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History and Race: March 18, 1942

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The War Relocation Act

Seventy-one years ago today Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order requiring 120,000 mostly Japanese-Americans to report for forced relocation.

In the wake of the December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, politicians, leaders and many others concluded that all Americans exhibiting the features of Japanese ancestry were potential spies, soldiers or saboteurs.

Relocation Centers

Round-Up

While Asians and Asian-Americans were no doubt used to a degree of  racism, this detention based solely on physical characteristics was unprecedented.

The mass round-up devastated families and communities as businesses were sold and careers ended.

There were ten re-location centers, mostly in the west.  They were chosen partly because of their remote location and ironically were mostly on Native America Lands.  Native Americans, of course, were similarly “relocated” though more forcibly and permanently.

Arriving at a Center

A Bleak Life

Life at a center was minimalist, spare and institutional.  Living arrangements were barracks style, meals were taken in a common mess hall and space was strictly limited.  At the Topaz Center each person was allocated about 114 square feet.

Some internees were able to obtain jobs, mostly in agriculture.  Others concentrated on education, hobbies and “Americanization.”

 

“Gaman” Art

Gaman

Gaman is “a Japanese word that means to bear the seemingly unbearable with dignity and patience.”  Internees confined in a harsh environment bereft of personal possessions and objects turned to making art out of available materials such as wood, beads, and other found materials.  This art is now known as Gaman art and is amazing for its ingenuity and beauty.

Freedom and Memory

Memorial

As the war drew to a close, July 1945 spelled the end of all of the camps but one.  Internees were expected to move on with their lives though irreparable damage had been done in the cause of a false sense of security based on racial profiling and animus.

In 1992 Congress passed legislation to allow for the construction in Washington, DC, of  the “Memorial to Japanese-American Patriotism in World War II.”

The completed memorial now stands at Louisiana Ave and D St., Northwest.  It recognizes both the hardship of the internees as well as the profound courage and patriotism of the Japanese-Americans who served in the armed forces.  The accomplishments of the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team are legendary.  Twenty-one members were awarded the Congressional medal of Honor for their heroism and bravery.

Not bad for a bunch of “traitors.”

 

Sources: SI.edu, Wiki

Posted by on March 18, 2013 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Administration & Leadership, Art, Command & Leadership, Different, History, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art, Values and Ethics, War and Peace, What We Call "Race", Words

Of Villainy and Religion

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To Apologize for Kindness

Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary
Raphael

You may recall that after the Newtown massacre where 20 children and six adults were murdered, an inter-faith memorial service was held.

Reverend Rob Morris, a Newtown Lutheran Minister, one of whose young parishioners was among the dead, gave the benediction at the service.

Reverend Morris was subsequently forced to apologize to his church leadership for participating in the service since mingling with different denominational ministers violated their prohibition against joint worship with people of other faiths.

The man who demanded the apology, Lutheran President and Reverend Matthew Harrison eventually apologized for his original demand offering up a contorted rationale.

 A Civil Society?

The Church and the State form two of the most important institutions underpinning modern or civilized life.  Both are associated to varying degrees with compassion.  Many citizens, religious or not, would see the role of the pious as teaching, modeling or extolling the virtues of compassion, kindness and comity as a key tenet of earthly life.  Faith relies on the future while kindness exists in the moment before us.  And, few acts of kindness are more powerful than comforting the bereaved.

How jarring then, in the midst of such a devastating catastrophe as Newtown, to have God’s minister rebuked and forced to apologize for an act of healing and kindness.  What aspect of that reinforces the concept of mercy or the sanctity of human life?

Villainy

It’s fancy for “wicked” which is a powerful word.  It basically connotes an evil willfulness.  Demanding what would effectively be a public apology from Reverend Morris for his kindness was an act of villainy.  He was forced to betray his personal sense of kindness and sense of community in order to satisfy the peculiar tenet of a religious doctrine.

God created “man” and we have created an endless series of sects and divisions jostling and preening for first place in the eyes of the great one.  Though it has long since been proven that we are all essentially the same, the role of much religion is to somehow convince us that we are actually different, and damned because of it.

Power

The synonyms for power are better than the word itself:  might – force – strength – potency – authority.  In the world we inhabit, it seems that no institution, of God or man, can long exist without some combination of strength and authority.  Institutions of power are characterized by hierarchy, status and the ability to punish.  Punishing human compassion is an exquisite abuse of power normally associated with the cruelest of regimes.

Tragically, the cost of power-based organized religion is the requirement to subordinate the inclination to be kind or merciful in order to reinforce  a sense of difference or specialness.

Christ En-route  to Calvary

Look, or look again, at Raphael’s masterwork but see the faltering Christ as the grieving people of Newtown.  See the beseeching Mary on the right as those who would offer compassion including Rob Morris.  Lastly, see the towering and unmerciful guards, centurions who willingly inflict pain to protect their power as the kings of religion.

Thus has the message of mercy and kindness been subverted by religious dogma and the lust for power and control.

 

Posted by on February 14, 2013 • Filed under: Art, History, Religion and Spirituality, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art, Values and Ethics, What We Call "Race"

Fire & Art: The Zouaves

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Ellsworth, Lincoln and the NY Volunteers

The Smithsonian Museum of American Art is running an exhibition through April 28th, entitled The Civil War and American Art.  It includes 75 works, mostly created during the war by some of America’s most famous artists of the period: Winslow Homer, Frederic Church and Eastman Johnson.  It also includes battlefield photography from Alexander Gardner and others.  The paintings are by no means all military but convey the sense of the approaching war and life during it.  Folks familiar with the 19th century Hudson River School and Luminist painters will like what they see.

Elmer Ellsworth was a native New Yorker who wound up working in the Springfield law office of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.   Ellsworth helped with the presidential campaign and went to Washington with the president-elect in 1861.  When the war began and Lincoln called for volunteer regiments, Ellsworth pledged his support and with the president’s personal backing, he was an odds-on favorite.

Zouaves
The Briarwood Pipe
Winslow Homer
1864

Colonel Ellsworth had studied the North Algerian based French Light Infantry known as the Zouaves.  The original Zouaves were Berbers from the Zouaoua tribe and were reputed to be both fearless and expert.  Ellsworth intended to raise a regiment of American Zouaves for his volunteer regiment and he knew where they should come from:  New York volunteer fire companies.

We mostly associate the Zouaves with their colorful uniforms made up of some combination of baggy trousers, short coats and “oriental” headgear including the Fez, complete with tassel.  Ellsworth’s Zouaves were the 11th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Recruiting was fast and successful.  He awarded officer commissions to several fire company foremen and within four days had twice as many men as needed.  The final regiment strength was 1,100.  Their departure for Washington, DC, was a comedy of errors as they failed to meet Army regulations and were told to remain in New York–they left anyway.

11th New York Encamped in DC

Ellsworth’s mis-calculation was to assume that “New York” firefighters were a cohesive unit when they were anything but.  He failed to note that they were famous for their company rivalries which often extended to sabotaging firefighting efforts and outright brawling during fires.  Once in Washington they broke into taverns,  swedged* on meals and generally terrified the locals.  Back to New York they went where they were quartered in Battery Park. Their mayhem continued.  Any Zouave on the street was arrested until 400 were shipped to Virginia to be included in another regiment.

The Zouaves saw combat at the battle of First Bull Run and helped quell the notorious 1863 Draft riots in New York.  Ellsworth was famously killed in an altercation in Alexandria, Virginia over a confederate flag.

 

*swedge: leave without paying for a meal.

 

Credits:  Smithsonian, Wiki

 

The Civil War and American Art

1st floor West, American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, N.W.) Washington, DC
November 16, 2012 – April 28, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by on January 16, 2013 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, Firefighter Politics, History, War and Peace

Almost Hidden DC: What Lovely Lamps You Have

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The (mostly) federal buildings around the city are adorned with some extraordinary lighting.

Ford House Building
441 D Street, SW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Library of Congress, Adams Building
2nd Street SE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Archives
700 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Gallery of Art, West Building
4th and Constitution Ave., NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Red Cross
17th and E Street, NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

US Capitol
East Front

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

US Federal Reserve
20th and Constitution Ave., NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Ave., NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organization of American States
200 17th Street, NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bartholdi Fountain
US Botanic Garden

Posted by on December 25, 2012 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, Different, History, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art

Making Hay on 9/11

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343

The Veteran in a New Field
Winslow Homer

One of my union local officers posted a piece on Facebook the other day reporting that a Florida elected official, Janet Long, was quoted as saying that firefighters, “have really taken advantage of 9/11 and what happened then and capitalized on it and the emotion” among other things.

Ms. Long is going where few mortals have gone before.  Calling out firefighters for “making hay” around 9/11 is either courageous or foolhardy and destined to get a strong response either way.

Much has been made of the fact that she is a democrat, as if friends of Barack don’t fart in church, too.  The truth is that generally, the lower down the food chain you go, the less it matters what political affiliation the person is.  And of course, the really great decider is geography.  A New York republican is likely as not to be more liberal than a blue dog democrat who vomits whenever public employee rights are mentioned.

Have firefighters taken advantage of 9/11?  Only we would know for sure.  Here’s a potential test:  If you aren’t a member of either IAFF Local 94 or IAFF Local 854 and you cited the events of 9/11 in any way that would result in personal gain directly or indirectly, you either took advantage of the situation or you were at least guilty of being tactless.  Responders who operated at the either the Pentagon or Shanksville get a bit of pass, though not much.

This is because the extraordinary losses in New York are so transcendent that they occupy an immortal space and should be the professional equivalent of sacred.

By the way, if your excuse is that FDNY members told you that you could invoke them, that’s really not an excuse.  Everyone knows that the FDNY legend is actually quite true:  They are unfailingly generous to other firefighters, sometimes to a fault, if such a thing can be.

Perhaps the real question is, have firefighters gained from 9/11?  Indeed we have, the world over.

The deaths of 343 firefighters on 9/11 was a cataclysmic professional event that still cannot be grasped by those not a part of their tribe.  We all saw it and some of us were caught up in it, but only as witnesses as a very brave crew went down with the ship.

To have gained from their loss does not necessarily consign us to moral corruption but it does mean that we must navigate a very complex passage.  We would surely founder in the end if we took advantage, especially by complicit association, because we will never know the true honor of the dead or the loss felt by those they left behind.

[We remember JP and all the others.]

 

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865
Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Oil on canvas

Painted through the summer and fall of 1865, not long after the nation came to grips with Robert E. Lee’s surrender and mourned President Lincoln’s assassination—both of which occurred during the second week of April—Homer’s canvas shows an emblematic farmer who is a Union veteran, as is signified by his discarded jacket and canteen at the lower right. The painting seems to blend several related narratives. Most soldiers had been farmers before the Civil War. This man, who has returned to his field, holds an old-fashioned scythe that evokes the Grim Reaper, recalls the war’s harvest of death, and expresses grief upon Lincoln’s murder. The redemptive feature is the bountiful wheat—a Northern crop—which could connote the Union’s victory. With its dual references to death and life, Homer’s iconic composition offers a powerful meditation on America’s sacrifices and its potential for recovery.  MMA/New York

Posted by on September 14, 2012 • Filed under: Art, History, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, Religion and Spirituality, Values and Ethics

Firefighting, Flying and the Future

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To FLY

The Public Domain Review is showcasing a set of cards from the end of the 19th century which depict what life will be like in the year 2000.  The 100-year-old renderings attempt to capture the lives we are living today.

Not surprisingly, they portray a mechanized world.  Everything from war fighting to dry cleaning to poultry farming is done by machine and we are theoretically the better for it.  In the 1890′s the world was ablaze with the industrial age and perhaps it was easy to dream of a future where tasks, from the mundane to the exotic, would benefit from technology.

Many of the cards display a fascination with the dream of flight.   Aeronautical experimentation was occurring everywhere.  Lilienthal in Germany, Hargrave in England, Chanute and Herring in the US and others were testing manned-flight using gliders, kites and even steam-powered aircraft.

The Flying Firefighters hover like moths around a flame as they simultaneously apply water and effect a rescue under the direction of a watchful commander.  Curiously, the engine far below seems to be a steam-apparatus fueled by ordinary combustibles.  The mind can aspire, but only so far.

It’s hard not conclude that we are frozen in time, somewhere between the romance of the past and the fantasy of the future.  Personal flight is a dream unfulfilled.  We still use combustion to go hither and yon, and still largely rely on water under pressure to vanquish the enemy.  And firefighters still retain their legendary stature as heroes and takers of risk.

It’s tempting to imagine our card for 2100.  Will we hover valiantly before the flame or be rendered arcane and relegated to history?

Only time will tell.

 

Posted by on August 10, 2012 • Filed under: Art, Different, History

DC Cats: The Quiz (Win $20 at Starbucks)

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 Washington, DC is a veritable jungle with lions and tigers all around.  Be the first to correctly identify these and win a $20 Starbucks card.  Just send in a comment (below) with your answers.  (Most correct list wins.)

Good Luck!

1. Guarding Cincy?

 

2. Mr. Big Guy

 

3. Watching Out for Mr. Flagg

 

4. In the Line of Duty

 

5. A Valley Hero?

 

6. For 64

7. Little Rock Bound

8. Brave New World

9. Near Wilke’s Redoubt

10. Art Imitates Life

11. Near Where Pols Bare Their Souls

 

Posted by on June 30, 2012 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, History, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art

40,000 Years

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I don’t know my eons from my eras and the very sound of the words reminds me of rocks, dinosaurs and natural history and I start to get very sleepy.

And while forty thousand years is a long time, it is just barely imaginable.  I once earned that much in dollars so I have a vague sense of the number.

A news story appeared last week regarding the now famous ancient cave paintings in Spain and France.  A new and improved method of radionuclide dating comes close to putting them at or in the Neanderthal period, at least 40,000 years ago,  meaning that they could have been created by early ancestors of Cro-Magnon, our ancient relative.

The drawings, of hands, animals and geometric figures are beautiful and mysterious.  Many will know that they are often found deep in the caves in areas that are both pitch black and inaccessible.  How did they find their way and why were they doing it?

Jean Clottes, an acknowledged expert on cave art has defined art as, “the result of the projection of a strong mental image on the world, in order to interpret and transform reality, and recreate it in a material form.”

These paintings suggest that our closest, direct biologic ancestors, some 400 centuries ago, apparently felt compelled to interpret and record their life experience.  It is a far cry from my understanding of the life or intellect of the hunter-gatherer.

Creating this art took time and resources.  Not only did the pigments have to be manufactured, but  torches and lamps were necessary to light the way and to paint.  But, why create art in a place where it would never be seen?  (Did they suspect that one day it would be?)

Art in modern society is divorced from the concept of the essential.  It is mostly viewed as the province of the elite and the playground of the dilettante.  But the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux suggest otherwise.

They prove that at the very dawn of our time, and for purposes unknown, we sought inaccessible and dangerous places to create art.  In a time when human sustenance hinged on a never-ending search for food, their need to draw, paint and sculpt was an imperative one.

The blown-pigment and negative-image hands are especially haunting.  They literally reach across the vast distance, beckoning, perhaps asking to be remembered by us, from a time long gone.

If Clottes is correct, that art helps us to explain life, perhaps part of the riddle is solved.  Then as now, we experience our existence and are deeply compelled to attempt to explain it or put it into context, spiritual or otherwise.  It’s a bit of a relief, a comfort really, to know that the quest to understand our existence is as old as we are.

Posted by on June 21, 2012 • Filed under: Art, Different, History, Religion and Spirituality

(Almost) Hidden DC: Jones, USN

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That’s as in “John Paul”.

He added the “Jones” after killing a sailor (“running him through”) while he was a merchant marine captain sailing in the Caribbean.  He escaped to America, adopted the pseudonym and expected to lay low, but the war with Britain intervened.

Though born in Scotland, John Paul readily took to America and to the revolutionary ideals of freedom and independence.  He joined the (very) fledgling US Navy as a lieutenant, turning down  several early offers of promotion to captain, a decision he would regret in years to come because of the Navy’s seniority list.

As a leader, Jones was detail-oriented, hot-tempered, expert and virtually never liked by his sailors, though he cared for them well.  As a subordinate officer or co-worker he was obstinate and prickly.  Good luck finding an example of any boss he ever got along with.  He even exasperated Ben Franklin with his behavior.

As a fighting sailor he was superb: aggressive, cunning, extremely well prepared, brave and never one to turn down a fight, even with a larger opponent.  Stories abound of him disguising his ship in order get close enough to a foe to engage at close range including a “grapple-and-board”  style fight.

Jones lusted for battle, the rank of admiral, and the biggest ship he could attain.  He was often frustrated though his place in history is secured as the man who sailed the Bonhomme Richard to England and terrorized the English sea coast with raids and battles that forced the Brits to keep more of their Navy close to home, as opposed to American waters.  His triumph over the HMS Serapis off Yorkshire’s Flamborough Head is the stuff of Navy lore.

Jones, of the “love them and leave them” type, remained single and went on to a short-lived career in the Russian navy, fighting the Turks in the Black Sea.  He returned to Paris, France, where he died a young man, age 45, in July of 1792.  Jones was preserved in alcohol, buried in a lead coffin and interred in what quickly became an obscure Paris cemetery.  In 1905, the body was found after a lengthy search and subsequently re-interred at the US Navy Academy in Annapolis.

Exact or not, he will always be remembered for his famous words:   “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight.”

Jones:  At the foot of 17th St. at Independence Ave, near the Mall.

(Very close to WII Memorial)

38.88823°N 77.0395°W

Bronze, 1912, sculpted by Charles H. Niehaus

Sources: Samuel Eliot Morison’s John Paul Jones and Wiki

 

Posted by on January 12, 2012 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art

(Almost) Hidden DC: George Gordon Meade

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Washington, D.C.,  is a city of monuments and memorials, and some of the best are just off the beaten track.  Steps away from busy streets are statuary and other works of art representing people and events, minor and major, from America’s past.  When next in the City, check these gems out.

For many decades, Washington, D.C., was little more than a provincial backwater.  Foreign visitors and others would comment on the muddy and trash-strewn paths we called streets as well as the lack of suitable lodgings on par with New York, Philadelphia or London.   Pigs wallowed and roosters crowed in a city where humans were sold at auction.

The beginning of the end of all that, in more ways than one, was the American Civil War.  Not only was the city in the middle of the fighting, it was the Command Post for the Union and became a center of activity and growth from which it never receded.

Even after 150 years, the Civil War is a singular event in our history, but in the decades immediately after 1865, there was an “orgy of commemoration” directed at those who led the Union forces.  Washington, DC is decked out from one end to the other with Civil War luminaries, great and otherwise, in parks, circles and hide-aways.

George Gordon Meade, career Army officer and leader of the Union forces at the titanic battle of Gettysburg, PA, looks south from his pedestal in front of the US Courthouse at 3rd and Constitution, NW.  Meade obtained the surprise promotion to Commander of the Army of the Potomac just three days before the epic battle when Joseph Hooker resigned and Lincoln’s first choice declined the honor.

Meade successfully arrayed the Union troops to fight a defensive battle against Lee’s forces but was heavily criticized for an ineffective follow-up as the Confederates retreated.  With his notorious short temper, he was known as, ”a damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle.”

The massive 260-ton piece poses allegorical figures around Meade including loyalty, chivalry and military courage.  Directly opposite the General is War, with his wings sweeping toward the front of the sculpture.  An especially striking aspect is the gilded bronze medallion wreath rising over Meade.

Like other sculptures in Washington, it has moved about over the years, from its original place near what is now the Capitol reflecting pool to the current home at the Courthouse.

333 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington, DC

Sources:  Goode’s “Washington Sculpture”, Schlesinger’s “Almanac of American History”, Wikipedia

Posted by on December 23, 2011 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, History, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art

(Almost) Hidden DC: Chief Justice John Marshall

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Washington, D.C.,  is a city of monuments and memorials, some of the best of them just off a very well beaten track.  Steps away from busy streets are statuary and other works of art representing people and events, minor and major, from America’s past.  When next in the City, check these gems out.

John Marshall may not be America’s first Chief Justice but he is certainly one of the most well known, and the longest serving, as well.  Appointed by John Adams as he was about to leave office in 1801, Marshall served for over 30 years, defining the Court as a co-equal branch of government.  Marshall wrote most of the opinions issued by his Court, including Marbury v Madison, which enshrined their right to declare a law passed by Congress as unconstitutional, initiating the concept of judicial review.  It is said that Marshall wrote the law but was not especially steeped in its precedents.  He once said to Associate Justice Joseph Story, “There, Story; that is the law of this case; now go and find the authorities.”

The bronze statue of Marshall at Constitution Ave and 4th Street, NW, executed by William Wetmore Story is one of  three castings.  Story, coincidentally, is the son of the Justice mentioned above.  The 1883 original is in the basement of the Court and the third is in Philadelphia.

 

Sources:  Almanac of American History (AS,Jr.),  Goode’s Washington Sculpture, Wiki

Posted by on December 12, 2011 • Filed under: (Almost) Hidden DC, Art, History, Sculpture, Statuary, Outdoor Art