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!
Thursday, May 9, 2013
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.
.
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