"For both nations and inviduals have sometimes made a virtue of neglecting history; and history has taken its revenge on them." -- H. R. Trevor-Roper "The Past and the Present: History and Sociology" (1969), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 197.
"In the next century the nations revolted; and their revolt was nourished, everywhere, by history. It was the 'historic nations', the nations which were conscious of their history -- the Poles, Italians German -- which led the revolt; and all the nations in revolt began by discovering, or inventing, their history. No doubt the history which they discovered was not very good: the cosmopolitan historians of the eighteenth century were probably better as historians; but there was a large area of history which those historians had dangerously ignored and which now took its revenge." -- H. R. Trevor-Roper "The Past and the Present: History and Sociology" (1969), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 197-198.
"It is right, I believe, to look for lessons in the past, to see its relevance to our own time, to observe the signs of continuity, connection and process. The past is not to be studied for its own sake. That is mere antiquarianism. But it is anachronistic, distorting, to judge the past as if it were subject to the present, as if the men of the eighteenth or the sixteenth or the tenth century had no right to be independent of the twentieth. We exist in and for our own time: why should we judge our predecessors as if they were less self-sufficient: as they existed for us and should be judged by us?" -- H. R. Trevor-Roper "The Past and the Present: History and Sociology" (1969), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 200-1.
"The historian is amphibious: he must live some part of his life below the surface in order that, on emerging, he can usefully survey it from above. The historian who has specialized all his life may end as an antiquarian. The historian who has never specialized will end as a mere blower of froth. The antiquarian at least is useful to others." -- H. R. Trevor-Roper "The Past and the Present: History and Sociology" (1969), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 201.
"If the future is not to be discovered but created, we need to recognize the power of such historical myths in helping to project a picture of the future which will rouse the enthusiasm or anger of the masses and sustain the faith or fanaticism of the elite." -- Alan Bullock, "Has History Ceased to be Relevant?" (1994), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 207.
"If one wants to know what is to be the future of history, one may well begin by studying the history of past futures." -- Alan Bullock, "Has History Ceased to be Relevant?" (1994), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 208.
"Of course, values based upon past experience have to be tested against and modified in the light of the new experience of each generation. But to ignore or throw them overboard, so that each generation starts again from scratch in the belief that no other has ever faced similar questions, and that nothing is to be learned from them, appears not only a form of arrogance but a wilful act of self mutilation." -- Alan Bullock, "Has History Ceased to be Relevant?" (1994), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 209.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Quotations from Tosh #9: Michael Howard
"'Socially useful' or 'relevant' history, whether consciously or unconsciously selected or tailored to meet contemporary social or political needs has no place in a university or anywhere else. But there is a danger that this is the kind of history that almost automatically would get taught, or at least learned, if the historical profession did not exist to prevent it." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), p. 12, cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 180.
"Far more than poets can historians claim to be the unacknowledged legislators of mankind; for all we believe about the present depends on what we believe about the past." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), p. 12, cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 180.
"And this perhaps indicates that the value of history as a training of the judgment and of the imagination is very limited if it is exercised only in recreating our own past, with little reference to the total context within which our society developed and, more particularly, the often very divergent structures of other societies whose development may have been of yet greater importance to the making of the world in which we live today. If it is, indeed, one of the major functions of the historian to explain the present by deepening our understanding of the past, then a study simply of our own society will not get us very far. Our awareness of the world and our capacity to deal intelligently with its problems are shaped not only by the history we know but by what we do not know. Ignorance, especially the ignorance of educated men, can be a more powerful force than knowledge. Ethnocentrism in historical studies, whatever its advantages in scholarly training, is likely to feed parochialism in the societies which those historians serve; and such parochialism can have pretty disastrous results." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), p. 12, cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 183.
"The past is a vast chain, every link of which must be kept in good repair." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 184.
"We have seen so much of this since the Second World War: people often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions, and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal. It is an awareness for which no amount of strategic or economic analysis, no techniques of crisis-management or conflict-resolution and certainly no professed understanding of the 'objective historical process of the international class struggle' can provide a substitute. Such miscalculations are always dangerous. In our own day they may be lethal on a very large scale indeed." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 186.
"And this is a matter of which no historian can afford to be simply a dispassionate chronicler and analyst. However great his intellectual and moral detachment, in the last resort he is committed to the values, and to the society, that enables him to remain so detached. He is a member of the polis and cannot watch its destruction without himself being destroyed." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 187.
"Far more than poets can historians claim to be the unacknowledged legislators of mankind; for all we believe about the present depends on what we believe about the past." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), p. 12, cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 180.
"And this perhaps indicates that the value of history as a training of the judgment and of the imagination is very limited if it is exercised only in recreating our own past, with little reference to the total context within which our society developed and, more particularly, the often very divergent structures of other societies whose development may have been of yet greater importance to the making of the world in which we live today. If it is, indeed, one of the major functions of the historian to explain the present by deepening our understanding of the past, then a study simply of our own society will not get us very far. Our awareness of the world and our capacity to deal intelligently with its problems are shaped not only by the history we know but by what we do not know. Ignorance, especially the ignorance of educated men, can be a more powerful force than knowledge. Ethnocentrism in historical studies, whatever its advantages in scholarly training, is likely to feed parochialism in the societies which those historians serve; and such parochialism can have pretty disastrous results." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), p. 12, cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 183.
"The past is a vast chain, every link of which must be kept in good repair." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 184.
"We have seen so much of this since the Second World War: people often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions, and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal. It is an awareness for which no amount of strategic or economic analysis, no techniques of crisis-management or conflict-resolution and certainly no professed understanding of the 'objective historical process of the international class struggle' can provide a substitute. Such miscalculations are always dangerous. In our own day they may be lethal on a very large scale indeed." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 186.
"And this is a matter of which no historian can afford to be simply a dispassionate chronicler and analyst. However great his intellectual and moral detachment, in the last resort he is committed to the values, and to the society, that enables him to remain so detached. He is a member of the polis and cannot watch its destruction without himself being destroyed." -- Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (1989), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 187.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Rockets Red Glare, etc.
I'm not a fan of incendiary and explosive devices in the hands of amateurs, but it it's going to happen in my vicinity, I'm going to take pictures. Have a safe and happy Independence Day!
 |  |  |
Monday, June 30, 2008
Quotations from Tosh #8: Mental Landscapes
"For blacks must read history with Indian eyes as well, and cannot fail to note that many of the New England 'fathers' participated not only in the forced migration and decimation of the original inhabitants but gave full strength to that trade in men which brought other dark men to these shores." -- Vincent Harding "Beyond Chaos: Black history and the search for the New Land" (1970) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 156.
"Our studies can turn into bomb factories. ... We have a responsibility to historical facts in general, and for criticising the politico-ideological abuse of history in particular." Eric Hobsbawm, "The New Threat to History" (1993), cited by Catherine Hall in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 160.
"Fanon has been crucial to our understanding of the internal traumas of identity which are associated with colonisation and enslavement. For colonisation is never only about the external processes and pressures of exploitation. It is always also about the ways in which colonised subjects internally collude with the objectification of the self produced by the coloniser." Catherine Hall, "Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment" (1996) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 163.
"Man spends his time devising techniques of which he afterwards remains a more or less willing prisoner." Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1944) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 172.
"There must be a permanent foundation in human nature and in human society, or the very names of man and society become meaningless." Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1944) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 174.
"Perhaps none of those who write so urgently about these problems have a very clear notion of the situation which they are trying to restore. But few of them can have realized how inappropriate it is to think of restoration at all, in the sense of returning to the historical past." -- Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (1965), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 177.
"History is not inevitably useful. It can bind us or free us. It can destroy compassion by showing us the world through the eyes of the comfortable ('the slaves are happy, just listen to them' - leading to 'the poor are content, just look at them'). It can oppress any resolve to act by mountains of trivia, by diverting us.into intellectual games, by pretentious 'interpretations' which spur contemplation rather than action, by limiting our vision to an endless story of disaster and thus promoting cynical withdrawal, by befogging us with the encyclopedic eclecticism of the standard textbook." -- Howard Zinn, The Politics of History (1970), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 193.
"Our studies can turn into bomb factories. ... We have a responsibility to historical facts in general, and for criticising the politico-ideological abuse of history in particular." Eric Hobsbawm, "The New Threat to History" (1993), cited by Catherine Hall in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 160.
"Fanon has been crucial to our understanding of the internal traumas of identity which are associated with colonisation and enslavement. For colonisation is never only about the external processes and pressures of exploitation. It is always also about the ways in which colonised subjects internally collude with the objectification of the self produced by the coloniser." Catherine Hall, "Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment" (1996) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 163.
"Man spends his time devising techniques of which he afterwards remains a more or less willing prisoner." Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1944) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 172.
"There must be a permanent foundation in human nature and in human society, or the very names of man and society become meaningless." Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1944) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 174.
"Perhaps none of those who write so urgently about these problems have a very clear notion of the situation which they are trying to restore. But few of them can have realized how inappropriate it is to think of restoration at all, in the sense of returning to the historical past." -- Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (1965), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 177.
"History is not inevitably useful. It can bind us or free us. It can destroy compassion by showing us the world through the eyes of the comfortable ('the slaves are happy, just listen to them' - leading to 'the poor are content, just look at them'). It can oppress any resolve to act by mountains of trivia, by diverting us.into intellectual games, by pretentious 'interpretations' which spur contemplation rather than action, by limiting our vision to an endless story of disaster and thus promoting cynical withdrawal, by befogging us with the encyclopedic eclecticism of the standard textbook." -- Howard Zinn, The Politics of History (1970), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 193.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Comment Elsewhere: Ballot-rigging warning shot
In response to “McCain Predicts ‘Underdog’ Win in Final 48 Hours” (warning: Fox News. via) I wrote:
So, he's basically saying that the election will be stolen: there'll be no polls showing him in the lead, because he'll be losing by all accounts, and the vote-rigging operation will do the rest. There's no other reason I can think of to start pushing this kind of narrative now, instead of actually campaigning on issues like a real leader.Oddly, however, my comment doesn't seem to be actually going through..... (it could have something to do with currently being on dial-up, or with Firefox.... or it might not.)
Paper ballots, please!
Monday, June 16, 2008
Quotations from Tosh #7: People in History
"The right-wing version of people's history is characteristically a history with the politics left out -- as in Trevelyan's English Social History -- a history devoid of struggle, devoid of ideas, but with a very strong sense of religion and of values. It is apt to idealise the family -- 'a circle of loved, familiar faces' -- and to interpret social relationships as reciprocal rather than exploitative. Class antagonisms may be admitted, but they are contained within a larger whole, and softened by cross-cutting ties. The characteristic location of right-wing people's history is in the 'organic' community of the past .... The ideology is determinedly anti-modern, with urban life and capitalism seen as alien intrusions on the body politic, splintering the age-old solidarities of 'traditional' life." -- Raphael Samuel "People's History" (1981), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 112.
"The attempt to recover the texture of everyday life may be associated with a 'neo-Romantic intellectual enterprise' -- one of the charges levelled against it; but it is perfectly compatible -- if that is to be the test of scientificity -- with elaborate day-charts and passionless prose." -- Raphael Samuel "People's History" (1981), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 115.
"Indeed it is unlikely that we shall ever be able effectively to combat bourgeois ideology until we can see how it arises in ourselves, until we explore the needs and desires it satisfies, and the whole substratum of fears on which it draws. Our understanding of socialism too might be less abstract, if we were to explore it historically 'from the bottom up', looking at its secret languages, its unarticulated passions, its cognitive unconscious and dissonances. Above all, the questions posed by feminism leave no category of Marxist historical analysis unscathed, and it is one of the strengths of people's history that it is proving a far more hospitable terrain for asking them than more abstract analytic planes. People's history also has the merit of raising a crucial question for both theoretical and political work - that of the production of knowledge, both the sources on which it draws and its ultimate point of address. It questions the existing intellectual division of labour and implicitly challenges the professionalised monopolies of knowledge. It makes democratic practice one of the yardsticks by which socialist thought is judged, and thus might encourage us not only to interpret the world, but to see how our work could change it." -- Raphael Samuel "People's History" (1981), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 116.
"Second, the discrepancy between the high quality of recent work in women's history and its continuing marginal status in the field as a whole (as measured by textbooks, syllabi, and monographic work) points up the limits of descriptive approaches that do not address dominant disciplinary concepts, or at least that do not address these concepts in terms that can shake their power and perhaps transform them." -- Joan Scott, "Gender: a useful category of historical analysis," (1988) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 137.
"We must ask more often how things happened in order to find out why they happened; in anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo's formulation, we must pursue not universal, general causality but meaningful explanation." -- Joan Scott, "Gender: a useful category of historical analysis," (1988) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 139.
"It is not sexuality which haunts society, but society which haunts the body's sexuality. Sex-related differences between bodies are continually summoned as testimony to social relations and phenomena that have nothing to do with sexuality. Not only as testimony to, but also testimony for -- in other words, as legitimation." -- Maurice Godelier, "The Origins of Male Domination" (1981) cited by Joan Scott in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 141.
"The attempt to recover the texture of everyday life may be associated with a 'neo-Romantic intellectual enterprise' -- one of the charges levelled against it; but it is perfectly compatible -- if that is to be the test of scientificity -- with elaborate day-charts and passionless prose." -- Raphael Samuel "People's History" (1981), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 115.
"Indeed it is unlikely that we shall ever be able effectively to combat bourgeois ideology until we can see how it arises in ourselves, until we explore the needs and desires it satisfies, and the whole substratum of fears on which it draws. Our understanding of socialism too might be less abstract, if we were to explore it historically 'from the bottom up', looking at its secret languages, its unarticulated passions, its cognitive unconscious and dissonances. Above all, the questions posed by feminism leave no category of Marxist historical analysis unscathed, and it is one of the strengths of people's history that it is proving a far more hospitable terrain for asking them than more abstract analytic planes. People's history also has the merit of raising a crucial question for both theoretical and political work - that of the production of knowledge, both the sources on which it draws and its ultimate point of address. It questions the existing intellectual division of labour and implicitly challenges the professionalised monopolies of knowledge. It makes democratic practice one of the yardsticks by which socialist thought is judged, and thus might encourage us not only to interpret the world, but to see how our work could change it." -- Raphael Samuel "People's History" (1981), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 116.
"Second, the discrepancy between the high quality of recent work in women's history and its continuing marginal status in the field as a whole (as measured by textbooks, syllabi, and monographic work) points up the limits of descriptive approaches that do not address dominant disciplinary concepts, or at least that do not address these concepts in terms that can shake their power and perhaps transform them." -- Joan Scott, "Gender: a useful category of historical analysis," (1988) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 137.
"We must ask more often how things happened in order to find out why they happened; in anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo's formulation, we must pursue not universal, general causality but meaningful explanation." -- Joan Scott, "Gender: a useful category of historical analysis," (1988) cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 139.
"It is not sexuality which haunts society, but society which haunts the body's sexuality. Sex-related differences between bodies are continually summoned as testimony to social relations and phenomena that have nothing to do with sexuality. Not only as testimony to, but also testimony for -- in other words, as legitimation." -- Maurice Godelier, "The Origins of Male Domination" (1981) cited by Joan Scott in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 141.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Quotations from Tosh #6: Marx and History
"History is a tragedy, but not a meaningless tragedy. Nor are we mere spectators: we have our parts in the action." -- Christopher Hill, "Marxism and History" (1948), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 87.
"Marx's influence on historians, and not only Marxist historians, is nevertheless based both upon his general theory (the materialist conception of history), with its sketches of, or hints at, the general shape of human historical development from primitive communalism to capitalism, and upon his concrete observations relating to particular aspects, periods and problems of the past." -- E. J. Hobsbawm, "Marx and History" (1984), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 93.
"It is also perfectly clear from the beginning that, since human beings have consciousness, the materialist conception of history is the basis of historical explanation, but is not historical explanation itself. History is not like ecology: human beings decide and think about what happens." -- E. J. Hobsbawm, "Marx and History" (1984), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 95.
"American historians, especially the most harshly anti-Marxian, generally confuse the two [Marxism with economic determinism] and then, since economic determinism is easy to refute, dismiss Marxism as being of no value. This game would prove entertaining, were it not that these same historians so often retreat into banal economic explanations to suit their convenience." -- Eugene Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South" (1968), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 101.
"It would be wonderful fun to list the respected and influential historians who have protected their jobs and families by eschewing the Marxist label while writing from a Marxian viewpoint and even greater fun to recount the multitude of ways in which the profession has misunderstood what they are in fact doing and saying." -- Eugene Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South" (1968), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 102.
"Marx's influence on historians, and not only Marxist historians, is nevertheless based both upon his general theory (the materialist conception of history), with its sketches of, or hints at, the general shape of human historical development from primitive communalism to capitalism, and upon his concrete observations relating to particular aspects, periods and problems of the past." -- E. J. Hobsbawm, "Marx and History" (1984), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 93.
"It is also perfectly clear from the beginning that, since human beings have consciousness, the materialist conception of history is the basis of historical explanation, but is not historical explanation itself. History is not like ecology: human beings decide and think about what happens." -- E. J. Hobsbawm, "Marx and History" (1984), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 95.
"American historians, especially the most harshly anti-Marxian, generally confuse the two [Marxism with economic determinism] and then, since economic determinism is easy to refute, dismiss Marxism as being of no value. This game would prove entertaining, were it not that these same historians so often retreat into banal economic explanations to suit their convenience." -- Eugene Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South" (1968), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 101.
"It would be wonderful fun to list the respected and influential historians who have protected their jobs and families by eschewing the Marxist label while writing from a Marxian viewpoint and even greater fun to recount the multitude of ways in which the profession has misunderstood what they are in fact doing and saying." -- Eugene Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South" (1968), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 102.
Comment elsewhere: Six of one....
In response to a critical look at Clinton's continuing campaign I argued:
p.s. I hadn't read this [via, but it's similar.... well, more Clinton-friendly, but still good points.
I'm ambivalent about this (not so much ambivalent about Clinton at the moment, but that's another discussion). The mantra with regard to the MI/FL crew -- "can't change the rules in the middle of the game" -- seems to apply here as well. Clinton's arguments about her electability aren't really more specious than Obama's arguments about his: both are untested premises in an arena where experimentation is fundamentally impossible. The superdelegate structure means that the near-tie in pledged delegates can't really determine anything, nor is it supposed to, like the first 45 minutes of most basketball games, or most sacred scriptures; since neither candidate has successfully convinced the democratic voters, there is no such thing as inevitability.Jeremy's smart, though; I doubt I'll go unanswered.
I see Clinton's argument. And if she believes, as so many of her supporters do, that Obama's electability really is weak, that he's a truly untested, risky candidate, then what she's doing actually makes sense for the party.
I don't like the way she's campaigning (you're right about that, for sure), and I think she's a huge liability in a general election, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss her arguments without acknowledging the liminal state both sides (and the party) is really in.
p.s. I hadn't read this [via, but it's similar.... well, more Clinton-friendly, but still good points.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Go to sleep, you weary hobo....
Utah "Bruce" Phillips has passed away. He was a singer/songwriter, a hobo in the grand classic style, but also an historian, both archival and oral. Oh, and an unparalleled storyteller. I never saw him perform, but my spouse did, and says that he spent so much time telling stories that he only got through about four songs! His breakthrough recording, in fact, was a story, Moose Turd Pie:
Phillips wrote any number of songs that sound like they've been around forever. My favorite, though, isn't a hobo song, but a simple romantic statement of faith:
The worst job I ever had was working for the Pacific Railroad, doing a thing called "gandy-dancing." Now most of you know the railroad was built partially by Irish labor. Well, back then the workers would use this long handled shovel, made by the Gandy Shovel Company of Great Neck New York. Well, they'd shove one end of the shovel under a railroad tie, and then run out to the other end of the shovel, when they could find it, and do a little jig on it, and they called it "gandy-dancin'". This would lift the tie up so they could shove gravel under it, which would level the roadbed, so when the train came along, it wouldn't tip over, which would be a real drag for everyone.
Well, nowadays, they run three cars out on the rail: a bunk car, an equipment car, and a mess car. The only thing they don't give you is a cook. The bosses figure you'll find out who the best cook is, and use him. Well, they were wrong. Y'see, they just find out who complains the loudest about the cooking, and he gets to be the cook. Well, that was me, see. Ol' aligator mouth. That was the worst food I'd ever had, and I complained about it. Things like "dog bottom pie" and "pheasant sweat." I thought it was garbage. So I complained. And everyone said, "alright, you think you can do better? You're the cook." Well, that made me mad, see? But I knew, that anyone who complained about my cooking, they were gonna have to cook.
Armed with that knowledge, I sallied forth, over the muddy river. I was walking along, and I saw just this hell of a big moose turd, I mean it was a real steamer! So I said to myself, "self, we're going to make us some moose turd pie." So I tipped that prairie pastry on its side, got my sh*t together, so to speak, and started rolling it down towards the cook car: flolump, flolump, flolump. I went in and made a big pie shell, and then I tipped that meadow muffin into it, laid strips of dough across it, and put a sprig of parsley on top. It was beautiful, poetry on a plate, and I served it up for dessert.
Well, this big guy come into the mess car, I mean, he's about 5 foot forty, and he sets himself down like a fool on a stool, picked up a fork and took a big bite of that moose turd pie. Well he threw down his fork and he let out a bellow, "My God, that's moose turd pie!"
"It's good though."
Phillips wrote any number of songs that sound like they've been around forever. My favorite, though, isn't a hobo song, but a simple romantic statement of faith:
"The Hymn Song"
(Bruce Phillips)
You know I think if lady luck was blind
That old sun would never shine
And I believe if death really held a knife
We'd all be beggars of lifeChorus:Sometimes I wish that I could close my eyes
I believe if I lived my life again
I'd still be here with you
I believe if I lived my life again
I'd still be here with you
To some things I don't want to see
But I believe if you lived your life again
You'd still be here with meChorusI'll never see the ending of my mind
Everything will have a time
Why should I ask for things that I don't need
Or pretty lies to hide my greedChorus
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Quotations from Tosh #5: National History
"We teach and write the kind of history which is appropriate to our organization, congenial to the intellectual climate of our part of the world. We can scarcely help it if this kind of history is at the same time the one most adapted to the preservation of the existing regime." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 64.
"New interpretations always come with crudeness and violence at first as we shall see. They erupt upon the world as propaganda; they must make their way as fighting creeds. They can become wise and urbane, perhaps even harmless, all of them, but only after they have submitted to the chastening effect of controversy, discipline and tradition." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 65-66.
"From the 17th century our greatest innovators have tried to show that they were not innovators at all but restorers of ancient ways. And so it is that even when we have a revolution we look to the past and try to carry it out in accordance with ancient precedents." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 66.
"The American must go outside his country and hear the voice of America to realize that his is one of the most spectacularly lopsided cultures in all history. The marvelous success and vitality of our institutions is equaled by the amazing poverty and inarticulateness of our theorizing about politics. No nation has ever believed more firmly that its political life was based on a perfect theory. And yet no nation has ever been less interested in political philosophy or produced less in the way of theory." -- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 70.
"Who would think of using the word 'un-Italian' or 'un-French' as we use the word 'un-American'?"-- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 73.
"By the decolonization of African history I mean four main things: the use of other sources besides the documentary; the approach to research into African history from the African and not European perspective, the interpretation of data against the African and not the European background, and finally the application of the same terminologies by historians the world over." -- A. Adu Boahen, Clio and Nation-Building in Africa (1975), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 78.
"New interpretations always come with crudeness and violence at first as we shall see. They erupt upon the world as propaganda; they must make their way as fighting creeds. They can become wise and urbane, perhaps even harmless, all of them, but only after they have submitted to the chastening effect of controversy, discipline and tradition." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 65-66.
"From the 17th century our greatest innovators have tried to show that they were not innovators at all but restorers of ancient ways. And so it is that even when we have a revolution we look to the past and try to carry it out in accordance with ancient precedents." -- H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (1944), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 66.
"The American must go outside his country and hear the voice of America to realize that his is one of the most spectacularly lopsided cultures in all history. The marvelous success and vitality of our institutions is equaled by the amazing poverty and inarticulateness of our theorizing about politics. No nation has ever believed more firmly that its political life was based on a perfect theory. And yet no nation has ever been less interested in political philosophy or produced less in the way of theory." -- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 70.
"Who would think of using the word 'un-Italian' or 'un-French' as we use the word 'un-American'?"-- Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 73.
"By the decolonization of African history I mean four main things: the use of other sources besides the documentary; the approach to research into African history from the African and not European perspective, the interpretation of data against the African and not the European background, and finally the application of the same terminologies by historians the world over." -- A. Adu Boahen, Clio and Nation-Building in Africa (1975), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 78.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)