Writing Slate

So, I've been doing a bit of independent projects with history since I've graduated, both centered around the history of Camp Abnaki. I started this summer with archiving a lot of the records and sorting them out in house, and from there, I embarked on two projects:

1 - Comprehensive History of Camp Abnaki. This is going to be an extremely long-term writing project, given the scope of what I'm trying to do. Rather than just writing a history paper that essentially goes from point A to B to C to D, this project is going to look at the history of Abnaki in the context of 20th century history - how major events such as the stock market crash, the first and second world wars, the cold war, outbreak of flu, the 1960s and how attitudes towards child care have been changing since 1901. This is going to take me a long time to finish, and it's currently on the back burner due to it's size and due to the next project:

2 - The life of Byron Clark. This paper's in a more complete form now, standing at 25 pages, with probably another ten or so to be written. I've just gotten Clark's journal, which I'm working on translating from cursive to a regular text file. However, in order to finish this in time, I'm going to have to forgo some of the translating and pick out sections where needed. I currently have one feeler out for a presentation at a historical conference in April, and I'm hoping to get this published (it will probably need to be edited down.) I've also currently put out requests for editing from three PhDs that I know.

3- Norwich University and the Invasion of Normandy. This was my thesis paper for my senior year at Norwich, and while I completed it for the course, topping out at 38 pages (50 with maps and sources), I'm not at the point where this is finished for me. I need to visit the National Archives and pull unit records for various infantry and armored divisions, which I found to give incredibly detailed information on the going-ons of the campaign. This is something that I'd love to get published someday.

4 - The Class the Stars Fell On - this is going to be my next project, and I'm going to start it right after I finish with my Byron Clark Paper. I came across the reference earlier this weekend when I finished Rick Atkinson's An Army At Dawn (FINALLY), when he mentioned that the American Military Academy (West Point) class of 1915 numbered 162 graduates. Out of that class, 59 were made general, two of them reaching the highest rank possible, five stars (Eisenhower and Bradley). Following that, there were two 4-star generals, seventy-three 3-stars, twenty four 2-stars and twenty four 1-stars. The intent it to examine what role this class played in the world following their graduation and why this class was so extraordinary - no class since has graduated as many people who obtained the rank of General. This will probably be a long project as well - possibly book length. I know that there's a lot of information, particularly about the more visible members of the class, such as Eisenhower and Bradley, but I'm going to need to research a lot of other people, to see what they were up to. I'm excited for the prospect of this project, and I suspect that it'll take me a bit longer than I'd like because I'll be starting my Masters in March, although maybe this can be a part of it.

Transcriptions

Back in December, I received a digital copy of Byron Clark's journal - a goldmine of information on my subject - dates, thoughts, and details that I didn't really have a good grasp on before. There are 659 high quality images that makes up the entire journal, with a number of images, hand-written notes and news paper articles. Currently, I'm transcribing the entire thing. I'm finding that it's the best way for me to understand the sequence of events that occurred at camp, and what Clark was thinking. So far, I've transcribed about nineteen pages of handwritten text, from the beginning of the first camping session to just after. It's absolutely astounding to what information is in those pages, about that first camping session, about the foundation upon which a lot of my life has essentially been based on. There's a bunch of things that I knew about, but mostly just general things. Here was specific, day by day information about the first camping session, with some things that really stood out. For example, I was unaware that the frist campers started a secret society, and that five of the campers were kicked out towards the end for stealing 30 bananas. I think that I'd be able to finish my paper without this, but it would be severely diminished. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a digital copy of this, which brings me to my next point - digital copies of physical documents is going to be an essential tool for researchers as technology and access developes further. Currently, the main problem with this is the sheer volume of materials that do not exist as a digital copy. Currently, according to an article in Seven Days, there's efforts underway for high resolution scans for some of the state's older documents, like the State Constitution. A couple months ago, I tried looking into getting mission reports for various Infantry and Armored divisions for D-Day to work on my Normandy paper a bit more, to no avail - according to the man I spoke with, there are just too many mission reports and files in hard copy, that the process will take years, if not decades of dedicated work. Another person I spoke with about military files stated that an entire repository was destroyed by fire a couple years ago - raw information that is lost forever. The advantages of digital scanning and replication are clear - it allows, first and foremost, a backup copy, something that really hasn't been available to historians before. Originals of documents, barring extraordinary cases, don't last the long, and are susceptible to changes in heat, temperature, humidity and human interactions. A digital copy would practically eliminate that, provided that a secure digital filing system can be perfected. (From what I have read and understand, there's no sure way to store digital information, something that, interestingly, the film industry is currently up against when storing film data files.) Additionally, digital copies make distribution of documents and files much, much easier, either via online databases such as JStor or similar sites, or on a user to user basis. There's an entire industry here, as these sites aren't free, and are generally used by universities and institutions. The main downside is probably going to be an ongoing argument regarding the nature of information and its distribution via the internet. Should information be completely free? And if historical documents are brought to the digital world, who will control it? The company or institution that does the scanning and storing? I can see this opening up some problems for researchers. What is to prevent institutions from selectively releasing information to researchers to alter histories? While the government has laws that allow for transparency (which should help military historians), I'm not aware of any such laws that could operate with the private sector. That being said, digital copies would also make historian's lives easier, because it really doesn't help when you need physical copies, and they're 7-10 hours away by car.

Paper Update

I have Dad Clark's journal! He's the guy who I'm writing a historical paper on - I've been working on for the past couple of months. This is a huge, huge breakthrough, because the original copy is for all intents and purposes, in accessible to me. (It's held by the camp, and the only time that I'd really be able to take a good look at it would be during regular office hours.) I've since been working with Jim Albright, one of the experts on camp history, and he had a copy of the journal, a collection of 659 pictures of each page in the journal. Now, I have a primary source, rather than a handful of secondary sources. The big drawback to this is that I now have several hundred pages to go through, almost all in cursive - it's going to take me a long time to go through it all, and it's most likely going to add on a huge number of pages to a paper that I'm already trying to keep the page count down on - I'm at 25, and I don't want to go over 30. Still, this is a huge wealth of information that will really put me into the early days of camp and right into Byron Clark's head, something that I really haven't been able to do that easily.

Current Writings - Byron Clark

In the time off from work, I've been working on a new paper that I'm hoping to get published sometime down the road. For the past eight or so years, I've worked or helped out at YMCA Camp Abnaki, and over that time, I've gotten really interested in the history surrounding camp. I was able to get some documents when I was up there last time to do some more research on various aspects of the camp's history. I've been intending on working on a larger history of camp through a set of papers. There's a lot of possibilities for work with this camp's history.

While going through the documents, I started writing up a timeline of Byron Clark's (the founder of camp) and found that he was not only involved in camp, but over twenty different organizations in the Burlington era, but also was involved with World War I, and might have been responsible for bringing the Boy Scouting movement to Vermont. When I consulted with one of the doctors here, he suggested to look at him as a progressive, which makes sense seeing that he was most active during the progressive era.

After another consult, I've gotten a bunch of sources and places to look, and I've since started an outline and have started working out the bits inbetween. He looks like a facinating person, and much much more interesting than I had previously known, which had been through the view of Abnaki. Now, with a larger view, it's a much more complicated picture.

More as I write it up.