Category: opinion

Thoughts on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

As much as I know that this post should be limited to a sharing of information, such is the case these days that a tendency to editorialize will inevitably color it. I want to believe that I am capable of rising above the vitriol and general nonsense that emanates incessantly from the current White House Administration. Nevertheless, I ask, how insecure must you be to insist that at every public entry point into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) a warning will be affixed that alerts the public, “Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country”?

This pathetic and petty warning appears to be a distillation of the 162-page report prepared by the White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC) regarding the policies and programs of the Smithsonian Institution. Even the report’s title “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage” inspires the titillation of scandal that Mr. Orange Face just loves to provoke at every turn.

Have you ever visited the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History? For me, it was the highlight of our family’s trip to D.C. in 1987, back when we parents were still able to influence our children’s activities to any measurable degree. A little overwhelming given the enormity of its collection, but breathtaking, too, for the same reason. Because I wanted for my children to have enough of a context so that the exhibits really engaged their interest and curiosity, I spent a lot of time preparing notes that I hand-wrote on index cards. I needn’t have bothered with this exercise because—in the moment—I kept having to refer to my prepared remarks. Such was my shaky command of American history. (Also in that moment, I became the embarrassing mom. . . and wife.)

Revolutionary War uniform (American Continental Army “Lottery coat”)

I had imagined that I, like any knowledgeable museum docent, would usher my rapt charges through the more popular exhibition spaces, pointing out fascinating details, such as this, delivered sotto voce as if to share a juicy bit of gossip: Did you know that First Lady Mamie Eisenhower’s pearls were fake? Without breaking stride or momentum, we would then move on to view Mr. Rogers’ unforgettable red cardigan, at which point I would reach for my chest with splayed hand and shake my head as I pointed out, So sad he couldn’t tell the difference between his red cardigan and his green one; all brown, of course, just different shades. Our beloved Mr. Rogers was colorblind. (Another fun fact: his mother made all his sweaters, installing zippers instead of buttons, so that her son could easily sing his song while putting on his sweater.) Our visit to Mr. Rogers’ cardigan would be followed by the ruby red slippers that Dorothy had clicked together—a tad uncertain—when the all-important lesson descended upon her that there’s no place like home. Anyone knows that Dorothy wore “ruby red” in the 1939 movie, but did you know that L. Frank Baum had described them as silver in his 1900 novel. I’ll leave you to puzzle out why the directors opted for red.*

Isn’t it astonishing that our woefully misguided president felt the need to squander his time and energies by writing and issuing an executive order aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history”? No one is against truth and sanity, of course, but the finer details of the mandate insisted that the vice president (in this case, J.D. Vance) eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian. Central to the aims of our president’s “Truth and Sanity” executive order is the desire to remove historical evidence of poor behavior. Let’s face it, though; our “shared inheritance” includes, in addition to extraordinary accomplishments, some pretty atrocious behavior, even immoral behavior, all manner of behavior that unmasks flawed systems of belief. We weren’t perfect. We’re not perfect now.

Is the inclusion in the Smithsonian’s “Many Voices, One Nation” exhibition of implements of bondage that reflect that long era of slavery too much for the delicate sensibilities of the white nationalists among us? In the 162-page report, whose release by the White House Domestic Policy Council was timed to coincide with our nation’s semiquincentennial, the DPC claims that the Smithsonian’s goal is “to instill within visitors its belief that migration and immigration, including the granting of citizenship to illegal aliens, is a defining modern-day civil rights and human liberty issue.” You’d have to have been living under a rock the last two years not to concede that citizenship and immigration are a defining modern-day civil rights and human liberty issue. (We could argue, too, that they have been for as long as we’ve been a nation). It’s hardly a criticism from which we should feel the need to recoil in disgust. It’s a modest wake-up call that suggests we can do better by the immigrants who arrive here, often in desperation, but buoyed by hope.

Descendants of immigrants should have no trouble conceptualizing that sense of hope that propelled their ancestors to America. It would have been the one element that sustained them through their journey to a destination whose precise details they often found impossible to conceive. The journey began, of course, with them hugging their loved ones—holding them tighter and a little bit longer—and saying goodbye. I wonder, did they believe their own promises to see them again? As I’m sure many descendants of immigrants do, I often try to imagine the contrasting cultures that our forebears experienced. For example, rural western Ireland tenancy life vs. mill city tenements and textile factories. However disparate those settings, America then and now were similar in their disparagement of immigrants.

The Pew Research Center offers interesting insight into recent patterns of immigration. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/) Inasmuch as our nation has been shaped throughout our history by the arrival of immigrants from all corners of the earth (as much as 98% of our population can be categorized as immigrants or descendants of immigrants), our policies toward immigration have become more restrictive in recent years. It can be argued that they have always reflected an attitude of contempt born of suspicion and distrust (classic xenophobia). (Even President Biden enacted legislation that imposed stricter limits on asylum in 2024.) Under the current administration, we find that for the first time since the 1960’s the immigrant population has declined. (Pew)

The current Administration has been especially callous and cruel toward immigrants and other disenfranchised classes of people to the point whereby they hope not just to squelch constitutionally protected rights, but to silence and even erase marginalized groups who dare to exercise them (and even those individuals who don’t “create a fuss” because, why, they just look different or they have a foreign-sounding surname or they support the wrong people or causes. . . or whatever).

When one sanitizes our past—as the President’s Executive Order 12453 of March 27, 2025 mandates—it demeans our citizenry. Instead of expressing the fullness of our nation’s story, a romanticized and inauthentic narrative supplants it. The very thing that the executive order decries—the “replacing [of] objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”—is systematically (and ironically) becoming our reality.

What would the Administration have visitors see at the NMAH (instead of the expertly curated exhibitions)? Evidence that portrays our founding fathers as perfect human beings? Wealthy plantation owners, but without the slaves? Photos of immigrants arriving from Western Europe, their faces aglow from hours and days spent lounging on open ship decks (instead of pressed uncomfortably together in cargo holds)? What about the lessons that the women’s suffrage movement can teach us? Does the Administration quail at the thought that “groups with limited political power” can effect real change through their right to vote and through public protest?

The President’s executive order took direct aim at the venerable Smithsonian Institution. (He has a habit of singling out prestigious, honored organizations that enjoy acclaim by the public. Another case in point: the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.) It seems less about professed claims of “improper ideology” and more a consequence of an uneducated, petulant man whose stunted development provides no room for dissent, and whose ignorance about American history has him pitching a fit because not enough museum space has been dedicated to Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the vaunted glory of our founding fathers. (One can see here the extent of this president’s understanding of American history.) And, forget about the Smithsonian’s encouragement of critical thinking! That just leads to close examination and challenging questions. Yikes, we can’t have that!

I haven’t returned to the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, but it remains on my list. The older me would want to see very different exhibits than those that the young mother in me singled out for her children’s educational benefit. (To begin, I would not want to miss Carl Yastrzemski’s batting helmet. That, and examples of tools used in bloodletting because I have a morbid curiosity about infectious diseases in the era before germ theory became accepted science.)

First Ladies Exhibit (photo taken demonstrates lack of ability of blogger in operation of camera)

The entirety of the Smithsonian Institution as an educational and cultural treasure—with all 21 of its museums, galleries, libraries, and the Zoo, not to mention its research and education centers—is an invaluable treasure. It articulates our collective moments of achievement and allows us to pause, too, in reflection and inquiry in the face of our sobering, unenlightened moments, those that have caused us great shame. Reputable museums don’t overplay the lustrous aspects in a shallow bid to win our approval. That’s not what they’re all about. To present history in an authentic manner, they must also examine and offer evidence that sometimes counterbalances and other times countervails the burnished features of our past. The best museums, however, take it a step further; they don’t just present and explain artifacts, they stimulate a sense of wonder and inquiry. The viewer is guided to think, Why (or how) did this happen? What does it mean?

I’ve read parts of the DPC report “Saving America’s Story” and related summaries, and urge others to do so. The National Council on Public History (NCPH), just one among many historical organizations to condemn the report, considers it to be an “unserious and distorted document. . . [that] fails to reflect the basic and fundamental standards of scholarship, including an accurate interpretation of the full evidentiary record.”

The DPC report was prepared by non-historians who perhaps harbor their own myopic viewpoint of American history and who—at the very least—delivered to their president exactly the product he mandated, a sharp and dogmatic criticism of one of our most respected and cherished museums. I leave you with this question: How well do you trust this report about the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History?

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*With the introduction of technicolor in movies in the late 1930’s, it was felt, naturally, that red shoes would be more of a wow factor than silver. Well done, Noel Langley, screenwriter.

Sources:

PewResearchCenter.org: “What the data says about immigrants in the U.S.”, August 21, 2025″. Kramer, Stephanie and Passel, Jeffrey.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Smithsonian-Report-Saving-Americas-Story.pdf

https://abcnews.com/Politics/scathing-report-white-house-accuses-smithsonian-presenting-radical/story?id=134515705

https://ncph.org/news/ncph-statement-in-response-to-white-house-saving-americas-story-report

William Clark Did Not Reward York with Freedom. . . at Least Not for Several Years

sculpture base at U. of Portland

Yes, it’s a pile of rocks. I came upon it while walking around the University of Portland campus one day this past week. Each day of my week-long Portland stay began with a walk around my University Park neighborhood before I headed over to my daughter’s house to hang with my new grandson. Anomalies always inspire curiosity.

To the uninitiated (such as myself), one of the first things you notice when you visit Portland is the abundance of memorials to Merriwether Lewis and William Clark and other reminders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Corps of Discovery. Until my daughter moved to the Pacific Northwest ten years ago, there was really little substance to my understanding of that stage of what many of us call “American history”. (And of course, that understanding had been shaped by a K-12 Eurocentric curriculum.) If you asked me to explain what I recalled about the whole Lewis and Clark thing, I’d probably say something like, “One of them was Merriwether, and they wore buckskin outfits and traversed wide swathes of wilderness in our country’s vast interior, forded wrathful rivers, came upon hostile Indians — whom they either subdued or befriended if there was something to be gained through such exploitation — and they eventually arrived at the Pacific Ocean, whereupon they exclaimed, ‘We have thus succeeded in manifesting destiny.'” (My lack of genuine understanding is shameful.)

Multnomah River (aka Willamette R.) from bluff at U. of Portland

For a little over thirty years (from 1988 to June of 2020), the north campus of the U. of Portland held a bronze sculpture of William Clark, his black slave York*, and an unidentified Native American who had served as Clark’s guide. The sculpture showed a reverential Clark peering into the distance and pointing, with York and the Native American following his gaze. No matter that “Seekseekqua” (the object of Clark’s interest) was well-known to the Native bands who populated the area — and had been for thousands of years, Clark had “discovered” Oregon Country’s second highest mountain, which he pronounced should henceforth be called Mt. Jefferson.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, social media got busy by providing lists of potential “targets” for those wishing to express their frustration through acts of protest. When the University of Portland’s sculpture appeared on one of the protest lists, authorities removed first York’s figure, and then a day later, the Clark and Native American figures. What remains now is a pile of rocks, a list of original donors for the funding of the 1988 sculpture, and a very interesting interpretation of events. Read it yourself here:

In my mind, what is lost by the removal of the sculpture is the opportunity to supply a more accurate depiction and analysis of events and a more authentic statement about its symbolism. The sculpture should be returned. The plaque that accompanies it, however, should be refashioned to echo the historical truth.

*Like most sons of plantation owners, as a boy, William had been given a black slave — similar in age — who would serve as a companion and valet. Because York was not only trustworthy, but showed exceptional promise as a wilderness “survivalist”, he was deemed a creditable candidate for the cross-country Corps of Discovery. It didn’t hurt that he was tall and powerfully built, a reassuring presence in the expedition’s camp. Despite York’s contributions to the enterprise, he was not rewarded with manumission (release from slavery) for several years. (The record is unclear as to precisely when it happened, just that it is likely to have occurred before 1832, nearly two decades after the expedition.)

Read about York here.

Source:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/york-explored-west-lewis-and-clark-his-freedom-wouldnt-come-until-decades-later-180968427/

I’m Giving Yellowstone Another Chance

It isn’t the first time I’ve come across this term — flyover country — but I have to pause and really think about its meaning. When I do that, I realize that it’s not a very flattering descriptor; in fact, it can be seen as dismissive, even disrespectful, as if the spaces labeled as such are somehow insignificant, not worthy of visiting.

And that’s what its meaning suggests. Here’s the surprising thing, though — when the term was first used, in 1980 (according to the Oxford Dictionary), it was in the context of self-identification. The writer Thomas McGuane, a native Michigander, portrayed his adopted state of Montana as “flyover country” in an Esquire article about landscape artist Russell Chatham, fellow Montanan.

It is unlikely that McGuane foresaw how durable his expression would become, but he was earnest in his desire to convey a particular sentiment representative of people living in the heartland. And he should know. He grew up in Michigan, was educated there, and despite regular sojourns to each coast’s urban centers, has made Montana his home for several decades. He has spent a lifetime observing not just people, but nature. I’m not prepared to say that McGuane’s cynicism developed after he turned from writing novels to writing screenplays for Hollywood, but it can be said that his reverence for nature’s gifts has been a constant. That it would be McGuane whose name will be forever tethered to a pejorative seems unfortunate.

Approaching the Cascades (I think)

For ten years I’ve regularly done the loooong coast-to-coast flight in order to visit my younger daughter, who lives in Portland, Oregon. On most occasions I take the window seat; it allows me to periodically break up the monotony by studying the landscape below. The middle areas of the country that seem particularly devoid of concentrated activity always excite a sense of wonder — what would it be like to live in this part of the country? When I observe a land surface that has the appearance of an enormous, fleecy blanket draped over a mysterious jumble of objects of varying sizes, I’m curious, how close is the nearest home? The nearest farmers’ market? When I finally do catch movement — a car or truck, likely, traveling along a slim thread of lonely road — it reinforces that initial wonder.

I’m not what you would call well-traveled. I’ve been to Europe, Central America, a couple of places in the eastern provinces of Canada, several places up and down the East Coast, and — of course — the Pacific Northwest. It would seem that I’ve only ever picked away at the edges, never experienced the wide open spaces of our country’s interior. Part of it has to do with my supposed need to be within striking distance of an ocean. When you fly from the east coast to the west, it takes a while before the distances between urban areas grow so great that you sense a real shift, as if you should fully expect to have your passport handy were you to land somewhere below. As the plane passes over North Dakota, then Montana, it’s impossible to ignore the physical contrast between what is rolling out beneath you and the tightly arranged communities on either coast. I find it humbling. It’s also a reminder of the foreignness — to me — of so much of our country.

All of this current reflection would not have come to pass if not for a decision I made a couple weeks ago. I’m going to give Yellowstone another chance, I vowed. I watched Season 1 a year ago, and then promptly pitched the remote across the room and thought, what a horrible bunch of creatures. Even the ones who seem decent or innocent become poisoned by their association with the Duttons. There may be one exception — Walker, who, soon after being condemned to servitude at the Yellowstone, remarks about the aura of evil that pervades the ranch. (As I begin Season 2, I hold out the slimmest of hopes that he’s incorruptible.)

I plowed through Season 1 again, and felt that same urge to sling the remote across the room. I want to understand, however, why Yellowstone persists as one of TV’s most popular drama series. I’m filled with questions: Do viewers hang on the desperate hope that, sooner or later, these vile characters will reveal traces of humanity? Is it instead our need for validation that there are depraved people out there (maybe even entire communities), but we are not like that? Does it instead have something to do — at least marginally — with the derisive attitude that people in the heartland have toward the “coastal elites”? (The unfavorable portrayal of them is unmistakable.) Or is it the yearning to experience — even if indirectly — the majesty and breathtaking beauty of Big Sky country? Maybe it’s the wish to make sense of the cowboy lifestyle, unveil the mystique? (I do love the idea that the show employs authentic cowboy actors.)

Because I want to be proven wrong — I want Walker to resist the evil that he knows surrounds the ranch, and I want Jimmy not to be so needy (to the point that he loses all remaining vestiges of innocence) — I’m giving Yellowstone this second chance. . . even if it means subjecting myself to Beth Dutton, a specimen of pure evil if ever there was one.

Am I wrong?

Sources (for background on origin of “flyover country”, and Thomas McGuane):

Attaching Value to Objects

On a shelf in my garage sit a clunky set of headphones and a 1980’s era Sony Walkman that no longer serve any purpose. I can’t bring myself to part with them, though. They belonged to my husband, and he wore them (for over three decades) every time he cut our acre of lawn. His Sony Walkman would be holstered on his belt, and each week of the cutting season, a different cassette would whirl reel to reel, pleasantly mixing with the muffled engine sound outside his head. When he exhausted the playlist options — it wouldn’t have taken long — the cycle would repeat. Long after cassette tapes fell from favor, George stuck to his habit. I look at his headphones and the memories mushroom up and fill me with nostalgia.

In my retirement, I begin most days with some type of inspirational or thought-provoking article. This morning I ended up on the Smithsonian Magazine website, as I often do when I want to explore topics that are historical or scientific in nature. In January I posted about NFT’s (“non-fungible tokens”), so it was natural that I would be interested in a bizarre stunt pulled by a self-styled philanthropist who has hitched his star to the potential profitability of NFT’s.

Martin Mobarak is the founder and CEO of Frida.nft who, in July, had high hopes of blazing new trails in the world of priceless art collection. . . in the virtual sense. Attired in a sequined blazer festooned on the back with the face of Frida, he made a showy display involving martini glass, blue rubbing alcohol, and lit match. He thus irrevocably “transformed” an authentic (and irreplaceable) drawing done by Frida Kahlo in the 1940’s, a sketch entitled “Fantasmones Siniestros”. Its estimated value is. . . was. . . ten million dollars. But was it real? And what if it wasn’t? While the extravagant spectacle received little attention at the time, Mobarak’s impulsivity has now landed him in a heap of trouble.

On the one hand, if the drawing was indeed authentic, Mobarak faces criminal charges. (According to a statement made by the Mexican government in September, “The deliberate destruction of an artistic monument constitutes a crime in terms of the federal law on archaeological, artistic and historical monuments and zones.”) If the drawing that was permanently “transformed” was a reproduction, he is in violation of copyright laws. Lastly, he may be guilty of deception and fraud. No bueno, in any scenario.

I’m straining not to react with pure disgust. Who in their right mind burns a Frida Kahlo work? It seemed important that I venture down the rabbit hole, in this case by mining the annals of Martin Mobarak, flashy businessman from Mexico, currently home-based in Miami. The quick and dirty synopsis looks like this: fisherman in the Bering Sea, prospector (silver mine), developer of an internet service in Alaska, food service provider as well as aviation services in Florida, a B&B in Mexico. One has to admire his enterprising nature and sheer pluck. And I do. . . admire that.

After I sifted through the layer of news about the current Mobarak-Kahlo controversy, I was able to temper my feelings about the permanent loss of priceless art. Built into the scheme is a charitable offshoot. Inasmuch as the endeavor was to enrich Mobarak (in his wildest, non fungible dreams), 30% of proceeds are — or were — intended to benefit charity. The causes about which he feels most passionate are rare childhood diseases and abuse of women. On the surface it would seem that careful and deliberate thought went into his charitable choices, more so than the hastily-planned “transformation” event, which was likened to “the ice bucket challenge, but with fire” (according to Gabrielle Pelicci, who helped him plan the risky stunt).

In the end, the Kahlo NFT’s have not been selling — the intent had been to fractionalize the ten million dollar iconic work into 10,000 NFT’s. That didn’t even come close to happening. Apparently, the “Fantasmones Siniestros” sketch is nothing more than a few unrecognizable flakes of ashy residue, reducing Mobarak’s speculative move to a tragedy, one that — but for his ego (and a sense of desperation) — was completely avoidable.

Perhaps my sense of alarm is so great because I haven’t bought into the idea that we now fully exist in a sphere where things of value can be digitally “memorialized”. When I recently digitalized several hundred family photos (including daguerrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, and — additionally — all manner of photographs from the 20th century) and made them available for family to view on Flickr, it very much occurred to me that the digital images will ever fail to evoke the same emotion that the physical ones do. When I hold in my hand the ambrotype of my great-grandfather, I’m better able to imagine the moment in which the photo was taken. I imagine, even, the thought process behind my great-great-grandmother’s decision to have the picture taken in the first place. The high school portrait of my dad, still sitting in its frame, presents an opportunity to reflect on, not just his life, but his parents’ as well, even the society into which he was born. The portrait would have hung on one of the walls in their home on Warner Street, Medford (“on the Somerville line”), later in their home at Wolcott Park; it would have kept the wallpaper underneath it bright and light as all around it faded and became dingy. Of course I only knew my father as an adult, a parent, never as a seventeen year old. At seventeen he had yet to confront the real obstacles that life predictably serves up. And he had yet to be judged harshly — or, in fact, be coaxed himself to judge, for example, the sobering calculus that would result in 7.5 million American service men and women being sent overseas to safeguard democracy in the 1940s. Dad’s face is smooth and unlined; he looks serious, but innocence and vulnerability can be read in his dark eyes.

We have a habit of needing to attach a monetary value to all that we own. I can’t do that with some of my possessions. In many cases, to do so would miss the essential point. Value so often resides in the stories that objects hold and the historical moments they beseech us to preserve.

Is it unwise of me to think that NFT’s are a fad, that their popularity will eventually fade? Are we too deep into a world that is virtual that we’ve lost reverence for all things tangible? George may have defied the march of technological advancement, but even he was alert enough to know that his headphones and Sony Walkman had passed from being “cutting edge” to being quaint, outdated. And an 8″ x 10″ grayscale, monochromatic high school portrait in a simple 1930’s frame will only ever hold sentimental value. What, then, will NFT’s be replaced by? I wonder.

It would grieve me to think that any of us are okay with destroying an original, as Martin Mobarak did, in order to inflate the value of its representative equivalent. Moreover, let’s never lose sight of why we strive to preserve objects of value (such as a Sony Walkman or a family portrait), or — of greater consequence — why we place our treasured artifacts (important documents such as the Declaration of Independence, priceless works of art, etc) in museums. They trumpet our achievements and our trials — in short, our story. As authentic artifacts, they evoke curiosity and emotion, and sustain interest much more effectively than any cryptographic asset can possibly do.

Maybe that’s why Mobarak’s scheme failed.

Sources of Information:

Anthony Comstock’s Permanent Harm to Women’s Rights — It Goes Back to the 1800’s

Some of my best thinking happens while I’m enjoying my morning coffee and reading something from Smithsonian magazine. This morning’s read included an archeological piece on the workers who constructed Stonehenge 4500 years ago; in particular, it was about their poop (and their dogs’ poop, too). But, as fascinating as the short article was (one that I just had to share with my daughter in Portland, whose scientific curiosity is as distinctive as mine or — alternatively — whose filial sense of responsibility demands that she indulge me), it was the second article that I read that struck a more emotional chord. And, frankly, the current topic is nothing if not fraught (with its political overtones), and one likely to provoke an emotional maelstrom. . . if one reflects too intensely on the “historical moment” in which we currently find ourselves.

I invite you to imagine this scene: a husband and wife are in a passionate embrace in their bedroom when they hear rustling outside their second story window. Peering at them as they’re involved in “the act” is a furious-looking man whose enormous bald pate catches the reflection of the full moon filtering through the trees. He has held his tongue until he is sure that the couple have committed an illegal act. The illegal act? The husband has slipped on an industrial-grade condom (not the micro-thin, lubricated and scented “rubber” that wouldn’t become available for a looong time after). The man outside the window — as a “special agent” for the United States Post Office Department — leaps from his perch on one of the tree’s limbs through the open window and shouts, “You’re both under arrest for violating Connecticut’s obscenity laws.”

Sound ridiculous? Anthony Comstock was a pretty ridiculous man of the 19th century who was nevertheless instrumental in the passage of one of our country’s most restrictive federal laws concerning civil liberties and the right to personal privacy. Moreover, he was granted an insane degree of power to police it. So, the image presented in the paragraph above is indeed far-fetched, but Connecticut’s 1879 version — one of the many “little Comstock laws” that were implemented by states subsequent to the 1873 federal anti-obscenity law — illustrates what could happen. You could be a married couple who utilizes any manner of contraceptive, and — if found guilty — be subject to a fine, imprisonment, or both. Even coitus interruptus — always an option treated with natural skepticism by the woman — and the rhythm method (the Catholic Church’s favorite recommendation that compliant mothers of large broods likewise — long after the fact — viewed with mistrust) were outlawed. Nearly one hundred years would pass before the Comstock Law would be successfully challenged.

Whether you see yourself as someone who will be affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to overturn Roe v. Wade, there’s a gnawing sense that our society — already dangerously frayed — will be re-shaped by the Court’s unwillingness to preserve the most private of privacy rights of our citizens. Excuse me, . . . our female citizens. And whether you stand on the side of the majority of our citizens who wish to preserve the rights guaranteed in Roe v. Wade, or you’re instead guided by a belief system that sanctifies the rights of a fetus (or maybe even an embryo), you’ll no doubt appreciate the magnitude of this issue. It’s quite illuminating to note at this juncture that the first half of the 19th century — and even through much of the 18th century, as well — women enjoyed much more freedom (at least legally) to exercise control over their own bodies. How, then, did it all get upended? Who determined that a woman — any woman — was incapable of making her own decisions where it concerns her own body, her own health, her own needs?

To form an idea as to how our society veered onto a more noxious path, you can take a look at the disproportionate number of patent medicine ads in newspapers of the late 19th century targeting women, who were seen as constitutionally weak and nervous, whose very womanhood was viewed as pathological. It truly must have been a bewildering time for women. At the same time that they were beginning to flex their muscles in the work arena (outside the home) and to insist on being included in political discourse, they were being assaulted with messages of their inadequacy, their inferiority. Clearly, gaslighting is not a new phenomenon!

It is interesting to note that running parallel to the rise in feminist activism and advocacy was a contemporaneous (and insidious) trend that over time proved ruinous in terms of women’s constitutional protections. What began as a shift in perception evolved into a potent mechanism to wield control. You see, women had little agency until some time around the Civil War — in other words, they posed no threat to the establishment while they performed their wifely duties in the home.

As our country became more urbanized and people adapted to industrialized life, the social and business interactions that they engaged in became less intimate and less defined. . . and a whole lot less principled. The foods that people ate and the medicines they took were no longer ones that they grew or concocted. By the turn of the century, abuses were happening throughout the food and drug supply network and everyone seemed to recognize that some type of oversight was needed. When you set up a regulatory program (such as, for example, the Food and Drug Administration), you rely on experts. The mandates inherent in the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 were just one instance in which the opinions of the male-dominated medical establishment were deemed unassailable.

So, while women made visible gains during this time in some ways — the vote in 1920, for example — they lost immeasurably in other, more subtle but distressing ways. Their greatest surrender, in my mind, was conceding control over their own bodies to men of medicine and men who cited men of medicine. . . and even men who purported to be men of medicine. As if the matter were one of choice. It was a time of great opportunism, and a great time to be a man, especially a self-righteous, moralistic white man whose puritan (and puritanical) lineage dated back several generations

I’ve always been intrigued by 19th century American history. Admittedly, it’s probably because the invention of photography has made it easy to study intently the figures of the era. Bustled, corseted women standing stiffly next to an even more stiffly arranged Victorian settee are an invitation to reach for my magnifying glass. Even if I have no idea who the subject might be, I’m still very curious about what her life may have been like. Did she hate turnip as much as I do? What kinds of arguments did she have with her parents? Did she like to dance? And if I knew who she was, my questions could be endless.

When I study the portrait of Anthony Comstock, I’m curious about his life, too. He was part of that era when important men tugged on their mutton chops, puffed up their chests with self-importance and passed sweeping and important legislation that would leave future generations wondering what perception-altering drugs they favored when they were looking for professional inspiration and (of course) further opportunities for self-importance, further reason to puff up their chests.

It’s important to examine the broad historical context for clues — it allows for a more meaningful understanding of how we’ve arrived at this moment, one that keenly feels like a worrisome return to an earlier time characterized by huge social inequalities. Only by doing so can we fully acknowledge what’s on the line.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has always been seen as a watershed moment in our country’s long journey to wrest from the federal government control over women’s bodies. For nearly one hundred years, petitioners had been agitating to de-fang a federal law that was forcefully promoted by Anthony Comstock, a tyrannical, mutton-chopped Connecticut yankee whose puritanical upbringing caused in him some pretty inflexible ideas about acceptable behavior among his brethren. . . especially if we include women in that cohort.

(photographer unknown)

Anthony Comstock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1844, either the fourth child of eight or the fourth child of thirteen if you include his five youngest half-siblings. The son of a successful farmer, he was able to directly trace his American ancestry back six generations to the founding of Wethersfield, Connecticut. By Anthony’s time, the family had established a legacy based comfortably on agriculture and civic-mindedness. In William Comstock’s case — William was Anthony’s 4x great-grandfather — such civic responsibilities involved protecting family and community by hefting a musket at critical moments, such as during the Pequot Wars (1636-1637) when he joined his fellow puritan comrades and Mohegan allies in a massacre of 500 Pequot men, women, and children. Such was the sense of duty among Comstock men in their readiness to answer the call that each successive generation either signed up in eagerness to defend their turf (and God-given rights) and/or apply for proud membership in the Sons of the American Revolution.

In trying to make sense of Anthony’s extreme views about decorum that fueled his later crusade, an examination of his formative years goes a long way in explaining his skewed outlook on humankind. He had just turned ten (in 1854) when his mother died in childbirth. Simply put, his orderly and predictable world pitchpoled. With eight children and two servants, Anthony’s father Thomas (for a while) continued to toil and till — rather listlessly — on his farm in New Canaan; soon, however, Anthony’s two oldest brothers began to assume more responsibility for the farm’s management.

And then the Civil War happened.

And then Thomas laid down his pitchfork for good and removed to London. . . where he married a girl (younger than half of his children). Thomas would begin a new family with his second wife off in England, eventually running into financial difficulties. After crossing the Atlantic a few times, he transferred his new brood to Brooklyn, New York, where he would take up residence a mile away from his by then high-profile and very outspoken son Anthony.

Meanwhile, and before striking out for New York City himself, Anthony continued to struggle as he tried to restore order and sense in his world, but heartbreak pursued him. His older brother Samuel died (at age 21) in a Gettysburg hospital after wounds suffered in that battle. (His name appears in a long list of soldiers who succumbed in the months following the Battle of Gettysburg; interestingly, a high percentage of them were casualties of chronic diarrhea — typhoid fever, consumption, and dysentery also being frequently cited as cause of death. ) No doubt devastated by the loss of his brother, Anthony was moved to likewise answer the call, thus joining the Union cause three months later. He was nineteen. His experience as a private in the infantry exposed him for the first time to the rude realities of locker-room behavior among men. He was shocked and appalled. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that his resultant crusade against obscenity and all forms of immorality — one that lasted throughout the rest of his life — had its origins in that episode and was informed by the strict moral code that had been instilled in him by his late mother.

After mustering out and with his eyes now wide open, Anthony descended on the roiling hotbed of indecent behavior — New York City. For a while he held an academic position, but his growing indignation over what he saw as positive proof that American society (being systematically diluted and debased by the rising immigrant population) was slithering its way toward a vile and vulgar morass of immorality led him to advocate with every fiber of his being for the passage (in 1873) of the federal Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.

The implications of this 1873 law, soon dubbed The Comstock Act (or Law), were far-reaching, opening the door for states to draft their own stringent laws that, in many cases, underscored the differences between the haves and the have-nots. People of the upper and middle classes continued — largely unhindered — to avail themselves of outlawed products, but the working class encountered all manner of difficulty in their attempts to access the same. Once Anthony was installed as “special agent” for the United States Postal Service, he was uniquely positioned to observe how New Yorkers exchanged information; some of that information made him quake with disgust and anger. With his new unfettered powers — he could open mail, arrest suspected perpetrators, even entrap people — Anthony Comstock was delirious with his own sense of importance and authority. And he was unstoppable.

And he was easy to spot a mile away. He was a short block of a man with a shiny bald head and ginger-colored sideburns that sprang audaciously from the sides of his face. Purposeful in his stride, his forward motion was, nevertheless, hindered and made comical by his habit of walking on the balls of his (tiny) feet. Often caricatured because of his physique and behaviors, as well as his idiosyncratic opinions, whenever he turned his glowering attentions on potential victims, the intensity of his gaze alone could make them tremble in fear.

It’s worthwhile to take pause at this juncture in order to contemplate the very real — as well as the emotional — fallout from this one man’s crusade. The law made birth control illegal. Let’s just start there. And abortion was seen by Anthony as the most egregious violation of the law; recalling how his saintly mother died giving birth to her eighth child, it must have been abhorrent to him that women (even those who were married) would entertain the thought of rejecting a pregnancy. They should be willing to die in service to their primary (procreative) purpose, must have been his thinking.

Moreover, it may have been one thing to arrest people who were peddling “obscene” literature — notwithstanding the subjective (and highly variable) nature of the word’s definition, but Anthony always seemed to veer into the extreme. He once was offended by an undressed mannequin in a San Francisco store display window and brought charges, (which of course were later dismissed in court.) Equally absurd was the controversy over an oil painting. Google “September Morn” — not Neil Diamond’s song, but the oil painting by Paul Chabas. Even if you don’t look it up, let me sum for you: it’s a naked young woman standing in the shallows and striking a modest pose. Her nakedness was displayed in a NYC shop window, causing our crusader to storm angrily into the shop and demand that it be removed at once. Anthony was often impulsive and quite the hothead, not averse to getting physical or threatening . As the painting had already withstood legal scrutiny earlier in Chicago, our friend Anthony knew that the painting — and the reproductions — had standing, and the most that he could do was cast his opinion publicly, declaring it “demoralizing in the extreme and especially calculated to excite immodesty in the young.”) (Wikipedia)

If there was any “exciting” going on, it was the controversy that clung to Anthony Comstock in every encounter that resulted in him zealously exercising his powers of arrest or through his efforts to otherwise publicly condemn the shameful behaviors of his contemporaries. Occasionally, there were campaigns to overturn the Comstock Law, but at least while Anthony was alive, he enjoyed the backing of some very influential businessmen‚ most notably J.P. Morgan and Samuel Colgate. As always, Congress aimed to keep the captains of industry happy. And it must be said that many U.S. citizens, too, were pleased that they could rely on the indefatigable work of this uncompromising crusader against smut. Nothing would change until 1965.

Griswold v. Connecticut, a case being closely parsed of late, has been considered — from the outset — to be one of the most influential precedent-setting decisions where it concerns right to privacy. Pursued all the way to the Supreme Court, the plaintiff Estelle Griswold, who was executive director of Planned Parenthood, (through her lawyer, Yale lawyer Thomas Emerson) successfully argued in 1965 that Connecticut’s law banning the use of and/or dispensation of contraceptives violated a fundamental implied constitutional right. Eight years later, the success of Roe v Wade would depend on a broadening of the marital privacy rights that were articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut. A woman’s (and her doctor’s) right to privacy and freedom from governmental intrusion was re-interpreted to include abortions. In Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion yesterday, he alludes to future reconsideration of — among other cases — the due process protections that were decided in Griswold v. Connecticut.

As I’ve noted, it’s important to recognize what’s on the line. It feels terribly wrong that a body of nine — not a single one of whom has the biological capacity to become pregnant, either because of gender or age — exercised their power to nullify the constitutional right to an abortion, which, let’s just acknowledge it right now, disproportionately affects black and brown women. It should also be very unsettling that Justice Thomas is essentially welcoming other cases that will further subvert the rights of under-represented cohorts — same sex couples, for example. We’re wholely unaccustomed to court decisions that so ravage constitutional protections, but it does have familiar historical echoes. Our society can’t seem to escape its tradition of suppressing rights that should be enjoyed by all constituencies (while simultaneously broadening rights that imperil our most vulnerable, as also happened this week by means of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. Bruen.) Over and over we find ways to preserve the status quo, by which I mean the perceived threat to the rights of privileged white men. Anthony Comstock — whose extreme beliefs were cultivated from the cradle and indulged for nearly his entire adult life — caused irreparable harm to our less fortunate, disenfranchised citizens. Our shameful past — we can never seem to shed it, and yesterday’s ruling simply magnifies the recurring hurt.

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