Week of November 4

There’s nothing particularly difficult about this selection from Stilgoe. The title of chapter 16 is, once again, a little on the obscure side. But if one thinks of what frosting is, tasty, to be sure, but also decorative, then one will understand Stilgoe’s point. In this case, the emphasis is on greenery: trees, shrubs, and the like, and their uses.. The pictures are, as usual, important. Pay some attention to the dress of the men. Why all the coats? Why all the ties? Why all the hats? What’s going on?

Chapter 17's, title is not as mysterious. But it is important to note and distinguish between two types of “improvement” featured. On the one hand, self-improvement, but on the other, “improvement” of the community. Interestingly, the same gender has an important role in each.

This chapter and the one I've scheduled for Friday will bring usto the 20th Century In Chapter Six, Light and Air we consider some of the machinery which makes a house function... and, once again, we'll see that even such "essentials" as bathtubs and flush toilets were available for adoption long before they became popular. Once again, culture predominates, and what we need to reconsider what we consider as absolutely necessary for comfort. Note how advertising works to create a sense of need where none existed previously.

Chapter 7 looks at innovations in the "woman's sphere" and most particularly at the revolutionizing of the American Home through the introduction of electricity. To prepare you for discussing this, I'd like to have you (A) guess how many electrical appliances your have in your home, and then (B) mentally survey your own homes and list all the electric appliances in them, by room. How close to right were you? Bring the list with you to class.

Men were perhaps more concerned with improvements in the "systems" of the house, plumbing and heating, for example. Solid fuel burning furnaces were a great innovation, either those which allowed for the circulation of heated air or radiators circulating steam. Click on the illustrations for more information

There were great advantaces in plumbing as well, which led to the invention of a new room. Victorian squeamishness led Americans to call this room the "bathroom" though bathing was not the chief activity which occurred in it. The English had their own set of euphemisms, probably the chief of which was the W.C., (the abbreviation for "Water Closet". Click on the illustration to the left to visit a "venerable" firm, still making the product for which it was famous in the late 19th century. The name of the owner was probably coincidental, but it became another euphemism for the room in which a certain bodily function took place.

As "nature" became more and more important, people were less and less willing to wait for Mother Nature to produce trees of significant size to produce the desired romantic effect. Stilgoe pictures one of the monumental efforts Borderlanders used to move mature trees. To the left is today's technological response to the same demand. This is not the largest such machine, nor the largest such tree. Click to learn a little more

Appliances of all types were introduced into the woman's domain. The Home Washer promised "that if used with that intelligence and good sense with which you use other household utensils, it will be a "well-spring of joy" in every family that owns it.

A look at the dress worn by the operator gives a clue to who was expected to use this machine. Simultaneously the husband's incompetence around the house was "celebrated (?) in advertisements like the one to the left. Note the prominence of the idea of "home" in each. While styles have changed, the ancestry of today's appliances can be seen in their ancesters pictured below. Click on each to learn more.

Every time I've taught this couse since the beginning, I've taught it on a twice a week schedule. I thought it wouldn't prove too difficult to switch it into a three times 50 minute schedule, but it turns out I was a little wrong about that. Some of the videos I planned do show, took more than a full class to present. Discussion boiled over (I rather liked that) so we began to get a bit behind. What I'm suggesting is that I do not think we're going to have time to read Linda Smeins' Building an American Ideantity, which makes me sad because it is a great source for images and also for the sociology of suburbs--suburbs created to exclude persons of certain ethic backgrounds, for example. I don't know how many of you bought it yet. If you didn't, don't. And if you did, and have no desire to keep it, let me know and I'll compensate you for the cost of the book. This is my mistake and I apologize.