Maxine’s Tap Room Gutted By Fire!

Early Tuesday Maxine’s Tap Room–my favorite Fayetteville dive which I have written about on this blog before–was gutted by a fire.

The good news is that its structurally fine….the bad news is that its interior is what made Maxinie’s Maxines’…see my Flikr posts to see what I mean.

The fire apparently started in a trash can beneath the bar & firefighters had to cut into the roof as Maxine had fitted the front and back doors of her establishment with formidable iron gates….

Alas…Maxine dies, then the beloved Tap Room itself is torched….

This MUST be my queue to leave Fayetteville…I move to Magnolia, Arkansas this Sunday.

For more see this article on the NWAnews:
http://www.nwarktimes.com/adg/News/161592/

The SAU Research Station Has a Postcard!!!

Much to my surprise, I have come across a 1963 postcard of the Bruce Center–the former Student Union on the Southern Arkansas University campus (then it was Southern State College). The back of this image reads:

College Center

Southern State College

Magnolia, Arkansas

Completed in the fall of 1963. Glassed-in lower

level contains dining facilities; upper level – lounge,

game room, snack bar, bookstore and Post Office.

The new location of the SAU Research Station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey is the entire “lower level” of this building…the “glassed-in” area is the future home of the SAU Museum (we’re currently planning…I’ll post more on this later).

How many non-park archaeological facilities have their own postcards, eh?

At any rate…I’m almost packed & the “big move” to Magnolia is this weekend!!!!!!

The Morturary Behavior of a Paramount Chief, or, The Ashes of James B. Griffin

My good friend and old colleague Gregory Vogel sent me an interesting e-mail this afternoon. Greg is currently doing a post-doc at the Center for American Archeology in Kampsville, Illinois. At any rate, he tells us that a recent organizational meeting ended with a surprising mortuary ritual.

James B. Griffin (pictured above during his 1930s work in the Lower Mississippi Valley) was one of the most influential archaeologists of the United States during the 20th century. He had a five-decade-long tenure in the University of Michigan Department of Anthropology, and acted as the director of the Museum of Anthropology. He had over 260 publications including such landmark works as Archeology of Eastern United States (AKA “the Green Bible”), and Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947 (AKA “P, F & G” as it was, of course, co-authored Phillip Phillips and James Ford).

Griffin died in 1997 and Greg now tells me that he was cremated, and it was his wish that the ashes be split, with half of them scattered in the Illinois River Valley (Greg didn’t know what happened to the other half of the secondary burial). Jane Buikstra, the Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and a bioarchaeologist certainly accustomed to dealing with chiefly burials, ended up with the Illinois Valley portion of “Jimmy.” Before now, Vogel tells us, she hadn’t found an appropriate occasion to broadcast the remains.

Below is a snippet from Greg’s e-mail:

Many of the people attending this meeting knew Griffin, so they went out in a pontoon boat (see attached picture), motored a few miles above Kampsville until they were opposite the Kamp Mound Group, and decanted the remains into the river from a reconstructed Elizabeth Mounds Site bowl. In attendance on the boat were Jane Buikstra, Jim Brown, David Ash, Nancy Ash Sidell, Gail Anderson, John Doershuk, Bonnie Styles, Rochelle Lurie, Sarah Neusius, and Mike Wiant. A touching final ceremony for Jimmy Griffin.

One last humorous note: Along with the bag of cremains was a note, apparently from Griffin’s son, that read “No chemical tests.”

The Curiously Middle-Eastern Architecture of Memphis…

I came across this great shot by Gary Bridgman on Memphisto’s Bluff–a Flickr group I belong to. Memphisto’s Bluff is meant to show “non-tourist” pictures of “M-Town.”

Capturing the St. Jude’s golden dome and The Pyramid in one shot is brilliant!

Gary writes:

“The Levant at the top of the Delta? St. Jude Children’s Hospital/ALSAC’s golden dome and The Pyramid, both along I-40 in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Pale comparisons to the originals? Hell, just try and get a decent pork BBQ plate in Jerusalem or Cairo. BBQ goat, sure, but you’ll still be hard-pressed to find a 6-pack of Busch skull-busters (16-oz cans) to go with it. I’m pretty sure the guy driving the truck was Mossad. NowhatI’msayin? Jackie’s Ice Cream in Jerusalem….now that’s a different story altogether…”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bridgman/174307365/in/pool-memphistos_bluff/

The End of An Era…

Below you see 9 years of my life on a table–the Van Winkle’s Mill Archeological Project collection. I started this project in October of 1997 with Jerry Hilliard & James Davidson, and I “finished” it (barring new plans by Arkansas State Parks) with Alicia Valentino in October of 2005.

Today I prepared all 81 boxes of it for final curation and hauled into the curation facility at the Coordinating Office of the Arkansas Archeological Survey in Fayetteville.

That’s alright…I’ve been ready for some new research projects for a long time now… Goodbye Northwest Arkansas, southwestern Arkansas here I come!

Packing, Websites, etc….

Well…I’m currently back in Northwest Arkansas–packing books, tying up loose ends on my NWA projects (i.e., getting Van Winkle’s Mill into the curation facility) and assorted other things related to the Magnolia move.

Another thing I’ve been working on are a set of web pages for the SAU Research Station–currently only the SAU and UAM station do not have some sort of web presence…well, I’ll fix that!

You can check out the design as it progresses….eventually it will live on the AAS station pages or on the SAU server, but for now the pages are a part of our collaborative Project Past site…check them out & send any design/content comments you have to me.

http://www.projectpast.org/sau/

More Statues… Denmark Vesey: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?

Check out this article that appeared yesterday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution…

Here’s a snippet….

“There’s no likeness of him, no record of a word he wrote or said directly, no marked grave. The slave rebellion he allegedly plotted —which would’ve been the largest in U.S. history — was scotched before it happened. Some historians believe there was no plot — that the insurrection said to have called for the murder of every white in Charleston was concocted by white leaders for political advantage. What isn’t disputed: Denmark Vesey, a freed slave, was hanged in 1822 with 34 co-conspirators. “

“So it’s hardly surprising that an attempt to erect a public monument to Vesey in Charleston has become one of the more enigmatic memorial ventures in the monument-happy South.”

For the rest of the article…see George Mason University’s History News Network:
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/28013.html

Slavery & Historical Memory: Penny Lane is in my Ears and in My Eyes; and the Eyes of Texas are Upon You…

Yesterday, the AP posted a brief article that touches upon some sticky issues when it comes to history, race, representation, popular culture and cultural memory.

Associated Press
Liverpool–Penny Lane will keep its name. City officials said Saturday they would modify a proposal to rename streets linked to the slave trade when they realized the road made famous by the 1967 Beatles song was one of them.

The unassuming suburban avenue was named for James Penny, an 18th-century slave ship owner. Liverpool, the Beatles’ northern English hometown, was once a major hub for the slave trade.

“I don’t think anyone would seriously consider renaming Penny Lane,” said city council member Barbara Mace, who has been pressing to get rid of names linked to slavery.

The council plans to talk Wednesday about a plan to rename several Liverpool streets named for slave traders. Some want to honour Anthony Walker, a black teenager murdered in a July 2005 racial attack. Others suggest renaming streets for abolitionists.

How should nations like the UK (& the US) address their history as nations founded on the enslavement and trade of other, racialized human beings? Do we further suppresss our involvementt in the slave trade by “erasing” the fact that we once venerated these traders with street names? On the other hand, should we now honor abolitionist and victims of racial violence in order to show that our positions have changed? And finally, what significance can we give more recent popular culture (i.e., the Beatles song) when it is more recent and more prominent in our cultural memories.

A personal parallel comes to mind. While I was at the University of Texas they were busy attempting to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a statue–the first such statue on any campus in the US. But where to put our MLK statue?

On the prominent South Mall of the UT campus there stands what is commonly known as the “six pack”–a set of six statues that includes four statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians: Jefferson Davis, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and John H. Reagan.

In 2001, UT’s Graduate Student Assembly formed an ad hoc committee on the South Mall statues. The committee found that many students may find the statues objectionable because of the connection between the Confederacy and the institution of slavery, while many other students may view the statues as symbols of individualism, bravery and state pride, and do not perceive the statues as promoting slavery.

The Graduate Student Assembly recommended that the University’s Office of the President take the following actions:

1. Add new plaques next to each of the South Mall statues, to include historical and biographical information regarding the individuals;

2. Create a new University Commission, consisting of faculty, students and community leaders, to study the presence of Confederate statues and symbols on University property;

3. Construct a statue of Barbara Jordan at a prominent location along the pedestrian-friendly portion of Speedway.

Meanwhile, the MLK statue, which was conceived and financed entirely by the University of Texas at Austin student body, was looking for a home…at the time I recall that some outspoken six-pack critics suggested that we place MLK in the center of the South Mall (symbolically confronting the ex-Confederates), or–even more radically–some suggested that we melt down Robert E. Lee and cast MLK out of his remains (I kinda liked the symbolism behind that one).

In the end, MLK ended up on the East Mall (near Anthropology, facing the LBJ Presidential Library) and not confronting the figures of the South Mall. Further, to my knowledge, no explanatory signs have gone up on the South Mall.

More importantly…I feel that the purpose of the MLK statue was to show that the University of Texas was a progressive institution that valued Dr. King’s vision of a diverse society (not unlike Liverpool’s intent to show that it does not value slave traders)…but Texas’ attempt at a progressive image was undermined in January of 2003, when students defaced the MLK statue by pelting it with raw eggs…and again in August of 2004 when vandals painted MLK with silver paint. Finally a guard had to be placed at the statue in order to protect against vandalism…what does this say about the University of Texas’ REAL position toward Dr. King’s beliefs? What will it say when Liverpool street signs with the name “Anthony Walker” on them go missing? Only time will tell us what Liverpool is made of…

The original AP article can be found here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060710.wxnote10-4/BNStory/Entertainment/home

Virtual Dellinger…

You may recall that in an April post I reported that the Old State House Museum opened an exhibit entitled “Sam Dellinger: Raiders of the Lost Arkansas.” Dellinger, for those of you who do not know, was the “father” of the University of Arkansas Museum and responsible (with both good and bad connotations to the word) for the collections of hundreds of pre-Columbian Native American ceramic vessels…

The exhibit has received some good reviews and it will host a visit from the Southeastern Archeological Conference this fall when we hold the annual SEAC meeting in Little Rock…I’ll report more on critical reaction then.

At any rate, there is now an on-line “virtual exhibit” companion to the Dellinger exhibit for those who can’t make it to the great state of Arkansas…

Check it out at:

http://www.oldstatehouse.com/samdellinger/

From The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

For summer reading I’m hitting a tour of “American Culture” (inspired, I guess, by my friend and mentor John Hartigan’s recent work)…I’m currently reading Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)…this is Miller’s reassessment of American culture after 10 years as an expatriate in Paris…Upon his returned to the US (ushered by WWII & his father’s impending death), Miller embarks on a post-Tocqueville/pre-Kerouac journey across the country in 1939…In fact, reading this book beside Tocqueville’s Democracy in America results in some strange observations…

At any rate, here’s a section of Nightmare that caught my eye…

We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudices and hatred. This is the melting-pot, the seat of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually was are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quaks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all our striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and homeless; there is no room in this great, empty land for those who, like our forefathers before us, now seek a place of refuge. Millions of men and women are, or were until very recently, on relief, condemned like guinea pigs to a life of forced idleness. The world meanwhile looks to us with a desperation such as it has never known before. Where is the democratic spirit? Where are the leaders?