On: Grace Karskens, "Public History and Academic History: the common ground".

My Defense of Local Historians

The impression I am left with, on reading Grace Karskens’ views in her "Public History and Academic History: the common ground", (in Public History Review, 1, 1992, p14-25) is that local historians are simply (read: simple) locals, with an interest in the past, who write only for their little corner club; and, that it is only the Professional Public Historian (PPH) that has got it all together, in terms of BOTH scholarly ability and relationship to the community. I think otherwise!

Grace Karskens makes the following determination (p19) ... if time and money is short for producing a commi$$ioned hi$tory (my emphasis), resulting in the “[inability to use] primary sources already located … then "public historians often have to fall back on more readily accessible, but often crude, secondary sources -- like local histories -- and make of them what they can." She also perceives PPHs as being "conduits" between academia and "the wider community outside" (p21).

But, she also says (p21), "the new public historians [have to] deal with non-historians, including ..... people from amateur groups... [such as] historical societies.." She relates "horror stories" about PPHs having contact with, it appears, these tribal manifestations of unclad history-tragics armed only with an elementary arsenal of research weaponry and skilled only in bush-craft (my words).

It seems to be getting down to these things:
1) That Karskens excuses entirely any prospect of a local historian (who is, in fact, a "non-historian" in Karskens’ words) being able to produce a history with any value, that has any currency in the 'history marketplace'.

2) To me, it seems most likely that the local historians are the ones who contribute most significantly to ferreting out and securing primary sources for further research by themselves and others, along with secondary sources, and also produce a bibliography accordingly. This bibliography, of course, becomes a substantial menu for the PPH.

3) It doesn't get any better for Karskens when one comes to realise that it is probably the local historian who HAS researched those very same primary sources to produce their vulgar views, something the PPH may not have time to do in their rush to meet deadlines and remain commercially viable and in the public eye.

4) There is a double standard, entirely, in reducing local histories to a crudity and then rehashing their content with some scholarly spit and professional polish to make them acceptable and meaningful. It is OK for PPHs to harvest local histories for fodder, but “to make of them what they can”, and employ them as the basis of their magically acceptable commi$$ioned hi$tories, at the same time denigrating the source is not. One can wonder to what degree the local historian is recognised in such works produced by a professional.

5) There is potential for PPHs to be non-professional: What, after all, is a professional history without researching the primary sources known to be available? And, since when is it valid for secondary sources to become the primary source of information for the PPH, who junks primary sources in the process because they don't have the time? I contend with Karskens’ claim (p21) that PPH's work is inherently somehow pure: the work of PPHs can indeed be "inherently inferior" to what it could be if PPHs produce half-baked histories based on (allegedly) crude secondary sources at the expense of available primary sources.

6) PPHs invariably are visitors to an area, they come and they go. They do not necessarily have the respect of the community just because they are a paid professional. And they won't have it if they push an external, official version of the locality's history, especially one lacking the richness offered in using primary sources, and devalue the contribution made by those within the community, along lines of 'professional vs. non-professional'.

7) Finally, are not the local historians the ones most likely to have a "meaningful relationship with the wider community" in which they live, and a relationship that is present and continual? The work of the several local historians at Paterson Historical Society and their relationship within and to the local community, and the Lower Hunter region of NSW, stands as a fine example and a testament to the good standing and effectiveness of the unpaid local historian.

Honeymoon Weather

It is drizzling here today, has been all night, and today is our 27th Anniversary. The weather couldn't be better for it reminds us of who we were and who we have become and so we can delight in each other. My first attempt at poetic prose, written in another time and another place, is below. It speaks about today's weather, and the weather back then, and much, much more...

--- Lord of the Dances ---

A beautiful day started hot, but eased with a tender cool change.
And now a gentle evening breeze weaves its way wistfully
curling about the quiet neighbourhood into our garden, up the path
through our locked gate to break our threshold. There is no knocking.

That unseen elegance, incomprehensible as it is, enveloping as it will,
brushes my moist, outstretched hand busy in its doing. That breath’s
tender caress enlivens arm and wind chime alike, the music
sparkling starlike in the background and
raining life into my journaling world.

Lately,

we’ve been sleeping in the back room, our safe place

butted up under the window, that portal of a unique grace.

Our pillowed heads calm as the night breeze

luffs its random notions of peaceful ease,

lulling into obscurity the day’s tensions and hypnotically

whispering us into sleep’s otherworldly companionship.

And those simple aluminium chimes (I hear them again just now)
answer both the wind’s demand and my desire for a subduing
distraction from the humming drum and clang of daylight hours
(I don’t hear the chimes during the day’s terrors and torments).

Occasionally,

the night rain splashes through the fly screen

onto our faces, perhaps dropping itself into my dream

in some mystical motionless manner (as it has done before),

participating in my sub-conscious meanderings, and later

precipitate weirdly-wild indescribable recollections,

over morning coffee.

Other times,

I have woken and said, “It’s our honeymoon all over again.

You remember, don’t you? How could we ever forget those

drizzling days that tucked us away with nothing else to do?”

I think again of other sheltered moments of sacred communion,

but no day is the same.

Into the many layers of our existence, our experience, our awareness,
arresting intonations appear, modulating the haphazard bones of
disquiet, smoothing ragged wounds, making sense of the absurd.

Sunrise heralds its master, the shafts unmistakably
press my eyes tight until I realise
my refusal leaves me darkened and bound.

In reflection,

morning brilliance bounces off the bird bath

over our heads, splashing the opposite wall

it never seems to touch.

It is not hard, not demanding or formal, just

an entrancing dance of the pond’s hidden shadows

teased out from its shimmering surface

to inspire and to wonder how

such secrets are projected into my life.

No day is the same, nor is any shadow. Intimacy varies with age
and different things touch the previously untouchable. But
the Light remains reliable, unchanging, and the breeze like
the Spirit reminds and awakens my heart to again praise
the Lord for himself and all the dances of his creation.

Is Christianity Broken?

This question has recently been asked over at
Cerulean Sanctum.I have offered my two-bobs' worth over at Dan Edelen's site and will put an abridged and altered version here. My apologies if it seems a bit fragmented.(You may wish to read Dan's original post and the full text of my comment there).

Is Christianity broken? Of course it is, it always has been. Is the Church broke, Of course it is, it always has been. Would some unbeliever reading the Scriptures think the Church, as constituted in the Israelites and the post-resurrection community, is broke? Just look at the lives of Adam, Abraham, David, Peter, the Corinthians community, six of the churches in the Revelation, etc, etc, etc. Sure, of course anyone reading the Word could think the whole thing is a sorry mess.

But, isn't that getting to the whole point of what God is doing? People who ain't broke don't need fixing, they don't need a Redeemer.

Perhaps what all the criticism of those blogs by believers that don't present Christianity in a shining light shows is our capacity for pride and prejudice: self-justification and other-condemnation; it will simply mirror what we see about us in the/our fleshly capacity.

Bloggers in the first century?

What is the heart of the first-century church? Is it not LOVE? It is the same heart of/for this-century church. Does this relate to blogging?

Are we to ask, Should we not be blogging because there is no Biblical example of every man, woman and their Christian dog publishing their thoughts and experiences, good or bad? What are we actually permitted to do in this day and age? And, what constitutes a Biblical example of approved actions and behaviour (that is easy for a literalist to answer)?

It is easy to appreciate that there is no Biblical example of thousands and thousands and thousands of Christians, of the common pew-sitting variety, blogging away; they are putting out into the world community their beliefs, experiences, understanding, hurts, frustrations, anxieties, joys, successes, and pride and prejudices, and their love.

What are the implications of Christianity being broke and the divine command to love, for bloggers?

The very same as they are when they aren't at their PC blogging their socks off, simply to love and be loved. Are we to stop blogging because there is no Biblical example of it, no Biblical equal, or because it has the potential to cause harm, or because someone might take it to some extreme and do nasty things with it? I think not, but where the act of blogging is an expression of God's love and his nature as Redeemer then it will be both crucified in the earthly and praised in the heavenly. We can be sure of that -- just look at the Biblical precedants.

And so, in my mind it is simple: if we read a blog and it " often leaves [us] feeling confused, angry, depressed, and just about every feeling but the one the Lord wants to cultivate most in us, joy", then, don't read it. We are to dwell on the truthful (including truth that reveals things that need fixing), on the good, and loving, and Godly, on the joyful and uplifting (which can include attending to the broken as the Lord wills). We are to let God do what he does best with those things that are broken of which he alone has the business of fixing, including various blogs and bloggers. He may, of course, ask us to be involved in the process of fixing the broken, from time to time, something we are to do by faith through love.

Is Chritianity Broke? Sure it is. How is it fixed? By loving God and by loving our neighbour on a present and continual basis. And I believe we all are broke, you, me and every other believer; and we are now fixed, and in the process of getting fixed and of being presently and continually fixed.

So, for the believer, shouldn't blogging/living mean being pro-truth, pro-God, pro-love? I think so. What we aren't to do is to try and fix everyone else -- that's God's job and he is doing it just fine.

Primitive By Today’s Standards

Our Family Home at Kotara Hts,
on completion, c.1954.

Mum's 1950s laundry was primitive in more ways than one, a multi-purpose facility of no architectural merit and so very basic by today's standards. This little back room with its bare timber floor boasted a copper and exposed, galvanized piping with gun-metal taps hanging untidily over a pair of concrete tubs. The tubs are those you now see with goldfish, or with geraniums hanging over the edge in some where-it-landed-last backyard corner, having been purged from many a house. But even an old laundry can't be washed clean of a history of questionable and unlikely events.

Taking up almost the whole of the remaining floor area, or so it seemed to a little kid, was an (allegedly) state-of-the-art Lightburn washing machine. While the copper and tubs held their infamous place within the household’s culture of feasts and festivities, it was the washing machine that gripped this young lad’s delight.

A monstrous contraption, and leviathan of any era, the Lightburn had an inclined agitator and a vertical spin-drier. Into the agitator I would slide, from where I could spy on a small part of my world through the lid’s porthole. I could also grip the agitating lugs with my feet, press myself against the inside of the bowl, and spin myself silly -- round and round and round -- into a self-induced, childhood trance. It was great fun. Not sure if the cat agreed, though.


Mum's Laundry, c.1960s

If that wasn't enough there was also the spin drier. Although it was considerably smaller, I could stand up to my waist and fling myself wildly about, with a centrifuge effect: arms out; arms in; slower, faster. One day, the last day, I got completely stuck at the hips by the top flange of the bowl. With some difficulty Dad cut me out with tin-snips before the amused audience of siblings and peers. While this rescue left me embarrassed, bare bum and all, the bowl had to forever vicariously bear the scars of my misfortune and subsequent redemption. But, thankfully, I left Mum’s laundry in better condition than the poor, hapless chooks.

The laundry’s copper was where all the family whites where boiled. A portly device, it stood on a small, metal frame and came complete with lid and a timber copper-stick used for stirring the brew. While this proverbial cauldron often witnessed the major production of the calico-wrapped Christmas pudding, happily brooding away, it was the penultimate roasting place for many a chook.

In days long gone home-grown poultry was a culinary delight, to be sure. Mum couldn’t just go pick-up a conveniently processed and frozen, "Size 14" from the supermarket, like nowadays, where each hormonally-enriched ‘chicken’ is hermetically shrink-wrapped and untouched by human hands.

No! Our white pullets were free-range with real live blood in their veins, two clawed feet, one attached head, and each came wrapped in its own feathered flight-suit. Ours could be called ‘living chooks’, a real creature mostly unknown to kids these days. And we had a cage-full of them in our very own bush-built, smelly, backyard chook-house.

Memories do have a warped way of turning up, like now with visions of Dad down the backyard holding a cackling creature over the chopping block. With an elementary bluntness he unceremoniously lopped off its head, and hung the flinching, decapitated carcass on the fence with its legs between the palings. We of course stood back in fear and trepidation; with the phrase "you’re chicken" taking on a whole new meaning. Then it was up into the copper cauldron with the carcasses (yes, they were more of the family's whites), then over into the tubs to pluck the feathers.

Occasionally, before being laundered, one of the seemingly quick-witted yet headless would break free and run willy-nilly around the yard, emitting this hitherto unknown gurgling sound. This was matched only by the clackophonous commotion emanating from death row forlornly looking on from behind the wire.

Now there is absolutely no smell on earth to compare to Mum's laundry at chooking time. Intensified by the steam, the indelicate and foul, fowl odour could penetrate nostrils at a hundred paces. It is that sort of smell that haunts me forty years later. Simply put, it is totally disgusting, and the very reason my mother-in-law can't eat chicken to this day.

I would love to visit Mum’s laundry just once more, if that were possible, and you could join me. Maybe we should go and catch us a chook and ...... . No. Some memories are meant for the past, in their own unique way, living or dead. Besides, that would be an act all too primitive by today’s standards.