The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy

Father Richard J. Casey greets John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States, after he attended Friday Mass at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown the morning of the inauguration, January 20, 1961. According to Richard Tofel, religion was a dominant issue in the primaries and general election and “Kennedy was not above using his faith to political advantage” (12). While according to a Gallup poll in 1956 twenty-two percent of voters said that they would not vote for a well-qualified Catholic from their party, Tofel says in 1960 Catholics who voted “their faith over their politics may have provided the margin of victory in five states” (12). (Courtesy of the Library of Congress LC-USZ62-70671)

Tofel, Richard. Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.

American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), at the invitation of John F. Kennedy, wrote a new poem entitled “Dedication” for the inauguration. After reading just a few lines, Frost stopped because he could not see since the sun was reflecting off of the snow. Vice President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson tried to shield Frost’s face from the glare, but he could still not see (Tofel 20). Frost then went on to recite his poem “The Gift Outright” from memory and changed the ending from “Such as she was, such as she has become” to “such she will become” noting that he changed it for this occasion (Tofel 21). According to Thurston Clarke, Frost’s performance “turned out even better than Kennedy could have dared imaged” and provided him with an audience that was “emotionally involved in the ceremony” (188). (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph collection, LC-USZ62-120741)

Clarke, Thurston. Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech that Changed America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.

Tofel, Richard. Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.

Repeating after Chief Justice Earl Warren who has his left hand on the Fitzgerald family Bible, John F. Kennedy takes the oath of office on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 1961. The onlookers include Mrs. Kennedy and President Eisenhower standing behind Chief Justice Warren and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon standing behind President Kennedy. (Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration 111-SC-578830)

Richard,Tofel, Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 22.

President John F. Kennedy delivers his inaugural address calling upon Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.” He addresses America’s friends and foes and sets out the goals that he has for America and the world. In finishing, Kennedy calls upon Americans as well as citizens around the world to “ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.” (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph collection, LC-USZ 62-135491)

The Kennedys arrive at the inaugural ball at the National Guard Armory in Washington, DC. This was one of five inaugural balls that President Kennedy attended the evening of January 20, 1961 (Clarke 204). (Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, Collection JFK-WHP: White House Photographs, 12/19/1960-03/11/1964)

Clarke, Thurston. Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech that Changed America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.

Comments on the Visual History Project

For me, the first challenge of this project was to think of an event that was on a national scale so that there would be images of it available on the National Archives’ or Library of Congress’s website. On these websites there are not as many images of the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as I thought there would be.

I had trouble understanding the copyright information for some of the images that I found on the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. One of the images had a reproduction number but no information about publication and another one said that publication may be restricted. I followed multiple links, but I did not find any of them helpful. When I called the Library of Congress looking for some answers about specific images that I had found, I got a voice message directing me to the website. I was pleased to find that the image of Robert Frost that I found on the LOC website did have information about the copyright restrictions.

Even though the National Archives has fewer images concerning my topic, I thought its database was easier to use. The one image that I did find in its database had information about its use restriction. I liked that I could set the search parameters, that it displayed the images on the search results page, and that I could sort the images within the results.

This project was frustrating because the story that I wanted to tell was limited by images that I was able to find and could use. The most interesting part about this project was realizing that the images that I found shaped the story that I told and thinking about the impact this has on learning about history. Through this project I learned how images and informative captions can be used to tell a story.

Valentine's Day Greetings

Although mystery surrounds the origins of Valentine’s Day and the man the day was named for, it is undeniable that the sharing of Valentine’s greeting cards has become one of the most popular customs of Valentine’s Day in the United States. This custom has developed over the centuries and continues to expand.

The first Valentine’s greeting may date back to Saint Valentine himself. According to one legend, Valentine, while imprisoned and just before his death, sent a note to his jailer’s daughter whom he had fallen in love with and signed it ‘from your Valentine.’ The oldest known valentine still in existence, which dates back to 1415, is a note from Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife. It is currently in the British Library in London, England.

In the 18th century Valentine greetings became more popular in Great Britain and the United States. By mid-century, in Great Britain it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection and hand-written notes. This custom spread to the American colonies where they created hand-made cards with lace ribbons, cupids, and hearts. In Great Britain, due the advancements in printing technology, by the end of the 18th century written letters began to be replaced by printed cards. In a time when it was not seen as proper to directly express emotion, these ready-made cards made the expression of emotions easier.

In the 19th century the sending of Valentine’s greeting cards again gained in popularity and ease. The lowering of the postage rate increased the popularity of sending Valentine’s greetings. In the 1840s, Esther Howland of Worcester, Mass. made and sold the first mass-produced Valentine’s greeting cards in the United States. She was said to be inspired by an English card that she received.

Americans have not slowed down in sharing Valentine’s greeting cards ever since. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25 percent of all cards sent each year are for Valentine’s Day. Regardless of what people know about the origins of the day, both hand-made and mass-produced cards are shared on Valentine’s Day in large amounts.

Valentine's Day Challenge Commentary

The legends and the ambiguity of the origins of Valentine’s Day and the man behind it makes writing a history of the day more difficult. The history of valentine’s greetings also has some ambiguity. There are many sites, both professional (CNN and History Channel) and amateur sites that have information about the history of Valentine’s Day.

The reliability of some of the websites seemed questionable. I used information from the historychannel.com, infoplease.com by Pearson Education (an article which had an author), and Wikipedia thinking that, like it said in the articles assigned for this week, the page would be checked because it is a high traffic site-especially this month. Other sites that I found through Google had interesting and relevant information, but it was not clear who was behind them and the overdone graphics and the ads made them look amateur and unreliable. Some of the sites had conflicting information about the history of valentine’s greetings, including dates and the materials used for the cards, and other aspects of Valentine’s Day.

Many of the sites that I searched lacked citations. The Wikipedia page on Valentine’s Day had the most citations and it said that it needed more. Especially concerning the origin of Valentine’s Day and who Valentine was, much of the information was “according to legend” and there are many versions which makes writing an essay more difficult especially without the use of scholarly sources to use as a reference.

This was a good exercise to see the range of material, reliability, and scholarship (or lack there of) that can be found on one popular topic for free on the internet. This exercise revealed the gap between what historians use as reliable sources and what is in the public domain on the internet. For this topic at least there seems to be a lack of identifiably scholarly work available for free on the internet. I found it difficult to get started because of the conflicting origin stories and the questions of reliability.

Chicago History Museum Web Review

Chicago History Museum (http://www.chicagohistory.org/) Created and maintained by the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL. Reviewed February 8-9, 2008.

The Chicago History Museum website’s audience will be potential museum visitors, teachers, students, and researchers. The site provides information about the museum- though not a lot about the individual artifacts in its collection-useful materials for teachers, homework resources for students, and a catalog of its manuscripts, photographs, and books and other online resources for researchers.

The website has both good and bad aspects of usability. On the positive side, there is a Spanish language option which makes it more accessible and most of the information that a visitor would expect on a museum site can be accessed from the homepage. On the negative side, every time the user goes from page to page on the main site a message pops up asking the user to run an add-on from the site; though it is not clear what the purpose of this add on is. Also, the search function on the site is not useful for finding information and the site is lacking a sitemap which can make navigation easier. One of the online projects requires Quicktime, so this project is not accessible to those who do not have it or want to download it. Many of the links opened in a new window which can be good so the user does not have to keep clicking back to return to a page, but it can also be an overwhelming amount of windows open at one time.

The exhibits section provides a brief description of the permanent, current, and upcoming exhibits at the museum though it does not include images and descriptions of the individual artifacts. The site does not include online exhibits in this section. The collections section also gives a brief description of the different areas of the collection though it is not searchable online. This section provides a limited amount of specific information about the museum’s artifact collection to potential researchers. The easiest way to search on the site is by using the Encyclopedia of Chicago. The entries are written by scholars from universities (though it is not clear if they are students or professors), newspaper contributors, writers from the CHM and the Newberry Library, and freelance writers. The contributors and their institutions are listed on the site. The encyclopedia also includes maps, historical sources, and special features that include interactive interpretations. The new media of the web allows the users to search the Encyclopedia of Chicago more easily and it lets the Encyclopedia include interactive maps and photos, and links to other related materials which enhance the entries.

The research section includes an online catalog and online resources such as links to other research sites and to online projects, which are collaborations between the museum and Northwestern University that use the museum’s collection. These online projects highlight the artifacts held on specific topics better than the collection and exhibition sections do.

The education section will be useful for teachers because it includes information about field trips and lesson plans. The classroom materials are for grades 3-12 and were developed and used by local school teachers. The materials include online and downloadable lessons about a variety of topics in Chicago and American history. There are also homework resources for students. The kids and family section provides information about children’s exhibits at the museum, online games, and fun facts.

The presentation of the website is consistent on the main pages with the logo and the color blue. The site does not use moving images or many images at all. On some of the projects that are collaborations with other institutions, the setup of the page is different and the CHM logo is not there. The Chicago History Museum was formerly the Chicago Historical Society and some of the pages still include the CHS logo. The online projects and the Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005) are not updated. On the homepage the upcoming events section is updated and “Chicago History Minute” which features this day/month in history changes daily. The site does have links that connect its sections although some of the links on the kids & families page connect to the same page which is unnecessary.

The CHM site uses the new media of the web to enhance the Encyclopedia of Chicago with searchable, interactive, and linking features. Researchers can also search the site in order to get a better idea of what the museum has before going to the museum research center. The web also allows the CHM to collaborate with other institutions in projects such as the Haymarket Affair digital collection which presents and makes searchable the museum’s holdings concerning the Haymarket Affair.

The Chicago History Museum website provides many research and education resources. The site could be improved by adding a sitemap for easier navigation, by providing more information about the exhibits and individual artifacts, and making the artifact collection searchable by keyword or name.

History on the Web

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History site, The Valley of the Shadows site, the Do History site, and The History Channel site have different approaches to history on the web because of the different types of projects that they come from, the differing types of sources that they built their presentations of history around, and the different scales of whose history they are trying to present.

The NMAH, because it is a museum presents the objects of history and tells how they are significant because of who they belonged to and/or how they were used. The site has online exhibits similar to how the museum exhibits are constructed and presented. It also has a timeline where an object is shown individually and then is connected to an exhibit or collection. The collections can also be searched by item or subject and then an explanation of it is given which grants the viewer more access to the objects than the traditional museum exhibits ever could. The national scope of the NMAH influences how it approaches history and history on the web because the audience is large and it exhibits iconic objects and weaves them into the American experience. This site is for people who are interested in the icons of America and objects that were used in creating American history. The site also has teacher and children sections again using objects as the basis for learning. The website is image based because it focuses on objects.http://americanhistory.si.edu/

The Valley site is documents based and unlike the NMAH which exhibits objects and themes that many Americans have some knowledge of, its mission is to tell the stories of individuals that are not usually told. Unlike the NMAH site, the Valley site does not get people’s attention or exhibit its collection through images because they present documents not objects. The site does not make exhibits and tell a history in the same way that NMAH site does. The way this site does try to tell a story is through the arrangement of the documents. The categories are set up so the comparisons are more easily seen and are not necessarily how an archivist would set up the collection, for example by keeping the papers of a family together, somewhat in the way it came to them. These documents are arranged for researchers to use them. The scope of the material of this site is smaller than that of the NMAH. Whereas the NMAH is presenting the objects in the context of American history and experience, the Valley site is focusing on the story of the people of two towns during the Civil War era. The audience for the site is more focused and most likely includes professional historians, amateur historians, and people interested in researching about these places during this time. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/

The Do History site is also based on documents. By comparing the official documents and the account of one woman, the site points out the importance of knowing the background and the perspectives behind the sources used to do historical research, how they may affect the conclusions one may come to, and how historians use these documents. This site is geared toward a different audience than the first two sites were geared toward. It is for people who have an interest in historical research, are looking for a place to start understanding what historians do, and may want to try some historical research. The NMAH site was not geared toward people who were trying to do historical research and it was not going to tell them how to do it. The Valley site is for people who are doing historical research, but again its purpose is not to instruct someone how to use the documents and do historical research. The Do History site’s approach to history, since it is based on the sources used for a book and film, focuses on the historical research that has to be done to produce these works and emphasizes this process in presenting the story of Martha Ballard. The focus of the site is small because it is about one person’s story but its purpose of helping beginners understand how historians do research and to help them do research can appeal to a broader audience. http://dohistory.org

Possibly because of its affiliation with a television station, many of The History Channel site’s presentations of history are through television clips of events, interviews, and its television shows made about a person, place, or time. If a topic is searched, biographies and other text articles appear. Unlike the other sites this site is not based solely on objects or documents. The History Channel site has a similar presentation to that of a news site, with features such as the advertisements of its television shows, This Day in History, polls, and forums on history and current events. The audience for this site are people who watch the History Channel and may want to use it for a search of many topics in history. This site also has resources for teachers and it could be used for people who want to know more about a topic, but it is not a database of primary documents and how to use them. This site does not have as much of a scholarly presentation as the other sites do. By presenting history in this way the topics seem to feel less old and distant.http://www.historychannel.com

There are many history websites geared toward people with many different backgrounds and interests in history. By sharing content on the web, an advantage is the increase of access to historical information, including primary sources, interpretation, literature, and discussion, to all levels of historical enthusiasts from children to history academics.

Review of Energy Roundup

The Energy Roundup blog on Wall Street Journal online “collects and analyzes” the day’s energy news from sources around the world. Editors and writers from WSJ.com contribute to the blog. The blogs are written on market days and in the week from Tuesday, January 15 through Tuesday, January 22 two days had three posts, two days had only one post, and I used only the first morning post of today. There are no posts on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays (I am assuming this because there was not a post on Monday, January 21).

The blog seems to be for Americans who have somewhat of a concern about energy and/or environmental issues who want an overview of the latest discussions, study findings, and actions concerning energy topics such as alternative energy sources and some analysis of how they may affect the environment, the economy, politics, nations around the world, and their lives. The blog provides a sort of one-stop-shop for people who do not read many news sources, but who want to be informed.

The blog is informative because it talks about what energy issues are discussed in the day’s newspapers, new studies, and by people who are influential in energy decisions such as, oil promoters, alternative energy promoters, politicians, and nations. The blog may have appeal and draw a repeat audience because it is about what is in that day’s newspapers and online content. Some topics over the last week were peak oil, global warming, the promises (or lack thereof) of alternative energies, European energy strategies, Bush’s efforts in Saudi Arabia, and the carbon market.

The intention of the blog seems to be to question “conventional wisdom” and to bring up points that make the reader rethink one side of a story, stance, or some expectations. Many of the posts are not the most positive or optimistic about the state of the energy sources and strategy and about the promises of new energy sources.

The Energy Newstand posts focus on what the day’s newspapers and news sources are reporting about a current issue and what they can mean together. The other posts include new research findings, comments on speeches and other current actions concerning energy, as well as information from newspaper and other sources.

The Energy Newstand posts are accompanied by a small graphic of a newspaper on a doormat. One post was accompanied by a chart and another included a picture of a man whose comments were the subject of the post. Some of the other pictures had captions and were more for humor and to add to the point of the post. Each post has one image.

The posts include hyperlinks to articles on websites such as The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNNMoney.com, The New York Times, National Review Online, other blogs, research study PDFs, meeting minutes, energy organization websites, and environmentalist websites. It referenced the WSJ the most. I had trouble with some of the hyperlinks-one of them was not able to be displayed and the other directed me to the page that I was on. I did not like that the hyperlinks would disappear once I had clicked on them.

At the end of each post there is an option to view and make comments and to email and share the post. There are also links to view related content and read more about the topics on WSJ.com.

The writing style of the blog is less than formal; though it is still not difficult to read or much different than the writing in the Wall Street Journal. I found one typographical error.

Overall the blog is interesting, informative, and well put together.