history

Forty-Five Thousand, Nine Hundred and Fifty Six Days (or Thereabouts)

November 28, 2012

. Many top stories are receiving their usual high levels of attention, from the structural taxation reforms bandied about in the face of the “fiscal cliff” that is really a graded driveway to Israel and Gaza. What receives no attention? The usual, including from among the far left advocates of “peace and justice” who pretend to be [...]

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Living in History

December 29, 2011

. I am reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. I would be interested in the history anyway, but I have a personal interest too. Snyder identifies the “bloodlands” thus: The bloodlands were where most of Europe’s Jews lived, where Hitler and Stalin’s imperial plans overlapped, where the Wehrmacht and the Red Army fought, and where the Soviet [...]

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9/11/11: Goering’s Defense

September 13, 2011

. (Eighth in a series) In the matter of “squandered sympathies,” let history not lose the record that as early as November 2, 2001, fewer than two months after 9/11, Jean Baudrillard notoriously produced in Le Monde, under the title “The Spirit of Terrorism,” a logically homeless piece of postmodern theory-talk that evinced the equally [...]

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Twenty-Five Hundred Years before 9/11

September 9, 2011

(9/11/11: fourth in a series) Van Gogh’s Eyes Before my drive to Normandy and my second stay in Paris, I had left Julia in St. Remy-de-Provence, where she taught a photo workshop to the eight students who had braved their fears to fly there less than two weeks after 9/11. I stayed a few days [...]

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The Culture War of Attrition

December 20, 2010

At Tapped, Paul Waldman puts clear focus on a point I’ve been making recently, including earlier today. It is worth recalling every time some says that the U.S. is a center-right country. Many may conceive it so, but it is not. But it’s never bad to remind ourselves that with the important exception of abortion [...]

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On love, loyalty, patriotism, and human nature

October 12, 2010

(The following is a guest post by Adam Levick of CiF Watch. Adam responds to two of my recent posts. I will reply, answering Adam’s questions and furthering the discussion, next week.) ————— There’s much to dissect in Jay’s “Churchill Doctrine“, as well as his follow-up, “Incoherence on Race and Culture.” I’ll stay clear of [...]

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Facing National Wrongs

October 8, 2010

Over the past several days Jeffrey Goldberg has been blogging about what I like to refer to as recalcitrant Southern boobs – the kind of people who display the Confederate Stars and Bars, who advocate and maintain that flag as any part of a state symbol, or who argue that there was anything honorable in [...]

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Analogize This

July 13, 2010

From time to time on this blog I have offered my opinion on the use of analogies in political argumentation. Generally speaking: not well done. An analogy became the culminating point of focus in that Jeffrey Goldberg-Glenn Greenwald dispute a couple of weeks ago that I covered over a series of posts. In “Pino/Cheney,” I [...]

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You Say “Potato”

April 30, 2009

If you’re interested in a detailed account of the 1947-48 war between Jews and Palestinians that led to the declaration of an Israeli State, but are without the time or current inclination to read a book-length treatment, Israeli historian Benny Morris offers one at HistoryNet.com. Still, give yourself half an hour. Almost as instructive as [...]

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Code Talker

March 5, 2009

Originally there were twenty-nine. They developed the code. Then there were about 390 more. Sam Tso was one of the 390. During the Second World War, he was a Navajo Code Talker. It had been done before, on a smaller scale, with the Cherokee and Choctaw, in the First World War. The Comanche were used [...]

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Commemorating the Apache Experience

February 21, 2009

They came from the Jicarilla Apache Tribe. They came from the Tonto Apache. The White Mountain Apache were there, and the Yavapai-Apache, and the Camp Verde Apache. They came from the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Under a grey, marbled dome of sky and the cross-hatched rays of light that sometimes broke through them, amid a [...]

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Now You See It

January 24, 2009

In the February Harvard Magazine, Craig Lambert’s “From Daguerreotype to Photoshop” offers a primer on on the tension between the image as pictorial artifact and mirror of reality. The issues are many, but here is one brought to mind, Robert Doisneau’s iconic Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville. As Wikipedia explains The identity of the [...]

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Old San Carlos and a Blessing

January 19, 2009

On December 30, 2008 members of the San Carlos Apache community, accompanied by leaders and members of the Mescalero and Jicarilla Apache Tribes, who had traveled to San Carlos for the occasion, took part in a blessing ceremony at the site of Old San Carlos, the original Agency (Bureau of Indian Affairs) settlement on the [...]

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The American Indian Church

January 3, 2009

Among the goals and legacies of conquest has been that of converting Native Americans to Christianity. Christian churches have been evangelizing on the San Carlos Apache Reservation since soon after Geronimo was captured for the last time and active resistance to the concentration policies on the reservation ceased in 1886. The first Lutheran missionaries arrived [...]

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Christmas Elders’ Lunch – Apache Gold Casino

December 29, 2008

The second annual Christmas “Elders Lunch” of the San Carlos Apache Tribe was held on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 at the Apache Gold Casino on the San Carlos Reservation. The luncheon is a gesture of appreciation for tribal elders initiated last year by then new Tribal Chairman Wendsler Nosie, Sr. Nosie, who is a spiritual [...]

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The Personal and the Historical

December 28, 2008

One of my continuing interests is the intersection of the “ordinary” individual life and the historical moment. My own father, Meyer, or Mac, had many. Born in a small shtetl in Ukraine before the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to the United States, arriving, still a teen, in 1927. In the early Thirties, at the height [...]

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Repressed National Memories

December 14, 2008

The San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation was established, as a concentration camp, on November 9, 1871. The intent was to remove from land coveted by the U.S. government and local settlers various Apache bands – originally, among the “Western Apaches,” the Pinal, Aravaipa, Apache Peaks, Tonto, and San Carlos bands – and concentrate them on [...]

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Bordello Rooms

December 10, 2008

The way I do it is I stand in the middle. I’m in the desert this time, gazing at the landscape as the dogs chase rabbits and roadrunners around me. My back is turned to Highway 80, to RVs and the other signs of post-nineteenth-century life, though they aren’t that plentiful. Before me, almost all [...]

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Katherine Siva Saubel

December 4, 2008

When we first publicly announced to colleagues and friends by email our intention to produce a book on contemporary Native American life, we asked those we contacted, as an aide to our research, for any referrals in the Native community they could offer us. The response was great and gratifying. In a culture at large [...]

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The Open Road

December 2, 2008

In the summer of 2006, the year of its eightieth anniversary, Julia and I flew to Chicago to drive the length of old Route 66 from its starting point at Michigan Avenue to its end at the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. Our article on the history of the route, and on westward travel in [...]

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