Walking through the Old City....of New York

I have a real appreciation for the subjects of my dissertation. As a historian this can be a good or a bad thing. E. P. Thompson, one of the greats, said his task in writing about the "making of the English working class" was to "rescue them from the enormous condensation of posterity." I'm not so sure that is what I'm trying to do with the young Americans who worked for the Commission for Relief in Belgium during World War I, but they do have a story to tell in the sources they've left behind.

The men who left from New York City between 1914 and early 1917 were about my age and my education level. They had a basic knowledge of the French language. Mine is really basic, but I plan on working on it just as they did. I probably have a better knowledge of Belgium as a country than they did, but it's such a unique nation-state that I'm certainly no expert. They left for a term of at least 6 months. I'm going for 8. They weren't saints. They were men of their times with particular views about women, race, work, "the other," and things like that, but the left on an adventure that colored their futures. I see this trip as doing the same for me, even though it is difficult and pulls me out of my easy life in the US with friends, family, and the like.

I don't mean to be mawkish or "a Hamlet," even though I'm prone to that. I hope it's seen as a more contemplative mood. For example, I wanted around the Financial District of New York City yesterday. I went in to do some errands and visit Carly for lunch near her office. After lunch, instead of going back to Brooklyn, I stayed in the City and wandered around the "old" part of New York (if New York could have an old section). The Financial District is unlike the rest of New York. With the Customs House, Trinity Church, St. Paul's Chapel, Federal Hall, it's old. There are brass plaques all over noting historical events or places. A Citi Bank branch is located in the Second Class Passenger entrance of the old Cunard Cunard Steamship Company building near Battery Park. There is no grid system, for example. The streets are narrow and intersect at odd angles. They are named, not numbered. I got turned around trying to find a deli I need to find before Carly got out of work. I had to look at a map a few times to figure out how to get some where. It stuck me, I'm a stranger in my own City. In fact, I wasn't hearing much English. Many tourists linger in the area and the employees of the shops speak Spanish mostly or Russian. The Wall Street types are too busy to talk. It got me thinking about "big cities."

Brussels is a big city. It's the capital of Belgium. It's the "capital of Europe." (The EU is based there.) Roughly the size of Staten Island it has a little over 1 million people. It's a multi-lingual place because of Belgian necessity (Dutch and French (and German )are the official languages) and because of the EU. It has new buildings, but lots of history, too. Its roads are named, not numbered. they are narrow in places and broad in others. (At least according to the maps I've looked at.)

This got me thinking about my fears of going to live there for 8 months. Yes, it's a foreign city. It's different, but it's also a big city, like New York and like Rome. I can manage in NYC. I survived in Rome when I was there on vacation. Now, of course, Brussels is its own place. Has its own history and I expect to fall in love with it on its own terms, but in preparing to go it's useful to think about the connections between there and here, just as I try to show my students the connections between the then and now. Yes, difference is the keystone of history, but we study it to make connections with why we are the way we are today. So, maybe, there is more to connect me and calm me about this move and change by not making where I'm going into some sort of "other," but into a place that offers a connection to where I am right now -- New York City, or at least a specific part of New York City.

Time to get serious....

Okay, it's time to get serious here. First, about the blog and then about that pesky dissertation I'm supposed to be researching and writing.

First, the blog. My previous posts aside, I hope to use this as 1) a way of keeping in touch with loved ones while I'm away from September to April on a research trip in Belgium. 2) I really, really do think interesting things happen to researchers in and out of the archive. My experience during the month of July at the Hoover Institution Archive at Stanford University was proof of that, for me at least. Things like from renting a room from two lovely, elderly Morman sisters (biological sisters, not of a religious order or anything) who openly judge you when you politely tell them your girlfriend will be visiting for a weekend, to sitting across from an acclaimed historian who seems to only work for a half-day in the archive, to discussing with others why on earth a busy and well endowed archive would have only one photocopier that worked maybe 5 out of every 8 hours each day and the way researchers and archivists turn into children when confronted with any disruption in the balance.

When I'm abroad, I hope I'll be able to observe and share not only my experiences working in a foreign archive, but the experiences of living in Brussels the capital of a united Europe and a divided Belgium. (I seriously could be over there while the country divides along it's linguistic/cultural divide....)

Second, the dissertation. All this -- the trip to CA, my time a few years ago in the winter icebox of West Branch, Iowa at Herbert Hoover's Presidential Library, my upcoming trip to Belgium on a very generous fellowship -- is all in service not necessarily of personal betterment, but to find material for my eventual passable dissertation on humanitarian experience during World War I, specifically the experiences of a small number of American men who worked in the service of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. (I know *I* can't wait for the movie version...., right 'cause when you write a blog about something the blog and that something is turned in to a movie, right?! RIGHT?!)

For the month of August I'm living in Brooklyn with my wonderfully supportive and patient girlfriend, Carly while I finish up some research here, enjoy my last month in the States for a while with friends and family, and figure out what the hell a guy takes with him to Belgium. From reading my sources, I know I need a rain coat. Beyond that....