Author: Priya C.

Thinking About the Future: The Voting Rights Act of 1965

writingLet’s kick this conversation off with a little bit of background:

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). This section requires certain states and localities with a history of discrimination to submit changes to election practices to a judicial authority before it can go into effect.

While the act as a whole enforces the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, this particular section was meant to prevent the poll taxes, literacy tests, and other Jim Crow tactics that infringed on the rights of African-American citizens to vote.

What’s the overarching argument about the case? In the years since the law’s enactment, and particularly with the election of Barack Obama, this provision is no longer necessary. [Read Supreme Court Case Explained or this response from Representative John Lewis]

Continue reading “Thinking About the Future: The Voting Rights Act of 1965” →

1/21/13: A Conscious Reflection

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

—Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States First Inaugural Address

Four years ago I stood, toes frozen to the ground, fingers numb, listening to the last phrase of President Obama’s first inaugural address as it rang through the crowd. It had already been a long day—waking at 4 am and walking from National’s ballpark to a spot right opposite the Smithsonian Castle—but I could feel the excitement, the pulse of the crowd, the mood of the masses. After all, most, if not all, had come to witness, to be a part of a moment in time when our county crossed a barrier that we weren’t sure we would ever cross.

This year I got up a little later, with better shoes, and once again made my way down to the National Mall. Once again I found myself next to the Smithsonian Castle. Once again we took pictures, waved flags, and listened as the words boomed through the hundreds of thousands of people who had come to once again bear witness…. Continue reading “1/21/13: A Conscious Reflection” →

Guest Post: Re-Discovery at National Air and Space Museum

January has turned out to be a busy month. From moving to the Presidential Inauguration I’ve developed a long list of blog ideas, but not a whole lot of time to get pen to paper. So I thought I would let someone else write for a change.

In addition to being a friend of mine, Robert Cannon spends his free time taking photographs of places in DC and his other travels.  This time he decided to go closer to home and was inspired to share his story with me.

When I was young, my family would regularly visit the National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington DC.  As a kid, seeing the technology and history on display at was awe inspiring. Nothing matched seeing the history of flight; from the Wright Brother’s plane, to The Spirit of St. Louis, to Apollo 11. Even to this day, the thirty seconds when a plane lifts off the ground and my stomach hits the floor fills me with an almost Rand-ian appreciation for human achievement. Continue reading “Guest Post: Re-Discovery at National Air and Space Museum” →

2012: Turning, Turning, Turning Through the Years

writingWhen I started this blog in 2009 I had intended for it to serve as an outlet for these words I constantly have churning in my head. Words floating around after I step out into the world, asking–begging to be written down. These words are more than just a way to express myself, they are a way for me to paint a picture, tell a story, form a narrative. They are letters that form sentences that lead to ideas.

So when I look back at my words this year, I realize that 2012 was filled with milestones. When this blog goes live it will be my 108th post*, and the nineteen posts that made up this year have a few common themes. Some were labors of love (the history of Jim Crow, and my piece on public history, the American Revolution, and 1865) while others looked to my travels from Wisconsin to Washington State. I also attended some gorgeously produced theatre productions that pushed storytelling to the next level (not to mention the big Disney buys Lucasfilm news). With every word I put down I tried to embrace the connections between what we read, see, and watch and what we think following these experiences.

Continue reading “2012: Turning, Turning, Turning Through the Years” →

Visions. Visions of Lives Lived

A storytelling mechanism that I love is one that uses altered realities to push characters toward an unintended and unexpected destination.For some, these altered realities are remembered as if in a dream, while for others it is a rift in time that only comes once a year.

Two weeks ago, I attended a pair of theatrical productions that used this mechanism to tell the tale. The first was a preview of The Shakespeare Theatre Company‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The second was the National Theatre of Scotland’s (whose Black Watch I reviewed earlier this year) The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.

Continue reading “Visions. Visions of Lives Lived” →

Putting the Puzzle Together: Reflections on Travel in Seattle

Cross posted at PreservationNation.


Dale Chihuly Gardens of Glass Exhibition.

A metaphor I often use when talking about the past is that of a puzzle. Getting to know the whole picture of place means fitting together a number of disparate pieces that when snapped together give you a single picture — a snapshot in time that is one in a series that make up the past.

I also approach visiting new cities through this lens. A few weeks ago as a prelude to my visit to Spokane for the National Preservation Conference, I went to Seattle to visit with some friends and family. What I ended up doing was not just visiting to a popular tourist destination but also getting a sense of the place itself.

Continue reading “Putting the Puzzle Together: Reflections on Travel in Seattle” →

Context Matters

A few weeks ago I went to see the movie Argo. It’s one of those historical movies where we already know the ending–that a group of Americans who had escaped being held hostage by the Iranians had hidden in the Canadian Ambassador’s house before being rescued. In 1981 the rescue came from the Canadians themselves, in 2012, once the mission was declassified by the CIA, we learned the true story. That an American Intelligence Officer had entered the country as part of a fake film crew and had led those individuals to safety.

The film is great both for reasons you might expect (intense, suspenseful, heroic), but also because of the first five minutes in which we are given context. In those five minutes we are told in wide brush strokes the key elements of Persian/Iranian geo-political history…and the active role of the United States and Britain in that history, emphasizing, that nothing happens without a precipitating action.

Continue reading “Context Matters” →

A Long Time Ago…

I am a woman who loves history. I am a woman who loves storytelling and narratives of heroines and heroes that look beyond the black and white of good versus evil.

I am a woman who loves Star Wars.

This is not the blog post I intended to post earlier this week, that will probably come in a few days. Rather the sudden news yesterday that the Walt Disney Corporation has purchased Lucasfilm demanded a quick reflection.
Continue reading “A Long Time Ago…” →

Reality and Fiction//Fiction and Reality

Scene. We are on a stage. Literally sitting on. a. stage. Below us the members of Black Watch are joking around with one another and we can all sense what is coming. We’ve heard live gunfire, been engulfed in the drifting fog, and felt the tension as they fought a choreographed dance with one another and the invisible insurgents in the middle of Iraq. We were given a history lesson, punctuated by uniform changes all to the sounds of the Scottish Highlands. We are in an enclosed space in the middle of Washington, DC, and yet….we are transported. We are somewhere else. We are anywhere but here.

Scene. It’s a story we know by heart. Jane. Beautiful Jane, who we know can’t be beautiful for nothing, trying to be stoic when something that seemed so real, so true, is suddenly over. And her sister, our narrator, is feeling the loss, and looking to understand the sudden changes, but unhampered by 18th century propriety and expectations. This time we are experiencing a 21st century Jane Austen, which includes an Elizabeth Bennet that is someone we all know, someone we could be friends with. A Lizzie Bennet sharing her life on YouTube and Twitter, through the very modern online social world we all live in.

Continue reading “Reality and Fiction//Fiction and Reality” →

You Can’t Take the Sky from Me: Reflections on Travel in Albuquerque

Re-posted from the PreservationNation.org blog.

If I had to sum up my last week in Albuquerque, New Mexico in two words it would be this: the sky. During the day it was a brilliant shade of blue, at dusk a deep shade of pink, and there were moments this past week where I thought all I had to do was reach up and capture some of it in my hand.

It was everywhere — along main roads, soaring forward when we drove around town completing errands; along the Turquoise Trail on my birthday as we made stops at ghost towns on the way to Sante Fe; and at a rehearsal dinner located high on a hill where we could see all of Albuquerque spread out before us.

While the purpose of the trip was to celebrate the nuptials of an old high school friend, it was not devoid of the all-important historical wanderings. As suggested by some of PreservationNation’s readers, I had dinner in Nob Hill, a local main street with shops and restaurants, and walked past the numerous murals that illustrate Central Avenue downtown. Continue reading “You Can’t Take the Sky from Me: Reflections on Travel in Albuquerque” →