Culture without agarvation

One of the hardest things about visiting other cities is remembering that free admission is not the default at 99% of the world's museums. DC's got the Air and Space, the Hirschhorn, the Smithsonian castle, the Museum of National History, the Museum of Natural History (those two are right next to each other; speak clearly when making plans), the Museum of the American Indian, the National Botanical Gardens, and the National Gallery of Art, which is in fact twin museums connected by an underground tunnel. It's a feast of yummy free culture goodness within walking distance of my office.

I go maybe twice a year. Ridic!

Here we are, flirting with spring, temps in the 70s: perfect weather for going inside to peer at art. The current exhibit of Pompeiian artifacts is leaving at the end of the month, so when a friend suggested a get-together this weekend I shanghaied him into coming to the show. We took the long way around, starting in the west building and only eventually getting to the building where the exhibit per se was; this was less a plan than a result of my propensity to get lost and meander. Lots of good stuff before we got to the east gallery: Degas' equine bronzes (the legs are perfect; the bodies are squidged together like rough drafts), a bunch of Paul Manship sculptures (surely Europa shouldn't look so smug?), Herbert Adams' lovely Girl with Water Lilies fountain (water drips from the flowers in her hand into the pool below her feet), Leo Villareal's hypnotic lightwork Multiverse (we smirked a bit at first at its disco fabulosity...and five minutes later were still gawping at it), and a bunch of nautical paintings that inevitably brought Jack Aubrey to mind.

The Pompeii exhibit, which against all odds we eventually reached, was well curated, though a few of the bowls and kraters could've done with rotating stands. I was unreasonably tickled by Cato's criticism that senators were spending more time tending their mullets than their statecraft, and by the little kid who peered at a mosaic of sea beasties and proclaimed, "I see a eew." Oh tempora, oh morays! The great section about the Roman fad for Greek culture included a beautiful bust of Homer, paired with a Pliny the Elder quote about how we long for images of those whose faces have been lost to remembrance (I mangle), and the exhibit wrapped up with pieces showing modern reactions to the Vesuvian eruption. It'll be a cold day in hell when I pick up Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days in Pompeii, if the saccharine goop of The Blind Flower-Seller and Faithful Unto Death is any indication. And despite the museum's best efforts, I still can't name all nine muses ("Clio, Urania, Erato, Terpsichore, and, uh, Scary?") or all of Hercules' labors. Do not pick me as your Trivial Pursuit buddy.

Now that it's finally warm enough that I don't die a little whenever I go out, I'm recommitting to trekking down to local exhibits. Next up: either the butterfly garden or "Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake," depending on how ghoulish I'm feeling. A certain anthro 201 prof took excessive glee in describing causes of death in early Colonial-era settlers in Maryland, and now I kind of want to see the bones.

Ephemera

Back when I was in college, I got a small grant to do pretty much whatever I pleased for a summer, which is how I came to spend six weeks in the Alaskan taiga, swatting terrier-sized mosquitos and learning the basics of field archaeology among the mortal remains of Dishkakat (or, variously, Dishkaket), a small Gold Rush town. Rule one of rural Alaskan field school: Put mosquito netting up around the latrine before you do anything else, because skeeters on the nethers sounds funny until it's happening to you. No, wait, that's rule two—rule one is to be all kinds of Emily Post to your campmates, because many of them are carrying rifles, and six weeks is a lot of time for resentments to build up.

Anyroo, that was many moons ago, but I'm pretty sure that these are photos of the building in whose ruins I spent many hours, troweling away the years in my one-meter square. Our crew of twelve found a silver coin (probably a Liberty dollar, but worn almost smooth), a clock's hour hand, decorative metalwork from a rifle stock, part of a compass, half a bottle of some sort of hooch, and a pair of black stockings jammed into the space between two of the logs remaining in the wall. Mostly we found dirt.

The town, which was built on the site of a Native seasonal fishing camp, wasn't a great success in the Gold Rush, and it was abandoned by the end of World War I. By the time our class arrived, most of the buildings were just lumps among the trees; this one was a slightly bigger set of lumps, since the bottom two or three logs were left in place. Rule three: When in doubt, assume that the town's biggest building is the bar.

Letting our breath out and our hair down

I had planned to spend part of the evening in Virginia, where BK was hosting a watch party, and then to cruise up to 5*j's for a Silver Spring bash. But the best-laid plans went gang awry when Virginia's numbers were tighter than expected; the idea of getting on the train or into a cab (driving was, hic, not an option) and being cut off from a constant feed of TV and interweb news was terrifying. So I ended up sitting with BK and friends, flipping between MSNBC, CNN, and the Daily Show, while BK himself loaded and reloaded FiveThirtyEight and the CNN.com state and county pages as we asked demanded ("Give us the Prince William returns!" "No, but Arlington first!" "Wait wait wait, is Indiana really turning blue? The home of the Klan, THAT Indiana?"). We got more and more hopped up on drinks, sugar, and numbers, and then Jon Stewart, a fellow W&M graduate, announced that Virginia was being called for Obama. And then he said, "We would like to announce that now, as of 11 PM, Barack Obama is America's next president."

A pause that seemed long, and then there was a clamor for CNN and MSNBC, BK flipping on the Ode to Joy at volume 11, and from there on all I really remember is a welter of shouting and crying and an incoherent burst of toasts that wiped out a bottle of excellent German mead in the name of "the 21st century!" "the America we dreamed of!" "everything we worked for!" and hugs and yet more tears. Oh, and Obama-logo cupcakes.

But eventually you've got to get home, and Metro was closed, and come to find out, free cabs were in very short supply. I ended up shepherding a trio of German schoolteachers onto a downtown-bound bus, assuring them that it would take them to within walking distance of their hotel. They had come for a week to see the election, and they seemed a little disappointed at the lack of celebration in the streets of Arlington. I figured DC doesn't really party and that the earlier televised festivities had already broken up.

Hah. We heard the first screaming whoops as we rolled through Georgetown, and Dupont from K Street north was the best party I've ever seen in this self-conscious city. People high-fived and cheered anyone who smiled; cars honked incessantly in a triple beat as their passengers screamed and waved flags out windows or sunroofs or off the backs of pick-ups; chants broke out as people passed one another on the sidewalks; fireworks exploded over Adams Morgan and U Street. The teachers hugged me warmly when they found their hotel; "Congratulations," said one. "We feel it is a privilege to be here tonight." The driver of the bus I eventually caught heading home wouldn't take fares; his passengers, packed together hip to hip, laughed and cheered, hugging one another over jolts in the road or chattering as the last of the buzz gave way to incoherent fatigue. I staggered through my door around 3 AM, happy and exhausted.

I mean, I dunno about you guys, but I had a hell of a night.

Return of the desultory review, quotes edition

The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-1765, Cleone Knox
[ETA: Damn. The book's a fraud.]

Actual review portion: What a trip! Cleone Knox comes across as a smart, energetic Irish girl with an eye for the fellas and a fine sense of adventure. She outrides at least one importunate admirer, gets a double salute from the King when presented at Versailles (Louis XV liked the pretty girls), and dishes hilariously entertaining gossip. It’s a pity that the diary is so short, but what there is of it is marred only by the prudish editing in the early 1900s. The editor's prim notes indicate that there were some juicy details that were simply too scandalous, darlings, which makes me miss them all the more.

On to the quotes!

Wondering whether to run away with the dashing David Ancaster: “My inclination is to go—my prudence bids me stay but Lud! if one listen to prudence one might die a Spinster!”

Further considerations in re: bolting with Mr. A.: “’Twould be Highly Indelicate for me to show my doubts to Mr. A., and I could scarcely say as I stepped into the Chaise, ‘By the by, Sir, I hope you are not trying to ruin me,’ yet the more I think of it, the more I recollect the fact that amidst all his passionate love Making the magical word ‘marriage,’ so dear to the heart of every young unwedded female, did not once occur!”

The idea of the European Tour with her father and brother no consolation for being torn from Mr. A.: “Would the sight of the finest Churches and palaces be more agreeable to me than a loving glance from his Wicked black eyes. Plainly no.”

On the Bath fad of publishing poems praising the ladies of town: “I have had 3 addressed to me, but they are Too Insipid and Weak to waste time and Paper upon copying them in. I suspect that they find my name not an easy one for rhyming, else one poor Youth would not have been constrained to couple Cleone with Moaning!”

Fellow travelers unintentionally plant the seed for Cleone’s future adventures: “Last evening 2 young gentlemen arrived at our Auberge in a chaise…[to] all appearances Brothers…This morning coming downstairs I passed their chamber and glanced in, the door being ajar. What was my surprise to perceive seated on the bed in Deshabille not 2 young men, but One young man and a Pretty girl with long black hair. Yet two young Gentlemen left the Inn half an hour later.”

Distressed at the arrest of a French admirer, she cross-dresses (see?) and sneaks off to go see a spiritualist for news and instead encounters an unwanted admirer: “I hastened into an inner chamber and came face to face with the detestable De Belisle, who grabbed me in his arms and began embracing me like a Lunatick…In a great fright I yelled and kicked and screamed. Thank the Lord, I had the good sense to draw my sword and deliver him a blow in the chest with the hilt, which made him leave go.”

While wandering the sights of Venice: “A gallant in a crimson cloak slipped a three cornered note into the bosom of my gown. The usual request for a rendezvous.”

Sneaking out of the house to tour Carnival: “…I slipped on a cloak and mask over male attire (breeches and coat of rose satin and sulphur waistcoat) climbed down the balcony into a gondola, and so away!...Kisses are plentiful but the Mask is mighty convenient, for it does away with the need to blush. Took me an hour to return from the Piazza to this place. Experienced some odious little adventures, and was constrained to draw my little dagger now and again.”

Final entry, dated May 29, 1765: “Stupendous Discovery! Mr. A. is in Venice.” And they lived happily ever after.

And we thought it was cold in DC

Florence Nightingale, writing on the death of Lord Raglan, leader of the disastrous Crimean campaign and one of the architects of the Charge of the Light Brigade: "Peace be with him and his hecatomb of twenty thousand men." O SNAP.

Desultory review: 1491

It took me far too long to pick up 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, but now that I've gotten through it I join the hosannas. It's a kick to come across books that provide such a degree of shock and delight at the breadth of my personal ignorance and at how much there is to learn.

Mann's premise, which he supports with data from linguistic, historical, and archaeological analyses, is that the enormous mass of historical material on civilizations in the pre-Columbian Americas is presented poorly or not at all in most schools and the popular press. He tackles several common misconceptions among lay readers, including the ideas that Indian civilizations were relatively small or isolated, that native groups did not manipulate the surrounding ecosystems extensively, and that the European advantage in technology was the deciding factor in most Indian/European encounters. Mann's counterevidence often left me boggling quietly and trying to adjust to new interpretations of old data: He suggests that disease so far outstripped the progress of colonists that it is almost impossible to accurately estimate the original population of the two continents, but that archaeological and extant text data indicate that the population was almost certainly drastically greater than most of us think; that the enormous herds of buffalo and flocks of passenger pigeons observed by early explorers reflected an ecosystem reacting to the removal of human predation on managed species, rather than a natural bounty; that Indian government provided a model for Revolutionary War activists and Enlightenment philosophers; and that the Amazonian basin's nutritional abundance is in part the result of earlier civilizations' creation of flood-plain orchards. All of that is plausible, but how many of us learned anything like that in school? Did any of us doing our elementary-school Pilgrim pageants ever hear that Plymouth was built using material scavenged from the grave mounds of Squanto's decimated village, or that he may have picked up the trick of burying shad with the corn during his time as a captive in England?

The book has a few flaws. As Mann admits, he's probably getting minor details wrong, but in a lay-oriented survey of thousands of years of material, that's a forgivable offense. I got a bit bogged down in the academic in-fighting about teosinte's role as a maize ancestor, and thank God that there isn't a quiz on the Mayan political scene (although I did get the point: war and backstabbing and economic pressures and drought, oh my). It's more of a starting point for research than a primary or even secondary source, but since those aren't its primary goals, you can take the book on its merits.

It's too much to hope that a book this chock with juicy intel would be well written, but it is. Find a copy for your ainsel; I'll be in the corner, gnawing at the footnotes. Mm, historilicious.

Desultory review: "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

I had no problems with the original "Elizabeth"—how could I, with Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, and Christopher Eccleston all snarling and snapping at one another in a deathmatch power struggle?—even though it took some liberties with the actual history. Kapur got the story pretty much right, following Elizabeth's transition from politically inexperienced young woman (granted, it's debatable that she was ever truly naive, given her family) to iconic figure and skillful manipulator, and more to the point, the story actually progressed. With the sequel, he's got John "You Can Call Me Doctah" Dee, Francis "I'll Be In My Hammock" Drake, Walter "Put That In Your Pipe" Raleigh, and the whole bloody Spanish Armada, along with Elizabeth's burgeoning cult of personality; you'd think the movie would be a cinch. But no, apparently it's not exciting enough to show how a schemey competent woman handled national crisis; far better to have lots of her waffling between her political goals and her need for lurrrrve, with occasional breaks for posing and endless shots through glass because DO YOU SEE, IT'S ALL ABOUT DISTANCE AND IMAGE DO YOU GET IT YET DO YOU? Halfway through the movie I gave up hope, slumped down in my seat, and waited for it to be over, whenever that might be; eventually the ships would show up and maybe then I could go home. So sure, fine, the Armada was completely destroyed by fireships off Tilbury rather than just being driven to their destruction off Ireland. Hey, okay, Raleigh was so studly that he rode a blazing frigate straight into a Spanish ship, steering with his force of personality rather than the wheel. Good, whatever, Philip of Spain learned of his defeat by intoning (in dreadful slow mincing Spanish), "Elizabeth is the dark, I am the light," and seeing a candle blown out. I dun care. You've smothered me into indifference with the Elizabethan vogueing and the flirting with Raleigh and the Raleigh/Bess smooches and the oh here's Mary Stewart and the hey Jesuits hang out in a basement dyeing shit red because it looks more ominous and the Catholics generally all flashing the evil eyeliner and I am putting on my WTF parka and heading for WTFistan because you've somehow made this all so dull.

Seriously, if the words "bored now" come to mind in describing your depiction of one of England's best-known historical events, yor doin it wrong.

Desultory review: Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton

An insatiable reading appetite combined with dilettante-ism means coming across information in odd ways. Thanks to a note in a review for Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, I found out about Mrs. Beeton's book(s) of household management and cooking. What the Joy of Cooking used to be for young American brides faced with the unenviable task of cooking a bear paw, raw porcupine, or sponge cake, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management was for young Victorian women starting out in married life. Everything but sex seems to have found its way into the thousand-plus page tome (sex is quite literally covered in the NOC, however, apparently because the publishers objected to having books burst into flames). Despite the temporal incongruity, Mrs. B seems to have continued without a break for over 100 years, advising modern readers on the wonders of the microwave, Caribbean cooking, and how to pick a blender. Quite an accomplishment.

And, according to Kathryn Hughes's slightly uneven but engaging book, she did it with almost no experience of her own. Isabella Beeton was only 21, married less than two years, when she started to help her husband in his publishing ventures, first by writing up fashion and then by lifting enormous chunks of other extant household manuals and compiling them into a monster book. She died only eight years later, probably of puerperal fever, leaving behind two boys. Two other sons died before the age of three, likely infected with syphilis passed from their father to their mother; the same disease is suspected in her multiple miscarriages. (In the age of penicillin, most of us are cheerfully ignorant of the mechanics and side effects of chronic syphilis infection, and long may we remain so. Parts of the book are very grim.) Hughes has done extensive research to show which parts of BOHM are lifted from various sources, showing clips side by side, and she teases out the code used to refer to unpleasant events in Victorian life. Some of her conclusions could probably be argued by someone with more knowledge of the period than I have, but the overall picture of social change, women's roles in the economy and the home, and how one relatively inexperienced young woman became the voice of household authority, bring a period we often think of as dour to vivid life. Good stuff.