AberGina: Gina's Adventures in Aberdeen: Last night in Northfield

AberGina: Gina's Adventures in Aberdeen: Last night in Northfield: Less than 12 hours until my first plane takes off! First to Newark, then Copenhagen, then Aberdeen! It has been a long day with class, packi...

St. Olaf to the World

One of our little discussion tangents on Friday was when St. Olaf saw its first "diverse" (I put this in quotation marks because this is such a convoluted use of the word.) students. However, I think the precedent question is not when St. Olaf saw its first extra-Caucasian student, but when St. Olaf saw its first "normal" student, i.e. a Yankee. Obviously Olaf was an ideal school for Norwegians, and other extra-Anglo Europeans easily could have found more in common with the Oles than the Carls across the river, but it must have really been a turning point for the college when a Yankee first moved in. Because that signifies that it has achieved objective value as an American learning institution institution and become more than just a school for immigrants.

I might get to explore this issue further as my own Ole (and perhaps this Ole too!) wrestles with the concepts of Anglo, American, and (non-Anglo) immigrant.

At fifteen, I could define failure fast: to die in Minneota, Minnesota. Substitute any small town in Pennsylvania, or Nebraska, or Bulgaria, and the definition held. To be an American meant to move, rise out of a mean life, make yourself new. Hadn't my own grandfathers transcended Iceland, learned at least some English, and died with a quarter section free and clear? No, I would die a famous author, a distinguished and respected professor at an old university, surrounded by beautiful women, witty talk, fine whiskey, Mozart. There were times, at fifteen, when I would have settled for central heat and less Jell-O, but I kept my mental eye on the "big picture."

We are a nation of failures who have done all right and been lucky. Perhaps it is some ancient dark fear of repeating our own grandfathers' lives that makes us reluctant to acknowledge failure in national or private life.

They were Icelanders, and conscious of it, and though none of Frithgeir's children ever saw their ancestral home, they called themselves "western Icelanders;" and could observe by looking at any television set that they were not quite American in the manner conceived in commercials and soap operas.

Whatever failure is, Minneota is not it. Nothing can be done about living here. Nor should it be. The heart can be filled anywhere on earth.

These are just a few of the most striking quotes I found from "The Music of Failure." I found myself moved. That first quote is very true for me (albeit with my own image of success), with a slight adjustment. I don't think I've ever thought of my ancestors as having succeeded in "transcending Iceland" (Poland, Sweden, Norway, Germany...). Frankly, I sometimes think of them of traitors, forsaking Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, German for this English language and culture, forsaking individuality for assimilation, leaving me in this void between worlds, immersed in the Anglo world, but always at odds with it, feeling the dissonance between how I lived and how I spoke against my heritage.

I might come back to this post later, as I think I need some more time to process all this.

This is Fantastic

I found a game on the internet (clearly intended for younger audiences...) where you travel to the World's Fair by train with Thomas Edison and a host of other late 19th century Americans (as well as a few Parisians bragging about the Exposition Universelle). It's not the most scholarly of pursuits, but I'm having fun with it so far.

http://www.poptropica.com/?utm_source=POP_MysteryTrain160v1D-fb&utm_medium=HouseAd&utm_campaign=MysteryTrain

NB: You might have to choose "mystery train" from the map page to get to the World's Fair level.

Vaudeville Skit

I think that our Vaudeville piece, our own rendition of "Cell Block Tango" from the musical Chicago, is less an example of something that would've appeared on a Vaudeville circuit and more a portrait of the celebrity criminal, much like Evelyn's husband in Ragtime. The other useful thing about "Cell Block Tango" is that it shows the transition between Vaudeville and musical theater. Our piece strings together several different stories with song just as a Vaudeville show strung together various different acts.

And on a somewhat unrelated note, be ready because it's going to knock your socks off.

Free Market Religion in Chicago in Action

As we start reading about religion in Chicago, it would be a crime for me not to mention this interesting swap that occurred recently involving a church, a train station, the long-entrenched Presbyterians, and the upstart Buddhists in my neighborhood, Old Norwood Park.

Here is a link to the Presbyterian Church circa 2006:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yochicago1/252692756/
And here is their church today:
http://www.fpcchicago.org/home.shtml

I don't know the legal specifics of how it happened or why (although I have theories), but that stereotypical red brick church with the white steeple now houses a Buddhist meditation center while the Presbyterians have moved to our derelict rail depot. It should be noted that while Union Pacific no longer uses the station house, the platforms are still served by about two commuter trains an hour on weekdays. Any curious commuter who peaks in might stumble upon a Presbyterian service! Likewise, I imagine someone looking for a more Brittanic take on Christianity might be surprised to find Eastern practitioners in a colonial-style red brick church!

Pullman

One thing about Pullman that I found interesting while I was reading Gilbert is that the town had its own exhibit at the World's Fair, only a year before the infamous strike. I think that the fact that the man felt it necessary to show off the town says a lot about Pullman-the-man's relationship to the town he created. I am of the the opinion that a functioning town is not a display piece and that for one individual to wield so much control is unhealthy.

I'm including a picture of a lonesome Pullman car abandoned on one of Chicago's few (and rapidly dwindling) street running rail lines.

"Yes, Helga Crane. My mother was his sister, Karen Nilssen. I've been away. I didn't know Uncle Peter had married." Sensitive to atmosphere, Helga felt at once the latent antagonism in the woman's manner.
"Oh, yes! I remember about you now. I'd forgotten for a moment. Well, he isn't exactly your uncle, is he? Your mother wasn't married, was she? I mean, to your father?"

-Chapter 5 of Quicksand

Apparently the delineations of race and class supersede those of family.

As a result of such press campaigns, the long-standing public image of the queer as an effeminate fairy whom one might ridicule but had no reason to fear was supplemented by the more ominous image of the queer as a psychopathic child molester capable of committing the most unspeakable crimes against children. The fact that homosexuals no longer seemed so easy to identify made them seem even more dangerous, since it meant that even the next-door neighbor could be one. The specter of the invisible homosexual, like that of the invisible communist, haunted Cold War America. The new image was invoked to justify a new wave of assaults on gay men in the postwar decade. As police efforts to control homosexual activity intensified, the number of reported "sex crimes" surged dramatically. This provoked yet greater public alarm and thus further escalation of police efforts. The number of men arrested for homosexual solicitation in Manhattan alone rose from about seven hundred a year in the 1930s to more than three thousand a year in the late 1940s.

-p 359, Gay New York

Protests

Not particularly pertinent to what we're studying at the moment, but an interesting piece nonetheless:



From the Economist