Three Things Thursday: Classes, Maps, and Baskets

It is cold and it is mid-semester, but baseball, Formula 1, and summer field work planning reminds us that there is something on the horizon other than marking papers and the brutal winter wind. Unfortunately, the midterm brings with it meetings, thesis defenses, and deadline. So. Many. Deadlines. 

As a result, I can only offer you a modest trio of fragmentary ideas.

Thing the First

Did I mention is was cold? Last night my introductory level history class staggered in from the cold looking more than a little wind battered. Their body language was a combination of defiant and exhausted as the midterm grind had tried its best to wear them down, but perhaps had failed.

One of my goals as a teacher is to be more humane and to read the room better. Part of that involves doing what I can to mitigate the relentless character of the 16-week semester and give the students more room to breathe and recover. Last night, I sent my students home (or to wherever the needed or wanted to go) after about an hour of class. It’s week 7, they’ve been doing a solid job all semester, and while there was always a chance of a breakthrough on a frigid Wednesday night, it seemed unlikely.

Thing the Second

This is a map of Grand Forks made by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1990s. This map, in particular, shows the western half of the Lincoln Park neighborhood that the 1997 flood destroyed. The snaking feature that runs along the northern side of the neighborhood is the pre-1997 flood wall which traces the course of the 1950s flood wall and likely saw reinforcement after the 1979 flood.

My guess is that this map is the best pre-flood map not only of Lincoln Park but of the city in general. We’re currently working with the Department of Special Collections at the Chester Fritz Library to digitize the map, which only exists as far as I can tell, on mylar sheets, and then make it available to a wider audience.

Thing the Third

Over the last week or so, I’ve been slowly making my way through some “online first” papers from a special issue of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the theme of “Theorizing Capitalism’s Cracks.”

I was particularly enamored by this story offered by an Anishinaabe elder of the Hannahville Indian Community during a basketweaving session:

“A basket is a living thing, like a human. When the basket is first made, the strips of wood are light in color and smooth and shiny like a baby’s skin. As the basket ages, however, it becomes darker in color, its strips become dull and rough, and it loses its original shape, like an old person. How can you sell a living thing?”

It appeared in an article by Eric Drake titled “Envisioning Logging Camps as Sites of Social Antagonism in Capitalism: An Anishinaabe Example from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” It’s a nice article that goes well beyond this thought-provoking anecdote and explores how Native American communities found ways to resist capitalism even when embedded in the deeply capitalist space of the logging camp.