I am currently reading a book called The Cana Sanctuary by Frank Marotti. It concerns the way African-Americans in St. Augustine, Florida, both in Spanish colonial times and after Florida was acquired (that's putting a nice face on it) by the United States, worked the system to their advantage in a number of ways, particularly by finding an ally in the Catholic Church. The theme of how black citizens leveraged the system to their advantage is also explored in Jane Landers's seminal work, Black Society in Spanish Florida.
The first chapter of Mr. Marotti's book sets a background describing St. Augustine in the late colonial period (1784-1821, the Second Spanish Period) as being prosperous and bountiful, concentrating particularly on 1811-1812. It is a rosy picture, painted from the testimonies Mr. Marotti found in claims filed after the so-called "Patriot War" of 1812, which was a blatant invasion of Spanish Florida by a ragtag "army" of mainly Georgians and South Carolinians, backed secretly at the highest levels by the United States government. (For more on this, read James Cusick's The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida.)
These claims were filed by St. Augustine and rural East Florida residents to exact from the United States government reparations for destroyed properties and lost crops and other business losses. Mr. Marotti appears not to have been terribly critical of these sources, for he asks no questions about what they contain. There are descriptions of great bounty from the fields and farms of the area. At one point he says, "Indeed, money grew on trees for numerous rural East Floridians." He describes a five-acre plot owned by a Minorcan and worked by him and his family as being ample in its production to support a large family and to provide some profit as well. He seems to indicate that this was a norm among the Minorcans, and states that the family in question was able to set aside money each year off the profits from such endeavors. This does not seem to square with the death records in the Catholic cathedral's archives, which cite instance after instance of Minorcans dying intestate because they were poor. But then, we have to ask what constituted poverty in St. Augustine.
He also does not question one statement that the orange groves were so productive that 5,000 to 6,000 oranges could be got off of one tree.
There are other statements that require questioning, but let's examine what we have here. First, the oranges. No one is going to get 5,000 to 6,000 oranges off one tree in a season. According to the Florida Department of Agriculture, one mature orange tree can bear at most 1,250 oranges per tree "if you properly care for and fertilize the tree."(3) The Department of Agriculture, for this figure, is presupposing modern agricultural methods. I have a childhood memory of a particularly productive orange tree we had in our back yard. My mother picked something like 100 oranges off that tree in one day, preparing to make and freeze orange juice, and it looked like it had not been touched at all. I estimate there may have been a total of 250-300 oranges on that tree, which was pretty much just left to its own devices.
Also, this rosy picture does not square with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's soil survey of St. Johns County, where St. Augustine, and many of the rural farms surrounding it, are located. Most of the soils in St. Johns county are naturally low in fertility according to the soil survey. Soils in the county also tend to be strongly acidic, needing applications of lime to bring the pH more towards neutral. These soils also tend to be low on phosphrous and potassium. Soil tilth – preparation of the seed bed so that seeds can germinate properly and roots penetrate the soil – is important for germination and for the infiltration of water. When a soil has good tilth, the soil is porous and granular. Most St. Johns County soils do have good tilth, with their sandy surface layers. Organic matter is present in the county’s soils in low to moderate amounts, so the soil must be amended. The soil can get crusty if allowed to dry out after a heavy rain. Cover crops, plowed under, add organic matter and increase fertility.(4) While it is true that southern St. Johns county is highly productive of such crops as potatoes, cabbages, and sorghum, these results are obtained with 20th century agricultural methods such as plowing under cover crops to add organic material, fertilization, irrigation using modern equipment and technology, and methods not available to the farmers of Spanish colonial St. Augustine. What methods were in use in the late 18th and early 19th centuries?
But the broader consideration is that Mr. Marotti did not once bring up the question of what was behind his sources, the Patriot War claims. One thing we have to keep in mind while looking at these documents is, these were people who were seeking to get money from the U.S. government, and the likelihood was high that they were going to exaggerate their claims in order to extract as much money as they could. They were motivated to inflate their estimates.
Much of the testimony he cites is from neighbors testifying on a neighbor's claim, not from the individual claimants themselves. These neighbors testify as to how many acres their friend had, how much money he received from the sale of his produce, how much he paid his workers, how much he had in expenses, and other such figures. We need to ask the question, "Where did they get these figures from? Who did they get the information from?" Was there someone advising them on their testimony and advising the claimants on their claims? Were they being told that they had to inflate their claims in order to get anything at all? Did their friend and neighbor come to them and say that he needed them to testify as to these figures, and give them the numbers he needed mentioned? After all, the ones testifying for their friends also had claims pending, and who doesn't need a little quid pro quo in such circumstances?
We must also remember that these claimants and their witnesses were people who had been stripped of their properties and livelihoods. Their fields and crops destroyed, they went from the reality or even the prospect of prosperity to abject poverty. One resident is quoted as saying that the invasion "had stripped us of nearly all that we possessed, and left ourselves, our wives, and children to the cold charity of the world." (5) Others expressed their bereavement and their resentment. Thus, we have not only a population motivated to garner as much as they could by inflating their claims, but also a population motivated by resentment and a wish for vengeance against the government that had supported such depredation and impoverishment among them. This is not to say that St. Augustine was not prosperous at one time, because it certainly was not as abjectly poor as some have made it out to be in the past. The truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes, and we also must take a further look to see what the income distribution was in St. Augustine, and where and how great was the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Being critical of sources raises questions such as these, some of them useful, some of them silly. Further research can answer some of them, and some are left to speculation on the possibilities, tempered with a knowledge of human nature and psychology. But not asking the questions at all is inviting being fooled by the sources. It is better to ask the questions, however silly they may be, than to ignore them. Even if our conclusions, our answers to these questions, proves at a later date to have been in error, they may lead future historians down a path that will lead to a better understanding, to better insights, and a picture that much closer to "how it essentially was."
(1) Marotti, Frank. The Cana Sanctuary: History, Diplomacy, and Black Catholic Marriages in Antebellum St. Augustine, Florida. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 21.
(2) Ibid., 20.
(3) Florida Department of Agriculture. Producing Citrus in Florida. PDF document at http://faitc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/Producing-Citrus-in-Florida.pdf (accessed 15 May 2017).
(4) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Survey of St. Johns County, Florida (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1983), 56.
(5) Marotti, The Cana Sanctuary, 30.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Monday, February 29, 2016
Why Amateurs Should Not Translate
In my study of Spanish colonial St. Augustine from 1784 to1821, and in the creation of my book Non-Federal Censuses of Florida 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources, I have encountered a number of amateur translations. Some of them have made me shake my head. Some of them have made me laugh.
A few examples:
In a run of documents called the East Florida Papers, the originals of which are held at the Library of Congress, there is a letter which was written sometime in the 1920s or 1930s about a certain segment of these papers. One document mentioned is headed, in Spanish, informacion naturalization* which the translator rendered as "Information Naturalization (?)." At least the writer of the letter had the good sense to put the question mark in parentheses after their translation of the phrase. Or, I should say, their mistranslation. In Spanish, the word informacion does indeed mean "information." But someone more familiar with the language also knows that the word has the additional meaning of "report." And in this case, that's the word that should be used. The translation should be "naturalization report."
In another document the amateur translator was not a paleographer, a person trained to read old handwriting. I am a paleographer. We can make mistakes, too, when a handwriting is really difficult to read, but one mistake this translator made is a doozy, and shows his or her unfamiliarity with paleography and with the Spanish language. The document is a list of names that appeared in a census. Some of the names are followed by the improbable words "el hifs," "el hiso," or "el biss." A paleographer would recognize the error -- this is obviously a misreading of the Spanish el hijo, which means "the son." At least el hijo makes more sense in the context than the made-up words that translator came up with.
In a collection of extracts of the marriage records I'm dealing with currently, there is an instance where the individual making the extracts was not familiar with ecclesiastical Latin, in which the marriage records were kept until 1788, when Bishop Cirilo de Barcelona, the auxiliary bishop of Cuba, made a visitation and informed the priests at the church in St. Augustine that from thenceforward, the church records were to be kept in Spanish, not in Latin. Not that I'm all that fluent in ecclesiastical Latin myself, but I've been able to figure out enough to comfortably translate or at least read these church records. The translator misread the document and placed the time of the marriage in question as 21 December 1786. The Latin in the document reads "Anno Domini 1786 Die 21 Mensis Februarii . . ." What that says is: The Year of Our Lord 1786, day 21 month February . . ." So the correct date of the wedding is February 21, not December. The translator may have thought "Die" looked like "Dic," which he thought was an abbreviation for diciembre, the Spanish for December.
It's lovely that people get interested in a historical subject enough to want to do such work, usually on a volunteer basis. However, translation is not easy. Language is tricky. Handwriting can be tricky, too. I am trained in Spanish and in paleography, and I still at times feel that I am floundering. Two lessons here are:
1. Be careful with translated works, especially those done on a volunteer basis by amateurs. (Be aware, however, that there are some retired professionals doing translations, too. It's best, when retired, to have some activities, and when the retired pros do the job, it benefits everyone.)
2. Some things are best left to the pros.
*I have to apologize that my computer does not do high-end ASCII, and I don't know any other way to make the diacritical markings used in Spanish. If anyone has any help on that, I'd be happy to have it.
A few examples:
In a run of documents called the East Florida Papers, the originals of which are held at the Library of Congress, there is a letter which was written sometime in the 1920s or 1930s about a certain segment of these papers. One document mentioned is headed, in Spanish, informacion naturalization* which the translator rendered as "Information Naturalization (?)." At least the writer of the letter had the good sense to put the question mark in parentheses after their translation of the phrase. Or, I should say, their mistranslation. In Spanish, the word informacion does indeed mean "information." But someone more familiar with the language also knows that the word has the additional meaning of "report." And in this case, that's the word that should be used. The translation should be "naturalization report."
In another document the amateur translator was not a paleographer, a person trained to read old handwriting. I am a paleographer. We can make mistakes, too, when a handwriting is really difficult to read, but one mistake this translator made is a doozy, and shows his or her unfamiliarity with paleography and with the Spanish language. The document is a list of names that appeared in a census. Some of the names are followed by the improbable words "el hifs," "el hiso," or "el biss." A paleographer would recognize the error -- this is obviously a misreading of the Spanish el hijo, which means "the son." At least el hijo makes more sense in the context than the made-up words that translator came up with.
In a collection of extracts of the marriage records I'm dealing with currently, there is an instance where the individual making the extracts was not familiar with ecclesiastical Latin, in which the marriage records were kept until 1788, when Bishop Cirilo de Barcelona, the auxiliary bishop of Cuba, made a visitation and informed the priests at the church in St. Augustine that from thenceforward, the church records were to be kept in Spanish, not in Latin. Not that I'm all that fluent in ecclesiastical Latin myself, but I've been able to figure out enough to comfortably translate or at least read these church records. The translator misread the document and placed the time of the marriage in question as 21 December 1786. The Latin in the document reads "Anno Domini 1786 Die 21 Mensis Februarii . . ." What that says is: The Year of Our Lord 1786, day 21 month February . . ." So the correct date of the wedding is February 21, not December. The translator may have thought "Die" looked like "Dic," which he thought was an abbreviation for diciembre, the Spanish for December.
It's lovely that people get interested in a historical subject enough to want to do such work, usually on a volunteer basis. However, translation is not easy. Language is tricky. Handwriting can be tricky, too. I am trained in Spanish and in paleography, and I still at times feel that I am floundering. Two lessons here are:
1. Be careful with translated works, especially those done on a volunteer basis by amateurs. (Be aware, however, that there are some retired professionals doing translations, too. It's best, when retired, to have some activities, and when the retired pros do the job, it benefits everyone.)
2. Some things are best left to the pros.
*I have to apologize that my computer does not do high-end ASCII, and I don't know any other way to make the diacritical markings used in Spanish. If anyone has any help on that, I'd be happy to have it.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Getting down to brass tacks
Since our younger daughter moved out, we have the other two bedrooms in our house back for our own use. My husband has not yet begun to put together his "man cave," but he's retired, so he doesn't need to get to it right away. I, on the other hand, have made significant progress in getting my office ready. Now I finally have a space with a door I can close to minimize interruptions -- complete with a "mean sign" saying not to disturb me unless the state forest or the house is on fire!
I have four bookcases in here, and will be ordering another one. I will also be confiscating yet another from the chaos in what should be our living room, and have on order from Kohl's a 5-shelf bookcase to hold CDs and DVDs. I'm in the process of arranging my books on the shelves; I'm so anal retentive, I have them classified according to the Dewey Decimal system. What do you expect? I was trained as a librarian, having got my master's in library science at FSU in 1970.
But it's great to have this space, and I have gotten a great deal done. I'm a little late, having had a bout of the flu after I got back home from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. I can now spend the next terms at home, writing my thesis, since I have completed my in-residence coursework at USFSP.
It took a couple weeks to fully recover from the flu, though it was an abbreviated bout. I had a flu shot in October, and am I ever glad I did. I do not want to think what my bout of flu would have been like had I not had the shot! Temperature up to 102.4 and muscle and joint aches were no fun!
But now I've gotten a lot done on my proposal for my thesis. I want to get that done in a couple more days and run it out to the member of my thesis committee who is at the University of North Florida. Then it, and the signature form signed by the local professor, will go down to St. Pete for my major professor and the program director to sign off on.
I've also found some other sources for my research. I have a stack of books on my desk. This is a great desk -- it's a large oak roll-top we bought from friends who were done with it. It has lots of drawer space, lots of cubbyholes for pens, pencils, and all sorts of other office supplies, and a large writing space, with two writing surfaces that pull out. I have my computer on a wonderful computer desk I bought from Levenger's. And my printer is on a low stand, with room for lots of paper, that my husband lent me.
So I'm jumping in with both feet and enjoying being able to work with few distractions.
I have four bookcases in here, and will be ordering another one. I will also be confiscating yet another from the chaos in what should be our living room, and have on order from Kohl's a 5-shelf bookcase to hold CDs and DVDs. I'm in the process of arranging my books on the shelves; I'm so anal retentive, I have them classified according to the Dewey Decimal system. What do you expect? I was trained as a librarian, having got my master's in library science at FSU in 1970.
But it's great to have this space, and I have gotten a great deal done. I'm a little late, having had a bout of the flu after I got back home from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. I can now spend the next terms at home, writing my thesis, since I have completed my in-residence coursework at USFSP.
It took a couple weeks to fully recover from the flu, though it was an abbreviated bout. I had a flu shot in October, and am I ever glad I did. I do not want to think what my bout of flu would have been like had I not had the shot! Temperature up to 102.4 and muscle and joint aches were no fun!
But now I've gotten a lot done on my proposal for my thesis. I want to get that done in a couple more days and run it out to the member of my thesis committee who is at the University of North Florida. Then it, and the signature form signed by the local professor, will go down to St. Pete for my major professor and the program director to sign off on.
I've also found some other sources for my research. I have a stack of books on my desk. This is a great desk -- it's a large oak roll-top we bought from friends who were done with it. It has lots of drawer space, lots of cubbyholes for pens, pencils, and all sorts of other office supplies, and a large writing space, with two writing surfaces that pull out. I have my computer on a wonderful computer desk I bought from Levenger's. And my printer is on a low stand, with room for lots of paper, that my husband lent me.
So I'm jumping in with both feet and enjoying being able to work with few distractions.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
All done; time to go home
Today I finished my research at the Library of Congress. In addition to the marriage license petitions I mentioned in my last post, I have found a few letters concerning "clandestine marriages," those marriages conducted without a Catholic priest present. This was a punishable offense in Spanish society, being outside the observance of those rules laid down in the Real Pragmática de Casamientos.
There were also several royal edicts, or cédulas, regarding the Real Pragmática, the rules for marriage among the military and among government employees, and the rules for the marriage of slaves. It is going to be interesting transcribing and analyzing these documents. The transcription at times will also be harrowing and frustrating. For example, the document in which the rules for the marriage of slaves is spelled out is heavily damaged by worms. There are other documents which suffer from faded ink or from just plain awful handwriting. That's what makes paleography a challenge.
The research was intriguing. The staff in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress are real pros. They know their collection and are very helpful. I had some frustrating times with the scanning microfilm readers, but that is more because at times machines and I just do not get along.
Now I begin my preparations for going home. I leave Monday afternoon, and am looking forward to getting home. I am not a city person; I prefer suburbia or the country. It is also very hot in Washington, D.C., being the middle of July. City heat is a thing all its own.
I'll post entries here as I go along in the transcription and analysis of the documents, and the development of my thesis. I was hoping to look at how the different governors had applied the Real Pragmática, but the marriage license petitions span only 1785-1803, the administrations of two governors, Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes and Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada. I think there is enough material, and taken together with background reading on the Real Pragmática and other issues relating to marriage, I'm sure I can come up with something.
Just what that will be remains to be seen.
.
There were also several royal edicts, or cédulas, regarding the Real Pragmática, the rules for marriage among the military and among government employees, and the rules for the marriage of slaves. It is going to be interesting transcribing and analyzing these documents. The transcription at times will also be harrowing and frustrating. For example, the document in which the rules for the marriage of slaves is spelled out is heavily damaged by worms. There are other documents which suffer from faded ink or from just plain awful handwriting. That's what makes paleography a challenge.
The research was intriguing. The staff in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress are real pros. They know their collection and are very helpful. I had some frustrating times with the scanning microfilm readers, but that is more because at times machines and I just do not get along.
Now I begin my preparations for going home. I leave Monday afternoon, and am looking forward to getting home. I am not a city person; I prefer suburbia or the country. It is also very hot in Washington, D.C., being the middle of July. City heat is a thing all its own.
I'll post entries here as I go along in the transcription and analysis of the documents, and the development of my thesis. I was hoping to look at how the different governors had applied the Real Pragmática, but the marriage license petitions span only 1785-1803, the administrations of two governors, Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes and Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada. I think there is enough material, and taken together with background reading on the Real Pragmática and other issues relating to marriage, I'm sure I can come up with something.
Just what that will be remains to be seen.
.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Road Trip!
I'm going on a road trip, but not by car. I'm taking the train to Washington, D.C., next Wednesday -- provided that the arrangements get made on time -- for two months of research at the Library of Congress.
Why not fly? I have issues with flying, which make it uncomfortable. One problem could be serious. Even though I was chewing gum and doing all the things you're supposed to do to equalize pressure on landing, I had an excruciating pain in my left ear on landing in Orlando in 2008 when I returned from my research trip to Seville, Spain. Not quite a burst eardrum, but I don't want to take any chances with that!
So, the train. I like the train. Not so far to fall if something goes wrong, which -- knock on my little wooden head -- it won't. And you get to see the scenery, see the real America. I like that.
I'll be mucking about in the East Florida Papers at the Library, looking at the originals for parts which don't show up readably on the microfilms. The 1793 Spanish census of St. Augustine, Florida, is one of those. I'll also be looking at matrimonial license petitions. This research is all for my thesis, which is on the application of the Real Pragmática de Casamiento (Royal Pragmatic of Marriage), proclaimed in 1776 by King Carlos III, and extended to the colonies in 1778. One thing I'm wondering is if the various governors of East Florida in the Second Spanish Period applied the rules differently.
Yeah, it's one of those esoteric airy-fairy thesis topics. But it can be quite important to those of us studying Spanish colonial Florida. At least, I hope it will be. And I hope one of the university presses will think it is, too.
So Monday through Friday, I'll have my nose to the grindstone, reading old Spanish and transcribing. I have a bunch of the matrimonial license petitions already transcribed and some translated, as I am hoping to publish a book of annotated translations of these records. Some of them have wonderful historical and genealogical information in them, and many of them just have good stories! And at bottom, that's what history is to me -- a good story.
Monday and Wednesday evenings, the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room is open to 9:30. I might feel a little antsy about walking to the Metro Station and from the bus stop back to the condo where I'm renting a room, but maybe there are tactics I can employ to make the journey safer.
I'll be haunting that reading room, and also on Saturday using the National Archives, for another project I have in mind, which is a more long-term thing and not for discussion right now. When I have a germ of an idea, I tend to play it close to the vest. My publisher has expressed an interest in this project. It will require further research trips to a couple other cities, something that will be another two years down the road, at least.
But it's enough to keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls for a long time to come!
Why not fly? I have issues with flying, which make it uncomfortable. One problem could be serious. Even though I was chewing gum and doing all the things you're supposed to do to equalize pressure on landing, I had an excruciating pain in my left ear on landing in Orlando in 2008 when I returned from my research trip to Seville, Spain. Not quite a burst eardrum, but I don't want to take any chances with that!
So, the train. I like the train. Not so far to fall if something goes wrong, which -- knock on my little wooden head -- it won't. And you get to see the scenery, see the real America. I like that.
I'll be mucking about in the East Florida Papers at the Library, looking at the originals for parts which don't show up readably on the microfilms. The 1793 Spanish census of St. Augustine, Florida, is one of those. I'll also be looking at matrimonial license petitions. This research is all for my thesis, which is on the application of the Real Pragmática de Casamiento (Royal Pragmatic of Marriage), proclaimed in 1776 by King Carlos III, and extended to the colonies in 1778. One thing I'm wondering is if the various governors of East Florida in the Second Spanish Period applied the rules differently.
Yeah, it's one of those esoteric airy-fairy thesis topics. But it can be quite important to those of us studying Spanish colonial Florida. At least, I hope it will be. And I hope one of the university presses will think it is, too.
So Monday through Friday, I'll have my nose to the grindstone, reading old Spanish and transcribing. I have a bunch of the matrimonial license petitions already transcribed and some translated, as I am hoping to publish a book of annotated translations of these records. Some of them have wonderful historical and genealogical information in them, and many of them just have good stories! And at bottom, that's what history is to me -- a good story.
Monday and Wednesday evenings, the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room is open to 9:30. I might feel a little antsy about walking to the Metro Station and from the bus stop back to the condo where I'm renting a room, but maybe there are tactics I can employ to make the journey safer.
I'll be haunting that reading room, and also on Saturday using the National Archives, for another project I have in mind, which is a more long-term thing and not for discussion right now. When I have a germ of an idea, I tend to play it close to the vest. My publisher has expressed an interest in this project. It will require further research trips to a couple other cities, something that will be another two years down the road, at least.
But it's enough to keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls for a long time to come!
The term is over!
I'm back home from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where I'm running hard after a Master of Liberal Arts in Florida Studies. This term was hard, but I also goofed off a bit. In grad school, there are no Latin Honors (cum laude and all that), no honors in the major, so I have decided to study, yes, but also not to get all knotted up about it, and if I make a B, that's fine. That's all I need. But so far, I seem to be heading toward A's. That's fine, too. I certainly do not mind.
The toughest class was Theory of History. Theoretical stuff makes my head hurt, anyway, but historical theory can get really out there. The professor is a young neo-hippie (doesn't even own a car) who is uber-smart. He's very fond of the French Revolution, so we read a lot of translations of French historians. I've already talked about being a bit of an Annaliste in my own methods. I like background in my histories. We explored other theories and methods, some of them I liked, some I didn't. Post-structuralism (post-modernism) can only, in my opinion, lead to paralysis. If you believe there's no such thing as "truth," what do you do as a historian? Why bother? I think there is such a thing as "truth," though it may not always -- or ever -- be absolute. I think we can say things about the past that are true, and from which we can learn.
The seminar in Modern Florida was not that tough, but there was a lot of reading, some of it absolutely excellent. One of those was Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, an account of a very dark incident in the history of the United States and of Florida. Dr. Arsenault, who conducted the seminar, assigned the book, and almost all of us agreed that it was the best of the books we were assigned. The author, Gilbert King, won a Pulitzer Prize just last month for the book, and it is well-deserved. I did my paper for this course on "Prohibition and the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg, 1927-1933." I'm waiting for feedback from Dr. Arsenault on that. It was fun to do, and interesting to me because Prohibition is one of my favorite periods of U.S. history, and I served in the Coast Guard. My husband also served (he's the reason I joined), and was stationed in St. Petersburg in the early 1970s. Our younger daughter was born there.
And Dr. Arsenault gives great parties!
The last class I took was in Feature Writing (as in newspapers and magazines), which I took to satisfy the writing requirement for the Florida Studies degree. I chose that course, as I figured there would be far less reading in that than in a literature course, which was another way to satisfy the requirement. I didn't need 10 books to read on top of what I had to read for Theory and Modern Florida, and I hate having books assigned and then having to dissect them looking for what I think is often not there. But I won't get into that.
The Feature Writing course was interesting, though the professor in the beginning was too enamored of the technology of the online component. The University of South Florida is switching from Blackboard (used for mounting assignments, receiving submissions of homework and papers, e-mail service to the class, and other functions) to Canvas. We used Blackboard at the University of North Florida, where I did my post-bacc work, and I thought it was a dog. I think Canvas is a pig. Paper works.
The other reason I took Feature Writing was that we actually WROTE! We had to do two major feature articles (2500 words or more). Mine won't be published -- that's not where my interest lies. But it was fascinating to do the articles. The first one was on suicide, a rather grim topic. I learned a heck of a lot, and once I get back home, plan to do some awareness work. It's just so important. The second article was on the great white shark. That was most fascinating. I chose to focus on the shark that was tagged in March off the coast of Jacksonville, FL, and the efforts of OCEARCH to tag and track great white sharks around the world.
And that was my term.
The toughest class was Theory of History. Theoretical stuff makes my head hurt, anyway, but historical theory can get really out there. The professor is a young neo-hippie (doesn't even own a car) who is uber-smart. He's very fond of the French Revolution, so we read a lot of translations of French historians. I've already talked about being a bit of an Annaliste in my own methods. I like background in my histories. We explored other theories and methods, some of them I liked, some I didn't. Post-structuralism (post-modernism) can only, in my opinion, lead to paralysis. If you believe there's no such thing as "truth," what do you do as a historian? Why bother? I think there is such a thing as "truth," though it may not always -- or ever -- be absolute. I think we can say things about the past that are true, and from which we can learn.
The seminar in Modern Florida was not that tough, but there was a lot of reading, some of it absolutely excellent. One of those was Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, an account of a very dark incident in the history of the United States and of Florida. Dr. Arsenault, who conducted the seminar, assigned the book, and almost all of us agreed that it was the best of the books we were assigned. The author, Gilbert King, won a Pulitzer Prize just last month for the book, and it is well-deserved. I did my paper for this course on "Prohibition and the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg, 1927-1933." I'm waiting for feedback from Dr. Arsenault on that. It was fun to do, and interesting to me because Prohibition is one of my favorite periods of U.S. history, and I served in the Coast Guard. My husband also served (he's the reason I joined), and was stationed in St. Petersburg in the early 1970s. Our younger daughter was born there.
And Dr. Arsenault gives great parties!
The last class I took was in Feature Writing (as in newspapers and magazines), which I took to satisfy the writing requirement for the Florida Studies degree. I chose that course, as I figured there would be far less reading in that than in a literature course, which was another way to satisfy the requirement. I didn't need 10 books to read on top of what I had to read for Theory and Modern Florida, and I hate having books assigned and then having to dissect them looking for what I think is often not there. But I won't get into that.
The Feature Writing course was interesting, though the professor in the beginning was too enamored of the technology of the online component. The University of South Florida is switching from Blackboard (used for mounting assignments, receiving submissions of homework and papers, e-mail service to the class, and other functions) to Canvas. We used Blackboard at the University of North Florida, where I did my post-bacc work, and I thought it was a dog. I think Canvas is a pig. Paper works.
The other reason I took Feature Writing was that we actually WROTE! We had to do two major feature articles (2500 words or more). Mine won't be published -- that's not where my interest lies. But it was fascinating to do the articles. The first one was on suicide, a rather grim topic. I learned a heck of a lot, and once I get back home, plan to do some awareness work. It's just so important. The second article was on the great white shark. That was most fascinating. I chose to focus on the shark that was tagged in March off the coast of Jacksonville, FL, and the efforts of OCEARCH to tag and track great white sharks around the world.
And that was my term.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Thesis topic
I have picked a topic for my master's thesis here at good ol' USFSP. My main area of study is colonial Spanish St. Augustine, mainly during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821).
I have decided to examine the application of the Spanish marriage law (the real pragmática de casamiento) in St. Augustine during that period. One of my questions is whether the law was applied differently by different governors. I have not got past the first governor of the Second Spanish Period, Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes, who appears to have been rather an old softie when it came to folks getting married.
Another question is to see how much the law was either bent or completely ignored! It prohibited interracial marriages, but there are documented instances when these did occur, generally of light-skinned mulattoes or octaroons with white Spaniards, and generally among the elites, who probably could get their way no matter what (also one of the questions I'll be looking at).
So I have more reason to go to Washington, D.C., and look at Spanish colonial sources at the Library of Congress, and will have to get onto lots of transcribing when I get done with this term.
.
I have decided to examine the application of the Spanish marriage law (the real pragmática de casamiento) in St. Augustine during that period. One of my questions is whether the law was applied differently by different governors. I have not got past the first governor of the Second Spanish Period, Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes, who appears to have been rather an old softie when it came to folks getting married.
Another question is to see how much the law was either bent or completely ignored! It prohibited interracial marriages, but there are documented instances when these did occur, generally of light-skinned mulattoes or octaroons with white Spaniards, and generally among the elites, who probably could get their way no matter what (also one of the questions I'll be looking at).
So I have more reason to go to Washington, D.C., and look at Spanish colonial sources at the Library of Congress, and will have to get onto lots of transcribing when I get done with this term.
.
Friday, December 14, 2012
The Tome of Testimony
I'm a gamer. Sometimes phrases come to me when I'm writing my papers, phrases couched in terminology used by gamers, or in words that sound like it. I put such a phrase in my paper on the suspension and removal of Al Cahill as sheriff of Duval County, Florida. Cahill was suspended 30 January 1958.
The term was "the tome of testimony," by which I referred to the very thick -- something like 1100 pages -- transcript of grand jury testimony generated by the investigation into the charges made against Cahill. The newspaper reported on the thickness of the transcript. Governor LeRoy Collins remarked, when he received a copy of the transcript by permission of the judge in whose jurisdiction the inquiry was held, that it was "a foot thick."
The transcript probably contained a wealth of information about the case, information which probably would have answered many of the questions arising out of the event.
It is information we historians will never see. Nor will anyone else. Grand jury proceedings, and the transcripts thereof, are secret. Forever.
This is something historians have to deal with, especially when we deal with history that touches on politics and law enforcement. The "smoking gun" is not available. We can only speculate about what information the Tome of Testimony holds, but we'll never get near it.
What I had to do for my paper was look very thoroughly into newspaper reports of the event. It occupied a lot of space in the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville's newspaper, because it was a very big story. There are some other sources. There is a history of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (formed from the old Duval County Sheriff's Office and the Jacksonville Police Department when the city of Jacksonville and Duval County were consolidated in 1968). That book has some information on Cahill's predecessor, Rex Sweat, who was reputed to be corrupt. There is very little on Cahill himself, as he's a character they'd probably rather forget. There is a great deal on Cahill's successor, Dale Carson, a measure of the regard in which he is still held in the Sheriff's Office and the city generally.
There is a popular magazine article on Rex Sweat which also has useful information in it. There are a few items concerning the case in the LeRoy Collins Papers at the library at the University of South Florida, Tampa. One repository I have not yet had a chance to check is the state archive, which I will do before I submit the paper for publication.
The largest source in this case was the newspaper reports, which have to be approached carefully. We have to watch for "loaded" words or words which could be interpreted in more than one way. We have to account for the various meanings or the emotional charge a word may carry. We have to be aware of possible reporter bias or the bias of the newspaper, and we have to take into account the possible agendas of the people being reported on.
It is possible to tell the story of an event from such scant sources, and to perform some analysis of the event and the people involved in it. There will be questions remaining to be addressed by others with different interpretations. There will be questions which will forever remain unanswered. That does not mean that we should not ask them, nor does it mean that we should not try to tell the story.
But there it is, intrepid players of the game of history. Seek thou the Tome of Testimony, only to find that it is concealed forever behind the strongest of magic spells and castle walls. Then seek thou other sources, and use your powers of analysis to crack their secrets.
.
The term was "the tome of testimony," by which I referred to the very thick -- something like 1100 pages -- transcript of grand jury testimony generated by the investigation into the charges made against Cahill. The newspaper reported on the thickness of the transcript. Governor LeRoy Collins remarked, when he received a copy of the transcript by permission of the judge in whose jurisdiction the inquiry was held, that it was "a foot thick."
The transcript probably contained a wealth of information about the case, information which probably would have answered many of the questions arising out of the event.
It is information we historians will never see. Nor will anyone else. Grand jury proceedings, and the transcripts thereof, are secret. Forever.
This is something historians have to deal with, especially when we deal with history that touches on politics and law enforcement. The "smoking gun" is not available. We can only speculate about what information the Tome of Testimony holds, but we'll never get near it.
What I had to do for my paper was look very thoroughly into newspaper reports of the event. It occupied a lot of space in the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville's newspaper, because it was a very big story. There are some other sources. There is a history of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (formed from the old Duval County Sheriff's Office and the Jacksonville Police Department when the city of Jacksonville and Duval County were consolidated in 1968). That book has some information on Cahill's predecessor, Rex Sweat, who was reputed to be corrupt. There is very little on Cahill himself, as he's a character they'd probably rather forget. There is a great deal on Cahill's successor, Dale Carson, a measure of the regard in which he is still held in the Sheriff's Office and the city generally.
There is a popular magazine article on Rex Sweat which also has useful information in it. There are a few items concerning the case in the LeRoy Collins Papers at the library at the University of South Florida, Tampa. One repository I have not yet had a chance to check is the state archive, which I will do before I submit the paper for publication.
The largest source in this case was the newspaper reports, which have to be approached carefully. We have to watch for "loaded" words or words which could be interpreted in more than one way. We have to account for the various meanings or the emotional charge a word may carry. We have to be aware of possible reporter bias or the bias of the newspaper, and we have to take into account the possible agendas of the people being reported on.
It is possible to tell the story of an event from such scant sources, and to perform some analysis of the event and the people involved in it. There will be questions remaining to be addressed by others with different interpretations. There will be questions which will forever remain unanswered. That does not mean that we should not ask them, nor does it mean that we should not try to tell the story.
But there it is, intrepid players of the game of history. Seek thou the Tome of Testimony, only to find that it is concealed forever behind the strongest of magic spells and castle walls. Then seek thou other sources, and use your powers of analysis to crack their secrets.
.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Next step . . .
I got a 98 on my paper on the suspension and removal of Al Cahill as sheriff of Duval County, Florida. The 2 points probably were for technical points.
Now I'm going to polish it up and see about getting it published in a journal.
That's exciting!
.
Now I'm going to polish it up and see about getting it published in a journal.
That's exciting!
.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Is plagiarism-detecting software reliable?
I've had an unpleasant experience with my paper about the suspension of Al Cahill. The professor has required us to submit our papers to a plagiarism-detecting software used by the university. I am not going to name the particular software. And I'm not naming it because I think it's useless.
It said it found a 3% match between my paper and the sorts of sources it checks on the web. Four of the six that it "found" had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of my paper, and in fact had to do with things that have occurred in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not the 1950s. Two of them did have something to do with a part of my paper. One of them was a source I was unaware of; it never showed up in my searches. The other was tagged as being from a newspaper in a Florida city other than the ones in which the central events of the paper took place, that is to say, Jacksonville and the state capital, Tallahassee. I got the particular source from another site, that of a well-known historical society.
If this is the best the software can do -- and the professor told me that this was its function -- it does not seem to me to be very useful in detecting actual plagiarism. The software keyed in on single words, not phrases or paragraphs. Using a single word that might have appeared somewhere in another source does not constitute plagiarism. It's called "vocabulary."
Certainly I can see the thinking behind the use of these programs. But in the old days, before we became so dependent on computers and the internet for everything, a teacher knew the capabilities of his or her students, and could pretty well tell when a paper was written in a style and manner above those capabilities, and would call the student in for The Talk. And the student would get an F. Well, the teacher OUGHT to have known the capabilities of his or her students, but sometimes it did not work that way.
On his senior paper in high school, my brother was accused of plagiarism and given an F with no appeal. The teacher would not budge, even when our mother talked to the teacher The teacher did not bother to attempt to verify whether the charge was justified. She was right, and that was that. She just "knew" my brother "couldn't" have written such a paper. It was on the Yellow Fever epidemic in Jacksonville over a hundred years ago now. What the teacher did not know -- and did not bother to find out -- was that our aunt was at the time Director of Health Information for the State of Florida, and had gotten my brother all sorts of publications. She read the paper, our mother read the paper, and I read the paper. We looked at the sources. He footnoted everything he should have footnoted. Where he did not use footnoted quotations, he used his own words. He did not plagiarize.
Should twenty-first-century plagiarism-detecting software protect the student from lazy teachers as well as allow a professor to detect cribbed papers? Perhaps, but it should do a better job of detecting than focus in on one word -- such as "waiver," which I used in the sense of a waiver of immunity from prosecution -- and return a result of a story from a few days ago (fifty-four years after the events about which I wrote) concerning the President of the United States. I told my professor I was surprised the software did not return references to a bunch of sports articles!
The other thing that makes me very angry is that I was forced -- by the use of this software being required -- to place my paper out there on someone else's server forever. This is my work, and I like to control my work completely until it is published.
Before I will think well of these sorts of programs or services again, they need to make some pretty massive improvements.
.
It said it found a 3% match between my paper and the sorts of sources it checks on the web. Four of the six that it "found" had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of my paper, and in fact had to do with things that have occurred in the second decade of the twenty-first century, not the 1950s. Two of them did have something to do with a part of my paper. One of them was a source I was unaware of; it never showed up in my searches. The other was tagged as being from a newspaper in a Florida city other than the ones in which the central events of the paper took place, that is to say, Jacksonville and the state capital, Tallahassee. I got the particular source from another site, that of a well-known historical society.
If this is the best the software can do -- and the professor told me that this was its function -- it does not seem to me to be very useful in detecting actual plagiarism. The software keyed in on single words, not phrases or paragraphs. Using a single word that might have appeared somewhere in another source does not constitute plagiarism. It's called "vocabulary."
Certainly I can see the thinking behind the use of these programs. But in the old days, before we became so dependent on computers and the internet for everything, a teacher knew the capabilities of his or her students, and could pretty well tell when a paper was written in a style and manner above those capabilities, and would call the student in for The Talk. And the student would get an F. Well, the teacher OUGHT to have known the capabilities of his or her students, but sometimes it did not work that way.
On his senior paper in high school, my brother was accused of plagiarism and given an F with no appeal. The teacher would not budge, even when our mother talked to the teacher The teacher did not bother to attempt to verify whether the charge was justified. She was right, and that was that. She just "knew" my brother "couldn't" have written such a paper. It was on the Yellow Fever epidemic in Jacksonville over a hundred years ago now. What the teacher did not know -- and did not bother to find out -- was that our aunt was at the time Director of Health Information for the State of Florida, and had gotten my brother all sorts of publications. She read the paper, our mother read the paper, and I read the paper. We looked at the sources. He footnoted everything he should have footnoted. Where he did not use footnoted quotations, he used his own words. He did not plagiarize.
Should twenty-first-century plagiarism-detecting software protect the student from lazy teachers as well as allow a professor to detect cribbed papers? Perhaps, but it should do a better job of detecting than focus in on one word -- such as "waiver," which I used in the sense of a waiver of immunity from prosecution -- and return a result of a story from a few days ago (fifty-four years after the events about which I wrote) concerning the President of the United States. I told my professor I was surprised the software did not return references to a bunch of sports articles!
The other thing that makes me very angry is that I was forced -- by the use of this software being required -- to place my paper out there on someone else's server forever. This is my work, and I like to control my work completely until it is published.
Before I will think well of these sorts of programs or services again, they need to make some pretty massive improvements.
.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Papers, papers, papers
It's coming down to the end of the term -- just a little less than a month to go, and it all goes too fast at this point.
So I have three papers to do. I've got the research done on two of them, and almost done on the third. That third one is for my Geologic History of Florida class. It's been fascinating learning how Florida formed out of the ancient bits of this and that tectonic plate. The paper I'm doing is on the formation and composition of the soils around St. Augustine, Florida, which relates it to my overall research project on St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821). One of the aspects I'm interested in is what the people in and around St. Augustine had available to eat, which was, of course, influenced by the condition and capability of the soil.
Another paper is for Early Florida history class, which deals mainly with the First Spanish Period (1513-1763). However, my paper is the oddball in the class, because our professor, who is on the federal commission for the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, scheduled for 2015, wanted a paper done on the 400th anniversary, which took place in 1965, and which ran smack dab into the civil rights movement in St. Augustine. It's been a fascinating study.
The third paper is for my Florida Politics Since World War II class. I'm ambivalent about politics. I've come to feel like the waggish tagline says: Poly = many; tics = bloodsucking insects. But this paper topic I've picked is very interesting in that nobody has written about it in any of the usual academic venues -- books and peer-reviewed journals. There is a paragraph about it in a book on LeRoy Collins; there is another paragraph in a book on the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. There is nothing about it in the Florida Historical Quarterly. So I'm breaking new academic ground here, and that is exciting. Hey, so I'm a nerd!
Anyway, I've mentioned here in this blog what I'm writing about for this class: Governor LeRoy Collins's suspension of Sheriff Al Cahill of Duval County in 1958. I've interviewed a couple retired Jacksonville cops for this, and gotten good information from them. That's fun! These guys are great!
I've had to do a bunch of traveling for these papers, because of course now that I'm going to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, I'm doing papers on events and conditions in North Florida, and have to keep going back up there (where my permanent home is) to do research!
And that's what I've been doing for the past several weeks.
.
So I have three papers to do. I've got the research done on two of them, and almost done on the third. That third one is for my Geologic History of Florida class. It's been fascinating learning how Florida formed out of the ancient bits of this and that tectonic plate. The paper I'm doing is on the formation and composition of the soils around St. Augustine, Florida, which relates it to my overall research project on St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821). One of the aspects I'm interested in is what the people in and around St. Augustine had available to eat, which was, of course, influenced by the condition and capability of the soil.
Another paper is for Early Florida history class, which deals mainly with the First Spanish Period (1513-1763). However, my paper is the oddball in the class, because our professor, who is on the federal commission for the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, scheduled for 2015, wanted a paper done on the 400th anniversary, which took place in 1965, and which ran smack dab into the civil rights movement in St. Augustine. It's been a fascinating study.
The third paper is for my Florida Politics Since World War II class. I'm ambivalent about politics. I've come to feel like the waggish tagline says: Poly = many; tics = bloodsucking insects. But this paper topic I've picked is very interesting in that nobody has written about it in any of the usual academic venues -- books and peer-reviewed journals. There is a paragraph about it in a book on LeRoy Collins; there is another paragraph in a book on the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. There is nothing about it in the Florida Historical Quarterly. So I'm breaking new academic ground here, and that is exciting. Hey, so I'm a nerd!
Anyway, I've mentioned here in this blog what I'm writing about for this class: Governor LeRoy Collins's suspension of Sheriff Al Cahill of Duval County in 1958. I've interviewed a couple retired Jacksonville cops for this, and gotten good information from them. That's fun! These guys are great!
I've had to do a bunch of traveling for these papers, because of course now that I'm going to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, I'm doing papers on events and conditions in North Florida, and have to keep going back up there (where my permanent home is) to do research!
And that's what I've been doing for the past several weeks.
.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Life as a Graduate Student, or: Road Trip!
I have three papers this term, all of which deal with events or conditions back home in north Florida, now that I'm going to graduate school in south Florida! That just figures.
My classes are on Tuesday and Thursday, giving me a four-day weekend. That makes going home quite doable. I had not expected to come back much before next month, but decided to come up and do some research. It has been rather a disappointment to the family, because my main purpose being research has meant not much family time, but my husband and I did watch "Apollo 13" last night -- even though half the time I had my nose in my computer, arranging the newspaper articles I had photographed off the microfilm at the library! Such is the life of a graduate student.
I did, however, see enough of the movie for the final several minutes to bring the usual tears to my eyes. I can't see that movie without getting teary-eyed. I remember that event, and the waiting to see if the astronauts had made it through re-entry.
I've spent the last two days, Friday and Saturday, in the main Jacksonville Public Library. I left Pinellas Park early Friday and went directly to the library (after having lunch at a favorite restaurant in Jacksonville's Riverside neighborhood, that is). I spent the afternoon going through the Florida Times-Union index and found some interesting and wonderful information for my paper in the Florida politics course.
That paper deals with Governor Leroy Collins's suspension of Duval County sheriff Al Cahill in 1958. Lots has been written about Leroy Collins and his term as governor of Florida. The vast majority of these writings have to do with his actions related to civil rights. Nobody, as far as I have found out, has written anything about the suspension of Cahill.
That event is another one I remember. I grew up in Jacksonville. I was eleven years old at the time, and I read the newspapers. The story was all over the papers and the television news. Cahill had just taken office the year before, having defeated Rex Sweat, who had been sheriff of Duval County since 1932. His removal was the end of a string of sheriffs who attained office with no prior law enforcement experience. A new tone was set when Governor Collins appointed Dale G. Carson, an FBI agent, as Cahill's replacement.
I have a number of questions I'll be addressing in this paper. I'm going to enjoy this -- I do like breaking new ground. That's what we historians are supposed to do.
.
My classes are on Tuesday and Thursday, giving me a four-day weekend. That makes going home quite doable. I had not expected to come back much before next month, but decided to come up and do some research. It has been rather a disappointment to the family, because my main purpose being research has meant not much family time, but my husband and I did watch "Apollo 13" last night -- even though half the time I had my nose in my computer, arranging the newspaper articles I had photographed off the microfilm at the library! Such is the life of a graduate student.
I did, however, see enough of the movie for the final several minutes to bring the usual tears to my eyes. I can't see that movie without getting teary-eyed. I remember that event, and the waiting to see if the astronauts had made it through re-entry.
I've spent the last two days, Friday and Saturday, in the main Jacksonville Public Library. I left Pinellas Park early Friday and went directly to the library (after having lunch at a favorite restaurant in Jacksonville's Riverside neighborhood, that is). I spent the afternoon going through the Florida Times-Union index and found some interesting and wonderful information for my paper in the Florida politics course.
That paper deals with Governor Leroy Collins's suspension of Duval County sheriff Al Cahill in 1958. Lots has been written about Leroy Collins and his term as governor of Florida. The vast majority of these writings have to do with his actions related to civil rights. Nobody, as far as I have found out, has written anything about the suspension of Cahill.
That event is another one I remember. I grew up in Jacksonville. I was eleven years old at the time, and I read the newspapers. The story was all over the papers and the television news. Cahill had just taken office the year before, having defeated Rex Sweat, who had been sheriff of Duval County since 1932. His removal was the end of a string of sheriffs who attained office with no prior law enforcement experience. A new tone was set when Governor Collins appointed Dale G. Carson, an FBI agent, as Cahill's replacement.
I have a number of questions I'll be addressing in this paper. I'm going to enjoy this -- I do like breaking new ground. That's what we historians are supposed to do.
.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Journal advice
I had lunch with my friend Barbara today. We met in 1986 at a Star Trek movie. We were big Trek fans then, and accumulated a circle of friends who were, too. We had some great times. We have moved on, yet we fondly remember those days. Our friends have moved on with us, and we still keep in touch with the hard core.
Barbara is optimistic and a fountain of positive wisdom. She has encouraged me to keep a daily journal, even if only to write one sentence. So I'm going to do that. The journal will be hard copy, and sometimes I will record in there things that I wish to keep private. But I will also, from time to time, reprint here the entries that pertain to the subject of this blog: the journey of a historian-in-training.
The first entry will probably be tonight. Tomorrow is the day my husband and I lug a bunch of my stuff -- mostly books! -- to my new digs, in the home of a family friend, four hours south of where we make our home. I'm looking forward to the living arrangement, which is eminently suitable for both of us. Our friend has just painted the interior of her house, and is also going to install a new ceiling fan for me in my room. I saw the color she had in mind for my room, and I like it a lot.
I'm looking forward to the program in which I will be working on my master's degree. The Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is an interdisciplinary program, and in addition to history courses concentrating mainly on colonial Spanish Florida, I will take courses in other subjects which are related and which I think will enhance my research.
For instance, this term, in addition to a seminar in Early Florida and a seminar in Florida Politics Since World War II (which is required of all Florida Studies majors), I will be taking Geologic History of Florida. I think an understanding of the geology is important to my understanding of the soils of St. Augustine, which in turn is necessary to an understanding of what food crops would grow there!
Related to that will be a course or courses in the environment and environmental history of Florida. I have already had one course in Florida's environmental history at the University of North Florida. That course concentrated on the area of the St. Johns River, which includes St. Augustine. I had not anticipated the course would be so deeply relevant to my inquiries, but it surprised me.
I also anticipate taking a basic economics course, because part of my study of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period is to study the economy, possibly to find new material to bring out about that economy, from information I will be digging out of the East Florida Papers and other original documents.
My car is packed, and tomorrow we put the rest of my stuff -- including a bookcase, a file cabinet, and my office chair -- in my husband's F-150. This is going to be an adventure.
.
Barbara is optimistic and a fountain of positive wisdom. She has encouraged me to keep a daily journal, even if only to write one sentence. So I'm going to do that. The journal will be hard copy, and sometimes I will record in there things that I wish to keep private. But I will also, from time to time, reprint here the entries that pertain to the subject of this blog: the journey of a historian-in-training.
The first entry will probably be tonight. Tomorrow is the day my husband and I lug a bunch of my stuff -- mostly books! -- to my new digs, in the home of a family friend, four hours south of where we make our home. I'm looking forward to the living arrangement, which is eminently suitable for both of us. Our friend has just painted the interior of her house, and is also going to install a new ceiling fan for me in my room. I saw the color she had in mind for my room, and I like it a lot.
I'm looking forward to the program in which I will be working on my master's degree. The Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is an interdisciplinary program, and in addition to history courses concentrating mainly on colonial Spanish Florida, I will take courses in other subjects which are related and which I think will enhance my research.
For instance, this term, in addition to a seminar in Early Florida and a seminar in Florida Politics Since World War II (which is required of all Florida Studies majors), I will be taking Geologic History of Florida. I think an understanding of the geology is important to my understanding of the soils of St. Augustine, which in turn is necessary to an understanding of what food crops would grow there!
Related to that will be a course or courses in the environment and environmental history of Florida. I have already had one course in Florida's environmental history at the University of North Florida. That course concentrated on the area of the St. Johns River, which includes St. Augustine. I had not anticipated the course would be so deeply relevant to my inquiries, but it surprised me.
I also anticipate taking a basic economics course, because part of my study of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period is to study the economy, possibly to find new material to bring out about that economy, from information I will be digging out of the East Florida Papers and other original documents.
My car is packed, and tomorrow we put the rest of my stuff -- including a bookcase, a file cabinet, and my office chair -- in my husband's F-150. This is going to be an adventure.
.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
What Kind of Historian Am I? - part 2
So in my last post on this topic, I declared that I am a "historicist" - that is, I hold to the idea that we must evaluate historical persons and events in terms of their own times, not our times.
The next "school" of history and historiography I identify with is called the Annales school, named after a group of French historians led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, publishers of the Annales d'histoire economique et sociale (Annals of Economic and Social History). As with my historicism, I arrived at my congruence with the Annalistes by my own route, in thinking about why we do history and how we do history. I figure things out on my own; I do not seek out ideologies to identify with. In fact, I distrust and am highly suspicious of ideologies and ideologues.
The Annalistes got tired of the dominance of political and diplomatic history. There's more to it than that, they realized. They sought a holistic approach. They looked at the big picture. I like the big picture; too many people today are short-sighted, concentrating on minutiae, when they should step back and see the broader landscape. That broader landscape is what I am after in my study of history.
Annalistes like Fernand Braudel embarked on massive studies. Braudel produced a two-volume work, The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which encompassed political, social, economic, intellectual and geographic factors. This is the sort of thing I'm after in my study of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821). There were political factors at play, such as repeated attempts by British colonists, and later by Americans, to take Florida from Spain; there were economic factors -- shortages of cold cash and staple goods; there were social factors -- the Catholic church, practices concerning marriage and child-rearing, for instance; there were geographic factors -- St. Augustine is bordered by rivers and a swamp, and the presence of the swamp produced public health problems. History, I have always been convinced, is a great deal more complex than we usually find it presented in books.
Basically, what I'm looking for is a Unified Field Theory of history!
.
The next "school" of history and historiography I identify with is called the Annales school, named after a group of French historians led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, publishers of the Annales d'histoire economique et sociale (Annals of Economic and Social History). As with my historicism, I arrived at my congruence with the Annalistes by my own route, in thinking about why we do history and how we do history. I figure things out on my own; I do not seek out ideologies to identify with. In fact, I distrust and am highly suspicious of ideologies and ideologues.
The Annalistes got tired of the dominance of political and diplomatic history. There's more to it than that, they realized. They sought a holistic approach. They looked at the big picture. I like the big picture; too many people today are short-sighted, concentrating on minutiae, when they should step back and see the broader landscape. That broader landscape is what I am after in my study of history.
Annalistes like Fernand Braudel embarked on massive studies. Braudel produced a two-volume work, The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which encompassed political, social, economic, intellectual and geographic factors. This is the sort of thing I'm after in my study of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821). There were political factors at play, such as repeated attempts by British colonists, and later by Americans, to take Florida from Spain; there were economic factors -- shortages of cold cash and staple goods; there were social factors -- the Catholic church, practices concerning marriage and child-rearing, for instance; there were geographic factors -- St. Augustine is bordered by rivers and a swamp, and the presence of the swamp produced public health problems. History, I have always been convinced, is a great deal more complex than we usually find it presented in books.
Basically, what I'm looking for is a Unified Field Theory of history!
.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A Little Florida History: the Midwives' Song
Today I am going to relate a tale from my own childhood, which reveals a little Florida history from the mid-twentieth century.
My aunt, Elizabeth Reed, was a public health nurse and in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Director of Health Information for the State Board of Health, as it was known in those days. Today it is the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
In this capacity, she traveled around the state of Florida, making speeches, observing conditions, and otherwise gathering data on Florida public health. One experience she had was in the Florida panhandle, in Tallahassee, with a group of midwives who served the surrounding rural area, in the 1940s. There was a shortage of doctors in these rural areas, so these midwives were on the front lines in assuring safe childbirth. The state of Florida wanted to assure that they used the latest in aseptic practice (handwashing, sterilizing equipment, etc.).
These women were in the main not well-educated. The nurses who trained them used "visual aids," as in one meeting where the nurse was making the point that the infant mortality rate was still too high, and emphasizing the need for good aseptic practice. The nurse stood at the head of the group with a jar of beans, saying that for every bean in the jar, there had been a woman or child who died in childbirth as a result of carelessness on the part of a midwife or midwives.
Just then, two women entered the meeting late, and took seats in the back of the room. Another woman seated up front looked back and saw them. Then she turned forward again and said to the nurse who was training them, "You see Sister A---- what just come in? Two of them beans is hers!"
The ladies had a song they sang for what today would be called "team building." Here are the first two verses and the chorus. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the third verse.
The Midwives' Song
We midwives will help you
As your dearest friend,
For we are all midwives indeed!
We help build the nation,
Assistance we lend,
For we are all midwives indeed!
For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
There are babies in Heaven,
Who should be on Earth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
They had no good midwife
Assist them in birth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
.
My aunt, Elizabeth Reed, was a public health nurse and in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Director of Health Information for the State Board of Health, as it was known in those days. Today it is the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
In this capacity, she traveled around the state of Florida, making speeches, observing conditions, and otherwise gathering data on Florida public health. One experience she had was in the Florida panhandle, in Tallahassee, with a group of midwives who served the surrounding rural area, in the 1940s. There was a shortage of doctors in these rural areas, so these midwives were on the front lines in assuring safe childbirth. The state of Florida wanted to assure that they used the latest in aseptic practice (handwashing, sterilizing equipment, etc.).
These women were in the main not well-educated. The nurses who trained them used "visual aids," as in one meeting where the nurse was making the point that the infant mortality rate was still too high, and emphasizing the need for good aseptic practice. The nurse stood at the head of the group with a jar of beans, saying that for every bean in the jar, there had been a woman or child who died in childbirth as a result of carelessness on the part of a midwife or midwives.
Just then, two women entered the meeting late, and took seats in the back of the room. Another woman seated up front looked back and saw them. Then she turned forward again and said to the nurse who was training them, "You see Sister A---- what just come in? Two of them beans is hers!"
The ladies had a song they sang for what today would be called "team building." Here are the first two verses and the chorus. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the third verse.
The Midwives' Song
We midwives will help you
As your dearest friend,
For we are all midwives indeed!
We help build the nation,
Assistance we lend,
For we are all midwives indeed!
For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
There are babies in Heaven,
Who should be on Earth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
They had no good midwife
Assist them in birth,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
For we are all midwives, indeed! (Hallelujah!)
For we are all midwives, indeed!
We know what is right,
And we work day and night,
For we are all midwives, indeed!
.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
What kind of historian am I?
That's a question I am spending some time this summer thinking about. I am reading a book on historiography - the study of writing about history. It is Caroline Hoefferle's The Essential Historiographic Reader, in which the author describes the various "schools" of historigraphy by discussing their history and development. She starts with the Greeks and Romans and moves forward right up to the 21st century.
Some of the schools of historiography do not impress me, and many of them have been discredited by time and historical events - so history affects itself. However, I have found out that I am, for one thing, a "historicist." This school tells us we must examine the past on its own terms. I have long been critical of "presentism" - judging the past by the standards of the present. I have felt that the only fair way to examine history is to examine it in terms of its times. Sure, these days we are convinced (well, most of us . . . ) that slavery was and is an evil. But when we are talking about ancient Rome and its system of slavery, when we are talking about the events before and during the Civil War and about the causes of that war, we need to put ourselves in the ethos of those time periods. Unless we do that, we cannot understand what the concept of slavery meant to those people, or to certain segments of the people, at that time, which means we cannot have a firm understanding of how these conditions came to exist in the first place.
Or, take the case of Prohibition, the era of the Volstead Act (1919-1933) in the U.S. Nowadays, we are convinced that the Volstead Act was a mistake, a stupid law that did nothing to curb or eliminate excessive drinking, drunkenness, and the social toll they exact, and did everything to give rise to the modern specter of organized crime. But when we want to examine the roots of the Volstead Act, the conditions and social movements that led up to its passage, we have to place ourselves in that time period, using the social and emotional tools that they people of the time had available. We cannot look at it through 21st century eyes and give an accurate and reliable account of how it came about.
I arrived at this viewpoint through reading and thinking about history, and about how I would go about doing it. So, okay, I'm a historicist. And schools of historiography are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I have several other books on historiography that I am going to plow through in the next several months. I will post again on my explorations into what kind of historian I am.
.
Some of the schools of historiography do not impress me, and many of them have been discredited by time and historical events - so history affects itself. However, I have found out that I am, for one thing, a "historicist." This school tells us we must examine the past on its own terms. I have long been critical of "presentism" - judging the past by the standards of the present. I have felt that the only fair way to examine history is to examine it in terms of its times. Sure, these days we are convinced (well, most of us . . . ) that slavery was and is an evil. But when we are talking about ancient Rome and its system of slavery, when we are talking about the events before and during the Civil War and about the causes of that war, we need to put ourselves in the ethos of those time periods. Unless we do that, we cannot understand what the concept of slavery meant to those people, or to certain segments of the people, at that time, which means we cannot have a firm understanding of how these conditions came to exist in the first place.
Or, take the case of Prohibition, the era of the Volstead Act (1919-1933) in the U.S. Nowadays, we are convinced that the Volstead Act was a mistake, a stupid law that did nothing to curb or eliminate excessive drinking, drunkenness, and the social toll they exact, and did everything to give rise to the modern specter of organized crime. But when we want to examine the roots of the Volstead Act, the conditions and social movements that led up to its passage, we have to place ourselves in that time period, using the social and emotional tools that they people of the time had available. We cannot look at it through 21st century eyes and give an accurate and reliable account of how it came about.
I arrived at this viewpoint through reading and thinking about history, and about how I would go about doing it. So, okay, I'm a historicist. And schools of historiography are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I have several other books on historiography that I am going to plow through in the next several months. I will post again on my explorations into what kind of historian I am.
.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Hurry up and wait
So I have my application in to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. My transcripts have been ordered. I've mailed off my request for a waiver of the GRE. I've indicated who I want letters of recommendation from. I've submitted a letter of intent (why do I want to get into the Florida Studies program?), and I've sent a writing sample.
Now it is time to sit patiently and wait, something I'm completely incapable of! So I'll be itching and climbing the walls until I hear. And so it goes.
.
Now it is time to sit patiently and wait, something I'm completely incapable of! So I'll be itching and climbing the walls until I hear. And so it goes.
.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
All Graduated
Yesterday was graduation day at the University of North Florida. It was a lot of "hurry up and wait," so it reminded me of having been in the Coast Guard!
But the "hurry up and wait" was made bearable by friends giving good wishes and making happy talk, and by making acquaintances in the hallway where we were waiting, and just having a good time. (Read "Six Degrees of Karen Rhodes," today's entry in my blog Karen About Genealogy to see how connections worked yesterday).
Finally, the time came to line up and filter into the arena floor, where quite comfortable (thank goodness!) folding chairs awaited us. I was in the last row, but that made me visible to my family, and they got lots of pictures. The young man sitting to my right, Ray, had acquired his 5-year-old son from grandma and grandpa, sitting nearby in the audience, and held him on his lap for most of the ceremony. The lad was quite well-behaved, and Ray took him on stage with him.
After being photographed by three photographers as I came off the stage, I was waylaid by a friend who gave me a big hug. We exchanged congratulations. Moving down the aisle back to the seats, I was ambushed by three professors and given big hugs. One professor admonished me that I need more degrees (this is my fourth college degree, and my second Bachelor of Arts). I said I was working on it!
Another professor accosted me before I got back to the row. Then it was time for the recessional, and it was all done.
So my time at UNF passes into memory. It was fun! It was challenging. It was an experience I would not trade for all of anyone's money. I may have received my Phi Beta Kappa key at Florida State University in 1969, but I feel like I earned it at UNF in the last four years.
Stay tuned for the further adventures of a historian-in-training. Next step: Get my application in to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
.
But the "hurry up and wait" was made bearable by friends giving good wishes and making happy talk, and by making acquaintances in the hallway where we were waiting, and just having a good time. (Read "Six Degrees of Karen Rhodes," today's entry in my blog Karen About Genealogy to see how connections worked yesterday).
Finally, the time came to line up and filter into the arena floor, where quite comfortable (thank goodness!) folding chairs awaited us. I was in the last row, but that made me visible to my family, and they got lots of pictures. The young man sitting to my right, Ray, had acquired his 5-year-old son from grandma and grandpa, sitting nearby in the audience, and held him on his lap for most of the ceremony. The lad was quite well-behaved, and Ray took him on stage with him.
After being photographed by three photographers as I came off the stage, I was waylaid by a friend who gave me a big hug. We exchanged congratulations. Moving down the aisle back to the seats, I was ambushed by three professors and given big hugs. One professor admonished me that I need more degrees (this is my fourth college degree, and my second Bachelor of Arts). I said I was working on it!
Another professor accosted me before I got back to the row. Then it was time for the recessional, and it was all done.
So my time at UNF passes into memory. It was fun! It was challenging. It was an experience I would not trade for all of anyone's money. I may have received my Phi Beta Kappa key at Florida State University in 1969, but I feel like I earned it at UNF in the last four years.
Stay tuned for the further adventures of a historian-in-training. Next step: Get my application in to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
.
Monday, April 23, 2012
DEE-fense!
Happy to report that I lived through the defense. My husband accompanied me, for moral support. Also, it's part of the entertainment, and one thing I do is keep him entertained.
Before the session started, we talked to Dr. David Sheffler, the medievalist in the history department. He was the other member of my thesis committee. Undergraduate honors theses need only 2 committee members. I asked Dr. Sheffler if he was prepared with his rubber hose, and he did let me know that the department had outlawed waterboarding last month.
Kidding aside, we began the session. Dr. J. Michael Francis, one of the latinamericanists in the department, and the department chair, came in and we started after I introduced my husband.
They began by asking me how I had come up with the idea of my thesis -- that is, that godparenthood in St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period served as a vehicle for the transmission of values, influence and status -- how I developed it, and what methodologies and sources I had used. That was not difficult.
Then they -- particularly Dr. Francis, as he is more familiar with the location, though his period is the 16th century rather than the late eighteenth and early nineteenth that I'm working in -- asked more penetrating questions, which I was also able to respond to. The idea is not, as some may think (and some may experience) to tear the thesis and the argument to shreds, but to bring up the questions that the material may demand. They both said there was a lot of meat in my paper, which generated lots of questions. And the questions were not necessarily designed to challenge either my thesis or my argument, though some were. There were plenty of questions which dealt with collateral study opportunities which may arise naturally out of the material I am uncovering.
I am breaking new ground, and this is an important part of a thesis. If I can complete some of my project -- enough to really show something about godparenthood, or enough to enable a really practical, useful population picture of St. Augustine to be derived -- in three years, in time for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine's founding, Dr. Francis said I'll be "the golden girl." It could put me very much in demand for making presentations. That would be great. So I have to groom some aspect of this same project for my master's thesis, so I can advance the work just that much more.
I also need to spend the summer not only reading, but also transcribing and translating original documents, either from the East Florida Papers, which are available locally on microfilm, or from actual documents held by the Florida State Archives. I plan an archives visit this summer. Next summer, with some of Dr. Francis's travel money for students in the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg (pending my acceptance there), I hope to go to Washington, D.C., to work with the originals of the East Florida Papers, for those portions which do not show up well on microfilm.
It is going to be a busy two years!
.
Before the session started, we talked to Dr. David Sheffler, the medievalist in the history department. He was the other member of my thesis committee. Undergraduate honors theses need only 2 committee members. I asked Dr. Sheffler if he was prepared with his rubber hose, and he did let me know that the department had outlawed waterboarding last month.
Kidding aside, we began the session. Dr. J. Michael Francis, one of the latinamericanists in the department, and the department chair, came in and we started after I introduced my husband.
They began by asking me how I had come up with the idea of my thesis -- that is, that godparenthood in St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period served as a vehicle for the transmission of values, influence and status -- how I developed it, and what methodologies and sources I had used. That was not difficult.
Then they -- particularly Dr. Francis, as he is more familiar with the location, though his period is the 16th century rather than the late eighteenth and early nineteenth that I'm working in -- asked more penetrating questions, which I was also able to respond to. The idea is not, as some may think (and some may experience) to tear the thesis and the argument to shreds, but to bring up the questions that the material may demand. They both said there was a lot of meat in my paper, which generated lots of questions. And the questions were not necessarily designed to challenge either my thesis or my argument, though some were. There were plenty of questions which dealt with collateral study opportunities which may arise naturally out of the material I am uncovering.
I am breaking new ground, and this is an important part of a thesis. If I can complete some of my project -- enough to really show something about godparenthood, or enough to enable a really practical, useful population picture of St. Augustine to be derived -- in three years, in time for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine's founding, Dr. Francis said I'll be "the golden girl." It could put me very much in demand for making presentations. That would be great. So I have to groom some aspect of this same project for my master's thesis, so I can advance the work just that much more.
I also need to spend the summer not only reading, but also transcribing and translating original documents, either from the East Florida Papers, which are available locally on microfilm, or from actual documents held by the Florida State Archives. I plan an archives visit this summer. Next summer, with some of Dr. Francis's travel money for students in the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg (pending my acceptance there), I hope to go to Washington, D.C., to work with the originals of the East Florida Papers, for those portions which do not show up well on microfilm.
It is going to be a busy two years!
.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The defendant will please rise . . .
Tomorrow, I will be undergoing my first thesis defense. I have written an undergraduate honors thesis. Many departments do not require undergraduates to defend their honors theses; the history department does. Facetiously, Dr. Francis, my mentoring professor and the department chair, and chair of my thesis committee, told the department secretary to reserve the conference room for "Karen Rhodes's interrogation." I told him to be sure to bring rubber hoses.
To say I am a little nervous would be the truth. I'm not sure what to expect, beyond that I had better doggone well be familiar with what I have written! As to that, I just did a complete read-through (and caught a few typos) just to have it a little more fresh in memory. Memory's a tricky thing to a 65-year-old undergrad!
After the experience tomorrow, I will blog about what it was like.
As soon as I recover from the blows of the rubber hoses!
.
To say I am a little nervous would be the truth. I'm not sure what to expect, beyond that I had better doggone well be familiar with what I have written! As to that, I just did a complete read-through (and caught a few typos) just to have it a little more fresh in memory. Memory's a tricky thing to a 65-year-old undergrad!
After the experience tomorrow, I will blog about what it was like.
As soon as I recover from the blows of the rubber hoses!
.
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