Reds Hall of Fame Website Review

The following review concerns the information from the Cincinnati Reds website. Visit the Reds history page here.

The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame portion of the Cincinnati Reds website contains not only information about the hall of fame, but also an impressive section on Reds history. The web page qualifies as an electronic exhibit, and targets the general public, specifically fans of the Cincinnati Reds.

Because the site exists more to satiate the curiosity of non-historians than to serve as an actual academic source, the site authors are not likely to be concerned about keeping up with the latest historical scholarship or analysis. Even so, the authors should still be concerned with keeping accurate and important information on the site, and for the most part, they succeed. While perhaps the page design of Reds history portion of the site is slightly more outdated than the rest of the site, it is not terribly so.

Perhaps the single most informative portion of this history section is a timeline chronicling the team’s history, beginning with its emergence as the first all-professional baseball team in 1869, through the 2012 season. In addition to the timeline, the site contains impressive and easy-to-find information concerning the evolution of the team’s uniforms, logos, and ballparks. I was pleasantly surprised to find the opening day lineups listed, dating back to 1900, as well as an all-time roster which included not only players with such legendary careers as Pete Rose,  Ted Kluszewski, and Barry Larkin, but also those with less-than-legendary careers, such as Chris Sabo and Pete Rose, Jr. What is particularly impressive about this roster is that site visitors can click on the names and be redirected to a page about that player, including date and place of birth, position, Major League debut, and all of their player statistics, for every team for which they played.

I do have one significant criticism. While the site does contain a roster with the names of all former managers, including the years each one managed and their win-loss record while with the Reds, there is important information lacking in this section.  As a baseball fan myself, I have had many conversations and debates with other fans about managers, past and present. When arguing with someone about whether or not Dusty Baker is a worse manager than Bob Boone, it would be helpful to be able to go to the Reds history page, find a list of Reds managers, including their win-loss totals, both throughout their entire managerial careers, and while with the Reds ball club. Such information as post season appearances, post season wins and losses, any notable managing achievements or records, along with reason for dismissal or resignation would also be useful. Perhaps less important but still helpful would be a link to a roster containing the names of players for each year the manager worked for the Reds.

Aside from that single criticism, the Reds history section of Reds.com is quite comprehensive and impressive. It includes much valuable information, as well as photos and video footage. As an academic historian and Reds fan, I see this website as a valuable resource for anyone researching Reds history. 

Week Eleven: Colonial Williamsburg and Spaghetti Squash

This week's readings completed the book we began last week, The New History in and Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg, by Richard Handler and Eric Gable. Of course, the book is filled with interesting information and thoughts to consider, but one thing particularly stuck out to me in the last half of the book.

Chapter seven is entitled, "The Front Line: Smile Free or Die." While that almost sounds like the title of  a psychological thriller movie, by the second page of the chapter, I was thinking back to some of our previous readings, and rather fascinated by the challenge presented. Colonial Williamsburg employees were told that the worst thing they could do was be rude to a customer. That would result in immediate dismissal. While on the surface, that sounds reasonable, Handler and Gable went on to say that Colonial Williamsburg's VP stated the reason for this as being that the museum is "an intellectually open environment: people can say or think whatever they want about history, as long as they remain polite in their dealings with visitors." (pp. 170, 171). Again, this didn't sound too bad until I read on, about the frontline guide's interpretation: "...from that fact, she concluded not that Colonial Williamsburg is a domain of intellectual freedom, but that it is a big entertainment center and not an educational institution." (p.171).

This got me thinking. While Colonial Williamsburg is presented as a museum, and a place of accurate historical education, it does also have to make money. While it would be nice to be able to have such a place only be concerned with the accuracy of information and nothing else, the reality is, this is such a large operation that private funding alone is simply not going to cut it. Colonial Williamsburg has to draw enough people willing to pay the steep admission prices to compete with places such as Disney World, Six Flags, and Paramount's resorts, among other popular vacation destinations. Of course, we talked about a similar issue weeks ago in regards to the "Disney's America" theme park, and many of us focused on the danger of "Disnefying" history. But what about Colonial Williamsburg? Are providing good historical presentation and good entertainment mutually exclusive? Or can they both be accomplished? Are there ways to reconcile the two without totally damaging the integrity of the history being presented?

I'm genuinely asking those questions- I don't know the answer off the top of my head. As an academic historian, I tend to want to say the only right course of action here is to stick with "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." But then, if we do that absolutely, what do we sacrifice? Do we then end up with a defunct Colonial Williamsburg? Does the existence of a Colonial Williamsburg that gets as close as possible to the absolute truth without sacrificing tourist traffic still present enough of the real picture to justify any changes it has to make here and there, or any intentional oversights or minimalizations of certain issues?

Maybe, maybe not. One of the difficulties for public- and academic- historians is knowing where the "happy medium" lies. This actually makes me think of my recent food experiences, as I've become pretty much a health food nut in the last few months. At some point when I'm cooking for other people, I have to find the balance of just how many "healthier" substitutions I can make before my guest is going to be disgusted by my substitutions of honey for sugar and coconut cream for heavy whipping cream, and spaghetti squash for actual spaghetti. I think Colonial Williamsburg, among other public history sites, is more or less chronically in the same place. At what point do they need to add in a little sugar or spaghetti to appeal to enough people to keep the museum viable? Does adding a little historical sugar completely negate the accuracy of everything else?

Again, I don't know. And I'm not even sure the above analogy made sense (I'm hungry, can't you tell?). But if I keep trying to get people to eat my super duper healthy paleo substitutions for everything, they're eventually not going to want to eat my food at all (and it has nothing to do with my cooking skills...let's just get that straight!). From a business perspective, Colonial Williamsburg needs to do more or less the same thing. Just how that measures up in terms of historical integrity, I'm not sure. But it's certainly something interesting to consider.

Week Ten: Road Apples and the Other Half

My time is limited this week, so my post will be short. For our reading, we were assigned what amounts to the first half of The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg, by Richard Handler and Eric Gable. Of course, as a historian of American slavery, Colonial Williamsburg is very interesting to me, given the journey they have been on over the last couple decades, trying to reflect changes brought by the emergence of social history. As I was reading the first chapter of this book, a new question hit me: why social history? I mean, my interest in Williamsburg has always been more along the lines of how they implement social history, but this time, I started to wonder why social history is so important anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a social historian to the core. I wasn't actually wondering if social history was important, more like how. Not that I didn't know, but sometimes we tend to overlook things we think are too basic or obvious, thereby missing some of the important details.

Early on, Colonial Williamsburg was a fairly sterile, clean environment, praising the lives and work of Williamsburg's elite. By the 1970s, Americans had grown bored with the sanitized version of history which overlooked the bad, praising too highly the good- or at least, what leaders and historians at the time wanted Americans to think of as good. Beginning in the 60s, people wanted to learn about the history of the working class, ordinary people. They wanted to see history's whole picture- not just the "important" parts.

In the case of Williamsburg, just over half of the population were African American slaves, giving its elite an unusually high standard of living. Showing the social history of Colonial Williamsburg would mean showing some pretty unsavory elements of American history. It would mean presenting the great leaders of that town, and the American Revolution, as being flawed. Showing "the other half" would mean bursting the bubble for many Americans. But then again, I come to the same question: why? Why show slaves in Williamsburg? Why have live animals and horses leaving their droppings, or "road apples" for everyone to see and smell? Why not just focus on the good? Why do things have to be real?

As I thought about it, I came up with an answer that at least makes sense to me. If we don't show the past as it really was, if we sanitize it, if we take out the bad, then the good of the present doesn't mean as much. Additionally, it marginalizes the struggles others have gone through, the things people have had to overcome to get to where they are. It also takes away a lot of our ability to accurately understand the present- both the good and the bad of the present. Social history- both at Colonial Williamsburg and elsewhere- allows us to study, analyze, and understand history as a whole. Without social history, we're only looking at part of the picture- a part that lacks a lot of the struggle and stark reality- good and bad- of the past and the present.

Week Nine: Rabbit Holes and the Civil War

I was arguing with someone online a few months ago who insisted that all of the human rights reform movements between the 1830s and 1920s or so were against the Bible; that God never told us to defend our own rights, but rather to turn the other cheek, submit to authorities, and yield our rights to do what we want. This struck me as particularly interesting, since he was defending the South in the Civil War (of course, arguing that the abolition movement entirely went against Scripture). I thought about it for a moment, and in crafting my reply, remarked aloud to my friend Christi that with few (if any) exceptions, civil wars are merely failed revolutions, in which either the country splits into two or more separate sovereign states, or remains intact, with a new government taking over. Regardless, if the rebelling side succeeds, we usually remember the war as a revolution, otherwise it is a civil war. Which then launched a conversation between Christi and me trying to figure out why the Civil War, as a failed revolution, was okay, in which the Southern states were rebelling and fighting for the right to govern themselves (whether rightly or wrongly, it really doesn't matter here), but an abolition movement led largely by whites trying to free the enslaved African Americans, or a women's rights movement (very much supported by a number of men as well) to work to pass new legislation.

I have come to the conclusion that the American Civil War is a maddening rabbit hole. I remember my first glimpse into said hole- I was 16, away at a music camp for 3 weeks, with a roommate from Louisiana, Mandi. I seriously had no idea until then some people actually argued the Confederates were right. The next several years, I met more and more people who thought the same way Mandi did. Not long after returning home from meeting Mandi, my Baptist church in Cincinnati even had an actual debate about the Civil War. I was a little taken aback that people from my church actually sided with the South. So I started to study the Civil War. I became more aware of Civil War reenactments, of old Southern balls, with men in Confederate uniforms, and women in their big 1860s ball gowns, etc. The older I got, and the more I argued, the further I slipped down the rabbit hole. The further I slipped down the rabbit hole, the more people I discovered who are also stuck in said rabbit hole. I am currently further down the rabbit hole than ever. The frustrating thing is, I have yet to find a way out. I keep getting sucked into long arguments about the Civil War, in which no one's mind gets changed, and we end up where we started, only having lost several hours of our lives and raised our blood pressures in the process. No matter how many times I resolve to quit arguing about the Civil War, I always break that promise. When it comes to swearing off these arguments, my resolve is about as strong as Marshall Erickson's whenever he tries to make a resolution about...anything. I'm not like this regarding any other war. In fact, bring up literally any other war (my friend John on occasion has tried to bring up the War of 1812...he's Canadian), I'll make an argument, spend maybe 5 minutes defending it, and then shrug my shoulders and say you either have a decent point that I'll have to consider, or I'll just decide I'm right and move on (kidding...kinda).

So what's with the fascination with the Civil War? Actually, it could better be called an obsession. If it was just me, that'd be one thing, and I'd shrug it off, like I shrug off my obsession with fuzzy things or Peeps. But it's not just me! It's a freakishly large portion of the American population, including residents from states that weren't even involved...like Alaska...people whose ancestors hadn't even gotten here yet, and as my friend James informs me, even some Canadians. Yes, apparently Canadians have American Civil War reenactments too...including Canadians who never had ancestors in the US. I know, bizarre. But then, is it really any stranger than the fact that so many Americans are obsessed with a war that ended 148 years ago, and even our very oldest citizens are a few generations removed from the war? It's fascinating to me that someone could walk in to a crowded room in most parts of the US and scream "AMERICA SHOULD HAVE LOST THE REVOLUTION!" and most people would stare, blink a couple times, and then go back to whatever they were doing. But send someone into a crowded room to shout, "THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA SHOULD HAVE WON!" or, "GOD BLESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION ARMY!" and almost guaranteed, chaos will ensue, and people who may have just been speaking with each other in a friendly manner will end up in an instant heated argument (kinda like the whole predestination/free will debate- ironically, I discovered that was a "thing" when I met Mandi too...). So why is it that very few people care if someone says we should still be British subjects, but almost everyone is up in arms over any such statement about the Civil War?

One of this week's readings comes from the first two chapters of Tony Horowitz's book, Confederates in the Attic. I've always meant to read this book, and now I'm going to have to- the first two chapters are pretty awesome, though I only really have time to talk about the first here. Horowitz begins chapter 1 with a very apt quote from Gertrude Stein: "There never will be anything more interesting in America than that Civil War. Never." I think she may be correct.

Horowitz begins by talking about his great-grandfather, who didn't arrive in America until the 1880s, but was always obsessed with the Civil War, passing down that obsession to his children, grand children, and great-grandchildren. A few pages in, Horowitz queries, "Why did this war still obsess so many Americans 130 years after Appomattox? I returned to Poppa Isaac's book. What did that war have to do with him, or with me?" At this point, I looked up from my reading and said, "Yes, why IS this still such an obsession?" As many people have seen on my Facebook wall from time to time, I occasionally opine that not only has the Civil War not yet ended, but it also NEVER WILL. Historian Kathleen has to be more responsible and give more academic answers than that over-simplified rant, but private citizen Kathleen absolutely believes that.

The book continues as Horowitz details his experience meeting a hardcore Confederate reenactor, and the time he spent with this guy and his other reenactor friends. It's amazing just how hardcore these men were. Every single detail had to be correct. They cared nothing about physical injury, as long as it happened authentically. Many even tried to lose as much weight as possible, trying to achieve a weight of 135lbs or less, and acquiring the underfed, gaunt Confederate soldier look. I'm sorry, but as a 29 year old female, I canNOT help but wonder how many of these men had wives or girlfriends at home. I'm trying to come up with any circumstance under which I would find a guy over 5'7" or 5'8" and weighing 135lbs to actually be attractive, and I'm not getting anything. How hardcore must these women be to be okay with this? Or all they mostly confirmed bachelors who care more about reliving a war than female companionship? I did actually laugh out loud  when I read the conversation in which one reenactor lamented that his girlfriend broke up with him because she was tired of trying to compete with a 130 year old event. Can't say I blame her. Actually, I'd probably give her a good fist bump if I met her. But as per usual, I digress.

I found the end of the first chapter to be somewhat disturbing. Horowitz recalls the a conversation with several of the hardcores. They talked about how their repeated reenacting experiences, in very unpleasant conditions helped them understand how easy their lives were, and one said he would not be upset to get ticks and lice: "If that happened, I'd feel like we'd elevated things to another level. It would suck, but at least I'd know what it was like to scratch my head all day long." To me, this comes too close to the medieval ideas of self-abasement and punishment. Extreme suffering as a kind of penance. In this case, what a read seemed to border on a psychologically unhealthy obsession with understanding fully- by actually feeling- what Civil War soldiers went through. But here's my question: for what? Is there a purpose other than just understanding? And if so, what is it? To take it a step further, though my argumentation does not approach the commitment level of the hardcores, reading this does make me ask what the purpose of such arguments are.

Why am I still arguing about a war that ended 148 years ago? Why is anyone?

 
I have a mixture of good and bad answers to those questions, and I'm really not sure there's one right answer, or even just a dozen right answers. But something about the American Civil War makes it one of the most unique and, frankly strange, obsessions in existence. For all of us afflicted with this obsession, it wouldn't hurt to return to these questions occasionally for perspective. Though maybe it's really just another mental illness, and in 100 years, it'll be right there alongside paranoia and delusional behavior. Hmmm...

Week Eight: Hollywood and History

This week's readings centered around the film Black Robe, so as would be expected, we were required to also watch the movie. For my more conservative readers, I would say watch at your own risk, the movie does have an R rating, and it ain't the dialogue that got it said rating.

As a history geek, I have long been irritated by inaccurate portrayals of history in film. In many cases, Hollywood likes to sacrifice the real for the sensational, or edit things to prove the producer's agenda. For example, you know the scene in The Patriot in which the villagers are locked inside their church and burned by the British? I'll never forget the reactions of various professors decrying that as a sensational Hollywood lie. Of course then there's Song of the South which is a horrid perversion of a slave's life in the South. Pearl Harbor, Titanic, and many other movies have glaring historical errors in them.

The movie Black Robe is about a Jesuit missionary who embarks on a journey and has dealings with various First Nations tribes in Canada, including the Algonquins, Mohawks, and Huron. It is true that the portrayal of these people groups is less than flattering. It is also true that to someone who knows absolutely nothing about any of these tribes (and very little about Native Americans and First Nations in general), it has an air of authenticity. However, according to one article I read in response "And They Did It Like Dogs In the Dirt...An Indigenist Analysis of Black Robe" by Ward Churchill, the content was actually less than accurate. For one thing, the movie had Algonquians speaking a Cree dialect. I mean, not that I'd know the difference, but seriously, people? I wouldn't make a movie and have a Mexican speaking Castillian Spanish, nor would I make a movie and have a Ukranian speak Russian. If you're going to go to the trouble of having a large portion of a movie's dialogue be in a foreign language, why not make sure it's the correct one? Sorry, I just don't get that.

Churchill decries the film critics who claim to know anything about history at all, claiming it to be "historically sound," etc., and I'll agree, this is a problem. Film critics should comment on the film as a film, not as a representation of history. But aside from that, Churchill criticizes the filmmakers for quite obviously misrepresenting the various tribes, especially the Mohawks, showing them to be far more bloodthirsty or sexually deviant than they actually were. According to Churchill, the details were so thoroughly researched (sets, costumes, etc.) that it would be impossible to do so much research and not be aware that the child captured by the Mohawks would have simply been raised as a Mohawk, rather than killed in front of the child's family. Churchill accused the filmmakers of having an agenda to show these tribes as being savage- as if in an effort to justify white domination over the indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. I'll have to agree with him (assuming his facts are correct), that if so many minute details were correct, the filmmakers must have known what they were doing, and to intentionally villainize these people is wrong.

However. In his article, "In Defense of Black Robe: A Reply to Ward Churchill, Kristoff Haavik disagrees with Churchill, in spite of claiming to be an avid admirer of Churchill's work. Haavik actually states that Black Robe was an accurate portrayal of Native Americans.  After having read both articles, I have to say I'm more inclined to agree with Haavik, as he points out a few discrepancies between the film and Chruchill's retelling of it. Haavik states that Churchill has "something of a point" in his claims about the Mohawks killing their child prisoner, saying it would be more likely for the child to be adopted into the tribe, but killing children as portrayed in the movie was not unheard of for Mohawks- just far less common than adoption. Haavik's article goes on for several pages about native culture and Churchill's points.

It is not terribly uncommon for historians to disagree on things such as this. However, this dispute does raise a valid question: Can films be used as legitimate ways to teach history?

My answer to this question is a cautious "yes." One of the history professors at Ouachita (where I did my undergrad), Dr. Motl, used films in three of the four classes I had with him: Modern Germany, Modern America, and American Women's History. We watched Schindler's List, and then discussed it. He was careful to point out the few things here and there that were sensational add-ins on the part of Steven Speilburg, but that was easy to do, and on the whole, the film was incredibly useful in our class. It brought the horrors we were studying to life. I also remember watching the film Thirteen Days, about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this case, the film was almost entirely accurate (yes, sometimes Hollywood actually resists the urge to change history!), and I learned so much more about the Cuban Missile Crisis than I would have EVER learned otherwise. After watching the movie, I more fully understood everything that was at stake during that time, and how fantastic a job the Kennedy administration did in dealing with it. But I think the most significant movie (for me) that I watched in Dr. Motl's classes was the HBO film Iron Jawed Angels. Again, Dr. Motl did explain a few things that were sensationalized, the fact that the senator's wife was a fictitious character added to the story, etc., but the movie overall was an accurate portrayal of what women in America went through to gain the right to vote. It also showed Woodrow Wilson in a less-than-heroic light (which, in the case of women's suffrage is totally accurate!). I will never forget the force-feeding scene with Alice Paul in the prison, during her hunger strike. She wanted to starve to death to make a point, and of course, as was said in the film by the men opposing the suffragettes, "We can't have any martyrs on our hands."

Seeing those things on film helps people understand significance and sometimes context better. If we see it playing out in front of our eyes, we're much more likely to connect than if we hear a professor say it, or read it on a page in our text books. Dr. Motl set a great example for me as an aspiring college professor, in knowing exactly how to use films to teach in a way he couldn't do by just talking about something (sorry, Dr. Motl, but even Darth Vader has limitations!). Those are lessons and films I will never forget. In my own classroom, with my students, I even used film clips to help drive home certain points. I did show the force-feeding scene from Iron Jawed Angels, and I had half my class come up to me and ask for the title of the film so they could go watch the whole thing. I showed 70 minutes of The Help to show my students the kinds of things African Americans dealt with during the Jim Crow era, and to show them a good portrayal of African American agency at the same time. They responded to those things way better than they would have responded to me rattling off the facts during yet another lecture.

Sure. As teachers, we have to be careful to use films appropriately. Sure. There are teachers who use films as cop-outs, not knowing anything about a specific event or topic (sometimes including whether the film is accurate). But used correctly and with caution, films can be fabulous tools for teaching about history. We simply have to use our own professional integrity in choosing well what we use, and how.

Week Seven: Archives and Records Management

I'm sorry, friends, this week I just don't have anything witty or interesting to talk about. The subject of this week's readings was Archivists and Records Managers. While I recognize the need for both professions, and am very grateful such people exist, and even know and love wonderful people in such positions, both are positions I think would make me die of boredom if I had to do those jobs. I was simply not cut out to do either. I'm not calling these professions boring. I'm just saying they hold no interest *for me,* much like many people claim the greatest sport in the world (baseball!) to be boring, when it's really not. They're unable to find baseball interesting, and likewise, I am entirely unable to find careers in archives or records management to be remotely interesting. So this post will be pragmatic and to-the-point, in the interest of filling my class requirement for a weekly blog post. ;-)

Essentially, records managers AND archivists are both very important within a corporation. A records manager is mostly interested in information pertinent to the future of the company, meaning some information gets kept, perhaps reformatted, and stored for future use, while other information is permanently destroyed. Which make perfect sense for the efficient workings of a company. Keeping a lot of unnecessary information would absolutely make no sense, and perhaps be too cumbersome for things to run smoothly.

Archivists, on the other hand, keep records and original documents of things which may be important, not so much to the company itself, but to researchers in the future. They keep things for posterity and for the purpose of future learning. While some records may be of no use to a company after a certain date, future researchers may want to look into a certain period of the company's past, in which case, certain obsolete records may be pieces of vital information. Conversely, an archivist may have no interest in preserving certain records that a records manager would keep, because they have no archival value.

Of course, as far as a company (or government agency, or university) is concerned, archivists are "extra" or "unnecessary," so many only have records managers, who may, or may not, be capable of  serving a dual role as a good archivist as well. But in order for records to be properly managed and archived, any business or other institution should have both a records manager and an archivist who can work together to fulfill the needs of both the company, and future researchers.

Week Six: Bare Ankles, Union Soldiers From Georgia, And Rachmaninoff On The Harpsichord

It was a cool, misty morning in March of 1999, and a 15 year old me and my mom were in Arlington, Virginia, visiting friends. We set off for a day at Mount Vernon, and I was beyond excited to see the home of George and Martha Washington. Though at the time, my main focus was undeniably music, history had always been a major interest of mine, and I couldn’t wait to see the home of this historical legend.

We arrived at the site, and my first memory is of being greeted by a costumed woman, speaking to us in 18^th century language, and introducing herself as a house servant of the Washingtons.  (I think. I guess I should say, this was 14 years ago, so while I remember some things in extremely vivid detail, other things are a little fuzzy.) She gave us the usual background information about the Washingtons and the plantation, and life there. She never broke character that I remember, as she gave us a tour of the yard and buildings close to the house. At one point, she engaged the tourists, and I remember being amused and slightly (though only slightly) irked that she berated me for  wearing a skirt so short it showed my bare ankles (seriously, the skirt went alllll the way to my ankles, but did stop there), while ignoring all the other women in the group daring to sport extremely cropped hair or, even worse, pants! I was the only female there in a skirt, and thought I should at least get some credit for that, but I suppose the others there were better off because at least their pants covered their ankles? Yes, 14 years later, I do still think about and try to figure that one out. Lame, I know. 

I had never been to such a place before, where there were people like this woman. I was fascinated. I have a vivid imagination, and  spent much of my childhood imagining what it would be like to live in various time periods, so actually seeing someone talking to us, in costume, using correct 18^th century grammar and vocabulary, as though she had stepped right out of the 1780s absolutely fascinated me.

Fast forward almost three years, to December of 2003, in a hotel dining room in Georgia, where 18 year old me sat with my parents and about 30 other people, listening to a costumed man in his Union blues talk about his experience on the battlefield during the Civil War. Even though the setting was entirely modern and lacked the period authenticity suggested by Mount Vernon, I was at least as riveted as I had been three years earlier, for multiple reasons. I had always been far more interested in the Civil War than the American Revolution, but also, I was fascinated by the fact that we were listening to someone in Georgia, play the part of a Union soldier. Even then, I was keenly aware of the irony here. Additionally, I have been a lifelong Union supporter (but that’s another story for another time), which added to my excitement and fascination.

This guy did break character, when he removed his cap. He answered a lot of questions, including those regarding his portrayal of a Union soldier in formerly (some might argue currently- also another conversation for another time) Confederate Georgia. If my memory serves me correctly (again, 11 years ago here), he was actually the several greats grandson of an actual Georgia boy who had gone North to fight for the Union, for reasons of conscience regarding the slave issue (I believe he was unwilling to fight for a country which held slaves). For obvious reasons, he remained in the North after the war, but I believe it was either his son or grandson which moved back to Georgia with his family. He said it was true- he didn’t get as many calls to appear as his Confederate colleagues, but often was called upon by people who were either ambivalent about sides in the war, or who were Confederate sympathizers but genuinely fascinated by the story of a Georgian who went to fight for the North.

The next summer, 19 year old me visited an old French fort and settlement in Nova Scotia. Like at Mount Vernon, there were many costumed people present. Unlike Mount Vernon, none of them gave any kind of first-person accounts. They spoke about and demonstrated the life of people in the fort, but never pretended they were the people. I enjoyed this very much as well, because we could ask questions about contrasting the modern day with life in an early-18^th century French Nova Scotian settlement. I especially enjoyed speaking with the young man inside the main house who was playing the harpsichord. He was playing a Bach invention I was actually learning (though on the piano) at the time. When he finished, we talked about things like Baroque music, the differences between playing the harpsichord and the piano, and how funny he thought it was when he tried to play Beethoven, Chopin, or Rachmaninoff (the last of which was the most hilarious, according to him) on the harpsichord when no tourists were present. No, I didn’t get the first person experience, but it did get me thinking much more about the differences in the style and theory of the Baroque period, as well as the more primitive technology, producing a harpsichord rather than a piano, and what it must have been like for those alive during the transition period (for those of you who don’t know, the technique required for playing the piano is vastly different than that of playing the harpsichord- today we perform pieces on the piano originally written for harpsichord, and yes, the performance and interpretation is significantly different). Over-analyzer that I am, I literally thought about this for days. Actually, I still find myself really wanting to get ahold of a harpsichord and trying to play Joplin or Debussy on it, simply because of that conversation- which then inevitably always leads me back to thinking about the settlement and the reason it died: over-fishing. The bay on which it was located was filled with a certain kind of fish (I’m inclined to say cod, but I really don’t remember), and within 30 years, the bay went from being literally overpopulated with the fish to having them be nearly entirely wiped out in that location. Had that costumed harpsichordist not been there, I doubt I’d still think about my trip there in such detail.

This week’s readings were about performed historical interpretation. One reading was the first chapter of Joyce M. Thierer’s book, Telling History: A Manual for Performers and Presenters of First-Person Narratives. Thierer states that the result of good costumed historical interpretation is “active participation because an entertaining performance, a well-told story, inspires audience members to focus by appealing to diverse learning styles.” She also cites stories which say these presentations have emotional impact and creates long-lasting learning, which can be so significant to the observer, that it can be life-changing.  She also refers to it as “sneaky history,” meaning it is so much fun, even those who don’t like history enjoy costumed interpretation.

Of course, Thierer spent a lot of time talking about the various kinds of performed historical interpretation (spending much time saying re-enactors usually do things more for fun than scholarship, but serious re-enactors can be useful at times for certain programs and events). She talked about the pros and cons of each of the three kinds of experiences I talked about. Only having first-person interpreters who never break character can be awkward and uncomfortable for the visitors when they have questions about where certain things are. Having someone who breaks character can be confusing, if they don't make the transitions back and forth clear. Having people just in costume (she referred to them as "red shirts") can be interesting, but then the visitors miss out on the connection with a historical character that occurs with a good historical first-person interpreter. 

Personally, I enjoyed all of my experiences, and they all have stayed with me. I don't really have anything so fantastic to say with this post, but it was interesting to learn about the different kinds of costumed historical interpretation. I think the most important thing I took away from these readings is this: know what you have to work with. This includes everything: actors/interpreters, audience, costumes, settings, scripts, research materials, props, etc. Really take the time to figure out what is going to work best for your purposes. Failing to do this could end up doing more damage than anything else, and since history already gets such a bum rap anyway, correctly judging the situation is all the more important.