Author: cbcrenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is a musician, artist, writer, coder, gardener, and maker in Alabama.

Women’s Rage

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The Cut is featuring an excerpt from Rebecca Traister’s forthcoming book, Good and Mad: the Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger this afternoon and it is a doozy. If you’re interested in American history, in politics, or pretty much anything, you should definitely go read it. As a historian, I’m intrigued by the argument Traister lays out:

Look to the start, the germinating seeds, of nearly every major social and political movement that has shaped this nation — from abolition to suffrage to labor to civil rights and LGBTQ rights to, yes, feminism — and you will find near its start the passionate dissent of women.

I’m inclined to agree, but very much looking forward to working through the book. The historiography of women’s dissent has the potential to completely reframe our understanding of American political history. The book will be out October 2nd.

DIY Tip

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A word to the unwise DIYer, like me: Nothing–I repeat, nothing–gets Ty-D-Bol off of your skin. If you should, say, spill some on your hand when fixing a leaky toilet first thing on a Sunday morning, welcome to your blue-skinned life now.

Be careful out there, folks.

A Thought on Indexing and Power

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Tonight I was reading a book on indexing and abstracting–Brian O’Connor’s Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting (1996)–and had to stop and think about one of O’Connor’s guiding principles: “a subject is not an inherent element of a text.”

What do you mean? I thought. Doesn’t every text have a subject? Well, first of all, no. Many texts don’t have a subject, or they merely imply a subject, or they contribute to a composite subject. Ok. So then I wondered: isn’t this just hair-splitting? I had to think about it a bit more to realize that O’Connor’s point is bigger than that. The subject does not inhere in the text. You have to examine the text to understand its subject–or lack thereof. You have to master it.

But mastery is something else entirely; something not hair-splitting, but hair-raising. Mastery is the exercise of power.

The huge and ever-expanding power of technology companies in our lives today underlines an enduring cliché: information is power. But raw information is useless. Real power rests in the hands of information brokers: those who can master texts well enough to make the information they contain accessible to those who need it. This is the most significant reason why Google is so powerful. We all desperately want and need the information on the internet, but no one can sort through it all. We need a tool, therefore, that can match the questions in our heads to the answers other people have written down, and Google has done it better than anyone else.

I mention Google and the power of tech companies only to point to my insight from tonight’s reading. As a historian, I have learned all too well that both recording and interpreting information are vital instruments of power. Indexing, abstracting, describing, and organizing are instruments of power, too, which connect the recorders with the interpreters. Because the subject is not inherent in the text, to describe it is to power over both the writer, who may not have meant what the indexer says they did, and the reader, who may not ever be able to understand what the author meant because of the indexer’s choice.

This is an awesome power. It should not be taken lightly.

Lichgate: Beneath the Spreading Oak

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A short winding path opens onto this unexpected glade of whimsy on the outer rim of Tallahassee’s student ghetto and it takes my breath away. A towering oak twists above the glade, its gnarled fingers pointing toward gardens, a quaint cottage. Delicate paths weave beneath the swooping limbs of the ancient oak at the darkened margins of the clearing, leading visitors past a fairy circle and over a tiny stone bridge to a verdant garden on one side of the cottage, and a wooded chautauqua nestled past the titular lichgate on the other side. On a humid Monday morning in August, I can only imagine the vernal lectures given here.

More after the jump.

My sweat pours and the grass wets my ankles and there is a suggestion of tension in the interplay between shafted sunlight and dense shade here; between blooms and insects and the corpse gate in the side yard of the empty cottage. Spiders weave little webs in the unwashed corners of the windows and transact their sullen intercourse in the shade beneath the eaves. The professor who built this place spent her life studying heroism and tragic ethics, but this place, her place, sings a quiet melody of enchantment. This is more glade than stoa.

I knock away the morning spiders and sit a moment on the wooden bench in the darkened lichgate. Tragedy and heroism, Tudor fantasy and merrie olde whimsy are a sort of tradition, but perhaps it is best to think of this place in light of another tradition: the resurrection gate. Look for the little signpost in an unexpected place on your weary journey. Pass along the winding path and let the oak-scented glade take your breath, too. Walk the maze and watch the insects pass from bloom to bloom.. Let the sweat pour and cling in the thick summer morning air. Then emerge from the glade with new energy.

Where:

Lichgate on High Road
1401 High Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32304