Just returned from a wonderful trip back to Montreal for the Jazz Festival. This was our third trip to the city for this festival and it is one of our favorites. I love the fact that you can drive roughly five hours from Boston to a city that offers a taste of Europe. We ate ourselves silly and caught a couple of excellent shows. Here are a few links to tide you over until I get back into the swing of things.
- Brooks Simpson suggests that I missed an opportunity to comment on the presence of a black Confederate at Gettysburg. I will take a Montreal cafe over an individual that I reported on once before any day of the week.
- David Thompson interviews Carrie Janney about her new book on Civil War memory. I finished it and will write a review for the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. It goes without saying that the book is a must read
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- Andy Hall explores Paula Deen’s memory of her own family’s involvement with slavery and the process uncovers some interesting sources.
- I absolutely love the decision by the National Park Service at Gettysburg to allow the general public to recreate Pickett’s Charge rather than stage it with folks pretending to be soldiers. The former truly honors the memory of those who served.
- Check out Ed Ayers’s Banner Lecture at the VHS on the Seven Days Campaign.
- On the blogging front, Keith Harris has a new site and Jimmy Price has refocused his. Check them out.
- The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier decision that allows the city of Lexington to bar Confederate flags from public poles. Hopefully, that will be the last we hear of this.
Upcoming Talks: On Thursday I head out to the Framingham History Center to work with area teachers on how they can introduce students to the study of Massachusetts Civil War veterans and Civil War memory. The center utilizes the city’s GAR Hall as a museum and lecture hall and includes a soldier statue by Martin Milmore out front. Given the subject of my presentation I couldn’t ask for a more appropriate setting and we will certainly make good use of it.
Those of you in the Boston area can catch me at the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation area on July 21. I am going to talk a bit about the Civil War Sesquicentennial and local sites related to Civil War memory. Should be fun.
Hope all of you are enjoying the summer.
Thanks for the shout out! I’m glad you enjoyed that jazz stuff.
Hi Kevin,
Many thanks for the shout out!
You’re a good guy, no matter what Brooks says.
Thanks again,
Jimmy
Yeah … what he says.
And you missed Peter Carmichael getting embroiled in another dispute on how to deal with the history of the Civil War. I must note that he posted a comment to the article in which he disputed the tone and the accuracy of the article in conveying his views. In terms of placating the reenactor community, I’m not sure it helped, particularly in his distinction between living history (he approves) and mock battles (“I believe it leads to the mystification of war for all involved. I don’t think war should become a spectator sport. This is a reasonable objection that deserves consideration and civil conversation. It is far from an elitist perspective.”). Here’s the article and it contains his comment. http://blog.pennlive.com/gettysburg-150/2013/07/should_civil_war_re-enactments.html#incart_special-report
Hi Margaret,
Didn’t miss it. Just chose to ignore it for now.
Your call. Probably no good could come from wading into that one and it would likely generate more heat than light.
Margaret,
When have I ever worried about the “heat”? I pretty much agree with Peter. I’ve never believed that battlefield reenactments reveal anything interesting about the reality of Civil War battles. If anything they push us further from understanding salient aspects of the experience. That said, I do see the value of living historians if you can find the relative few who are qualified.
Kevin-I don’t recall saying or even implying that you were worried about the heat. I was talking about what the comments might be, based on the reaction to the original article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.
My bad.