The Host Desecration Project 1: Introduction

I am currently working on a little translation project to be published in a source reader my adviser is putting together. In the course of a paper I was working on a couple of years ago, I learned of an account of a Host desecration in the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. It is the first fully-articulated account of such an event. This is the story in brief:

On Easter day in 1290 a woman, who had pawned her clothes with a Jewish merchant, came to reclaim them. The merchant offered to return them free of charge if she would steal a consecrated Host from a Church. She did this, whereupon the Jew set about the business of tormenting the host in a recreation of the Passion, stabbing it, setting upon it with hammer and nails, and throwing it into a fire. None of this caused the least damage. Indeed, when thrown into the fire, the Host emerged whole and flew about the room. Once recaptured, the merchant threw it into a cauldron of boiling water, which then turned to blood and from which an apparition of the Christ child emerged. The tale continues with the discovery of this perfidy, the subsequent killing of the Jew and the woman, the conversion of his wife and children to Christianity, and the removal of the relics involved in this to various churches.

This story emerged at the end of the 13th century, when the doctrine of transubstantiation was firmly and finally entrenched. Written into church law with the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, it became the only tolerated position on the Eucharist by the end of the thirteenth century, given special impetus by the work of Thomas Aquinas in the 1270s. This meant that, in Catholic doctrine, one was required to believe that beneath the appearances (accidents) of the bread and wine of the sacrament was to be found the true, historical, body of Christ. Each time a Christian took the Eucharist, then, he or she was enaging in theophagy and anthrophagy. A less kind way of putting it would be cannibalism, and I suspect that stories like this one reflect the lingering anxieties felt by theologians about the sacrament on this very matter.

The account I am working on has never been translated- or at least published- in English. I thought it would be fun to write a little about this project and about the process I use for the translation as I struggle to come to grips with Latin, as well as sharing the translation in progress.

Next: Thinking About the Latin.

The Medieval Church

I will be teaching a five-session class on the Medieval Church at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Raleigh across five Sundays in Lent 2010. This is exciting, as I think it is the obligation of professional (or semi-professional, as the case may be) historians to reach out to the wider public. I hope to get back in to doing this blog and think I'll post materials relating to preparation for the class as I go forward. For now all I have is the class description and a biography to be published in their catalog. There's also a mug shot, which I will not post here.

The Medieval Church:The so-called Medieval Church defies easy description. Spanning roughly a thousand years, it is perhaps best thought of as a succession of "medieval churches," each with its own character but very much rooted in what came before. This class is an introduction to those medieval churches, exploring the paths taken by "the Church" as it faced the challenges wrought upon Western Europe by barbarian invasion, the growth of empires and their dissolution, conflicts with kings, heresy, and the changed intellectual landscape of the high and late Middle Ages. These challenges shaped the institution of the Church, even as it attempted to shape disparate European cultures into a single entity--Christendom. The results reverberate even today.

Donald Westlake's "Parker: the Hunter" by Darwyn Cooke

Make no mistake about it, Parker is not a good guy. He is a criminal who has been double crossed by his partner and by the woman he loves. "Parker: The Hunter," Darwyn Cooke's graphic adaptation of the first novel in Donald Weslake's series about Parker, is a smashing introduction to this character. The classic setup, a betrayed man seeking vengeance, does nothing to diminish the freshness of the character and of Cooke's approach to him.

Cooke, familiar to comics readers as the writer/ artist of "Catwoman: Selina's Big Score," "The Spirit" and, especially, "DC: The New Frontier," is perfectly suited to this tale. His drawings easily evoke the early 1960s, and the monochromatic palette is perfectly suited to the story.

"The Hunter" is dark, briskly-paced, and told with economy, as a good noir novel should be, and Cooke presents it with panache. As in the Mel Gibson movie "Payback," which was based on this book, we pull for the bad guy because, as bad as he is, he's better than those he fights.

I generally steer clear of graphic adaptations of prose works. It seems to me that they always lack a certain something that made the original work. I have not (yet) read the original novel, but I am left with the sense that, in Cooke's hands, the essence of the novel has been captured. It is telling that this is the first adaptation of a Westlake work that has been allowed to carry the Parker name.

Cooke says Parker will return in summer 2010. I'll be waiting.

"Men and Cartoons" by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem is one of the most distinctive and inventive writers of fiction today. From "Gun with Occasional Music" to "You Don't Love Me Yet," Lethem has shown an uncanny ability to transport readers into a world that, upon reflection, is incredibly strange but at the same time feels right.

"Men and Cartoons," Lethem's second collection of short stories, shows the (many) strengths of his writing, but also the danger in letting his fertile imagination run wild. The nine stories in the book are all beautifully written if uneven.

"The Vision" and "Vivian Relf" show the wistful evocation of earlier times that Lethem used to great effect in his latest, and best known works, "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude," as he evokes the follies and foibles of youth and how they hang on into adulthood. Along with "Super Goat Man," there is the powerful undercurrent of regret and nostalgia that haunts his best work.

"The Spray" and "Access Fantasy" tap the same veins, but show the powerful science fiction imagination that fueled Lethem's earlier work and were showed to great effect in his short story collection "The Wall of Sky, the Wall of Eye." The latter story also shows the potential weakness of being so inventive- wonderful ideas not fully realized. Perhaps we are meant to take the existence of the One-Way Permeable Barrier for granted, but a little more on it might have helped the story hang together better.

"The Dystopianist" is an interesting vignette of what might happen were a writer to be visited, even briefly, by his creations. The stark realism with which the story is written stands in relief to the absurdity and surrealism of the story. Other stories in the book, though well-written, failed to leave much impression.

Taken as a whole, "Men and Cartoons" is a wonderful collection of stories by a masterful writer. Readers who have never read Lethem can get a sample of the variety of styles he uses, while old readers can get a Lethem fix.

Philosophy and Death

"I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid."
-- T.S. Eliot

Death haunts me, as it does most of us. Being dead is not a worry. I expect no afterlife, no metempsychosis; death is the obliteration of self. Once I have died, there will be no "me" to register the fact of my demise. Still, there is the final moment, the terminal point where one ceases to be a subject and becomes an object. This is the aspect that frightens me. I cannot- none of us can- imagine non-existence.

Simon Critchley begins his work, "The Book of Dead Philosophers" from this point. Accepting Cicero's dictum that "to philosophize is to learn how to die," Critchley writes of how 190 philosophers spoke about and faced death. His aim is to counter the facile attempts in this modern age to deny the fact of death through "the transitory consolation of momentary oblivion or a miraculous redemption in the afterlife."

It is important to note, especially in the face of a potentially incendiary quote like the one above, that his is not a flat-out denial of an afterlife. His point is that all we can know is that we are living and that, by denying death through consumption or religion, we truncate our lives. Accepting death is the only way to truly live.

So we learn how philosophers faced death. Socrates' argument that death, be it eternal sleep or the reunion with the honored dead, is not to be feared is the logical starting point. Then, following a rough chronology, we encounter the early materialists who preceded Socrates, the Platonists, Epicureans and Stoics who came after him, Romans, Chinese. The common thread is that death is something that cannot be overcome, so it is not to be feared.

There are even entries for members of an obscure group of Jews following a teacher from Galilee. These are perhaps the most interesting in some ways. Those who know only the flavors of Christianity available today forget that, at its base, the faith is all about death. Chritchley accuses most modern Christians of "actually leading quietly desperate atheist lives bounded by a desire for longevity and the terror of annihilation." The central preoccupation of Paul, for instance, is death. It is Paul who tells us how Adam brought death and how Jesus, through his own death, conquered death. St. Anthony pursued his faith by becoming dead to the world, founding Christian monasticism in the process.

I did not intend to dwell on Christianity, but since its presence is so strongly felt, it creates a gravity of its own. The point is that, excepting beliefs in an afterlife, the way someone like Paul faced death was not so different from the way someone like Hume did. The cheerfulness Hume is reported to have shown as he died is akin to the joy expressed in martyrdom accounts. Both show, for different reasons, an acceptance of the fact of death and an understanding that it cannot be avoided.

This is a wonderful book. Chritchley's prose is lively and humorous; there is something of the smart-aleck about him. His argument that we should embrace death as part of life and not dwell morosely on it is bolstered by his presentation. Critchley has me thinking about death differently. Perhaps, instead of pursuing my true love of History, I should have dallied longer with my mistress Philosophy. The consolations (see Boethius) to be found there are more than religion could ever offer me.

"Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" by Neil Gaiman

It seems so long ago that I really liked the work of Neil Gaiman. Like many, I was enthralled by "Sandman" and roundly entertained by "Good Omens." Then came "Neverwhere" and "American Gods," reusing many of the tricks and tropes from his earlier work and I began to doubt his powers. "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" has done little to dispel my doubts.

Gaiman writes the story of many deaths of Batman, described by those who knew him best: the villains and allies in his 70-year fight against crime. Two ghostly presences (one of whom is, no surprise, Bruce Wayne) watch and comment on the proceedings. Bruce protests at the beginning that these things didn't happen, but the other presence counsels him to listen.

This is the problem. The other presence might as well have been Death of the Endless, or Dream. One can almost hear Dream telling Queen Mab that a story need not have happened for it to be true. Get a new trick, Neil.

Since this story marks a transition to a new Batman (Bruce Wayne died, or not, in the pages of "Final Crisis") the logical comparison, one which Gaiman alludes to in his introduction, is Alan Moore's wonderful "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," which provided a breaking point between the god-like Superman of the 70s and early 80s and John Byrne's re-imagining of the Man of Steel's origins. I re-read the earlier work for this review, and it holds up well, though Moore is a better writer today than he was then.

Moore understands Superman better, I think, than Gaiman understands Batman (I also think Moore gets Batman, but that's not for now). Superman and Clark Kent are coterminous in a way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are not, a point borne out by the fact that Batman endures after the death of Bruce Wayne. Other writers, less talented than Gaiman, have understood this as well.

I have been dwelling so long on the failings of Gaiman that I have said not a word about Andy Kubert's art. The word is WOW! The art is amazing, evocative of the decades of legendary Batman artists like Bob Kane, Neal Adams and Brian Bolland. It makes the book worth reading.

This book has garnered a great deal of acclaim for both Gaiman and Kubert, not least from the New York Times, and one suspects it is a lock for Eisner awards next year. Gaiman will get the same free pass given to writers like Grant Morrison. Doubtless I am on the losing side of this argument, but someone has to speak up. "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" is a serviceable story, but one that is not up to his talents and one not suited to the task.

"Mouse Guard: Winter, 1152" by David Petersen

When we last saw the stalwarts of the Mouse Guard, they were facing a cold, hard winter in the aftermath of betrayal by one of their number. In volume one of the series, Fall 1152, David Petersen introduced us to Leiam, Kenzie, Saxon and Sadie of the Guard, their leader Gwendolyn, the mysterious guard known as the Black Axe, and the town of Lockhaven. The Guard is charged with protecting the routes between the mouse towns and with fighting threats against mousekind. The wonderful art (also by Petersen) combined with a rip-roaring action tale to produce one of the most purely fun graphic books I've read in ages.

Petersen does not miss a beat in volume two, Winter 1152. The Guard, charged with requesting supplies from other towns so Lockhaven can last the winter, is scattered across the icy landscape. There they face all manner of threats and through these, bits of mouse history are revealed. Petersen succeeds in immersing the reader in the world of the Guard, creating bizarre and beautiful worlds. This is the kind of thing graphic media does best.

Who lives? Who dies? What is the nature of the new threat facing Lockhaven? I don't wish to give anything away, suffice it to say that nothing is a throwaway, and the consequences of past actions seem likely to linger into the future. While there are some things that seem predictable about this series, there is much that is surprising as well. Petersen's imagination and improving (!) artwork make this worth a read. One can only hope that Spring, 1153 is on the way.

Darwin and Clio- A Persepective on History and Religion

When I look at the middle ages, I see myself reflected back. This is the justification I most often give when asked why I have chosen to focus, as a historian, on the time period stretching roughly from fifth century to the fifteenth. It is, as Morris Bishop put it, a period of continuation and transition. There is a continuation from the Roman and Germanic precedents, and a transition in social organizations that continues to the present.

When I ponder the study of history as a whole, I tend to think of fossils, representing the ancestry of the present. In more concrete terms, I think of hominid fossils, and it is during this period that the fossils begin to resemble the present. It is something akin to holding the skull of Homo sapiens at the moment he emerged from Africa and thinking: this is us.

The practice of history requires more than knowledge of dates and names. It is the study of cultures as much as events. Questions of who and when and when are important, but answering them is not sufficient to practice the historian’s craft; one must endeavor to understand the why, even though the why is seldom fully understood. This is perhaps the greatest misconception of history among the wider public, that everything in history is cut and dried. Each historian brings to the practice his own diagnostic tools with which he approaches the evidence, and these tools influence the final result. Among the lenses through which I view history is Darwinian evolution, for the value it has in the consideration of culture. All too often, culture is treated as something completely chosen. But Darwin tells us something different, and we need to consider this as well when we study anything people do.

Darwin realized that when he applied his theory of evolution by natural selection to humans, this would open all facets of human existence to examination by the light of biology. He argued that through selection, humans had acquired an ability to imitate, to pay attention, to imagine and to reason. Yet his fundamental insight, and one we must consider, is that humans are, at bottom, no different from other animals. That, though we have the vocal capacity to claim our superiority and the technological ability to enforce it, we are subject to the same drives and risks, ultimately, as every other organism. Indeed, it is nature that has brought us to this point. The marvel of this is overlooked; it is as seminal to an honest view of ourselves as Galileo’s joining of the heavens and the Earth by one set of rules was to an honest view of the universe.

Culture, then, must be seen as an outgrowth of biology as well and as subject to the same selection pressures as biology. The most important reason that humans do the things they do is because those things have, in the past, contributed to greater reproductive success than doing other things. So, as a historian looks at the human past, it would serve him well when he sees some strange cultural artifact, to remember that at some point it was adaptive. This must include the origins of religion.

Darwin understood man not to have been “aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in an omnipotent God” and thus sought to place the origins of religion in the struggle for existence.[1] In the pages that followed, Darwin proposed that there was a belief in “unseen spiritual agencies” that was common among the less civilized peoples of the world and, though to the skeptic this may appear to be a distinction without a difference, posited that such could “easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods.”[2]

There can be little doubt that religion is ultimately a social phenomenon, whether one believes it an adaptation to social living or a gift from the deity to guide a certain group. Darwin saw morality as an adaptation to social living, since “[n]o tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery, & c., were common; consequently such crimes within the tribe are ‘branded with everlasting infamy.’” [3] He made this statement in the context of an argument about sympathy, which he believed allowed people to be social, and suggested that the lack of morality evinced among uncivilized tribes was due to their lack of sympathy for those outside the tribal group. As forward-thinking as Darwin was, he was still at times hobbled by ingrained prejudices. Cultural mechanisms such as religion, it has been argued, are necessary to regulate behavior in groups that are too large for each member to know each other member. Religion, then, must arise as one of those regulators of relations within tribal groups, and its prescriptions and proscriptions must be viewed in this light.

Historians tend to treat religion and culture as something entirely man-made or, if they are theistically-minded, as artifacts handed down from the heavens. Darwin, by contrast, requires us to look to our biology for at least a partial answer to the deeper “why” questions we pursue. Thinking in this way allows the historian to view historical phenomena in a different light. We can see culture rising by selection, performing a selective function and fading when it is no longer adaptive.

This, then, is the perspective that Darwinian thought offers to the historian. It is a further tool to investigate the why questions that are left over once who, when and where have been answered. If we, as historians, begin with the notion that people are, to some extent, driven by their biology, then we can see the things people do as answers to the question of how best to survive long enough to pass our genes to our offspring. We can understand that, at some point in the distant past, our individual chances of survival were enhanced by banding together and sharing resources and responsibility. The dark side of this is that our survival was also enhanced by treating members of other groups, attempting to do the same thing we were, as somehow fundamentally different and applying different rules to them, removing the protections we give to members of our own group. This can be used in considering broad issues such as heresy and orthodoxy, or in particular religious ideas, such as the prohibition on usury in the Abrahamic faiths.

Such a view also helps us understand why certain cultural appendages continue long after their usefulness has passed. At some point in the past, each piece of the culture we inherited from our parents provided, if not a distinct advantage in the struggle for existence, at least no detriment. This is a strong incentive to continue practices that might seem logically outmoded or even detrimental to ourselves and others. As long as a certain beliefs or modes of living are not an obstacle to reproductive success, they will likely endure and be passed on to offspring, not through genetics, but through imitation and instruction.

But it also provides no excuse. When we can see, in the light of selection, that a practice once beneficial has become detrimental, then by all rights we should alter it. We should recognize the reasons we persist in it and, using the autonomy selection has granted us, break free. And in this sense, a view of history that takes this into account could potentially be prescriptive. If history is to speak to us, after all, it is because the story it tells is our story, the lessons learned bear upon our present and our future. Why bother with it, with anything, otherwise?

[1] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man in E.O. Wilson, ed., From so Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006), 814.

[2] Ibid., 815.

[3] Ibid., 830.

"Magnificent Desolation" by Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin's latest memoir, "Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon" holds nothing back as Aldrin reveals his struggles with depression and alcoholism following his voyage to the moon. Indeed, the events of July 20, 1969 occupy only about 20 percent of the book, the rest dealing with the inevitable letdown that followed the Apollo 11 mission. This book is honest and, though not as well-written as his previous memoir "Men from Earth," authentic and, for the most part, humble.

This is not to say the book is without flaws. There are places where a little more editing could have been used. Aldrin's seeming disdain in some places for medication to treat depression might be seen as blase. There are times where the moral seems to be that all that is required for a man to beat depression is the love of a good woman. The final third of the book often seems to be promotion for SpaceShare, a non-profit venture to promote civilian space travel.

Still, it is hard to fault him in his zeal for space travel and exploration, and as a rallying cry for progress in these fields "Magnificent Desolation" is valuable. One can forgive the occasional lapses in his humility, such as when he refers to himself as "a visionary often stymied by a bureaucratic maze" (311) if only because he is one of twelve people ever to have set foot on another world. And any voice attempting to rouse us to the greater exploration of space should be considered.

"I believe," he concludes, "that mankind must explore or expire. We must venture outward" Amen.

The Auctioneer (part two of two)

Part one here...

A pod of people formed on both sides of the first pile. The auctioneer set his hand on the tobacco, as though blessing it before it was sent out into the world. He began by calling out the number of the pile and an opening price, raising it by watching the subtle gestures of the buyers who stood around the pile. Within 10 seconds the pile was sold, for $1.94 a pound and he had moved on to the next pile. As he moved, another man called out the final price while a third reached for the card, wrote something on it, and threw it back on the pile.

The auctioneer seemed to fall into a trance, nudging the price gently higher until each pile sold. I watched in awe as he proceeded from pile to pile down the row, never running out of breath, always in the same cadence, raising the assembly like a charismatic preacher with his subtle shifts of tone. When we reached the end of the first row, we performed a precise maneuver; the auctioneer turned to face the pile of tobacco behind him while the buyers, opposite and outside the aisle walked around, like the pencil on the end of a compass. It was then, as the yin and yang of the auction shifted that I understood.

There are no coincidences. One night, not long before, I had been channel surfing between the halves of a basketball game. I stopped on one of the specialty channels in the nether regions of cablespace, transfixed by the image of a Tibetan lama, robed in saffron chanting over a mandala. Relaxing into the steady rhythm of his prayer, I was unaware that my then-girlfriend had entered the room until she leaned over the back of the sofa, her hair falling over my shoulder. She kissed my cheek and said, “I wonder what he’s selling.” I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She smiled the smile of seduction and said, “Sounds like he’s having an auction.”

I turned off the television.

* * *

As I stood outside the knot of people around the auctioneer, I realized what had brought me here. I knew then why I would spend my coming days wandering from small town to small town across America, attending, when I could, a tobacco auction here or a farm auction there, perhaps an estate up for the bidding or a parcel of land for commercial development, listening to the singsong of the auctioneer’s cant. And finally, upon reaching the sea, perhaps voyaging across it to India or Tibet to hear the other holy men chant their chant, offer their wares. From there, perhaps, to the infinity I had just glimpsed.

In that moment I understood what the auctioneer could not have understood about himself, that it was not tobacco or drug forfeitures or pop art that he auctioned, but attachment. The auctioneer’s twang sang out to me, to all of us, as the buyers assembled thought they purchased a farm commodity, but were actually accruing parts of the divine. And the auctioneer, oblivious to his role, an unknowing boddhisattva, the catalyst, continued. He was an old man, who had surely been doing this for quite some time, selling his self and with that loss of self gaining entrance to another plane. Perhaps he would be reincarnated as an auctioneer in a larger venue, perhaps at Sotheby’s or Christie’s where the speedy murmur would give way to more measured and aristocratic tones. Or perhaps that was bad karma; perhaps he had already been there and this was his reward.

Maybe, I thought, he’ll simply go to the top. Moving up, becoming a lama himself, an auctioneer of his own soul, bringing upward along the great chain of being those whose lives he touched as this man in North Carolina. Or was this his final stop, having acquired and then discarded sufficient divinity, having peered over the wall into the jeweled city but not crossing into it, coming back to tell us all the way, giving pieces of himself to serve as a compass? I pondered these questions, but dared not ask him for fear of breaking the spell. Instead, as I left the building and found my way to the road that would carry me to Tennessee, I could only content myself with images of his next life, auctioning his divinity to the most willing bidders.

"Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" by John McWhorter

This is an intriguing little book whose goal is to advance some interesting arguments about English, indeed a magnificent, bastard tongue. Unlike other books I have read on the topic, OMBT does not approach the history of English from the standpoint of vocabulary (though there is some at the end) but from the grammar. Specifically, he attempts to account for some of the quirks of English that are not easily accounted for by mainstream narratives of the development of the language.

English, in John McWhorter's view is a language spoken by Germans, heavily influences by Celtic-speakers, battered by Vikings and heir to a rich influence from Semitic languages.

He leads with his strongest argument: that, far from having a negligible influence limited to only a few words, the Celtic languages spoken at the time of the German invasions of England left their fingerprints everywhere. The most important evidence for this is the meaningless "do" (as in "Did you hear that Celtic languages exerted a lot of influence on English?) and the "ing" marker used to denote the present progressive. These features are not present in any Indo-European language, except for the Celtic languages.

From there he continues to show how Vikings ruling in England and speaking Northumbrian were instrumental in eliminating the case endings from the Germanic language of the English, leading to the simplified grammatical structure we have today. English is the least inflected language of the European languages, and it is because of these Viking influences.

Finally, and most controversially, he advances a notion that Proto-Germanic, the mother tongue of English and the other Germanic languages, was heavily influenced through contact with at least one of the Semitic languages, possibly Phoenecian. One-third of the vocabulary of Germanic languages is not easily traceable to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European roots. Among these are words heavy in certain consonantal sounds and those which mark a change in tense by changing the vowel.

Along the way, McWhorter takes issue with the notion of "bad" grammar, scoring points against the whole notion in a way that makes this reviewer a little uncomfortable. He also effectively demolishes the notion that grammar is a wholesale representation of the way speakers of a language group think. The meat of the book is the three arguments above, and they are presented in the order of their strength beginning with the strongest and using the momentum to carry through the argument about Semitic influence. I am not enough of a linguist to evaluate them in terms of linguistics, but all seem worth considering.

Satisfying through and through, "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" is certainly worth reading. McWhorter approaches a subject that could easily be subsumed in dry technical jargon and presents it with humor throughout, while not straying from his argument. Anyone interested in the history of this wonderful, messed-up language we know and love should find much to enjoy here.

Yorktown

A column by Jim Jenkins in this morning's News & Observer has me thinking about Yorktown and the importance of the place in my personal and (dare I say?) professional life. Not that this is the only time I have thought about Yorktown lately. In preparing my Master's thesis for North Carolina State University, I felt the need to pause and reflect upon those people who influenced me along in my continuing journey as a historian. The first of these was my father and it was through innumerable walks with him not only at Yorktown, but also at nearby Newport News Park, itself home to earthworks from the Civil War battle of Yorktown. Nearly every weekend, sometimes both days, for four or five years we visited these places, the walks ending on the precipice of puberty and the struggle for autonomy that begins then.

Those walks were my first history lesson, and one of the forces that led me to become a historian, albeit of medieval Europe. They also helped instill a love of country that endures despite constant disappointment with those in power of whatever party, as well as the respect and admiration for those soldiers and patriots who, for complicated and often contradictory reasons, fought for America's independence.

As the Fourth of July approaches it seems appropriate to think about this and just how fragile the seemingly solid edifice of history is. It would be easy to look back, see how things happened, and think that they could not have happened otherwise. But Yorktown offers a different lesson. The situation was precarious. Had the French fleet of Comte de Grasse not defeated the British fleet which had come to relieve Cornwallis, cutting off not only reinforcement, but also escape, the result could have been vastly different. Consideration of how close-fought this was, of how close-fought every pivotal moment is, should be a corrective against hubris, or claims of divine favor.

As I reach milestones on my personal journey as a historian, it is nice to pause and reconnect with those places that were important along the way. It is heartening to see that the place that touched my life so profoundly continues to touch the lives of others.

The Auctioneer (part one of two)

This is a story I first wrote sometime in the mid-90s, and which I revisit every few years to tweak, mostly because I seem to meet a dead end when I start a new one. I have the writing bug right now, so I am trying anything to jump start.

As I stood among the pallets of tobacco wrapped in burlap and baling wire, sweltering in the summer heat and enraptured by the singsong mumbling of the auctioneer, I had my epiphany. I looked heavenward—as though expecting a sign, but seeing only the movement of the large, steel ceiling fans in their futile struggle against the August air, their blades fused by motion as they spun at full tilt—teetering on the edge of awareness. On the periphery of perception, at the edges of my narrowing world, I heard the auctioneer rattling on and on, moving from pallet to pallet along the aisle, the rhythm of the words carrying the bidders to the climax of the game. And when the congregation reached the end of the second row, after a scant fifteen minutes of instruction, I understood.

When I first approached the building, really a large shed made of corrugated tin with a long-long faded and hard-weathered white paint job, I could not have told anyone what I was doing there. The morning air was still damp on the way to oppressive and dew glistened in the grass and in the trees. Passing through the farm town on the state highway, I had passed the warehouse and its sign bearing the name of the cooperative under whose auspices the sale was held. The sign, welcoming as at any church, read, “Sale Today, 9 A.M-?, Come on in!” I might have ignored the sudden curiosity the sign awakened had not my stomach grumbled, reminding me that it was time for breakfast.

* * *

The country diner was a country diner. There is really nothing to compare the species to except for other members of the species. A formica counter with spinning seats, topped in red vinyl; a handful of tables topped with red checked tablecloths, four chairs to a table; the smell of pork and eggs and hash browns in the air, so thick you feel your arteries clog when you open the door. I love a country diner. The place was crowded and as I sat down at the counter to order my own little portion of excess, I listened to the sound of the room.

Most of the conversation was about the upcoming auction, and how this could be the last. They talked about past sales as well. Some of them were, or at least looked like, ancient farmers, their faces permanently weathered by the sun and so on. I won’t bother you with details; the type has been described before and I have no special gift for faces. Their talk was the talk of old men, of better days when the auctions had real meaning, before the conglomerates began negotiating directly with the farmers, before the allotments had been bought up by the government. Soon the auctions, already a pale shadow of auctions past, would be extinct. They despaired that their way of life would endure.

* * *

Perhaps it was this despair that drove me to follow most of them back to the warehouse to watch the sale. The representatives of the tobacco companies had already arrived and were picking over the merchandise, rubbing it between their fingers and inhaling the scent. It struck me as futile, since the sweet smell of fresh tobacco was omnipresent, overpowering every olfactory nerve in the place. More than once a deep inhalation led to sneezing, the sound clearly marking me as an outsider.

Off to the side, serenely sitting in a lawn chair and stroking an old coon hound, taking everything in, was a man later revealed as the auctioneer. Occasionally someone would approach him and he would respond with a nod, looking at the supplicant and through him at the activity. They quickly realized that he was paying little attention to them, though his face never betrayed the slightest annoyance. With no apparent signal, he unfolded himself and walked over to the first pile. The auction had begun.

On to part two...