Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort to Turn Back the Environmental Clock

If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress

I Went to Learn, Meanings of the European Tour of Senator Robert M. La Follette, 1923

In 1923, progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette, an astute observer of government, economics, and social conditions, toured Europe in preparation for his third-party presidential bid. This article examines that trip and its legacy, particularly in relation to Daniel T. Rodgers\u27 1998 book Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age.

Women and Gender: Useful Categories of Analysis in Environmental History

In 1990, Carolyn Merchant proposed, in a roundtable discussion published in The Journal of American History, that gender perspective be added to the conceptual frameworks in environmental history. 1 Her proposal was expanded by Melissa Leach and Cathy Green in the British journal Environment and History in 1997. 2 The ongoing need for broader and more thoughtful and analytic investigations into the powerful relationship between gender and the environment throughout history was confirmed in 2001 by Richard White and Vera Norwood in Environmental History, Retrospect and Prospect, a forum in the Pacific Historical Review. Both Norwood, in her provocative contribution on environmental history for the twenty-first century, and White, in Environmental History: Watching a Historical Field Mature, addressed the need for further work on gender. Environmental history, Norwood noted, is just beginning to integrate gender analyses into mainstream work. 3 That assessment was particularly striking coming, as it did, after Norwood described the kind of ongoing and damaging misperceptions concerning the role of diversity, including gender, within environmental history. White concurred with Norwood, observing that environmental history in the previous fifteen years had been far more explicitly linked to larger trends in the writing of history, but he also issued a clear warning about the current trends in including the role of gender: The danger ... is not that gendering will be ignored in environmental history but that it will become predictable-an endless rediscovery that humans have often made nature female. Gender has more work to do than that. 4 Indeed it does. In 1992, the index to Carolyn Merchant\u27s The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History included three subheadings under women. Women and the egalitarian ideal and women and the environment each had only a few entries. Most entries were listed under the third subheading, activists and theorists, comprising seventeen names. 5 Nine years later Elizabeth Blum compiled Linking American Women\u27s History and Environmental History, an online preliminary historiography revealing gaps as well as strengths in the field emerging at the intersection of these two relatively new fields of study. At that time Blum noted that, with the exception of some scholarly interest being diverted to environmental justice movements and ecofeminism, most environmental history has centered on elite male concerns; generally, women\u27s involvement tends to be ignored or marginalized.

Adda F. Howie: America’s Outstanding Woman Farmer

In 1894, forty-two-year-old Milwaukee socialite Adda F. Howie seemed a very unlikely candidate to become one of the most famous women in America. And yet by 1925, Howie, the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin State Board of Agriculture, had long been “recognized universally as the most successful woman farmer in America.”1 Howie’s rise to fame came at a time when the widely accepted ideas about gender were divided into the “man’s world” of business, power, and money, and the “woman’s world” devoted to family and home. Yet Howie, rather than being vilified for succeeding in the male sphere, was publicly praised for her skill in bringing traditional female values into the barns and pastures of Wisconsin. Instead of facing ridicule for her unconventional, ostentatiously feminine innovations, she was heaped with praise and her methods studied and adopted on farms across the United States and beyond

Even Judging Woodrow Wilson by the Standards of His Own Time, He Was Deplorably Racist

The news that Princeton acquiesced to student demands that the university confront the racism of Woodrow Wilson set off a series of responses. Some protest that it is unfair to judge the 28th president by present day standards. These pundits, almost all white, proclaim that Wilson must be understood within the context of his own time. The inference of such an assertion is that in times of pervasive racism it is reasonable for a leader to perpetuate it. Setting aside the assumption that morals are relative rather than absolute, let’s examine Wilson’s actions within his times

That the Worst Shooting in US History Took Place in a Gay Bar Is Unsurprising

The selection of Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub, as the site for a murderous homophobic rampage makes the killer’s crime a special outrage in view of the role that nightclubs have played in this nation’s LGBTQ history. Like many popular LGTBQ clubs, Pulse serves not only as a welcoming place to party, but also as a community partner, hosting a variety of social and educational events including, for example, Breast Cancer Awareness and HIV/AIDS prevention. According to its website, Pulse Orlando serves as “a driving force within the GLBT community” and strives to “to make strides towards equality awareness, and love for all.” Nightclubs have been some of the most potent sites of identity, organization, and power in the long history of LGBTQ Americans

Why McCain and His Running Mate Demand Special Scrutiny

The supporters of presidential candidate John McCain aggressively pooh-pooh concerns about his age and health history. That which hasn\u27t killed him, they argue, has made him stronger. But a study of past American leaders reveals that those who think McCain\u27s long history of toughness makes him invincible had better think again. Of the eight presidents who have died in office, four were killed by assassins. Youth and a clean bill of health remain no match for bullets. The running mates of even young and vigorous presidents should be completely qualified to take over all presidential duties in a heartbeat. But older candidates with a history of health concerns and their running mates require special scrutiny

Belle La Follette’s Fight for Women’s Suffrage: Losing the Battle for Wisconsin, Winning the War for the Nation

A century ago, on May 21, 1919, the US House of Representatives voted difinitively (304 to 89) in support of women’s suffrage. Two weeks later, Wisconsinite Belle La Follette sat in the visitors’ gallery of the US Senate chamber. She “shed a few tears” when it was announced that, by a vote of 56 to 25, the US Senate also approved the Nineteenth Amendment, sending it on to the states for ratification.1 For Belle La Follette, this thrilling victory was the culmination of a decades-long fight. Six days later, her happiness turned to elation when Wisconsin became the first state to deliver a certification of ratification. Her husband, Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, confided to their children that Wisconsin “beat ’em to it on the suffrage amendment [because of] your smart mother.” Belle La Follette, worried that Illinois would “try to steal first honors,” had wired representatives in her home state to be sure that Wisconsin acted as quickly as possible.2 Former state senator David James, whose daughter Ada had been a leader in the state’s crusade, was hailed by Belle as “the gallant, veteran courier” for delivering the papers to the state department just moments ahead of the messenger from Illinois.3 As soon as a telegram of confirmation was received, reported Bob, “I went on the floor and had it read into the [Congressional] Record. . . . Mamma and all of us feel good, you bet.”

Barren Lands and Barren Bodies In Navajo Nation: Indian Women WARN about Uranium, Genetics, and Sterilization

Founded by Native American women in 1974, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) insisted that the ongoing Indian public health crisis could not be properly understood exclusively within the context of the exploitation and pollution of the physical environment. It required as well an understanding of the larger context of Indian health issues evolving out of past and present cultural and political changes. This article focuses on selected health, threats affecting the Dine, or the People, as Navajo Indians call themselves, living in Dine Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) during the mid to late 20th century. Navajo history is marked by a series of catastrophes befalling the health of its people and lands, and reactions by both the Dine and the federal government. The 20th century Navajo story combines the concurrent tragedies of forced Indian sterilizations with the calamitous health consequences of uranium exploitation that continue into the 21st century. This context must not be ignored when assessing the difficulties involved in establishing a trusting relationship between the Navajo people and outside researchers and health care providers

Women for a Peaceful Christmas: Wisconsin Homemakers Seek to Remake American Culture

In the autumn of 1971, sixteen Madison homemakers, including Nan Cheney and Sharon Stein, began Women for a Peaceful Christmas (WPC), a unique attempt to do nothing less than remake American culture. Under the slogan No More Shopping Days \u27Til Peace, WPC organized ostensibly powerless homemakers into a quiet revolt against \u27an economy which thrives on war and the destruction of our earth\u27s resources.\u27\u27 WPC urged the public (especially women, the sex that did the vast bulk of holiday shopping) to take economic, political, and environmental matters into their own hands. If you don\u27t want your Christmas celebrations to be controlled by the monoliths that corrupt governments and pollute environments . . . Don\u27t buy the pre-packaged, disposable Christmas! Make your own. Rather to the surprise of the group\u27s founders, WPC was immediately inundated with queries and requests for its informational materials. In five months\u27 time, the movement had spread to almost every state, with members ranging in age from teenagers to grandmothers. WPC received national press coverage. The group disbanded in 1975 when the Vietnam War wound to a close, but its effort to highlight how women\u27s spending contributed to the waste of natural resources was taken up by others. The movement raised the national consciousness of the role that everyday Americans could play, for better or for worse, in the deepening environmental crisis