Subcommandante Marcos unmasked!

"The constant obsession on the part of the Mexican government to know or to discover the face of subcommandante Marcos takes the place of any commitment to address the structural causes for the faces of poverty which beset over a million families in Mexico."

Loose translation from an editorial by Jaime Martínez Veloz published April 9, 2010 in La Jornada.

World Cultural Preservation

My former professor, Richard Kurin, has been the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture" at the Smithsonian Institution for over 25 years now. An interview with Dr. Kurin posted on the U.S. State Department's propaganda organ America.gov has been making the round among progressive news outlets like Scoop and cultural resources blogs like Saving Antiquities.

I am amazed that Kurin has not only survived but flourished as organizer and recruiter of international acts for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as many of the Silk Road Project events and exhibits at museums in our nation's capitol. The profile advertising his appearance at the Canadian Museum Association conference in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Kurin describes many of his most recent accomplishments:

(Kurin)... has worked with cultural figures ranging from Pete Seeger, Yo-Yo Ma, Mickey Hart, and Bernice Johnson Reagon to the Aga Khan and the Dalai Lama. He helped draft an international treaty on safeguarding the world’s living cultural heritage. He has produced major events for the Smithsonian’s 150th anniversary, the opening of the World War II Memorial, the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, and programs for numerous presidential inaugurals, including that of President Obama.

I highly recommend the interview with Kurin posted at America.gov.

A Tour of Governor's Island

EPA damages Fort Edward

This story is over a week old, but it is only just now beginning to show up on listservers and blogs about archaeology and historic preservation.

Fort Edward is located on the east bank of the Hudson River 45 miles north of Albany, New York. It strategic importance lay in serving as a point of portage between the Hudson River and Lake George. Fort Edward figured prominently in the history of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. The fort's location is also within the area initially impacted by PCB wastes which were left behind by General Electric and were eventually washed downstream to contaminate the entire Hudson River valley and its estuary, where New York City is located.

The current chapter in Fort Edward's long and colorful history began when the Environmental Protection Agency restarted its project to dredge the entire Hudson River downstream of the spill. The dredging project had been strongly debated both pro and con for many years, and the environmentalist forces marshalled by the likes of Pete Seeger and Robert Kennedy, Jr. finally achieved their goal. Now some clumsy equipment operators appear to have ripped out timbers from an historic fort, triggering severe bank erosion. Conservative news outlest such as CNS News and Rupert Murdock's New York Post have jumped on the story, presumably because it casts the EPA in a bad light. Historic preservationists must regrettably admit that the fort site itself had been poorly maintained. Archaeological consultants working for EPA may have given inadequate guidance regarding the fort's extent, condition, and appropriate measures for dredging in the immediate vicinity.

Hat tip to New York History blogger John Warren, whose excellent writing just came to my attention while researching this story.

Generic Peace Symbol Turns 50

I went to 7th grade in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. At the public high school I attended, I had a few friends who continued with me from my elementary school. It was a stressful period in my life in which one of my few continuing activities and stable peer groups was the Boy Scouts.

I had an extremely conservative and overtly religious principal that year who was also my teacher for social studies. He would routinely punctuate his lectures with "Amen, brother Men!" One day he went on a tirade against the peace movement and was characterizing the peace symbol as an image of a "witches' foot" with roots in worship of the devil. Somehow, I had heard the real story of the peace symbol's origins. I raised my hand and, when called upon, stood up out of my seat and related what I knew of semaphore signaling from earning my First Class rank in the Boy Scouts. I explained how the letters "N" and "D" were made with the semaphore flags and how that stood for nuclear disarmament. I do not actually recall my teacher's reaction. Perhaps the FBI has a report somewhere that he filed in the following days.

Today the peace symbol is one year older, and not even a full year older than that scared little boy scout. I got the news first from Michael Moore, and the above photograph was taken at a Committee for Nuclear Disarmament Rally in 1961. The peace symbol was only three years old when Christopher Holden took this picture in London's Whitehall.

Cutty Sark fire

Fire broke out on the historic clipper ship Cutty Sark at 4.45 AM GMT (12:45 AM EST) Monday morning. By 6:28 AM GMT (2:28 AM EST) the fire had been put out by the London Fire Brigade. Nonetheless, the ship was all but destroyed. Arson is suspected.

The Cutty Sark was the centerpiece of harbor redevelopment in Greenwich, England. Fortunately, much of the rigging, flooring, and hardware from the ship had been removed as part of an ongoing restoration projected to cost 25 million pounds. Now an additional 10 million or more will have to be raised to begin building her from the ground up in dry dock.

In a moving memoir, journalist Ceri Radford fondly recalls how the Cutty Sark attracted her to make Greenwich her home. Over 120 readers have left comments bemoaning her fate on the Cutty Sark website. We should all join them if we treasure objects of maritime history.