Elected Dads Elect Fathering Styles

Father’s Day is here, perfect timing for the launch of Joshua Kendall’s book First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama.  I heard his highly entertaining and insightful talk at the New Haven Museum.

Grant and family

Grant and family

President Grant fell into the ‘Sweet Dad’ category, one of six Kendall used to group the 43 Presidents, all of whom had children (5 adopted).

No surprise that Mr. Obama also falls in the Nurturer category.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so did Truman.  When Margaret was criticized for a concert she gave in 1950, Truman turned ferocious with the media.  The mail that came in overwhelmingly supported the father standing up for his daughter.  Kendall suggests that this fierce, fatherly protectiveness led Truman to make the decision to drop the bomb–to protect American boys from harm.

Just so you know, George Washington was apparently very sweet to Martha’s children, whom he adopted.

The Preoccupied Dads will come as no surprise to you.  Those ambitious politicians focus all on career and little on family.  Linda Johnson had to read the Congressional Record to get LBJ’s attention.

 

Carter and Amy, 1974

Carter and Amy, 1974

Surprisingly, Carter was tough on his three sons, reflecting his own upbringing, his military training at Annapolis, and the practice of spanking.  Jack didn’t speak with his father for two years, but when he did tell his father of his pain, to his credit, Carter reflected and learned from what he had done:  passing on harsh parenting that he received, without thinking.  We consider Carter a Peacemaker now, and Kendall makes the case linking the personal growth that came from learning about his parenting.

You know I like the Playful-Pal Dads.  Grant loved playing with his children, and Kendall attributes his alcohol problem to missing his children when he was stationed in California.  Teddy Roosevelt was a playful dad, and Alice was frisky right back.  With lifelong asthma, TR couldn’t tolerate cigarette smoking and told his daughter, “no smoking under my roof.”  Alice complied, by smoking on the roof.

Having three daughters may have swayed Woodrow Wilson to finally relent on Suffrage.  I don’t know though.  He was verbally brutal about the protesters, that he found so annoying when he was trying to deal with ‘weightier’ matters.  Kendall also suggests a Freudian interpretation (he does psychiatric research), when one of his daughters married the best dancing bachelor, to mimic her father’s dancing prowess.

Double-Dealing Dads had children outside their marriages.  One of LBJ’s secretaries said the president offered to set her up in an apartment in New York.  While she turned him down, others didn’t.  Harding apparently had sex in a White House closet in 1928.  Careful where you hang your coat!

An older Grover Cleveland married his young ward, not a pleasant thought, and then cheated on her, fathering a child with a mistress.  He verbally slammed the mistress as ‘a drunk and a slut’ when he was the alcoholic with loose morals.  He won the election anyway.  Being promiscuous doesn’t necessarily mean being a bad president.  ‘Grover the Good’ was an honest politician, known for his integrity with a budget.

Now, what’s really cold are the Antebellum cheaters.  Tyler and Harrison both had slave children, and Kendall has tracked paperwork showing Tyler sold his own children, including Sylvanius Tyler, who recorded that Tyler had 52 children.

Tiger Dads are authoritarian, and the tendency seems to get passed down.  John Adams told John Quincy he would be a failure if he didn’t become president.  John Quincy Adams told his son George Washington Adams that JQ wouldn’t attend his Harvard graduation unless he was among the top five.  At age 28, GW committed suicide, likely from mental illness, no doubt exacerbated by parental badgering.

Jefferson was so controlling, he gave his daughters lists of what clothing to wear.

The Bush family, 1964

The Bush family, 1964

The challenge of losing a child either makes or breaks a president, per Kendall.  The grief Lincoln felt over losing beloved Willy made him step up as a war leader, while Piece suffered a breakdown from the loss of his third son, while in office.

As a side note, when Robin Bush died, Barbara, in her late 20s, suffered from depression, and her hair turned white overnight.  George W. turned into a clown to cheer her up.  At least we know the source of that behavior now….

The difference between the public and private man, of course, can be striking.  FDR was like a father for so many.  He saw people through the Depression, through war.  He seemed so strong.  But he leaned on his own son, needy, yet also preoccupied.  His younger sons had to make appointments to see him.  Eleanor was distracted with her many involvements.  Perhaps as the result of their own parenting, the five Roosevelt children had 19 marriages among them.  Chaos!

The Roosevelts, 1939

The Roosevelts, 1939

Kendall said that Hillary Clinton has a male parenting style, whereas Obama’s approach resembles female parenting.  You know, nurturing, involved, inclusive.  Bill and Hillary told Chelsea about disparaging remarks being made about her philandering father.  She was 6.  Chelsea still relates to her parents via politics.  Kendall described Trump’s children as “more normal than he is,” and they are involved in his business as Vice Presidents.  Both sets of children meet their parents on the parents’ turf.

Toward the end of his talk, Kendall differentiated between fathering and mothering.  Traditionally, mothering is about nurturing; fathering is about procreating.  He assured us that things have shifted since the 19th-century origins of those gendered distinctions.

Here’s to all our fathers – human, fallible, foibled, and doing the best they can!

 

 

 

Preserving Memory

I love a good story and a great storyteller.  This week, I had two encounters worth noting.

Tammy Denease knew her great-grandmother who was enslaved and lived to be 125.  Wow!  Mississippi, her home state, is a place that only recently actually outlawed slavery, and Tammy knew the mindset of slaves first hand.

Now in Connecticut, she tells the stories of incredible women from history, preserving the memory of their humanity, as well as who they were and what they accomplished.  At the New Haven Museum, she performed the story of “Sara Margu: Child of the Amistad.”  And what a story it is!.

sara-margu-banner

Sara Margu was one of four children captured and put on the Amistad, which ironically means friendship in Spanish.  The ship was a slave vessel.  Sara’s name in her native Mendeland (now Sierre Leone) was Margu.

The Amistad story is probably more familiar now due to the Stephen Spielberg movie.  It tells of the remarkable case of a slave revolt in 1839, with the captured people taking over the ship.  Although they wanted to return to Africa, they couldn’t make that happen. The boat was captured in Long Island Sound by a US ship, and everyone on board was brought to shore in Connecticut.

The people declared themselves free, and the remaining crew and Spain labeled them property.  In an internationally famous case, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Mende people, declaring them free, becoming a major marker for abolition.

What Denease does so well is skirt the famous portions of the story for the personal, the human.  She preserves the experience of Sara Margu by telling her very particular story–the horrors of the slave ship from a child’s perspective and her healing through education.

Sara Margu worked off debts her father accrued in Mende and was taken when she was already separated from her family.  She tells how the horrors didn’t really stop when the captives arrived in Connecticut.  Many were housed in New Haven, while figuring out next steps.  She describes that people paid 25 cents to look at the Africans, as locals had never seen or heard anyone like them before.

She also recounted how Josiah Gibb wanted to help and cleverly learned how to say the numbers 1-10 in Mende, then walked through black communities saying the numbers out loud until he found someone who understood what he was saying.  That man then became the translator for the interactions in New Haven.

Sara Marrgu was moved to Farmington where she lived with a family who had a deaf son and a kind woman named Sara (where she took that portion of her  name).  She communicated naturally with the son and began to learn English.

With the trial, she understood that the central issue was, “Am I a person or am I property.”  It was election year, and President Martin Van Buren said, property.  The Queen of Spain said, property.  But the US Supreme Court disagreed by a remarkable 6-1.

The Mende people could go home, but they had no money or sailing skills to get them there.  So they did the American thing and went on a speaking tour, telling of their “adventure” on the Amistad.  Sara Margu also singly demonstrated that Africans were intelligent by reading from the Book of Psalms.  Sigh.

But however demeaning, the tour was a success.  Sara Margu and the others raised enough to return home, and although they were not allowed to eat with white members on board, the travel was much more comfortable.  The missionaries who accompanied the Mende hoped they would help the whites start a school and convert the Mende.  One responded by ripping off his clothes upon return to show his tribal markings.  But Sara Margu helped as she could.

The missiona2016-03-10 18.14.42ries then paid for her to return to the US, to study at Oberlin, a college that accepted blacks.  Sara Margu was 14 years old.  It was 1844.  Although it wasn’t all peaches and cream, despite the liberal stance, she did learn and became the first black to graduate.

She returned to Africa and felt the outsiderness of not fitting in anywhere easily.  Still, she worked in the school, embracing Christianity along with her Muslim upbringing.  She married and had a child.  Not everyone who survived the Amistad to return had such a good life, and Denease relayed those stories, too.

For her, the world of the Amistad is more than a powerful legal case.  And one thing I really loved is that she doesn’t ever tell about the death of her historical figures.  Sara Margu can live on in our minds and hearts.

Carol Highsmith sees her work as preserving memory, too.  2016-03-09 18.23.41She has collaborated with the Library of Congress for 35 years, photographing America.  To the tune of 30,000 photos so far.  She is 70 and expects to continue for the next 15 years.

She just finished documenting Connecticut and told that story at the Connecticut Historical Society.  And she does consider her work documentary.  She is thinking about researchers in 500 or 1000 years wanting to understand the culture of the United States.

Diminutive in stature, but huge in confidence, bon amie, and story telling through photography, Highsmith is truly a national treasure.

She mixes and matches images because that’s how she sees America.  In her presentation, she might have an image of Lincoln’s coat he wore when he was shot next to Yellowstone and an image of the Mona Lisa on a barn.  She calls them all iconic.  And because nothing stays the same, she repeated, “that’s why we need to record ourselves.”

The entire archive of her work is downloadable and free via the Library of Congress.  You can have so much fun browsing it, looking for your state or favorite place.  Go for it.

Mona Lisa barn art, Wisconsin

Carol Highsmith, Mona Lisa barn art, Wisconsin

Historic Pie

Screen Shot 2016-01-10 at 12.56.49 PMRobert Cox has gone where no man has gone before…well, that’s probably not true.  But he’s done it well, compiling a history of pie in his book New England PieI had the delectable pleasure of hearing him roll the dough at the New Haven Museum.

Affection for pie came from England. Makes sense.

But in New England, pies as we know them weren’t eaten until the 18th century.  Why the delay?  That has to do with the formation and function of pie.  Yeah, really.  The function wasn’t to relish the deliciousness of pie as we know it.

Instead, flour and water were mixed together to make a thick pastry boat, if you will, for cooking your contents.  You know, your squash, your rhubarb, your poultry.  The flour-water mixture made a tough, impermeable shell that worked well in the wood fire, but also was easy to move around.  So it was your cooking dish, serving dish, and potluck transportation, all in one.

The third crust on top?  That kept out insects and crows.  Useful.  Plus keeping air out of the contents of the interior meant you had your Colonial Tupperware, storing contents and even preserving them against rot.  Who needs a refrigerator?

In the early 18th century, butter and lard were added to the flour-water mixture, and something really, really good emerged.  Pie.

The fillings however, were different than today’s pie.   No blueberry pie then.  Blueberries weren’t domesticated until the 1920s.  Instead your Colonial pie likely mixed savory and sweet, with sugar, spices, and  herbs, all together.  The result was a ‘high style’ pie in the 1690s.  The Puritans, whose austerity included rejecting bodily pleasures and presumably delicious foods, then started to lose their power over pie.

The battle of the crust began.  By 1796, Amelia Simmons wrote the first American cookbook by an American, published in Hartford.  The cookbook featured nine different crusts.

2015-12-08 17.55.28

Shepherd’s Pie

Plus there were false pies and mock pies.  What?  Those aren’t the same?  Oh no!

False pies include shepherd’s pie, also called a cottage pie.  Lots of potatoes, mashed in a crust.  Your Maine-inspired Whoopie Pie is false, as is the Washington pie.

GW Pie

 

How did George Washington inspire this pie?  The Parker House Hotel‘s celebrity chef named this pie, although it’s actually sponge cake with raspberry or strawberry jam and powdered sugar on top.  Another version of this pie, with cream and chocolate is the Boston cream pie, another falsie.  In 1824, when Lafayette made his triumphal return to the United States,  he got a pie named for him that’s similar to his friend and mentor Washington’s treat.

Trivia:  at the Parker House Hotel, Ho Chi Minh worked in the kitchen, and Malcolm X was a busboy.  Between them and the GW Pie, something there sparked revolutionary spirit!

Mock pies refer to a ‘culinary mockery.’  Mock turtle soup does have turtle in it.  Mock apple pie?  You guessed it.  No apples.  Before our supermarkets made produce available year-round, pie makers had to content themselves with seasonal everything.  Ritz crackers to the rescue!  Add lemon, butter, and cream of tartar, and you get a taste like apples…  Really?  Don’t take Cox’s word for it.   See below for Corporate America’s recipe.

You can also make mock cherry pie with the more readily available cranberries.  Appearing in an 1890 Chicago cookbook, mock cherry pie took off!  Just add lots of sugar and vanilla.

Women competed to make the best pies, the best crusts, at fairs and beyond, as well as for recognition of their economy, during wartime and beyond.  Mock was the real deal.

Until freezers and processed foods.  You know, our world today.  In New England, the classic pie is simple, heightening its purity.  Simple ingredients, harmonious combinations. Really?  No.

Mince pie

The classic mince pies were a collision of the proverbial kitchen sink–cranberries, rhubarb, chicken, turkey, whatever you had, all in one pie.  That was culinary high taste.  So even the idea of the classic New England pie is a delicious myth.

But really, who cares?  Enjoy!

And in case you’re daring, here’s the promised recipe:

Ritz Mock Apple Pie
The classic pie, featuring Ritz crackers baked in a golden crust,
is perfect for the holidays.

Pastry for two-crust 9-inch pie
36 RITZ Crackers, coarsely broken (about 1 3/4 cups crumbs)
1 3/4 cups water
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated peel of one lemon
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Roll out half the pastry and line a 9-inch pie plate. Place
cracker crumbs in prepared crust; set aside.

2. Heat water, sugar and cream of tartar to a boil in saucepan
over high heat; simmer for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and peel;
cool.

3. Pour syrup over cracker crumbs. Dot with margarine or butter;
sprinkle with cinnamon. Roll out remaining pastry; place over pie.
Trim, seal and flute edges. Slit top crust to allow steam to escape.

4. Bake at 425 F for 30 to 35 minutes or until crust is crisp
and golden. Cool completely.

Makes 10 servings

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION per serving
413 calories, 3 g protein, 63 g carbohydrate, 17 g total fat,
3 g saturated fat, 339 mg sodium, 0 g dietary fiber.

Preparation Time: 45 mins.
Cook Time: 30 mins.
Cooling Time: 3 hrs.
Total Time: 4 hrs. 15 mins.

 

Local Passions

2015-08-02 15.48.19

And now for something completely Colonial.  As a belated celebration for Penny’s birthday, we went to the Pardee-Morris House, for a taste of Colonial history…and beer.

The house dates back to 1750, when the Amos Morris family was making its fortune in flax and with their salt works.  Its location was auspicious, on LIghthouse Road on Long Island Sound, convenient for shipping goods.  This house was no rough-and-tumble shack.

Look at the size of this fireplace.  2015-08-02 15.35.24Don’t get me wrong, I don’t lust after such a thing, because, after all, to cook here, you’d have to walk around the fire.  Fireplace cooking was the second leading cause of Colonial women’s deaths, after childbirth.  Cooking was a dangerous activity!

The house didn’t have just one cooking fireplace, but three.

2015-08-02 15.38.59

Here’s a later iteration that’s a tidge safer.  Narrower and with a separate, high bake oven, technology was definitely improving.

This room also features the extra-wide “coffin door,” for bringing your dead in and out.  Cooking and death.  They just seem to be linked, as prevalent companions in Colonial life.

2015-08-02 15.39.28You can tell how spartan the house is now, but in its day, this was one fancy place.  It featured a central hall, creating a larger house and a show-off place for wealth.  And then there’s that third kitchen on the other side of the house.  It was used in the summer, to keep the cooking heat away from the rest of the living space, separated by a breezeway.

In between was the staircase to the ballroom.  Not a fancy staircase, but still besting what anyone else had at the time, I’m sure.  Upstairs, in that big open room we couldn’t access, we could still peek up and see the chandeliers.  Again not elegant, but a step up from oil lamps.

2015-08-02 15.36.24

Our guide was in love with the tea-brick, the way tea was shipped from China.  One brick?  About 200 cups.  Densely packed tea leaves, pressed 2015-08-02 15.37.07in a mold to achieve pretty patterns, and the black tea aroma lingers.

As a tea fan, I loved the brick, but also this lemon press.  I’d like to have that right now to make some lemonade, contemporary or Colonial.

So that’s your well-equipped kitchen in a wealthy New Haven house.  That wealth, and the ability to provide supplies, is what got both Amos Morris Senior and Junior in trouble.

Here comes the Revolutionary War.  The Morris father and son provide the rebel soldiers with supplies.  The British are not going to take this

Prosperous Amos Morris II

Prosperous Amos Morris II

too lightly.  They capture the Morris’ and throw them in jail and burn this house to the ground.

The year–1779.

By 1780, the son had apparently escaped and the father was released, to rebuild the house as we see it today.  The 1750 fireplaces survived, as did some beams.  The rest you can think of as a Colonial renovation.

Remarkably, the Morris family lived in the house until 1915, even doing the late 19th century thing of running a boarding house to make ends meet.  Pardee bought the house with the intention of creating a Colonial museum, but died before pulling it off.  He left it to the New Haven Museum, which has had it for over 100 years.  A caretaker stayed in the house until 15 years ago, and now, it is in the shape as you see it.

First up, save the roof.  I hope they can manage the money to do more with this house that tells such an interesting story.

2015-08-02 15.54.35After the hard work of touring the house, it was time for Penny and me to learn about Connecticut beer, from the Morris period to today.

Author and beer-columnist Will Siss told us all.  New Haven was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony initially, and the English settlers loved their ale.  Of the two kinds of beer, ale and lager, ale was easier to make, faster to ferment, and successfully brewed at warmer temperatures.  Colonial women were the typical brewers, making ale at home.  Ale was necessary at a time when water wasn’t safe to drink.  Boiling the water to brew beer also killed off the bacteria.

In 1659, New Haven had its first “Ordinary” or tavern, a social place to meet, drink the local brew, and exchange news.  By 1885, New Haven had 8 breweries, each with its own personality and neighborhood following.  German immigrants were contributors to the growth of the brewing world here, and they became known for the lagers, which required refrigeration and were crisp, cold, and clear.  Of course, some breweries became huge, like Budweiser.  But others held that local sway.

With drink comes the inevitable backlash.  Lack of responsible drinking fueled the mid- 19th century Temperance movement, of which the Hartford Beechers were key advocates.  Connecticut attempted a state-wide ban on drinking in 1854 (when the Morris house was 100 years old).  Well, that didn’t work.  By 1872, the state tried the “local option” law, where each town could vote ‘wet’ or ‘dry.’  This approach was received pretty well in the country, with one town, Bridgewater, holding out until last year.  But the city dwellers wouldn’t have that law either.

With Prohibition and the rise of speakeasies, crime and public drunkenness actually increased.  Repeal in 1933 brought the slow resurgence of breweries.  Jimmy Carter helped the cause (and Billy Beer brewed by his brother) by passing a law that increased the allowed amount of production that could still be labeled ‘home brewing.’

And so we go full circle.  Back to highly localized, boutique breweries, that can be enjoyed in local restaurants and bars, just like the Colonials did.  We got to taste several samples from two new breweries.  Erector Brewing Collective is just getting started, with an IPA (India Pale Ale) and a lager, both strong and bitter.  Penny called the lager chocolatety.  Now that’s a civilized taste bud for you.

I preferred the four beers by Black Hog Brewing Company from Oxford, CT.  Before you ask, black hogs are a kind of pig you will find in the Berkshires.  There’s this link to your barbecue (of the pig) and beer…  Okay.  Now that we’re past that, Penny and I shared tastes of four kinds of Black Hog beer: one made with rye, another with oatmeal, the third with ginger, and their new beer, with a grapefruit peel finish (not pictured).

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 6.36.14 PM

The lesson from this day?  Stick to your passion, whether it’s letting your house be burned down for a cause or blending your brew with fruit.  Do it!

Heroes and a heroine for all time

indexDione Longley has written Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories by compiling their words from letters and diaries.  She quipped that writing this book took longer than the war.  But clearly she never lost the heart of the storytelling, as she shared with us at the New Haven Museum with her book signing.

Screen Shot 2015-05-02 at 8.59.50 AM

 

 

She recounts how Connecticut farmers, factory workers, and college students rallied as Citizen-Soldiers, as called upon by President Lincoln the day after the firing upon Fort Sumter.

Longley follows one fighting regiment in particular, through the painfully evocative writing of Nathan Taylor, a tinsmith, who described the rush to training camp, the inexperience of the recruits, and the details of battles throughout the war.  Unlike so many others, Taylor made it through the war with only one minor injury.

What Longley does in the book is bring familiar skeleton facts to life.  Taylor describes the fear he felt while on watch.  He heard a noise and was sure it came from a Confederate soldier.  Turned out to be a hog.  The next day, the battle at Bull Run began.  The juxtaposition between an ordinary experience and colossal chaos and fear become alive in the solder’s words.

It was a long war for the Connecticut troops.  The house painter Lucius Bidwell, from the Connecticut 14th, fought from 1862.  He was wounded at Fredricksburg, then went on to fight in 8, yes 8, more engagements before he died at Wilderness.

Captain John Griswold’s gravestone in Old Lyme, CT

From a different point in the soldier spectrum, Captain John Griswold came from a famous family and was a Yale grad.  When he was fatally shot at Antietam, he didn’t die right away.  A classicist and a gentleman, he apologized to those who had to care for him, “sorry to be a bother,” and spent his last hours quoting poetry with another officer.  He recalled the “flash of sunlight off Antietam Creek.”  Has anyone else capture that kind of remembrance of Antietam?

Henry Wing, in the 27th Color Guard, made clear how dangerous carrying a regimental flag could be.  In the noise and confusion and smoke of battle, when an order couldn’t be heard, the flag was essential for helping soldiers find their own.  The flags were huge, often 6′ x 9′, proudly displaying the regimental colors.  Consequently, they became a target.  On both sides, the ultimate pride came from capturing an enemy flag.

Wing wrote they’d all willingly die before giving up a flag.  That’s why 12 men were needed to carry 2 flags.  The death rate was appalling.  During one battle, he wrote, he was “proud for a minute” before the “murderous fire of rebel artillery” threatened the flag again.  After being shot in the leg, he crawled around looking for the flag, noting “ten of my fellows were dead.”  He wrote there’s “no romance, no glory.  Just disgust for those who planned such slaughter.”

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

I was completely surprised by the image this story makes.  Reverend Henry Clay Trumbull of the 10th Connecticut Regiment described the small pleasures of watermelon.  Not at camp, but in battle.  “What could be more refreshing under fire?”  He described officers “carrying slices, taking a bite between each command.”

The stories go on and on.  They are so terribly personal, while also sociological.  What kind of people are we that we fought this kind of war?  Toby Kellogg was captured and put at the notorious Andersonville prison, where the men had no shelter through the winter and were starved.  Meager rations were brought in on the same carts that carried out the dead.  He wrote, “it takes no great courage to die in battle, with fame undying and comrades to care and cheer for you,” while POWs “gain no sympathy” and “are dying by inches.”

And then there were the Wadham brothers from Litchfield County.  Headed toward a battle for Richmond, the three fought in different regiments, coming at the battle from three different directions.  Luman wrote of riding off to visit his brother Henry, only to learn he had just been killed.  Luman, Henry, and Edward all died within a two week period.  Imagine being that mother.

You’ve been waiting for me to mention women.  Longley only told us about one.  But oh what a story she had!  Harriet Ward Hawley, an abolitionist and cousin to Harriet Beecher Stowe, followed her husband Joseph Hawley after he joined up.

harriet-foote-hawley

“I wish I could enlist,” she wrote.  She got on-the-job training as a nurse, tending the soldiers.  “They suffer terribly.  You do not dream of what these men undergo.”  Berating herself because she always considered herself good in an emergency, she fell into despair.  “45 dead today.  A piece of my life went with each one.”

After the war, her husband became governor of Connecticut.  And she had a bizarre cart accident with a recovery that involved staying in a darkened room for two years.  Now that would make you nuts.

But Hawley never forgot the soldiers.  She advocated for their pensions.  The wounded often could not work after the war and yet had no recompense for the devastating results from their service.  Hawley never stopped fighting for these men, even at the end of her life, when she was frail and walked with crutches.  When she died in 1886 at age 54, she received a “soldiers burial,” with a ritual flag-draped coffin and decorated headstone.

What soldiers they all were.  Ordinary, heroic.  To be remembered.

 

 

Knots of Science and Art

2014-05-03 12.42.23Several of the New Haven museum exhibits have changed over for summer.  So on this luscious spring day, I visited three.

The day was so pretty that I took the opportunity to stroll into the woods behind the Eli Whitney Museum.  I had never walked through the adjacent covered bridge, proclaiming on a sign that Hartford is 32 miles away, and then Boston beyond.

2014-05-03 12.31.18

 

 

 

The A. Frederick Oberllin bridge was erected in 1980, but seems like it could be much older.  It spans the heavily rushing Mill River.  After crossing, I ventured on a little hike along the far side of the river bank.  I’m so happy to know about this picturesque place, so close to my house.

2014-05-03 12.42.592014-05-03 12.43.20

 

 

from inside the bridge

 

 

 

 

Inside the museum is the 20th Leonardo Challenge.  The theme this year is Knots, with artists riffing on “Knot What You Imagine.”  The challenge is about applying Leonardo-type thinking to a problem.  Using science and art in imaginative ways.  This year’s inspiration are the knots from the “Mona Lisa” bodice.

mona-lisa

What do they mean or represent, asks the exhibit curators.  They are intricate and specific, demonstrating the artist’s command of detail in that field of sfumato (smoky atmosphere).  Is this merely about the artist’s bravura?  Do they represent a brand for ‘da vinci’?  Are they a mathematical code?  Do they represent his exchanges with Islam via Istanbul?  These are the knots art 2014-05-03 12.33.44historians tie themselves in.

So why not challenge artists to do the same?  My favorite of the works is “Gordian Knot” by Brad Conant.  He perfectly represents how my brain feels right now.

I also liked the Conceptual word play of “Not, Naught, Knot” by Group C (Brad Collins/B. Whiteman).

2014-05-03 12.38.58

 

 

 

Makes you think a little, eh?

 

 

 

 

Hannah Clark’s proud grandmother showed me the secret of “Not a Knot.”  From most angles you see the pieces suspended in the box, then in just one spot, the pieces cohere.

2014-05-03 12.41.292014-05-03 12.41.23

 

a very clever mind at work

 

 

 

 

 

Knots of a very different sort took me to the New Haven Museum, and its moving exhibit “Nothing is Set in Stone: The Lincoln Oak and the New Haven Green.”  Again blending science and art, the exhibit commemorates a peculiar event resulting from the October 2012 Hurricane Sandy super  storm.

On the New Haven Green, the “Lincoln Oak,” planted in 1909 to commemorate the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, was blown over by the storm.  Intertwined in the roots of the tree were human skeletal remains.

The Green had served as an unregulated burial site for about 175 years.  Then in 1796, the new nation’s first chartered burial ground was incorporated and is still in use today.  You may remember an earlier post about the Grove Street Cemetery.  Meantime some 17,000 bodies were buried under the Green, expanding to both the Upper and Lower portions, and was still used up until 1812.  That New Haven history, ever revealing of something quirky and interesting.

So when the venerable Lincoln Oak toppled, it exposed some bones knotted up with it.  The New Haven Museum, itself founded during the Civil War in 1862, then came up with a remarkable idea.  They offered local artists branches and parts of the trunk of the toppled tree to work with any and all of the ideas in this complex knot of natural and civic history.  The results are powerful.

2014-05-03 13.04.15You can read the Gettysburg Address carved into pieces of the Oak’s trunk.  Click on the image to enlarge it.  Each chunk of the address is carved on a chunk of the tree, knotted together to form a spine in Erich Davis’ “Backbone.”

2014-05-03 13.09.35I choked up reading these familiar words carved into a tree that had come to represent New Haven and its history, a kind of backbone for this old place.  Plus Lincoln’s own strength of will served as backbone for a country divided.

2014-05-03 13.07.29

 

Look at this split–where the oak remained joined at the base, but split toward the top, as if recognizing a history that was unified and a divided present of the Civil War.  Here, Lincoln heads the attempts to reunify the discord.  This sculpture is Susan Clinard’s “A Nation Split.”  She used clay to add the head and hand of Lincoln to the Oak remains.

2014-05-03 13.14.00

 

 

 

So beautiful and elegiac–of Lincoln, of the loss of innocence of a nation, of a grand old tree that symbolized a city and the glory days of its past.

Michael Quirk, self-described as an artist, antique collector, and treasure hunter has created a work that blends history and the New Haven Museum, 114 Whitney Ave., presents "Nothing is Set in Stone: The Lincoln Oak and the New Haven Green," a tribute to the historic Lincoln Oak on the New Haven Green. It will run until Nov. 2.
In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy toppled the tree, which had been planted in 1909 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Under the tree was found human skeletal remains.
Area artists were invited to use branches, limbs, or pieces of the trunk of the Lincoln Oak to interpret the history of the tree and the discovery of the remains. Hamden sculptor Susan Clinard, as well as Lani Asuncion, Erich Davis, Michael Quirk, Jeff Slomba, Rachael A. Vaters-Carr and Alison Walsh, participated in the exhibit.
Another component of the exhibit -- this one scientific -- consists of the results of the archaeological analysis of remains. The research was conducted by G. P Aronsen, F. Hole, Y. Tonoike, and K. A. Williamson (Yale University); N. I. Bellantoni (UConn); R. Beckett, G. Conlogue, R. Lombardo, and N. Pelletier (Quinnipiac University); J. Krigbaum (U. Florida); and L. Fehren-Schmitz (UCSC). Historical research was provided by J. Schiff (Yale University) J. Bischoff-Wurstle, and J. Campbell (New Haven Museum).
The contents of two time capsules found at the site of the fallen tree are also on display.
Details: <a href="http://www.newhavenmuseum.org"target=new window">www.newhavenmuseum.org</a>present.  He overtly references layers of human and natural history and creates a kind of time capsule with Lincoln memorabilia, coins, an arrowhead, news articles, and detritus from Hurricane Sandy.

2014-05-03 13.12.58

 

 

 

 

 

Quirk references a Cabinet of Curiosities, so popular in the 19th century for blending two passions–science and art.

 

 

At the Beineke Library, a new exhibit featuring small collections (when the large ones are splashier, more researched, etc.) has just the kind of objects that might make their way into a such a Cabinet.

Consider this “game” for glass blowing.  Really?  Yeah.  Before we coddled children, we allowed them to use blow torches and furnaces to blow glass.

2014-05-03 13.48.37

Well, so it seems, with the Gilbert Company’s highly gendered toy: “Gilbert toys bring science down to the level of boys.”

If any of you, boys or girls, actually “played” with this toy, I’d like to hear more about it!

2014-05-03 13.55.09

 

And imagine the knots lesbian woman had to tie themselves into to fit in a less inclusive world early in the 20th century.  But they could go to Chez Moune in Paris, the Cabaret Féminin, to be themselves, some dressing in tuxes to escort their lady friends.

2014-05-03 13.55.09

 

 

They could commemorate the experience with personalized matchbooks.  I have never seen anything quite like these and immediately wanted one for my Cabinet of Curiosities.

Untangling knots like these made for quite a day.

Alice Washburn and the trolley suburb

It was standing room only at the New Haven Museum this evening for an illustrated lecture on Alice Washburn, a self-trained architect. In her ten year career, Washburn built about 90 homes, mostly in one neighborhood in New Haven and in my new hood, Spring Glen in Hamden. She started on spec on one of the nicest streets in Spring Glen and with a budding reputation, worked on commissions for larger, custom homes.

But with the Depression and her own perfectionist tendencies, Washburn went bankrupt in 1931, living out her life in an apartment and dying in obscurity in 1958.  Unknown she stayed until the 1980s, when an intrepid art historian resuscitated her career.  Realtors now sell her 1920s homes for more than average.  I sat next to Jean, the owner of a Washburn home, purchased from the son of the original owner.  She received a tube in the mail, addressed to “Occupant,” containing the original blueprints.  A precious thing indeed.

Washburn  believed that women were the ideal architects because the home was the domain of women.  Does that mean she designed gender-specific qualities?  Lecturer Charlotte Hitchcock, an architect with the Connecticut Trust, didn’t know.  Apparently, her kitchens ranged in size, more suited to the house than any particular gendered use.  Jean said her four-bedroom house has two baths at either end of the hall, not a master, clearly suited to family use.

Washburn’s houses were part of a larger Colonial Revival period, lasting from about 1910-1930 and the City Beautiful movement that started in the 1890s.  During that time, monumental buildings were constructed like the stately Hamden Town Hall.  Also a focus on public health meant putting gas, electricity, and running water, as well as parks, into developed and new neighborhoods.

Attention was certainly paid to walking-oriented new developments.  Hence the trolley suburb–first horse-drawn rail ways, and later, around 1910, electric.  That’s how my neighborhood grew up.  The Webb farm was subdivided for single family homes.  The town center, literally just below my house, was the retail that emerged along the trolley line.  Still very handsome today.

But no, my house isn’t a Washburn.  It was built about 25 years after her last.  Still I hope someday, it will have a bit of that New England charm she trolled for and incorporated in her Colonial stylings.  She happily mixed in Dutch, Greek Revival, Arts and Crafts, and Federal elements.  She liked the classical and a curved walk.  My house sports one now, too!

The largest of Washburn’s houses cost $20,000 to build.  Most were modest, much less expensive.  You don’t want to know what my remodel costs!  At least, the detail and perfectionism going into this little house will honor Washburn’s spirit.

The Shrieks of October

The trees are going hot orange and pumpkins to match are sprouting around.  The local MacIntosh apples are on the shelf, and the farm stands are offering apple picking times.  But the New Haven Museum is focusing on spooks.  During October, in this 375th birthday year for New Haven, the historical society is giving over to the macabre.

Last night was the kick-off, with Mike Bielawa discussing his new book Wicked New Haven.

 

The ol’ story goes:

“Is this Hell?” the boy asked.

“No, son,” his father replied.  “It is only New Haven.”

That the oft-repeated quip is on the New Haven Museum walls demonstrates just how low a city’s self esteem can go.  Bielawa uses it to wander into New Haven’s wicked past.

 

The book has a definite water-y theme, with its share of pirates using Connecticut coves as covers and cursed captains and haunted ships and hellish crimes and supernatural legends.  Bielawa focused on one cursed captain, the supposedly beloved Captain Parker J. Hall whose temper also got him in a lot of trouble, and his haunted ship, the Robert P. King.

Sailing in the early 1890s, Hall refused to give in to mariner superstition, painting his boat blue, which was notoriously bad luck, and thrusting a knife into the mast, another no-no.  While hauling a load of cement from Augusta, ME to New Haven via the Hudson River in 1894, Hall’s crew of two, Portuguese brothers, turned on and attacked him.  The siege ended badly for one of the brothers, murdered, or killed in self-defense, depending on your point of view.

After that, no sailor would stay on board the schooner overnight, for all the shrieks, weird laughter in the rigging, and voices calling, “kill him!”

Whether the haunting comes from that mutiny and murder, or from the schooner’s history as a slave ship, a whaler, and battle ship during the Civil War, we can only speculate while telling the tale on a dark October night.  The remains of the Robert P. King are on display in Mystic in the Ship Carver’s Building.  We need to go hear for ourselves.  Field trip!

Click to access king.pdf

History with a Twist

2013-06-05 17.45.21

 

Visiting the New Haven Museum (the local museum that corresponds to the New York Historical Society), I couldn’t resist this book.  I really look forward to getting the backstory on Arsenic and Old Lace and of course, Benedict Arnold, who had his druggist, book, and what-not shop on the New Haven Green.

 

2013-06-05 17.10.15

 

The strange phrase on his shop sign “Sibi Totique” means ‘something for everyone’.  Arnold also prospered as a merchant in the West Indies trade, as did New Haven.  But you probably know Arnold as the Revolutionary War turncoat.

And you may not know that Nathan Hale, America’s first (failed) spy lived in New Haven and attended Yale. Caught and hung by the British, yet still a model origin spy for the CIA.  What a way to make a reputation!  New Haven certainly has inauspicious Revolutionary War ties.

Cinque Leader of the Amistad Captives

Cinque
Leader of the Amistad Captives

The city redeemed itself with the Amistad trial, where John Quincy Adams defended newly enslaved Africans, who led by Cinque, revolted onboard the slave ship Amistad.  Considered the first Civil Rights trial, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, little changed in terms of policy or law as a result.  The pitiful rationale was that the slavers were Spanish.  Had it been an American ship, the outcome probably would have been very different and not as noted in history.

 

 

 
New Haven had an industrial boom, making clocks, carriages, locks, and my favorite, corsets.  In two weeks, I see a play called Freewheelers on that very supportive topic, at the Arts & Ideas Festival. And then there’s the bicycle.

bicycle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just for the ladies…

bicycle ad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Haven also was a major trade and working port, as well as a center for oyster harvesting.  In the maritime exhibit, I really liked the modernist artist Max Dellfant.  Many were like this work, with thick, juicy paint slathered on the surface.

maritime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And his depiction of his workspace just charmed me, reminding me of the mess and jumble of my mother’s studio.

My Studio Max Dellfant 1923

My Studio
Max Dellfant
1923

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
From Connecticut’s earlier history, the Jerks of Connecticut book doesn’t include the two early founders who hid out in a West Rock cave.  They were hiding because they had GeorgeHenryDurrie-JudgesCaveWestRockNewHaven signed the death warrant to behead King Charles I in 1649 (note, eleven years after New Haven was founded, which is completely unrelated).  With Restoration in 1661, they were hunted by British Royal Agents.  Now a street is named after Edward Whaley.  How history redesigns us all.  The cave is apparently a local tourist site, so I have to go find it.

The evening concluded with a lecture on financial documents from the Revolutionary War period.  You know, hand signed currency, stocks, bank notes (which anyone could print, even Delmonico’s Restaurant), and bonds for financing the nation.  Bonds were also used to raise the money to fight the war.  They could be redeemed in meat, wool, or sheep, as a hedge against inflation.

Early on, silversmiths had the engraving skill to put an identifying mark on the border of stock certificates to try to prevent counterfeiting.  Later pictures were incorporated, including portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes.  So these documents are actually quite handsome.

This aesthetic didn’t keep the country from going bankrupt.  Alexander Hamilton created the US Treasury to take back those (worthless) bonds in exchange for Treasury Bonds.  Everyone wanted to buy Treasury Bonds because they loved their new nation.  Too many were sold, in fact, causing an early financial panic, which then created the national debt.

Although a seemingly dull subject, the documents opened doors that were wonderfully evocative.  Stories about expansion, experimentation, businesses and industrialization, as well as the individuals behind the scene.

Plus in those early days, bonds yielded 6 percent.  Those were the days!