http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-civil-rights-museum-20171209-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
Another take on America’s “statues problem”
An excellent editorial by the perceptive writer Sarah Vowell on commemorative statues.
Swerves back to Columbus monuments, and to their character as homages to Italian American heritage.
History– and memory– is complicated.
New exhibition about Vietnam
An excellent new exhibition and series of resources on the US and the Vietnam War, from the National Archives.
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/currently-on-exhibit-remembering-vietnam
Russian Revolution and the “uses of history”
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Here’s a really interesting editorial about the Revolution and the uses of history– how to put history to work in service of political goals:
“Manipulating history for political ends is not unusual — see the Trump administration and the Civil War. But in Russia, invoking history has long been a way of proclaiming political or ideological affiliation. The “Great October Socialist Revolution” was the founding myth of the Soviet Union; Nov. 7 (Oct. 25 on the old Russian calendar), the date of the uprising that brought the Bolsheviks to power, was the national holiday, on which tanks, missiles and high-stepping soldiers swept through Red Square.
The history of the revolution — and of the czarist past, and for that matter of the entire world — was written to fit the myth of Soviet Russia as the vanguard of civilization, and woe to those who tampered with the official version. Unless they were the guardians of the official version, to whom it fell now and again to rewrite and update that history — like when Stalin went abruptly from demigod to footnote.”
Is Rock Dead?
An interesting article about the decline of rock and roll.
Confederate-statue lessons for other countries
Another story from NPR about monuments to “heroes” in South Africa and other countries (Ukraine, Taiwan) that are now coming under question.
Architecture of haunted houses
This piece from NPR will be appropriate for our historic preservation discussion (today) and for our upcoming field trip to the Ramsey House, a Victorian house with some rumors of ghosts….. Listen to it here.
“Lack of compromise” = Civil War
The White House chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, has weighed in (inadvisably) in the Trump “debate” about the origins of the Civil War.
A cross honoring war dead
A fascinating collision of the politics of memory and the constitutional provision for the separation of church and state:
New exhibit on Vietnam War
A major new exhibition on the Vietnam War at the New York Historical Society:
“For the people who live it, history is personal. And if you live it intensely, you feel you own it, or it owns you. A lot of Americans still feel that way about the Vietnam War years. No matter how removed you were from actual combat, if the war consumed your attention, shaped your emotions, and dictated your actions, you were in the middle of it.
That’s where the word-and-object jammed exhibition called “The Vietnam War: 1945-1975” at the New-York Historical Society puts you. From the minute you walk in, you’re surrounded.”
findinghistory 