces.September 12: More Cville Stories: Hazings: The series concludes with two Cville connections to a complex and important social issue.September 13-14: Robert Greene II’s Guest Post: My latest Guest Post, as History PhD candidate Rob Greene analyses 21st century college athletics.September 15: Country Music and Society: Gender and Identity: A series on country connections begins with Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and images of gender.September 16: Country Music and Society: Patriotism and Images of America: The series continues with the deeply frustrating definitions of America contained in some country songs.September 17: Country Music and Society: The Dixie Chicks and Strong Women: The kinds of strong, independent female artists we support, and those we don’t, as the series rolls on.September 18: Country Music and Society: Johnny Cash and Prison: The lessons about a forgotten and stereotyped American community we can still learn from the Man in Black.September 19: Country Music and Society: 21st Century Country: The series concludes with five songs that capture the range and depth of 21stcentury American country music.September 20-21: Crowd-sourcing Country Music: My next crowd-sourced post, as fellow AmericanStudiers share their country connections—add yours, please!September 22: Woman and War: The Armory Fire: A series on women in wartime begins with the Civil War tragedy that complicates a historical division.September 23: Woman and War: Rosie the Riveter: The series continues with two ways to challenge and deepen our narratives of an iconic figure.September 24: Woman and War: Molly Pitcher: The historical figure who may or may not have existed, and why she matters in any case, as the series rolls on.September 25: Woman and War: Suffragist Pacifists: On how we think about and treat protesters and activists, oand what history has to tell us about those practices.September 26: Woman and War: Jane Fonda: The series concludes with a problematic anti-war protest and the real problem with propaganda.Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

September 26, 2014: Women and War: Jane Fonda

[Some of the more complex American histories and stories revolve around women and war. In this week’s series, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy five such stories—but this is just the tip of the iceberg, for these stories and overall, and so as always I’d love to hear your responses and thoughts!]On war, activism, and the real problem with propaganda.Between yesterday’s post on suffragist pacifists and last week’s on the Dixie Chicks, I’ve written a lot recently about famous, controversial anti-war voices and activists. As those posts, and many others like this one on Slaughterhouse Five, no doubt illustrate, my deep-seated opposition to and perspective on the worst elements and effects of war makes me naturally sympathetic to such anti-war voices, and concurrently unsympathetic to the critiques of those voices as unpatriotic or traitorous or the like. Dissent, as Howard Zinn (not Thomas Jefferson) famously put it, is indeed the highest form of patriotism, and I can’t imagine a more important time for such patriotic dissents than in the periods before and during a war.On the other hand, it’d be just as simplistic to treat all such anti-war activism as equally serious or successful as to critique it all as unpatriotic. I’ll admit to having had my issues with Sean Penn’s December 2002 visit to Iraq—the U.S. wasn’t at war with Iraq at the time (although the Bush administration was already arguing for that war to be sure), but the trip nonetheless felt unnecessarily provocative; Penn could have made the same arguments without visiting Iraq, meeting with Saddam Hussein’s Deputy Prime Minister, and so on. The same could be said for Jane Fonda’s famous—or infamous—visit to North Vietnam in July 1972, but with a very important distinction: the U.S. was at war with North Vietnam at the time, and so Fonda’s meetings with North Vietnamese leaders, her radio broadcasts in support of NVA, her apparently accidental but hugely controversial photo while seated on an NVA anti-aircraft gun, were all amplified by that wartime situation.The real issue with Fonda’s visit, it seems to me, is this: it constituted a propaganda effort for the North Vietnamese government. I would place the emphasis there not on “North Vietnamese,” but on “propaganda”—concurrent with Zinn’s definition of patriotism would be an ability to critique American propaganda just as much as (if not more than) that of other nations, after all; but it becomes more, not less, difficult to advance such critiques if we participate in the propaganda efforts of America’s adversaries. Which is to say, Fonda had just as much of a point about America’s war in Vietnam as did Maines about the Iraq War (and perhaps even more of one, given that by 1972 America had been fighting that war for a decade), but her participation in propaganda efforts made it far less likely that her point would ever be heard or engaged with by most Americans. Next war story tomorrow,BenPS. One more time: what do you think? Other war stories you'd highlight?

September 25, 2014: Women and War: Suffragist Pacifists

[Some of the more complex American histories and stories revolve around women and war. In this week’s series, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy five such stories—but this is just the tip of the iceberg, for these stories and overall, and so as always I’d love to hear your responses and thoughts!]On communities of protest and activism, and how we treat them.Last week’s series on country music and society included a post on the extreme reaction to the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines and her March 2003 anti-Iraq War/George W. Bush comments. I made the case there that the reaction had at least something to do with gender, and with a sense of what kind of feisty independence is and is not appropriate for female artists. But another important context would have to be the way in which the entire anti-war movement was treated by a sizeable percentage of American media and society in and around March 2003: as, to put it bluntly, a bunch of crazy drug-addled kooks and hippies to whom the appropriate response would be (and much too frequently was) simply a combination of mockery, ridicule, and scorn. (The concurrent protests around the world were, it seems to me, taken much more seriously, whatever their nation’s stance on the Iraq War.)Such dismissals of anti-war protesters were nothing new in American society, of course. Whereas the Vietnam War became so broadly unpopular that its anti-war movement garnered as much support as it did critique (although the aforementioned stereotyping of the protesters still occurred to be sure), the World War II and World War I anti-war movements were far more nationally unpopular and subject to the same kind of attacks. During both wars, many of the most prominent pacificists, both in America and around the world, were also women’s rights activists; a trend exemplified by Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, who opposed both world wars and who represented the sole Congressional “no” vote against declaring war on Japan on December 8th, 1941. Rankin’s political career survived her World War I pacifism, but her opposition to World War II proved not only politically costly but personally destructive, both in media coverage and in threats on her life. (She did not run for reelection, but did live to lead an anti-Vietnam War campaign in 1968!)The virulent opposition to Rankin and her pacifist colleagues could be attributed solely to pro-war agitation and fever, and certainly that’s been a consistent part of such wartime historical moments and narratives. But I think it would also need to be analyzed in conjunction with the equally virulent and too-often forgotten opposition faced by suffragistsand other women’s rights leaders. In that linked post I highlighted the shockingly nasty children’s book Ten Little Suffergets (c.1910), which offers a particularly vivid but far from isolated illustration (literally and figuratively) of such anti-women’s rights attitudes. If we have largely forgotten this kind of widespread anti-suffragist vitriol, one clear reason would be our collective recognition of just how fully those women’s rights activists were on the right side of history—a lesson that we perhaps have yet to learn when it comes to our anti-war movements, contemporary and historical.Last war story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other war stories you'd highlight?

September 24, 2014: Women and War: Molly Pitcher

[Some of the more complex American histories and stories revolve around women and war. In this week’s series, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy five such stories—but this is just the tip of the iceberg, for these stories and overall, and so as always I’d love to hear your responses and thoughts!]On the iconic war hero who might or might not have existed, and why she matters in any case.I can think of few more AmericanStudies ways to analyze popular memory and prominence than through the eleven rest stops on the New Jersey turnpike—and by that measure, Molly Pitcher and Clara Barton are the two most famous women in New Jersey history and culture (if that last phrase isn’t an oxymoron—I kid, Jerseyites, I kid). Pitcher’s is also the only one of the eleven rest stop referents that wasn’t an actual name, and that might not even link to an individual figure—some historians believe that the name does refer to one woman, Mary Ludwig Hays, who followed her husband and the Continental Army to the Battle of Monmouth and found herself not only serving water to the soldiers but even taking over her wounded husband’s artillery job; but others have linked the name to a number of other Revolutionary-era women who performed one or another of those roles (camp followers, water carriers, and so on), including Margaret Corbin.So Molly Pitcher is as much a folkloric as a historical figure, one not unlike Paul Bunyan, John Henry, or, perhaps more accurately, Johnny Appleseed. Because like Appleseed’s inspiration John Chapman (about whom see that linked, wonderful Guest Post by William Kerrigan), women like Hays and Corbin most definitely existed; the details of their lives and experiences are as partial and uncertain as most any 18th century histories, even those of the Revolution’s most prominent leaders, but there’s plenty of information out there, such as at the various stories linked in my first paragraph’s closing sentences, and the Molly Pitcher legend provides an excellent starting point for researching and learning about these historical figures. Even absent such research, any collective memory of “Molly Pitcher” itself adds women to our narratives of these Revolutionary war battles and histories, producing a more full and accurate picture of those histories as a result.I’d take that argument one step further, however. I’ve written on multiple occasions, including in this post on Judith Sargent Murray and this one on John and Abigail Adams, about the striking cultural, social, and political voices and roles of Revolutionary-era American women (including not only Murray and Adams but also Phillis Wheatley, Annis Boudinot Stockton, and others). Indeed, it’s fair to say that such women help us to see the era’s possibilities for gender and society as likewise revolutionary, and as foreshadowing and influencing the 19th century women’s movement. That some of these women, including Adams and Stockton, achieved such success in relationship to their husbands’ lives and work—just as, that is, Hays and Corbin did in relationship to their husband’s wartime efforts—reflects some of the era’s limitations and obstacles; limitations and obstacles that all these women, like Molly Pitcher, pushed well beyond.Next war story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other war stories you'd highlight?

September 23, 2014: Women and War: Rosie the Riveter

[Some of the more complex American histories and stories revolve around women and war. In this week’s series, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy five such stories—but this is just the tip of the iceberg, for these stories and overall, and so as always I’d love to hear your responses and thoughts!]On two ways to complicate and deepen one of our more famous images.I would argue that there are few 20th century images or icons that have achieved and sustained more prominence in our collective consciousness than Rosie the Riveter. Initially created as part of a propaganda effort, the War Advertising Council’s Women in War Jobs Campain, Rosie has transcended that specific origin and starting point to become a multi-layered icon: a Greatest Generation complement to celebratory images of World War II soldiers; a rejection of social associations of women with anti-war perspectives and efforts (on which more later this week); and a feminist argument for women’s capabilities, in the workforce and in general. However we analyze her, Rosie is an inescapable part of both her era and 20th century American history.Yet as is so often the case, our perspective on Rosie is at best a simplified and at worst a troublingly inaccurate one. For one thing, as this article details at length, Rosie was not created through the WAC’s ad campaign (the name Rosie was not associated with that famous picture until the 1980s) but rather through a series of distinct cultural texts and moments, including a 1942 songthat (it seems) first used the character’s name. Moreover, she was brought to national prominence through an image that differs in striking ways from the “We Can Do It” ad: Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Saturday Evening Postcover, which depicts a far more overtly working-class Rosie, one situated amongst the implements and grime of her labor just as much as she is the propagandistic details (the American flag backdrop, the copy of Mein Kampf under her foot). There are certainly parallels between Rockwell’s image and the WAC ad, including a central emphasis on strength as depicted in Rosie’s visible and impressive arms; but at the very least the Rockwell image should be as prominent a part of our collective memories as the ad.Yet Rockwell’s Rosie and the ad’s figure share another feature, one easily overlooked but well worth noting: they are both white. It’s in response to that feature that Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest working National Park Ranger and a guide at Richmond, California’s Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park, discusses her own World War II work experiences as outside of the Rosie narrative: “Rosie the Riveter is a white woman’s story,” as she puts it in that first linked article. Of course I take Soskin’s point, and agree with her that remembering the triumphs of Rosie has made it easier for us to forget concurrent, complicating histories such as the 1944 Port Chicago mutiny. Yet just as the image of Rosie has been created and disseminated in particular ways, there’s no reason why we can’t create and remember a new version—one, for example, based on Soskin herself and the thousands of African American workers and women like her. Next war story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other war stories you'd highlight?

September 22, 2014: Women and War: The Armory Fire

[Some of the more complex American histories and stories revolve around women and war. In this week’s series, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy five such stories—but this is just the tip of the iceberg, for these stories and overall, and so as always I’d love to hear your responses and thoughts!]On the tragedy that sheds new light on one of our more complex histories.In this post on Martin Scorcese’s Gangs of New York (2002), I gave the filmmaker a good bit of grief for the way in which his film builds toward a chaotic but sympathetic depiction of the city’s Irish American community during the 1863 draft riots. As I noted there, the riots were of course part of a complex set of historical and social contexts and factors, but likewise, and even more saliently for Scorcese’s sympathies, was the period’s Irish American community. It’s always challenging for those of us striving for a progressive perspective on history when one oppressed community opposes another, and that’s undoubtedly part of the story of the riots: a recent, heavily discriminated-against American community (Irish immigrants) reacting to yet another perceived discrimination (the Civil War draft) by enacting violence against an even more discriminated-against community (African Americans).If we’re going to remember the draft riots more fully and accurately, as I believe we certainly should, it’d be important at the same time to remember the ways in which Irish Americans contributed much more constructively to the Union cause during the war. That would definitely include the nearly 150,000 Federal troops who had been born in Ireland, nearly a third of whom were apparently New Yorkers and all of whom were instrumental to the war’s successful outcome. But it would also include the many Irish American women who worked in the era’s mills, factories, and especially arsenals—the latter especially not only because of their overt contributions to the war effort, but also because of the striking number of tragic arsenal explosions and accidents that claimed many workers’ lives (in the South as well as the North) over the course of the war.Exemplifying such tragedies, and particularly overtly linked (in its own era and in our collective memories of the event) to the Irish American community, was the June 1864 Washington Arsenal fire. 1,500 men, women, and girls worked in that arsenal, and while it’s impossible to ascertain an exact tally of how many were killed and wounded in the fire, historians estimate that at least twenty women died (the particular area where the fire began was worked almost exclusively by women), and many of the rest were likely injured either in the blaze or during their escape. It’s certainly fair to say that these workers were casualties of war, just as all such workers contributed mightily to the war effort; fair and important to remember them right alongside those Irish American soldiers. And, to reiterate, right alongside the New York draft rioters as well. History’s not reducible to any one moment, and the more we put them in conversation, with each other and all their contexts, the stronger and more valuable those collective memories will be.Next war story tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other war stories you'd highlight?

September 20-21, 2014: Crowd-sourcing Country Music

[As with any longstanding, popular cultural genre, country music has a complex, evolving relationship to American society. In this week’s series, I’ve highlighted five ways we can AmericanStudy the genre and those social connections and meanings. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and connections of fellow CountryStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]Rob Greene follows up Monday’s post, noting, “I think this shows once again how complicated a genre country music is—far too often associated only with conservative ideology, but your interpretation of Parton's work makes a lot of sense.”Paul Beaudoin also responds to Monday’s post, writing, “Interesting to talk about country artists, gender and identity. Parton's Jolene is a great song to think of in this respect. Rare is a tune where an unidentified woman pleads with Jolene to leave her man alone because she KNOWS she can't compete with her beauty. Our singer knows the man dreams of the ‘other’ but for her owself (selfishness?) hopes that her love will keep faithful to her. The main character's (who again, is never named) vulnerability is heard as quintessential American femininity - esp. through the voice of the songs composer and lyricist Parton. The soft yet resonate twang, the simple music accompaniment set the scene well for putting the singer's circumstances in our ear's mind. The listener becomes the unidentified lover who is pleading. Yet, when we slow down Parton's recording of Jolene, a wondrous transformation takes place - Jolene because transgender. With Parton's voice now sounding ‘masculine’ the pleading to Jolene now takes on new meaning. With this gender change new layers of meaning (understanding) come in to play. Parton's heteronormative lyric becomes homoerotic and suggests an even more complicated relationship than the original.” More broadly, Paul adds “Male relationships in much country music are about as macho as they come - drinking buddies, gamblers or gunslingers - men - American Country men - adhere strictly to the heteronormative code that is familiar to many (for example see Billy Currington's ‘People are Crazy’ with nearly 24 million hits ). Straight up ‘Gay’ country music (pun intended) is also a bit of a rarity. However, there has been huge breakthrough this pat summer with Steve Grand's ‘All American Boy’ (*curiously released just a few days before the July 4th in 2013). The video for the song appears quite hetero normative but the sensitive listener will hear a twist in the music just as the introduction ends. This foreshadowing suggests that not all is what appears to be. What happens when ideas of Steve Grand's ‘All American Boy’ become a part of the mainstream. With only about 3.4 million hits - it's unlikely to be more than just a blip on the country music scene.”DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld follows up that post to add “A Boy Named Sue” “is not Silverstein’s only country song,” sharing both the original and this PG version.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Any other country connections you'd highlight or artists/songs you'd recommend?

September 19, 2014: Country Music and Society: 21st Century Country

[As with any longstanding, popular cultural genre, country music has a complex, evolving relationship to American society. In this series, I’ll highlight five ways we can AmericanStudy the genre and those social connections and meanings. I’d love to hear your country connections and analyses for a twangtastic crowd-sourced weekend post!]Five recent songs that capture the genre’s evolving American story—and about which I won’t say too much, because you should let them say it to you directly:1)      Jamey Johnson, “In Color”(2008): Johnson’s beautiful dialogue between a grandfather and his son manages to sum up much of the 20th century alongside its moving depiction of life, family, and love.2)      Brad Paisley, “Welcome to the Future” (2009): Paisley’s ode to progress is a more direct and somewhat on-the-nose engagement with 20th and 21st century changes, but any country shoutout to Martin Luther King, Jr. is fine by me.3)      Neko Case, “People Got a Lotta Nerve” (2009): The warnings of a self-avowed “maneater” aren’t exactly revolutionary—“These Boots Are Made for Walking,” anyone?—but Case’s imagery is as distinctive as her voice and sound, and it adds up to another side to those strong country women about whom I blogged on Wednesday.4)      Eric Church, “Springsteen”(2011): You didn’t think I could resist including a song called “Springsteen” in this list, did you? Again, Church’s ode to a long-lost young love isn’t exactly the first of its kind; but in its self-referential use of pop culture to express those feelings, it represents another element to 21stcentury country for sure.5)      Kacey Musgraves, “Follow Your Arrow” (2013): I mentioned Musgraves and linked to this song in that same Wednesday post—but any country song that makes the case for both lesbian relationships and smoking pot has to be included in an analysis of new trends in the genre, ones that reflect but also continue to push forward their society, and ours.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Responses to any of the week's posts, or other country connections you'd highlight for the weekend post?

September 18, 2014: Country Music and Society: Johnny Cash and Prison

[As with any longstanding, popular cultural genre, country music has a complex, evolving relationship to American society. In this series, I’ll highlight five ways we can AmericanStudy the genre and those social connections and meanings. I’d love to hear your country connections and analyses for a twangtastic crowd-sourced weekend post!]On the message the Man in Black still has for us—if we can ever start to hear it.In this very early post on my colleague and friend Ian Williams’ work with prison inmates, I made the case that the incarcerated might well represent the most forgotten or elided American community (and that they’re in that bleak conversation in any case). I wish I could say that anything has changed in the nearly four years since I made that case, but I don’t believe it has; perhaps Orange is the New Black will help produce a seachange in our awareness of and attitudes toward those millions of incarcerated Americans, and perhaps the proposed federal changes in drug-related sentencing will begin to make a dent in those shocking numbers, but as of right now it seems to me that the prison industrial complex is only growing in size and strength.More than fifty years ago, one of the most iconic 20th century American artists and voices began a career’s worth of efforts to force us to think about the world and life of our prisons. I had some critical things to say about Johnny Cash in Monday’s post, so it’s more than fair that I pay respect here to one of his most impressive and interesting attributes: his consistent attention to that setting and its experiences and communities, from the 1955 song “Folsom Prison Blues”through his many prison performances, culminating (but by no means concluding) in the groundbreaking live albums At Folsom Prison (1968) and At San Quentin (1969). My fellow AmericanStudier Jonathan Silverman identifies Cash’s trip to Folsom as one of the Nine Choices through which Cash most reflected and influenced American culture, and I would go further: it was one of the most unique and significant moments in any American artistic career.Or it should been that significant, at least. Forty-five years later, with our collective awareness, understanding, and attitudes toward prisoners seemingly more negative than ever (although studies like this 2002 onegive some reason for hope in that regard), I don’t know that Cash’s clear recognition of the shared humanity between himself and those prisoners—and, implicitly but clearly, between those prisoners and every other audience to whom Cash performed—has reached his fellow Americans in any consistent way. That might seem like a given, recognizing prisoners’ humanity—but when I read and hear frequent critiques of prisoner access to exercise and health facilities, to media, to decent food, to liveable conditions, to any of the things that seem to define American life as we generally argue for it, I’m not at all sure that such recognition is widespread. Perhaps we must first, to quote another prison song (sung by a man who did his own time for drug-related offenses), Steve Earle’s “The Truth”(2002), “Admit that what scares you is the me in you.” Last country connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post, or other country connections you'd highlight?