Black Mountain College: This Date in History

[nycfan]

Elvis, My Mother, And Me

“The news of Elvis’s death spread around the neighborhood. It was as if my mother’s sobbing set off some kind of Bat signal, and you could hear wails of anguish coming from housewives all down the block.”

ihavethatonvinyl.com

The Alabama judge mentioned in that headline, Frank Johnson, did not get the FBI job for health reasons, so William Webster was eventually confirmed instead. But Johnson was subsequently appointed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (which split into the 11th circuit in 1981) a few years later.

 

[nycfan]

I recall it was a Tuesday afternoon, my mom was making dinner, I was setting the table and my dad walks in from work. He usually said hello and went straight to change but he walks in the kitchen and says to my mom, who was chopping onions, did she hear that Elvis died?

She paused a beat or two (she was always bad at getting jokes and worse at telling them) and then, a bit exasperated sounding, said “what’s the punchline?”

My dad said no, he died. Elvis is dead.

My mom returned to preparing the food. She had tears streaming down her cheek. I said are you ok and she said it’s just the strong onions, go tell my brothers to clean up for dinner. Even at that age, I understood she needed some space for a minute. Normally I was to stick close in the kitchen while dinner was being made.

 

[donbosco]

The Queen of Soul also died (2018) on this day.

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]

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[donbosco]

#OTD in 1957 16-year-old Dorothy Brown of Iredell County (Mooresville) appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.




Aug 20, 1957, page 13 - The Virginian-Pilot at Newspapers.com - Newspapers.com

Quite a story about the fascination with what was identified as Hillbilly Culture -- Iredell isn't in the Appalachians but is close enough. Poverty was also on the minds of Americans in those days and recognized as a national problem. Brown was quickly associated with a spin-off "L'il Abner' Comics figure named "Long Sam" -- a young backwoods beauty whose Ma worked to keep off the boys who flocked around her -- If you know "L'il Abner" then you know...if you don't then you need a deep dive.

What became of her? Read on below.

Read on about Dorothy here: Society of North Carolina Archivists - Dorothy Brown and being “Long Sam”

And a bit more here: Long Sam and Nature Girl: 2 of 2 – Library of American Comics

 

[05C40]

#OTD in 1957 16-year-old Dorothy Brown of Iredell County (Mooresville) appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.




Aug 20, 1957, page 13 - The Virginian-Pilot at Newspapers.com - Newspapers.com

Quite a story about the fascination with what was identified as Hillbilly Culture -- Iredell isn't in the Appalachians but is close enough. Poverty was also on the minds of Americans in those days and recognized as a national problem. Brown was quickly associated with a spin-off "L'il Abner' Comics figure named "Long Sam" -- a young backwoods beauty whose Ma worked to keep off the boys who flocked around her -- If you know "L'il Abner" then you know...if you don't then you need a deep dive.

What became of her? Read on below.

Read on about Dorothy here: Society of North Carolina Archivists - Dorothy Brown and being “Long Sam”

And a bit more here: Long Sam and Nature Girl: 2 of 2 – Library of American Comics

Not really relevant, but back in the late 1960's, the singer Oliver was on the Ed Sullivan show. After the performance, Ed Sullivan called out for Oliver's younger brother, Johnny Swofford, in the seats to stand up. Ed Sullivan told the audience that younger brother Johnny attended UNC and had recently set a school record for the number touchdown passes thrown in a single game. Young Johnny Swofford looked really embarrassed.

 

[donbosco]

Not really relevant, but back in the late 1960's, the singer Oliver was on the Ed Sullivan show. After the performance, Ed Sullivan called out for Oliver's younger brother, Johnny Swofford, in the seats to stand up. Ed Sullivan told the audience that younger brother Johnny attended UNC and had recently set a school record for the number touchdown passes thrown in a single game. Young Johnny Swofford looked really embarrassed.

 

[Zoo_View]

Europe/the Middle East/Far East just had their devastation a 150 years earlier in the 14th Century with the Bubonic Plague. It killed as many as 200 million people wiping out a third to 50% of the Eurasian population.

Did the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere bring the Bubonic Plague to Europe?

BTW, estimates are that the diseases Europeans brought to the Western Hemisphere killed 90% of the Indigenous peoples.

 

[donbosco]

Did the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere bring the Bubonic Plague to Europe?

BTW, estimates are that the diseases Europeans brought to the Western Hemisphere killed 90% of the Indigenous peoples.

This is a thing that I work with sometimes and I have never heard that. There are theories that syphilis came from the Americas that some argue though.

The plague theory is chronologically off plus a great deal is know about its origins (Central Asia).

The mass death of indigenous people in the Americas is pretty certainly true though some have enjoyed arguing that it is all fabricated and that this side of the Atlantic was basically uninhabited...this is called the Pristine Myth...and thus the invasion and conquest was just fine.

 

[05C40]

. . .. The mass death of indigenous people in the Americas is pretty certainly true though some have enjoyed arguing that it is all fabricated and that this side of the Atlantic was basically uninhabited...this is called the Pristine Myth...and thus the invasion and conquest was just fine.

For being basically uninhabited, those few that were in the Western Hemisphere must have had some mad/mythical/extraterrestial building skills.

On the serious side, my understanding of history was irrevocably changed/influenced by Alfred S. Crosby's trilogy: The Columbian Exchange (1972), Ecological Imperialism (1986), and The Measure of Reality (1997). I love the quote about Crosby that went something like, "The Columbian Exchange blasted a crater in the anthropology of the Americas that we as an academic discipline still haven't crawled out of." Also, I loved the books Charles C. Mann wrote: 1491 (2005) and 1493 (2011), about pre-Columbian America and the post-Columbia world.

I loved the story that Mann told about his interview of Crosby for a newspaper article where he asked whether Crosby would write a book that focused on what Mann later covered in "1491." And supposedly Crosby told Mann that he (Crosby) was too old to undertake that task and challenged Mann to write that book.

Two last notes: 1) I absolutely and catagorically reject what I consider to be the absurd notion that anyone other than Native Americans were responsible for the magnificant and monumental buildings and cities of the pre-Columbian Americans. It wasn't extra-terrestials. It wasn't the Egyptians. It wasn't the Chinese. It wasn't the Romans. It wasn't the Polynesians. It wasn't the Vikings. And it wasn't Irish monks. It was the Native Americans. 2) I really hope I live long enough to get some sort of realistic appraisal of the Pre-Columbian societies that existed in the basin of the Amazon River. But I doubt I will. The technology to really do that is just too far in the future.

 

[donbosco]

@05C40 -- It is hard for me not to get started but I have a busy day here at work...Pre-Invasion America is one of my teaching "things" and I've got a lot of suggestions for readings and watchings. A couple of things for the moment...the short video below is more than worth the three minutes and 33 seconds it takes to watch.

Three Minutes with Charles C. Mann





Additionally...I don't know if you know of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It is kind of radical in that it poses some theories that upset the canon but I'm willing to give it a chance. It is not about the Collapse but rather about the heights to which American civilization rose intellectually prior to the invasion...in particular the discussion of the thoughtfulness of Kandiaronk, a Wendat leader and diplomat is kind of game-changing but so too are their observations about the Tlaxcalans of the Central Valley of Mexico and democracy.

“Hiding in Plain Sight: Democracy’s Indigenous Origins in America,” (Kandiaronk and Tlaxcala): https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/democracy/hiding-plain-sight (29 Minutes, listen or read)

PS...Alfred Crosby kind of blew my mind too...it is interesting that years ago when I first read The Columbian Exchange, followed by Ecological Imperialism they were both new ways of seeing. Today when I speak in class of those ideas, at least in the simplest element of plants and animals, my students have already been introduced to them...albeit, in a very sanitized way.

 

[donbosco]

Da Nang, Hanoi, and Dien Bien Phu - “faraway places with strange sounding names” - these were some of the sounds of my childhood. As boys my buddies and I in #DeepChatham, like boys all over the US in the mid-1960s I suspect, played Army. I can still make that ‘tchoo-tchoo-tchoo’ sound of a machine gun as easily as I can whistle. I’m pretty sure I had mastered it first in fact. We watched “Twelve O’Clock High,” “Combat,” and “Rat Patrol,” and took note of the details to take back to our games.



For good measure we also tuned in to “McHale’s Navy,” and the bizarrely plotted Prisoner of War Camp Comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes.” All the while on the evening news a real war was coming right to us with embedded reporting from the likes of Morley Safer and Dan Rather, all interpreted by news anchors like Walter Cronkite. We didn’t know then that our nation was “off to the wars.”



Wars (plural) and Constitutional Democratic Republics (hereafter ‘democracies’) ought not to be concepts so constantly coupled. Such things are for empires that accumulate territory and colonize. Those old shows we watched, and the games we played, were not in our hearts and minds about imperial ambitions but vaguely couched in a sense of defending our shores - of course Axis Aggression and the Real Threat of Fascism, embodied in Nazis and Kamikazees in Zero fighter planes - which WAS most definitely about Empire-Building had caused the heroes of our ‘shows’ to journey to foreign countries in the defense of ‘democracy.’ These are the baseline thoughts of a child at play.



The troubling, and real backdrop of Vietnam grew and grew in my life during those days. I heard of older boys who were drafted and went away to fight. I had three first cousins enlisted at the time so that fight touched family closely. I wanted to go too but my youth meant a seemingly interminable wait. I inquired about military school but my Deddy put the cap on that - I was only 10. By the time I was just 13 - 1971 - so much had changed about me and my perception of the world and right and wrong - by the time I was 18, Vietnam was over and perspectives had shifted mightily for many.



Now though, we’ve been sending women and men “off to the wars” for 30+ years (The Gulf War was 1991 - involvement in conflicts in Central America preceded even that). Our military is all-volunteer, effectively taking the ‘democracy’ out of our constant occupation and deployment. We fight ‘police actions’ or some such rather than having Congress declare war. The “Military Industrial Complex” that no less than General (and President) Eisenhower warned us of operates essentially outside of the parameters of our ‘democracy,’ and some would argue, directs our overseas actions.



When I played Army in the woods around #Bonlee my mind’s eye was set on WWII and an anti-fascist and noble struggle. Now-a-days I’m aware that even in that war the complexities overshadowed a boy’s simple imaginings. All of that said, as it appears that the latest of our foreign wars has concluded, you have to wonder if those years of childhood, and ‘childish?’ dedication to “Combat” and “Twelve O’Clock High” might should have taken a backseat to The Evening News. Or did we just forget? Did that military industrial complex do the learning? Extracting the ‘democracy’ and replacing it with empire was a smart move for someone at least.



#OTD (August 17) in 1942 Hobgood NC’s Frank Armstrong led the USA’s first daylight bombing of Nazi installations in occupied France. He earned the Silver Star. His story would be shaped into the book, film, and TV show “12 O’Clock High.” Frank Armstrong of Twelve O’Clock High Fame

 

[Ramrouser]

Did the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere bring the Bubonic Plague to Europe?

BTW, estimates are that the diseases Europeans brought to the Western Hemisphere killed 90% of the Indigenous peoples.

It was terrible, no doubt, but Eurasians (and their diseases) were eventually going to find the North American/South American continents prior to modern medicine so I don't know how what happened to the Indigenous peoples could have been avoided.

 

[donbosco]

For a while it has seemed that everywhere I turned I ran into #BlackMountainCollege. I know that has a lot to do with WHERE I looked and what I was LOOKING FOR when I went there but just the same I’m consistently amazed by the nature of that place to BE nigh everywhere. Consider chairs - really - not the four legs on the ground type but rather the C-shaped cantilever, light and curvy kind. They’re all over and they are a German #Bauhaus idea - But Bauhaus and Black Mountain College are intimately intertwined…fleeing 1930s European Fascism some of those German thinkers and designers migrated to Black Mountain College to teach, the USA then being a refuge from such ideologies. Other artists did too and many of the shapes and colors of Bauhaus refugees Anni and Josef Albers were worked out in these mountains of #WNC.


The Polymath and Visionary Thinker Buckminster Fuller pulled together his Geodesic Dome at #BMC during his summer teaching time in 1948 and 1949 and Willem de Kooning and Jacob Lawrence developed painting styles and techniques there. Poets wrote new kinds of poems at Black Mountain:


I Know A Man

As I sd to my

friend, because I am

always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his

name, the darkness sur-

rounds us, what

can we do against

it, or else, shall we &

why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for

christ’s sake, look

out where yr going. ~ Robert Creeley
******************************************

I am encouraged that this incredible place happened here in The Tar Heel State. I’m a homeboy about things like that but it shows me that looking forward or to the skies or even backward with insight can happen - right here. Last spring I took advantage of a tour of the Lake Eden campus and was treated to insights and open doors (in particular the Studies Building which I had never been lucky enough to find unlocked and again, my mind raced with the imaginings of brainstormings of time gone by.

Of late in the paltry time available to research and write academically I have I have been tracing the visits of two Muralists that came to BMC from Mexico in the 1940s. Carlos Merida was born in Guatemala but journeyed to Mexico to study with and learn from Diego Rivera. He worked at BMC during the Summer Institute of 1940. Likewise Jean Charlot, though not born in Mexico but rather connected to the country by family, also studied at Black Mountain. Like Merida, Charlot was also a student of Rivera and spent a summer, 1944, at Black Mountain. Charlot left a mural beneath the Studies Building on the Lake Eden campus after his stay there which languished for decades until a recent restoration — a wonderful thing by any estimate. See here: Jean Charlot Fresco Conservation - Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

These artists exemplify the global reach of Black Mountain. The international and cosmopolitan nature of the work that went on there from 1933 to 1956 is close to unbelievable and remarkably, the reverberations continue to resonate around the world. These days the Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center in downtown Asheville and a network of scholars and artists keep that creative flame lit in myriad ways.


#OTD (August 19) in 1933 Black Mountain College was founded in Buncombe County. Non-Traditional, the aim was a Progressive Education curriculum with The Arts fully integrated. Never accredited and always money-strapped, it nevertheless flourished for 23 years. @bmcmuseum


Associated with BMC were the likes of “Buckminster Fuller and Walter Gropius; artists Josef Albers, Willem DeKooning Robert Motherwell and Robert Rauschenberg; dancers Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor; musician John Cage; filmmaker Arthur Penn; and writers Eric Bentley, Robert Creeley, Paul Goodman, Alfred Kazin, Charles Olson, Joel Oppenheimer and Jonathan Williams.” https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2016/08/19/black-mountain-college-experimental-school?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExVVFHb3pFWlRmNVVXZ0pmcwEeY4Uv4ShW4yy6r_SZwBOqWtpHulZg3SqooQj7apeglNm1bk2wn601ubl5ogU_aem_qDJxl5LK9FFS2GVf6Rx37g

 

[donbosco]

#OnThisDay in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the legal right to #vote.
But the story didn’t end there. For many Black women, systemic barriers like poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept them from the ballot box. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others formed the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913 to fight for voting rights that went beyond the text of the amendment.

Read more in this JSTOR Daily article from 2020: https://bit.ly/4oFkxJR

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]