Why it’s been quiet in the Garden lately.

It’s been a week since my last post, an unusually long time, and I thought I would say something about what’s going on and what’s coming up here on this blog. I really do love maintaining this blog and the small community we’ve started to build here. This blog doesn’t have anything like the reach of my YouTube channel, but I tend to think of it as a little more intimate and less public than that. So, here’s what’s going down.

In about a week and a half I’ll be taking a vacation and the blog will be on hiatus until possibly the second week of November. (I’ll do an announcement article just before we go dark). Because I’m very eager to get another deep-dive video finished and up on the channel before I leave, I’ve been working very intensively on it, and trying to fit everything else—my classroom teaching, administrative work, trip preparation, etc.—into the increasingly small cracks of time available between the various tasks on the video. For the record, the new video will be called “China’s Long Revolution, 1900-1950” and will be an in-depth examination of the tumultuous half century of China’s history between the time of the Yihetuan Uprising, also known as the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900 and the consolidation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949-50. I announced that I’d be doing this video in this article, my comments upon the passing of Dr. Jonathan Porter of the University of New Mexico, who taught me this subject nearly 35 years ago. The video will be dedicated to Dr. Porter and will contain a brief section intended as a tribute to him. In this effort I had the surprising and very helpful cooperation of the Daily Lobo, UNM’s campus newspaper, whose editor got me some footage of the classroom in which I took the course “Revolutionary China,” which was ultimately very formative in me becoming a historian.

As it always does, real life has intervened to complicate matters. This past weekend one of my nephews (I have four) got married, and my husband and I flew down to Texas to attend his wedding. I had to wear a cowboy hat with a suit, but that’s what you do in Texas. I also somewhat unexpectedly attended a football game at Texas Christian University, where another of my nephews—the groom’s brother—is on the spirit team. Those of you who know me in person know that as a rather timid academic, live football isn’t really my thing, but I’ll say that I really did have a terrific time at the game. The header photo of this article is a picture I took from Amon G. Carter Stadium, with the moon rising over the venue and the TCU campus. The photo below is of my nephew Nathan carrying the TCU flag. I seem to have caught a cold at the game—I’m recovering now—but it was an excellent time.

Now I’m in the most intensive phase of completing the Revolutionary China video. The story of China in this period is so complicated and tragic, and I’d forgotten how completely absorbing it was. Much of it is a surprisingly personal story, driven by the desires, prejudices and decisions—mostly bad ones—of leaders like Cixi (the Dowager Empress), Chiang Kai-shek of the Nationalists and Mao Zedong of the Communists, each of whom had starkly different visions for how to bring China into modernity, and whether doing so was a good idea at all. China was sort of in a cocoon for 2000 years and its final dynastic rulers were especially allergic to any intercourse with the modern world. That the cocoon had to break open in 1911, just three years before the First World War changed everything so dramatically, was both China’s incredibly hard luck, and its opportunity. The dimensions of this story still continue to amaze me.

So, this is where we are and where we’re going on the Garden. I’ll probably get a chance to do at least one or two more “normal” articles before the hiatus, depending on the breaks with the video. (I notice I haven’t done an Interiors article in some time). But I wanted you all to know I’m still here, still working, and eternally grateful for your support and interest in what I do. Take care.

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