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The National Park Service Centennial: An Imperiled Promise

August 25, 2016
by Peter Feinman

Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service is a study conducted by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) at the invitation of the National Park Service (NPS) published in 2011. The study was featured in a pre- conference workshop on June 12, 2014, at the Henry Wallace Visitor Center located at the NPS site in Hyde Park. It was a free public program prior to the annual New York State History conference held at nearby Marist College. On this centennial day of the NPS, it is constructive to look back at that session.

The title of the session was “Imperiled Promise: Public History and Shared Authority at New York’s NPS Sites.” The session was chaired by Patricia West McKay, Martin Van Buren National Historic Site. The session is available online on its website.

McKay introduced the panel and called the study a critical analysis on the state of history within the NPS. She noted that the session was third occasion for a public discussion of the Imperiled Promise study, focusing here on the NPS in New York State. She spoke of the need to share authority, to listen to the audience, and to respond accordingly. McKay cited a blog written by New York State Historian Bob Weible on the tendency of people within the history community to be limited to their rut or silo and not to engage people outside that restricted view. The history community will never realize its untapped potential for making a difference in people’s lives as long as its practitioners fail to see the larger context.

As it turns out, on May 29, 2014, just two weeks earlier, I attended a history roundtable in Albany convened by State Legislator Englebright [and attended by staff aide Devin Lander on his last day in that position]. The word mentioned again and again throughout the meeting was “silo” as it applied to the various fiefdoms within the NYS history fiefdoms in the government. I confess that I had never heard the word used as frequently as I did during this period. This usage brought home the fact that all the questions being raised about the NPS also apply to the NYSOPRHP, a point to be elaborated on when I turn to the Imperiled Promise study itself.

Christine Arato, the Chief Historian, NPS Northeast Region

Arato began her presentation with the disheartening comment that Imperiled Promise had landed with a glorious thud two years earlier. She expressed the hope that perhaps we now are ready to move beyond navel gazing. Arato characterized the report as a gift from strong allies and it addresses challenges many cultural organizations face not just government entities. This meeting was cited is a good platform for a conversation forum. Important issues included funding challenges, training, and grappling with the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to overcome the chasm between interpretation and history in the Park Service staff. This division proved to be a recurring theme for the speakers: there are those who do the research behind the scenes and those who are on the frontlines who deal directly with the public.

Arato noted the troublesome image of the concept of expertise in the current cultural climate. In that context, sharing authority becomes even more problematic. According to current social learning theory as presented by Arato, learning is best served by meaningful experiences, social interactions, and the resulting self-discovery. The emotional and the intellectual work together in an audience-centered learning experience.

Arato returned to the chasm which divides the NPS staff. The culture resource managers are document oriented – they study the artifacts from the past. That work contrasts with the delivery techniques needed to convey the information from the past to the audience of the present, the purview of the guides. The chasm between the two groups results in different approaches and expertises.

Arato then discussed three case studies to substantiate her concerns. The first involved the recent bicentennial of the War of 1812. The NPS sought to include the voices of the Indian tribes who had participated in the war by speaking to the descendants to gather their memories of it. The collection of these traditions were subject to an academic review to determine which ones and how they could be presented on the NPS website. She observed that the submissions from the Indian tribes were limited to solely Indian topics and that there was no such submission on Andrew Jackson, for example.

The second case study combined social learning and media focusing on the specific subject of women’s rights. The NPS invited students to create videos about these rights. Different approaches were taken as students from different genders, sexual preferences, and religions participated in responding to the general question of one’s place in America. The public presentation of the students’ work led to a vitriolic response as if the NPS had endorsed certain perspectives expressed by these students. One might add that the reaction to these student creations probably provided a better emotional meaningful learning experience based on social interactions than did the creation of the presentations themselves.

The third case study looked inward to the training and preparing of the staff to work in a climate of shared authority. “Authority” is an issue within the NPS. To facilitate conversations on social media is a new experience for the government organization. Arato asked what is the place of our institutions, what are we prepared to do, what is relevant? Again she referred to the chasm between cultural interpretation and shared authority in ranger-led programs.

She concluded with a call to action to the NPS in its second century. It needs to develop history lessons that are participatory events for new audiences so they may learn about their American heritage.

How will we make this happen? Teaching about the past is insufficient. There is a need to build the capacity for historical thinking, to create an inquiry based model. She used the metaphor of journey for identifying the mileposts for the development and evaluation feedback needed. Arato acknowledged that the shared promise [hopefully not imperiled] and tacit goal is to create informed citizenry with critical capacities. She declared an activist bent for the NPS and then asked: is this the right thing for the NPS to do in leading social change? What are the goals and expertise needed? What does the audience think? [Spoiler alert – there was no real facilitated conversation with the audience on the questions Arato raised.]

Justin Monetti, Site Manager at the Martin Van Buren Historic Site

Monetti brought an interpreter’s perspective on shared authority drawing on his own experiences in the field dealing with the general public. In the beginning, rangers drew on the military example. The NPS was a hierarchal organization with a uniformed staff. The tours were not history-based but guides in the parks where knowledge of what people saw in the hike was imparted to them by the expert. The ranger then was a figure of authority.

The situation has changed. Now there is a need to relate to others. The personal experience needs to replace sterile tours. Rangers need to know what they are talking about, who the audience is, and the delivery techniques appropriate to create a learning opportunity. Echoing the previous speaker, Monetti said memories are stronger when delivered in the context of an emotional response. There is a connection between the intellectual and emotional responses. Rangers must facilitate connections between our resources and the audience. They must craft programs tailored to audience responses. The one-dimensional programs where the only feedback is in the observation of audience by the ranger looking at them is out. The best programs produce tears!

Programs must be personally relevant and this necessitates a cultural consciousness of the audience. However, that audience is a high-volume one at many sites and it spends only a short time with the ranger.

During these close encounters of the brief kind, rangers typically avoid controversy. Public speaking can be scary! Especially for young part-time summer guides. There is a fear of the heckler or the know-it-all in tour. There is a fear of letting the visitor control the program. The culture of fear creates an anxiety in rangers over loss of control of the tour. Rangers also fear being chastised if they violate the official approved history they have been given and instead explore additional interpretations through the lens of the audience. That can be frightening.

Monetti recognized the need to develop techniques to invite engagement, to facilitate dialog, to promote civic engagement and civic skills. Rangers needed to overcome the current fixed and fearful approach to avoid controversy. He pointed out the audience (and got a laugh from this one) by saying that for rangers preservation of one’s job takes precedence over expressing creativity as a priority.

These musings raised the issue of exactly what the NPS should celebrate during the centennial. It presents an opportunity to encourage dialog on what we mean to society now. We need to recognize the desire to continue learning over one’s lifetime as part of defining the future for the NPS. Yet Monetti also noted a study that shows that visitors spend on average 3 minutes on rim of the Grand Canyon and 20 minutes in gift shop. How does one create conduits between past and present in that context? To change the format is a frightening prospect. How do we shift as an organization so people seek us out about the changed perspective?

Monetti touched on many critical issues. To continue the metaphor of the chasm and the Grand Canyon, he stands on the brink of change without directly seeing it. The high-volume short-visit model probably is less applicable to historic sites than to natural sites where it is easier to wander around the visitor center and see the spectacular sights on one’s own. The missing ingredient in Monetti’s analysis is the need to restructure the visit at historic sites by the tourist so the process of engaging the audience changes as well. Retraining the guides no matter how knowledgeable they become is not enough if the tour guide format remains the same. I will pursue this observation in a subsequent post on the Imperiled Promise.

Vivien Rose, Women’s Rights National Historical Park

Rose began by asking “When did you start caring about the past? About a dead person and then went on to learn?” She answered her own questions by recounting an experience she had in high school. That experience contributed to her obtaining a Ph.D. in history and her present job.

She called history the story we tell to each other about the past. It is not a static story or one of just stating the facts. At the site where she works, a question was placed on the bulletin board: “What will it be like when men and women?” Her review of responses led us to questions we didn’t even know we had. She challenged the people in the audience to share their passions. Yet she noted that the more she functions as a PHD, the less she can communicate with the public. Note – I wasn’t quite sure if she was referring to the time available to her given the requirements of research, the atrophy of skills since she had less opportunity to engage the public, or both.

For me, her talk was a natural follow-up to Monetti’s although not presented in that manner. The best way to have the research people engage the public is the way other research people, i.e., professors, do at colleges to students and in speaking to historical societies. I doubt there are any studies that suggest having people stand up for long periods of time often in the sun is the environment most conducive for learning. A better way is sitting down in a climate-controlled facility like the Wallace Center where the Ph.D. in history or the relevant subject can speak to the visitors, engage them in a facilitated discussion, and prepare them for what they are to see when they do walk around the site with or without a guide.

Marla Miller, University of Massachusetts

Speaking of history professors, the next and final speaker is one. I spoke with her after the session and she provided me the information about how to obtain a copy of the Imperiled Promise study which she helped write.

Miller began her engagement with this audience by expressing the hope that the study will gain traction within the NPS. The study was based on 544 detailed responses to a survey of NPS staff. The four historians who wrote the report had spent three years creating the survey. They concluded with roughly 100 recommendations and 12 findings [not all of which I will list in my future post!].

The chasm within the NPS hit the study team hard. It was something about which they had no awareness prior to delving into the inner workings of the organization. She forthrightly spoke of the challenge for NPS to overcome cultural resource and interpretation divide within the organization. Miller saw a long road ahead if the pernicious problem of this divide was to be overcome.

Miller mentioned the silo of history practice in NPS.

One critical finding of the study was the need to expose NPS staff to ongoing scholarship in the field. The staff needs to be current. The staff needs to be able to knowledgeably respond to the questions posed by the public. The staff needs professional development training just as professors do who attend history conferences and social studies teachers do in content-based professional development programs [the underlying principle of Teacherhostels which has visited NPS sites].

Miller noted the rapid changes in the NPS since 2008 when the survey began. One obvious one is the flourishing embrace of social media. She spoke of the preference people have to be where the messy stuff is, ironically, the exact the motif mentioned in a panel in which she participated at the SHEAR conference in 2016.

Collaboration with the public is the core principle. Miller provided two of the recommendations from the study as the most important:

The creation of a history leadership council within the NPS. The purpose would be to identify the leading lights in public history practices internal to the agency which then cold be disseminated to others. One might ask as there ever being a NPS history conference at the Wallace Center? The Center hosts numerous history programs and I have used it for teacher programs and history community meetings. But to the best of my knowledge, the NPS history staff in New York never meets collectively, nor does the NYSOPRHP. Imagine if the two groups held such a conference!
The creation of a history advisory board to bring in people outside the agency. Again the comments about the history leadership council apply. There are OAH sessions at its annual conference on NPS topics now.

Miller commented that the test was still to come on these recommendations. Since her comments were in 2014, it would be interesting to know what progress has been made on the report received with a thud.

In the Q&A, Debi Duke, Teaching Hudson Valley conference and NPS, asked about how this conversation can trickle down to other sites outside the NPS. Miller agreed on the need. Leaders can talk the talk but it is the frontline interpreters at the grassroots level who are left hanging when the leaders omit to walk the walk. That is the piece that often gets lost. Monetti added that to develop capacity, training programs for all levels are needed on how to develop dialog with audience especially for someone just out of college.

McKay ended the session with the words: “This is not the end, only the beginning of the discussion.” What discussions have taken place since here in New York?

Historic Preservation Round Table (August 22, 2016)

Secretary Jewell, Congresswoman Lowey and Commissioner Harvey invited regional historic preservation stakeholders and advocates to Bear Mt. State Park to participate in a roundtable discussion on the issues and opportunities associated with protecting and preserving the country’s historical and cultural sites and structures. Participants in the forum discussed challenges to historic preservation, what works, sustainability of historic sites, and ways to engage new audiences and cultivate the next generation of preservationists. The dialogue provided valuable insight to the challenges and creative ideas that will shape historic preservation over the next 100 years. (Press Release from Representative Lowey)

The General Public and the Early Republic Historians (SHEAR Conference)

August 23, 2016
by Peter Feinman

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) held its annual conference in New Haven from July 21-24. I was only able to attend the weekend sessions on the last two days. Below is my summary and comments on the first session I attended on Saturday, July 23.

THE PUBLIC AND THE EARLY REPUBLIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON IN AND BEYOND THE ACADEMY

Douglas Bradburn, Washington Library, Mount Vernon

He reported that Mount Vernon receives approximately 1.1 million visitors annually. I spoke with him after the session about this number. Approximately 350,000 are students in the 8^th grade. The visits to Mount Vernon by the students often are combined with visitations to other historic sites in area. I recall a few years ago attending a history conference at Columbia University where the executive director of Williamsburg discussed attendance there. When he started his new job, everyone was excited about the site having finally cracked the 1 million barrier. Now the challenge for the organization was to reach 2 million. Attendance subsequently declined to 600,000+. I don’t know what it is now.

Bradburn stated that people at historical societies and museums need academic help to learn the history relevant to their site. Towards that end, he proudly discussed several initiatives at Mount Vernon. These included a new education center, a “presidential” library [Mount Vernon is a private site not part of NARA], a digital encyclopedia, streaming monthly book lectures, holding a public symposia, conducting a teacher institute and other programs.

I was particularly interested in the online lecture library. During the break, I had the opportunity to catch-up with Liz Covart. I had not seen her for a few years but I do hear her on her Ben Franklin’s World podcast. I wanted to pick her brain about creating a New York History podcast and she gave me useful information about what is involved. She also noted the great response by the New York history community to her podcast based on the statistics of who is accessing the website.

Several possibilities occurred to me as a result of the presentation and hallway discussion.

Podcasts are the wave of the present – the future is here.
Podcasts and taped lectures provide an excellent way to have facilitated discussions at schools, libraries, history museums, and historical societies. The facilitator could be a social studies teacher, local professor, curator, or enthusiastic person with conversational skills. Such programs even could be offered for professional development credit for teachers. The key would be [for SHEAR] to create a good database of what is available online that interested organizations and people could use in an organized manner and disseminating that information to appropriate organizations like the New York Council for the Social Studies (NYCSS), the Museum Association of New York (MANY), the New York Library Association (NYLA) and the New York Council for the Humanities (NYCH). There is a lot of potential in podcasts and online lectures and I am sure there is a lot going on that I don’t know about.

Marla Miller, University of Massachusetts

In her non-profit capacity as Vice President of the National Council on Public History (NCPH), Marla spoke about trends in public history and what history sites are doing today. She expressed the comparatively recent discovery that visitors like it when Toto pulls back the curtain and get to see the real deal rather than the tidy spic-and-span look. People don’t want to see what ancient people looked like in their Sunday-School clothes; they want to see them messy. [These aren’t her exact words and she can berate me when she comes to Westchester this September to learn about the Sing Sing Museum project.]

Marla discussed exploring partnerships that previously had been ignored. She specifically mentioned the history museum and healthcare. Museums can provide therapeutic benefits and reach out to senior citizens to discuss concerns in the past relevant to their lives today. Another possibility was to bring objects from the museum or historical society to the senior homes. She gave a shout out to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hancock Shaker Village [I am not sure or didn’t write down which one she meant], and Martin Van Buren (Patricia West) for those sites innovative work along with Eastern State Penitentiary [she’s into prisons now in CT]. She called for listening to others and promoting one’s interest in public history. Marla definitely needs to return to New York and we should create sessions at conferences to highlight in more detail what these various organizations are doing.

Walt Woodward, University of Connecticut and Connecticut State Historian (title not listed on program)

I keep hoping that Connecticut will take back the Town of Rye (where I live) but I have been unsuccessful in getting Walt to endorse the project.

Walt spoke in the capacity of the state historian reaching out the general public and not as a scholar in the academic world. He has a podcast (but I didn’t have a chance to follow-up with him on it) and gives about 75 public lectures per year. His experience has shown him that there is a tremendous public interest in Connecticut for history. He strongly advocates for historians to leave the ivory tower and venture out into the public arena. Walt generously provided some guidelines to be followed if you are so inclined.

Don’t speak academic or undergraduate-lecture style jargon to the general public.
Don’t assume prior knowledge (or that they read the assignment before the lecture).
Complexity is not clarity.
Nuance can be mind-numbing.
Park your biases at the door – leave out the progressive politics. You are there to share your presumed expertise in the past, not to indulge in being a know-it-all on a TV talk show.
Don’t be arrogant – you aren’t the god’s or goddess’s gift to humanity where the little people should bask in the aura of your greatness and be thankful that you have chosen to enlighten them.

The public audience loves history and wants to hear from people who knew it well and can communicate to them in an effective manner. Naturally no one in the audience was guilty of violating any of the prohibitions the way I am doing by writing this post!

Note – Walt didn’t exactly use these words; he has his own sense of humor but I think this captures the gist of his presentation.

Peter Onuf, University of Virginia (Commentator)

In his wrap-up, Onuf raised three issues.

The standard model of history doesn’t have a future – what, then, is the future?
If students don’t care about history, then the professors need the skills of the public historian who has the job of reaching out to a general audience and then to apply those skills in the classroom to reach the students.
Fellowships are replacing tenured jobs as the wave of the future for Ph.D. graduates, a future that already has arrived.

Questions and Answers

Craig Friend (Director of Public History at NC State University) to Walt on citizenship. Walt replied that the public historian needs to connect content to the lives of the audience by drawing on the ideas of the people who lived in the historic sites. Brad noted that citizenship is a critical interest at Mount Vernon. The new citizen ceremonies have included people representing 140 countries.

Recommendation – Perhaps a good way to start connecting newcomers to local historic sites would be to have immigration ceremonies at the location. It could include everyone who became a citizen in the last year especially in smaller communities.

A question was asked about relevance and presentism. The questioner expressed a concern that audiences and students push analogies to far [“The Triumph of Mel Gibson” will be the subject on a post on presentism].

Marla answered that a speaker can use that as a point of entry. History provides the opportunity to build bridges between the living and dead citing the example of NPS Patricia West at Martin Van Buren’s home.

Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Monticello, asked a question which I didn’t write down so I can only provide the answers.

Walt is critical of the elimination (or reduction) of history in a STEM world. The history community is doing a poor job of communicating to the general public of history’s importance. There is a need to intervene in creating the k-12 curriculum.

On a personal note, I remember years ago at a Connecticut Council for the Social Studies annual conference receiving a handout, which I probably still have, showing that local and state history would be included in social studies every year even in ancient civilizations and global studies classes. Of course, the implicit assumption was that social studies would be taught every year along with math and English.

Marla suggested academics expand the view of the job market to include public history. Linda Carter, Williamsburg, from the audience, added that convincing academics of the importance of public history is a challenge. Brad echoed this comment.

Brad also mentioned using Google to determine what the public is interested in based on the searches.

If I may conclude with some general observations. In New York, there are separate statewide conferences for public historians, history museums, social studies teachers, and academics. Getting people to work together on an ongoing and sustained basis with actual deliverables is a challenge indeed. A session for public historians in an academic conference definitely is good, but what is next? What, if anything, are the NCPH and SHEAR going to do moving forward? Obviously I am not privy to such discussions or familiar with the national arena, so maybe this observation is of little merit.

The American Revolution and Presentism: The Triumph of Mel Gibson

August 17, 2016
by Peter Feinman

In 2000, Mel Gibson released The Patriot. On one level, one could view the movie as another stirring action story in the tradition of Braveheart. If the characters in the movie weren’t exactly historical that was OK; it was set in a real war with real locations and the good guys won. The movie wasn’t intended to be “the true story” of some specific individual or individuals, so relax and enjoy the entertainment.

There were certain caveats which rendered the escapism troublesome. Certainly the British didn’t fare too well as human beings. They were more in the tradition of Romans or Nazis in the Gibson universe. More troubling perhaps was Gibson’s presentism. Presentism refers to the retrojection of cultural values of the present into the past. It is the judgmental equivalent of having Washington use satellite imagery to locate the British troops or having Elliot Ness read Al Capone his rights. Typically, presentism is used to cast negative judgment against people in the past, to knock them off their pedestal, to take them down a notch, to make the judge, jury, and executioner of reputations in the present superior to the targeted person in history. It is not such much about setting the record straight as it is in being morally superior and self-righteous. There is no “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” or sensitivity in presentism.

Gibson used presentism in a different sense. Instead of retrojecting politically correct values to condemn someone in the past, he retrojected the values to create a community living in accordance with them. Gibson’s secret hideaway for fugitives from the British was a kumbaya community of people living in harmony with each other regardless of race or gender. Except for the fact that there was a war going on out there somewhere in the real world, Gibson’s “Gilligan’s Island” exemplified life as it should be lived in an idyllic setting. As one might expect, Gibson was taken to task for this artificial reality he created in the American and southern past.

Artists, unlike honest biographers, have choices to make about what to include or exclude in an artistic creation. After all, everything can’t be included. In the commencement address last spring at the University of Pennsylvania, Lin-Manuel Miranda discussed the power of stories to shape our lives and expressed the realization that story-telling is an act of pruning the truth, not representing it in its entirety. Miranda said:

Every story you choose to tell by necessity omits others from the larger narrative. One could write five totally different musicals from Hamilton’s eventful, singular American life … For every detail I chose to dramatize, there are 10 I left out. I include King George at the expense of Ben Franklin. I dramatize Angelica Schuyler’s intelligence and heart at the expense of Benedict Arnold’s betrayal. James Madison and Hamilton were friends, and political allies-but their personal and political fallout falls right on our act break, during intermission. (The Pennsylvania Gazette July/August 2016, 15)

Miranda’s Hamilton in one striking inclusion and one striking omission demonstrates that Mel Gibson is alive and well in the portrayal of the American Revolution. In his commencement address, Miranda referred to one of the defining stories this presidential election year.

In a year when politicians traffic in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system. A story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time again immigrants get the job done. (The Pennsylvania Gazette July/August 2016, 15)

Miranda is to be praised for reminding us that America from the start has been an unfinished experiment and that the journey continues. That expression is part of why Hamilton is the great sign that the journey will continue to be a successful one, that the work that still needs to be done, will be done. But he can be faulted for going overboard on Hamilton the pro-immigrant person based on politically correct values in the present. In the musical, the line “immigrants get the job done” generates the loudest applause. There is no doubting its theatrical effectiveness in New York City in 2015-2016 and beyond. There also is no doubting it is an example of Mel Gibson kumbaya.

In the musical, Hamilton and Lafayette high-five each other as they exclaim this thought. Technically, of course, Lafayette, was not an immigrant but a visitor. The musical does not specifically identify him as an immigrant but it is easy to infer that he is if one didn’t already know better. Immigration during the war wasn’t a big issue. There was more concern about Loyalist Brits returning and participating in the American political entity than about non-British immigration. It would be decades before immigration would become an issue with the arrival of America’s first “Moslems,” the Catholics who pledged loyalty to a foreign master and who were going to infiltrate and take over the country. Do you know how matter Catholics there are on the Supreme Court today? And as Republicans!? One may raise legitimate issues about how welcoming Federalist Protestant Hamilton would have been of the arrival of multitudes of riff raff. But not in the musical Miranda chose to write.

Similarly there is a race problem. Hamilton was not a slave owner and he did join John Jay’s manumission society. On the other hand, he did marry into a slave-owning family. Just recently, there was ceremony at Schuyler Flatts in Colonie, just north of Albany, of the remains of 14 of the Schuyler slaves. They were first discovered during a construction project in 2005 and then analyzed by the New York State Museum in 2010. I tried to go there as part of Teacherhostel/Historyhostel, but was informed by the New York State archaeologist that there was nothing to see at Schuyler Flatts. It just was flat piece of land. Now there are artistically-created burial coffins for these people. So while Hamilton casts some of the Schuyler daughters as black it does not address the slaves those daughters owned through their father. Not an easy subject for Miranda’ musical but an essential one for a biography by a historian.

Gibson’s presentism continues on in the AMC series Turn, another American Revolution story with 21^st century values. I refer here not to John Graves Simcoe, the future founder of York, now named Toronto. In the TV series he is cast in the Darth Vader role as a “ruthless attack dog” according to the website. I am referring to Anna Strong, the older married woman with children who is transformed into a sexy tavern wench lusted for by men on both sides of the conflict. But at the Turn panel discussion at the New-York Historical Society last spring, the audience was informed that the character’s position would take a turn for the better in season three. She would be transformed this time into an active participant in the spy ring who travelled about and contributed to the decisions made. Her travels take her to John André’s black servant, Abigail, a former slave in the Strong household. The scenes involving Anna, Abigail, and her son are dangerously reminiscent of Gibson’s kumbaya community in The Patriot. One might wonder if the enhanced role for the lead female figure was due to some new discovery or scholarship but that would be foolish. The decision, of course, was a marketing one to provide a character to appeal to the desired demographic. If changing this bewitching female into a witch would help ratings then that might be considered too except The Legend of Sleepy Hollow already has that niche covered for the American Revolution.

Overall, it is good that there is such interest in the birth of the country. After all, we never were a country of one ethnicity or religion. That demographic diversity is part of the reason why we have continued to exist even as the number of ethnicities (Palatines-Irish-Italian-Indian) and religions (Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, Moslem) continues to grow. We are better as a country if we continually return to the story of our birth as country to make the story relevant to We the People today. Take a look at the story of the Exodus and see how many times Moses climbs up and down the mountain and all the activities at the mountain and you see examples of Exodus Midrash, the Jewish tradition of retelling the story of the foundation of the people, a tradition which continues today both in the different Passover ceremonies which are held and the different Exodus movies which are made. Mixed multitudes and diverse demographics become one in the ideas that constitute or covenant them as a single people. To stop telling the story of that birth is to die as a people, to cease to exist as a culture. But there are limits. The presentisms of Mel Gibson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and AMC are not the first time the story of the American Revolution was retold and won’t be the last. In fact, part of the story of America, is the recognition that we are telling and retelling the story of our birth again and again.

Friends With Benefits: NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation

July 10, 2016
by Peter Feinman

“The fact that some conservancies are able to solve it
[investment shortages in parks doesn’t reduce the need
to do more.” State Senator Daniel Squadron (NYT, July 14, 2016)

How many historic sites does the NYSOPRHP maintain? That is not a trick question. At the NY Statewide Preservation Conference, May 5-7, in Albany and Troy, the question was an unintended running joke among several sessions. Generally the number was between 35 and 40 with a variation due to how to classify a site given a site can be recreational and historic. But this is not a post about the combination of recreation and historic sites in one bureaucracy (it wasn’t always that way). Rather it is a discussion about what it means to be a state historic site.

The opening session I attended was “Olana 50/50: Partners and Practices.” As it turns out, this year marks the 50^th anniversary of Olana, the home of Hudson River Art painter Frederic Church, becoming a state site. In the presentation by Sean Sawyer, President of the Olana Partnership, he shared with the audience that a Church descendant still lived in house as recently as the 1950s but that situation was dire. The state of the house was so perilous that household objects were tagged for sale with “Everything must go” sign before a concerted effort led to the site being rescued. That effort involved such luminaries as Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, and Nelson Rockefeller, not your typical historic site rescuers. A turning point was reached when Life magazine, circulation 8.5 million, featured the site under the title “Must this Mansion be Destroyed?” The answer obviously was “no” and here we are 50 years later and Olana still stands tall although not without some threats from a potential nuclear energy plant.

The Save Olana Issue Cover (article on page 64)

I used to take teachers to Olana as part of a Hudson River Art Teacherhostel/Historyhostel. Wint Aldrich who has spoken in an IHARE program and is on this email distribution list, called Church’s “The Hudson Valley in Winter from Olana” the painting which changed history. Harvey Flad who has spoken in an IHARE program and is on this email distribution list testified during the hearings on the impact of landscapes in cultural history and of its contribution to the character of the community. Sawyer cited both these individuals as critical to the nitty-gritty of saving the site in the 1960s.

Also present on the panel was Amy Hufnagel, the Director of Education, The Olana Partnership. During the Teacherhostels, we met with an education director who was a Parks employee. That individual later transferred to another Parks position. In 2012, Rose Harvey, NYSOPRHP Commissioner, contacted Sara Giffen, Sawyer’s predecessor as President, The Olana Partnership, about it taking over responsibility for the education at the site. Sara agreed and the result is the taxpayers no longer pay that salary, the cost has been outsourced to a private non-profit. While on one level that seems like a good deal for the taxpayers; but on another is raises questions about what it means to be a state-owned site and what happens if there is no Friends group with the financial wherewithal to bear such the cost of an educator.

To drive the point home, recently the private Olana Partnership advertised for a director of collections and research, Ph.D. preferred. This is a “newly-created senior management position.” True given the paintings at the site, it is not a typical historic location and has specialized needs. Still this is serious money and it testifies to the heft of the Friends group.

The Olana Partnership operates in a rarified atmosphere as a Friends group providing multiple and substantial benefits. When Sara stepped down as President it was after a reign that had raised millions on behalf of Olana. The recent annual benefit for the Partnership was held in Manhattan. How many historical sites have fundraising dinners 100 miles away from the site? The prices at the fundraiser also probably differed from that of many other organizations. For tables one choices were:

Grand Preservationist at $75,000
50th Anniversary Supporter at $50,000
Landscape Benefactor at $25,000
Restoration Patron at $12,500

and for individuals:

$5,000: Premium seating
$2,500: Preferred seating
$1,500: Seating

Clearly we are dealing with a Manhattan historic site that happens to be located upstate in Columbia County (near an Amtrak train stop and a great place for a second home). I do not mean to suggest that there is anything illegal or wrong with having a Friends group with this financial power (see also the John Jay Homestead in “Martha Stewart country” Katonah in Westchester County). But clearly this Friends group operates in another league compared to the other sites.

“Enemies Conversing” — Old Fort Niagara’s British Redcoats meet face-to-face with an officer of the Continental Army, portrayed by event organizer Tommy Thompson of Hoisington’s New York Rangers, and an American militiaman, portrayed by Tony Consiglio, also of Hoisington’s, during Patriots Day Weekend. (Photo by Charlotte Clark)

As it turns out, State ownership of a site is not as straightforward as one might think. There are other arrangements besides the Friends with benefits at Olana. I receive a hardcopy of the Fortress Niagara newsletter, a journal of the Old Fort Niagara Association at Old Fort Niagara State Park (I have been there). A recent newsletter had an article about John Simcoe, a prominent person who founded the city Toronto and who bears the same name as a character in AMC “Turn,” the cable TV series about a spy ring in the American Revolution based in Setauket. According to the newsletter, the very active Friends group has a staff of nine and works very hard to engage the surrounding community in the history of the site. In this case the Friends group which is on the NYSOPRHP website site for the Fort seems to operate the site in its entirety on behalf of NYSOPRHP without any state employees present at all.

According to its newsletter, the Fort was able to secure $15,000 in education funding through the office of its state senator. This funding is both for schools and the general public programs. Given that it occurred outside the REDC process and there are no member items anymore, I am sure all historic sites both public and private in the state would be interested to know how such state funding was obtained.

Earlier this year when I was invited to attend the Oneida Indian workshop on planning for the anniversary celebration of the Battle of Oriskany from the American Revolution, I recommended that State and NPS staff from Fort Stanwix in Rome, the Oriskany Battlefield State Historic Site in Oriskany, and Herkimer Home State Historic Site in Little Falls be invited as well. Although I have been to all three sites I did not realize or had forgotten that Oriskany has no staff. As the NYSOPRHP website states, the “Oriskany Battlefield is managed in partnership with the National Park Service at Fort Stanwix National Monument.” The Herkimer Home does have Parks employees but only a few months got a site manager after a long absence.

An interesting related note appeared in a recent post New York History Blog:

Grant Cottage is one of several New York State historic sites that operate without a State Parks employee present. The non-profit Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage has managed Grant Cottage in cooperation with NYS Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, along with the Department of Corrections.

So not only are there multiple state historic sites with no state employees, there even is a partnership with the Department of Corrections. Land ownership does change over time!

As one can see from this brief survey there are a variety of different arrangements with state historic sites. This situation is not unique to state historic sites. For example in New York City, Central Park with its private conservancy rakes in tens of million dollars annually including a gift of $100 million four years ago. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library and Battery Park in lower Manhattan also do well. That leaves a lot of lesser known and often small parks scattered around the city that live primarily off of what the city government provides. This has been an issue of contention by the Mayor. One could tell a similar story about the public schools and their friends groups, the PTAs. Not all schools, parks, or historic sites are created equal.

It’s not that Rose Harvey isn’t aware of the situation (the two of us spoke briefly about it once at the Jay Heritage Center, a private site). But it does raise the question of what the State warrants when it takes ownership of a site:

Is it responsible for the maintenance of the site including the grounds, the buildings, the interiors and the exteriors?
Is it responsible for curating the collections?
Is it responsible for there being an education director?
Is it responsible for there being a site manager?

When the state chooses to outsource these responsibilities to private organizations (are we a Republican state after all?), then its responsibility is to monitor that these tasks are being completed according to the established and agreed upon standards. I am not suggesting no monitoring exists. Certainly the number of visitors is factor. Highly visited sites require more maintenance. Weather and landscape/environment can drive costs. Also many historic sites serve more as recreation parks where locals can walk, hike, bike, picnic, paint, and bring their dogs rather than as historic sites. Is there a state of the state of historic sites that delineates the actual situation and condition of them? It used to be on American Revolution in the Hudson Valley Teacherhostels/Historyhostels there were separate site mangers for each site visited, even those in close proximity to each other. Then there weren’t. Is that to a legitimate lack of need for them or to an economic cutback with no Friends to provide those benefits?

The Commissioner of Education and the NYS Historian

May 24, 2016
by Peter Feinman

At present the position of the New York State Historians lies deep within the bowels of the state bureaucracy, starved for resources, and scarcely able to see the light of day through all the bureaucratic levels above it.

Formerly, the State Historian reported to the Director of the New York State Museum, who reports to the Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Culture and Education, who reports to the Executive Deputy Commissioner of Education, who reports to Commissioner of Education, who answers to the Board of Regents.

But what does that mean? Continue reading “The Commissioner of Education and the NYS Historian” →

New York State Historian: The Weible Years

May 19, 2016
by Peter Feinman

A Fitting Title for the Situation in Albany

New York State now has a new historian. In some ways that should seem like a routine announcement since the State is required to fill that position. However as people in the history community well know, the State, like many counties, cities, towns, and villages does not always comply with regulatory requirements. There is no penalty to the State for the failure to comply either and only a trivial unenforced one at the municipal level.

Even when the State and the municipalities do comply with the letter of the law, they don’t necessarily comply with the spirit. The position is often disrespected and/or disregarded excluding some ceremonial occasions and is not taken seriously when the real decisions of government are involved. The diminished State position sets a poor but accurate example to the county executives, mayors, and town supervisors that local and state history really aren’t important regardless of any lip service at the press release level. How often is the voice of the history community actually heard in the REDC funding process [which is now beginning again for the 2016 cycle]. How much funding is there for collaboration in the Path through History project regardless of how often the jargon is spoken? Message received.

On the other hand, how often does the history community make its voice heard? Does it even have one? How often does the history collaboratively ask for anything?

With these thoughts in mind, let’s consider the latest chapter in the story of the New York State Historian: the Bob Weible years. Just to put things in perspective, here are some excerpts from the press release by the NYS Museum on February 4, 2008, announcing Bob as the new state historian. According to the State:

Weible was selected following an exhaustive search that began in 2006 as soon as funds became available for the position. Following the budget crisis of the 90’s the Museum has faced an uphill battle to obtain the funds necessary to rebuild capacity as several key positions were vacated due to retirement and other budgetary factors.

The heroic State Museum persevered against all odds and finally prevailed despite the adversity.

However, Bob paints a different picture in his post to New York History Blog on Former NYS Historian Weible On State Ed Bureaucracy, Responsibilities on February 22, 2016:

State Historians subsequently fought through various internal reorganizations to meet external as well as internal demands, but the position lost support and became vacant in 2001. And it remained so until 2008, when pressure from county and municipal historians persuaded the State Education Department to fill the vacancy.

Note the different in emphases in the two versions: budgetary concerns versus a degradation of the position until the grassroots history community forced a changed. The State Museum versus the State Education Department. What really happened? Here is an interesting historical challenge for historians of public history in New York to investigate.

Turning to the individual who would fill the long-vacant position, the press release stated:

A native New Yorker and nationally recognized historian, who has held various leadership positions on the state and national level for the past 28 years, has been appointed the new chief historian.

“Robert is a public historian who has built strong partnerships throughout his career with diverse community groups, universities, cultural organizations and local historical societies,” said Museum Director Dr. Clifford Siegfried.

Siegfried specifically cited him “for the renewal of the Museum galleries and the transfer of our extensive history collection to a new storage facility” which gives a pretty good indication of what his real work would be along with the new exhibits in the Museum.

The press release went to state that the new historian “also will work with local historians and academic and cultural institutions to increase the public’s understanding of New York State history and its role in U.S. history.” In English, this meant about 25% of his time.

The tricky part was in the second “also”: He will also oversee management of the Museum’s history collections and help develop content for public programs and teacher workshops. Public programs and teacher workshops?? I know I initiated a couple of them in the New York State Museum with Bob, but I would say overall this is an area that needs serious work.

Here is how Bob described the situation in his February 22, 2016, blog:

But the decision to combine two very different positions into one was really a kind of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand: the State Historian position may have been officially filled, but as was made clear to me, the Museum’s institutional priority had remained the same: research and collections care.

Bob generously acknowledged the budgetary constraints on the state government in general and added his own perspective:

But it is true that without proper leadership and public support, bureaucrats can easily lose sight of the larger social goals their organizations were created to achieve and become nihilistic, self-serving careerists dedicated simply to perpetuating their positions and authority.

By referencing proper leadership and public support, Bob addresses the two sides of the dynamic: leadership from the top meaning the Governor and advocates from the grassroots meaning the history community. While it’s easy to fault our Governor for his lack of support beyond signs and fixing roofs, it is also true that the history community doesn’t ask for anything beyond signs for its own site and fixing the roof of its own site. The requests of the history community tend to be small and local, lacking in statewide vision and ignore the necessity of civics for the health of the social fabric.

During his tenure as State Historian, Bob had the opportunity to discuss some of these issues.

On March 17, 2014, in Saratoga Springs at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Historians of New York State (APHNYS) in his State of the State’s History address, Bob called for the need to cooperate. He challenged the attendees with the declaration that if we can learn to work cooperatively with each other we can find out how powerful we are. He said that history is what unites us as Americans, as New Yorkers, as members of our local community. He equated a community that forgets its past with a person with Alzheimer’s. A community’s memory is important for identity, for pride of place, for a strong sense of place. Advertising is not enough for quality heritage tourism. Civics needs to be taught in our schools. With these thoughts, the State Historian had raised important issues about:

the dysfunctional organization of the State
the funding or lack thereof for state and local history particularly for cooperative and collaborative projects
what the history community can contribute to the economic growth and social wellbeing of the state.

But like the proverbial tree falling in woods that no one hears fall, Bob’s words in Saratoga Springs were not heard in Albany.

One year later he returned to some of these issues in his State of the State’s History address on April 10, 2015, at the APHNYS conference in Corning. He spoke about the history markers, a favorite topic of his, about the lack of a state database of history markers, about how they promote tourism and the way people think about their own community. He spoke of the underutilization of heritage resources and the lackluster historical presentations on behalf of heritage tourism. He called for innovative and engaging history storytelling that would reinforce community identity and attract visitors seeking an authentic experience. But once again he was the proverbial tree falling in the woods that no one hears fall. Bob’s words in Corning were not heard in Albany.

On March 30, 2016, Bob tried to make sure he would be heard in Albany. In an article published in the Albany Times Union entitled New York State’s Former Chief Historian Warns the Bureaucracy Is Putting History at Risk, Bob spoke publicly now that he was free of bureaucratic constraints and the necessity to know his place and mind his business. His tale of woe included the observation that “The state once led the nation in creating and supporting institutions that ensured the survival and use of historic documents, artifacts, buildings and sites.” Times changed and now “New York has also witnessed the dismantling of a unique network of historians that had long enabled both classroom and lifelong learners to become informed, more active citizens.”

He repeated the charge he levied in his February post to New York History Blog on how the grassroots push was the driving force behind the State finally complying with Stare regulations and filling the position of state historian. Then with the exquisite subtlety of a maestro at work, he gently said:

The bottom line here is that, without proper leadership, New York’s entire history community has for decades been compromised in its ability to live up to its public service responsibilities.

Again there is the juxtaposition of the State and the history community with the abdication of the State of its responsibilities as the primary problem. He then asked:

Can the situation be reversed?

Bob even provided a solution to the problem:

In 2011, the Board of Regents approved a plan to investigate the possibility of reinventing the Office of State History. Unfortunately, internal opposition has kept that from happening. And after my recent retirement, the museum even announced plans to downgrade — and further undermine — the state historian position. Not surprisingly, this idea has raised serious questions within the state’s history community.

Bob is more optimistic than I am. While I prefer to be optimistic I have zero confidence that the State on its own initiative will do the right thing after decades of dismal neglect. Nothing in the REDC process or the Path through History project as they have operated so far suggests any serious interest in nurturing, developing, and promoting state and local history for the health of the social fabric or the growth of the economy. I also have grave doubts over whether the history community itself can make its voice heard and advocate in Albany. Nonetheless, some people are trying to be heard in what the AAA calls “Albany’s Alice-in-Wonderland environment.” Those efforts related to the State Historian position will be the subject of a future post.

Bob Weible’s Swan Song

Recent Lower Hudson Valley History Meeting Highlights

December 15, 2015
by Peter Feinman

In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to attend and participate in three regional and county history community meetings:

October 16: Greater Hudson Heritage Network (GHHN) annual meeting
October 24: APHNYS Region 3 also covering mainly the Hudson Valley
November 14: Sullivan County History Conference

These three meetings provided venues to meet with colleagues, discuss issues and topics, and learn what is going on. What follows then are some highlights from those meetings and this post is not intended to be a full report on what transpired.

Greater Hudson Heritage Network

This organization conducts an annual meeting in the Hudson Valley region and draws from people outside the region as well. It is a day-long conference with plenary speaker(s), concurrent sessions and includes lunch. These past two years it has been held at colleges so presumably there is no rent or it is nominal. This year Prof. Lisa Keller of Purchase College was the host. There is a fee to attend.

At the conference, Priscilla Brendler, Executive Director, spoke, among other things, on the Path through History. There were flyers for the June 18-19, 2016 dates and she urged people to participate in this program which helps provide vital statistical information on the state of history tourism in the state.

At the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Conference, Gavin Landry, Executive Director, I Love NY, mentioned that based on my posts on the Path through History, some changes had been made. He didn’t identify them but I suggest two such changes were on view here. One is based on my criticism of the “Simon says” aspect of the date selection leaving history sites and others scrambling to guess when the Path Weekend will occur. The second was organizations not having sufficient lead time to plan or having their June event on the correct date. The decision now is for Fathers Day weekend with plentiful advance notice.

Another change which I did know about was the relationship of GHHN to the Path through History weekend. The flyer distributed at the meeting lists a GHHN phone number and email address for contact, questions, and updates. It would seem that the work for operating the Path Weekend has been outsourced to GHHN presumably for which GHHN gets paid. GHHN already operates some programs on a statewide basis and this appears to be another example of its expansion beyond the Hudson Valley. The history community would benefit from having a NYHN, a New York History Network although it should be noted that GHHN tends to focus on the backend of history site operations and less on history itself or outreach. Teaching the Hudson Valley (THV) used to do that before it shifted its focus to the environment. So while there is (or used to be before the 2016 cancellation) a state history conference (NYSHA), regional and/or county ones are hard to find.

The keynote speaker at the conference was Professor Ken Jackson, Mr. New York State History. He was the keynote speaker at the launching of the Path though History in 2012. He had been personally recruited by Governor Cuomo to participate in the now defunct Path through History Taskforce which never really did much and was more for show. His talk addressed the same considerations as his keynote address three years earlier now with some perspective on the Path project he helped launch. Jackson referred to the project as one of “noise” and “not much else.” It was not well run or thought through. Cuomo takes credit for it but doesn’t do much for it. The financial support is down. Nothing Jackson said was new to regular readers of my posts

The contrast between the talks of Priscilla and Ken could not have been greater. Here in the briefest of time spans, one was able to experience the official view from the Albany-Manhattan bubble and the reality outside the bubble. Admittedly, I enjoy moments like this because they make writing posts so easy.

APHNYS Region 3

This was an excellent meeting organized by Suzanne Isaksen, regional coordinator Town of Montgomery historian and hosted by Mary Ellen Matise, Village of Walden Historian. The meeting was held in the historic village hall and public library and we were welcomed by the mayor. This was a day-long program with lunch on our own by walking to nearby places in the historic setting. There was a slight fee.

Three speakers from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (NYSOPRHP) presented – Dan McEneny, Jennifer Betsworth, and Matthew Shephard. The program provided an overview of the Division for Historic Preservation and its programs, the process and criteria for National and State Register listings including tax advantages, and the new Cultural Resource Information Database (CRIS). We had the opportunity through CRIS to see maps identifying the cultural resources right in Walden where we were meeting. The database is a remarkable tool and if the history signs or markers could be added, it would be a terrific resource for the history community. You can not only see a site but access detailed information on it. This new website requires some thoughtful thinking and conversations with the history community on how it can best de used and developed. It can be located at https://cris.parks.ny.gov.

This session, which could be repeated throughout the state and at statewide conferences, made me realize a missing ingredient in the public historian training. As the New Historian session at the APHNYS state conference made clear, people become public historians in their communities often with little training or guidance. While there is some information at the APHNYS website (guidelines which need to be updated), municipal historians don’t necessarily know that APHNYS even exists. The challenges of being a municipal historian were the recent subject of Orange County Historian Johanna Yaun’s newsletter and post to New York History Blog

Recommendation – all public historians should receive and be required to receive state-funded training in Albany. Such training should include the NYS Archives, NYS Library, NYS Museum, NYSOPRHP and the NYS Historian. The program should include touring the facilities, meeting the staff, learning the resources available and the related rules, regulations, and requirements. This one-week training program will improve the professionalization of the municipal historian across the state, enhance the status of the position to the local mayors, town supervisors, and country executives, and help counter the isolation of the municipal historian. To establish the program actually is the simple part as each of the state entities in Albany could easily formulate such a program if asked. The challenge would be in funding. That would require a concerted effort by the history community to advocate for it, an activity which is conspicuously absent at present. At some point it would be beneficial to develop an agenda of what the history community wants from the state and then advocate for it.

Sullivan County History Conference

This was an excellent meeting organized by John Conway, Sullivan County historian. It was held at the Sullivan County Community College with the real credit belonging to Debra Conway as her husband repeatedly mentioned. Congratulations on a job well done. The program was funded by the Delaware Council and was free including lunch.

The stated intention is for this to be an annual event and it is an example of what every county should do. The attendance was over 70 people for this day-long event despite the snow flurries in the county and the near freezing weather. As I said in my keynote, when I left home in Westchester it was fall. When I arrived in Sullivan County it was winter.

This particular conference focused not on the history of Sullivan County but on the state of history. It included a video welcome from Congressional Representative Chris Gibson with whom I also shared the program when the Delaware Council was launched. Other speakers included fulltime county historians Johanna Yaun and Will Tatum III from Orange and Dutchess Counties. County history conferences were held there in 2011 before their time and I hope they will have one-day programs of their own soon. Johanna held a mini-conference in the summer which John and I attended and which partially served as a catalyst for this one.

The conference drew from a multitude of areas. Linda Oehler-Marx, a former teacher, spoke on the issue of finding a place for local history in the new social studies framework. This is a vital issue and there needs to be more discussion between the history community and the teachers on how to incorporate local and state history into the classroom even without field trips.

Social media was addressed in general terms by Johanna in her presentation and by Matt Colon, Director of the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands. I commented on when I first got involved in local history, the State Archive Records Administration (SARA) grants were to microfilm records. Times and technology have changed. Here is an area where county-level workshops on how to take advantage of new technologies really would be useful.

The conference ended with a presentation by Kristina Heister, the Superintendent of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River, NPS. Much of her talk was on the NPS which will be celebrating its centennial next year. She also mentioned Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, a study commissioned by the NPS. Marla Miller, one of the co-authors, spoke at a pre-conference workshop to the NYSHA conference at Marist in 2014. I spoke with her afterwards and then downloaded the 120-page report. I have read it but not yet written about it. Some of the recommendations are appropriate not only for the NPS sites in New York but for NYSOPHP as well. According to Kristina in terms of implementation the study is still a work-in-progress. I guess I have put off writing about it for long enough.

Of course, no history conference would be complete with noting the comments made about the Path through History. Although there were some perfunctory remarks made about its continued existence, the comments to the audience that it was an “ill-fated debacle” with no history community participation that fizzled out got right to heart of problem. One suggestion was a massive statewide letter-writing campaign addressed to the governor so perhaps he wouldn’t remain clueless.

History conferences are a lot of fun and I recommend more of them at the county and regional level. It also would be nice to have a master calendar for such county, regional, and state conferences. Maybe the new state historian once one is hired could take the lead here.

NY State History Month: Another View

November 19, 2015
by Peter Feinman

November is New York State History Month. The goal of this initiative certainly is a worthy one. Naturally as historians, a primary source document such as a press release invites a close reading of the text. That’s what historians do and government publications are not exempt from such scrutiny. The exercise is quite productive and one can learn a lot from doing it.
Continue reading “NY State History Month: Another View” →

The Area Code Universe and Your Sense of Place

November 4, 2015
by Peter Feinman

We are a species of belonging, of being part of place, of having a sense of identity based on that place. The place most closely associated with that sense of belonging is home. Be it ever so humble there is no place like it. Click your heels three times and you are there. Can it be that easy?

Many factors contribute to developing this sense of place One of them as it turns out is one’s area code…or at least it used to be. I was reminded of this fact when according to a press release in July, the New York State Public Service Commission approved the addition of a new area code. It would overlay the 315 area code region which includes all or parts of Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence and 12 other New York counties. The new area code would apply to new telephone numbers and no existing numbers would change.

This was not the first change which had occurred in the region. Like the ancient Tryon County, the region has needed to be divided into ever smaller units to accommodate not so much the increase in population, but the increased use of phone numbers due to the technological changes which have occurred. Of course, the original 315-people will always know who they are and the other area-code-people are newcomers.

This issue of area code identify first arose back in 1984 in New York City. Once upon a time 212 encompassed the entire city of all five boroughs. Then one’s sense of belonging to the city was shattered with the introduction of a new code, 718, for Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. As reported in the New York Times (February 15, 1984), following the public announcement, all hell broke loose.

City “officials argued the change would divide the city, hurt the development of business, cause confusion and stigmatize Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.”

“Our one city should not have two area codes,” Borough President Donald R. Manes of Queens said.

”The hardship and inconvenience for Brooklyn business people and residents could and should have been avoided,” Borough President Howard Golden of Brooklyn said.

Now one would have to dial “1″ before dialing the area code and the 7-digit number (which itself hadn’t always been numeric).

Legal action was threatened. City Council President Carol Bellamy said it was ”unfair to penalize people for the needs of machines” meaning fax machines then and not computers or cell phones. State Attorney General Robert Abrams called the action ”bad public policy.” Mayor Koch optimistically predicted that the city would survive having two area codes.

The city did survive but the changes kept coming. The Bronx became part of 718 as well and then 917 was introduced for cell phones and pagers. Eventually there came a time when even within Manhattan there was a need for a new area code. Yes, Manhattan itself would be sundered. Say it isn’t so! Is nothing sacred?!

The discussion heated up in 1997 with the State Public Service Commission suggesting the creation of 646 for use in Manhattan. The reaction was apocalyptic. “(H)ow will 212-ers feel if they are to unceremoniously dumped and lose what they consider to be the center of the area code universe? And how will 646-ers feel, branded so clearly as newcomers?” Did you even know that there was an “area code universe”? Would you want to be banished to the boonies of the area code universe?

The phone company was aware of these grievances. ‘There very often are sensitivities,” said Dennis Wax of Nynex. Remember Nynex? But as with Koch before him, Wax optimistically predicted ”People adapt quickly. By now, 718 people are identified as New Yorkers as well as 212 people.” Tell that to Melanie Griffith as a Staten Island working girl or to John Travolta as a Brooklyn Saturday night dancer. 718-people know they legally live in New York City but everyone knows 212-people are the center of the universe. Now even that sense of identity for Manhattanites was threatened too. Where would it end?

The headline the next day exposed the truth:

Manhattan Is Awash In Area Code Angst

That’s right. Area code angst had disrupted the Big Apple. According to the reporter, “But faced with the possibility of losing 212, a legend among area codes, not all Manhattan residents remained calm, particularly since one possibility would be assigning them to 718″ a presumed fate worse than death.

”It’s terrible, it’s a putdown,” said a publicist who lives on the Upper East Side and liked her phone number as is. ”When people meet someone in a bar and they ask what’s your number and they say ‘718,’ they’ll say, ‘Oh I don’t want to go out with her.’ I’m from Chicago, I didn’t move here to become a 718.”

The 212 area code was deemed inextricably linked to the city’s sophisticated image.

‘‘Manhattan is the hub of the universe,” said another resident of the Upper East Side. ”I feel we should have our own area code. It should be 111, because we are the hub.”

A small business owner, said that, professionally speaking, 212 is much more desirable than 718. ”You work hard to have an operation in Manhattan; you don’t want to look like you’re in Brooklyn. ‘If I say 718, people will think Brooklyn.” Evidently the idea that Brooklyn one day would be desirable had not occurred to him.

A graduate student at New York University who used to live in Los Angeles, brought a California perspective to understanding one’s place in the area code universe. He informed New Yorkers that in Los Angeles young people depended on area codes to size each other up – there were five for the metropolitan region. ”There are 213 women, there are 310 woman,” he said. ”A 310 is yuppie, young, living near the beach. A 213 is more of an urban hipster. The beach crowd frowned on the 213 crowd.” He said he was happy to escape such area code and demographic diversity and move to Manhattan, where he saw the 212 area code as a ”badge of honor.” ”It immediately marks you,” he said. ”Big city, glamour, tuxedos, excitement.”

Besides the putdowns of those confined to the 718 area code and the fear of being switched from 212 to that inferior number, there were some historic perspectives. Some people “grew nostalgic about the days when Manhattanites were assigned phone numbers that began with words: PEnnsylvania 6-5000. The prefixes corresponded to different regions of the city — Columbus was the prefix for the area near Columbus Circle, and Butterfield was assigned to the Upper East Side.”

Back then, you really knew someone’s place from their phone number. ”You knew what neighborhood a person lived in as soon as you heard their number,” said the co-owner of a New York book store. ”There was something nice about that.” She said she would not be devastated by an area code change, but she had what she considered a tidier solution: assigning a new area code to fax machines, which would free up thousands of phone numbers. ”It would make a lot more sense,” she said. ”Everything in New York changes, so we can live with this. But changing the fax machines would be much easier, in my opinion.” Of course, that didn’t happen.

A regular reader of my posts informed me that area code 646 was a basis for a Seinfeld episode. According to Wikipedia, “”The Long-Distance Relationship” was the working title for the 175th episode which aired on April 30, 1998, during the ninth and final season.

In it Kramer signs up to receive restaurant menus by fax but uses Elaine’s phone number, mistakenly thinking she had a fax machine. Annoyed by the non-stop calls from the fax service, she receives, Elaine changes her phone number and gets one with the 646 area code. She is not happy with the new number. When attempting to give her number to an initially-eager man, he hesitates when he sees the 646 area code and asks if it is in New Jersey. Her response is, “No, it’s just like 212 except they multiplied every number by 3… and added 1 to the middle number.” He makes an excuse and walks off. When her neighbor Mrs. Krantz dies, Elaine manages to get her old 212 number. Mrs. Krantz’s grandson Bobby keeps calling Elaine’s apartment, ignorant of the fact that his grandmother is dead. Elaine tries to convince Bobby that his grandmother has died by pretending to die herself; this backfires when Bobby dials 911 and firefighters beat down Elaine’s door.

Most likely, fiction is stranger than truth and certainly funnier, but the episode did speak a truth.

Even now in 2015, the legacy of the 212 area code continues in the real world as the March 25th headline “As City Gains Area Codes, Still Coveting the Original’ shows. A couple moving from Boston to New York dreaded receiving a second-rate area code saying of 212: “It’s a status symbol most definitely.” A market for 212 numbers now exists with prices ranging from $75 to over $1,000. People lust to get a 212 number for their cell phone. How much more alpha can one get!

The trauma of losing a precious area code number is not something to be taken lightly. It is no trivial matter. It goes to one’s sense of place. Just as I knew I was from New Rochelle and not Scarsdale because my phone number growing up began with NE and not SC, so area codes later became part of our identity. Now as the 315 people begin to be divided into two classes of people, at least we can take solace from one incontrovertible fact about the 315 area code – it really is upstate, isn’t it? You wouldn’t want to mix up upstate people with downstate people would you?

New York State Heritage Areas: Real or Not?

October 8, 2015
by Peter Feinman

New York State has heritage areas – 19, scattered around the state.

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (NYSOPRHP) defines these areas on its website: Continue reading “New York State Heritage Areas: Real or Not?” →

Public History