Why History? Part 4

Today I had a meeting with my adviser, Professor Whittenburg, about my thesis. I think it just might work. Just maybe. Possibly, I will have a draft of the first chapter by November 9th. That's my personal goal. I have an outline-- new and revised-- and two slightly more focused chapters with an epilogue. The trouble now will be fitting it into 70 pages, but Professor Whittenburg said just to write and worry about technicalities later. "Tell your story," he said.

My story. Remember how I said in the last "Why History?" that every person has their side of the story? Well, Professor Whittenburg is the one who first introduced me to that *incredibly important* concept. When I entered William and Mary as a bright-eyed freshman I knew that I wanted to be a history major, so I signed up for Professor Whittenburg's freshman seminar fondly known as "Saturday class." Yes, I had class every Saturday my first semester of college. We met at 9:00 or so in the morning, ate donuts and had a presentation from a student, then headed off in a big white van to some location in the Tidewater area. We went to Jamestown, Westover and Shirley Plantations, James City Courthouse, Historic St. Mary's in Maryland, Yorktown, and a thousand other places in our quest to discover Virginia from 1607 to the Revolution. (If you want to read my NIAHD Journal-- essentially all of the papers I wrote for the class-- click here.)

The first week of the seminar we were assigned three readings: "Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia," by Carville V. Earle (found in Thad W. Tate & David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (1979), pp. 95-125.), "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (found in The Journal of American History, Vol. 66, No. 1. (1979), pp. 24-40.), and “The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18” by Edmund S. Morgan, (found in The American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (1971), pp. 595-611.)

All of these readings are on the same subject: why people died in Jamestown. But, even though these authors wrote on the same topic, and the readings came out in the same decade, and all were printed in respectable publications, they couldn't be more different. Which begs the question-- how? Shouldn't they have the same conclusion? Isn't there one right answer? How can the same phenomenon have three extremely different articles written on it? Shouldn't one author be right? Which one is right?

The thing is, none are right. And all are right. In short (VERY SHORT), Earle blames the deaths on the water in Jamestown, getting extremely technical with the science of the environment and the way pathogens work. Kupperman blames the deaths on the fact that the men who settled Jamestown felt like prisoners of war and fell victim to psychological illness. And finally, Morgan blames it on the fact that the men who settled Jamestown were soldiers unused to having to produce their own food or take care of themselves in such an unsettled area. Normally they would pillage or the state would provide sustenance for them.

I think somewhere in all of the readings, combined together, we might begin to scratch the truth of the matter. But the point is, there is no simple answer to history. Moreover, just as these three authors have their three opinions, the men at Jamestown were not homogeneous in their mindsets. Perhaps some did feel like POWs, while others did expect England to send them ships full of food. And perhaps most just succumbed to bad water.

History is sticky and you can't take anything at face value. Behind every story there is another side to the story, as history-- both the actual occurrences and the writing of it-- is filled with complexities and composed of unique individuals with their own ideas and biases. The point of history, as my tutor Leslie told me in Oxford, is to pick a side and argue it as best you can. Believe in what you say. Because you'll be right. But someone else might be right, too. And that's not something you learn in an ordinary high school history class.

Want more proof? Tune in to the next Why History!

From ASE to NYC

And to conclude these two weeks away from Williamsburg, I had a mini-Bath reunion in New York City. My friend Brooke lives just outside the city, so I-- and Shea and Alli-- trained up to New York to see each other. I literally hadn't seen Brooke for over two years, since I said good-bye to Bath for the last time. I hadn't seen Shea and Alli since June. I arrived on Saturday morning, they picked me up at the White Plains station, and then we went shopping at Westchester Mall. This place was ridiculously huge. We actually ran out of time to shop. I only bought a pair of tights, a nice work-type jacket and an on-sale dress, but I tried on probably over fifty items. It was glorious.

After our shopping excursion, we went back to Brooke's house to pick out our outfits for dancing that night. I felt like Meg in Little Women when she shows Belle her dress and Belle basically says, "No, no, I have something else that you should wear." In Meg's words, "The girls dressed me up for fun, and I rather like it." I wore a very short, very tight-fitting black dress of Brooke's with a pair of lovely little red heels, not too high. It was something I probably would never have bought or paired on my own, but I 'rather liked it.'

Brooke's mother made a wonderful homemade chicken pot pie for dinner, and we had a homemade apple tart for dessert, plus champagne and Riesling, and then it was off to the city for dancing at a bar called Mad River. As far as bar's go, it was pretty fun. I'm not much for nightlife-- clubs kind of sketch me out and I'm a terrible dancer-- but no one came up behind me trying to dirty dance or anything, and they played songs I knew, so I actually enjoyed my time. Still, I was glad we were only there for two and half hours or so.

The next day, I trained into the city for lunch with another ASE friend, Kiki. I hadn't seen her since-- goodness, I guess the final tea in Bath, but I don't remember when I last talked to her in person. We had an amazing lunch at a Thai place near Times Square, then she walked with me over to Penn Station and we got a drink in Starbuck's while waiting for my train. It was such a fun afternoon-- we discussed theater, England, boyfriends, roommates, and life in general. We weren't super close when I studied abroad, but in the time since then we've gotten to know each other better via Facebook messages and such, and I'm really glad for that.

ASE introduced me to some really incredible people, and I'm so grateful that those bonds are only strengthening since I studied abroad. I'm realizing more and more that our ASE '08 group of fifty-five share such unique and wonderful memories, and we keep making more together as the years go by. I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but now I know that these are friends that I will keep for life.

Food & Wine & Love (& Birthday!)

Just returned from a fantastic trip to Disney World, where I ate too much, drank good spirits, and celebrated my dad's birthday. And best of all, I spent a wonderful three days with Zan, showing him my favorite place in the world during the Food & Wine Festival.

My favorite part of any Disney trip is the first day: we arrive, we check into the hotel, and then we visit one of the parks, or the Boardwalk, and suddenly all cares melt away. But I think this particular first day-- being with Zan, going to Epcot, getting an Irish cheese plate, a glass of meade, a pint of Guinness, and standing at a table in the shade overlooking the World Showcase-- was perhaps one of the most wonderful moments I've ever, ever experienced. The "with Zan" part is key.

My dad's birthday was also fun: I gave him a plush Stitch jumping out of a plush cupcake which read "Happy Birthday", and a glow-in-the-dark Halloween shirt. I almost got him some Tigger ears, as once upon a time he dressed as Tigger for Halloween, and then I saw an Eeyore toy that I would have gotten if he actually appreciated stuffed animals. We had an extremely tasty dinner at The Yachtsman, and his college roommate joined us full of stories... that was quite the experience, let me tell you. :)

We visited the Magic Kingdom for Wishes, we went to the Animal Kingdom and experienced the best "Kilimanjaro Safari" I've ever been on (there were actually some animals out this time!), we saw lions, tigers, and bats, and rode two "traveling-carnival"-esque dinosaur rides that I had never ridden. We went to Hollywood Studios, ate at Sci-Fi diner, and had the best The Great Movie Ride tour guide I've had in years. He was hilarious; he still loves his job. At Epcot, we met up with our friend Steve who was also (randomly enough) in Disney World, we watched Captain EO, Illuminations Fireworks, rode Soarin' and Nemo and created our own Roller Coaster.

But the Food & Wine Festival definitely, well, took the cake. At the World Showcase in Epcot, each nation, plus many nations not represented in permanent pavilion form, bring out the best of their foods, wines, beers, and mixed drinks. I mentioned the Irish food-- additionally they had a lobster and scallop fisherman's pie. Canada had their Cheddar Cheese soup and ice wine, Chile had a beef and corn pie with a great Cabernet Sauvignon, we got the Peach Schnapps tea and eggrolls in China, a coconut-beef redang in Singapore with Tiger Beer, German Spaetzle and Apfel Strudel and beer, Moroccan falafel and sangria, Belgian mussels and Spanish sparkling wine, plus more! We also tried the new Neapolitan pizza place in Italy-- wow. And there was so much I didn't get to try that I wanted to try.

And to top it all off, last night after we got home, Zan gave me a panda bear necklace. ♥

When I stop to realize it, I am surrounded by love and light. And while Disney World is always fun, the real magic is not the rides, or the food, or the characters. It's the people I'm with, and the love that we share, and the little moments of laughter and joy that we experience together.

Why History? Part 3

When I was fifteen, I went to London for the first time. This was a huge moment for me. London had been the center of my universe since the day I began to learn about the Tudors (Elizabeth I in particular) and Shakespeare. It also had the pros of being the city of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and James Barrie’s Peter Pan. Since this time, London has only grown more important in my life; I’ve found a thousand other books, movies, and historical figures that lived there who I have come to idolize. It features quite prominently in my thesis, to the point that I’ve looked up things in archives there. Not just London, but all of England has captured my heart—especially Bath and Oxford— as well as parts of Scotland and Wales. But when I was fifteen, London made an indelible impression.

Perhaps the most important moment in my historical education up to that point occurred in London. Before this moment, history had been a subject in school—one that I enjoyed, but nothing more. That, or it had been not history but historical fiction. Felicity Merriman wasn’t real, nor were the girls in the Dear America series. Even the movies I watched fictionalized reality—Evita, Elizabeth, etc. These people had been real and logically I knew this, but their lives were stories; they were portrayed by actors. In a way, history was nothing more than pretty costumes and an “A” on my report card.

So what happened?

Within the Tower of London, there is a tower called the Beauchamp tower, and here is where Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, was kept imprisoned during part of the reign of Mary Tudor. While there, he carved his name into the stone of his room, as well as an oak tree. As I stood staring at the carved words “Robart Dudley” my dad said, “Just think, all that separates us from him is time. He stood right here, he touched this wall. If we could turn back time we would be standing right next to him.”

This concept floored me. It was as if I was just a little late to meet him. It was the same thing as missing someone by five minutes because you’re running a bit late. That person exists, you just missed them. Robert Dudley had existed, I just missed him. Suddenly, history came alive in a way that it never had before, even through listening to my dad talk about the Civil War battles or watching a movie. History existed personally. These people had all walked, and talked, and felt the sun just as I was doing (it was exceptionally good weather in London that trip). They had good days, bad days, cried, caught colds, laughed, danced, sang, felt embarrassed, felt exhilarated, felt scared, felt comforted, fell in love, fell out of love, slept, ate, drank, everything! They had friends, they had enemies, and they had their side of the story. And I didn’t see it happen to them because I was just a little too late.

Before I had been infatuated with history; now I was falling in love.

Shake The Glitter Off Your Clothes

Opulent. Decadent. Bigger-than-life. Manipulative. Crazy. Exhausting.

I think I used all of these words, mostly in that order, at one time or another over the past four days while I lived it up in Las Vegas with my friend, Emily. How can I even begin to describe this city or my unique experience? Here goes nothing...

Opulent: When we walked into the Wynn I literally thought some French peasants were going to appear with a guillotine to revenge themselves on me for staying somewhere that just reeked with money that could have gone to feed a third world country-- several third world countries-- for years. The place was absolutely gorgeous. Our room-- my goodness. It was amazing. And on the 60th floor (possibly 50th, as the elevator had no rooms in the 40s), and my ears popped during every elevator ride. The lobby was decorated in sparkling mosaics, laid-in wood desks, and to get to the main lobby you had to pass through an atrium that smelled heavily perfumed, had flowered mosaic floors, and little streams with real koi fish.

(Emily in The Wynn)

Decadent: I suppose most of the trip was decadent. The first night we were there, Emily and I went to go see Cirque du Soleil, La Reve, at the Wynn theatre. We sat in the VIP seats, which were leather recliners, had a waitress, a free bottle of champagne, chocolates and chocolate-covered strawberries, and a little backstage TV in front of us. It was jaw-dropping. The show was absolutely beautiful. The story follows a woman who doesn't know whether to fall in love or to resist it. When she falls asleep on a park bench, the Dream King (who I'm just going to go ahead and call Oberon, because he had a little Puck figure with him) appears and throughout the show they explore the various facets of love through dance and choreography. Love is presented as crazy, fun, scary, hurtful, exhilarating, and ultimately something which is worth putting yourself out on a limb for... I really enjoyed it.

After the show, Emily and I went to a club called Blush. We bought some drinks and realized that in Vegas, to sit in a nightclub you need a reservation. Oddly enough, just then a girl named Kashmir called us over and had us sit with her and her friends/co-workers who were part of a marketing group and had a $2,400 tab to use up. They bought the rest of our drinks that night. It was quite an odd experience, I must say. Kashmir was a dear, and a man named Matt seemed nice enough to talk to, but overall, slightly surreal. I did enjoy the free drinks, though. I also enjoyed pleading the time zone difference and leaving at midnight-- it felt like 3:00 AM to my body clock.

The next day, Emily and I had free spa appointments (yes, free!). The spa was gorgeous, and after our massages we spent some quality time in the jacuzzi room. But again, the place was opulently decorated and full of amenities. After the spa, Emily and I went to a lovely little restaurant called "Society at Encore!" and I had the BIGGEST turkey sandwich I've ever eaten in my entire life. It was incredibly tasty, but goodness! I also had some amazing sweet potato fries. Funnily enough, though, Emily and I were trying to save room for our dinner that night at Alex.

Alex is the nicest restaurant in the Wynn. Good God, I could write a whole post just on this restaurant experience. We walked in, were led to our table, and then given little chaise lounges to set our purses on. They gave Emily one for her wallet. There was no detail too small during dinner. The waiters were constantly attentive, gave Emily a new napkin after she left hers on her chair to use the restroom, and refilled our champagne glasses without us noticing. We were given a pre-first-course course that consisted of a butternut squash soup sample, a cheese cracker, and fois gras on toast, then came bread, then our appetizers (I had risotto and Maine lobster tail). After our appetizers came an amuse bouche (chicken and cranberry beans), then our main course (I had duck). After our entrees came a little panna cotta, followed by our desserts, FOLLOWED by our after-desserts-- a little basket of warm honey Madelines and a tray of chocolates. We had no idea there would be so many extra courses, and by the end of the meal the chocolates were exquisite torture. I had eaten so much I thought I might be sick if I tried to take another bite. Then, just as we were leaving, they handed us a box of macaroons. I've never been so full in my life.

Bigger-Than-Life: We woke up the next day intent on seeing the rest of the Vegas strip. We ventured down to Paris Las Vegas for a brunch (which we were both still too full to really enjoy). The buffet, called Le Village, looked like something out of Beauty and the Beast. The architecture of the rest of the hotel was crazy-- it really did look just like Paris. You can even go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I felt like I was in some kind of strange inverted Disney World. After brunch, we crossed the street to Caesar's Palace-- again, bigger than life. The buildings were so tall, the hotel so extensive, the attention to detail striking. Then into The Mirage, past the pirate show at Treasure Island, and over to The Venetian. We were going to take a gondola ride INSIDE THE HOTEL but couldn't find the ticket booth and didn't care that much.

(Le Village Buffet at Paris Las Vegas)

Manipulative: That afternoon, Emily and I walked up to the Forum shops at Caesar's Palace to visit the Anthropologie store (I can't help it). I tried on about 20 shirts and dresses but settled on buying only a pair of tights I had been eyeing online. After our mini-shopping adventure, Emily and I headed back to the hotel. It was getting to be late afternoon, and the sun was setting, but we decided to go sit by the pool-- not in swimsuits or anything, just to be outside. We were comfortably reclining when a voice came over the PA system announcing that the pool area was closed and any Wynn guests needed to leave. We went back inside and sat on a couch in the lobby. Side note: great people watching spot. Anyways, we got to talking about how there is literally nothing to do in these hotels besides eat, shop, and play at the casino. The entire enterprise is geared towards manipulating people into spending money in the casino. The ventilation system is great so the air always tastes fresh, despite all of the smokers. The casino is bright and noisy and exciting. The pool closes before the sun is gone. There is no bowling alley or movie theater or... anything. So, we let ourselves be manipulated.

(Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas)

That's about the time that I lost six of my ten dollars in the slots (three the day before, one at the airport). It's amazing how quickly the money goes. Emily, on the other hand, hit a huge bonus in a Monopoly slot machine and turned her three dollars into $17.73 or so. But once you're up, it's hard to quit. Emily played a few more rounds and her seventeen plus dollars dwindled down, then up! Then down... at $15.99 she decided to call it quits. But, as she noted, it's very addictive. Once you get a small payout, you think you can do better, even though the slots are pure chance, no skill involved. It's easy to see how someone with an addictive personality could become a compulsive gambler. Overall, though, Emily came out up about 8 or so (given the dollars spent the previous day) and I came out down 10. Not terribly good or bad. But the amount of money some people spend!!! There were Blackjack tables with a minimum bet of $500 or even $1000: crazy.

Exhausting: Slots wear thin quickly, though, if you're not into losing huge sums of money. And given the time change which we hadn't really adjusted to and the piles of good food, we were exhausted. We got a small tapas dinner at the Lobby Cafe and Bar, then headed up to watch a special about the making of the Harry Potter movies.

So overall? Vegas is an amazing place, especially if you're a "Vegas" person. The thing is, I don't think I am a Vegas person. One night at a low-key nightclub was enough for me; I felt no need to go back out to their other, more hyped up "dance" type nightclubs. Nor do I really like to gamble away huge sums of money, and most of the shopping was out of the range that I was willing to pay for clothes or shoes (I mean, I can drool over Manolo Blahniks, but I'm not actually going to buy a pair!).

But it's definitely worth experiencing. Vegas is what it is, and doesn't try to hide that fact. In Vegas, you find the best and the worst of life. The sheer opulence of the hotels, the impressive themes of each resort on the Strip, the nightclub hawkers on the street, the smell of stale beer coming from the cheaper casinos on the Strip, the crazy people in pirate costumes or who look like brunette Paris Hiltons or terribly mismatched couples where the woman is clearly a trophy wife, the lights, the Lion Habitat at the MGM Grand, the Cirque Shows, and everything in between make it unforgettable.

(Blurry due to aperture issues, but me with the lights of Las Vegas)

(All photos by me, except the last one, by Emily.
If you wish to reproduce, please do so with a credit and a link.)

Why History? Part 2

Flashback to a fifth-grade birthday party for my friend, Jamie. For the party, we were all going to see a movie. Jamie wanted to see Practical Magic. I wanted to see Elizabeth—again. Yep. I was that kid. The kid who dared to be different. The one who never wore jeans because everyone wore jeans, and who chose to buy the soundtrack of the latest Broadway musical instead of the new N*Sync album. Also, I was a nerd.

But a nerd in the best possible way. I was the one who wanted to know the history behind the movies. When I saw Evita I found myself spending hours learning about Eva Duarte Peron and where the movie accurately portrayed her and where it took dramatic license. When I saw Pocahontas—well, let’s just say I learned quickly not to believe everything you see on the screen. In fact, I researched most every historical story I ran into. When I saw The Scarlet Pimpernel (the musical, though I recommend the book highly—it’s one of my favorites) I became briefly infatuated with the French Revolution. When I saw Hercules I learned everything I could about actual Greek mythology. This was aided by a program I was in called EER; in fifth grade, we studied Greek city states (my focus was on Corinth). The year before we had studied the plays of Shakespeare… and thus began another love in my life. More on that later.

Anyways, when I saw Elizabeth, I had found a role model and a life passion. Immediately, I looked up everything I could about the real Queen Elizabeth I. I bought a book called Beware Princess Elizabeth, which was “her” diary, I spent hours on websites finding out information about her, and from there a whole world of Tudor History opened up for me (you’ll forgive me for not going out and buying John Guy’s or Christopher Haigh’s books at that time—I was eleven). Already I had read a play that my parents had on our bookshelf called The Six Wives of Henry VIII, so I knew a good deal about her parents’ relationship in a dramatized form, and had a base layer of Tudor-ness under my belt. And, let’s be honest, how can you not love someone so strong and so, well, crafty? I’m not saying Elizabeth was a good person; not that she was a bad person either. But she was incredibly intelligent, powerful, brave, and strong. She was someone who knew what she had to do to get what she wanted and to keep her life and her crown. And Cate Blanchett made her damn sexy.

Then, in sixth grade, I saw The Lion in Winter in New York City starring Stockard Channing and Laurence Fishburne. I immediately checked the script out of the library and read it over and over; freshman year of high school I read Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine and used a segment of the play for Speech and Debate. Eleanor is another strong woman, but her tenacity wasn’t the only thing that attracted me to the play. I also loved Alais, the princess of France. She has one of my favorite lines in any play: “Kings, queens, and knights everywhere. I am the only pawn. I have nothing to lose. And that makes me dangerous.” Not that that is necessarily true of her, but isn’t it wonderful rhetoric?

Junior year of high school I read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and found the fictional Lady Brett Ashley both tragic and compelling. Arguably, of course, she is not a good role model at all, but the book—and my love of Shakespeare, before I had read The Sun Also Rises— led me to the real life Sylvia Beach, who singlehandedly published James Joyce’s Ulysses from her American bookshop in Paris, called Shakespeare and Company. I also spent some time learning about ex-patriot Paris and the roaring ‘20s after ‘meeting’ these two women.

There were many other influential historical figures in my life (and I haven’t even gotten to the men!!!), but I’ll mention just two more: freshman year of college I saw the movie Out of Africa and set out at once to learn about Isak Dineson/Karen Von Blixon, and junior year of college I met Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire, whose short, beautiful, tragic, amazing life never fails to move me.

I just remembered: we also had to write a “tragic hero” monologue for theatre class freshman year of high school, and I wrote mine in the voice of Marie Antoinette, complete with French accent—throw-back to my French Revolution phase.

The point is, around the time I was eleven years old my obsession with Tudor England began, which led to my obsession with English history in general, which—combined with my love of Felicity Merriman and the American Revolution—has landed me pretty much smack dab in the middle of my thesis. There were many critical steps in between, but those two moments in my life (plus the Shakespeare thing) were the jumping off points.

Next time on Why History?: The story that first changed the way I view history. PLUS, when I decided to become a history major!

Why History? Part 1

So the first few parts of “Why History” are going to be autobiographical, but then we’ll get into some actual concepts and maybe even some historiography! Plus, we will explore in depth some of my favorite parts of history and talk about writing a thesis. Here goes….

I got started loving history at an early age, which isn’t surprising if you’ve ever met my dad. He’s a huge American Civil War buff; we had paintings of generals and battles all over our house (both Union and Confederate), a Confederate Generals coffee mug, actual letters written by our ancestor Amos Camden Riley who died fighting for the Confederacy in Georgia, and my dad has portraits of Lincoln and Grant next to his bed. So yeah. Civil War history is all over our house. Seriously, how many children learn to play chess on a Civil War chess set? Not many.

But oddly enough, Civil War history didn’t really strike the same chord with me as it did with my dad. I like it fine, but I really got into the history of the American Revolution when I was about eight years old and never went back… well, I did go back… further in time and to another continent… but the American Revolution still plays a large part in what I study and where I chose to spend the last six years of my life.

You see, I fell in love with the American Girl Felicity Merriman. I saw her picture in a catalog and knew I had to have her. I read all of her books, which are set in Williamsburg, Virginia, during its colonial/early Revolutionary period, and when I was about ten years old my parents brought me to Colonial Williamsburg for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the place. Clutching my Felicity doll, I wandered up and down Duke of Gloucester Street taking in the sights. I learned to play with a hoop and stick and was rewarded for my skill with a silver musket ball from a reinactor (he gave it to me, he didn’t shoot it at me). I dressed in a little eighteenth-century dress, and we spent an afternoon with Felicity’s teacher, “Mrs. Manderly.” She taught us the proper way of performing the tea service, but of course I took hot chocolate like a true patriot (though now I see that the books left out a ton of complexities about “patriot” and “loyalist” and also you wouldn’t give a child chocolate in the eighteenth-century… but whatever, as a kid they shaped my life).

Most importantly, after I read about Felicity wishing she could go to William and Mary (it was for boys only in the eighteenth century), I knew that’s where I wanted to go. I even wrote about Felicity in my college entrance essay when I was seventeen. So in a way, this one simple American Girl doll influenced the course of my whole life up to now…

But not entirely. Because at age eleven, my dad took me to see the movie Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes. And thus began a whole new phase in my historical timeline.

To be continued…

Why History?: An Introduction

Quite frankly, a lot of people find studying history boring. A lot more people find public history interesting, but have never looked through an academic book (and those people probably have never thought about the difference between public history and academic history, or the fact that not every history book is academic). Even more people have no idea what someone would do with a B.A—let alone an M.A.—in history. All of this inevitably leads to polite nods when people find out what I’m studying, an instantaneous discussion of what I think about the latest period drama or History Channel show (usually based in an era or on an event which I don’t study at all), or a bewildered, “So you want to teach, then?”

The answer to that last question is no. Or, at least not in a school. We’ll get to that.

Since this is so commonly the case, and I’m sure many budding historians have run into these scenarios, I thought I would do a blog mini-series on why I love history, what got me into history, and what makes studying history so compelling (to me). I mean, why do history at all? Beyond the obvious joy of pointing out glaring inaccuracies in historical movies and television shows (The Tudors, anyone?) what is studying history really contributing to anyone and are we actually doomed to repeat it? Hopefully, I will answer these questions and more over the course of the next few weeks or months, depending on how often I write these posts.

“Why History?” will not be published daily or even uninterruptedly, because I will of course keep writing about other things in between “Why History” installments, but I feel like these blog posts might help clarify what exactly a graduate student in history—or at least, this graduate student—really thinks and feels about her chosen field.

Welcome to “Why History?”

Collected Thoughts

When I returned to Virginia, I turned on the heat in my house for the first time this season. I love the way it smells as it comes through the registers, all warm and good like Christmas. It makes me want hot tea or hot chocolate and heart-warming movies or books.

Microfilm can get really, really boring. I can't wait until I only have to read it for twelve hours a week instead of twenty. It has it's moments-- it has made me incredibly happy and incredibly sad (to the point of tears)-- but mostly it's very dry. I think when I cut back on my hours per week I will both find the microfilm more enjoyable, and feel more up to reading books for my thesis. I miss my thesis (even though I read another book for it on the plane to Albuquerque).

There isn't enough time to get everything done that I need to get done. Someone needs to add more hours to the day. Why haven't they gotten on that one yet?

I went to the eighteenth-century kitchens today because it's the first Tuesday of the month-- that means it's the day Jim makes chocolate! I really miss working in Foodways, especially on days like today when the weather is sunny and cool. It was the perfect weather for making chocolate. And the chocolate smells so good as it's pressed into liquid and I miss those mornings of chocolate shell tea, and sometimes burning my fingers on the cooked nibs as I shelled them because they were always so hot, but it not mattering because it was freezing outside and I wanted the warmth. And sometimes Jim would give me cooked cocoa nibs and I would dip my finger in the sugar so that when I ate the nib it wouldn't be so bitter. And the other mornings of actual hot chocolate with cinnamon and nutmeg and the Foodways chocolate which is the richest you'll ever taste. The best part of Foodways was feeling like I had done something everyday-- I had created something material-- something of the present but also intimately connected with the past. Whether chocolate or potato balls or Spanish eggs or syllabub, I made it with my own two hands. I miss that.

I am wearing my new black boots today with my new dress and I feel so happy. The outfit combined with the Governor's Palace grounds (the English gardens and the hedge maze) also makes me feel a slight bit Victorian/Alice in Wonderland/Secret Garden. It's a nice feeling, like anything can happen because I might be in a storybook half of the time.

Life can be uncertain and trying, but also exciting and sweet.

I'm at a point where everyday I wake up and can't wait to find out what will happen, for better or for worse.
All I know is that I want to live.

Up, Up, and Away!

Currently, I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my parents visiting my grandparents, my aunt, my uncle, and my two cousins. We arrived late Thursday night, spent Friday morning with my grandparents (they are in an assisted living apartment), took my grandma out for lunch at Applebee’s (as per tradition), and went out to dinner with my aunt and her family. Since the last time I was here, my cousins Stephanie and Jared have grown up so much! It’s crazy! Stephanie has gotten to be absolutely beautiful, and Jared is so sweet and talkative and engaging. Last night he showed me all of his sports trophies, his train town, and, most importantly, his balloon cards.

Oh yes, it is also the weekend of the International Balloon Fiesta. My aunt and cousins love the Balloon Fiesta, and now I can see why.

We woke up at 4:15 AM this morning, and were out at the Balloon Fiesta field by 6:00 AM or so. We got little cinnamon buns and coffee, looked at the tents and lights-- so carnivalesque in the still-dark morning-- and as the sky lightened, the balloons began to inflate… hundreds and hundreds of balloons flying through the morning sky.

Pure magic.

Also, a very sweet picture of my Dzadek—that’s Polish for grandfather. He will be ninety in December. Today he suggested that for my career I join a theatre troupe and take up acting, not thinking of tomorrow, eating when I can, and generally being, in his words, “a vagabond woman.” I love this man.

(All photos by me, if you'd like to reproduce them please do so with credit and a link)