historians-from-massachusetts

"In 1918 he retired as an officer of the , and in the following year was elected of the . Here he officiated for the remainder of his life, serving as curator, director of its museum, and editor of its nationally known magazine, "Old-Time New England." In 1894 he founded the Topsfield Historical Society, serving as secretary and treasurer of the Society, and editor of its publications. When the came into the posssssion of the Society, he was in charge of the restoration. Because of his knowledge of early New England architecture he was often consulted, and had charge of the restoration of a number of eighteenth century houses for individuals and historical societies throughout New England. He also designed the . In 1922 he organized the Marine Research Society at Salem and edited its long and valuable series of publications."

"The ' shipped 15,000 brown biscuit and 5,000 white, that is, , i.e. crackers; also or half-cooked bacon, as it came from the , which was much liked with the biscuit and when fried was considered a delicacy. Haberdyne () was also a staple article of diet; also . Potatoes were practically unknown at that time and the store of cabbages, turnips, onions, parsnips, etc., soon ran short and gave way to boiled mush, , s, etc. Their beer was carried in iron-bound casks."

"Of course it goes without saying that when a whale was sighted, the whalemen were in for a hard job, a harder job than the uninitiated could ever appreciate. The chase, the capture, the , the were dangerous and inordinately wearisome. But the chase and the capture, too, had their better sides. The love of a princely sport thrilled the whalemen when the cry of "blows" came from aloft."

"The "Stars and Stripes" now float over a vast continent, extending from the Atlantic to the Great Ocean, and from the Gulf to the Frozen Seas of the North. The Great Republic may now be considered as embracing four nearly equal quarters, of about nine hundred thousand square miles each:—the first being the original territory east of the Mississippi River; the second, the Louisiana Purchase; the third, Texas and the Mexican Provinces; and the fourth covering Oregon and Alaska."

"Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it."

"On rocky islands gulls woke."

"Bart [burning books]: So long, Johnny Tremain. Your Newberry award won't save you now!"

"Marge: It's about a boy who goes to war. His hand is deformed in an accident. Bart: Deformed? Why didn't you say so? They should call this book Johnny Deformed."

"Hundreds would die, but not the thing they died for. A man can stand up."

"How old are you, Johnny?" she asked. "Sixteen." "And what's that — a boy or a man?" He laughed. "A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war."

"I knew he could learn — if he didn't get killed first. It was sink or swim for him — and happens he's swimming."

"If he still were in England and were the man whom this girl loved, she would probably seek him out — women have almost a genius for anticlimaxes."

"Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men—the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains."

"Human relations never seem to stand completely still. This apple, for instance. It might ripen into something better than it now was, or, unromantically, it might rot away in his pocket."

"After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke."

"We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills ... we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up."

"He had never in all his life slept in a bed alone — much less a whole room."

"A man can stand up to anything with a good weapon in his hands. Without it, he's but a dumb beast."

"Then Johnny saw running down Cambridge road through the bushes on Charlestown Common a scurry of red ants. ... Those red ants were British soldiers. ... You could see the flash of musket fire, too far away to be heard. Fireflies swarming, hardly more than that."

"The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist,”. “It is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth."

"Many of the essays engage with the question of written constitutionalism in the United States, meaning, in a specific legal way, that we are ruled by the dead. But a lot of the essays also engage broadly in questions about how memory and devotion and obligation to the dead inform decisions that we make. I don’t think it’s an unshakable hold. And sometimes, as in the title essay (from 2019), that hold is an embrace."

"I never set out to study history. I only ever set out to write."

"The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself, which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave the country alone. That way, America's ugliest partisan tendencies could emerge unimpeded by the unifying effects of war. The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn't acting competitively- that should be encouraged- but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group. That is exactly what the politicians of both parties try to do when they spew venomous rhetoric about their rivals. That is exactly what media figures do when they go beyond criticism of their fellow citizens and openly revile them. Reviling people you share a combat outpost with is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and public figures who imagine their nation isn't, potentially, one huge combat outpost are deluding themselves."

"So how do you unify a secure, wealthy country that has sunk into a zero-sum political game with itself? How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a cohesive society that was worth fighting for in the first place? I put that question to Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Yehuda has seen, up close, the effect of such antisocial divisions on traumatized vets. "If you want to make a society work, then you don't keep underscoring the places where you're different- you underscore your shared humanity," she told me. "I'm appalled by how much people focus on differences. Why are you focusing on how different you are from one another, and not on the things that unite us?""

"Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

"There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return."

"Like a black hole, NSA pulls in every signal that comes near, but no electron is ever allowed to escape."

"... it would seem that the permanency of the present union [Yugoslavia] is extremely doubtful."

"Education in public administration has been strongly influenced by Leonard D. White's text, Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, the first edition of which was published in 1926. The author traces the theoretical issues of public administration through the four editions of the Introduction into the administrative histories which were White's final work. Many important aspects of White's thought are analyzed-the partial intellectual genesis of his formulations in Frank Goodnow's writings at the turn of the century, the four assumptions which were the foundation of White's work and of the discipline of public administration, are analyzed, exposing problems of relationship that White never fully resolved. Storing finds in White's administrative histories a style of scholarship for resolving these problems. Using these formulations, other scholars may find differing approaches to the dilemma of identifying the theoretical assumptions that underly public administration as a field of inquiry."

"Whenever we [public officials] make a mistake, some-one jumps on us for it, but whenever we do something well nobody pays any attention to us. We never get any recognition except when we get ‘bawled out’."

"His desire "to organize his own knowledge" reminds us of how much hacking away at a jungle has to be done at such an early stage in the study of and reporting on a new field."

"More and more clearly it is being understood that the promise of American life will never be realized until American administration has been lifted out of the ruts in which it has been left by a century of neglect."

"The role of administration in the modern state is profoundly affected by the general political and cultural environment of the age."

"Few of the major tasks of modern administration can be carried out without the constant support of the technician."

"Public administration is the management of men and materials in the accomplishment of the purposes of the state."

"One foundation for the future of American democracy is a sound administrative system, able to discharge with competence and integrity the tasks laid upon it by the people. The present system is far in advance of that which sufficed in 1925, but its improvement has no more than kept pace with the added responsibilities heaped upon it."

"The objective of public administration is the most efficient utilization of the resources at the disposal of officials and employees."

"To conduct of government business... [is similar to the] conduct of the affairs of any other social organization, commercial, philanthropic, religious, or educational, in all of which good management is recognized as an element essential to success."

"You cannot give an official power to do right without at the same time giving him power to do wrong."

"John M. Gaus, Leonard Dupee White, and Marshall E. Dimock. Frontiers of public administration. (1936)."

"Curiously enough, commentators on American political institutions have never produced a systematic analysis of our administrative system except from the point of view of the lawyer. Until the last few years even the text books have obstinately closed their eyes to this enormous terrain, studded with governmental problems of first magnitude and fascinating interest; and even today they dismiss the subject with a casual chapter. But certainly no one pretends that administration can still be put aside “as a practical detail which clerks could arrange after doctors had agreed upon principles.""

"Any system of public administration inevitably reflects its environment."

"The book rest upon four assumptions. It assumes that administration is a - single process, substantially uniform in its essential characteristics whether observed and therefore avoids the study of municipal administration, state administration, or federal administration as such. It is assumed that the study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law, and is therefore more absorbed in the affairs of the American Management Association than in the decisions of the courts. It assumes that administration is still primarily an art but attaches importance to the significant tendency to transform it into a science. It assumes that administration has become, and will continue to be, the heart of the problem of modern government."

"As a nation we are, however, slowly accepting the fact that the loose-jointed, easy-going, somewhat irresponsible system of administration which we carried over from our rural, agricultural background is no longer adequate for present and future needs."

"[ Lawyers are clear. On the one hand, they are important and deserve] special consideration [because they] are always found at the right hand of the administrator whose actions must be legally defensible. A lawyer, therefore, sits close to the seat of administrative authority... Policy may have to yield to constitutionality, and the lawyers prescribe. On the other hand, it must be said that the training of the lawyer, based on precedent, and looking backward rather than forward for guidance, is not a training which is suited to make an ideal administrator."

"Organization is the arrangement of personnel for facilitating the accomplishment of some agreed purpose through allocation of functions and responsibilities. It is the relating of efforts and capacities of individuals and groups engaged upon a common task in such a way as to secure the desired objective with the least friction and the most satisfaction to those for whom the task is done and those engaged in the enterprise."

"[ Public administration is merely] a special case of the larger category, administration, a process which is common to all organized human effort and which is highly developed in modern corporate business, in the church, in the Red Cross, in education, and in international bodies, public and private."

"Defined in broadest terms, public administration consists of all those operations having for their purpose the fulfillment or enforcement of public policy. This definition covers a multitude of particular operations in many fields — the delivery of a letter, the sale of public land, the negotiation of a treaty, the award of compensation to an injured workman, the quarantine of a sick child, the removal of litter from a park, manufacturing plutonium, and licensing the use of atomic energy. It includes military as well as civil affairs, much of the work of courts, and all the special fields of government activity— police, education, health, construction of public works, conservation, social security, and many others."

"He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. [...] : [At the colony,] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology.Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting."

"Tsai's Multi-kinetics were dynamically integrated multiple constructions, employing thirty-two kinetic units, each of which contains a configuration of multi-colored gyroscopic forms. With these elements he created an active environmental field that could, apparently, be infinitely extended. Each motorized unit was a self-sufficient entity, and when it was combined with other similar units produced a large-scale kinetic work that joined visual intensity with mechanical power. By controlling the time sequence of each unit in skillful compositions, Tsai used engineering principles to achieve aesthetic ends."