pass me a koekje, will you?

I'm pretty sure I meant to commemorate the one year anniversary of this blog, and say something about the fact that while I swore to everyone (mostly Rita) that I would never, ever, ever, EVER be a blogger, I can conclude now that it really isn't so bad, actually. I think I planned to disavow some of my stupider posts and chuckle fondly at the clever ones, but since I should have done all this about a month ago, the idea seems a bit stale now. It was also kind of a bad idea to begin with.

So, anyway, let's focus on an anniversary I haven't missed: the one year anniversary of the beginning of my American History Self-Improvement Project. Like my blogging, I haven't been as consistent or intelligent about this as I wanted to be, but it's turned out OK in the end. In fact, I think I've learned more about pre-twentieth century American history in the past year than I have in all my previous years of schooling combined. As Will Hunting said to that asshold at Harvard, "you dropped a 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have gotten for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library." My experience this year suggests that he was kind of right; I love the Brooklyn Public Library, and I have spent only 50 cents on late charges.

Am I ready to write my dissertation on Lincoln, or the Federalist Papers, or the founding of New Amsterdam? Not exactly. But do I now know the etymology of the word cookie and can I tell you whether Obama was the first President from Illinois since Lincoln? Yes, indeed I can: cookie comes from the dutch word koekje, meaning cake, and Grant, who lived for a while in Galena, was kind of from Illinois. (So was Reagan, but I don't think he counts.) Totally useless information? Yes. But not everything I've absorbed is quite as useless.

At the moment, I'm reading The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. It's really excellent, so much so that I'm actually thinking about reading William James. Also, it turns out that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and William James "had a date to get together every Saturday evening at 8:30 to discuss philosophy." This was in 1866; James was 24, and Holmes was 25. It's really good to know that I am not quite the biggest dork ever.

nowheresville, pa.

So, yesterday was Easter, in case anyone missed it. Family tradition states that if I'm somewhere between DC and Boston, I go to my Grandmother’s house for Easter. She lives about 20 minutes south of Philadelphia, so we usually drive for about two hours and then sit around her living room and listen to my Aunt and Uncle and cousins gossip while drinking large quantities of tea. At some point everyone goes to Church, while my Dad and I stay behind and read the newspaper.

This year was blissfully unlike the others. Instead of going to Nowheresville, PA, we managed to convince my Grandmother to come into Philadelphia for Easter. So instead of reading the Sunday Styles section while others went to Church, my Dad and I got to take a tour.

Despite having been born in Philadelphia, I have never really been to Philadelphia. At least not that I remember; I moved to Brooklyn when I was one and a half, and since then I’ve only really come back to the area to drink tea. I’ve decided, though, after reading Confederates in the Attic, that my American History Self-Improvement Project should have a travel component. Tony Horwitz spent months sleeping in muddy Civil War battlefields, getting beaten up in back country bars, and visiting the last confederate widow in Opp, Alabama (among other things). I am not cool enough to do all that, and I don’t have a publisher willing to pay for gas, but I can try my best.

In any case, I spent my Easter Sunday at Independence Hall. For those of you watching the John Adams mini-series on HBO, you’ll be happy to know it looks exactly the same in person, though maybe not exactly the same as it did in 1776. The tour was actually good, too. At least, unlike HBO, the tour guide had the sense to mention Thomas Paine.

I also got to see the site of Ben Franklin's privy! History is thrilling, isn't it?

you can call me babe-raham lincoln.

I’m now into the third month of my American History Self-Improvement Project, and I have to say, it’s not going as well as I thought. I got sidetracked for a couple weeks and read a few Graham Greene novels, Michael Chabon’s new-ish Jewish book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and some Freud. My trip to Charleston and Savannah confirmed, however, that I need to focus, cause I'm still kinda dumb.

Case in point: while looking out over Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter, my mother, my sister and I got into an argument about the Star Spangled Banner. Strange, but true. I thought the National Anthem was written about Fort Sumter, but my mom and my sister thought it was written during the Revolutionary War. I knew for sure they were wrong, but I wasn’t sure I was right. In the absence of wikipedia, we had to call one of my sister's friends to settle the debate. (My Dad has an encyclopedic knowledge of American history, but he was in Singapore that week.) Turns out, all of us were wrong. Francis Scott Key wrote the song about a battle at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, during the War of 1812.

And you’re thinking, “Julia, who flippin’ cares?! You know what the Declaration of Independence was about, right? The Star Spangled Banner is incidental. The last time you heard it was probably 6 months ago, at some baseball game."

But seriously, I feel bad about this. You know that thing Jay Leno does, when he stops people on the street and asks them basic questions, and when they don't know the answer they look really dumb? I don't want to be one of those people. In order to prevent this from happening, I’ve resumed my aforementioned project. Having covered the basics of the Revolution, I've started on the Civil War -- I'm reading James McPherson's history of the Civil War era. The book has a dumb name, Battle Cry of Freedom, and it’s so long that I've sprained my shoulder carrying it around, but nonetheless, it is excellent.

Truly, this book has convinced me to take back everything I ever said about American history being boring. Did you know that, during the crisis over Kansas in 1856, a Congressman from South Carolina assaulted a Senator from Massachusetts by beating him over the head with a gold-headed cane?? And just before the 1860 elections, things got so heated in Congress that no one came into any sessions without a loaded pistol?

Everyone is pretty thrilled about the excitement surrounding politics this primary season, but just picture Rick Santorum pulling a pistol on Nancy Pelosi. That's when you know shit is really going down.

the revolution got me pregnant.

Gordon Wood tells me, in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (which is excellent, btw), that "in the last part of the eighteenth century, one-quarter to one-third of all brides in some areas of America (and England too) were pregnant before marriage."

How, pray tell, was this particularly juicy statistic determined? The information comes from an essay published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, so I assume it wasn't pulled out of thin air. I'm picturing a few haggard graduate students poring over the marriage and birth records of England and colonial America, endlessly counting the months between matrimony and arrival of progeny. Or endlessly imputing data into spreadsheets. I hope they were paid extremely well. I bet they weren't.

Fun fact, though, right? And I thought 6th graders were bad. But what do you think got those colonials preggers? Lack of birth control, raging horniness, or the revolutionary spirit? Gordon Wood thinks it's the revolutionary spirit, and I think he might be right. (Changing social mores, rebellion against paternal power, etc, etc...read the book.)

I still feel bad about the grad students, though. I wonder if they're all ABD.

never is a not promise.

Since the last time I whined about how little time I have to read, I've made a concerted effort to do better. Reading is my only hobby, after all. I can't neglect it, otherwise I'll be even more boring than I am now. I managed to finish a few books (see my new goodreads thingy if you actually care) and I feel better about myself now. Go me.

Anyway, as promised, I read the The Scarlet Letter over Thanksgiving. I said I'd never, ever read it, but alas, I'm happy to say I broke that promise. I'll never be a huge fan of gothic romances, but I did enjoy the book. (It was certainly better than the movie, but what book isn't?) I also sufficiently conquered my fear of Puritans that I'm now reading a history of colonial America. I now know that Pilgrims aren't the same thing as Puritans, and that Benjamin Franklin is distantly related to the founder of Folger's coffee (through his mother, Abiah Folger).

Really, the whole story is new to me. I was never taught American history in school. All I remember from elementary school is that the Native Americans invented lacrosse and the Dutch were the original settlers in Manhattan. I studied US history for a brief moment in 9th grade, but my teacher had lipstick covering half her face and that made it difficult to pay attention. Later on, we covered 20th century American history, but I pretty much missed out on everything that came before the First World War. I studied the Mexican Revolution for about six months, but no one ever mentioned the American Revolution.

And up until recently, I wasn't so interested. Pre-20th century American history always seemed like a boring subplot to whatever was happening in Europe. In college I read some Jefferson and learned a little about Constitutional history, but that's about it. It's tempting to blame my lack of curiosity on the fact that I'm the grandchild of immigrants, but really, isn't everyone? And it's not like I know anything about my actual ancestors, who did absolutely nothing of note in the shtetls of Europe and the potato fields of Ireland.

Being something of a half-breed, and the child of transient parents, I really have very little allegiance to anything. I have no religious affiliation, no hometown, dual citizenship and less than a century of accurate family history. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm an American. It might be good to know something about that.

Now, who wants to draw up a syllabus for me?