“Learn More, See More”

Teaching our students to “see” our field is an essential aspect of what we do.  While I had a student recently express frustration with my midterm that tests for methodology as much as content–and, what would he need that for when this is a 101 class and he’s a computer science major–the simple fact is we want our students to see more of the world around them, not less.

History has a humanizing quality about it, but one cannot access that facet of the field unless one has an understanding of how history works.  Engaging humanity through another culture, even if it is a root for our own–especially if it is a root for our own–forces students to effectively open a dialogue with the people who came before.  But, that is impossible if we pretend to be the man behind the curtain and provide our students with a sterilized “history” that has already “answered” all the questions for the students.  Rather if we open the discipline up to students and encourage them to attempt formulating their own interpretations and engage directly with those of scholars, then we will expand their vision.

Perhaps, I should explain what I mean by “expand their vision” so it is not some empty platitude.  Neurologist Richard Restak explains that the eye does not operate as a camera lens, taking snapshots of “the world out there.”  Instead, it sees according to the knowledge of the scene already possessed, hence his expression which I borrowed for my title, “learn more, see more.”  If I, for example, brought a sailor, a marine biologist, an American historian, and a local businesswoman out to the point where Fort McHenry sits in Baltimore, each of their minds would seize on different aspects available in the scene, would be drawn to different subjects:

• The sailor would likely notice the tides, the shipping lanes, and perhaps scan the port visible across the water;
• The marine biologist would plausibly look for algae blooms, scan the fauna along the shore, notice the sea birds or other animals that the others might miss, and see the unwanted debris floating in the Bay;
• The American historian would probably focus more on the Fort itself and scan the horizon for the landmarks during the War of 1812 or the Civil War, looking for the neighborhoods that were occupied or were battle zones;
• The local businesswoman would doubtless take in the new developments in the surrounding neighborhoods visible from the point or, depending on what her business is, direct her attention to the port and its activities, BUT…

If she is a local, born-and-raised Baltimorean, she may well see many of the same things as her counterparts:

•  Boating is such a big part of local Bay culture that she may be an enthusiast, herself, or have friends and family who are thereby having picked up something of their knowledge;
• One cannot live on the Bay without being acquainted with the local animals and fauna, nor without being aware of the decline in its health and efforts to improve it, frequently hearing in the news, local radio, and PSAs about its conditions and what threatens it most;
• The history of Fort McHenry is well known to locals who are proud of its place in American history and as the site where the star-spangled banner waved in the wind, inspiring Francis Scott Keys, held on a British man-of-war in the Bay, to pen the poem that became our national anthem.

The more we can add to what our students and our children see, the more rich and nuanced the world they live in becomes–the more alive!  When a person can scan the horizon and see in his or her line of sight a teeming vision of the community around him or her (whether it is a positive and pleasant sight or one that insights frustration or anger), boredom and disinterest remain distant.  Citizens are thus engaged in their community and in the world in which they live.  As a result, they can share more with all of us.

This same argument applies to the skills the field requires, not merely the content.  Seeing is a verb with many meanings.  One can see the scene in front of him or her and one can see patterns in verbal communication (which can later impact how one sees the scene).  We are a culture inundated with verbal communication: ads, news, social media, entertainment, etc.  It is crucial that we learn to digest that material effectively and critically.  It is also expected that as citizens we are prepared to engage in the dialogue, but for that to be useful the output has to be intelligible and preferably intelligent, even if contrary.

Historians have to read critically, recognizing what questions a source answers (even if that question was not already in their head when they sat down to read the source!) and which questions still need to be answered–this active reading and developed curiosity leads to interesting and productive explorations.  It also fuels useful discussion.

It is further incumbent on historians to interpret what happened in the past given the available sources and make an argument defending that interpretation.  This argument requires developing verbal skills in both written and oral communication.  This in turn should improve ones recognition of the patterns of argumentation one encounters.  (Please note, however, that this is precisely what textbooks and most documentaries do not do!  Rather, these forums provide the interpretation as fact–a squirrely thing in the field of history–not as a single interpretation that has been developed through one’s research into past sources, which are themselves often interpretations of an event and thus subject to critical reading, analysis, and interpretation.)

If we can help students to see these things in what they read and write we are training them to be successful whether they are stay-at-home moms or dads, computer science professionals, local businessmen and women, or historians.  It trains them to see information with a critical eye and ask the right questions, recognize answers, and intelligently navigate arguments.

The overwhelming body of written stuff [I want to read]

 My curiosity often seems fairly boundless to me.  There are so many things I want to explore and I never will have time to read even a quarter of it.  My interests are pretty wide: various fields of science, current events, virtually every location and era of history, and countless tales, fables, stories, and poems all fascinate me.  Every day could be filled with reading the various articles of interest from my Twitter feed alone.  I could very literally spend an entire day reading through it.

It would help if I read faster than I do–it would have helped in grad school, too.  But, puzzlingly, I am not particularly speedy when reading the written word.  Sometimes I get bogged down in hard thinking over the reading, or thumbing through the filing cabinet of my brain seeking a dialogue with some other text (or several) that my current subject provokes.  That latter scenario is often when additional texts, articles and notes start piling up around me at my desk and next to the couch, on the night stand and on the already stocked shelves an arm’s length from my side of the bed.  The former scenario usually leads to mad scribbling in various journals–maybe its the journal I use for possible projects, maybe its the more personal journal in which I record my more personal thoughts.

This extensive curiosity is one major reason why I stopped at the Masters of Arts in history, unsure of how to proceed to a dissertation that would focus my energies  for a number of years on one particular problem–completion of my Ph.D. seemed unlikely to occur in an acceptable time period.  It is also why freelancing was so appealing, I could work on longer projects that require long-term focus, but pick up smaller projects of other interests along the way.  Ideal really.  (Homeschooling my daughter has ended up filling in most of those smaller projects for the time being, but we don’t plan on homeschooling her for college, too.)

Another challenge I have is the cultural literacy I have developed that has given me access to many stories despite the fact that  I haven’t read all of them.  To this day, I cannot remember if I have read Romeo and Juliet in its entirety, from start to finish, or if I have only read various excerpts and seen it a hundred times in a hundred ways–I can probably quote more lines from it than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, but I am still not certain I ever read it.  I still haven’t seen Hitchcock’s Pyscho on a related note, because I already know the plot and have seen the most famous scenes from the movie.  It’s not my intention to avoid these classics–quite the opposite I assure you–but it is difficult to prioritize my reading when there is such a long list and such tall piles waiting for me.

When it is time to start a new book or story, I often suffer from option paralysis because the stacks are so many.  Not only that, but I often try to “schedule” reading certain books before others when I know that there is an open dialogue between texts A and B, and the author of B largely relies upon the fact that I, the reader, have already read A.  Plus, there is the self-experienced truism that many of the greatest works offer something more in each new reading, and I hate not returning to the great works.

It really isn’t a bad problem to have, but sometimes I get a little depressed when I consider just how few of the many books, articles and papers I want to read will actually be read.  As a historian, my work is reading and writing.  I just finished explaining to my students in the 101 history course I am teaching this semester that a historian wants to consult as many sources as possible to engage a particular event and really understand and interpret it.  This is much easier to say in a 101 course, for which we have so comparatively few sources and the authors’ existing canon is fairly limited and well-known by comparison with the early modern era and the increasing proliferation of sources, expanding with increased literacy and technology.  Even comparing a research project of the American Revolution with one of the Norman Conquest reveals a laughable gap in the available sources, though knowledge of Latin is far less necessary for the Americans.

This holiday season, I will be traveling–hours in a car and in a plane mean I will get some reading done, but not a ton.  It also means I will, much to my pleasure, acquire more than a handful of new reading materials, both as gifts for the holidays and as the result of my travels.  In other words, my list will only grow.  That’s ok.  If nothing else, it means I should never be bored, and I always have something to look forward to as  I get tied up in one project or another, building book castles all around my abode.  Although, I will always be grateful that I live in the 21st century and am thus not likely to become a historian of the era and all the many, many multi-media sources it will produce!

Can I get a printer? More minor struggles in book-editing

I want 8 x 11 1/2 paper, with 2 pages on the front (i.e. 1 and 2) and 2 pages on the back (i.e. 3 and 4). Why is this so hard?

I usually am fairly loyal to Office Depot, but they’re making me nuts for my book-editing.  I’m sorry, but I need to have my text on paper to edit.  Apparently, this is a huge problem–one that I could probably solve if they let me set the printer settings.  All I [frickin'!] want is print two-to-a-page, double-sided.  Two tries, two strikes.  As a child, I could never figure out if a three-attempt situation was more apt to be a strike-out or a charm.  Here’s hoping, I guess.

Attempt 1

My first attempt to print my first rough draft ended up being  a small enough problem–small being the operative word!  I shared that experience in a previous blog: Oh the little, little things! Minor struggles in book-editing. | Brush off the dust! History now!  Four pages were printed on one side, the back remained empty.  I was fine for most of the first three quarters of the tiny, tiny book.  Around that time I, discovered how much easier it was to delete “extraneous” material than to edit it.  A lot more material became “extraneous” than I would have first anticipated.

I was determined that this would not be repeated this time.  I monitored the situation.  I was ready to say, no I won’t accept that, but I should have known by how long it took them to “figure it out” that something was amiss.  I just didn’t pick up on the actual problem until I got home.

Attempt 2

Having edited my first draft, I was ready to print it and edit my second rough draft.  The first woman struggled, so she called her manager.  Somewhere several points of mis-communication must have ricocheted through the space between the three of us.  Before she called for help, the employee had reconfigured my document into two columns–not what I wanted.  But, the manager thought I wanted it printed as a book, and I did not make the calculation to figure out what this would mean for my page numbers.  I thought she had the right idea: four pages to a sheet of paper.  So close!  But, I wanted consecutive pages.  I wanted my document to go in sequential order so I could hole-punch it, put it in my binder and then edit the mo-fo!  Instead, she printed my document and folded it in half before handing it to me.  And, I still didn’t get it!

Needless to say, the current half sheets I have in my binder are stupid.  This will be obnoxious and a pain in my posterior.  Again.  I am trying to save a little money on my nearly 150-page manuscript and still stay on top of it to keep editing.  Office Depot is not helping.

Methods of reading…

It is perhaps inevitable that I would study the medieval era and perhaps inevitable that I would go to grad school to study history.  I say this in observing how I read.  It appears that I have a rather medieval turn of mind which is seen in the analysis of my inquiries: my investigation invariably grows laterally as I gather authorities and auctores around me in my study.  The medieval literary mind would seek a greater synthesis of all materials than I do and would likely have a greater memory of their library stored in their brain matter than I do, but otherwise the similarity remains.

As I proceed into an inquiry, just as many other scholars do, I seem to assume the quintessential image of the professor working away between mountains of books.  Note, that  I said inquiry as opposed to research project, because it is not always the case that I am engaged in a serious research project when the near-obsessive, hound-like hunt begins.  I may have just read something that has simply made me curious, in an article or a novel.  I begin pulling books off the shelf and sniffing out the trail my synapses seem to have created.  Often, I think I would like these to develop into projects, but it happens so frequently that I cannot possibly live long enough to pursue every track to the prey.

I am a historian, a traveler, a writer and a lover of mysteries–though I define mysteries far more broadly than crime–and, as such, I currently have several book projects and possible articles collated and filed in my brain.  (I can only hope that my brain’s filing system is more finely tuned and calibrated than my office suggests.)  Journals, nearly a fetish of mine, are filled with notes, outlines, and text-pockets sewn together with arrows.  These are maps of the inquiry as it unfolds on my desk, literally reaching new heights, before I finally concede a need to get back to authorized assignments and official business.  Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to pursue these projects more thoroughly at some point, but simple math assures me that many will never come to fruition.

And, yet, there is little regret.  While I read more slowly than other folks with my background, training, and interests, I am quite at peace with the lively energy that accompanies even modest intellectual pursuits, including more than a few that were intended simply as pleasure.  The truth about texts is that they are forever talking to each other in ways that no one person can entirely grasp, even the authors.  So, my desire to join the conversation is, while rarely planned, as much part of the program of the textual world as it is inherent in my own composition.  Although, I admit it is sometimes difficult to turn off and can be nothing but a nuisance at one in the morning.

I have always had a reputation for being energetic, but the energy is not only a physical trait, it is a mental trait, as well.  Perhaps, it is less medieval and simply over-active.  Also, I concede I have found a powerful need to balance physical activity with intellectual activity throughout my personal history.  I suppose that is why I was able to earn my black belt two-and-a-half years ahead of schedule when I was an undergraduate, one semester before graduating with one major and two minors.  None of this is meant to brag or suggest I have a powerful intellect, because I have met people with powerful intellects and am well aware of my lacking.  In fact, some bright psychologist reading this may be just as inclined to diagnose me with ADHD!  (If so, I contend that I have developed some successful coping mechanisms.)

Hey Erika! Remember that blog you write?!?

Why, yes, I remember I my beloved blog.  I haven’t really forgotten, despite appearances.  I’ve just been a bit busy.

Busy with what, you ask?  Well, there was the PBS gig I worked on–I wrote a couple of lesson plans and contributed to a game about the election process; keep your eyes open, because it will be up and running soon.  Then there is this awesome digital magazine, called Rohous, for which I am writing some pieces–hopefully, it will be a monthly gig.  Finally, I have decided to adjunct again this semester teaching History 101 at the Community College of Baltimore Campus–a position I took a mere week before my first class.

Then there is all the usual stuff I do…

BWI Rotary (I’m the secretary and everything-tech-person, as well as being the PR Committee Chair, and schedule all the speakers for our meetings) is in the midst of a major project to provide iPads to our area elementary schools that struggle with rising poverty rates (I’m talking kids who go to school to eat, never mind learn!) and increasing numbers of ESL students in the hopes of combating illiteracy so students don’t fall behind.  And, that’s in addition to the normal service projects and good works we do in our community.

Plus, there’s the homeschooling-mom-thing, which at minimum means I’m driving around, but since I also write a larger part of the kid’s curriculum, I do a lot of that kind of writing and compiling (while relying heavily on various resources–especially credible internet ones).  And, the driving, did I mention the driving?  Driving to archaeology, to the Walter’s Teen Arts Council, to the ice rink, to choir, to soccer, to 4-H (if I can’t get out of it), etc.

Finally, there’s the book… oh wait.  I haven’t touched the book I was supposed to finish (at least, the first draft) at all this summer.  *Sigh.*  …Not to mention all those other writing things I wanted to do.  Well, I’ll try to get back on that wagon.  I have a number of blog posts-in-waiting, that I hope to have up here just as soon as I can get them written.

Stay with me, folks!  Stay with me!

It will be ok… I’m just sure of it.

Oh the little, little things! Minor struggles in book-editing.

Lesser printing fee, greater eye strain.

I’ve been working diligently (well, fairly diligently) on a book about teaching and sharing history.  I had a great system to get myself started: I just started writing!  This blog was very helpful in that regard, because I could pull content from the blog and modify it for the book.  I did not worry about the book’s specific layout, initially.  I had certain content that I knew I wanted to include and made a few general outlines, but otherwise I just wrote on those topics and subjects!

A few months ago, I reached enough content that it was time to start pulling it together and organizing it all.  I wasn’t done, had not written all of it, but had enough material that the next pieces I wrote would benefit from the guidance of seeing how far I had come at the time and figuring out approximately how much further I had to go, what directions I would take, and what themes or research were still required.  Bon.  Alles gut.

So, I took all of these individually typed Word files down to my local print shop, because I can’t really edit anything of real length properly on the computer screen, and printed out all of my individual files.  I organized them, pulled out a working table of contents, did some preliminary editing, and brought it altogether in one new Word document.  Thankfully, I completed that task before the new dog peed on the binder and yellowed the entire manuscript, which promptly went into recycling once my desire for hygiene overcame any arguments from my desire to archive.  A little rocky, at the end, but again, bon.  Alles gut.

I returned to the printer with a newer, solitary Word document that had been updated with additional material and, of course, my working table of contents.  For a variety of reasons, I have a good relationship with my local printer, who has always proven quite competent.  So, I was a little thrown when I requested 2 pages printed on 1 page, front and back–effectively giving me 4 pages on one piece of paper, and thus saving me a little green while printing out 138 pages of my draft manuscript–and was told, “I don’t know how to do that.”  I did what I could to help, but the final result was 4 pages squashed onto each page of the single-sided print job.  Not wanting to waste the 35 pages and having battled through 4 squashed pages in my grad school days while printing off .pdfs of journal papers, I figured it wasn’t ideal, but I could manage.

And, manage I have…along with the mantra, “never again,” pumping through the vitreous fluid behind my cornea!  I have gone through all 138 pages, editing away, but as I go through them a second time to update my digital draft, I find myself [hysterically] laughing away margin notes that say, “Rewrite, unclear!”  It will still be unclear when I go through the next draft, maybe even more unclear, and thus will once again earn the severe margin notes.  But, just now, at 70-odd pages in, I find my readiness to be creative and my tolerance for creating textual fixes waning as I read letters that are but barely measured in millimeters–as in 2 mm high, if capitalized–and the attendant marginalia, also necessarily small.  Deletion, or paring down, if you will, has meanwhile been far easier than on any prior text I think I’ve ever worked over.  Bon.  Alles gut.

Writing Fiction as an Exercise in History Education

The literary world has much to offer the study of history.  While I do not mean to suggest that novels should replace academic history texts in higher education (though I’d be less concerned if they replaced many of the textbooks I’ve seen), good historical fiction, or fiction written historically, can augment our developing understanding of historical eras.  Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” or Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” are stories that inform us about our eras of study.

The reverse is also true.  The effort of research and study of primary documents provides a bounty of fruitful forays into one’s imagination.  Without imagination, being a historian is almost impossible since one is compiling a reconstruction of a past era with bits and pieces of information that have been handed down–much has been lost, naturally.  Historians with an inclination towards writing do the world a service; whether they choose to write fiction or not, others will still recreate the past at will but not necessarily with any accuracy; I submit Dan Brown as Exhibit A.

In other words, historians have the done the research and have the imagination to produce fiction that enlightens the world on multiple levels.  They also have a number of other responsibilities that make writing full length novels a challenge given the time available to them.  Many may also doubt their abilities, having a healthy respect for the demands of writing.  Still, where time can be found, the effort would be rewarding for both other educators and readers in the general populace.

By the same token, however, the assignment of fiction writing as part of a larger research project is also a fruitful exercise for the inexperienced history students.  As a multi-disciplinary project, it is incredibly valuable: not only do English teachers have the opportunity to teach them about literature and creative writing, but the History teacher has the opportunity to teach both historical research and test cultural assumptions that they might make.  A character has to behave as she might in the studied era, not in the 21st century; he has to communicate as he would in his era, not in this post-modern information age; she has to exhibit an education commiserate with what her era would teach her, not what she would learn in today’s democracies.

This is such a valuable mental exercise not only for budding historians, or at least young history students, but also for young people who are learning how to find their way in a world that supports many different cultures and mores.  It is an exercise in understanding and in imaginative reconstruction based on available evidence.

Researching to write historical material or historical fiction

How to Improve Your Researching Skills and Write Accurately | WritersDigest.com.

WritersDigest.com recently published this article on how to research for your work.  One of the reasons many authors enjoy writing is because it offers one the opportunity to explore many things they are curious about.  History offers a huge amount of material and opportunity in this way.  The article linked above is a very good starting point, but I wanted to make some history-specific recommendations to add to this writers’ guide.  These are useful, I believe, for the author of fiction or non-fiction.

Reliable Sources

When a historian writes history, he or she writes an argument for his or her interpretation of the past.  As with any argument, evidence is needed–if an author does not provide adequate evidence, be suspicious!  History is always a journey into foreign lands as separated by time and sometimes physical space.  It is faulty to presume that the past is always familiar, even when at first glance it appears to be a very familiar situation to present circumstances.  This is one of the non-historians most frequent errors!  Presumptions and generalizations based on supposed similarity may provide compelling reading, but are often misleading at best and an entirely misrepresentative of past peoples and cultures.  (I find it particularly troublesome, because if we do it with historical peoples, do we not also run the risk of doing it with foreign peoples?)

Some common examples of this include the assumption that Renaissance artists were generally gay because they were so artsy–it is true that Leonardo da Vinci was accused of sodomy (a term which encompassed a rather large category of sexual deviance, of which when defined for modern audiences often seems odd and confusing) while he lived in Florence, as were many more people than were likely guilty, although evidence does exist to suggest he was in a relationship with a young man.  Another useful example is Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible which was written as a commentary of Cold War-era commie “witch-hunts.”  As such, it is far more descriptive of Miller’s contemporary America than of colonial Puritan Salem.  Dan Brown’s accounts of the Roman Catholic Church’s history are incredibly flawed–I have no idea how accurate his accounts of science are or are not.  Biographies are often, also, a difficult sort of book both to write and to use as a source.  Often biographies are unbalanced, leaning too heavily towards vilification or laud.  They are also frequently too divorced from the era or eras in which their subject lived, providing a myopic account of the figure’s actions.

So, how does an untrained researcher of history avoid these pitfalls for articles, books or fiction.  Start with reliable sources.  Start with the history book written by a history scholar.  These are identified in many ways, my recommendation is head over to a nearby certified research library as designated by the American Library Association’s Association of College and Research Libraries.  Access the JSTOR database and do a search for your topic, this way you can get both reviews and scholarly articles on your topic.  Depending on the era you are researching, there may be other databases that are also more specifically targeted to your research–the librarian will be able to assist you with that.  If you have a university close by and the history department teaches the area you are researching, faculty may also be able to assist you in building a reading list.  (Remember your college schedule?  Faculty are busiest in preparation for a semester and immediately after major due dates such as midterms and finals week–the soft spots are usually when the students are working on projects.)  Another good place to start are the collections of published by Cambridge, Oxford and other preeminent universities and university presses.  These are usually compilations on a subject, such as the Oxford Illustrated Guide to ___ and the The New Cambridge ___ History c. ___ to ___.   (Note: these same companies often also have similarly good materials for youth!)

The advantage to using these sorts of academic resources are twofold: 1) you’ll get good information, and 2) you’ll get good, cited evidence that provides a paper trail for your research, including both secondary (scholarly written history) sources and primary (contemporary original documents from the studied era) sources.  These authors have been through history boot camps, they understand how to interpret the past and are also on guard against assumptions of familiarity or strangeness.  Also, there are general guidelines that they all follow such as stating the intended purpose of the written work, supplying evidence through cited sources, etc.  (Always read the introductions!  Also known as gold mines by history majors and grad students everywhere!)

When it comes to history research, your online sources are generally limited to the following options: 1) the American Historical Association and like organizations of scholars (many exist on more specific areas of expertise); 2) .edu sites that have information or collections of primary sources (caution: these can often be dead or neglected sites that a professor set up, but for whatever reason has ceased using and the school has since pulled), a very useful site of this kind is the Internet Sourcebook provided by Fordham University; 3) internet sites attached to a museum collection or related online exhibit, the Smithsonian, for example, does this regularly, now; 4) internet sites established by a historical site or preservation project which can vary widely from local projects to National Park sites or National Trust for Historic Preservation projects.  Beyond that, one must tread carefully.  History is a subject that many people enjoy, but fewer people actually do well and the web is absolutely groaning with bad historical information for anyone to misuse!

That’s my basic primer.  I was motivated by the useful article from WritersDigest.com and from oodles of experience being disappointed or just plain offended by the inaccuracies that pass out there for fiction.  I long for the day that people actually have a useful and vaguely correct concept of the Middle Ages, for example, as opposed to the prejudiced account of the Dark Ages that was largely, though not entirely, created during the Enlightenment and is wrong or vastly overstated on most counts.  Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the importance of reliable sources and primary documents–that goes last bit goes double for writers of historical fiction!!  Below are some additional reading recommendations before you really get rolling:

Word of the Week, 8/29-9/4/11 – grammar

When I want to free myself from a particularly obnoxious person at a cocktail party, all I have to do is tell him that I’m a grammarian.  Without fail, he’ll lower his head and sidle away, mumbling into his shirt collar, “I never did well at that in school.”  When I like the person and want to continue the conversation with her, I say I’m a linguist…

When you know the meanings of words and don’t know what a sentence says it’s because you don’t know the GRAMMAR of the sentence, the structural system that puts words together in meaningful units and indicates the relationships between units.  Put another way, the grammar of a sentence tells you who does what to whom.

~ Max Morenberg, Doing Grammar, 2nd ed.

Grammar is a sine qua non of language, placing its demons in the light of sense, sentencing them to the plight of prose.  

~ Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

The word grammar, is of early Greek origin.  It is related to the word “gramma, -atos, -to” that which is drawn and that which is written, a written character, letter, and it is also related to “grapho” representation by means of lines, a drawing, painting picture and writing, the art of writing, a writing.  In other words, for the Greeks, grammar meant representation in images and words–isn’t it interesting to note that in this early phase there is little to differentiate painting/drawing from writing?  (Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell & Scott–the “Middle Liddell”)

In classical Greek and Latin, the word’s definition was refined and “denoted the methodical study of literature”:

[Grammar] = “philology” in the widest modern sense, including textual and aesthetic criticism, investigation of literary history and antiquities, explanation of allusions, etc, besides the study of the Greek and Latin.  Post-classically, grammatica came to be restricted to the linguistic portion of this discipline, and eventually to “grammar” in the [modern] sense.  In the Middle Ages, grammatica and its [Roman] forms chiefly meant the knowledge or study of Latin, and were hence often used as synonymous with learning in general, the knowledge peculiar to the learned class.  As this was popularl supposed to include magic and astrology, the [Old French] gramaire was sometimes used as a name for these occult sciences.  In these applications it still survives in certain corrupt forms, [French] grimoire, Eng. GLAMOUR, GRAMARVE.

~ The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary

Today, grammar refers to the study of language, its inflectional forms or means of indicating the relationships of words in a sentence and with the rules for employing in accordance with established usage.  It is “the scientific study and classification of the classes, forms, sounds, and uses of words of a particular language” and “the systematic study comparing the forms and constructions of two or more languages; comparative grammar.”  (The World Book Dictionary)  The word is often used interchangeably with syntax, which is more narrowly concerned with “the arrangement of words to form sentences, clauses or phrases; sentence structure… the patterns of such arrangement in a given language.”  (The World Book Dictionary)  It is more specifically the “part of grammar dealing with the construction of phrases, clauses, and sentences.”  (The World Book Dictionary)  

The other words that have grown from the common  root shows just how weird the links in history and linguistics can be.  Going back up to the OED’s definition, consider the connotation of grammar with learning and education.  At a certain point, alchemy and astrology really picks up interest in the high Middle Ages and becomes one of the major pursuits of learned types (read In Alchemy’s Defense).  As a result, the word that means the system that puts words together into meaningful units is related to other words in modern western languages that reference the occult, mysterious fascination, alluring charm, magic spells and enchantments!  (The World Book Dictionary)

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, quoted above, apparently appreciates the connection between the two words as her grammar book revels in the Victorian era gothic in her instruction manual:  ”This is a dangerous game I’m playing, smuggling the injunctions of grammar into your cognizance through a ménage of revolving lunatics kidnapped into this book.  Their stories are digressions toward understanding, a pantomime of raucous intentions in the linguistic labyrinth.”

Grammar was part of the Liberal Arts program in the Middle Ages through the Early Modern era.  In today’s liberal arts system, subjects have realigned themselves and the humanities has been vastly downgraded, tragically.  As the internet reveals, the English language has a greater number of executors and executioners.  Without a proper understanding of grammar, rhetoric, logic and explanation are lost as writing collapses into a jumble of words or even merely letters, today.

A paper vs. digital rant

Or, why I love (love!) paper

(Book Autopsies series, Brian Dettmer)

I write a blog.  A blog is short for “web log” and represents a unique forum in communication on the web’s agora.  I do not pay to maintain my blog and you do not pay to read it, but this free-of-cost illusion does not come cheaply.  The energy cost is not free.  The cost to the environment is not green.  And, the publication of the blog is not lasting.  It is convenient and contributes to a much higher output, but it is transient and only accessible via technology.

This post is a bit of rant, really, about the impermanence of our information, today, and it considers the paperless myth and the hidden costs to our society.  As a historian, my work depends on archives and libraries; as a teacher, adopting the Iroquois proverb about taking care unto the seventh generation, I want to see that future historians are able to continue to delve into the past, our past.  Speaking of the seventh generation, it really is a myth that the paper industry will destroy the planet’s green by wiping forests from the face of the earth–quite the opposite, in fact.  And, finally, shunning paper creates a real problem and inequity in our society–even cheap technology costs more to purchase and operate than paper!  Furthermore, our youth and society at large lose something when they do not slow down long enough to take the time to read and write with paper.  It effects our brain and our thinking.

Let me say that I am not a Luddite!  I love technology!!  I just don’t want it to replace my hands and my brain completely.  After all, I do write a blog and very much enjoy the blogs of others!  It is the best way for me to get headline news and stay up to date with many of my hobbies, such as sports, but I’d rather sit down and read a newspaper at the coffee shop to get the depth in coverage.  But, even as I revel in technology’s accessibility, I print out most things I am going to read that are longer than a few paragraphs.

Historians and paper.

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

Historians need sources!  As a result, they need their paper!  You may well argue that just as methods for producing data evolve, so, too, will the methods of research with digital material.  Certainly, future historians will no doubt include technicians who can perform autopsies on obsolete 3×5 floppies, but nevertheless much will be lost before they have the opportunity.  How many people have sought to take their old Word Perfect files off their IBM 360?  If the files were not printed, they were probably not saved.

As the Paper Because campaign points out, paper just lasts longer!  The Gutenberg Bible still exists today!  Any document that was written out by hand on paper or a paper-like substance, such as velum or papyrus has a shot, because it could be saved.  How else we do we have the writings of Greeks, Romans, Persians, Chinese, Japanese, etc.?

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

Our personal histories are being lost with each successive computer crash–we do not even print out our photographs anymore!  I was first acquainted with this concept when I met a grad student my freshman year of college in the library studies program who, in working with the university archive, remarked that such archives across the country were finding it increasingly difficult to keep records on college life because e-mail had already begun to replace letters.  This was in the fall of 1999.  I no longer have access to my college e-mails or instant messages.  The e-mails were lost  due to a fatal computer hacking of the college’s computer systems.  The only ones I have,  I printed and stored with my letters from my childhood.  This is everyone’s story.  Think of school assignments that are entirely lost (sometimes before they’ve been handed in) because of a computer glitch or crash.  Some of these not only reflect the student’s hard work, they include personal creations that can’t be recovered.  I won’t speak for others, but in my family we kept stories and projects because they were on paper and were stored in our file or brag book.

Humans will produce an exponentially greater amount of data than ever before (think of all those Tweets and text messages), but will save a negligent amount of it in the upcoming years.  It will distort our memory and legacy.

Print is Green.

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

You are forgiven for thinking that avoiding paper-use saves trees–it is a very popular theory–but, you are wrong.  It is, in fact, quite the opposite.   The paper industry insures the health of forests.  Without the demand for paper, which is the least wasteful product produced from trees, forest land would be sold off to developers, leveled and become a construction site, confining forest land to preserves.

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

As an industry and as a final product, paper also conserves energy.  Reading a book, writing a letter, painting a picture or developing a photograph (on paper) costs little or no energy once the book, stationary, and paper has been manufactured.  Furthermore, these industries are leaders in energy-efficiency and recycling.  So, be green!!  Do something good for the earth!  Use paper products!!  (Below, are sites devoted to this concept with cited information.  In fairness, many of them come from the paper industry, but their arguments and sources make for a compelling argument.)

The costs of abandoning paper.

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

There are two main costs I want to consider: 1) the resulting divide between those who can afford technology and those who cannot; and, 2) the stunting affect excessive technology can have on brain development.  Both of these concepts represent a real loss to society in slightly different ways.

By reducing paper–particularly in the case of the government and its sundry departments–we reduce access for the portion of our population that cannot afford smart phones or computers, nor have access to such technology at school or work.  While libraries offer a slight reprieve, they are not equipped or funded to cover the entire demographic.  The internet is a great resource in democratic society, but when the IRS decides that its tax forms are no longer available at the post office, and that one must go online to get said forms, the internet becomes an unintended class weapon.  The paperless revolution takes on a eugenic-like quality where the poor are once again sacrificed in the name of progress in general and green progress in particular regardless of whether it is intended or accidental.

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

But, there is more lost.  There is a diminishing return in the development of the young brains.  Sure, we do not experience the same astonishing development that Lynne Truss reported took place in New Zealand.  There, students were permitted to hand in class work and tests in what I like to call text-speak (Eats, Shoots and Leaves).  But, nonetheless, there is evidence to show that students’ brains learn something special when they are forced to do slow reading as opposed to exclusively internet-scanning.  And, again, brains develop more completely when forced to write by hand as opposed to typing everything.  We still, rightly, refer to written works created by the act of writing, whereas we never refer to typed materials or typing–just typos!   (Having said that, my sixth-grader spends useless computer lab hours toodling around on the internet and has yet to rise above chicken-pecking her assignments on the computer!  Surely, if they are going to be on the computers in school anyway, and are assigned large projects that must be typed at least several times a year, then they can take the time to teach them typing!!)

Handwriting has been linked time and again to cognitive development.  This thinking ability, the capability to make connections and to problem-solve, is something I have to guide my students through each semester in community college history classes.  It is frustrating to know that the seventh graders I taught at the all-boys private school were more literate and capable of cognitive thinking then the majority of my students at the college level.  Key practices and training are being missed at earlier levels, stunting development.

Today, students cannot typically process lengthy textual information–even at the collegiate level where they must.  By lengthy, I do not refer in my [collegiate teaching] experience to books or textbook chapters, but long articles.  They seem to struggle to focus on anything even that long.  This is in part symptomatic of little practice, and is exacerbated by confining themselves to reading texts, Tweets and internet pages and posts.

Not only does this inhibit youth development, it retards and diminishes adult brains as well.

***

 

(Book Autopsies series, by Brian Dettmer)

So, hail paper!  Hail books!  Hail slow reading!  Hail paper tax forms and ballots!  Hail writing with a Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil!  Hail photographs printed and framed!  Hail watercolor paintings!  Hail the glorious tactile sensation of fondling a book you are about to savor!  Hail postcards!  Hail archives and primary sources!  Hail newspapers with articles longer than two paragraphs!  Hail printed journals!  Hail diaries!  Hail printed sheets of music and a group of people making music together!  Hail printers and book binders!  Hail memory and legacy!  Hail recycling and forests!  Hail the unhackable!  Hail note-taking!  Hail research papers, theses and dissertations printed and bound!  Hail paper!!

Recommend reading on this subject:

(Feel free to print stuff out and read it at your leisure!!)

Preserving history

This is not a new area of concern for libraries and archives.  In 2006, in an article, “Fragile digital data in danger of fading past history’s reach” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 7) reported on the problems encountered by the Library of Congress and the National Archive Records and Administration.  Contact the archive at your alma mater or make inquiries at any collection that maintains primary sources and get the scoop!  Librarians are not shy–they’ll tell you!

Keeping green

Start with these sites:

Paper Because: http://www.paperbecause.com/

Print Grows Trees: http://printgrowstrees.com/

Choose Print: http://www.chooseprint.org/

Learning better

On slow reading I recommend, “The art of slow reading” and “Slow Reading: An antidote for a fast world?”.

On the link between handwriting and cognitive development I recommend, “How writing by hand makes kids smarter”, “How handwriting trains the brain” and “Writing by hand helps the brain”.

forests