Carl Schurz

Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right. -Carl Schurz, quoted in Isaac and Isaac. The Coercive Utopians (p. 292).

The Stealth Team

There is a team that is absolutely tearing up the NBA right now and nobody even notices it. It is the Dallas Mavericks. While all the people who should know better are waxing eloquent over LeBron, D Wade, and the other guy in Miami, or looking at Carmelo as the second coming of Willis Reed, others are talking up the Lakers and Kobe or the Celtics. Yet the Mavs have won 16 of their last 17. They have 43 wins and nobody mentions them, nor the other "stealth team" ahead of them in the standings, San Antonio, whose record is even more fantastic. The Spurs have Duncan, Ginobli, Parker, and that's it. The Mavericks have Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd and the best and deepest bench in the Association. I think the Mavs will still be around in June. Will anyone notice them then?

Another History of Texas

James L. Haley., Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas. (2006)

Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by facts--John Steinbeck

For the most part, this is an enjoyable read but it is occasionally clouded by bias, ignorance, and errors.
In the realm of military history, Haley does not understand military organization terminology. He ranks Philip Sheridan as a division commander in 1867 when he was a department commander. (329) Earlier, in describing the 2nd Texas Infantry Regiment, Haley writes that "when it was repatriated after capture, [it] could muster no more than a brigade." (316)
There is an overworking of the term "yahoo" and a strong bias against organized religion. This bias manifests itself in the constant degradation of the Second Great Awakening as being oppressive and moronic. For example: "The frosty certainty with which early church leaders viewed their right to schoolmarm over the lives of their followers and others was rooted more in the unlettered [emphasis mine] Second Great Awakening than it was in any biblical warrant." (279) Has the man not read the Gospels or the Letters of Paul (especially those to Timothy and Titus)?
Finally, there are some oversights. Texas music receives little coverage other than Bob Wills and Janis Joplin. Sports? Do sports matter to Texans? Most glaring is the assassination of Kennedy. No mention of Oswald, Warren Commission, or how the nation reacted to Texas, and in particular, to Dallas. Enjoyable, but read with caution.

Nostalgia

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton was one of the books of my early childhood. This image comes from flickr.com.

Several days ago I happened to think back on this book but I could not remember the author's name. Then last night I was doing a book search and the author's name was Burton and this was the first title to appear. I think they call it serendipity.

The story is very simple. A house is built out in the country, built to last for generations. As time goes by we see the process of urban growth, as the pleasant countryside is overtaken by the big city. The house is not torn down, just abandoned. (Obviously not in Dallas!) Then one day a woman sees the house and realizes it was her great-grandmother's. Her family buys it, and moves it out to the country, where:

The windows and shutters were fixed and once again they painted her a lovely shade of pink. As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily. Once again she could watch the sun and moon and stars. Once again she could watch Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter come and go. Once again she was lived in and taken care of.

Border's Files Chapter 11

Yesterday Borders filed for bankruptcy protection. While not surprising, it was depressing, especially that they will be closing our neighborhood store that has been there for nearly twenty years. What I liked about Borders was the selection. Sometimes it was hard to find a just published work, but this was compensated for in the number of books that were not mass published, that came from university presses. Often one could go there and find something you did not know you were looking for, like Haynes's book on the Anglophobia. Browsing was the best part of the Borders experience. Browsing on a website just isn't the same.

What's Wrong with Tiger?

Allow me to put in my two cents about the Tiger Woods "Slump". This weekend past there were two golf tournaments, one in Dubai with a very nice purse, and the AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach (formerly the Bing Crosby). Tiger played the former and although he was competitive for three rounds, the bottom fell out on Sunday and he finished 20th.
Tiger needs to do some serious navel-gazing. Why does he play golf? Is it for the money or for love of the game? His sponsors could not force him to go to Dubai. He's still Tiger Woods and I would think that wherever he wants to play they will agree to it, even if its the Rancho Cucamonga Long Ball and Chile Cook off. His presence still makes the tournament.
He needs to go have fun on the golf course. If it is only for the money he should retire.

Lay Theology

Christian theology is the attempt to make clear the beliefs implicit in the Christian way of life. It is rooted in that life itself, but, as a reflective discipline, it also stands in relation to philosophy, the sciences and the culture generally. Lay theology is particularly concerned to relate the theological enterprise to the whole people of God. It is theology of the people, by the people, for the people. -John Macquarrie. The Faith of the People of God. (1972) p. 23

Josh Hamilton Signs Two Year Deal

The Rangers did the right thing. They signed Josh Hamilton to a two year, $24 million contract and avoided arbitration. He certainly deserves it and the Rangers got a bargain. In baseball, $12 million a year for an MVP, All-Star, potential triple crown winner is a bargain.

Pitchers and Catchers Report

In five days.
While Dallas digs out from yet another school closing ice storm, there is a sign of spring on the horizon: Pitchers and Catchers report to training camp in less than a week.
ESPN's Baseball Tonight could have been renamed Rangers Tonight. First topic was designated hitters and the Michael Young problem. I do not see why the Rangers wanted to trade him unless they believe he is on the downside of his career. His postseason was not great but he is the heart of the team.
Next came a story on whether the Rangers could replace Cliff Lee. It was like the Rangers were in last place when they traded for Lee last July. If I remember correctly they were already in first. Lee was a steadying hand down the stretch as well as a pitcher with postseason experience. Now, all the returning pitchers have postseason experience. I believe it is a loss but not as bad as some make it out to be.
The conclusion of the "experts"? The Rangers are the favorites to win the AL West but it won't be as easy as last season. Last season was easy?

Schools of History, Texas-Style

What gives the debate [over how Davy Crockett died] its particular rancor is that it has sharpened the differences between two competing schools of thought on how Texas history should be approached. On one side are traditionalists, typically older and more conservative, who, even their sympathizers have to admit, sometimes treat their subject like the proving ground for a cultural value system and who become annoyed at any presentation of contradictory evidence. On the other side stand revisionists, mostly academic, who, while they raise important new questions, often enrage traditionalists with an affirmative action scholarly agenda and with conclusions that sometimes leap beyond the arguments constructed.
James L. Haley. Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas. p. 162. (2006)

Plagiarism: Oh My!

The official rules governing citation, stemming from Enlightenment notions of authorship, ownership, and originality, and the distinction between ideas and expression of ideas, are simply not accepted by today's college students. They quote constantly in their ordinary lives and rarely have to cite their sources. They are more in tune with Lethem's "ecstasy of influence" than with Bloom's "anxiety of influence." The ecstasy is magnified when influence is shared. And when it is shared, there is no need to cite explicitly. The unstated but commonly known, though shared experience, bonds peers. The academic premium placed on citation merely emphasizes the distance between academic practice and students' values as expressed in their daily lives.
The kind of inadvertent or careless plagiarism that results from uncertainty about the norms of citation in part reveals the ongoing way in which intellectual property is regarded. And in fact, evidence from linguistics and linguistic anthropology supports students' sense of the instability of origins and the convergence of invention. While quoting lines from popular culture offers a chance to celebrate shared identity, the painstaking tracing demanded in academic writing reinforces the distance between student and teacher. We cannot improve student practice without acknowledging that at least two different ideologies of quotation are in effect. We faculty ignore this at our peril. (Did I invent that phrase? Plagiarize it? Would I be found guilty of copying? Is it a cliche? Did someone own it once but now it has slipped into the public domain? Oh, the anxiety of influence.)
The ideal-or myth-of originality does not drive this generation of students. They are more interested in sharing, belonging, resembling, converging. Thus plagiarism-the violation of originality-does not horrify them, does not cause revulsion or despair. They can be taught to understand that it is a breach of academic practice, but without their feeling it intensely, the fear of plagiarism is not likely to retain its grip.
Ideas of the author and intellectual property rights point to another, even more profound mismatch between faculty and students in how they view the role of the self in all its words and actions. This aspect of contemporary life is shaped by technology, as well as by the values of social and psychological change sweeping over twenty-first century American youth. I call it a shift from the ideal of the authentic self to that of the performance self, and see in it yet another reason why today's students may engage unapologetically in a variety of behaviors that the academy lumps together as "plagiarism." Susan D. Blum. My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture. pp. 58-59. (2009)

*

Footnotes matter to historians. They are the humanist's rough equivalent of the scientist's report on data: they offer the empirical support for stories told and arguments presented. Without them, historical theses can be admired or resented, but they cannot be verified or disproved. As a basic professional and intellectual practice, they deserve the same sort of scrutiny that laboratory notebooks and scientific articles receive from historians of science. Anthony Grafton. The Footnote. (vii)

The weapon of pedants, the scourge of undergraduates, the bete noire of the "new" liberated scholar: the lowly footnote, long the refuge of the minor and the marginal, emerges in this book as a singular resource, with a surprising history that says volumes about the evolution of modern scholarship. In Grafton's account, footnotes to history give way to footnotes as history, recounting in their subtle way the curious story of the progress of knowledge in written form.
Grafton treats the development of the footnote-the one form of proof normally supplied by historians in support of their assertions-as writers on science have long treated the development of laboratory equipment, statistical arguments, and reports on experiments: as a complex story, rich in human interest, that sheds light on the status of history as art, as science, and as an institution.

A Comment on 19th Century American Historiography

By a combination of ability and good fortune all the remaining obstacles, by no means contemptible were swept away, the will of the two nations was executed; and before long it was generally realized that their union was expedient, logical, and practically inevitable. For a variety of reasons, however-chiefly natural prejudices and equally natural want of information and the fact that certain gifted opponents of annexation enjoyed great prestige in quarters where much attention has been paid to historical writing-some inaccurate views regarding the matter have unavoidably prevailed. (Justin H. Smith. The Annexation of Texas. 469)

How much of what we study as American History was shaped by the New England historians of the mid to late nineteenth century? How much of that bias still affects us today? I am writing of the gentleman historians of Boston and New York, those writers with the time to write history as they saw it, at their leisure, historians who predate Henry Adams. Justin Smith wrote this nearly a century ago. He dedicated his work to George Garrison, another early professional historian. The work of Smith demonstrates definitely the influence of Ranke in his obsession with the original materials and his documentation of the same. Here, in the concluding sentences of his massive The Annexation of Texas, Smith is taking a swipe at his predecessors by claiming that they allowed sectional prejudice to color their writings. We can see in this work the transition from the amateur historian to the professional. How successful was Smith? To write anything about this event, his work cannot be ignored.

Ice Storm 2011

An ice storm hit early Tuesday morning. There has been no school since then. Temperatures have dropped so low that the furnace is running constantly. The high today was 18. Wind chills bring that close to 0. Add to this two power plants being knocked out because they weren't winterized and you have rolling blackouts. Are we having fun yet?

The 1844 Sales Pitch for Annexation

At this point let us halt for a moment, and let us recall the three general ways in which Texas has been found a menace to the United States. Had she remained independent and acquired northern Mexico, including California, she would have been a serious rival and probably the cause of numerous complications. Had she remained independent and fallen in line with the designs of England, as apparently she almost certainly would have done, she would not only have exerted in these directions all the power she herself possessed, but would have been supported and guided by a great nation that had aims believed to be inconsistent with the prosperous development of the United States. While, had the project of annexation been definitely rejected by the votes of the North, she would have perhaps caused the dismemberment of the American Union and the formation of a new confederacy, including herself, the southern States and a large portion of Mexico, that might not only have rivalled but have overshadowed the wreck of the old republic. (Justin Smith. The Annexation of Texas. (220))