Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 423

January 7-8, 2012: Honoring A Great American

Earlier this week, one of the 20th Century's (and history's) most courageous and inspiring Americans passed away at the age of 93. Gordon Hirabayashi is likely best-known for the Supreme Court case that bore his name, and which resulted in a decision that rivals Dred Scott and Plessy as a tragically misguided application of the law to buttress un-American discrimination and bigotry. But that case, and its converse four decades later by which Hirabayashi was finally vindicated, represent only a portion of the heroism and ideals which Hirabayashi and his co-resisters embodied.

I have plenty I could say about the Japanese internment, about Hirabayashi's stand, and about the worst and best of American identity that they collectively reflect. But for today I'll let actor, playwright, and activist George Takei's brief but moving words about Hirabayashi and the internment speak for themselves:

http://www.allegiancemusical.com/blog-entry/hero-our-democracy

and will supplement them with the extended biography provided in the New York Times obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/us/gordon-hirabayashi-wwii-internment-opponent-dies-at-93.html?_r=1

The full story of the Japanese internment has yet to be included in our national narratives and conversations, although I'm heartened to see that Takei is working on a musical that will engage with this dark and divisive and yet, as Hirabayashi demonstrates, also deeply moving and inspiring part of our American history and story. As we mourn the loss of this inspiring man, we can and must also honor his courageous and vitally American actions and life.

More next week,

Ben

PS. Any thoughts on Hirabayashi, the  internment, or any related histories or issues to add?

1/7 Memory Day nominee: Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance novelist, anthropologist and folklorist, and essayist whose works consistently depict the complexity and richness, the pain and promise, the horrors and hopes, of African American and American communities and lives.

1/8 Memory Day nominee: Emily Green Balch, the Nobel Prize-winning anti-war activist whose near-century of inspiring American life included professing economics and sociology at Wellesley, writing pioneering books on Slavic Americans and international women's organizing and activism (among others), and defending human rights around the globe. 

January 6, 2012: American Studiers Needed

[This week I've been highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the fifth and final entry in that series.]

How an American Studies approach works best when it's as diverse, multivocal, and communally interconnected and inspiring as America itself.

I could provide another American Studies analytical example here, and will of course continue to do so in this space in the days and weeks to come. But I know I speak for both myself and Graham Beckwith when I say that this new site's most profound goal is to be driven not by my voice (that's what this blog is for) nor by his (although his designs and vision are creating the space where this will all happen) but by the voices and perspectives, the ideas and needs, of as many American Studiers as possible. And so on this last day of my first week blogging at the new site, I have a request for you.

The short version is this: I want to hear what American thing—a text (in any genre and media), a event, a figure, an issue or debate, an idea, a period, a question, whatever you've got—you've got an American Studies analytical take on. Maybe you've already articulated that take pretty fully somewhere, and we can link to it or otherwise include it here. Maybe you'd like the chance to articulate it more fully, and you can contribute a guest post to the blog or a thread to the Forum or share it in some other form that works for you. Or maybe it's more something that could become part of our pages or content here in an overarching and evolving way.

Whatever the case may be—and I'd love to have starting points and suggestions of all those types, and plenty of them—all I'm asking for right now is that you let me know that you're interested. A comment on this post works fine for that, as would an email (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) or tweet (@AmericanStudier) if you prefer. This site will grow and succeed in direct proportion to how much it becomes a community of voices, so let's get started building that conversation!

More this weekend,

Ben

PS. You know what to do!

1/6 Memory Day nominee: Carl Sandburg, the son of Swedish American immigrants and a Spanish American War vet who became one of the 20th century's most multi-talented and prolific writers: of poems that define a city and era, of a Pulitzer-winning multi-volume biography of Lincoln, and of a huge and very underrated historical novel.

January 5, 2012: Mike Mulligan and His America

[This week I'll be highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the fourth in that series.]
How an American Studies approach can help us dig into the many layers of one of our most enduring children's books.When you have two young AmericanStudiers like I do, you spend a lot of time reading children's books. Often the same books over and over again, in fact. While there are few things I would rather do, it's nonetheless fair to say that an adult AmericanStudier's mind occasionally wanders during the 234th reading of a particular book; hence my thoughts on The Cat in the Hat and single motherhood in this post, for example. One of the boys' favorites, for its construction-vehicle-focus, for its beautiful illustrations, and for its pitch-perfect narrative voice and storytelling, is Virginia Lee Burton's Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939). And luckily for the American Studier who gets to read Mike at least once a week, it also reveals, reflects, and carries forward a number of complex and significant American narratives and histories.Burton's book was written and published during the Great Depression, and it certainly engages with that central historical context in interesting if somewhat conflicted ways. The nation-building work on public/infrastructure projects that Mike and Mary Ann do in the opening pages echoes the Works Progress Administration's and other New Deal-era efforts, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam, and makes a case for the importance of labor and work more broadly; yet in Burton's book those projects are apparently quickly forgotten, and Mike and Mary Ann find themselves unemployed, their own depression (in every sense, as they cry together over a landfill of discarded steam shovels) the text's real starting point. Similarly, when they journey to the small town of Poppersville to bid on its city hall project, they encounter some of the worst as well as the best of communal relationships during an economic downturn—the penny-pinching, dog-eat-dog mentality of councilman Henry B. Swap is what gets Mike and Mary Ann the job in the first place and motivates at least some of the intense interest in their efforts, even if the community members do seem eventually to bond together in support of those (successful) efforts.Those conflicted themes are not only relevant to the Depression, however—they also reflect a couple of distinct but interconnected dualities out of which much of American populism, at least since the late 19th century Populist movement and party, has arisen. For one, American populism has vacillated significantly between a nostalgic embrace of idealized, seemingly lost historical communities and identities and a progressive push for future change; Burton's book, with both the villain's role played by new technologies and Mike and Mary Ann's Popperville endpoint, seems to side with nostalgia and the past, although I might argue that Mike and Mary Ann have helped moved Popperville a bit more fully into the future in the process. Even if they have, though, they have done so in an explicitly rural, or at least small-town, setting, a world which has likewise been in complicated and often conflicted relationship with the urban throughout the history of America populism. But Mike and Mary Ann's early identities and works certainly resonate with the urban contexts of the labor movement, and perhaps their arc in the book suggests that the worlds of urban and rural America could no longer afford, in the depression or in the 20th century more broadly, to remain separate in perspective or reality.Just some things to think about the next time you read a children's book—no thanks necessary, it's what we AmericanStudiers do. Last entry in this series tomorrow,Ben

PS. Any children's books you'd AmericanStudy?

1/5 Memory Day nominee: Hosea Williams, the Civil Rights leader and hugely inspiring American whose exemplary 20th century life included surviving a near-lynching, serving in World War II, working closely with Martin Luther King, and founding a still-thriving organization dedicated to feeding hungry and homeless Americans.

January 4, 2012: Gaga for American Studies

[This week I'll be highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the third in that series.]
How an American Studies approach can reveal the threads of contemporary and historical connections that weave together around one of our most unique pop culture forces.Whether you're a card-carrying member of her Little Monsters or think that she's a sign of the imminent apocalypse—and full disclosure, my wife's a big fan so I've gotten to hear pretty much all of her music to date and certainly lean more toward the former category—you're not likely to disagree with the sentiment that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga, is a strikingly original popular musician, artist, and presence. That's perhaps especially true of her performance artist-like qualities—the meat dress, the giant egg on the red carpet, the 10-minute movies instead of conventional music videos, and so on—but even her songs, while often clearly influenced and inspired by earlier artists (such as Madonna), have a sound and feel that is very much her own and unlike anything else on the contemporary pop music scene.Yet an American Studies approach to a figure like Gaga would stress the significance of connecting her to different cultural and historical narratives—not to minimize her individual and unique qualities, but to make clear how they exist in those broader contexts and conversations. Of the many aspects of our contemporary society and world to which I might connect Gaga—our digital and socially networked communities, transnational influences and identities, the role of ITunes and YouTube in 21st century pop music—perhaps the most complex and interesting is her relationship to what we might call post-gendered America. As with narratives of Obama and "post-racial America," I fully understand that any argument about the ways in which America has moved past traditional gender identities and roles is going to be immediately and importantly complicated by lots of other ongoing realities; but nonetheless, I think a comparison of Lady Gaga to Madonna is illuminating here: Madonna rose to prominence and kept herself relevant by embodying and even selling a strong female sexuality, whereas to my  mind Gaga has done so by embodying and even publicly advocating for multiple sexualities, cross- and trans-gendered identities, and generally an complication of any and all such boundaries.At the same time that we American Studiers seek to understand the contemporary and concurrent conversations to which any individual artist and American connects, however, we also work to put every individual moment in its broader cultural and historical contexts. Some of the most obvious, and certainly relevant and illuminating, such contexts for Lady Gaga are to postmodern and avant-garde American artists, and most especially to their defining representative Andy Warhol; like Gaga, Warhol utilized and profited greatly from (and so could be seen as "selling out" to) popular and consumer culture, while at the same time offering counter-culture critiques that complicated dominant narratives of fame, success, and identity. Yet Gaga's career to date, persona, and voice also interestingly echo those of one of the 19th century's most famous and success women: Fanny Fern. As her era's highest-paid newspaper columnist, Fern could certainly be described (in comparison to contemporaries like Margaret Fuller and Lydia Maria Child) as more commercialized and less genuinely counter-cultural; but at the same time Fern used her invented persona and tremendous media success both to advocate for controversial and critical social causes and to develop a voice and style unlike any other writer of her day.You might make entirely different contemporary and American, cultural and historical connections for Gaga, of course, and that's precisely (or at least a large part of) the point. It's the American Studies approach and perspective that's important, to help us realize how much any artist, even and especially the most unique, can tell us about our culture and society. More tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? How would you analyze Lady Gaga? Or are there other contemporary cultural figures you'd think about in these ways?1/4 Memory Day nominee: Max Eastman, the poet, journalist, and political activist whose complex and always interesting and inspiring writings and life can help us trace many of the 20th century's most prominent communities, from the Harlem Renaissance (for which he was a patron) to 1930s Communism, his modernist literary efforts to post-World War II conservative turns in his political and philosophy ideas.

January 3, 2012: Ron Paul and Race

[This week I'll be highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the second in that series.]How an American Studies approach can deepen and strengthen our analyses of one of the most controversial current debates.Perhaps no story is dominating more American headlines at the start of this new year than Ron Paul's surge to the top of the Iowa Republican Caucus, and so perhaps no current debate rages more heatedly than the arguments about whether and to what extent the extremist, often bigoted newsletters that were published for decades under Paul's name (and from the sales of which Paul has made millions of dollars over that time) can and should be used to critique Paul directly. As with any political debate, there's no question that one's own perspective and starting point will have a lot to do with where one comes down on these questions, although it seems clear to me that even in the best-case interpretation Paul allowed his name to be associated with, and the profited from, revolting sentiments and ideas (or was unaware that those things were happening, which isn't necessarily better). An American Studies approach and analysis is not the same as—if never entirely distinct from—a political argument, however, and in this case such an approach would allow us to link Paul's newsletters and history significantly to other prominent late 20th century trends and narratives. When it comes to race in America, some of the most complex but meaningful trends could be described as the unforeseen aftermath of Civil Rights, and more exactly of where and how white supremacist communities and ideas have persisted after that era and its changes. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been monitoring and responding to such communities since its 1971 founding, and its pages on still active KKK groups and more recent offshoots like Stormfront are relevant not only to a general sense of these American trends, but also very specifically to the question of Paul's newsletters and supporters: both KKK leader David Duke and Stormfront founder Don Black have recently, publicly stated that they subscribed to Paul's newsletters and are endorsing him for president.Even more nationally central over the last few decades, of course, have been our debates over multiculturalism and its alternatives—in my second book I define the "culture wars" as driven first and foremost by the competing multicultural and traditional historical narratives—and an American Studies approach could likewise link the Paul issues to those debates. Because while Ayn Rand critiqued racism  and white/Southern racists in her 1963 essay "Racism", the libertarian movement that has followed her philosophies has often focused instead on critiquing movements such as multiculturalism or policies such as affirmative action as themselves racist (particularly toward now disadvantaged white Americans), as illustrated by an Ayn Rand Institute-sponsored essay entitled

January 2, 2012: 1876

[This week I'll be highlighting some of the benefits of an American Studies methodology. This is the first in that series.]How an American Studies approach can help us better understand and analyze our most contested presidential election.The 1876 presidential election was not only the most contested in American history—with the electors for four states remaining up for grabs for months after election day, leaving the nation with no newly elected president until January of 1877—but also, and for related reasons, one of our most overt historical turning points. Historians have in recent years worked to complicate narratives of the compromise—or "crooked bargain" as it had long been called—by which Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the electors of key Southern states and thus elected president over Samuel Tilden, but the fact remains that one of Hayes' first official acts as president was to withdraw federal troops from the South, thus explicitly and dramatically ending Federal Reconstruction.An interdisciplinary, American Studies analysis of the election wouldn't entail eliding the complex political and historical complexities of the election, its aftermath, and the trajectory and conclusion of Federal Reconstruction. But it would, I believe, contextualize those details with other social and cultural histories, narratives and moments from earlier in the year that exemplify how much the election compromise reflected and solidified existing national trends. I opened my first book by highlighting one such cultural history, the striking shifts in advertisements for the Howard's touring Tom Show; where February 1876 newspaper ads highlighted the show's "vivid picture of life among the lowly" and "great moral drama," three months later May ads described instead a "new version, in commemoration of the centennial," one "adapted to the sentiment of the times" and featuring "old-time plantation melodies of pleasant memory." The Centennial Exposition itself (which opened in May in Philadelphia) further illustrated such cultural sentiments, both in its invitation to Confederate veteran and poet Sidney Lanier to write the opening ceremony's "Centennial Cantata" and in its on-site "Southern Restaurant," a culinary concession where "a band of old-time plantation 'darkies' [sung] their quaint melodies and strum[med] the banjo before the visitors from every clime." And an American Studies analysis of these narratives could connect them to prominent 1876 literary works: from Mississippi lawyer James Lynch's epic poem "Robert E. Lee, or Heroes of the South" which casts Lee as a staunch defender of the antebellum South and its slave society; to Lanier and his brother Clifford's short tale and folk poem "Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn," in which "a certain Georgia cotton-planter" laments the grass's "defiance of his lazy freedmen's hoes and ploughs."Such cultural and literary trends don't mean that the election's results or effects were inevitable, nor that there weren't competing, very distinct narratives about region, race, and history in the year and era. But engaging with them helps illuminate the moment and contexts in which the election took place, and helps us analyze how and why it unfolded as it did. More tomorrow,Ben1/2 Memory Day nominee: Isaac Asimov, the Russian American writer, scientist, and philosopher who helped originate and popularize an entire literary genre, taught at the BU School of Medicine for decades, and developed original insights into such crucial 20th and 21st century fields as computers, robotics, the role of technology and science in society, their relationship to spirituality, and more.

January 1, 2012: What's Next

As the new year dawns, I ask for your input, both here and in an exciting new spot in development.I don't have any plans to stop blogging in the new year, and if anything I hope to continue to expand the range of subjects, themes, texts, media, week-long series, and, most importantly, voices that I include here. So I reiterate my frequent and always heartfelt request for responses in comments or by email (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) , for suggestions for posts or focal points or other things the blog can be or do, for guest posts (whether at the idea stage or in the form of a fully written post), for whatever you've got and want to share.I do, however, have plans to expand and broaden and deepen what AmericanStudies can be, offer, and mean. I have been working with Graham Beckwith, an AmericanStudies graduate student at Cal State Fullerton and a web designer of considerable talents and vision, to create a full AmericanStudies website at http://www.americanstudier.org/ , a space that I hope will become an online home for students, scholars, researchers, and all those interested in American culture, identity, history, and Studies. The site will certainly host this blog, but that's the tip of the iceberg: I have plans for multimedia and archival sections, for collections of links and resources, for a forum for any and all AmericanStudies conversations, for a calendar of Memory Day nominees and possibilities, and for much more.Those are merely some of the many possibilities for what americanstudier.org can become, though, and so once again I turn to you. What would you like to see on an AmericanStudies website? What will be useful, interesting, important, helpful? What haven't you seen that you'd like to see? What would help with your studies, your researches, your own scholarship, your interests? What sites have modeled digital scholarship or public scholarship or the public humanities for you? This website will be yours as much as mine, and I'd love to get you in on the ground level as Graham and I continue to develop it from here.More tomorrow,BenPS. You know what to do!                         1/1 Memory Day nominee: Alfred Stieglitz, one of America's most innovative and significant photographers and a deeply humanistic and powerful chronicler of America's late 19th and early 20th century communities, identities, experiences, and transformations.

April 2011 Recap

April 1: Taking Flight: Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt battle it out for the title of "Most Inspiring Flight by an American Woman."April 2-3 [Tribute post 9]: Three Strikes: An Opening Day tribute to three great baseball novels.April 4: A Story You Can't Refuse: The powerfully AmericanStudies choices and stories at the heart of The Godfather, Part II.April 5: What If?: Alternative histories of the disputed 1876 presidential election and its aftermath.April 6: Speaking Freely: On the Westboro Baptist Church and the more widespread anti-gay bigotry that is far too frequently disguised as "Christianity."April 7: For Which It Stands?: Repeat of a late November post on the complex and important histories of the Pledge of Allegiance.April 8: Praise, Worthy: James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Know Praise Famous Men and the false dichotomy between modernist and political writing in America.April 9-10: Big Pimping: A follow up to my February 27th post on the upcoming NEASA conference, and some shameless promotion of same.April 12: What Would Change 1, Language: The first of four posts inspired by the official release of my second book, each considering a different aspect of our national narratives that would change if we define the core of American identity as cross-cultural transformation. This one focused on arguments about "English as the national language."April 13: What Would Change 2, "All-American": The second book-inspired post, this one on oft-used and little-examined phrases like "All-American."April 14: What Would Change 3, Mixture: The third book-inspired post, this one on images and narratives of racial and cultural mixture.April 15: What Would Change 4, The Melting Pot: The fourth and final book-inspired post, this one on one of our most persistent national narratives.April 16-17: Birthday Presence: My younger son's 4th birthday leads me to blog about four complex and significant births in great works of American art.April 18: The Hard Way: George R.R. Martin leads me to think about the easy and facile vs. the hard and genuine forms of patriotism.April 19: Fools Rush In?: Some hard questions on what public scholars can and should do in times of prominent propaganda and lies—and how Albion Tourgée can help us answer them.April 20: A Good Day at a Good Gig: Five consecutive events remind me of how great my job is.April 21: Picturing War: Tim Hetherington, Matthew Brady, and the complexities of war photography and journalism.April 22: Where in the World?: The frustrating nonsense behind and yet deeper and more significant AmericanStudies meanings of Birtherism.April 23-24: Reasons to Believe: On atheism, America, and AmericanStudies.April 25: The Doctor Is In (Print): Repeat of a late November post on William Carlos Williams' medical career and writings.April 26: Do No Harm: Medical professionals, the torture regime, and the question of whether and how Americans can remember our darkest histories.April 27: Guest Post of Sorts: James Fallows' pitch-perfect response to the latest developments in the Birther saga.April 28: On Not Wincing: W.E.B. Du Bois, Barack Obama, and why critiques of affirmative action are wrong on multiple significant levels.April 29: This Space for Rent: AmericanStudier Ben hands the keys over to NEASA President Ben so he can share a publicity message about the fall NEASA conference.

May 2011 Recap

April 30-May 1 [Tribute post 10]: Professor Rachel Tudor: A tribute to a colleague who had been unjustly denied tenure for the worst reasons and is fighting back eloquently and significantly.May 2: Exhibit A: Rambo and James Bond help remind me, on the occasion of Bin Laden's death, of how complicated and confused the histories of American/Western and Afghan relationships really are.May 3: Remember It, Jake: Repeat of an early December post on the AmericanStudies meanings and resonances of Chinatown.May 4: May the Fourth Be With Us: Four things that Star Wars can still teach us about America, on the anniversary of its 1977 release.May 5: Cinco de Cinco: A Cinco de Mayo special on five inspiring Mexican Americans.May 6-8: The Mother of All Stories: A Mother's Day visit from my Mom inspires a repeat of this December post on Tillie Olsen and parenting.May 9: Planes, Trains, and Americans: Vehicular segregation, racial profiling, and American history and ideals.May 10: End of Semester Post 1, All That We Leave Behind: The first of five end of semester inspired posts, this one on the open-endedness of any class and semester.May 11: End Post 2, On Indoctrinations: Second in the series, this one on the genuinely ludicrous concept of liberal professors "indoctrinating" unsuspecting college students.May 12: End Post 3, Teacher, Examine Thyself: Third in the series, on a new exam question I came up with and my continuing realization about how much I have to learn about this gig.May 13: End Post 4, Party, School: Fourth in the series, on why I cut Fitchburg State students some serious slack when it comes to their hard-partying tendencies.May 16: End Post 5, Keep DREAMing: Fifth and final entry in the series, on my Ethnic American Literature class and what its featured authors might help us understand about the DREAM Act.May 17: The Other Side: Illegal immigration, Obama's egregious deportation policy, and the need to remember the families and children most affected by such deportations.May 18: Grading on a Curve: Eugenics, The Bell Curve, and continuing racializations of science and identity.May 19 {Uber-Tribute Post]: An Exemplary American: A tribute to my paternal grandfather, Art Railton, who passed away today at the age of 96.May 20 [Tribute continued]: One More Take: The very moving obituary to my grandfather in his local newspaper.May 23: Home Lands: Historical debates and controversies over naturalization, citizenship, and "sojourner" immigrants—and contemporary debates over US-Israeli relations.May 24: I'm on a Boat: A boat trip to my grandfather's funeral reminds me of four very significant such trips in American culture and history.May 25: Accept It: A revision to my uber-tribute to my grandfather, to emphasize the crucial difference between tolerance and acceptance.May 26: The Two-Way Street: Contemporary narratives of reverse or anti-white racism, and the genuine need for national narratives and identities that can include and connect all Americans.May 28: Pahk Your Blog in Hahvahd Yard: A visit to Boston's Public Garden reminds me of three great moments in American literature and culture set in and around Boston landmarks.May 29-30: Memory and Memorials: Some Memorial Day reflections on the holiday, remembering war and soldiers, and competing post-Civil War narratives.May 31: Let's Review: Two significant lessons I learned from writing my first published, academic book review.[image error]

June 2011 Recap

June 1 and June 24: Let Me Be Clear: [Later renamed] No, Your (and My) Ancestors Were Not Legal Immigrants: My most overt and blunt thoughts yet on what our national narratives about immigration history get entirely and crucially wrong.June 2: On Speaking Out: On whether and how Southerners opposed lynching and Muslim Americans (and international Muslims) have opposed Islamic terrorism.June 3: Born to Be Misunderstood?: An interesting article on "Born in the U.S.A." and Vietnam gets me thinking once more about the question of audience readings and mis-readings.June 4-5: Common Knowledge: Paul Revere, Sarah Palin, Wikipedia, and the question of communal memory and history.June 7: Public Art: Diego Rivera, Scott Walker, and the roles and meanings of public art.June 8: Summer in the Cities: A very hot summer day gets me thinking about four AmericanStudies connections to the season.June 9: Irony Can Be Pretty Ironic, Sometimes: David Barton and the question of who, exactly, the "revisionist historians" really are, and where they are.June 10: True Confessions: Sarah Plath, Mark Doty, and the power of great confessional poetry.June 11 [Guest post 5]: Rob Vellela's Post: The Americanliteraryblog's host writes about his goals for his own brand of public literary scholarship and performance.June 12: I Really Want to Know!: A disappointing public scholarly moment leads me to ask some questions about what this blog has been and can be—questions on which I'd still love to hear your thoughts!June 13: Ebony and Ivory: Clarence Clemons' illness leads me to remember and celebrate five inspiring interracial American friendships.June 14 [Tribute post]: Collegiality: A tribute to the many amazing communities of colleagues with whom I've been fortunate to work.June 15: For Which It Stands: Flag Day special, a repeat of my late November post on the complex histories behind the Pledge of Allegiance.June 16: No, Love is Not All You Need: The Shirley Sherrod saga leads me to some thoughts on why the Civil Rights movement depended on a lot more than the peaceful and generous attitudes our dominant narratives often associate with it.June 17: On the Other Hand: Following up and balancing the prior day's post with a link to an amazing story about what love can do and mean.June 18: Guest Post in Reverse: A link to my guest post (on Sarah Piatt's marriage and poetry) on Rob Vellela's americanliteraryblog.June 19: Your Dad Did: A Father's Day special, on five American stories that highlight sons learning complex and important truths about their fathers, their own identities, and the past.June 20: Big Goodbye: My heartfelt tribute to Clarence Clemons.June 21: We Need Them: The contemporary and historical needs for a "them" to balance an imagined American "us."June 22: Judge Not?: Our competing and often contradictory narratives of the Supreme Court, and how the current Court relates to them.June 23: An Inspiring Redefiner: Jose Antonio Vargas, the prominent journalist and self-identified illegal immigrant working to redefine our national images of illegal immigration and American identity.June 24: No, Your (and My) Ancestors Were Not Legal Immigrants: A repost of the June 1 post (linked up above), following up the Vargas post with my own bluntest thoughts on immigration history.June 25-26 [Tribute post]: Just a Few More Things: The death of Peter Falk leads me to consider some of the best and most ideally American qualities of his most famous character, Lieutenant Columbo.June 27: The Mysteries of Memory: Jonathan Lethem, Tim O'Brien, and the intertwined natures of memory and mystery.June 28 [Tribute post]: Only Connect!: A tribute to my Mom, Ilene Railton, and the amazing connections she makes every day to some of our most desperate and important fellow Americans.June 29: Fits the Profile: The Amadou Diallo case, racial profiling, and American history, community, and identity.June 30 [Dream-Guest Post]: Bruce on Clarence: Bruce's hilarious, moving, and unsurprisingly perfect eulogy for the Big Man.