January 2011

The June 7 issue of Harper’s Weekly contained a writer’s recollections of his interview with the recently deceased Charles Babbage, a British mathematician who had invented a calculating machine in the 1820s. Although Babbage never actually built his “analytical engine,” which would have run on punch cards, he was not averse to making predictions: “Mr. Babbage believe[d] that calculating machines could not merely work out sums, but even that they might be so constructed as to perform the most complex processes of mathematics.” Babbage had also asserted that “machines might be made to find out perfect play at chess, though the united labors of so many generations of players have as yet failed to discover it.”

For Utah’s Mormon pioneers the spring of 1848 brimmed with promise. They had been arriving since the previous July, hoping in that harsh and remote land to finally escape persecution. Their trip through the desert had been arduous, and the ensuing winter had been fierce. But now, amidst glorious mountain scenery, as towns arose in the desert and the sun shone on acres of sprouting crops, they could almost feel God smiling.

Then the crickets came. In late May dense swarms of the buzzing, ravenous insects—described as “a cross between the spider and the buffalo”—devastated the Mormons’ fields. One pioneer’s diary recorded: “Today to our utter astonishment, the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans for us and in twenty minutes there was not a vestige of them to be seen. They next swept over peas, then came into our garden; took everything clean.”

On May 29 Wisconsin entered the Union as the thirtieth state. It was the fifth and final state to be formed from the Old Northwest, and its admission closed the book (except for a slice of present-day Minnesota) on the territory ceded from Britain in the Revolutionary War. The move had been almost a decade in the making. With new settlers pouring in, Wisconsin’s voters had rejected statehood four times in the early 1840s, preferring to remain a territory under the federal government’s financial umbrella. In 1846, however, with federal assistance decreasing and national politics heating up, Wisconsin decided that the time was ripe.

The would-be state already had a name (standardized in 1845 as Wisconsin over such variants as Meskousing, Ouisconsin, and Wiskonsan), a nickname for its inhabitants (Badgers, for the lead miners of the southwest who lived in burrows in the ground), and more or less fixed borders (though the northwestern boundary remained to be determined). All it lacked was a constitution, so 124 delegates assembled in Madison in the fall of 1846 to write one.

On June 15 Margaret Jones of Charlestown became the first person in Massachusetts to be executed for witchcraft. She was New England’s second such victim; the first had been Alse (or Alice) Young of Windsor, Connecticut, hanged on May 26, 1647. Little is known about Alice Young. As early as 1638, however, Dorothy Talbye was hanged in Boston for killing her child at the behest (as she admitted) of Satan.

The evidence against Jones, as recorded in Gov. John Winthrop’s diary, was strong. Her “malignant touch” could cause illness in people she disliked. She practiced as a healer, and her medicines “were harmless, as aniseed, liquors, etc., yet had extraordinary violent effects.” She sometimes put a curse on those who refused her services, “and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued . . . beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.” She also performed feats of prophecy and clairvoyance.

The February/March 1998 issue carries a story titled “My Lai, Thirty Years After” (“My Brush With History”), whose author, Rachel Snyder, is an assistant professor at DePaul University in Chicago. Ms. Snyder says that she “taught Vietnam War literature for nearly three years.” Yet in her story she says that Highway 1, which follows the Vietnamese coast, is the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That famed network of roads was actually deep inland, largely in Laos, and it was so central to the conduct of the war that even a casual student should know that it was not on the coast. One wonders how literature can be taught devoid of its historical context.

Ms. Snyder’s error can be dismissed as just another example of the disconnect too often seen between the worlds of theory and history. But can we so easily excuse the editor for letting such an obvious mistake be perpetuated?

The Glebe house in Woodbury, Connecticut, is appropriately named. A glebe, from the Latin word gleba, which means “clod of earth,” is a minister’s land endowment; the more fertile it is, the better it will support the pastor and his family. In fact, the earth of this western Connecticut glebe has proved especially fecund. Preserved as a memorial since 1892, opened to the public in 1925, and later listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, Woodbury’s Glebe House played a critical role in the growth of the Episcopal Church, as the site of the election of its first bishop. Seven years ago, after a plan commissioned in 1926 was uncovered in a university archive, Glebe House also became a centerpiece for the only existing American garden by the famous English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll.

The best time to visit the Confederados is when they have their quarterly community picnics at the Campo. The gatherings normally take place the second weekend in January, April, July, and October, although dates are subject to change. For picnic dates, general information about the community, and inquiries about seeking lost relatives or new friends, write to Noemia Pyles at the Associação Descendência Americana, Rua Tamoios 566, Santa Barbara d’Oeste, São Paulo 13456-020, Brazil. To make telephone contact in English, call Thomas Steagall at 011-55-11-3865-7460. The Immigration Museum (Museu da Imigração) in Santa Barbara is at Praça 9 de Julho s/n; phone: 011-55-19-455-5082.

I congratulate Gerald W. Bracey for helping shatter the myth that American public education is in a steady state of decline (“What Happened to America’s Public Schools?,” November). He offers convincing arguments that we are beginning to turn the corner in education and that there is some real progress to report. Mr. Bracey’s balanced appraisal is a breath of fresh air.

We still have a long way to go, of course. We must challenge all students to meet high standards, and we must encourage all parents to be fully involved in their children’s education. We must connect every classroom and library to the information superhighway; right now only about 13 percent of classrooms are connected (up from 2 percent just a few years ago). And over the next ten years, two million dedicated, qualified teachers will have to be hired to replace retirees and those who will leave the classroom for other work.