Making stories

With all the technology available today, it's not hard to believe that everything is knowable. Even the past is knowable. When it come to personal history, seems like we are all historians. Ancestry.com is reminding us that we all can know about our personal stories. Just turn on your TV, and the natural impulse to know about your past is so clear.





This is all good, but the idea that "you don't have to know what you're looking for" should cause history educators to pause. After all, not knowing what you're looking for is antithetical to the process of historical research. So, does Ancestry.com set the notion of history education back? Historians, and even students of history should know what questions to ask, and with a good teacher, students should ask good questions prior to digging into the historical data. That's not to say that every experience with history must be framed by a question or some prior knowledge. Perhaps, what's most important is that we are interested.

Kennedy online: A contrast in styles

The New York Times reported this past weekend that a new collection of digitized recordings from the Kenndey White House are being made available on the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum website at http://www.jfklibrary.org. Will quick access to a behind the scenes Kennedy change our public perceptions? Perhaps, the contrast is sharp for sure.

Listen to the Kennedy most of us have come to know.
 Coverage of 1961 Kennedy's address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, on the nation's efforts in space exploration. In his speech the President famous told the nation that "we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."


For something complete different, here is a dictation belt recording of a couple of conversations Kennedy had on March 2, 1963.

Audio Telephone Recordings: Dictation Belt 9A - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library http://bit.ly/VFFkKB
Move the tape forard to about 9:30 to hear a particualrly interesting exchange between President Kennedy and his brother Attonry General Bobby Kennedy.
The transcript is available on the site as well. Here's a preview.

JFK: Hello?
RFK: Jack?
JFK: Yeah.
RFK: Oh, uh, Ed Guthman [Edwin O. Guthman] went to a party the other night . . .
JFK: Yeah.
RFK: . . . and was talking to Doris Fleeson . . .
JFK: Yeah.
RFK: . . . who's evidently very bitter.
JFK: Yeah.
RFK: You know as she always, uh, usually is. But I don't know whether, uh, there might be some attention paid to her or somebody look at her or something.
JFK: Yeah. What's she bitter about?
RFK: [I'd say?] she's just mad, generally . . .
JFK: Yeah.
RFK: . . . you know the way she gets . . . [skips] . . .
JFK: Yeah. . . . [skips] . . . be Republicans there, and she doesn't like McCone [John A. McCone], and she's. . . . What is it particularly?
RFK: Well, he didn't, uh, didn't, uh. . . . She just seemed mad, generally, but I don't know whether, uh. . . . She seems always somebody that if somebody gave her a little attention occasionally then maybe she'd come around a bit.
JFK: Uh, well, it's pretty difficult. 11
RFK: Is it?
JFK: Well, she, you know, is just a waspish woman and she's always mad at something. She's mad at the Republi-, uh, because we have the Republicans or we're not fighting hard enough for, I dunno, civil rights or some god damned thing, whatever it may be. She's always sore. I don't have any contact with her.

Digital Dharma

Digital Dharma - http://digitaldharma.com/

Digital History on spiritual level!

From the http://digitaldharma.com/ website...

"The beauty of Southern Asia and its native cultures envelops the film as Smith returns to India and Nepal in 2008, delivering to remote monasteries hard drives containing 12,000 of the 20,000 ancient documents he has salvaged. The recovery of missing texts continues, as Smith hopes to ensure the preservation of Tibetan culture for future generations. It is during this return trip that we experience Smith’s epic mission through his eyes. He provides us with unique access to the insights and way of life of the world’s leading lamas and lineage holders, monks, local “publishers” and other key players in this preservation movement. Their personal stories, told in their own voices, reveal the complexities, challenges and triumphs they have experienced in contributing to this cultural rescue. Smith’s travels take him to his old home in Delhi, the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, and monasteries of the four Buddhist sects and the Bonpo, the first documented religion in Tibet. Smith’s encounters with these traditions provide firsthand accounts of the challenges each faces in its efforts to preserve its roots and survive as a living tradition. Digital Dharma reaches an aesthetic and dramatic high point with Smith’s meeting at the SakyaMonlam (Mass Peace Prayer), where over 10,000 monks gather at the reputed birthplace of Buddha in Lumbini, Nepal, and his encounter with the incarnations of his first two teachers."

Wish they had the digital text online. The movie website reference the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center - http://www.sky.tbrc.org/, which does provide access to thousands of Tibetan texts, but much of the digital content is behind a pay wall. Not able to access myself. I did find this collection from Yale - http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/, but none of the sacred text.

This post from EarlyTibet.com http://earlytibet.com/2010/12/13/secrets-of-the-cave-i/ adds to the intrigue.

"In 1889 local treasure hunters found a cache of manuscripts in a site south of Kucha on the northern Silk Road and subsequently sold some to a local scholar..." http://idp.bl.uk/pages/collections_en.a4d

Dead Online

 

Grateful Dead, Flock, Humble Pie - Lights: Brotherhood of Light - Bill Graham Presents in San Francisco - Fillmore West - December 4-7, 1969

Long live, the Dead. An impressive online collection of 45,000 digitize items from the University of California Santa Cruz Grateful Dead archive went online today at http://www.gdao.org/
The archive includes memorabilia, art, and of course an impressive collection of music, much are fan tapes. The collection reminds us of what digital history can do for cultural memory. It's a fine example of pop culture, on the fringes, meeting up with the world of academics, who will undoubtedly use this collection for years to come to better understand the time and ways of the Dead.

1940 Cenus is Online

1940 census was released by the U.S. National Archives today. The images above are from the census records for Ware County Georgia. My father and his parents live in Ware County in 1940. I was able to find them in the census pretty quickly, actually through good fortune. They were listed on the first page of a 24 page record for the street where they lived - Mary Street in Waycross, Georgia. While I was lucky, the census actually present a massive challenge for most users. The archive is not searchable, so the only way to locate records is to have specific information that enables you to browse your way to the record. While the 1940 Census release is exiting, it reminds us how difficult historical research can be.

The records were made available after the mandatory 72 year embargo. The waiting period for releasing census records was originally set as a period of time that would last longer than  the average lifespan. We've waited a long time for this record, so have fun, but don't take an short cuts. History research is after all serious business!

Generaloigist Angela Walton-Raji shares her excitement for the release as well. 

What is the Theory of Relativity?"

An initial offering from Hebrew University's the papers of Albert Einstein archive, went online this week at http://www.alberteinstein.info/. For now, the online collection includes just a fraction of 80,000 items in the Einstein collection, among these is this gem where Einstein explains his theory of relativity for an audiance of British scientist in 1918. Einstein concluded his argument with this simply but overwhelming logic.

The chief attraction of the theory lies in its logical completeness. If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible.

The letter is online at http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000033998

Midnight in Paris - A meditation on the past

What is the past? How do we imagine and live in the past?




Woody Allen's 2010 movie Midnight in Paris has a few things to say about history, and I suppose digital history - or at least the way we imagine history on the screen - analog or digital. In the movie, the protagonist Gil Pender travels in time to the 1920s. Gil has romanized the '20s, and lives through his fantasy when he fall for a women from the era. However, she too is unsatisfied with her current condition and travels with Gil to the 1890s. It's here that Gil comes face to face with the nature of history.
As Gil puts is "If you stay here and this becomes your present then pretty soon you'll start imagining another time that was really the golden time. That's what the present is. It's a little un-satisfying, because life's a little un-satisfying."