Even Old New York Was Once New Amsterdam

After reading Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto, I CAN say why they changed it, and also state that it's open for debate whether people really liked it better that way at the time.

Telling an epic story, like that of the Dutch colony on Manhattan (c.1620 - 1664) is a difficult task. Imagine it today. I have three close friends living in the general vicinity. One is in his early 50s, and came to the city several years ago with $400 and no other prospects other than the promise of a free month's rent and the possibility of getting back with an ex-girlfriend, and in a modern-day Horatio Alger tale, is now happy and has a successful and lucrative career. Another friend is a scientist who, despite being intelligent, well-spoken and passionate about life and her field, has not managed to land a job in her field and lives at the edge of poverty. A third friend lives not on Manhattan but in Brooklyn. She holds a BA in English and is pursuing her master's in education while working at a group home. She is the only child of a single mom, and they live together. So whose New York is it? Probably most of you were drawn to one of the first two stories, but there are probably more people living like my third friend. Or does the story of New York in the beginning of the 21st century belong to any of them? Does it really belong to Guiliani and Bloomberg, to plummeting crime rates, skyrocketing real estate values, terrorist attacks and rebuilding?

Russell Shorto manages, in only 325 pages, to weave all of these types of stories together in presenting the true origins of America as we think of it. It takes an unusual sort of person to leave everything they knew and make a new life in a region which is essentially unknown. You'd have to be either terribly brave and noble, or terribly foolish with nothing to lose. There are plenty of both peopling Shorto's book. I laughed out loud to read about Griet Reyniers, the prostitute with a knack for self-promotion and a penchant for measuring her customer's penises on a broomstick, and her husband, pirate Anthony "The Turk" van Salee, described as a "one-man criminal class...even his dog was trouble."

But I came to admire a man who deserves his own paragraph (and more). Adrien van der Donck was poised to have it all. He was from a good family and a lawyer, recently graduated from the best university in Europe, yet he chose to come to the Manhattan colony. Once there, he proved himself to be both a shrewd politician and clever manipulator, but also an advocate for freedom and representative government. He was imprisoned and nearly lost his life to the cause, but one can see in his struggle the prototype for the American revolution.

Another hero, to me anyway, is Dr. Charles Gehring, director of the New Netherland Project. In a move that must have had his parents tearing their hair out, he earned his PhD in 17th Century Dutch Language. By fortunate coincidence, the New York State Library was looking for someone to translate a cache of 12,000 pages of documents from the New Amsterdam colony as he was searching for a job. This was 26 years ago, and Gehring has been there ever since. If you want to visit him in his office, you cannot just go in. The elevator doesn't stop there. You have to go up a floor, state your business, and be escorted downstairs to see him. I've just left a job that I found increasingly isolating, and his ability to keep going in the fact of that is remarkable to me.

The central thesis of the book is that the Dutch, through their tolerance, created the "melting pot" one can find in New York City today, also that their influence has been more pervasive than has been thought in the past. Wall Street was the site of a fortification they built to keep the English out (you can tell just by the name change how that worked out). If you came to the colonies as an apprentice, you'd work for a master, or baas. So if you've ever bitched about your "boss", that's where the word came from. The Manhattan Dutch also invented a dish called koosla, cabbage chopped and tossed with vinegar and melted butter. We call it cole slaw today. The book contains several other wonderful nuggets like this, both mundane and profound, to show the true influence of this often-forgotten colony.

This is starting to change. There has been more scholarship in the field, as well as general interest. I did my internship at a Dutch homestead, built shortly after the end of the Manhattan colony, and during my summer there, we received visits from the New Netherlands Project, and also from several people at the Met, who had recently acquired a Dutch homestead to exhibit and were researching the architecture and furnishings of Dutch homesteads that were still extant. It was there that I first heard about this book, and I'm glad I read it. I highly recommend it. I've also included a link to the New Netherlands Project should you want to know more...just click on the title to this post.

Colonial History Thing

In the next couple of days, you'll see a review on this site of Russell Shorto's excellent book, The Island at the Center of the World, about the Dutch colony at Manhattan. Learn where the wall of Wall Street fame came from, and why Americans work for "bosses", and find out why Adrien Van Der Donck was so great, anyway. Obviously, I've enjoyed this book a lot, and since there are a few other colonial history books on my TBR list, I'm going to try to knock some of those off, too. They are:

Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty. Cleverly timed to coincide with the release of the latest Pirates of the Carribean film, this book tells the REAL tale of the pirate of the Carribean during colonial times. It is also due back at the library in two days, so I'm not sure if I'll make it.

A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos. Has been haunting my conscience since late 2003, when it was assigned for a material culture class, but it was an extremely busy week, and I just didn't get to it. I liked the class discussion a lot, though, and kept it to read. I started to read it this spring. Now I'm going to finish it.

The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. For the same class, we had to pick a chapter to read and discuss. Mine was about Hannah Barnard's Cupboard, and it was very engaging. That was a good discussion that day, but as my notes on the Demos book suggest, I had quite enough to be getting on with without trying to read something for fun. I've always meant to go back to it, and now I will.

Good Wives is also by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. It came from the personal collection of a legend at my graduate school. I got the book shortly before I graduated, and have been meaning to read it for two years now. This is the time!

Since nothing but history will make me go all wonky, I do have some fun books planned for the next two weeks. I picked up both of Tawni O'Dell's books, and I've started Imitation of Life. I also have to get reading for my new job. And pack, and find aplace to live...damn, it'll be a busy couple of weeks!

His Dark Materials...coming soon

Previews are already in theaters for the long-awaited screen adaptation of The Golden Compass, the first book of Phillip Pullman's excellent His Dark Materials trilogy. The film will see wide release on December 7th, and I will be there!

These excellent books deserve an excellent adaptation, and from the previews, it seems like it will get one. Sam Elliot and Nicole Kidman are excellent choices for the roles of Lee Scoresby and Mrs. Coulter, respectively. Tom Stoppard (yes, that one!) collaborated on the screenplay, as did Pullman himself. The director seems to have a relatively undistinguished body of work so far. He's previously directed Down to Earth starring Chris Rock and About a Boy with Hugh Grant, based on the book by Nick Hornby. His best-known work to date, however, is a trilogy that's quite different: the American Pie trilogy. However, he has a degree in film from Cambridge, and was hoping to enter the diplomatic corps, so perhaps he will step up. Trailers can make anything look good, but there are a lot of encouraging signs with this movie, so I'm optimistic!

It's All in the Telling

You would think a book starring a woman who lost her mother at an early age, was smacked around by her dad, raised dirt-poor, acted as a mother to her younger sister (who disappeared at age 16 and hasn't been seen for nearly 20 years), got pregnant at age 16 after being raped, and had recently resigned the police force in an economically depressed mining town to own and operate her own cab company -- such a book sounds utterly tragic, and no fun at all, right? Not if the book in question is Sister Mine by Tawni O'Dell.

The woman in question above is Shae-Lynn Penrose, who is a true survivor with a sense of humor, tough, smart and with a strong sense of justice (early in the book, she gets toseed from a bar for starting a fight with a man who neglects his kids). As I described above, Shae-Lynn's overcome a lot in her life, but through the course of the book, is forced to deal with it all afresh when two strangers come to town separately, each looking for the sister who had disappeared all those years ago. Shae-Lynn has believed that her father beat her to death, but the strangers seems to know Shannon, and even have pictures. It's not long before Shannon herself reappears on the scene, as if she'd only been gone for a few days, and is full of lies and contradictions.

Shae-Lynn spends much of the rest of the book unraveling what Shannon's been up to for the past two decades, and what the strangers want from her. She also spends it trying to help her friends. Her town is a coal-mining town, and a year earlier, five of her close friends made national news when they were trapped in a cave-in. They got a book deal and a movie deal out of it, but it hasn't improved their lives much. all are, in different ways, coping with the aftereffects of not only the trauma, but the short-lived fame. Shae-Lynn is also working out her complicated feelings towards one of them, and as if all this weren't enough, is also forced to deal with the man who raped her so many years ago, whose identity she's kept secret, even from her son.

While this book has some of the usual elements of "chick lit" (strong female protagonist, romantic subplot, liberal doses of humor), it goes a little beyond that. For one thing, this isn't a book about the bonds between women, despite the title. Shae-Lynn is more at home among men, and although she has good relationships with several women, she doesn't seem as strongly connected to them as she is to the men in her life. Although Shae-lynn is a mother, and acted as a mother to her sister all her life, the book isn't strictly about motherhood, either. Finally, there's a lack of glamour. Shae-Lynn's hometown is not a glamorous place. It's hard, dirty, and poor, and when Shae-Lynn talks with the wives of the miners, you can almost hear the practical haircuts and utilitarian clothes.

Serious sub-themes run throughout the book: economic exploitation (frequent mention is made of the lazy, entitled, man who owns the mines); military exploitation (the Marines work hard to recruit students from the high school, knowing that with little other opportunity, they're likely to hop on the chance to get out of town); child absue and neglect (Shae-Lynn's childhood is mirrored by a 12-year-old girl named Fanci, who we first meet when she's attempting to trade her 4-year-old brother for a cab ride to the mall, and who reappears periodically throughout the book); and the whole question of what the law does and doesn't allow (read the book and you'll catch this one).

I just happened to grab this one because it was in the "New Acquisitions" section, but I'm glad I did. O'Dell has apparently written two other books, and I'll have to look for them the next time I'm near a library. I wonder if she is going to write other books about any of the characters in Sister Mine. I think that Shae-Lynn is a strong and charismatic heroine and would enjoy watching her negotiate other challenges and situations. I hope she does.

Marlene Carvell II, as promised

Sweetgrass Basket did not take me very long to read at all. I picked it up on Thursday and finished it last night. It was excellent, though, and I can understand why it won several awards and is on the recommended reading list of a group that monitors Native American portrayals in literature.

Sweetgrass Basket is the tale of sisters, Mattie and Sarah Tarbell. Mattie and Sarah are Mohawk Nation and their mother has passed away. They were sent to Carlisle Industrial Indian School, which was a real place that existed in the early 20th century.

The white man's war on the Indians did not end with the signing of the peace treaty (incidentally, the document with the most signatures of leaders known to human history -- over 500 -- and held in the collections of a museum I used to work for). Although the shooting part of it may have been over, the beliefs that they posed some kind of a threat did not die so easily. These "Indian schools" were an attempted antidote to the threat. The overt idea behind them was that the schools would teach them useful skills needed to function in society. the real intent was to extinguish group identity and culture. Members of the same tribe were separated. They were not allowed to speak their native languages, nor were they allowed to have any "Indian things" from home. They worked extremely hard. Although truancy laws were a few years in the future and the average white child may have left school after 8th grade, some people stayed at these schools into their 20s, especially those who were older when they came to the schools.

None of this is in the book, exactly. Rather, it tells through Mattie and Sarah's eyes (in alternating chapters, and in Carvell's trademark free verse style) their experiences at the school. Mattie is the elder of the two, and although she is an immediate social and academic success, she has a hard time following the rigid, military-style rules at the school and constantly finds herself in trouble. Sarah is better at doing as she's told, but struggles with her classes and takes longer to fit in. Neither girl is happy -- none of the students seem happy -- but they are fitting in well enough when a small incident gets blown out of proportion by the truly sadistic school head, and leads ultimately to tragedy.

My copy of the book was signed by the author. She signed it: "Children everywhere have stories that need to be told" and I think that sums up this book very well. One thing that angers me about the story of the Native American and the white is that we whites have never been honest about it, the same way we have about slavery. You learn about slavery and civil rights in grade school, but often have to wait until college to learn about the attempted extermination of Native American tribes. You hear vague allusions to the whites and the Indians not getting along terribly well, but they never really sit you down and tell you why. And as a result, Native American reservations are among the most desolate places in the country. Name any social problem: alcoholism, suicide, teenage pregnancy, unemployment and you'll always find it at a much higher rate on a reservation than in the general population. Carvell's books would be excellent tools for bringing the story into a classroom. They are both classified as "young adult" and both very readable and as enjoyable as is decent given the subject matter.

Please, no more sex with minors!

After reading the third book on this theme in less than two weeks, and choosing to ignore what this might say about me, I'm ready to give this theme a rest. I don't care if I never read another book about a 40-year-old fucking a teenager ever again, and that's a sentence I never thought I'd utter!

Before I turn my back on it, though, I'm going to post about What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller. I had been dying to read this book ever since I saw the movie starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I expected.

The book is about twin obsessions. The one that drives the plot is the art teacher Sheba Hart's interest in a student named Steven Connolly. The interest starts out as professional (he displays a talent for art, but is unable to take her class because he is in special ed., so she agrees to help him after school), takes a turn towards the sexual, but surprisingly, winds up being a one-sided crush on Sheba's part. Sheba actually falls in love with him, which causes him to back off.

The other obsession (as those who have seen the movie will know) is Sheba's colleague Barbara Covett's feelings for Sheba. Barbara is the narrator of the book, and her feelings towards Sheba are bizarre and complex. Barbara has never married, and alludes to another strong friendship with a woman that ended badly, but you don't exactly get the impression that she's a lesbian either. Her interest in Sheba is something else altogether. In the movie, Barbara comes off as more twisted and obsessive, where Sheba is a basically good woman with bad judgement in her choice of companions -- ALL of her companions.

In the book, Barbara portrays Sheba as selfish, vain and flighty. The movie depicts Barbara as being an emotional vampire, but in the book, Barbara's actions and feelings seem more understandable, given Sheba's alternating fits of dependence on her and ignoring her altogether. In one breathtakingly callous moment, Barbara has stopped by Sheba's house, dreadfully upset because she just learned she'd have to put her cat down. During the conversation, Sheba's underage paramour calls up and asks to meet. Sheba chooses to leave her friend alone with her grief, her friend who has kept her secret, given her advice and acted as a good sounding board.

I think everyone's had a friend like Sheba Hart -- although probably not one with as big a secret as she had. In college, mine was a brilliant, charismatic, borderline alcoholic with a propensity towards casual sex, although one of the guys I thought she'd slept with repeatedly told me later that they'd never actually had sex because she'd always start crying and he'd hold her until she fell asleep. I liked her a lot, I thought I had something to offer her and had a lot of fun being around her, but she just started to suck the life out of me, because it was always all about her. Always. If I made other plans, she'd fuck with them, but would never hesitate to ditch me if something better came along.

It makes me wonder, though. I wound up walking away, but what made Barbara Covett stay? (Heller has a lot of fun with names: Covett (she does, Hart (she wears hers on her sleeve), Pabblem (the principal of the school, and the perfect word for Barbara's opinion of his new-age, touchy-feely educational and management theories). Also making cameos in the book are a Rumer, a Bangs, and a Hodge, the last of which is depicted as very dull and foolish). Was it loneliness, the desire to be needed (things get to a point where no one else could help Sheba), some sort of twisted love? The reader can decide.

Book Club To-nite!

This was a bittersweet book club for me, as it will be my last with this group since I'm moving 150 miles away at the end of the month. But it was an excellent one to say goodbye with!

Tonight was rather different. Tonight, we welcomed author Marlene Carvell to talk about her two books, Who Will Tell My Brother? and Sweetgrass Basket. Carvell lives and works in the area, and it was a real treat to hear her talk about them after having read them. Well, I read the one, anyway: Who Will tell My Brother?

The most striking thing about her novels is that she writes them in free verse. I know of no one else who does this, and it gives them a very different feel than anything else. As she talked about her journey in getting published, I felt pleased that something like this was able to see the light of day at all. I had avoided watching American Idol until this current season. I had hated the show all that time, but decided to actually see it and find out why. I had my answer during the first few auditions I saw, when Simon, Paula and Randy were actually coming out and telling people: "You've got the look that record companies love" or "You'll be very easy to market." I wasn't so naive as to believe that marketing had nothing to do with their decisions, but I hadn't thought that was ALL there was. So reading a book like Carvell's is a pleasant oasis amidst all those pink-shoe books you see at Barnes and Noble these days.

As Carvell herself said, to say that Who Will tell My Brother? is a book about a Native American boy who tries to get his offensive high school mascot changed is to oversimplify, although that is what the book's about on a very basic level. It also follows the journey of Evan (the young man in question) towards understanding his heritage, and (as Carvell also said) is about how people treat one another. Changing a school mascot sounds like such a small thing, but in the book (and the real-life experience of Carvell's son the book is based on), people dug in, people ridiculed him and treated him horribly. The Board of Education actually voted to keep the mascot -- after repeated appeals, they not only not listened to him but actually voted to keep the mascot. He got picked on at school. And ultimately, the mascot did not change. But Evan succeeded in changing people's minds, and several of his classmates stood with him at graduation through the mascot's offensive dance on the field.

The treatment of Native Americans at the hands of whites is one of the most shameful episodes in American history -- only the treatment of blacks even comes close. The difference is that attitudes towards blacks have changed, and that the story from slavery through Jim Crow and Brown vs. Board of Ed. is taught in school and well-known to all Americans, whereas we as a society have never really faced up to the systematic destruction of Native life and culture. Unless you live near a casino, you generally just don't hear about them. Politicians never court the "Native American vote." There's no "Native American Music" section at Borders, no Native American market segment. We've never really given them a way to fit in, although we have alternately romanticized and vilified them. Carvell is white, but her husband is a member of the Mohawk tribe and has a painful family history. His aunt was taken from her family and placed in a boarding school for Native American children, where she was forbidden to speak her native language, cut off from her family, and kept away from any classmates who happened to be from the same tribe (her experiences form the basis for Sweetgrass Basket). His grandfather ran away from a similar school and had to work his way back home. He changed his name from a typical Native American last name when he'd applied for a liquor license and gotten denied. He applied under his new last name and was granted it. And while Who Will tell My Brother? is a novel, her own sons suffered through many of the same experiences as each tried and failed to get the mascot changed.

If you're wondering, though, there was a positive ending IRL. Her son's cause resonated with the eighth graders in the district, and as high school students, a group of them banded together to fight for change. The school board promised them that if they did a list of things over the course of the school year, they could change the mascot, but refused when the students came to them having completed the list. The students went to the media, a special school board meeting was called, hundreds showed up, the mascot got changed, and there was an unprecedent turnout of high school seniors who were 18 at the next board elections and they voted out the president. They kept the name -- the Marauders -- but the mascot itself is now a wolf. The real-life Evan, meanwhile, is now studying for the bar exam, and is involved with a tribal court out west.

Carvell's third book is in pre-publication and doesn't deal with Native American issues. She is working on a fourth, but didn't tell us much of what it was about. It was a fascinating evening with her, however. I'm going to pick up her other book tomorrow (sexual exploitation fest 2007 having come to an end). I'll report on it soon!