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Cliopatria's History Blogroll Part I / Part II.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Jack Temple Kirby

I’m shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jack Kirby,the distinguished southern and environmental historian, and, I’m proud to say, a close friend for a long time.

(From the St. Augustine Record on 8/9/2009)

Jack Temple Kirby, 70, died Aug. 6, 2009, at Flagler Hospital. He was born in Portsmouth, Va., the son of Clifford Kirby and Theodosia Palmer Kirby.
He graduated from Old Dominion University and received his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Virginia. He was W.E. Smith professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where his specialties were the American South, rural and agricultural history, and environmental history. He was author or editor of seven books, including "Media-Made Dixie"; "Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960"; "Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society"; and "Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South," which won the Bancroft Prize in 2007. At his death, he was president of the Southern Historical Association. For some years he was editor of the series Studies in Rural Cultures at the University of North Carolina Press. He was a past president of the Agricultural History Society and a former Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Genoa in Italy. He also served on a number of editorial boards. He moved to St. Augustine in 2003.
He is survived by a son, Matthew Kirby, of New York City; a daughter, Valerie Kirby, and her husband, Mark Bruhn; and two granddaughters, Ella and Sophie Bruhn, all of Fort Wayne, Ind.; two sisters, Susan Kirby, of Portsmouth, and Betsy Andrews of Midlothian, Va,; and by his companion of 17 years, Constance Pierce.
Following cremation, his remains will be interred in the family plot at West Point, Va. A memorial donation may be made to the Virginia Historical Society, P.O. Box 7311, Richmond, Va. 23221 or the Miami University Library, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056.

Posted on Monday, August 10, 2009 at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, July 24, 2009

Why Not Kick Us Again? You Might Have Missed A Tooth OrTwo! *

One of the numerous nasty side effects of a fiscal crisis is that it affords those in authority a prime opportunity to pursue their own personal and political agendas and vendettas. Higher education has not been particularly popular in Georgia for a long time among a certain coterie of legislators who represent districts where even the Episcopalians handle snakes and some folks think the Bible and the Sears Catalogue constitute a mighty fine library.

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 28, 2009

My Heroes Haven't Always Been Cowboys

Most historians I know are pretty slow to bestow their unreserved admiration on anybody, although in my case I’m pretty sure this simply goes back to the trauma I experienced as a child upon discovering that Roy Rogers was really Leonard Slye from Duck Town, Ohio. In any case, even if it was strictly SRO in my Pantheon of Heroes, there’d always be a place for John Hope Franklin.

Posted on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 11:25 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, October 31, 2008

Should John MCain Have Allowed Sarah Palin to Be Curtis Lemay?

All of the commentators who have suggested with reasonably straight faces in recent days that the McCain campaign may have erred in refusing to let “Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin,” might want to take a gander at what happened forty years ago when Alabama governor and American Independent party presidential candidate George C. Wallace held a press conference to introduce General Curtis LeMay as his running mate.

Posted on Friday, October 31, 2008 at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 17, 2008

The Day of the Egghead May Be at Hand--No Yolk!

"When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of history haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension, and materialism at home, and ruthless, inscrutable, and hostile power abroad….the bloodiest, most turbulent age of the Christian era… is far from over. Sacrifice, patience, understanding, and implacable purpose may be our lot for years to come. … Let’s talk sense to the American people! Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions."

If you’re wondering when Barack Obama said this, then you’ve just been PUNK’D!

Posted on Friday, October 17, 2008 at 2:58 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? DOES HE “PAL AROUND” WITH THESPIANS? HAS HE EVER PRACTICED CELIBACY? AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW!

During the 1950 Democratic Senatorial Primary in Florida, challenger George Smathers went way beyond shamelessness in insinuating that incumbent Claude Pepper‘s relatively liberal racial and political views marked him as “the Red Pepper,” a seditious radical who might well be cashing checks cut in the Kremlin. Disgusted with this daily charade, a bored reporter covering the campaign apparently concocted a caricatured version of Smathers’s standard stump speech:
"Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper before his marriage habitually practiced celibacy."
I thought of this oft-told story when I read that, having failed utterly to come up with anything of substantive positive appeal to voters, the McCain campaign is predictably returning to its old strategy of trying to make Barack Obama out as a sinister America-hating radical.

Posted on Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 11:00 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

A Little Palin Droning

With Sarah Palin’s likeness currently sharing the tabloid covers with the latest exclusive pics of Hitler duck hunting in Arkansas, I can hardly believe that just a couple of days ago I was reading that Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate has convinced the Religious Right to finally hop aboard the Johnny Mac Express. “That,” I remember thinking at the time, “depends on who the religious right really is.”

Posted on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 3:40 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

"By Durn Boys, Looks Like We Might 'a Won After All!"

(crossposted at http://cobbloviate.com)

Just when I thought I was making a little headway in convincing white folks down this way that we lost the war and it’s time to move on, here comes a Newsweek piece by Michael Hirsh that’s likely to undo all my good work:

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee led an ill-advised incursion into Pennsylvania. His army was defeated at Gettysburg, and thence afterward Lee beat a fighting retreat until the South lost the Civil War. One hundred and forty-five years later, the South--or what has become the South-Southwest--has won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores--in Pennsylvania and everywhere else. Allright! Up to now, I’d been totally stumped as to how Barack Obama got 43 percent of the white vote in the Georgia primary—with John Edwards still in the race—but only 37 percent in Pennsylvania. Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if this could be traced to back to Gettysburg and a mighty clever plan—for southerners, at least—whereby the Rebs would push into Pa. and pretend to be defeated while trained infiltrators would slip quietly from the retreating ranks and begin the subtle program of brainwashing that, a century and a half later, culminated in one in six white Democratic voters in the state’s 2008 primary saying “race matters” to them when they pick a candidate.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, March 5, 2007

YOU TELL 'EM, "JL," I'M SO MAD I CAN'T

Crossposted at http//cobbloviate.com. Here's a little evidence that suggests we should be a tad less eager to stereotype working class white southerners as out of touch with the realities of their polical interests. JC

“JL” (no periods) Strickland, hails from down in “the Valley,” an area on The Alabama –Georgia line once known for its heavy concentration of textile mills. JL describes himself as an:
“Unemployed geezer, frustrated writer, forced into early retirement when the cotton mill where I worked closed and went to China. “

Posted on Monday, March 5, 2007 at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

If It Quacks Like Apartheid, It Probably Isn't A Duck

I’m not sure how I feel about Jimmy Carter’s new book, "Peace not Apartheid," which seems a little over the top to me in some respects, although I do know that efforts to brand him an anti-Semite are some sort of absurd amalgam of historic hyper-sensitivity to any criticism of Israel and political correctness run totally amok. Carter has caught a lot of flak for characterizing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as "apartheid." I don’t know whether this usage is the most accurate description possible, but I do know that Carter is by no means the only person to employ it.

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 2:06 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

A New Duckhunter's Guide for Democrats

Thomas Schaller makes some mighty good points and provides some interesting info in questioning the Democrats' need for a "southern strategy." He asks whether it is finally time for them to quit wasting their time, with apologies to old Barry G., "hunting where the ducks aren't" and concentrate on expanding their bi-coastal base inland by turning the already "purple" Midwest totally "blue."

Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 3:09 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Monday, September 25, 2006

WHAT YOU CAN'T OVERCOME, YOU JUST GO AROUND

Sunday's New York Times Magazine "The Ballad of Big Mike" offered a fascinating account of efforts to help a deeply disadvantaged young athlete, Michael Oher of Memphis, to get into college and thereby pursue a lucrative career in the NFL. Although in this rather dispassionately told tale, those who do so much to help Michael don't come across as terribly conflicted, the story strikes me as a classic example of how even a genuine impulse to do something good can sometimes lead us to do something that's not quite right. Here's an excerpt:

Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 at 8:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, September 11, 2006

WHAT ABOUT FREEDOM FROM THE POLITICS OF FEAR?

(The following is cross-posted at http//:cobbloviate.com)

The fifth anniversary of 9/11 is clearly tailor-made for "W"'s shameless fearmongering. Yesterday's visit to Ground Zero reminded him that “there’s still an enemy out there that would like to inflict the same kind of damage again.” With the Bush people running around telling folks that we should support them because we are no freer from fear than we were five years ago, it seems appropriate to dust off this piece that appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sept. 12, 2001:

Posted on Monday, September 11, 2006 at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, June 22, 2006

DON'T "LOOK AWAY" JUST YET: A "SOUTHERN STRATEGY'"FOR THE DEMOCRATS

I’m afraid I have to add a modest qualifier to Ralph Luker’s contention (below) “that no Democrat has ever been elected president of the United States without being competitive in the South, i.e., without carrying at least five Southern states.” Bill Clinton, might have said, “It all depends on what your definition of ‘southern’ is,” I suppose. If you count Kentucky, ol’Bubba himself sure enough carried five southern states in both ’92 and ’96 but I think it is important to note that he didn’t need any of them to win. In fact, between 1968 (when Nixon actually needed only one southern state) and 2000, the only winner who really required southern votes to be elected was Jimmy Carter.

Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 9:38 AM | Comments (5) | Top

Monday, May 1, 2006

PARTISAN HISTORY: A FRESHMAN'S PERSPECTIVE

After 34 years of college teaching, I thought I had heard just about every imaginable student complaint. Last week, however, a freshman in my 300-seat US History Since 1865 course came in to discuss her exam with one of the graders and proceeded to work herself into a semi-hissy over the fact that we had spent four class periods(one of them consisting of a visit from Taylor Branch) discussing the civil rights movement.

Posted on Monday, May 1, 2006 at 11:06 AM | Comments (8) | Top

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