Road Trip Through History? Sort Of.
Several weeks ago, My Own True Love took me to the Round Barn Theater at Amish Acres in Nappanee, Indiana to see Plain and Fancy, a musical I first discovered when I was in high school. I had developed the habit of checking out obscure soundtracks, opera recordings, and the like from our local library.* I loved the music to Plain and Fancy and I checked out the LP over and over. The play had opened on Broadway more than twenty years previously and had long faded into obscurity. I had no real hope of ever seeing it performed. When I found out that Plain and Fancy is the central show in the summer repertory program at Amish Acres, I was thrilled. I may have even squealed as we drove past the sign.**
Amish Acres is an odd mix: a restored Amish homestead from the mid-nineteenth century used as the center of a "heritage resort". The site offers tours of the homestead and outbuildings, living history demonstrations, buggy rides, and some efforts at explaining Amish history and culture. A truly glorious round barn has been transformed into a theater which offers a professional summer stock program of musical theater--something that would have been anathema to its original Amish owners. The historical site is a bit dated in its presentation, though it’s possible I’m jaded.*** (I’ve been to a lot of living history programs over the years.) The theater is a lot of fun. The barn is worth a stop all by itself.
Plain and Fancy is the point where the theater and Amish heritage come together. It tells the story of a pair of New Yorkers who find themselves involved with an Amish community for a brief time, with an initial lack of comprehension and gradual understanding on both sides. I must admit, I was afraid I would be disappointed after waiting literally decades for a chance to see the show. I’m pleased to tell you that it’s a charming minor work from the golden age of American musicals. It was the first musical play written by Joseph Stein, best known for Fiddler on the Roof. Plain and Fancy isn’t on the same scale as Fiddler, but shares some of its thematic elements, including an underlying philosophical strain and a respectful exploration of a traditional society. It’s also drop dead funny. If you happen to be driving through northern Indiana and have a taste for classical musical comedy, go.
Next up on the high school wish list, Irving Berlin’s Mr. President.
*Why yes, I did spell nerd with a capital N.
**As those who know me in real life will attest, I am not much of a squealer.
***If you’re interested in a serious look at the history and culture of the Amish, Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups, I recommend the Menno-Hof interpretive center in Shipshewana, Indiana.
Counting The Fallen
The size of the armies and the number of the casualties in a given war, or even individual battle, is always a difficult discussion for historians.
When dealing with pre-modern sources of any kind, historians are cautious about accepting contemporary estimates.* The assumption is that at best the writer of the source did not have access to accurate numbers and at worst he** diddled the numbers to make a victory more glorious or a defeat less humiliating.
Modern** record-keeping makes it easier to feel secure that the size of armies in the field is more or less accurate, but counting the fallen is still tricky. The conditions under which the counting occurs are inherently difficult, the temptation to make a victory more glorious or a defeat less humiliating remains constant, and the definitions of what is counted may vary from battle to battle. Casualties can include dead, wounded, fatally wounded but not yet dead, or missing (a category that is inherently fuzzy).
Accuracy aside, it is hard to visualize just what the body count actually looks like. Forty-eight thousand dead and wounded at the Battle of Waterloo*** is much less than 425,000 casualties in the Battle of Normandy. But what does either number mean, beyond the fact that enough men are dead to populate a small southern city, in the case of Waterloo, or a western state, in the case of Normandy?
Filmmaker and data-journalist Neil Halloran grapples with these questions, as well as the even slipperier issue of civilian casualties, in The Fallen of World War II--a web-based graphic documentary that looks at the human cost of the war. The graphics are as simple and painful as a fist to the gut. Halloran doesn't just look at how many people each country lost, but when and where they died. Most interesting of all, at least to this history buff/bugg, he compares WWII's numbers to those of other wars across historian and does not hesitate to draw conclusions about what it all means.
Check it out: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
(There’s an interactive option, but I couldn’t get it to run. Possibly an operating system upgrade is needed for either my computer or my brain. If any of you get it to work, let me know what you think.)
*Not surprising given that the further back we go the looser our definition of contemporary. Primary sources means different things for different periods.
**I usually hesitate to use he for the generalized third person singular, but the case of pre-modern history almost all of the sources are in fact "he" due to historical realities related to access to education, etc. [rant over]
***Definitions may vary
****That's a LOT of teeth.
A Bit of (Really Gross) Waterloo Trivia
Let’s face it, there’s no reason for me to give you a quick synopsis of what happened at the Battle of Waterloo, what led to the Battle of Waterloo, why it mattered, or the battle’s social/political/artistic impact. If you are reading this on or soon after June 18, 2015, blog posts and news articles related to the 200th anniversary of Waterloo* are everywhere, in both History Land and the mainstream media of your choice. It will be harder for you to avoid reading about the battle than to read about it.
I had planned to give you a list of Waterloo books that you might have missed, or forgotten about.** Instead I’d like to share with you one of the oddest bits of Waterloo trivia that I’ve read in recent weeks: “Waterloo teeth”.
Rotten teeth were a significant problem in the long eighteenth century*** and false teeth were problematic. They were expensive. They were heavy. Many of the materials used to make them--wood, ivory, and bone--were themselves prone to decay, which resulted in nasty breath and nastier infections. The best material for making replacement teeth was actual teeth. (Are you grimacing in disgust, yet?) Prior to the Napoleonic wars, real-teeth dentures were made with teeth from executed criminals, exhumed bodies, or animals. Gumming your food may well have looked like a better choice.
The denture industry took an upward turn at the end of the eighteenth century when the Napoleonic wars produced a ready supply of young healthy tooth donors. Teeth stolen from the from the bodies of fallen soldiers became the preferred material for dentures, which became known as “Waterloo teeth”.
Makes you want to floss right now, doesn’t it?
* * *
Here’s a little something to take the taste out of your mouth:
*It is worth pointing out that Waterloo is shorthand for three battles fought over a period of several days. Napoleon’s army defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny and forced the combined British-Dutch forces to withdraw from Quatre-Bras on June 16.
**Okay, just one, which I haven't yet read. The Sage of Waterloo, in which novelist Leona Francombe tells the story of the battle from the perspective of a bunny living on the modern site of the battlefield. Watership Down meets Vanity Fair?
***One of the side-effects of inexpensive sugar from the Caribbean islands. The empire strikes back.