Citizen Soldiers
While We Lie Sleeping, a silent short film by Monica Sharf, is a tribute to those who have served or are still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a provocative addition to the 'support the troops and oppose the war' conversation. Relatedly, we're hosting a discussion with women who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam: Women Veterans: Citizen Soldiers in Changing Times Thursday, March 5th 6:30 - 8:30pm
Collective History of LGBT Groups
Spreading the word about a good public history project: OutHistory, an educational website produced by CUNY's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies is collecting histories of LGBT Employee and Other Groups. Jonathan Ned Katz, director of OutHistory.org, says: We’d especially like to have histories of LGBT employee organizing at Google and IBM, at other electronic media companies, and at other corporations. We are also asking users to create histories of organized LGBT groups within unions, and among LGBT professionals.
Lincoln's 200th Birthday
Thank goodness for well-preserved audio archives! On the occasion of Lincoln's 200th birthday, WNYC is sharing a clip from their audio archives recorded in 1938: This is William R. Rathvon, the only known eyewitness of both Lincoln’s arrival at Gettysburg and the address itself to have left an audio recording of his recollections. Click here to listen.
Red Hook Wedding Hall?
Yesterday, we hosted the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable. I wasn't there, but according to the Brooklyn Paper this morning, Red Hook developer Greg O'Connell (who built the Fairway) is proposing a high-end wedding hall near the end of Van Dyke Street. The funny thing is, while this announcement was being discussed downstairs, I was upstairs interviewing Frank Palescandolo (b. 1917), a writer who grew up in Coney Island and whose most famous book Rumble on the Docks (1953) is set in Red Hook. It's about longshoremen and teenage gangs, it's got a classic pulp cover, and in 1956 it was made…
West Indian Roots of Hip Hop
Saturday, February 28, 3 - 6pm Organized by our friends at City Lore and featuring Dr. Natasha Lightfoot, DJ Kool Herc, Kool DJ Red Alert, Ralph McDaniels, and Co-founder of VP Records in Jamaica, Patricia Chin.
Food in Bushwick
This sounds like it will be a really interesting community conversation: Past, Present, Future of Food: Bushwick, Brooklyn A(n Urban) (Farm) Salon March 7, 2009 1:00 to 4:00 Brooklyn Public Library, Bushwick Branch 340 Bushwick Avenue, L train to Montrose stop We will explore how Brooklyn and Bushwick in particular went from being so rich an agricultural community to the desert it is today, and we’ll talk about what people can and ARE doing to grow food here. How did it happen that all the land was developed? What kind of food can you get to eat here now? What’s made here? Is it good for you…
Counter/Culture Extended
The rumors are true! We're extending the Public Perspectives exhibition Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn's Storefronts. If you haven't yet seen Karla and Jim Murray's photographs of mom & pop shops in Brooklyn or their gorgeous new book Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York, make the time to visit, it's really great. Jim and Karla also photo-document grafitti in their book Burning New York and that's how they fell into the Storefront project.
Oral History in Turkey
Oral history workshops are becoming really popular in Turkey. Professor Leyla Neyzi, who leads the workshops, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “We have started to think very differently about our history. The past is being rethought in terms of the demands of the present.” Yesterday, we hosted a workshop for teachers regarding our oral history exhibition In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn Vietnam Veterans. We discussed ways to teach contested histories and difficult material; using oral history as a tool in the classroom both to bring history alive and to teach important…
Lakota Oral History Found
Oral historians are always talking about the best way to archive and preserve oral history interviews. At this moment in time, we're all working to digitize interviews in our collections recorded on cassette tapes, since cassette tapes degrade and break over time. Storing things digitally seems like an archivist's dream because digital files can be copied over and over without effecting the original and you can easily store them in multiple places. But what's still the most reliable way to preserve an oral history interview? Paper. Good ol' (acid free) paper. Proof positive: A woman in…
Women in Archives
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a conference at Columbia University called Archiving Women, "bringing together scholars and archivists to examine feminist practices in the archive". It was as interesting and interdisciplinary as one would expect, and it was very crowded! Many people spoke about the historical and habitual lack of focus on women in archival collections. Central to that is the debate about What constitutes archives-worthy materials. To illustrate how public/professional lives intertwine with the personal Michael Ryan described his processing of Erica Jong's…
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Everytime the New York Times writes about Brooklyn neighborhoods it's like they are just discovering the borough!
In Brooklyn, A Slice of the South
Astroland Rocket
The Astroland Rocket of Coney Island finally found a new home. Former Astroland co-owner, Carol Hill Albert donated the super-awesome Rocket to the NYC Economic Development Corp. on behalf of the Coney Island History Project. We still don't know where it will actually live though. Photo by Peter Kleeman, Space Age Museum
Archiving Women
Cool conference @ Columbia this Friday: And check out this related project: Engendering the Archive.
Worst Joke Ever
Ok, so, this post isn't Brooklyn-related, but this is an important document of our times: Watch George H.W. Bush telling an infuriating joke about women: I'm looking forward to having the space to discuss the ramifications of things like this at our forthcoming seminar Documenting Women's Lives.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
Check out this great, and kinda creepy, video about the Brooklyn Navy Yard - it features Rubena Ross, a woman we've interviewed for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Oral History Project. The City Concealed: Brooklyn Navy Yard from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
Keepin' It Brooklyn
Students at the Secondary School for Research in Park Slope working with Urban Memory Project, Park Slope Civic Council, and BHS on a wonderful oral history project. Check out their blog Keepin It Brooklyn!
Listening to Women
The Brooklyn Historical Society announces a New Seminar: Listening to Women: Documenting Women's Lives through Oral History A six-week non-credit course meeting once per week for 2 hours Wednesdays March 18, 2009 – April 29, 2009 6:30 – 8:30pm Registration Deadline: February 25, 2009 Admission limited to 15 participants. Sign up HERE I took it for granted that like most of the billions of people who are born and die on this planet I was just an accident. There was no reason for me. Yet my life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation…
Inauguration Day
We here at BHS just gathered in the kitchen to watch the Inauguration. We tried to spot our colleagues who made the trip to DC among the inspiring millions on the Mall. Oral historians sixty years from now will be saying: "Tell me what it was like to see the first black person elected President of the US..." Interestingly, this painting, View of the Yosemite Valley (Thomas Hill, 1865), hung behind President and First Lady Obama at their Inaugural Luncheon and is on loan from the New York Historical Society.
Hopeful Barack Obama
Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday. President in less than 24 hours!