History and the nature of research

 

                It is election season, the time when we choose what facts to bring forward and which ones to leave behind.  I have been pondering this notion of fact choice for the last three months; I have been on a JFK history roll. Clearly, who chooses the facts matters in support of your thesis.

                I started with The Fitzgeralds and Kennedys, by Doris Kearns Goodwin because I had read a memoir by her, and it was summer, and the Kennedys where an important part of my family’s locational back story. It’s a tome, but frisky. She reaches back to the mid nineteenth century in Boston, tracing first the Fitzgerald family and their involvement on Boston politics, and then the Kennedy family until the election of JFK. Drawing on family papers and interviews, she wrote an even handed history of the family and the time. Clearly, she admired the Kennedys, but she was also the first to reveal that one of their daughters was lobotomized. It struck close to home as well; Honey Fitz was still a character in Boston lore when I was a child; my mother dressed like Jackie O.; my great aunt lived a few miles from the family compound in Hyannisport (they probably ate at her third husband’s restaurant).  It took a month, a chapter a day, but it was worth it.

                Because I wanted to learn about JFK as president, I moved onto Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy years, written by David Talbot. He’s a fan and this is where I began to wonder about the choice of facts and sources.  His thesis is that it was Robert and John Kennedy against the CIA, FBI, and entire government. The CIA wanted to kill Castro, but the Kennedys did not. The CIA wanted to bomb Cuba, but the Kennedys did not. The CIA or the mafia wanted to kill Kennedy—both of them—and may have. And Robert did not feel like he had the political power to investigate the assignation unless he was president—and then he was killed as well. I wish, now, that I had created a character chart, because the names of all of the men involved in the various intrigues get tangled together, especially when I wanted to compare this history with the next book I read.

                When I finished Brothers, I remembered scanning over The Dark Side of Camelot  by Seymour Hirsch, one of my reporting heroes.  I checked a copy out of the library and began working through it. In this version, the Kennedys want to kill Castro, are not in control of anything, and JFK, at least, spends hours every day cavorting naked in the White House pool with starlets, as well as carrying on serious affairs with a multitude of women. JFK was about to lose control of the narrative and his reelection when he was killed. If I had created the chart while reading the last book, I could have compared the two more clearly; I actually went back to the library to get it and it was gone! Someone else in Corvallis is on a Kennedy roll.

                The two books are both deeply researched; they have bibliographies and cite their sources; the authors spent years interviewing people who were engaged in the government and the press at the time. But the conclusions are different. I suspect they asked very different questions. They clearly chose their quoted sources to support their own thesis and probably ignored discussions that did not. The interviewees are old—many die before the book is printed—and their memories may not be as clear. Hirsch quotes from more manuscripts of unpublished memoirs; his time as a reporter in Washington may have given him access to documents the other writer did not have or want. Both are “true,” in that they are based on facts and evidence.

                And there is the cautionary tale—we need to research a variety of opinions and sources in order to understand history, politics, and our culture. Believing just one source will not give us an accurate or reliable picture of the world. Creating a chart to compare details is a good thing, even if it means backtracking in our research. Considering the bias of the writer is essential. Hirsch exposed the Mai Lai massacre and blamed Kennedy for involving the United States in Vietnam; that impacts his research. It does not make him wrong, however.

                There is a week to go before this election season ends.  We are being told that Haitians are still eating the pets; that democracy will collapse if you vote for the other candidate;  that council will be more efficient if there are only six councilors, rather than nine. Do your research, consider the bias of your sources, compare notes, and vote.

 

Changing Seasons

 

        

        This has been a beautiful fall. Golden light for days, slowly slanting across the sky. Tomatoes keep ripening on the vine; I have “cleared” them at least three times, thinking we were done for the year, and then found more—I may need to set up another batch of tomato sauce. The green beans lingered so long I let some of them go to seed and dried them to plant for next year. The figs have taken a full month to ripen, coming in waves, not slowed down by rains. The fields are plowed and planted, trees are slowly turning and dropping leaves, and the cats spend all day outside, soaking in the sun.

                I have never had so much time to be outside in the fall. In some ways, it reminds me of the year after I graduated from college. I lived by myself in a two room apartment with the bathroom in the hall.  I  worked at the deli counter of the local grocery store, flinging Roast Beast onto the slicer while college couples, newly co-habitating, made out in front of the meat case. I rode my bike to the university campus once a week to talk to a professor about American Intellectual History, beginning my graduate degree.  My boyfriend lived 40 miles away, so it was an intense relationship in bursts, separated by long periods of quiet time on my own. I read, rode my bike, worked evenings and weekends, ate Macintosh apples, and thought about the future.

                Moving through these golden days, I feel the same expansiveness, even as the season turns towards winter. I have time to consider.  Where do I go now, after graduation?

Lost Cat

 

                Mark and I went camping overnight—foggy walks on the beach, quiet campground, fish and chips for lunch—it was great. When we came home, I called the cats in. One came running, all purry and begging for tummy rubs. The other—no sign. “She’s a deep sleeper,” Mark said, “She’ll wake up soon.” I did another round of calling before the council meeting, then left, figuring she’d be home by the time we were done. When I came home around 8:30, no cat. Because there was quite a bit of food in the bowl from the weekend, we thought she might have disappeared on Sunday evening.

                We prowled the neighborhood, calling, for two hours. Mark made fliers and put them up. I posted on social media and talked the numerous people on the street (it was a warm night!). No cat. Finally, we went to bed, one cat tucked under my chin.

                Around 1 AM, I heard the cat door slap. There she was, eating crunchies. When I picked her up, she smelled like…soy sauce. She went outside for a drink of wild water, chased something into the bushes, and took a lap of the back yard with her sister. By two am, we had both cats asleep on our feet. We are all fine; the cats are happy to be prowling the house and yard this misty morning .Soon, they will curl up and go to sleep.

                But the question remains—where was she? Where do cats go when they disappear? I can look in the greenhouse for a cat, find no one, turn around two minutes later, and there a cat is, sprawled on the floor like she has been there for hours. Do they fall into another dimension where the cat treats re better, and just stay there sometimes? How far afield do they actually travel?  Do they gather in cat packs under the street lights and Look at each other? Whose clean laundry are they sleeping on?            I’ve been wondering about this for a long while; yesterday, I looked up tracking collars. The technology is there. I may soon know.

Wheelbarrows

 

Wheelbarrows.

We have seven. Three are holding strawberry plants, keeping them out of the reach of slugs. One holds the plant starts in summer so that I can move them from sun to shade depending upon the temperature. And three big old metal beasts move stuff around in the yard.  Some days, we use them all.

The old metal beasts all came to us used and a bit battered. Our friend Mark brought one that he had just cleaned up and replaced the handles on after after a year’s long grump about “how you can’t buy anything new that will last”  when our first barrow broke (it is now holding berries) and I was looking for a replacement. I bought the second for about ten dollars from the used goods place down the street; our neighbor dropped the last one off last spring—he had found it somewhere.  They are all solid, but needed some love. This week, they have been transformed.

The barrows have spent the summer resting against the garden fence in the chicken run—out of the way and handy. So, first, they needed a wash. I scrubbed off moss, rust, and years of dirt and they looked better already. Mark took off the wheels so they would not be in the way and then I gave them all a nice coat of primer—we had ghost barrows on the lawn for a couple of days while we decided on paint.  On Monday, I rode out to Winco and bought spray paint for the metal barrows and then rummaged through the basement for the handle colors.

The paint changed everything. It is deeply colored and shiny and covers all of the funky battered spots on the sides. I sprayed all three one afternoon and then left them overnight to dry. Yesterday morning, I spent a couple of hours on the handles, lying on the ground to hit some awkward spots while the cat observed. The result is glorious. Three wheelbarrows, three body colors, with contrasting handles.

Did I need to repaint them in three colors? Not really. They will last longer with the care, but they are work tools. They do not need to be vibrant or distinct. It’s not like they have different uses that need to be quickly defined—one barrow hauls compost as well as another. All painted grey and they all work just as well. But the colors help define their solid working forms, bringing out how each is unique in how the wheels are attached or the back plate is shaped, and it gives each its own personality. This winter, they will glow against the grey days.