Curio Cabinet

Friday the 13th? That's child's play when it comes to actual bad luck days. On her album release of Time (The Revelator) (2001), alt-country singer Gillian Welch crowned April 14th "Ruination Day" in America, and with good historical support for her claim. The earliest date mentioned in Welch's song Ruination Day (Part II) is April 14, 1865: that evening, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater while watching Our American Cousin. The second April 14th tragedy occurred in 1912 when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, and some 1,500 people died in the freezing North Atlantic waters. The third and final date was April 14, 1935, when the "black blizzards" of dust reached the droughted southern plains states, causing the Associated Press to coin the term "Dust Bowl."
 

Welch took musical inspiration for Ruination Day from the works of folk singer Woody Guthrie and bluesman "Blind" Willie Johnson—though one doesn't have to dig into the lore of 20th century folk music to get a handle on how bad the middle of April is in U.S. history. A 2014 Vice article highlighted some of the worst American tragedies that happened not only on April 14th, but the third week of April, and they're a doozy: the devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906, the Oklahoma City bombing occurred April 19, 1995, and the Columbine massacre in Colorado happened on April 20, 1999.
 

So what's with all the bad luck and trouble in April? In the northern hemisphere, there is evidence that warming temperatures have some correlation with rises in crime rates, but causation hasn't been scientifically determined in such studies. Or maybe there's something to the T.S. Eliot quote from "The Wasteland" that "April is the cruelest month." Barring natural disasters or an anachronistic rise in unsinkable boat-theories, April 2021 is looking to be a transitory time at the end of covid rather than a tragic one. Let's remember to stay safe, follow CDC guidelines, and thank the artists who's creative works have kept us entertained and intrigued during these trying times.

 

Below: Ruination Day (Part II) by Gillian Welch.
 

[Image description: The bow of the sunken Titanic. Located 370 south-southeast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean.] Credit & copyright: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2004.

 
Written by: Esther P.

It takes quite an author to successfully release a novel about travel during lockdown! Then again, bestselling Korean-American author Chang-rae Lee is known for his bold writing choices. Unlike the dystopian novel Lee released in 2014, My Year Abroad, released February 2, 2021, is so optimistic that the New York Times Book Review called it “a manifesto to happiness.”
 

Born July 29, 1965, in South Korea, Lee’s family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. Although he earned a B.A. in English from Yale University in 1987, it wasn’t immediately clear to Lee or his family if he would choose to write professionally. In fact, following his graduation, he took a job on Wall Street as an equities analyst. It wasn’t until a year later that Lee decided the finance world wasn’t for him, and began working toward his Masters of Fine Arts degree in writing at the University of Oregon. The manuscript he’d been writing in his spare time became his thesis, and would eventually transform into his first novel, Native Speaker, in 1995. Realizing his passion for teaching, Lee became an assistant professor of creative writing at the very university he’d just graduated from. Over the following years, Lee would hold teaching positions at several universities, including Stanford and Princeton.
 

Lee’s novels often explore issues of identity and belonging, especially relating to the experiences of Asian-Americans. Lee’s first book, Native Speaker, focuses on the internal struggle of a young Korean-American man who is hired to ruin the reputation of a Korean-American politician in New York City. In A Gesture Life, released in 1999, an ethnically-Korean man, who was adopted by a Japanese family and served in the Japanese army, deals with haunting memories and struggles to break out of his routine in order to reconnect with his estranged adopted daughter. 2004’s Aloft features Lee’s first non-Asian-American protagonist, an Italian-American retiree who is forced to grapple with the fact that his life and family aren’t as perfect as he had always supposed. Lee’s 2011 novel The Surrendered, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of three characters who survived the Korean war and are reunited years later. On Such a Full Sea, published in 2014, takes place in a dystopian future-Baltimore. It’s Chinese-American protagonist works a dangerous job as a diver at a fish farm.
 

While many of Lee’s books focus on older characters, 2021’s My Year Abroad stars a young college student named Tiller, who describes himself as “twelve and one-half percent Asian.” Unlike the older, world-weary protagonists of Lee’s most famous novels, Tiller is portrayed as ordinary and relatively unremarkable. However, when Chinese-American business mogul Pong Lou brings Tiller along on a trip across Asia, a range of wild experiences open Tiller’s eyes to the wider world. Tiller also finds that, although his ethnicity causes him some difficulty fitting in, in the U.S., he is also considered foreign in Asia, leading him to question where he truly belongs. In an interview with NPR, Lee described My Year Abroad as a subversion of the typical American story, where a white protagonist travels abroad to expand their horizons. “We all know that story, of course. And it's essentially a colonial story. And I think we're all done with that story. And what we want is to find out a little bit more about ourselves, as we always do, as peoples everywhere do. But the ways in which we get that story isn't as easy and simple as it's been told to us before,” he explained.
 

My Year Abroad has already garnered praise from critics, many of whom see the novel as a lampooning of capitalism as well as an exploration of identity. As Tiller faces increasingly bizarre situations on his trip, sometimes fueled by expensive alcohol or drugs, the novel makes it clear that luxuries don’t always equate to a great time, and there is such a thing as too much excess. Readers who have been stuck at home for the past year, however, may well find My Year Abroad's wacky misadventures in far-flung locales a welcome break from the COVID-19 blues.

 
[Image description: Author Chang-rae Lee, wearing a blue shirt, sits at a table in an otherwise empty library.] Credit & copyright: Penguin Random House

 
Written by: Maria C.

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

The great American poet Langston Hughes was known for writing about the lives of poor and working class Black people in the early 20th century, and now Louisiana-based multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla is reviving Hughes's poetry with a Southern flair. As part of its African American Legacy Recordings series, Smithsonian Folkways is re-releasing McCalla's Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes in October. The original limited release saw McCalla adding her roots-inflected arrangements to Hughes' pieces like Song for a Dark Girl, as well as revitalizing takes on traditional Haitian songs. The melancholic melody follows the life of a narrator who has seen her lover lynched "way down south in Dixie." McCalla's sparse fingerpicking-blues guitar sounds like it could fit seamlessly alongside tracks recorded by Leadbelly or Geeshie Wiley from almost 100 years ago—even if the lyrical themes are eerily present for 2020.

 

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Image credit & copyright: City Winery
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

As one of the 19th century's greatest poets, Walt Whitman once wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." It was no secret that Whitman was also a tall and gregarious figure in life, which makes these images of his last years in Camden, New Jersey, all the more poignant. Whitman spent years in and out of newspaper rooms in New York and New Orleans, with a role as a hospital caretaker during the Civil War. He first published his seminal work Leaves of Grass in 1855 and revised at least nine editions. Like many aspects of his life, Whitman's poetry in Leaves of Grass ignored rules about rhyme and meter, subjecting readers to a vibrant and affectionate view of the world (the erotic texts cost Whitman a job in the Boston, Massachusetts, District Attorney's office). After suffering a paralytic stroke in 1873, Whitman once again took to revising Leaves of Grass, noting it would be his final edition. He felt that the work encapsulated all things great and small: "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."

 

Below: another view of Whitman in his house at Camden, New Jersey.
 

Image credit & copyright: Library of Congress
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

You might be surprised to find that the best-selling poet in the U.S is not the current National Poet Laureate, or Shakespeare, or even an English speaker. It's the 13th-century Persian theologian Rumi, widely considered the greatest poet of Islamic tradition—and currently an Amazon Best Seller. He was born in 1207 C.E. in modern-day Afghanistan, as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. He received a robust education and also benefited from extensive travel. Rumi and his family were forced to flee 2,500 miles west from Afghanistan to escape the brutal invasions of Genghis Khan. Along the way, they toured the Middle East and stopped at Mecca, before settling in modern-day Turkey. There, as an adult, Rumi became a teacher at a madrasa, or religious school. But it wasn't until after Rumi encountered a wandering holy man named Shams al-Dīn, or "Sun of Religion," that he waxed poetic. The two became inseparable friends, devout students of Islam, and possibly lovers. Then, three years later, Shams disappeared mysteriously. Some say Rumi's jealous students and family members murdered Shams; others believe he departed for mystical reasons. At any rate, Rumi was distraught. He fled his home in search of Shams, ending up hundreds of miles away in Syria. Eventually he realized that his friend was still in his heart and memory; and returned home to write 3,000 love songs to Shams, as well as 2,000 four-line quatrains and his 26,000-couplet masterwork, Masnavi. He took up dancing, better appreciated his other relationships, and lived happily until his death at 66. His cosmological philosophy is best summed up by this quote: "I have neither a soul nor a body, for I come from the very Soul of all souls." Maybe click on the Amazon link above and give Rumi a read, to honor National Poetry Month?
 

Image credit & copyright: BBC News
 

The United States Postal Service has found its next unsung American hero to honor with a stamp. For International Women's Day last month, the USPS announced Chien-Shiung Wu would be commemorated with a postage stamp for her 40 year career as a prominent nuclear physicist. Wu was the first woman hired as a faculty member of the physics department at Princeton University. She also served as a design consultant for the "Wu experiment" involving parity and radioactive decay with cobalt-60, which lead to Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. Wu would also be recruited to support the Manhattan Project during World War II. Later in her life she would discover molecular changes to hemoglobin in sickle cell anemia. For the USPS commemorative stamp, artist Kam Mak depicted Wu in watercolors, with a lapis lazuli background to denote her important social value. Wu is also wearing a qipao, a high-necked dress worn by Chinese noblewomen—another nod to Wu's great worth and character, and her proud Chinese-American heritage. It's definitely a different look from the physicist's lab coat, but nonetheless regal and a statement piece!

[Image description: a photo of Chien-Shiung Wu in the laboratory, and her official USPS stamp with portrait ] Credit & copyright: Columbia University, USPS.
 

Written by: Esther P.

Cow Hollow is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in San Francisco bordered by the Marina, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, and the Presidio. It's hard to imagine less than 150 years ago, Cow Hollow was a sparsely populated valley with a picturesque lagoon. Named Laguna Pequeño by the Spanish, the little lake was fed by springs from present-day Nob Hill. Indigenous populations and Spanish colonizers used the lake to wash clothing. When gold-seeking immigrants or forty-niners inundated the region, they nicknamed it Washerwoman's lagoon. At the time, laundry was incredibly expensive. Most men had no clue how to clean their clothes. The few women laundering clothes were able to charge as much as $8 (approximately $265 today with inflation) to wash a dozen shirts in the lagoon. It was actually cheaper to send clothes to Hawaii or China to be laundered or to buy new clothing. Bayard Taylor, a journalist, reported in 1849, that a few men made a go of it, "It was an amusing sight to see a great, burly, long-bearded fellow kneeling on the ground, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and rubbing a shirt on the board with such violence that the suds flew and the buttons, if there were any, must soon snap off." Chinese immigrants recognized the trade as a substantial opportunity, particularly as they faced xenophobia and racism in industries like mining. Eventually, competition reduced the prices of laundered clothing to $5 a dozen.
 
Unfortunately, all the local development destroyed the pristine lake. Soap-suds, waste from nearby dairies, slaughterhouses, tanneries, and factories, and raw sewage degraded the water. It quickly became a cesspool. Linked to cases of cholera, including one that killed then-Mayor Ephraim Burr's son, the communal washbasin was filled in on this day in 1877 by a chain gang of 200 men from the city jail. This didn't resolve the larger waste problem. Over the next 10 years, waste continued to build, eventually overflowing onto Vallejo and Franklin Streets. The 8 to 10 foot "river of filth" was only contained with the construction of new sewers and additional roads—not to mention the relocation of the more putrid enterprises. No doubt these choices took a load off locals.

 
[Image description: View from Russian Hill looking west to Washerwoman’s Lagoon and Spring Valley, between 1859 and 1862.] Credit & copyright: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library. Online Archive of California.