November 15
A whole lot of angsty posts and the North Platte "race riot"
1978
Margaret Mead died today. It keeps intruding on my thoughts. That’s one more person I always wanted to meet…too late. Now I’ll just have to be Margaret Mead. That’s a laugh.
How DARE she die! That’s how I felt with Walt Kelly and, to a lesser extent, Alan Watts. And she was only 76. I wanted her to live into her 90s. Oddly, I don’t know that much about her. I have just read a few of her works, mostly the popular stuff, and there was that talk at Syracuse. Nine or ten years ago!! What have I each done since then?
I’m in Humor class now; the set-up is weird. Usually I sit here:
But there wasn’t a chair there and it looked like the lectern was going to be used, so I sat on the other side of the room. Prof. M came in and sat next to me and mentioned the seating change. Apparently it made him nervous. After the break he had moved his chair so he could be in his usual pedantic position.
He really does want to be The Perfesser. I guess I do, too. I’ll be relieved when I don’t have to be a student any more and I can be a perfesser in the front of the room, too. Up yours, Prof. M.
1979
Another long day at the Library of Congress. Am I tired! Tomorrow I’ll stay home and finish the Textile Science paper. (Poor thing) Then to campus to do various things (more index cards, more pockets, more ring binders). The dissertation moveth slowly. My guess is I’ll be looking at 1000-1500 cartoons over the 31 years, or about 14 more days of Library of Congress work. At 3 days a week, that’s over a month to go. Whoosh! By then I should be able to set up my content analysis. I am not doing much reading these days. The photocopying must be done, boring as it is.
1980
So much is going on, it is impossible to catch up. Bad me! Should have kept up.
1) the chance to stay at UMD appears slim
2) the opportunity to work at the Smithsonian looms closer
3) and there’s always the job at URI.
Today I mostly slept.
1981
The exhibit is in, it took the whole weekend. 11 hours over two days. It looks good up close, not as good from far off (too many bits and pieces).
I get so impatient at times. June seems so far away. I don’t feel pregnant and hardly anyone knows. The semester is drawing to a close. History of Costume I is almost done, just oral reports and the final left. A very unsatisfactory semester; that course seemed to drag horribly. History of Textiles was fine, as usual.
1983
The evolution continues. I feel my interest shifting from the history of fashion to something about technology, responsible consumption, whatever. I’ve been invited to be a discussant at the International Federation of Home Economics in Oslo, Norway on the subject of Household Technology: the Role of Home Economics. A very exciting opportunity; maybe it will help me see my next direction more clearly. After all, I’ve been “doing” men’s and boys’ clothing for about four years; maybe it’s time for a new direction.
Comment 2023
It was not, and a good thing, too.
1986
This is not a situation conducive to relaxation…or work. I’ve pretty much kept busy but feel very much in limbo. I might have the baby today, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Or maybe next week. It’s going to be soon, this weekend would be best. Tomorrow evening would also work. But I have no control. I keep having little contractions, 2 or 3 at a time, about five minutes apart. Then they stop for a while.
Later-
Well, we took a worthless trip to the hospital to get checked. They put me on a monitor and I continued to crank away in the same pattern, but nothing happened. Since I came home, they’d slowed and finally stopped, so I’m going to bed. Jim is at work downtown all night tonight. So if I feel like getting up and turning on the light, I can. This is so nerve-wracking. I’ll tell you one thing: Kiddo 1 is very, very ready.
1997
Question two: can I get through this weekend and get rid of somethings?
Help me let go of my anxiety about my children. May this be a restful, fulfilling and productive day.
2002
Yesterday I started really thinking about my future and felt a hard tug to return to the department, after several years with College Park Scholars. I need more time to do research and write. What to do, what to do?
2005
What can I say about a 3-month hiatus in journaling? I could pretend I’ve been on a cruise, had an affair with a much younger man, took up the violin again and mastered it, or wrote a short, amazing novel. But the truth is I’ve been wearing myself out at work, spending long hours on campus, and watching junk TV. I spent the first 6 weeks of the semester going to physical therapy for my shoulder. Two one-hour sessions a week, plus travel time. It did wonders for my shoulder, but messed up my schedule. I am struggling to maintain any semblance of the PT work, but often forget. So my shoulder is getting more sore again, of course. Basically I need to stretch and strengthen. A lot. Jim and I had a good anniversary, and great weeks leading up to it. But since mid-October we have both been too busy for even a long conversation.
I am doing some great reading. Right now, Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. How have I missed her? How indeed?
2016
My wanderings here in North Platte have taken me back to the microfilm machine at the library, and the 1929 North Platte Evening Telegraph. Long ago, I had stumbled across a news article in the New York Times about a "race riot" in North Platte. I was researching something else, and this was when photocopy machines were uncommon, even at the Library of Congress, so I didn't save the story, or even take notes. But I remembered. And as the Internet expanded, I would try to find more information from time to time. Here is what you'll find today about the incident.
“On Saturday morning July 13, 1929, in North Platte, a white police officer was shot and killed by a Negro he was trying to arrest. The slain officer was Edward Green, a well-known former acting chief of police, and one-time professional baseball player. The black man was Louis (Slim) Seeman, operator of the Humming Bird Inn, a chicken-dinner lunchroom located in his home on West 7th Street. Shortly afterward Seeman, too, was dead, either by his own hand or as result of police gunfire. Following the shooting deaths, a small group of whites threatened the city's black citizens, most of whom had fled by late afternoon.”
David G Dales, “North Platte Racial Incident: Black-White Confrontation, 1929,” Nebraska History 60 (1979): 424-446. http://nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1979NorthPlatte.pdf
If you read the whole article, you see that it's a very complicated story. The news reports were eventually found to have exaggerated, adding lurid detail, increasing the Black population of North Platte from around 30 to 200, and describing nonexistent babies nearly drowning as they escaped in a rain storm that never happened. But there are also bits of truth. There was a small group of men who circulated among the Black community and warned the residents to get out of town by 3 pm. There was a Ku Klux Klan presence in the town at the time. The men accused of chasing the Black people away were tried, and all were acquitted. The entire incident is *still* blamed on the Black people; an acquaintance told me last week he had heard about the story when he was a kid, but that "there was a lot of prostitution and crime in that neighborhood". The claim that Seeman shot the officer and himself with the same sawed-off shotgun is contradicted by the autopsy.
So what matters? Is it a happy ending that it wasn't a race riot, after all?
2019
After two days away from the task, I am halfway through a total rehab of this fucking chapter. It is possible I will be done by the weekend. Jeeezuzzzz, I hope so!
2024
Five years later, the chapter lies in various files (digital and paper), and the book is dead. Closure is a fine thing.