moral perfection app?

One more on Franklin.  While some students found his daily scheme for cultivating virtue "over the top," I can not help but wonder what sort of I-phone aps he might devise if he lived today.  Here are ten to help one lose weight: LINK  Wouldn't the scientist and inventor want to put this technology to work towards solving an elevated dilemma, such as how to achieve moral perfection?

Johnson on Franklin

"One of the delights of studying American history in the 18th century is that this remarkable polymath, visionary, down-to-earth jack-of-all-trades pops up everywhere.  There were few contemporary pies into which he did not insert a self-seeking finger.  We know a lot about him because he wrote on the best of all autobiographies."  p. 134  Paul Johnson, A History of the American People

Now we have the opposite problem to the one that face us relative to Pocahontas.  Instead of knowing little about her, we know lots about him and his views of himself.  Nonetheless, we don't know everything.  His autobiography, like all examples of the genre, is crafted (perhaps composed as a page of type) to reveal his life as he wants to to be understood.  If it  is also a sort of self-help book, advise for the young American, the book and its author suggest that self-interest and public good can be coordinate goals.  However, he also models a life that is segmented: first the period of direct involvement in his business, then the period of public service. This echoed in my car as I listened to an interview with businesswoman Meg Whitman, a candidate for governor of California.  She has been CEO of e-bay but not politically active.  What, I wondered, would Franklin say about this preparation for government leadership? 

errata in a book of a life

The book is the metaphor Benjamin Franklin uses most often to consider his life.  Even as he writes his autobiography and describes his work as a printer who composes the page of type, he is also suggesting that his life can be corrected as the composer can remove the wrong letter and replace it in the tray with the correct letter.

I'm reminded of Elsa, a woman who worked in the office where I had my first post-college job.  This was in the early days of photocopying (1976-7) so we did not have a photocopy machine in our office.  Instead we had a mimeograph machine that required us to "cut" a stencil on the typewriter, attach it to the drum, and then run-off the copies by turning the drum so that ink was pressed through the stencil on to the paper.  Elsa was a master of every step in the process including correction of errors.  Usually an error in typing/cutting the stencil was corrected by first painting over the error with correction fluid that filled in the wrong holes and then recutting through the patch.  However, once we forgot the second step and ran hundreds of copies of the song sheet for a pastors' retreat with a syllable missing from one of the songs.  Elsa to the rescue!  I watched in admiration as she cut a new stencil that consisted solely of the single missing syllable and then reran the whole stack of song sheets.  When she was done, no one could have seen the repair.

Are repairs in one's life made so neatly?  When Franklin entered into a common-law marriage with Deborah Reed, did he undo the errata of having neglected their engagement?  Surely he did not erase the consequences of events and actions.  Perhaps the metaphor works better for his financial debts.

breaking archeological news

Thanks to Liza for this LINK to a Wall Street Journal notice of new finds in historic Jamestown.  Archeologists have uncovered the location of a church, perhaps the location of Pocahontas' marriage to Rolfe.  That is what catches the popular imagination.  The building is also of interest for its suggestion that the Jamestown English might have been a bit more pious than they have been given credit for. 

Marilyn Monroe and the Teaparty

Petra gives us the link to this editorial "Making Ignorance Chic" by Maureen Dowd in which she works her way from recent interest in MM to Sarah Palin by way of comments on the bifurcation of beauty and intelligence. (The StarTrib published this with a lovely photo of Monroe wearing glasses, a sure marker of female intelligence.)  I know this seems improbable.  Nonetheless, I think Dowd is on to something important about the character of contemporary political life.  She notes the Monroe made efforts to associate with intellectuals and to participate in their circles.  In contrast, she observes that Palin seems to disdain even the appearance of knowledge and clear thought. Glamour, a sort of magic spell, replaces ability.

:...the Dumb Blonde of '50s cinema had a firm grasp of on one thing: It was cool to be smart. . . . But now another famous beauty with glowing skin and a powerful current, Sarah Palin, has made ignorance fashionable."

You may not be convinced, but the editorial is worth reading and pondering.

an american conversation with petra: on education and women/girls: "Today, there were three fantastic articles in the New York Times that really spoke to me. 1) 'Making Ignorance Chic' by Maureen Dowd This a..."

Material World

PBS presents some of Peter Menzel's photos from the 1990s.  He set out to document the possessions of "average" families from around the world.  Opal reminded me of this project and it seems relevant also to the reading from Jonathan Butler.

Butler describes the results of a late 17th century consumer revolution in the North American colonies.  Of course the change involved how much people had and how they got those things; it also involved which things they wanted.  The symbolic function of material possessions (including food, clothing, shelter, and other movable goods) becomes more evident when we consider desire for one item rather than another that fills the same practical function.

If colonial North Americans were negotiating their identity as Europeans who did not live in Europe by means of the stuff they wanted and perhaps had, many people today are doing something similar relative American stuff and its symbolic value. Which is not to say that Americans have ceased doing so.  Surely paying attention to the origin of the items on our room inventories would lead us to ask more questions about economic networks, about advertising, about markers of status, about the source of our desires, about the notion that St. Olaf students are preparing to be citizens of the world.

"The goods found inside the wide variety of colonial homes raise fascinating questions not only about the expanse of material objects across the colonies but about the origins of these products and, hence, about 'Europeanization,' 'Anglicanization,' or 'Americanization' in the  eighteenth century British mainland colonies."  J. Butler, "Things Material," Becoming America, p. 154.

school lists, education, and values

In the last couple of weeks, alongside classes, I have been writing a piece about educational opportunities for Norwegian-American women. To do so I read about several schools, including some that no longer exist. And I returned to some of my older work. In an article published by Norwegian-American Historical Association I found my comment on some of the items a student would have brought with her to the Lutheran Ladies' Seminary in Red Wing, Minnesota. (The school closed in 1920 following a fire.)

• a dictionary
• a Bible
• "a suit for drills in physical culture"
• "a large apron to protect her cotton dresses during domestic science labs"
• napkins and a napkin ring

The equipment is indicative of the sort of education this student would receive.

In addition to suggesting something about what one does, one's processions convey something about one's values.  Many AmCon students are surprised by how much they have in their rooms and begin to ask themselves, Why do I think I need this?  Or, what do I want this for? As Erik noticed, not everything in his room was necessary for survival, but much of it has a purpose.

Traveling offers us opportunities to reconsider what is needed both along the way and at home.  Here is challenge to pare down even at home: Six Items or Less  I'm certain that making do with six items of clothing for a week or a month would be an education.  Certainly one would learn something about a kind of freedom that comes from having enough, but not too much.

Perseverance, a necessary virtue

If the Hacker ethic essentializes freedom, what is that notion of freedom?  Is it merely freedom from constraint?  Is it the positive freedom to act, to find the hole, to exploit?  Does it have any limits?  Any responsibilities?  Is it mitigated or moderated by willingness to persist at a difficult task?

That persistence, or perseverance, is a virtue I have been meditating upon.  This is contrary to an American inclination to "get out of Dodge."  Heading west into the open future is one way to pursue an American dream of a better life.  (Yes, that is deliberately vague.)  But . . . that perpetual motion misses the transformation of space into place; it misses the slow growth of communities that share memories as well as the present.  This is not easy.

THE THING IS
by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Para-pillars: again

Once more from the Lilly Fellows Network National Conference and St. Olaf.


After the talk on hacker ethics, alum Sam Graber remarked: sounds a bit like the Paracollege.  He was right about the commitment to knowledge, the cultivation of learning as playful, willingness to push the system in pursuit of these ends.

And, its memorial, "Para-pillars," invites the viewer to enter into the piece by planting one's feet on the plinth, to become a pillar, to do so looking out from the hill toward the town.  So, to be in a place, but not to be captive to it or limited by it.

edges and ties

One of the speakers at the conference I discussed in my previous post suggested that a Facebook newsfeed tells us something important about personal identity today.  I've continued to ponder this suggestion.  Certainly it is true that very person's "home" page looks different and reflects that individual's unique collection of "friends."  This reality mimics the reality that no one is precisely the same as any other person, a reality sometimes contrasted with a romantic notion of traditional societies in which knowing one fact about a person was likely to reveal many, many more. 

One perspective on this new reality is to lament a sort of identity politics in which finally no one can communicate with or understand anyone else because no one is precisely like me: edges.  This point of despair or mere irritation is reached when we hear ourselves say, "Well, everyone has her own view of what freedom is." At the moment we appear to be giving in to the premise that there is no possibility of making contact across the difference or even much point in trying. 

Another perspective is illuminated by the analogy to the Facebook page.  It highlights the connections and the ways in which each person has the potential to be a bridge between other people or communities: ties.  Rather than each identity factor contributing to increased isolation, each factor provides more points of interconnection. 

This is one way that Bonhoeffer wrote about Christ who is the mediator, not only between the believer and God, but also between the believer and other people.

Perhaps these edges and ties are similar to the dynamics Robert Putnam considers under the terms bonding and bridging in his discussion of social capital.  AmConers: let's remember to take this up next semester!

Face to Face in Time and Place

Valparaiso University Center for the Arts

That is the theme of the conference I attended over the weekend at Valparaiso University.  (SPEAKER BIOS) So much of the conversation was relevant to AmCon in general and to our recent discussions of space, place, and campus in particular.

The first speaker (Gretchen Buggeln) presented a history of campus design from the colonial days to the present and illustrated with images much that we have considered.  Although she did not show slides of St. Olaf campus, I could easily make the connections with familiar observations: the preference for rural or small town-settings in the 19th century, early buildings that combined all the college functions in one place, use of topography, etc.

The second and third speakers (follow link above) considered "hacker ethics" and globalization as relevant features of the current context for education.  I'm looking forward to having the text of these as much went zipping by in the oral presentation.  Nonetheless, I did catch some key points.  Here are some reflections:

1. If the "hacker ethic" promotes engaged pursuit of knowledge, and is able to regard an activity or project as both difficult and fun, then there is potential for the non-hacker educational process to "exploit" it for the more "traditional" goals that include pursuit of knowledge and cultivation of character.
2. The tools of technology, while not morally neutral, are nonetheless, open to various uses.  In fact, in most instances, use of technology has more than one moral or social consequence at a time.
3. Duration of presence is an important factor in shifting one's perception of a location from space one moves through to place in which one dwells in community with others.
4. If globalization in the 21st century is in large degree a globalization based on personal relationships and consumer transactions, then it may well be that we are striving to be global citizens in a cosmopolis (world city) that does not (yet?) exist.  And if this is true, than one of the central tasks of this student generation and many after it, may be to construct that cosmopolis.
5. On the other hand, it is prudent to recall that globalization is not an entirely new phenomenon.  Perhaps one shift is a sort of democratization.  But this I mean that awareness of and interdependence upon the  work of people around the world is no longer limited to an elite or a relatively few.  Clothes made in Indonesia are sold at low prices at Walmart and other American retail outlets; villagers in rural Turkey have stalllite dish, television reception in their homes.

The Power of Pocahontas

Katie's Commonplace Blog: Pocahontas as a Character in America's Story: "When learning about Pocahontas, I would have to say my understanding of her is much more in character, than in symbol or historical figure. ..."

The Cavalier and the Princess

Reading Katie's post I begin to consider that the symbolic potency of Pocahontas may be rooted in the fact that while we have so few facts about her, we are confident that she was a historical figure.  Although the characters we create -- in film, in paintings, in poetry -- may not be accurate, the tenuous connection to a real person gives those images the energy of truth and allows Pocahontas to become part of our national mythology.  Here I use myth in the sense of a powerful story that shapes lives.  Even if the young Pocahontas did not save either John Smith or the whole Jamestown Colony, for good and for ill, her mythic self has shaped generations of Americans sense of what being American involves.  (See the accompanying image celebrating the tricentennial of Jamestown.)

God in America (2)

Karin's American Conversations Blog: Exodus to America: "Last night I went to the first showing of a new series on TPT called 'God in America'. (DeAne, thanks for setting this up, it was a lot of f..."

Thanks to Karin for this important connection between the Puritans and the story of Exodus.  Not only scholars say this, the people themselves thought of themselves as the New Israel.  They were not the last Americans to understand themselves on the basis of this biblical narrative.  Maybe it is another sort of "playing"--playing at being the Israelites led by Moses and freed by God for a special purpose.

Two other links to our course.  The first segment of the first episode focused on the SouthWest and included comments by a resident of the Santa Clara Pueblo.  Later the same episode offered us a reenactment of  Anne Hutchinson's trial based on the transcript.  The actor who portrayed John Winthrop was creepy.

Playing patriot.

Insurgents and Patriots
Check out this comment by my cousin Clark on his book blog.  His comments on T. H. Breen's The Revolution of the People suggest that the book might be useful for Tea Party papers and even interesting on its own.  But, here's what grabbed me: a bit of autobiography about "playing" at some historical moment. 
  

This is not my cousin.

April 19th is a holiday in Massachusetts, Patriots Day, and each year on Patriot's Day I would walk the Isaac Davis trail from Acton to Concord and watch the parade and reenactment of the battle, with lots of colorful uniforms, muskets and cannon fire.

I don't know if the school kids in Acton got to wear costumes when they observed Patriots Day, but I do wonder about how this sort of observation works its way into our imaginations and our bones.  Of course Deloria on "playing Indian" is in the back of my mind together with the admission some of you made about having all the Pocahontas stuff.  How else do we get free of our own time, place, and skin other than by giving ourselves over to our imaginations?

What dream . . .

After class Wendy and I continued our conversation about Pocahontas.  It had started with my question: Is Pocahontas better understood as a historical figure, as a character (as in a film), or as a symbol.  Our class discussion explored this, paying attention to what each of the options entailed and how Pocahontas might be moved from one to another.  All this was preparing us to carry our argument to our consideration of images of her and poetry about her later in the week.

But, Wendy's remarks led me to wish that we'd also asked this question: what sort of dreams for America are stimulated by Pocahontas?  This question can be asked of any of the three: the young girl described in John Smith's General History, the "princess" in Disney's movie, even the symbolic bridge.  (Thanks Tou.)

If this were a book with paper pages . . . .

 . . . I would paste in it 

the spectacular, luminous leaves of autumn 2010 

so that in years to come 

their powdered remains 

would conjure up memories of 

these students and their bright conversation.

Personfications, Symbols, Silence

The Grace of Silence: Review in Ms Magazine via Powell's Books 
"Piecing together the Aunt Jemima period of her grandmother's life, Norris juxtaposes her uncle's pride in his mother's small-town fame -- "She put that costume on and she was a star" -- with her mother's shame at the humiliating image and Norris' own disbelief, ambivalence and fascination. She also cleverly critiques the historical symbolism of the iconic pancake-wielding "mammy" character, from Aunt Jemima's debut at the 1893 World's Fair in the form of a large and gregarious former slave to the 1994 ad campaign starring Gladys Knight. "

The readings about symbolism, more particularly personification of such things as liberty or America in female figures, open up so many avenues of thought.  We'll move along one road toward Virginia, Pocahontas, Disney and the like.  Here I want to point in another.  Michelle Norris, of NPR fame, has written a book about her family that includes her grandmother's employment as a representative of Aunt Jemimah pancake mix.  Representative in italics because she was both selling the stuff by demonstrating it and dressed up as the fictional Aunt Jemimah.  I point toward Norris' treatment of her grandmother's experience because it is so nuanced and attentive to the ambiguities.  Like Deloria in the excerpt we read from Playing Indian, Norris probes the multiple meanings and the power of "disguise."  Moreover, in doing so she touches upon the matter of agency in a way that reminds me of our discussion of Anne Hutchinson.  Finally, her project is a fine example of the effort to make constructive use of one's past, in this case of her family's past in the context of the larger American culture.  I plan to read the book and consider using it in 202.

Anticipating God in America

Nope, I'm not standing on a street corner acting the prophet with a bull-horn and a sign.  I"m awaiting the new PBS documentary.  It looks very promising.  See a preview on the PBS site: Preview

Monday, October 11, 8-10 p.m.: you can watch the first two episodes as they are broadcast in Buntrock Commons Room 144.  (At St. Olaf College.)

The Pew Forum religious knowledge quiz that has been getting some press is somehow connected with the documentary.  One hopes that after watching, one's score might improve.  If you want to have a crack at the quiz, before or after, you can find it  here: Religious Knowledge Quiz

Senses and Place

"A tangible sense of place develops in their [Pueblo dwellers] architecture because it is premised on such a powerful sense of belonging to a larger natural whole."  Tony Anella, "Learning from the Pueblos," p. 31

"... all the senses were utilized....Everything was touchable, knowable, and accessible."  Rina Swentzell, "Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School, p. 57

These two quotations highlight the close relationship between our physical senses and our psychological or spiritual senses.  The aroma of almond cookies in Macao brought me from Asia back to Christmas in Minnesota in a second; immediately I was intensely aware of being away from home, even as I was comforted by the taste of almond in a cookie stamped with a Chinese character rather than in the shape of a Christmas tree.


The shape of the land around us, the type of vegetation, the quality of light: these effect us in ways beyond what we see.  This weekend I was on a bus tour of historic churches in southeast Minnesota with a group of historians of Lutheranism.  One remarked on the acres and acres of half-harvested crops: "There is a lot of empty out there."  Her's was the very opposite response to my initial reaction to a deep, mountain valley.  There I sensed, not security, but constraint.


Seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, even tasting are the means by which we perceive our surroundings.  From those perceptions we gain a sense of where we are and who we are.  Anella quotes Harries: "true freedom is not freedom from constraint, but rather to be constrained only by what one really is, by one's essence."  Indeed, who one is, who we are, these identities involve boundaries that do constrain our freedom even as they provide a sense of belonging.

The Progress of Pilgrimage: Directions, maps, and compass: Navigating on the road -- and off

Once again my friend Marty writes about something relevant to our work. Her reflections upon these navigation tools suggest the way that technology mediates and shapes our interactions with the natural world. Of course she is also suggesting that there is a sort of parallelism between the way we interact with the natural world and the way we are embodied, social beings in a cultural world.

Certainly we could ask if that parallelism is true to our experience.  How much is finding one's way in a new community like or unlike finding one's way through the woods or navigating the free-ways of Los Angeles? Is there a social equivalent of MapQuest to guide you into a new social situation?