(Chain)Bridging Budapest

Throughout the l9th century, there was a growing sense that Hungarians are powerful, Hungarians have a great language, Hungarians can and should live independently and free—free of Mongols, free of Turks, free even of Austrians, free of all non-Hungarian invaders, occupiers, rulers. Of course, Buda and Pest will be a big part of this movement because they are the heart of Hungary, and a lot of the events associated with the drive for Hungarian freedom happen in Budapest

There are several people whose names you need to know in connection with Budapest and the Hungarian independence: Lajos Kossuth, Sandor Petofi, Gyula Andrassy, the man for whom the main street of Pest is named. But there is no one more important than Istvan Szechenyi, the man who built a bridge, united Buda and Pest into one capital, and united the Hungarian nation.

Since Roman days, it had always been a problem getting across the Danube.

The Romans used pontoon, difficult because of flooding, instability; the Mongols had to wait until it froze so they could gallop their horses over into Pest. The Turks constructed a bridge mounted on oil drum-type structures. But none of these solutions was very satisfactory. After the l800, when the Hungarian national movement was underway, people began thinking seriously about the necessity of building a modern bridge, so that links between Buda and Pest could be improved, so that the Hungarian capital cities could be modernized and improved with an eye towards the future.

Count Szechenyi would be the man to realize this objective. He had motivation after trying to cross from Pest to Buda in January of l820 in a wild winter storm. After this ordeal, he declared, “I will give a year’s income if a permanent bridge is built between Buda and Pest.”

And he put his money and effort where his mouth was. In l832, Szchenyi formed a sort of lobbying association on behalf of a good bridge on the Danube, the Bridge Association of Budapest. This was interesting, because to my knowledge no one had ever united the words “Buda and Pest” into Budapest. Already there was thought that this bridge would make for one united capital city.
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This is kind of a DeWitt Clinton story…the chain bridge is the product of a man with a vision, an ability to see into the future and determine what was necessary to make the most of that future. In the l820s, Szechenyi, like a lot of young Hungarians, was thinking about three things: first, what had happened to Hungarians and Budapest since the reign of King St. Stephen: invasion by the Mongols, invasion by the Turks, takeover by the Habsburgs.
Secondly, they were thinking about what the French had done in their revolution: thrown off their King, established a democratic government and then nearly conquered the world. Perhaps Hungarians could follow their example
Third, they were thinking about Buda and Pest and realizing that it could be a major city, a capital for the eastern part of central Europe. They were even thinking that it could be a capital of an autonomous, even independent Hungary.
That was Szechenyi’s world view at that time…how to provide for a different and successful future for Hungary?

But even if it was an accidental inspiration, the bridge really seized Szechenyi’s imagination, and he gave over all his efforts and energy to making it a reality. This was a bigger deal than people in this country probably realized, because in Hungary of that day, and in the empire of which it was a part, there really was no such thing as citizen action. If projects were to be undertaken, the ideas came from on high, from the court or court circles, and imposed on the citizenry.
Szechenyi decided that this model wasn’t correct for a society that wanted to join the modern world. The modern world was built on the ideas and inspiration of ordinary people—the Frenchmen who had made the French revoloution, the Americans who had made the American revolution, the Britishers who had made the city of London the most important city in all the world. In Szechenyi’s opinion, everything depended on the actions of the individual.

“We cannot overcome time, and must be patient to see what it may bring. But it IS in our power to stand in the right place. And for Hungarians, the right place cannot be but Buda and Pest, which nature has so designated, because this is the heart of the nation—it must be in order and beat with all its vigor, and gush the lifeblood into the nation’s arteries.”

In l832, he founded a sort of lobbying assocation for the bridge, called the Buda Pest bridge organization—the VERY FIRST time anyone had ever used the term Buda-pest publicly.

This group of citizens began by arranging for a scientific analysis of the features of the Danube bank where the bridge would be built. Then they began to solici the opinions of engineers and architects about what kind of bridge would be best.

Once they had those details, in other words once they had a real start, they approached the Pest county diet, or legislature, with their plan. “The signatories claim with the utmost sincerity that creating a bridge between Pest and Buda is no longer physically impossible.”

The diet gave its preliminary approval, and so Szechenyi and his lobbying committee set out for London, where the acknowledged masters of bridge-building lived and worked.

There they met a man named Tierney Clark, who had built a bridge near Hammersmith in suburban London that was the most modern and attractive bridge built to date. Clark agreed to draw up the plans, to do the engineering tasks associated with the bridge-building.

Another Englishman, whose name was ADAM CLARK, no relation to Tierney, would direct the actual construction of the bridge. In l834, the two men collaborated on the dredging of the Danube at the place where the bridge would be built

The main issues were, first—who would own the bridge and have primary responsibility—Buda or Pest? How would the bridge be financed? That one was easy—you charge a toll—except that noblemen were exempt by long tradition from paying tolls or fees.

It took more than a year of arm-twisting, persuading, threatening and speechmaking—much of it done by Szechenyi himself—to get the legislators to agree that Buda and Pest city governments would jointly administer the bridge, and that noblemen as well as ordinary citizens would be required to pay the toll. If everyone in Buda and Pest would benefit from the bridge, everyone should be happy to pay his or her fair share of its costs—a very radical notion for that day.

In March l836, approval was finally given, and the proposal passed on to the Emperor of Austria, who had the last word.
In March of l838, a little sign from on high that this was an excellent idea: Buda and Pest were hit with the worst flood in history. A terrible winter with lots of ice gave way to a sudden thaw, which burst the Danube dams and inundated Buda and Pest. 3/4 of the buildings in pest were damaged or demolished in the flood; Buda escaped mostly because its buildings were higher up the bank
At any rate, the only bridge then existing across the Danube was obliterated in the first hours.

Meanwhile, the planning for the bridge was only slightly interrupted; in l839, Emperor Leopold approved the plan for the bridge; in l842, the city saw the triumphal laying of the cornerstone.

This bridge is a huge, defining event and symbol in Budapest history for several reasons:
tt was the first permanent bridge over the Danube in Hungary, and it confirmed the positive and negative aspects of geography in Budapest’s history: it was located along one of the great rivers of Europe, a river town, but rivers divide people unless they are bridged. So the appearance of the bridge was a kind of triumph over geography, much as the Erie Canal was in New York.

It unified the two biggest cities in Hungary physically, made them physically one town; it was only a matter of time before they united administratively. By the same token, as you will see, the Brooklyn bridge made inevitable the union of Brooklyn with New York, followed by the rest of the five boroughs in l898. First the physical union, then the political.

The building of this bridge is also cited as the dawn of a new Hungary, the first step towards its becoming a modern entity, the first step on its road to self-determination and independence, to controlling its own destiny. As we just said, this bridge marked the first time in which one individual took it upon himself to launch a project for the betterment of society. Individual inititiative is key to a society’s development, as we’ve seen in New York and other places, and that hadn’t been seen in Hungary prior to this time. Secondly, the bridge was the first instance in which EVERYONE contributed to something that had made life better. Previous to that, noblemen never paid taxes, never contributed anything unless they felt like it. The toll on this bridge that applied to everyone was the first step on the road to all citizens being equal under the law, another indispensable quality of a modern state.

The writer Gyula Krudy:

“Beneath the lofty arches of the Chain Bridge old Hungary passed over into New Hungary. The bridge had a hole, and thorugh it our grandfathers cast outmoded catchwords and ideals from their memories into the Danube. On the bridge the wind was strongest, disseminating the seeds of liberty and renewal along the shores, in the hearts and minds of people.”

The Chain Bridge is a survivor. Even before it was finished, it managed to avoid being blown up in the Hungarian war for independence in l849. It survived the hospitalization of its inspiration, count Szechenyi, in l849. It survived the terrible times Budapest and Hungary went through between World war I and II, and even though Budapest was eventually invaded by the Germans in World War II, it managed to survive until the Russians arrived from the east to chase the Germans from the city; at that time, the Germans detonated not just the Chain Bridge, but all the other bridges across the Danube: the Margit bridge, the Elizabeth bridge, the Franz Joseph Bridge, the Arpad bridge. All of them had to be rebuilt.

All were rebuilt, however, and the Chain Bridge stands again today, as one of the two most important symbols of Budapest and Hungary and the most beloved place in the city.

Budapest basics, part II

Compared with New York, which had its first major settlements in the l700s, Budapest is as old as the sea.
Its recorded history begins about the time of Christ’s death, 32. Today’s Budapest, just as its predecessor settlements, is very valuable for its proximity to the Danube, and its central location on the European continent. That led the greatest empire of its time, the Romans, to take control of the area and make the part of Budapest known as Obuda an important regional outpost. We know a fair amount about the Roman settlement now, because of archeological digs going on there for most of the past 50 years.

--it was conquered by Emperor Caesar Augustus, a name everyone knows, in around l00 AD
--several of its governors, including the famous Hadrian, went on to become Roman emperors.

In Roman times, neither the officials nor the townspeople called the settlement Obuda; they called it Aquincum for the endless flow of mineral waters that flow from the hills in the area. To this day, Budapest and Hungary generally are fantastic and well-visited spa areas. In Budapest, you can go to a spa hotel and take the waters one, two, three times a day; outside,you can go to a spa resort complex and take the waters AND learn Hungarian horsemanship, or shepherding, or just relax. MINERAL WATERS are one of the best things about Hungary. The Romans were the first to discover this.

Aquincum, as the archeologists have told us, was a typical regional town for the Roman legions. “the function of the Roman army was not only to conquer, but to spread culture and bring civilization to the peoples it came into contact with. Wherever it went, and set to building, which it did in times of peace, it had a common plan for its cities and facilities in which people could live and feel at home in, whether they lived in Asia minor, southern Europe or northern Europe.

It was an enclosed place, separated from the river by high walls and a moat. Inside were barracks for soldiers, assembly halls, stores, an arsenal, baths, gymnasium and infirmary, plus an aqueduct and network of streets, stores, and a library. Of course,a Roman town wouldn’t be complete without an amphitheater, and Aquincum had TWO, each of which seated ten thousand. Today, the Hungarian passion is soccer; back then it was bloody animal and human fights. I guess that means we’ve evolved.

The Roman empire eventually fell, of course; in the 5th century, contemporary Budapest was overrun by Atilla and the Huns, who are popularly supposed to be the fathers of Hungarians, but who actually don’t have any relation to them ethnically. They laid waste to aquincum and generally turned the Budapest area into a staging ground for combat with rival tribes.

At the end of the 8th century, the Magyar, or Hungarian, tribes arrived in what was to become their homeland. Five of seven Hungarian tribes settled here; their leader was a warrior named Arpad. Arpad himself made his headquarters in Obuda, where Aquincum had been, but substantial numbers of people lived south in Buda, and also Pest, where Islamic merchants had settled.

His successor, Stephen, the man known to history as King St. Stephen, honored every year on the country’s biggest holiday, August 20, also preferred to keep his headquarters away from the heart of modern Budapest; he actually established his reign in a city called Estergom, which is quite a bit farther north of Budapest. King St. Stephen is the man who accepted Christianity on behalf of the Hungarians from Pope Sylveszter II in the year l000, and he apparently felt that modern Budapest had too much the look and feel of an army camp to be a capital city.
For all that he believed the Budapest area unsuitable for his purposes, King St. Stephen is a HUGE presence in Budapest today. The main church in the city is St. Stephen’s Bacillica, a monstrous cathedral nearly the size of St. Peter’s in Rome; inside, you can go and inspect the Szent Jobb, the mummified Holy Right Hand of St. Stephen. The crown St. Stephen received from the Pope is in the Parliament; it dates to the year 1000, and it is very well-traveled. It has been hidden under hay carts in the countryside, it went to Vienna when the Hungarians lived under Austrian rule, came back to Budapest in l867, then resided there until it disappeared during World War II and then resurfaced in the US, where it remained in Fort Knox untill979.
In any case although it was not the capital in St. Stephen’s day, Budapest remembers its King Saint in many places. King St. Stephen is a major symbol of a free Hungary.


The next two hundred years of Budapest’s history pass without a lot of notice in the history books—St. Stephen’s son, Imre, died young, there was a struggle to succeed him, and a series of internal upheavals and invasions. The next of Hungary’s notable Kings, King Bela IV, founded a convent on what we now know is Margit island, the island in the middle of the Danube, and his daughter Margit died there, and left her name on the island.

Bela IV is generally considered to be a good king, progressive and enlightened, but he is notable for the terrible tragedy that befell Hungary and Buda in l241—in that year, like so many lands and cities before them, they were invaded by Genghis Khan and his Mongol warriors, who came on horseback and sent showers of arrows flying into the air before they attacked. The Danube kept them on the Pest side for a time, but only until it froze in the winter. They sacked all the buildings in Pest and Buda, killed a lot of people, then burned everything they could manage There was a Dalmatian priest who witnessed the attack and described it as follows:

Fortunately, the Mongols didn’t linger; they had other conquests to complete. King Bela more or less counted his blessings and took several lessons away from the experience. First, this settlement along the Danube has strategic weaknesses; second, the only things that were not razed by the Mongols were made of stone; third, there was a nice, level space at the top of one of the lower hills, south of Obuda. This all translated into a decision to build a castle on this hill, which then came to be known as Castle Hill, or in Hungarian, Varhegy.
This castle has been destroyed and rebuilt many times times; it was destroyed in the Turkish invasion after l526, then rebuilt; destroyed when the Austrians helped the Hungarians expel the Turks in l783, then rebuilt; damaged in l848, bombarded and destroyed in l945, shelled in l956—it isn’t the same building at all as the one King Bela built at all. It now houses the National Art Gallery and the Hungarian National Library—there aren’t even any administrative offices left there. But it is one of the most important symbols that you will see in Budapest. This thing was built long before Budapest became the capital of Hungary, when there was barely a Buda or Pest. Nonetheless.

It says that Budapest is a city that has known foreign invaders, that it is a city that wishes to keep its freedom and independence, and therefore it built its most important structure for many years ON A HILL, where it can see and assess any threats to its independence and freedom.

Buda castle links the two key themes in Budapest’s development, the influence of geography(this time, the disadvantages), its legacy of foreign invasion and its preoccupation with preventing it. The Buda castle is probably the most important symbol in all the city for that reason—that and the parliament building, across the river.

Perhaps the second-greatest Hungarian King was Matyas, the author of the Hungarian renaissance.

He was determined that Budapest should have high culture, that it should be mentioned in the same breath as the great Italian cities, and so he was a very busy man during his 50-year reign

He rebuilt the Buda castle in a Florentine, Renaissance style. He retained the services of architects from Florence for this rebuilding, in which 20 Italian craftsmen worked more or less constantly. The reconstruction had everything that a renaissance structure of its day should have: three magnificent stories, an elaborate chapel, hanging gardens, tall columns, sculpture of classical figures, such as Athena, goddess of wisdom and knowledge—it was a state of the art building.
Inside, King Matyas had the best artwork money could buy—paintings, frescoes, even a sculpture of the Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci.
He also assembled the best library money could buy—the Corvina library, which ended up being second only in volume and import to the Vatican—Greek and Latin manuscripts, a wide variety of subject matter, philosophy, history, poetry, geography, mathematics.
He arranged to have a printing press, a rarity at that time. Matyas believed that Budapest would be a celebrated capital and thus it should be a center of book publishing.

Matyas is credited with establishing Buda as the center of action in Hungary, and with making the Castle the focal point of the city. He believed that a free city is also a cultured city, and so his legacy is not only the rebuilt castle, but also its place as a historical/cultural center. To this day, the Buda castle houses the National Art Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the Hungarian national archives.

But there were two problems with Matyas’s reign in Hungary:: one, he eventually died without an heir, which guaranteed an internal fight for the throne, and Hungary was about to be invaded by the fiercest fighting force ever to hit Europe—the Ottoman Turks.

The Turks had already conquered all of southeastern Europe before l500—Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania, part of Croatia, Romania. They were moving steadily towards Hungary with overwhelming force. In August of l526, in southern Hungary, the Hungarian King Lajos met 80,000 Ottoman crack infantrymen with an army of l0,000 in light armor. It was brutal and quick. At the end of l526, Budapest was yet again occupied by a foreign invader. This time, it was the Ottoman Turks who would came to rule Budapest and the Hungarians—they moved into the Buda castle as conquerors(illustration). Their tenure lasted a couple of hundred years, l526-1783.

You can see the Ottoman influence in many places in Budapest. First, you can see it in the huge number of coffeehouses there, now mostly on the Pest side. The Ottomans were the ones who brought coffee, strong coffee, to Budapest—concentrated essence of coffee that is served in a small cup. It packs a punch.
You can see it in the huge number of bathhouses, too, mostly on the Buda side—Islam prescribed the taking of medicinal baths, so there were very many on the Buda side because there were so many mineral springs there. There are at least three that I know of dating to this period on the Buda side, down from the castle near the river.
The other major evidence of Ottoman rule in Budapest is now a world heritage site. It’s located in the Buda Hills, a little bit north of the Castle area and across the Margit bridge.
It’s a tomb—the tomb of Gul Baba(visible on this post), one of the Turks who took Budapest in l527. He was a cleric, close to the Pasha, who took part in the week-long celebrations after the Turks took Budapest. In that time, the Turks took control of the castle, turned the Matyas church, the signature church from Matyas’s time, into a mosque. Unfortunately, Gul died suddenly during the celebrations, but he was given a splendid funeral and a burial in the Buda Hills. His name in Turkish means “father of roses,” and according to local legend, he introduced the rose to Budapest. So the area around the tomb is called Roszadomb, or Rose Hill, and it has been maintained carefully in good times and bad, with recent help from the Turkish government.

It is an ongoing reminder of a two-hundred year period in which Budapest and Hungary endured foreign rule—more evidence of Budapest’s obsession with independence and freedom.

Some Budapest basics, part I

By popular demand, some Budapest fundamentals:

What are the foundations of Budapest? We know that New York is New York because of geography, the desire to make lots and lots of money, the appearance of visionaries at every key moment, and the acceptance of newcomers. Belfast and Londonderry became the cities they are today largely because of the Protestant-Catholic conflict.

What about Budapest?

Budapest’s foundations are in some respects similar to, and in some respects pretty drastically different from, New York:

1) It shares favorable geography with New York: it is located along a major riverway on the European continent—the Danube--which make it easy to get goods back and forth to major markets—and it’s close enough to the black sea that you see possibilities far beyond Europe.


But, there’s more to it than that. One of the reasons that Buda was founded is that it is high on a hill, affording a commanding view of the east if not the west. That hints that this is a dangerous neighborhood, and it IS. Budapest is both blessed and cursed by its geography—there are NO natural frontiers, no high mountains, no huge rivers that would slow down opposing armies, just some foothills and lots and lots of plains, flat, flat, flat. That wouldn’t be good in any case, but it’s really going to be murder when the Russians get going, then the Germans. It is NOT GOOD to be a small nation and people with no natural frontiers in a hostile neighborhood sandwiched between historically aggressive powers.
Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic were some of the first to ask to get into NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty of Alliance, because of their history at the hands of the Germans and Russians. The Germans are no longer a threat; Russia may or may not become a good neighbor.


2) It is fiercely committed to the idea of freedom, of being able to determine its own destiny. It has the most elaborate parliament building in the world—it looks like a combination of the Vatican and the US Congress. Inside that parliament, they have the relics of their most famous warrior king, King Saint Steven, who first fought for their freedom and aligned them with the “civilized” nations of Europe, huge, imposing statues of the great men of Hungarian history and there is an honored quote by one of Hungary’s great men: I don’t like to say “Hungary was.” I prefer to say Hungary WILL BE!
Both the concept of freedom and the people who fought to make Hungary free of foreign rulers, foreign invaders, foreign influence are everywhere commemorated in Budapest.
One of the major bridges in Budapest is the Freedom Bridge. If you drive over it from Buda into Pest, you will arrive at the American Embassy, which is located on Freedom Square.
The square that the Parliament is located on is Kossuth ter, named for Lajos Kossuth, the man considered the father of Hungarian freedom. The metro station is Kossuth Ter. There is a Kossuth street. There is a Kossuth high school in the town. And that is just for starters.

There is even a GEO WASHINGTON statue in Budapest City Park, a tribute to the US founding father whose country gave so many Hungarians over the years the chance to live in freedom.

The major statues and monuments are all devoted to Hungarian fighters for freedom

Kossuth. Sandor Petofi. Imre Nagy. General Bem, whose image you see above. And the lady atop Gellert Hill, once a Soviet monument, but rechristened in the spirit of a free and independent Hungary

And if you look at Hungarian state holidays, a great many of them have to do with freedom, days on which independence was proclaimed, or reproclaimed:

March l5—the day independence from Austria was proclaimed

June l6—the day Hungary celebrates the winning of its freedom from Russia in l989

August 20-- St. Stephen day, celebrates King St. Stephen, who oversaw the Christianization of Hungary and ruled a free, golden-age state in the l0th century

October 23—beginning of the Hungarian rebellion of l956 against the Soviet Union..


Thus the factors that made Budapest a city, shaped its destiny, are: geography, and then the all-consuming desire for freedom, from invaders, from foreigners ruling them, from

450 final

And now, what we've all(!?) been waiting for...the ModEur final...

History 450
Europe since 1945
Final exam spring 2008



Directions Part I(60%): Prepare the following question, drawing upon lectures, readings, videos, travel and personal reflection. Be sure to make clear at the outset what points you will address in the essay and back each point up with specific names, dates, etc. EVERYBODY will do this one.

One fact that characterized Europe between l945 and l989 was division. Write an essay in which you explain for someone unfamiliar with Europe how it became divided. Then identify briefly two or three manifestations of this division. Conclude by discussing briefly why the dividing lines dissolved in the late l980s. Use specific examples in specific places to support your discussion.


Part II(40%) Prepare answers to these questions, using the same methods as described above. You should prepare ALL of them, unless you are a betting man(or woman!)…


“Blessed are those who hunger for justice,” reads a mural in a Catholic neighborhood in northern Ireland. Select one of the H-Block martyrs(not Bobby Sands, because he’s too well known) and discuss the reasoning behind his decision to take his own life on behalf of Irish Catholics. Then evaluate the success of the hunger strike in improving the lot of Catholic citizens over the long term.

The fight for civil rights was waged in both the United States and northern Ireland in the l960s, the Irish taking a page from the notebook of Martin King and other American civil rights leaders. Discuss the conditions the northern Irish Civil Rights Association sought to change in their country, then trace the evolution of their movement. What role did they ultimately play in the resolution of the Troubles?

Like all the small nations in the Soviet orbit, Czechoslovakia had a tragic history after l945. Discuss briefly how it fell under Soviet control, then describe the yearlong attempt by some Czechoslovak authorities to achieve a more humane “socialism” in the Prague Spring l967-68. Conclude your essay by outlining some of the assets and liabilities life there now, nearly 20 years after the state’s breakaway from the Soviet Union.

Titanic Anniversary

Today is the 96th anniversary of the loss of the Titanic. BBC.com has a phenominal history website and of course there is one on the Titanic. Check it out here.

Essential website

As I was saying the other day, a group of dedicated observers and researchers at Queen's University, Belfast, has put together and digitized a remarkable collection of memorabilia documenting the northern Irish conflict. It will help a lot with preparation for the 425 final, so by all means visit here.

425 final

I've been in the salt mine for awhile, so this blog has been less than active, but I've come back up for air, just in time for finals 2008, of which this is the first to be posted:

History 425
Final exam—April 30, 2008


Directions Part I: Prepare the following four questions, taking care to bring in materials from reading, lectures, video, and whatever outside reading you have done. You will do ONE question in section I, and then ONE question in section TWO, but you don’t know WHICH questions will be selected, so you are advised to prepare ALL of them.


1) The Chain Bridge(lanchid in Hungarian) is indisputably the most beloved bridge in Budapest, a city of bridges. What is its significance for the evolution of the city, and more broadly, the Hungarian nation?


2) As in Ireland, the history of Budapest and Hungary is the story of a constant fight for freedom. First, outline for someone you know will be visiting where he/she can see evidence of this fight on the landscape of the Hungarian capital city. Then explain briefly the circumstances of the l956 Hungarian revolution and describe how Budapesters have chosen to commemorate that shattering event.

Directions Part II: See directions for Part I

3) In his book, Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life, John Conroy despairs of how the “core issues that have driven of this conflict can ever be solved through peace talks.” What are(were, now, thankfully) these “core issues,” and how did they affect residents on the Falls Road, the Catholic neighborhood where Conroy lived during his time in northern Ireland?


4) Clues to the northern Irish conflict—its past as well as its future—abound, particularly in the two largest cities, Londonderry and Belfast. What are some of the clues visitors can see, and what can they reveal about the way Catholics and Protestants view the “Troubles?”

Onward and upward...past this exam to summer break.

A new Rite of Spring?!

It must be spring, since we're beginning to see those quasi-pagan rituals emerge here and there. Here is a great one, by way of Flanders in Belgium...care for some goldfish with your beverage?

A Really "Bad" Girl...

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for pranksters, practical jokers and professional outrages, people who would upset the apple cart, drop a f-bomb on an unsuspecting dinner party, trip a little light fantastic maybe. Thus I was sorry to hear of the passing of Dorothy Podber this week at the age of 75...in a town full of eccentrics, she certainly upheld the reputation of " wild children" everywhere:

NEW YORK - Dorothy Podber, a wild child of the New York art scene in the 1950s and '60s who is probably best known for brandishing a pistol and putting a bullet through the forehead of Marilyn Monroe's likenesses on a stack of Andy Warhol's paintings, died at her apartment in Manhattan on Feb. 9. She was 75.

The artist Herndon Ely, her friend and caretaker, said she died of natural causes.

Ms. Podber was an artist and helped run the Nonagon Gallery in Manhattan in the late '50s and early '60s, which showed the work of a young Yoko Ono and was known for jazz concerts by performers such as Charles Mingus. But she became famous, and infamous, in the art world mostly as a muse and a coconspirator of more prominent artists such as Ray Johnson, with whom she staged impromptu happenings on Manhattan streets.

In one, she and Johnson persuaded people they had just met to allow them into their apartments, where they would play records used by speech therapists that contained samples of stuttering.

"She said people were pretty nonplussed, as you'd expect," Ely said. "She and Ray would also do another bit where they'd reenact the shower scene from 'Psycho.' "

In a 2006 interview with the writer Joy Bergmann, Ms. Podber said: "I've been bad all my life. Playing dirty tricks on people is my specialty."

Certainly the most outrageous was her unsolicited contribution to a few of Warhol's "Marilyn" silk-screen paintings. In fall 1964 Ms. Podber, a friend of the photographer and significant Warhol collaborator Billy Name, visited Warhol's Factory in midtown Manhattan with her Great Dane (named Carmen Miranda or Yvonne De Carlo, depending on the account). Ms. Podber asked Warhol whether she could shoot a stack of the "Marilyn" paintings; he apparently thought that she wanted to take pictures of them and consented.

But she produced a pistol and fired at them, penetrating three or four. One of them, "Shot Red Marilyn," with a repaired bullet hole over the left eyebrow, sold for $4 million in 1989, at the time setting a record at auction for a Warhol work.

"After she left," Name told Bergmann, "Andy came over to me and said: 'Please make sure Dorothy doesn't come over here anymore. She's too scary.' "

Ms. Podber told Bergmann that when money was low, as it often was, she generally found unorthodox ways to make it. She once ran a service that dispatched maids to doctors' offices, primarily as a way to get the keys to the doctors' drug cabinets. "I never worked much," she said.

No doubt New York will be the poorer without Podber and her prankstering...

Startling news!

I don't want to alarm anyone, but it is a FACT, History 425 and 450 will be meeting at their regularly scheduled times ALL THIS WEEK(!!!). 469ers will be in the salt mine, working diligently on their chefs d'oeuvres, and I will be hanging in the office, as usual, during NORMALLY SCHEDULED office hours.

That is all. Over and Out!

425 reminder

Don't forget, I will not make City in History class tomorrow(Wednesday), because i am the featured program at the Rotarians' meeting in Kennewick at noon. We WILL meet on Friday, no question, as usual. I am sure that this news will devastate everyone, but please try to recover in time for Friday...

Required reading on Russia

This morning, I referenced the article by Clifford Levy in Sunday's New York Times about the Putin election "campaign" as played out in a regional Russian city, Nizhnii Novgorod. Click here to access it from the International Herald Tribune, which you can read without registration. It is definitely required reading for understanding this incarnation of Russia.

More exam resources...

I mentioned the other day that the last in the New York: A Documentary Film series, "New York: The Center of the World," has a website on which you can find the transcript of the broadcast, as well as other helpful features. You can also access descriptions of the other episodes, but there are no transcripts. Nonetheless, it might be worth your time to look at the Big Apple history section...it certainly won't hurt. Click here to go there(if that makes any sense).

If you scroll down this page, you will find a great site for the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which is the subject of one of the two questions in part II.

Onward and upward, as my grad advisers used to say!

The 425 exam cometh...

...and just in time, some thoughts on those pesky questions on part II of the test...

Here’s a few things to think about…

On geography…remember that New York has probably the best, or at least one of the best, natural harbors in the world. That was very attractive at the time New Amsterdam was founded, and even well before, since we know a number of explorers landed there to look around. If ships can come and go easily, and find the kind of natural shelter from the ocean tempests that New Amsterdam offered, then it’s very likely that the mainland will become a commercial center.

Because it was so ideally positioned and equipped to become a commercial center, the city was a magnet for immigrants seeking work. And because there always was work for newcomers, those newcomers tended not to venture farther, which helped make New York the most dynamic city in the country. And of course, those immigrants all arrived by ship, until well into the 20th century…

Related to that is the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic at Manhattan and allows access to the north American inland. It allowed far more when DeWitt Clinton’s enterprise and brain power was applied to cutting a waterway that linked the Great Lakes and the Hudson. There’s natural geography and man-made geography, or rather man helping natural geography along…both were key to New York’s becoming the commercial HQ of the north American continent.

In the revolutionary war, New York just happened to be located right in the center of the American colonies…it was about equidistant from Virginia and Boston. This meant that if the British took and held New York in the war, they could probably hold most of the rest of north America. But they failed to hold New York, which goes a long way towards explaining their ultimate failure to hold onto the American colonies. So goes New York, so goes the rest of the nation.

And then there is the island factor…because Manhattan is a slender piece of land with finite space, the buying and selling of real estate has always been an obsession there, from the time that the Dutch bought “Manahatta” from the Lenape in 1624…remember, the city’s first millionaire, Mr. John Jacob Astor, made most of his millions by buying up as much of the island as he could and reselling--after he quit the fur trading biz. The finite space factor also determined what the city would look like…if you are on an island and you want to make $$$, you pretty much have to build up. Remember all the skyscrapers, e.g the Flatiron building, Woolworth’s, Empire State and Chrysler before the WTC…they didn’t just go up because people wanted tall buildings. The higher they go, the more office space and/or apartments you can build and the more rent you can charge…that was the imperative behind the WTC’s being 110 floors/tower.

Does this help? What you really need to do, granted probably not before the exam, is make a pilgrimage to Gotham and look for evidence yourself. In any case, you'll be an informed visitor when you do get there.

Dumb and dumber?

There's a new book out by Susan Jacoby probing the depths of, and the reasons for, American anti-intellectualism. There's always been a strong undercurrent of disregard and even scorn for the life of the mind in this country, beginning with life on the frontier. Who were the teachers there? The ones who couldn't DO anything, like clear away trees or build houses.

The New York Times report on Jacoby's book offers some contemporary evidence of American ignorance, including the following:

The American idol stalwart, Kelli Pickler, on a recent episode of "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

"Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

A recent National Geographic poll that discovered

that "early half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map."

But what exactly was it that moved her to plumb the depths of her countrymen's ignorance? It happened on New York's darkest day, 9/11/2001.

"Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

'This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, 'What is Pearl Harbor?'

'That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,' the first man replied."

At that point, Jacoby said, she decided that she needed to write the book. I had a student once who, under severe stress, wrote on an exam that Lyndon Johnson dropped the atom bomb on north Vietnam, but that's not quite in the same category.

Sheesh...we've got some DUMB people in this culture, dumb and dumber.

Nightmare time again

It's happened again...this time at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, Illinois, about sixty miles from Chicago. A gunman described as a "skinny white guy with a stocking cap on," dressed all in black, opened fire on a geology lecture this afternoon on campus. The latest reports indicate five are dead and several others in extremely critical condition. Read the latest here.

Every time this happens, I am first outraged--people have no right to bring their private grudges and weaponry into a place of peace and exploration and reflection. That is a severe trespass on all that I treasure. Then I wonder how long it will be before administrators will be putting up metal detectors and checkpoints at key entrances to the classrooms and offices. That is the way I've always known universities to be overseas. You can't get in any campus buildings there, generally speaking, without proper documentation and/or someone coming to confirm that you are expected.

Finally, of course, I wonder how and when it became acceptable to exorcise your demons on innocent people in a place where people come to learn and improve themselves. What's happening to this culture? Can someone explain this to me?

Congressman Tom Lantos and The City in History Class

How are Califorinia Congressman Tom Lantos and your City in History class possibly connected? Congressman Lantos is a Hungarian Jew and the only Holocaust survivor elected to the U.S. Congress. He grew up in a small town just outside of Budapest and he was saved by one Raoul Wallenberg, who you will learn more about when you study Budapest.

Congressman Lantos passed away yesterday. He was 80-years-old. Here is the Washington Post article where you can read a little more about his remarkable life.

A thought for the upcoming holiday...

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us, and so is Champagne, a great gift for just about anyone, or at least anyone who enjoys a little drink or two. In that spirit, I remind you of Mme. Bollinger, the sometime grande dame of the Bollinger Champagne houses, who spoke of her devotion to the bubbly stuff in a l961 interview:

"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it, unless I'm thirsty."

That pretty much sums up my attitude towards Champagne...one of the great thrills of my life was visiting some of the great Champagne houses in the eponymous region of France and taking a tour of Pommery, which you see above. It would be a sin to visit Lafayetteland and fail to pay a visit to Champagne...I heartily recommend it.

Triangle narrative site

There is a terrific site sponsored by Cornell University that is dedicated to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of March 25, l911 in New York City. You can find a summary of events, chronology, photos/illustrations, original newspaper articles from the following days, and closeup shots of turn-of-the-century sweatshops(which actually are indistinguishable from 21st century sweatshops). Worth your time and attention...

Four excellent questions

This is the time of year when people are contemplating life changes and/or changes in direction--grad school or no grad school, taking a year off, quitting the job in favor of going back to school, things like that. I was just reading a riff on risk from a prominent surgeon who is called upon to make life-or-death decisions virtually every day in his work. This individual always asks himself these four questions before proceeding:

What is the best thing that can happen if I do this?

What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this?

What is the best thing that can happen if I don't do this?

What is the worst thing that can happen if I don't do it?

You will notice that most of these questions lead to doing whatever it is you are reluctant, or afraid, to do, so if you are looking for courage or support in taking a risk, or going out on a limb, take a copy of these questions and block out some answers...

p.s. one of my graduate advisers, the late, great Robert Francis Byrnes, always told people to "do what you are afraid to do." That's pretty good advice, too, and good practice.