sernian1 – Historical Thinking

Apples and Oranges

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016sernian1

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This may not seem very historical at first, but it ended up far superior to what I had expected as well. The Anaheim Packing House, if any of you have heard or been to it, is a sort of small shopping mall, restaurant complex in downtown Anaheim. It’s an interesting place, made from what was, up until about two years ago, an Orange packing building. This is where, during the Orange plantation days of Orange county, the produce was packed onto trains and shipped to other parts of the country. I went to this location just to get a burger or something while I was at the Anaheim archive doing some research for my 300B class. The surprising part of this place wasn’t the new, hip, restaurants, but the small sections near the front of the building. There is a meeting room, a sweets bar, and a historical exhibit. It’s very cool, but still a little retro. There is a display cabinet with some of the old equipment from when the packing house was abandoned, around the time they began reconstructing it. There were also a few paintings, and captions along the wall. It was exemplary of a contemporary exhibit. The most important part was a film reel that they had playing over in the corner, which was inside of a kind of reconstructed shed partly built into the wall like a Disney construction. It was really well done, and I was extremely impressed with the entire history section which I spent nearly 45 minutes in despite it’s tiny size. I learned from the Archivist, that the displays had been created by the team over at Museo, a small museum, go figure, that displays small collections every so often.

Cronon’s New World

November 29, 2016sernian1

Cronon takes a very poetic spin to his analysis on Bonnifield and Worster. Cronon uses his ideal storytelling form of history to explain Bonnifield’s position on natural disaster in the dust bowl, and Worster’s position on man made disaster. It seems like cronon has a very different view of worster’s work than Koppes’ writings. Koppes seemed to think Worster was suggesting the people were to blame for the dust bowl. Cronon puts it as “The story of the Dust Bowl is less about the failures of nature than about the failures of human beings to accommodate themselves to nature. A long series of willful human misunderstandings and assaults led finally to a collapse whose origins were mainly cultural.” I hate to use such a long quote, but it just seems so contradictory between the two authors. I felt like Cronon had the far better interpretation of Worster, but his writing seemed to agree more with Bonnifield’s work. Koppes disagreed with Bonnifield, but seemed to have the lacking interpretation of Worster’s work. It was a strange to read. Cronon doesn’t stay on their work very long though, he moves on to the poetic descriptions. The poetic description shows what he meant earlier on about culture. He explains his historiography with symbolism excellently, and solidifies it with the description of Native distress and loss of nature. Jessica also has an interpretation using Cunfer’s writing “Cunfer argues that Worster’s research on the dust bowl was more focused on the two case studies on two small communities rather than the whole region. He discusses how the analysis of the whole region is more beneficial to understand the dust storms and the droughts.” http://courses.shroutdocs.org/hist300a-fall2016/archives/810 Cronon’s conclusion really impressed me though, because whether intentional or not he seems to belittle the non-fiction that isn’t historically reviewed and confirmed. At the library I’ll speak to people about being a history major in College and they’ll bring up 1421: The Year China Discovered America. I felt like this is the kind of work that Cronon hints at, although I know that his final intention is to critique potential Natural history.

Vaccination Mary

November 15, 2016sernian1

I found the book on Typhoid Mary very interesting mostly because, at least in the introduction, it mentioned how we can apply her spread of Typhoid to many other aspects of modern society. Namely, HIV, but even can be applied to the health care system that is a focus of public debate even now. Imagining as the author of Typhoid Mary puts it that we are at the mercy of public health problems, and must admit that even in better health care things can come up that puts us at risk. I was put in the group for chapter 3 where we read about the legal analysis of Typhoid Mary. It was interesting to see the transition of time once again in the interpretation of law, and even the constitution over time. Things that in colonial days would have been ignored now were infringed upon with Mary Mallon. The particular quote I enjoyed was “a preference for social control over individual autonomy” that encapsulates the modern day safety through health separation. This further made me think of other debates in modern politics. This applies to the debate on vaccinations that has caused quite a bit of contention. As Armando put it in his post about his historical event last week “That being said, this game is a great way to get people’s attention about an event that they will hopefully learn more about.” I think that Typhoid Mary is a good way to segway interest into modern day health systems.

Bibliography: http://courses.shroutdocs.org/hist300a-fall2016/archives/801

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Captial, the Marx of Death

October 25, 2016sernian1

Capital is a driving factor of the United States, and always was an important thing to have through the years. No big deal, cash is only kind of important. Rozario throws a spin on it, however, in his “what comes down, must come up.” This description of investing in Disaster seemed strange at first, bringing religious background and finance as well as sentiment felt like it would be a difficult comparison. I now see a whole new idea of theory in studies of history. I like to imagine Marx and Engels are rolling over in their graves with each turn of the page. As Elizabeth states in her Karl Marx post (http://courses.shroutdocs.org/hist300a-fall2016/archives/575) He himself as well as Engel’s were historians, and they practiced theory just as we do today. The theories that seemed to come up in this chapter of reading were almost in complete contradiction to the previous theories we learned in the Communist Manifesto. It was fun to see such differences, and it helps to analyze how two or three separate historians can see similar events and think such different things about them using different information and study. Marx would probably focus on environmental classism and analyze it through the eyes of the proletariat, or immigrants. The death tolls being so catastrophic, particularly in the San Francisco Earthquake. Yet in Rozario’s writings he immediately jumps into the newspapers contradiction, and the later investment buildup because of the disaster itself as well as good advertising, and even cultural backgrounds found in the United States. We do see a lot of cross over from each side though, in the interactions described, but I’ll admit I leaned towards Marx when Rozario mentioned the put down of the “rabble” Creative destruction is now my new favorite phrase. Kevin Rozario’s work was a good read, but it was a far better teacher.

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The Gilded surf

September 27, 2016sernian1

In the second half of Isaac’s Storm by Larson, you see a huge difference from the descriptive nature that was mostly passive and only slightly tuned to show hubris of the era. In these chapters full blame is soon assigned and death takes the full frontal assault on our imagination. I liked to compare this to Cronon’s writings comparing it to nature. As he was describing in the late part of the third chapter when the train is being swallowed in the wake, it dawned on me. This if compared entirely to nature alone, is simply a rise in water, strong wind, and a lot of rain. The rise in water was very funny to me, because everyone was freaking out about their lawn being covered, the train being swallowed and the buildings collapsing. Of course with good reason. It is sad to think of the death and destruction, but weird to think that without the city there, the island just slowly disappears, and then returns after a few days. Cora’s death in this novel was even more disheartening while I was reading, I have a soft spot for children though, and that was very uplifting. I was hoping it wouldn’t mention other children’s death though, and that was not the case. Larson probably did this to show the raw power of nature and shatter the audacity of the gilded age, and the death and destruction was the only way to do it justice. Like rhruska says “Larson does not shy away from the seemingly gruesome reality of the situation.” Although social norms are shown, I feel like the emphasis was aimed directly towards technology and new age (for the time) ideas were being crushed and destroyed. Many of the buildings he describes are newer constructions, and specifically positioned in text to prove that the new tech was the reason for death, such as the collapse of Isaac’s house. Their shelter, now turned into a weapon of nature.

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A sad day to die.

September 20, 2016sernian1

It’s actually kind of hard to read the Chicago fire analysis, because it is so destructive. It’s interesting of course, but a bit sad, and in one part enlightening. The part where they let the prisoners out to save them from the town hall collapsing brought me a lot of hope, but the rest was still kind of difficult to stomach. This however leads to even worse effects during the refugee movements. As erodriguez317 (Sorry I forget your first name) puts it “ Inmates were released because they felt bad that they would burn, but so many of those were causing much harm.” This puts being a refugee in perspective. Those who are morally sound are in the same place with, in many cases even less than the criminals. This must have been a huge moral dilemma, and indeed in the reading it is show to be. They say that the groups met in different areas outside the north, northwest, and south sides of the city where all met in one large group for aid. When I read this part, I admittedly thought about the burning of lake town, in The Hobbit. I had flashbacks of all the destruction from the novel and the suffering shown in the movie. It’s a horrible event, but it does bring some closer together, but even worse brings those who will tear society apart into their element. Chaos ensued. Smith helps to show the moral integrity being dealt with in many ways the rest of the way through the recovery. It seemed that religion was a very easy point that they could fall back on. The picture is way bigger than I expected, but it’s pretty cool so I’m gonna leave it.

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Water Palooza

September 14, 2016sernian1

The study of natural history is a very rewarding form of study it seems, and I loved the quote “It was second nature that Chicago should become the gateway to the Great West (Cronon pg. 63).” It was very fitting. It was interesting to see that this chapter focus so much on water. The most interesting was the canal that helped to grow the city. Another part that interested me was when the river met the lake, and it formed the sandbar. This helped protect the town, and made it a safer for the population to form in Chicago. I will admit though I failed to see why the map was so important that it made it necessary to show. Although I can admit it helped to show the importance that other towns had on it and the authors’s point of telling the railroad’s introduction. I do have to admit though I love maps, and having it diced into pie shapes was a very cool idea. I suppose it did help to show the trains effects later as well though, but the map was difficult to understand, and a bit gregarious to be honest. The later maps seemed a bit more useful though they seemed more useful. Cronin should have one that related to the later section with showing how Chicago linked west and east rail systems. That would have been awesome. I would have loved to see the map link with what boosters were saying about the growth of the town, rather than the travel in general. The best part of this reading was that it wasn’t quite so down on itself though. I liked the early industrial darkness, but it helped to be brighter having growth, trains and people in my mind rather than just a smokey cloud in passing.

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The Story of Stories

September 6, 2016September 6, 2016sernian1

Popkin so far in the first few pages of reading, has already hit a bit too close to home for all of us. Being history students he mentions us all in the second and third page of the preface, and as he continuous through chapter one targets his subject, and nails us in the forehead with it. He’s a blunt author, which comes as a relief compared to some difficult topics. Historiography is quite a contentious area, because it seems that every segment we begin to find research, we can find another historians work form a previous era has done their own work on it. Popkin immediately jumps in and tells us that this is, a necessary, perhaps evil, part of our studies. To use the other works to derive our own conclusions we must understand and evaluate their reasons for writing, the standards for historians of the time, the abilities commonly taught to scholars of history at the time, and an endless amount of corridors thereof. This may not be easy, it may not be fun in some senses, but it is where we can have some true investigation. I enjoy seeing that the debate and reasoning within the field is centralized on our different approaches to a problem. The more I read the easier it is to understand, that history is in flux, despite how much we would like it to be a solid timeline of everything. The most important thing to stand out in the first chapter to me was that, trends or commonalities, do not create standards. Just because an event has shown to cause a certain effect, that doesn’t mean the effects can be slightly or even enormously different from what would be expected. This section also deals with truthful history, helping mediate between certain arguments in politics, or emotional issues. With these tools I think our goals as Historians can be better achieved, using the writings from Popkin, although I’m sure even though this guide may be adequate for a small understanding, even these topics can be viewed very differently by other historians.

Calvin and Hobbes Facts

Historical Thinking – Fall 2016

Author: sernian1