Friday, October 29, 2010
In the Archives
I’m not a historian, but for my job I get to visit some of our region’s archives, and want to recommend the experience to anyone eager to know more about history. I’ve looked at manufacturing blueprints and sales records in the Studebaker archive. With the able assistance of staff at the Center for History and at Notre Dame, I’ve helped authors locate pictures of leaders in our area’s civil rights struggles. I’ve looked on in admiration at the beehive of research residents carry out in the local history collection of the St. Joseph County Public Library, nimbly aided by that facility’s supportive staff. And most recently the team at the Archives of Indiana University South Bend opened before me some of the most interesting of more than ninety sturdy boxes of records and photographs that document the creation and growth of the campus.
You never have a clue what you will discover when you raise the lid of an archive box or run a strip of microfilm through the viewer. In one IUSB folder, there was a memo from before the days of email asking who might have left behind that brown coffee cup at a recent campus meeting. In another folder, a photograph of seven IU South Bend professors strolling across campus, each one the winner of a statewide Indiana University teaching excellence award. But, for me, the dazzler was the folder that held a letter from the campus’s chancellor to the president of the United States along with that president’s reply. The two letters have a story to tell.
In the spring of 1970 the news was out. American B-52 bombers had been secretly attacking North Vietnamese military positions in Cambodia, extending the air war into that neutral country. Back home, protests erupted, including one at Kent State University in which four college students were killed by National Guard troops. One day after the Kent State deaths, IUSB’s chancellor, Lester M. Wolfson, sent a message to President Nixon. In three formal sentences of fewer than 85 words, preserved in a carbon copy in the Archives, Wolfson confessed his grief and called for the president to change course in two ways: to stop the bombing of Cambodia and to restrain the political language that inflamed the already fevered American public.
Six weeks later, President Nixon wrote back. His letter, on two pieces of White House stationary, was folded into a small envelope bearing a single six-cent stamp. On the stamp, a large American flag flies in a brisk wind over the Executive Mansion. Richard Nixon signed the typewritten letter in a clear, firm hand. In three substantial paragraphs the president acknowledged the country’s turmoil and grief. He argued in favor of the wider bombing campaign and condemned the most extreme of the protestors back home. “No violence is justifiable,” Nixon wrote.
Reading those words, seeing that signature, suddenly the terrible conflicts and contradictions of that very human time come alive. The chancellor, the educator, the citizen, asking for and modeling civility as he called for the president to change; the president, the man of action, both drawn to and repulsed by violence. These few old sheets of paper, carefully preserved in the campus Archives, overflow with drama and human frailty and striving. And they hint at the past riches and fresh insights that await anyone who walks into an historical archive with a question.
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A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Ken Smith -- In the Archives / More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
Heather Curlee Novak -- More essays by Heather
David James -- More essays by David
Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
Useful to Be Useless -- Is it better to be useful or useless? I can’t decide, and that’s a problem. I have the age-old drive to “do something” with my life. I feel compelled to be practical, to pursue realistic goals, and to turn my skills toward earning money or helping people. Those goals allow me to justify my existence. But I also feel the strong tug of uselessness. I enjoy creating for no purpose and thinking for its own sake. I could be a happy lay-about. But always that other drive to please people, to fill my resume, to prove my worth, to show my team spirit – that residual sociability keeps me from wandering away entirely. By Joe Chaney.
Good Eaters -- Reflections on the topic of food, brought about, no doubt, by this time of harvest and Thanksgiving, led to my reading Thomas Keneally’s recent book, “Three Famines.” In it, he gives a general overview of the physical and mental processes of starvation – pretty horrifying and unimaginable from where we sit – then writes specifically about the three hunger-events. Ireland in the 1840’s, Bengal in the 1940’s and Ethiopia in the 1980’s are the “three famines” of the title. Although seemingly unrelated as to world-area and time period, there is a striking commonality and it’s not the traditional “act-of-God” explanation. “Acts of God:” droughts, floods, etc. often begin the privations, but the human hand exacerbates the problems into a cataclysm. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
The Excellence of the Long Distance Runner -- Consider cross country, the sport of choice for our family’s young athlete. That’s a 5000 meter feat of speed and endurance. At practice each day the teams run even farther, so on Saturdays they’re ready to race each other hard for 20 or 25 minutes. Near the end of the course they speed up because that’s the kind of people they have become, and they don’t stop until they have travelled the length of 54 football fields. By Ken Smith.
Bacon Before Husband -- Do you have a daily list? I don’t mean tasks for work or chores for home, I mean a Happy List. I have a Happy List running through my head most of the time. This list tends to be fickle and definitely changes with my mood. It is rare that something gets crossed off of it but I get immense satisfaction from my list just the same. My list makes friends laugh and strangers think I am...stranger. By Heather Curlee Novak.
“A feminist walks into a fraternal lodge …” -- Today’s story begins like a joke: What happens when a feminist walks into a fraternal lodge? The answer isn’t very funny, and it isn’t really about me -- it’s about who runs for office, and who doesn’t. But, yes, in this scenario I am the feminist cheerfully walking into the fraternal lodge, of the kind gently lampooned in The Flintstones as the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes. By April Lidinsky.
South Bend Spring -- Would I ever think I’d find myself parting from one group of young adults yesterday, and then actually tearing downtown to join another? My knee-jerk reaction would normally be to slip into my hidey-hole on the third floor of Wiekamp Hall on the IU campus, or to run home—only three blocks—to read in solitude and eat Raman noodles. The first group—my first-ever class of college freshman English students—seem bemused at my political positions and ready to describe me as “professor,” but as a hopeless product of another day and time. By David James.
Call Me Bartman -- It’s that time of year when we wait in expectation of another World Series victory by the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, while recalling (or trying to forget) another lost season in the sad history of the Chicago Cubs. Anyway, that’s the way Cubs fans talk about it. I don’t see it that way. In my view, the Cubs are the greatest team in the history of sports, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. By Joe Chaney.
Autumn -- Have you noticed too? Can you feel it? Are you as excited as I am? After the wait of nine months for its rebirth, autumn is back. The real weather for football is here. The heat has abated, there’s a nip in the air, spiders are extruding blankets of webbing, and if you look up into the trees, here and there you see a bit of fall color beginning. Like so many of you, autumn is my favorite season. Time to clean up the detritus of summer – those only semi-successful tomato plants, for example – and to move on to the planting of crocus, bluebells, tulips and daffodils: the dreams of spring. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Casting the Bronze Bust of Dr. Lester Wolfson -- There on the floor was the hand-made barrel-shaped white plaster matrix into which the molten metal would be poured. Near it stood a small furnace with a hole at the top the size of your fist. A stream of yellow flames roared from this hole and had been roaring for a long time. The metal inside was now over 1000 degrees. The sculptor’s wife cautioned us, If anything goes wrong, don’t rush up to help, back away—if it touches you, the bronze will burn right through your body. By Ken Smith.
Complaint Department -- I have struggled to maintain the peace and raise my girls well, but the stress of my days often means by the end of each one I am not the sweetest woman to be around. I often hurl the myriad challenges of my day at my husband as soon as he walks through the door. Sometimes dinner isn't made and the house looks like a toy bomb went off and I feel guilty about it. When I try to explain how the day went down I think it is a lot more like complaining than anything helpful. By Heather Curlee Novak.
Mad Men’s Maddening Style -- Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls. Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper. What the heck is going on? I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times. By April Lidinsky.
Mandala -- I remember that year as the spring when my dad roared down the driveway at our home near Emory University in Atlanta in a new Austin Healey, a roadster, the proper name for a British rag-top sports car. This one was red with all the trimmings and served as waterproof glue for the closest period of bonding between a father and son. I say “waterproof” because the top on that car was a tight fit from the start, and had maybe fifty snaps to secure it around the cockpit; and of course after a couple times getting wet it shrunk, so there it stayed, behind the back seat squab—British for the seat’s backrest—for seven years, molding in peace. When it rained we got wet, so we cultivated raincoats and laughing. I didn’t mind a bit. By David James.
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