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| A woman reading near a pool. |
This
New Yorker article has thoughtfully laid out the qualifications for a good
summer read, but I must admit that I have frequently broken these reading rules
at the beach and/or pool. I'll go for some classic beach fare, sure-- an issue
of Cosmopolitan, a book with a beach on
the cover or centered around a "crustacean-centric eating party."
However, I have historically (haha) also heavied it up with some hefty reading
for research, teaching, or--horrors-- exams. I once memorably spent a day at
the beach in Santa Monica reading A
Short History of Reconstruction.
This is not because
I am so darn studious but rather because the pleasant setting makes work more
palatable. If I'm going to read, why not do it outside? The change of scenery
works wonders for my mood and often my concentration, and the weird timelessness
of lounging beside pool or ocean often stirs my brain to come at ideas in a
more patient fashion than it might otherwise. Don't worry, there's always a
backup magazine nearby in case of emergency.
So recently I took
this approach to new heights. I printed out pages of the Michigan Hospital School Journal that I've been using for dissertation research and read them in
the pool while on one
of those floaty things (yes, they got a little damp). I was pleased with
the success of my method-- I took a few notes on the pages and got through the
day's reading rather quickly.
The next day I came
across an interesting letter in an issue of this Journal. The Journal was
published by a convalescent home in Farmington during the 1910s-1930s which
reported on the goings-on of the institution, but it also had wider appeal as a
passionate call for the education and rehabilitation of children with physical
disabilities. Among other material, the editor frequently included letters from
all sorts of readers-- state officials, children at the hospital-school,
members of other progressive organizations, and disabled adults expressing
support and encouragement for the Journal and its mission.
The letter that so
caught my attention was from Percy Angove, State Supervisor of Industrial
Rehabilitation, published in the Nov-Dec 1922 issue. He began his note by
saying:
I
am on my vacation and my greatest enjoyment at the present time is looking
through and reading articles in my treasured bound volume of The Hospital
School Journal. This is the greatest compilation of its kind or anything
similar that I know of…
"My greatest enjoyment at the present time"--
strong words! What a glowing review of a periodical called The Hospital School Journal, and which
frequently featured items I find dry, hard to plow through, or repetitive.
Surely the Journal has brought me joy as
well-- some of the calls to action that editor Joe F. Sullivan delivers are
still stirring almost a century on-- but sheesh! I had a sudden image of Angove
sitting on a porch overlooking a Great Lake, sipping iced tea and thumbing through
his hardbound volume with delight.
I realized this was
not such a dissimilar image from what I had been doing the previous day. The
combination of the letter and the laid-back setting helped me see the Journal
from a perspective other than the straightforwardly critical lens that serves as
default. I tried to put
myself in the shoes of this Progressive-minded man on vacation, enjoying his
recreational reading, taking a week away from supervising industrial
rehabilitation to sit and read a magazine which is, at it's heart, about
children's orthopedic treatment.
When I came back to
the Journal, I thought about what might make the magazine so joyful in Angove's
mind. Certainly a shared pro-rehabilitation leaning between reader and material
was at play, but with my new frame of reference I could also appreciate how
light the material could be-- notes on picnics and parties, photos of happy
children, short poems and tidbits, and reader letters on a variety of subjects,
which are interesting in the way that reading someone else's correspondence can
be. The language of most of the articles is pleasantly straightforward. And of
course, as the publication hoped to drum up support for what they called
"crippled children's work" as well as reconstructive surgery and
training more generally, the Journal printed plenty of stories of satisfied
customers-- happy children who had grown into employed, articulate adults. This
was probably also part of Angove's enthusiasm, akin to the human interest
stories and videos which still capture public attention and make us feel
hopeful about people.
As teachers of
history, we focus a lot of attention on teaching students how to read
"like historians"-- from a scholarly, analytical mindset. However,
reading like historians also involves reading like historical actors, pulling
out not just what we can see in a text but also what might have stood out to
the people who read it when it was first produced. Perhaps our teaching could
incorporate this more explicitly-- not just asking "what would X group say
about this document?" after all have read it but also encouraging students
to read documents with a particular mindset. I aim to explore, in future, how to incorporate multiple methods of reading sources into classwork, looking not only for what the text itself is saying but what might have provoked interest, pain, or--yes-- greatest enjoyment of its early readers.
Related Links:
For more on Sullivan
and the Michigan Hospital-School, see Brad Byrom's work in Disability Discourse, Children with Disabilities in America: A Historical
Handbook and Guide, and The New Disability History: American Perspectives.
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