When I studied literature both in high school and again in college, the main critical approach was New Criticism. This meant looking at a piece of writing as an object, free from biographical and historical information. By calling itself “New” this method hoped to get away from the biographical and historical emphasis when reading a work which had preceded it. Needless to say, while I loved literature of all kinds, I rarely had a solid understanding of the cultural, biographical and historical influences on the authors.

When I was in Philadelphia, I stumbled across an exhibit in City Hall of contemporary artists reflecting on Walt Whitman for his 200th birthday. Reawakening my interest in Whitman, this display sent me back to his writing once I got home. This time I decided to read Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography written by David S. Reynolds. While I am very familiar with Whitman’s poetry, I had a very limited sense of the milieu out of which he wrote. This book continues to fill out the background and increases my appreciation of Whitman, an author I already truly enjoyed.

And why Philadelphia for the exhibit? It turns out that for the last fifteen years of his life Whitman lived in Camden, New Jersey, a bridge away across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Who knew? Certainly not this literature major!

 

 

 

Philadelphia highlights the opposing truths at the start of the United States. On the one hand, the Liberty Bell with Independence Hall behind it shows the lofty ideals of the United States Constitution as written there in 1781. On the other hand, as a wonderful new exhibit in the Museum of the Constitution highlights, there was no freedom for the 20% of the population that was enslaved. As for the Natives, they were not considered citizens, so were not entitled “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as spelled out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence from England.

These are hard truths, and often Americans try to disguise them by saying things like “that was then, this is now.”  But  the appalling resurgence of white “nationalism” shows that many citizens really don’t grasp the truth that this was never a “white nation.” I am grateful that in Philadelphia, at least, there is an attempt to paint the whole picture of the reality at the start.

My reading continues as I try to fill in all the gaps left by my very whitewashed presentation of history in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. I recently finished a massive biography of Frederick Douglass, and was gratified to find at the museum his original “pass” allowing him to travel in slave states since he was a free man. I also purchased a coffee mug with his face and the quote “Without struggle there is no progress.” It’s a good reminder that my country has a ways to go to reconcile truth with the myth of its beginnings.

I had a great time in Philadelphia, exploring the city on my own while my daughter worked. This statue was a few blocks from our hotel and frames an avenue of flags from every nation that was the original home of a Philadelphia citizen. Clearly, the city is full of a diverse population of immigrants from all over the world.

I had somehow never been to Philadelphia, although I had been to every other major city in the United States. I tried to soak up as much as I could in two days, first by walking and then by taking a 90 minute double decker bus tour. Yes I was one of those silly tourists sitting on top of a bus looking around! But it did give me a preview of the many attractions I want to see on another visit.

I decided that Philadelphia is a combination of Boston and Chicago. The colonial buildings and historical landmarks echo Boston. The diversity, open spaces, abundant street art and friendly people reminded me of Chicago. It is less like New York City than I first imagined.  Here people actually wait for the walk light before crossing the street.

I’ll be back. After all, I didn’t even try a Philly cheesesteak yet.

I have been taking a couple of days to start a new blog. After a very helpful consultation with Pete Johnson(beetleypete) I decided to keep my present blog with its mostly secular focus and start another one with a more spiritual focus. I spent my professional life in a secular college and had no trouble connecting with all kinds of students, religious, nonreligious and antireligious. My blog followers include all faiths, lack thereof and points of view on matters spiritual. So, just as I explored spiritual matters away from work, so I will explore more specifically spiritual ones on my second blog.

I forgot how much work setting up a blog entails. I am presented with all sorts of themes again and the necessity of finally using Gutenberg. The themes are more confusing than Gutenberg. I will let you know when it launches and how to access it. Beyond that, you are free to just keep up with this one. I am trying to ensure that posts from the second one only go to those requesting it by checking “follow this blog” on that site. There may be a few glitches, so I count on my readers to let me know of them.

Tomorrow I go to Philadelphia, courtesy of my daughter, who has bought our train tickets and our hotel. She is celebrating my 72 birthday by taking me to the one large U.S. city I have never seen. When she heard, much to her shock, that I had never been to Philly, she quickly set about to remedy that. I will try to post a picture of the cracked Liberty Bell. It seems particularly appropriate at the moment!

 

First of all, I believe in facts and by extension I believe in truth. I don’t discount the reality that different people can draw different conclusions from the same set of facts, but I also believe that some truthful statements can be made in any situation. Even in such a contentious scenario as a divorce, it can truthfully be stated that the marriage didn’t survive. When we get into the territory of blame, clearly different conclusions can be reached, preventing us from saying it was all one person’s fault. More facts may give us an increasingly detailed picture of the facts of the marriage, but the truth of the marriage, while existent, cannot be definitively reached by anyone.

Why am I going on so about facts and truth? At the moment in the United States facts and truth seem to be up for debate. Partly, in the case of historical narratives, I think this happens because we become aware of other facts and other points of view. In Plymouth, for instance, I learned much more about the indigenous people living in the area as the Pilgrims arrived. Clearly one truth is that it was very disruptive for the first inhabitants. That truth was hidden when I was presented a scene of a peaceful first Thanksgiving with everyone happily sharing a meal. More facts challenged this narrative. But truth didn’t suddenly disappear.

What about opinion? Here we need, I believe, to have plenty of humility. You and I may both be presented with a set of facts, for instance about trade with China. We can study exports, imports, tariffs and other sundry bits of information. At the end each of us can have an opinion. I may think tariffs are a bad idea. You may think they are beneficial. No matter how strongly either of us makes our points, neither of us will have THE truth on the subject. The only truth available at the moment is what has happened so far. No one can accurately state the truth about the future. We can only hold an opinion.

Sadly, we are presently heatedly yelling at each other over opinions. Yes, it is difficult to know the facts of the Mueller report since we haven’t been allowed to read it. We are caught like children in a divorce with only each parent’s side available. But at some point I hope the American people will have access to a well documented, lengthy examination of the effect by Russia on American elections. We need to know. We are voting again next year. And that is the truth!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the hallmarks of teenagers is the line “you could never understand,” hurled at their parents to make a clear distinction between their world and that of adults. I think it is appropriate at that age to try to carve out a niche for oneself that makes one stand apart from parents. However appropriate for teenagers, the stance seems to have seeped its way into American life. There it causes much unnecessary division because it cuts off conversation and sends people into opposing corners, ready for a fight.

It is true that my particular experiences limit my understanding of the experiences of many other people. For example, I have no idea what it would be like to be a man. Similarly, I have no idea how anyone could believe that Donald Trump was sent by God to save the United States. But if I just park myself in the corner marked “female Donald Trump opponent” and maintain that neither a man nor a Donald Trump supporter could ever understand me, I am stuck listening to my own limited thoughts.

One of my favorite books in recent years was written by Arlie Hochschild, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley called Strangers In Their Own Land. Hochschild realized that she lived in a liberal “bubble” and had no understanding of conservative America. She set out to correct that by spending months really getting to know people in Louisiana whose views were polar opposites to her own. She wrote with compassion and concern about the world so different from her own. She was willing to get past the idea that she could never understand. So did they. It is a stance worth taking, particularly now as the American obsessive focus on self and slights at every turn threatens to drive us even further apart.

 

In one of my first posts three years ago I wrote about the “like” button on WordPress. At the time I was concerned that I might be writing in order to be liked. I was intent on not doing that. Recently several different blogs I follow have either removed the like button from their page or questioned the usefulness of it. I thought I would bring my current thinking to this post

Visitors to my page are either recorded as visits, likes or comments. I always have more visits than likes and more likes than comments. Some people suspect that readers may just click like without reading the post and don’t want that option. I find, however, that I appreciate both likes and comments. Frequently someone I follow and know I am followed by just clicks “like.” I am glad to see that they dropped by. Other times I get a “like” from a new reader. This allows me to check out their blog. I have found interesting writers who simply “liked” my post but didn’t comment on it. I rarely check “like” when I read a post, preferring to comment, but I am happy to get any response to my writing.

My preference, as is true for many other writers, is a comment. I like to know that I have connected with someone. I respond to all comments though I may miss one from time to time. I did change my settings so comments from people I know appear right away. Since I only sit down once a day to write, my responses have a significant lag time, but they do get written. My comments are sometimes pretty brief as are the ones I sometimes receive. Other times we have a longer interaction if the topic calls for it. I have come to consider some writers around the world as my friends after months of comments back and forth. For me this is blogging’s most satisfying outcome.

There’s an old line: “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” I was thinking about that as I continued my marathon reading of American history filling in the numerous blanks left by my early schooling. The most balanced book I have read is These Truths by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore. She took up a challenge to write a one volume comprehensive U.S. history book after hearing that not only had not one been written since 1965, but also that it was impossible to do so. She incorporated much scholarship from the last 50 years and added it to what we generally(us non history professorial types) knew. It makes for challenging but enlightening reading.

No good comes from just highlighting the evils done by our forebears if we don’t learn from them. No good also comes from painting all who came before us as ignorant or intentionally destructive. It also serves no purpose to flip our sympathies from one group of people to another. All humans “fall short of the mark.” We are required to abandon simplistic “America All Good” or “America All Bad” and take up complex thinking. We live in a time of simplistic thinking, so it takes some effort!

But I am comforted by learning that the struggles going on in the United States have been going on for the duration of our nation. We have disagreed more often than we have agreed. We have even had Presidents as bad as the one currently in the White House. I am encouraged to know that I am learning more than the monolithic view of America than I was taught in high school. We are still living out a remarkable experiment in democracy. I pray that we will continue to work towards a “more perfect union.”

 

When I was 11 and in New York visiting our East Coast cousins, my 12 year old cousin asked me about cowboys and Indians. He had the impression that they were a regular part of my life in Oregon. I had to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he had a very wrong impression of Oregon! We lived normal lives, free of shoot outs on the back 40 acres. We did frequently play at cowboys and Indians, though we were always all cowboys. No one in my circle wanted to be an Indian. We weren’t sure why, but we knew on some level that the Indians lost.

Donald Trump and I were near contemporaries in school. We both were taught American history as a story of constant progress, exceptionalism and power. We were not taught about the “losers” in America, those people displaced, enslaved, deported and exploited. Slavery was an unfortunate blip in an otherwise sterling American story. When he says he wants to “Make America Great Again,” he implies that somehow we need to get back to that sense of the United States our textbooks portrayed.

I reflected on that a lot when visiting Plymouth. I thought about it most deeply when I encountered this plaque:

I began, not for the first time, to wonder whose story I had been taught so many years ago when we dressed up like Pilgrims and Indians to share a Happy Thanksgiving.