Barry Moses on Drumheller Spring and Grand Coulee Dam

Here is a fine short video of Spokan tribal member and Spokane Community College instructor Barry Moses, speaking about how the Spokans used (and still use!) some of the natural resources of the area. I love his story about his grandmother and Drumheller Springs, and how he brings the tale around to his own discovery of bitter root in the park. There are some good observations about the impact of Grand Coulee Dam as well.

Moses also blogs (sometimes in Salish) at Sulustu. He may be the only person in the world blogging in Salish?

The video, but the way, was originally filmed during a 2010 educational tour of the Spokane River sponsored by the Center for Justice. I had the privilege of being on the tour and it was great--the experts on the tour were Barry Moses, Jack Nesbit, and Bill Youngs, and we had stops at Spokane House, along the Little Spokane River, and at the Spokane Falls. A film of highlight of the entire event airs sometimes on Spokane's open-access cable channel, Community Minded Television.

Progress in the Battle to Save the Jensen-Byrd

Jensen-Byrd building by Flickr user Terry Bain.
(Thank you Terry for choosing Creative Commons licensing.)

This morning we have some good news about the fight to preserve Spokane's most-endangered historic building, the Jensen-Byrd. According to a Spokesman-Review article, the Historic Preservation Commission has ruled that the Jensen-Byrd is eligible for historic preservation: "The commission’s decision Wednesday designates the Jensen-Byrd building, which has been vacant since 2004, as eligible to be nominated for the Spokane Register of Historic Places.That decision now places a burden on Campus Advantage to establish reasons why it should proceed with demolition, said Kristen Griffin, the city-county historic preservation officer."

The article went on to state that the developer planning to raze the building, Campus Advantage, "has a contract with WSU to buy the building, but that deal has contingencies that could cancel the sale...Macejewski [a Campus Advantage executive] said he couldn’t comment on whether the restrictions on obtaining a demolition permit would jeopardize the sale."

What does this mean for Spokane history? I think if the public outcry is great enough, we can either get WSU to reverse the decision, or perhaps scare off the developer by adding uncertainty and delays to the process. Keep up the pressure! Spokane Preservation Advocates has been spearheading the public effort to save this historic building, their advocacy page has information on how to contact WSU to protest this unnecessary destruction.

Spokane has lost a lot of great buildings that could have been saved. But I have a sense that we as a community have reached a tipping point, where we come together and say enough is enough. If we save this building, it could mark a new era of historic preservation in Spokane.

The History of Hawaii as a Series of Plate Lunches

I am all for quirky ways of using technology to teach history, and this is absolutely charming. The video is "Unfamiliar Fishes" by "social observer" Sarah Vowell. Vowell is also the author of Assassination Vacation, a book about visiting the sites of presidential assassinations, and is an all around internet-enhanced author/personality. Enjoy. And keep an eye out for my upcoming YouTube viral video, "The History of Spokane as a Series of Chili Cheese Dogs."

Northwest History at Common-Place

It has been a while since I mentioned the marvelous online history journal Common-place, which describes itself as "a bit friendlier than a scholarly journal, a bit more scholarly than a popular magazine, Common-place speaks--and listens--to scholars, museum curators, teachers, hobbyists, and just about anyone interested in American history before 1900."

It is difficult to find that historical sweet spot in-between popular storytelling and academic rigor, and Common-Place hits that mark more often than any publication I know (except maybe for Montana the Magazine of Western History).

Common-place deals mostly in colonial and early national history, but if you poke around in their archives there are some real gems of northwest history. Below are some fine pieces on Francis Parkman, the fisheries at Celilo Falls, a photographer on the Oregon Trail, and first contacts in Alaska.

Common-place: The Pathfinder's Lost Instruments It became the Emigrant Road, the main trunk of the trails to Oregon, Utah, and ...Benton had his eye on Oregon, which at the time meant all the country west of ... www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-04/rea/

Common-place: Talk of the Past The Horseshoe Falls, the most photographed part of Celilo Falls, was close to theOregon shore. Until its inundation, Celilo Falls was by far the biggest tourist ... www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/talk/

Common-place: Hayden's Gaze Science and art come to the Oregon Trail. When the photographer William Henry Jackson posed fourteen men around a table in a field, propped a deer head on ... www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/rea/

Common-place: First Meetings in the North Pacific For the best recent history of Alaska, see Stephen Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony (Seattle, 2002). For a recent and more pro-Russian position see ... www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-02/namias/index.shtml

Act Now to Save a Spokane Landmark

What is a community to do when a university is destroying its historic fabric?

The Jensen-Byrd building, 1909-2012 (?)

Washington State University announced last week that one of Spokane's landmark historic buildings, the Jensen-Byrd building, would be torn down to be replaced with student apartments. This despite the fact that a local developer has offered to buy the building for the same price and save it. A WSU spokesperson explained that they went with the wrecking ball because that buyer offered to pay WSU more quickly.

It might not be too late to stop the destruction of this important piece of Spokane history. The Spokane Preservation Advocates has issued an action alert calling on citizens to mount an email campaign to save the building. They ask that you contact WSU President Elson Floyd at presidentsoffice@wsu.edu and Chair of the Board of Regents Theodor Baseler at hoytc@wsu.edu (also that you CC spa@spokanepreservation.org). Ask them to preserve this Spokane Landmark. Here is the letter I just sent, which you may adapt if you like:


Dear President Floyd and Chairman Baseler:

I think you would be surprised to know the amount of disappointment and anger that has been generated here in Spokane over your decision to tear down one of our most historic buildings, the Jensen-Byrd building.

Dating from 1909, the building is a grand testament to Spokane at the peak of its early growth. The Spokane Preservation Advocates recently recognized the Jensen-Byrd building as one of the top historic structures in the Spokane region.

All over the country buildings such as the Jensen-Byrd are being renovated and breathing new life into their communities. Indeed a local developer, Ron Wells, has offered to buy and preserve the building. But you have chosen instead to tear down a piece of Spokane history, simply (according to press reports) to get your money more quickly.

It is not too late to reverse this decision, which is a disaster not only for Spokane but also for the reputation of WSU. If you tear down this building it will take a generation to repair the damage to the reputation of your institution. For your sake as well as ours, please spare the Jensen-Byrd building.

Sincerely,

Larry Cebula

Possibly the Greatest Flickr Group Ever

Allow me to present customized bomber jackets of World War Two:

Bomber Jackets, a set by D. Sheley on Flickr.

Spokane Prohibition Documentary tonight

Raid on an underground still, via the Spokesman-Review.

KSPS is airing a documentary that should be of interest to readers of this blog: Rumrunners' Paradise: Spokane During Prohibition, which airs at 7 p.m. tonight. Unlike the east coast and midwest, where the bootlegging business was dominated by already-established organized crime networks, the inland Northwest liquor trade was more of an amateur hour. Bootlegging in the Inland Empire was shaped by our peculiar history and geography and involved unemployed timber men, Indians whose reservations were handily located between Spokane and the Canadian border, and not a few enterprising women and children. This HistoryLink article, "Prohibition: Booze Routes to Spokane" outlines the business. Edmund Fahey's Rum Road to Spokane is a wonderfully entertaining first-hand narrative from a rum runner.

Rumrunners' Paradise features historians Dale Soden, Bill Stimson, William Rorabaugh, Jim Kershner, Jim Price, and Tony Bamonte. An all-star lineup! Here is a good Spokesman-Review story on the documentary.

The Internet Archive and the Beauties of Spokane

So I was playing around on the Internet Archive and discovered a few things. The Internet Archive is "a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format." It is a fabulous and growing resource. I have used items from the Internet Archive to post about the Grand Coulee Dam and an 1950s educational film about Lewis and Clark.

So what's new? First, there seems to be a lot more content, at least concerning Spokane, than a year or two ago. This includes a substantial number of volumes that are not on Google Books, such as the 1895 booklet The Beauties of Spokane (see below).

Second, there is something odd going on with images at the Internet Archive and Google Books. Take for example Durham's 1911 History of the City of Spokane. The Google Books version has the images that were included in the text, such as this Birdseye View of Spokane on page 3. Yet the image is missing from the Internet Archive scan of the same page. Why is that? I smell a copyright dispute...

Third, Internet Archive now has the very best tools for online reading and sharing of scanned print books of anyone. Check this out--an 1895 book, The Beauties of Spokane. The volume itself is quite rare--Google Books not only lacks a scan, it doesn't even know about the book. And the volume is a treasure trove of high-quality images of Spokane buildings, many now lost.  Check it out below:

  .

Recovering Memory in Joplin

From the Flickr group Lost Photos of Joplin

I taught in Joplin, Missouri for 12 years, from 1996 to 2008, and the town has been much on my mind this year since the devastating tornado on May 21st.  The loss of life and property were terrible, with 160 dead and in excess of $2 billion in property damage. The tornado tore a gash across the center of town, destroying 7000 homes and many of the people inside of them.

Lost Photos of Joplin

The tornado was also destructive to the history of Joplin. The twister missed the historic downtown and the local history museum, but it tore up many historic buildings (particularly residences). More damagingly, it destroyed the personal history of many of who survived. The tornado ripped the roofs off of houses and scattered possessions over miles, newspapers stories were full of tales of personal photographs, birth certificates, and family heirlooms being found in yards and fields for weeks. And the area was hit by drenching rains for days after the tornado, destroying the personal libraries and documents left unprotected in those shattered roofless homes.

Now an interesting virtual effort to reunite tornado survivors to their lost photographs has been launched a Facebook named Lost Photos of Joplin, MO Tornado. The idea is to use the social networking power of Facebook to allow volunteers to post photographs they found after the storm with the owners. There is also a website, Joplin Rescued Photos, and a Flickr group. Here is a Joplin newspaper story and an American Public Media radio piece about the effort. Photographs that were damaged in the storm can even be restored by the volunteers at Operation Photo Rescue.

What is most interesting to me is the decentralized but highly effective nature of the effort, made possible by social networking tools, the proliferation of scanners, and existing networks such as area churches and genealogical societies. The process will probably play out over years, and many of the photographs will never find their owners, but it is hard to imagine such an effort even taking place just a few years ago.

Don't Mind the Mess

I am playing around with the template, so this site may go through quite a few different looks before I settle on something. Wish I had saved the old one before I started!

Meanwhile, courtesy of my employer the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, here is a mysterious 1888 death certificate from the frontier town of Spokane Falls, Washington Territory. Because I know you like that sort of thing:

I cannot find out anything more about this case online--there are no digitized newspapers for this period online. If you know anything, post it below!

Update: You guys are fast. A tip from the excellent Charles Hansen showed me that there are digitized newspapers from this period and I found an article about this case. Hansen writes the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society Blog, which often has valuable research tips for local and regional history.

Teaching American History Program Emergency

Today I received the following alarming message from the NCHE. The TAH program is on the verge of extinction.  Please call your representatives RIGHT NOW.

Dear Advocacy Team,

We need your help right away. The first report on the federal omnibus spending bill was released today and TAH funding for 2012 has been completely eliminated!

As you know, the House had already voted to defund the entire TAH program as part of Rep. Duncan Hunter’s (R. California) Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act. Now, the Senate has decided that insofar as $46 million (the amount funded for 2011) would not fund all the 2012 continuation grants, that they would agree to eliminate the program!

The timing is extremely limited to get to our Senators and House members to fight for this. Congress will need to pass the compromise bill, or a short-term extension measure, by tomorrow to avoid a government shutdown. But, even though Democrats and Republicans have agreed to these numbers, the measure could face a rocky road because of political factors that have little to do with education spending.

So…. please act today.

1) Call your House and Senate members and ask them to restore funding for TAH in the omnibus compromise-spending bill. If you do not know their phone number, email me for that information or check http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

2) Email your House and Senate members and ask them to restore funding. Make sure to emphasize the impact of TAH not only upon teachers and students BUT also the economic impact to your state’s economy.

Finally…

Spread the word! Let folks know that the future of TAH is at stake. To lose the funding will make it that much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure funding in the future of any history education professional development.

A Beguiling History of the World via Paper Cutouts

Kalle Mattson - Thick As Thieves (Official Video) from Kevin Parry on Vimeo.
An arts and crafts history of the world.

Forgotten Highways and Historic Preservation

The Spokesman-Review recently had an interesting story and accompanying photo essay about attempts to revive interest in the the historic Three Flags Highway. Later known as US 395, this "Mother Road of the West" was first laid out in the 1920s and connected Canada to Mexico via eastern Washington, Oregon and California. The route was heavily promoted in the early days of auto tourism, particularly in California, with the saying "three countries one road." Today, according to the Spokesman, "historians in southern California are trying to revive the name as part of an effort to reclaim the motoring past."

The story got me thinking about how many economic revitalization schemes depend on history, and the role that historic highways can play in the process. As little towns across America look for some way to brand themselves and establish a public identity, they often reach into their past and heritage tourism. And there are so many historic highways that can be promoted. We all know about Route 66 but that route was a relative latecomer compared to the Lincoln Highway (see above, the first automobile route across America, established in 1913), the Jefferson Highway (Winnipeg to New Orleans, 1919), the Dixie Highway (Chicago to Miami, 1915) and a host of others.

Coordinating the interpretation of a historic highway is necessarily a difficult feat, involving hundreds of communities and their small museums and historic societies, multiple state historic societies, and city and state tourism offices. For the same reasons it makes a good grass roots public history project--markers, displays and commemorations can come into being one community at a time, with or without any broad formal plan.

Writing this post reminded me of a visit a few years ago to the surprisingly excellent Great Platte River Road Archway Museum in Nebraska. The innovative museum covers the history of transportation and travel along the river corridor from pre-contact times to the present.  The exhibit I liked best was a section depicting an auto campground along the Lincoln Highway in the 1920s. I wish I had taken more pictures:

This aspect of American history--life and travel along the early pre-war highways--seems relatively under-interpreted to me. I don't know of a major museum or museum exhibit on this fascinating era.

The Simpsons on Graduate School

I promise this is the last post on this topic for a while, but this is too good not to share:

 

No, You Cannot be a Professor--the Reactions

My recent post, Open Letter to My Students: No, You Cannot be a Professor, was far more widely read than anything I have posted before (27,000 page views and counting). It provoked considerable discussion--not only in the comments section of this blog but also on Twitter, Facebook, and other blogs. Some excellent points were made and I thought I should address them in one place. Reactions fell into a few broad categories:

What, this again?

Yeah I heard that one before

Brian Sarnacki tweeted "Not sure the world needs another "don't go to grad school" article, but if it does here's one from @larrycebula..." Others pointed out that all of my points had been made before, with the best known examples being Thomas Benton's essay Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go. I pretty much agree with this criticism. In fact I keep a few copies of Benton's essays in my desk to share with students contemplating a PhD. So why another "don't go to grad school" article? I guess because I feel like the situation is even worse than Benton and other have presented, and because my students need the reminder.

"stark but truthful picture of the higher education job market"

The bulk of the reactions were similar to the above comment from Ted Schwab. An old friend from grad school emailed to say that her program had added the post to the assigned readings for incoming MA students. Digital history guru Dan Cohen called it "depressing but sage advice." Thanks, guys.

The Opportunity Costs Debate


I was properly called out for my offhand remark that the opportunity costs of a humanities PhD are "over a million dollars." I should admit this was a wild guesstimate on my part--but I am not sure I was wrong. In a thoughtful reply to my post, Sean Takats calculated his own opportunity cost. Takats gave up a well-paid job at IBM to pursue a history Ph.D. and in six years sacrificed by his calculation $450,000 in earnings.  But his calculation is incomplete, not taking into account the investments he might have made it that time (IRAs, home equity, etc.) and how those investments might have appreciated from that time until his retirement. He also does not calculate the differential between what he makes now as a professor and the larger amount he would be making had he stayed in the IT field. If you add those up, surely we are well over a million dollars.

"Charlie Brown, aren't you going
to the AHA this year?"

But wait, you say, very few humanities PhD students are walking away from a job at IBM. A better starting point is average starting salary of someone with a fresh B.A. in history--provided they can find a job at all in this economy. Zachary Schrag does the math and comes up with $120,000 in opportunity costs for a six-year doctoral program--but again, he is calculating only the lost wages for those years.

Of course, many college graduates are not finding work at all right now. For them, a fully-funded grad school gig is far better than moving back home with the parents. One person commenting about my post on another discussion board (unfortunately I cannot find the link) said that I did not understand the realities of the economy right now. He said he was a new college grad and was back at the crappy job he had right after high school and for the same money. A fair point. But even for those students, surely the economy will recover int he better part of a decade they would spend in grad school.


My Students Can Too Be Professors! They are Special.

Source of poor career advice

(Alternate version: I am special.) Part of the reason the job market is so overcrowded is the many professors who continue to urge impressionable young people to "follow your dreams!" without offering any realistic advice about this career path. Every department has a couple such professors, usually very popular with students. I was recently trying to warn a student about the odds in pursuing an academic career. She listened for a bit and then shut down. "I rely on Professor Sparkle Pony for career advice," she said. Good luck with that.

Holger Syme takes on my post point-by-point to argue Yes, You Can be a Professor--but his only argument is that since he overcame great odds and became a professor, his students can too. Sean Takats properly calls this response "a textbook example of survivorship bias." Takats quotes Wikipedia: "Sur­vivor­ship bias can lead to overly opti­mistic beliefs because fail­ures are ignored […] It can also lead to the false belief that the suc­cesses in a group have some spe­cial prop­erty, rather than being just lucky." This is a better explanation of the point I made in my post, that asking professors if you should go to grad school in history is "like asking lottery winners if you should buy a ticket." Nate Kreuter expanded on this point with a column over at Inside Higher Ed titled You Aren't the Exception.

We Need to Reform Humanities Ph.D. Programs


I like it that a lot of commenters thought that the job market was in part a symptom of the wretchedness of current history PhD programs--which in this country take an average of nine freakin' years to complete, have terrible drop-out rates, and with few exceptions are focused exclusively on preparing one for a career as an academic historian at a research-focused university. There is a lot to say on this topic and I will reserve my ideas for a later post.

"You are a world class ass"

Me?

A substantial subset of readers think I am a jerk. "I'm not a professor, but your condescending know-it-all tone further confirms how lucky I am to have chosen a career path outside of academia," one anonymous commenter wrote. "It's nice to not have to deal with pompous a$$hats all the time." I didn't even realize that my mother read my blog! Others described the post as "snotty," "tinged with condescension," "shortsighted" etc. etc.

They may have a point. Yet I do not like giving the advice in "No, You Cannot be a Professor." I have any number of students who would make great history professors, given the chance. But realistically they will never have that chance, and I have a responsibility to tell them.