Glazed America

My friend Paul Mullins has hit it big with his new book Glazed America...an African Diaspora archaeologist goes pop culture historian...





NPR joins in:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94095945

Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080721152000.htm

Check it out for yourself:
http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=MULLIS07
or
http://www.amazon.com/Glazed-America-Doughnut-Paul-Mullins/dp/0813032385

Re-membering Slavery in the Arkansas Legislature

Mike Carter of Arkansasbusiness.com reports that the Arkansas House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs rejected a standard symbolic resolution congratulating Barack Obama on his historic victory this morning. By a vote of 11-6, the committee failed to recommend HR1003 by Rep. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff...after some Republican law makers (Rep. Dan Greenburg, R-Little Rock, and Rep. Ed Garner, R-Maumelle) took issue with language describing “the United States as a nation founded by slaveowners.”

"The Old South"--a depiction of freemen in northwest Arkansas.

The debate centered on competing historical viewpoints. Flowers argued that the language was not meant to be offensive, and that anyone who found it so didn’t have a clear understanding of the history of the nation and the role slavery played.

Greenburg and Garner countered that while slavery was a terrible part of the country’s history, to suggest that all the founding fathers were slaveowners and that the country was founded on the institution of slavery, while ignoring those who fought slavery from the beginning, was not accurate and potentially divisive.

As both a Southerner and historian I think there is no denying that most of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, slave holders and that this great nation was founded and built using a large amount of slave labor...The struggle over slavery's memory has been almost as intense as the struggle over slavery itself. If you'd like to check out the trajectory of "re-membering slavery" check out "Slavery as Memory and History" by Ira Berlin on the Library of Congress website.

Capitol Round-up: Resolution Congratulating Obama Rejected in Committee

This would be a great example of why we need to continue to teach Arkansas history in public schools.

My "25 Things About Me"

1. I was called “Jamie” for the first five years of my life…then I went by my middle name—“Chad”—from Kindergarten until I graduated high school…I returned to “Jamie” in college.
2. I love chorizo con huevos breakfast tacos…especially with black beans, fried plantains and sour cream.
3. My first wife died in a car wreck.
4. I collect depression-era memorabilia.
5. I was the president of the Paradox—the Memphis State Doctor Who Society— in 1989…the year the show was cancelled.
6. I’ve chewed tobacco since high school and switched to Copenhagen snuff during graduate school…very few people—aside from folks who’ve worked with me in the field— have ever seen me dip.
7. I love cold, rainy days…I have ever since I lived in Memphis
8. I must watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Desperately Seeking Susan, and High Fidelity when they come on…I’m not sure why.
9. I am a connoisseur of chocolate malts.
10. My sister was my best friend for much of my life…I hate that we are no longer so close.
11. Going to graduate school at the University of Texas was like coming to a home that I never knew I had.
12. I’ve read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass hundreds (if not thousands) of times.
13. I can play most woodwind instruments (esp. the saxophone), the bass and rhythm guitar.
14. In high school, my singing voice was in the range of Geddy Lee from Rush or Jon Anderson from Yes, now I’m somewhere in-between Jay Farrar (Son Volt) and Steve Earle.
15. I am a tech-y and a Luddite at the same time.
16. I have never, ever lived alone…until now...I hate it.
17. I truly believe in “service above self.”
18. I was given a paddling or write-offs almost every day of my existence in third and fourth grades.
19. I met both my wives at historical re-enactments
20. I still have a rotary phone on my home office desk.
21. I do not like holidays as the interrupt my routine.
22. I can't stand heavy perfume or cologne.
23. I am loyal.
24. If I was not an archeologist, I would be a recording engineer…or, if I was good enough, a producer.
25. I love TJV.

Giggity Leadership?

I found this sign on the SAU campus today...wow! You might be asking yourself, "What the...?!?" I know I did.

This sign points the way to the Leadership Academy associated with the SAU's Becoming a Mulerider program (BAM!).

The BAM! website explains that:

"Nothing even comes close to all of the fun, good times, new friends, learning, and excitement that you’ll find at the Southern Arkansas University Leadership Academy..."

and that the "Leadership Academy is a 48-hour leadership experience designed to enhance your career at SAU. Southern Arkansas University is committed to providing students with opportunities to become involved with the campus and the community...Leadership Academy offers you the opportunity to begin this involvement and to continue your high school success into college life and beyond...At Leadership Academy you will have the opportunity to meet and interact with campus leaders, to explore the inner workings of university organizations, to improve your time management and team building skills, and to tap into your leadership potential."

All this reminds me a lot of parts of My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, an ethnography I use in my Cultural Anthropology class at SAU. In My Freshman Year anthropologist Rebekah Nathan (or Cathy Smalls) explains that university programs all over the nation are falling over themselves to create a sense of "community" along with a air of fun, spontaneity and individuality...the thought is that a greater sense of community will increase student retention.

Of course the problem is that real communities are forged on shared experiences and the modern university (wanting also to cater to your sense of individuality) offers an ever expanding set of choices to students...requiring common experiences is vastly unpopular...hardly any students share a set of classes or experiences that link them together--even in small colleges like SAU...talking with my students, the REAL communities that last are ones based on shared experiences--sports, Greek and even sometimes experiences within your major (depending on the major)...The image of Quagmire above selling "fun" and "individuality" along with "leadership" and "community" strikes me as a bit odd and contradictory...and...well...stretching it a bit...it might be better to be truly spontaneous and fun (instead of evoking an image of fun)...that might forge some university community...but then again, real spontaneity and community can be a dangerous thing in the eyes of some...maybe we better stick to Quagmire...

Arkansas Cage Fight !?!

A July 8th posting from The Smoking Gun has a bit of information that involves southwestern Arkansas...and Arkansas's national image.

Lured by $1 beer and the prospect of "hot chicks" and "hardcore fights," thousands of Arkansans were duped last month into appearing as extras in comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's latest staged mayhem. Cohen and his confederates organized cage fighting programs on consecutive days in Texarkana and Fort Smith. Both cards ended with two male grapplers (one was identified as "Straight Dave" and wore camouflage) tearing each other's clothes off and, while in underwear, kissing down their opponent's chest. This man-on-man action triggered Fort Smith fans to throw chairs and beer at the ring, according to one cop present at the city's Convention Center. [Click here and here to read bulletin board messages posted in early-June by miffed mixed martial arts fans who attended one of Cohen's Arkansas productions.] Cohen is currently filming a follow-up, of sorts, to his smash 2006 film featuring Borat, his fictional Kazakh journalist. The new film stars another of Cohen's creations, Bruno, a gay Austrian journalist who favors mesh t-shirts and interviews subjects about fashion and entertainment. The June 5 Texarkana promotion was adverstised as "Red, White, and Blood." The June 6 matches in Fort Smith were dubbed "Blue Collar Brawlin'" as seen in the below poster. Ads on craigslist--like this one--noted that attendees had to be over 21 and suggested that fans arrive early "for $1 BEERS!" Cohen & Co. underwrote the cost of beer, which usually sells for $4 at the Fort Smith facility. "Blue Collar Brawlin'" drew about 1500 fans, who were greeted by signs stating that the event was being filmed. Attendees were also not allowed in with cameras or cell phones and some were asked to sign releases...

While I was in Malvern for the Arkansas Archeological Society summer dig this year, Davis Markus (a UF student who was helping me out at the dig) noticed that there was going to be a cage fight in town during the weekend of Malvern's Brickfest...We did not go, however...now I wonder what it would have been like if we had gone...real cage fight or sureal cinema?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0708081bruno1.html

Nature's Fury in the Natural State

Last night tornadoes hit central Arkansas--North Little Rock & Benton to be precise...

I'd just like to point out that over the past two months, parts of Arkansas have seen an EF4 tornado during a storm outbreak that killed 13, a foot of snow, upwards of a foot of rain and near-record flooding...

Who have we pissed off?

Wynn-Price: Hidden Gem in Garland City

Earlier this month I received a call from a Skip Bernard who was working with a museum organization out of Shreveport, but he lived in Doddridge, Arkansas...to make a long story short, the organization was interested in a historic building in Garland City (in Miller County just east of Texarkana)...this historic home was already on the National Register of Historic Places (since 1992), but it was not in the Arkansas state archaeological site files...moreover, the nomination actually stated that the site could benefit from archaeological work...so they called me...That's how I came to know about the Wynn-Price House.

Last week I met Skip over at the house, and let me say that it a hidden gem in Garland City...to steal words from the AHPP website, "this grand Greek Revival design, luxurious in both plan and elevation, was undoubtedly constructed largely from materials shipped up the Red River from New Orleans and elsewhere (we know that the marble for the two fireplaces was so ordered). The tall imposing two-story portico with its flanking single-story 'temples' must have been one of the most majestic edifices in the region"...it is certainly one of the most complex Greek Revival houses that I have seen in Arkansas...Ironically, I HAVE visited the African-American cemetery associated with the Wynn-Price plantation (known as Wynns Cemetery)....but when I visited it last year (with Anthony Clay Newton), we had no idea that a huge antebellum mansion lay just around the corner...go figure.

The description below is a brief excerpt from the AHPP website entry for the Wynn-Price House...below you also find links to my photographs of the structure and the AHPP entry...I look forward to investigating this house--and its associated plantation--in the near future.

As is frequently the case in Arkansas, attempts to study even significant characters in local or regional antebellum history are frustrated by a lack of primary sources. Reconstructing the life and activities of William Wynn is no different, though we do know through census records, slave ownership records and deed information that he was a successful farmer, and probably growing cotton, the staple crop of the Red River valley during this period. However, when considered within the broader context of American and regional history during the period of 1835 (the first documented date of William Wynn's arrival in the Red River area) to 1861, the primary sources that do survive support certain additional conclusions about Wynn's investment activities and his hopes for the "city" of Garland as a major commercial river and overland transportation crossroads...Though the site probably also retains potential to reveal further information about the occupation of the site by William Wynn, his two sons (the 1840 Lafayette County census indicates two males between the ages of 20 and 30 living with him, though not necessarily at this site) and his slaves, a professional archaeological investigation of the site remains to be done. Such investigation, upon completion, may justify additional areas of significance for the property.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157603949469598/

http://www.arkansaspreservation.org/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.asp?id=5