PJH Studios

Tag: history

  • The Smithsonian and what is history

    The nation’s museum, The Smithsonian, becomes another front in the war on truth.

    But even as the social history approach remade American museums, most Americans cling to an understanding of history that prioritizes the very things the social historians criticized. According to a 2021 survey of attitudes to history, conducted by researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the American Historical Association, the vast majority of Americans view history fundamentally differently than historians do. History, for about 70 percent of Americans, is simply what we remember about the past, especially names, dates and other facts. It isn’t, as most professional historians believe, the interpretation of those facts that constitutes history.

    “We were always trying to get people to think, ‘What is history?’” Gardner says. “The goal was to think about meaning and perspectives.”

    So, there is a paradox: Americans consume and enjoy social history on a daily basis, in museums, books and documentaries, but if asked to define history, they would give an account that sounds more like the rote lessons and recitations of fact that their grandparents and great-grandparents found tedious and boring decades ago.

  • Dyatlov Pass incident

    In 1959, nine experienced Russian skiers died under mysterious circumstances, referred to as the Dyatlov Pass incident. Bodies found in different locations with varying amounts of clothing and an array of injuries. The facts made for ripe speculation: stumbling on a secret government project, a sadistic murderer, American spies, and the supernatural.

    In 2021, Douglas Preston covered the history of the investigations, and modern science may have solved it. The likeliest culprit? An Avalanche.

  • Red envelopes for Lunar New Year

    Here’s some good background on those red envelopes, Hongbao, shared on Lunar New Year

    The modern concept of hongbao emerged in early 20th-century China. Elders would give money wrapped in red paper to children during the Lunar New Year as a talisman against evil spirits, known as sui (祟).

    But the gift giving traditions go back to about 200 BCE, way before Santa flew across the world.

  • Ten years on, he still stands

    Ten years on, new stories find a way to be told about that day. Everyone owns a part of history, however far removed they were from the events that occurred. September 11, 2001 horrifically created a common experience.

    My experience became real, running late to a business law class and arrived to a visibly upset professor. Upon hearing the news from his students he said, in a broken voice, “I can’t do this today, class dismissed.”

    Everyone left in search of news, finding nothing to make sense of the morning.

    The morning after, September 12, I woke up early to seek out a New York Times. By 8 am there were no copies left in the student union, the grocery store across from campus, nor the convenience store a block away. You Tube, Facebook and social media as we know it today, let alone the scale of internet news didn’t exist. A physical newspaper still retained meaning, as if to say, “yes, yesterday did happen.”

    Twice a week, I submitted political cartoons to the campus newspaper, the TCU Daily Skiff. The cartoon for September 12 was already published. I called an editor and told them I’d have a cartoon for them by mid afternoon.

    I sat at my desk, in my dorm, with my sketchpad and wrote down a few words. What did I want the cartoon to say? A good political cartoon evokes an idea with minimal need for words. The Skiff’s cartoon for the 12th was that of a dark grey bust of the Statue of Liberty, torch held high, and a white, contrasting tear falling down her cheek.

    Powerful, somber, resonant.

    Somber.

    I couldn’t do that the next day. I had to go a different direction. Horror? Anger? Defiance? Resilience? Depressing? Ashes? Smoke? Flags? Firefighters? Police? Uncle Sam…

    Uncle Sam, ashes, smoke…

    There’s a Pearl Jam song, Given to Fly, where the line at the climax of the song, Eddie Vedder sings, “At first he was stripped, then he was stabbed by faceless men, well fuckers, he still stands.”

    “He still stands.”

    Uncle Sam still stands amidst all the ashes and rubble and smoke.

    The song continues on, “He still gives his love, he just gives it away.”

    I’ve got the image in my head and quickly sketch it out. I then draw on the paper I use to submit the cartoon and pencil the basic image and finish with the inks. I turned the cartoon in that day, and it ran September 13th.

    I chose resilience.

    = = =

    I’ve since lost the original inked version. Moving tends to misplace pieces of paper. Below is the only remnant of that cartoon.

    TCU Daily Skiff cartoon that ran 9/13/11, two days after the September 11 attacks.