Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 1, 1964
The Harvard Summer School looks like an artist colony of French existentialists and pseudo-cosmopolitan Midwesterners.
West Newton, Massachusetts, July 3, 1964
The Civil Rights Act Signed into Law
Yesterday evening, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which now has become the law of the land. This was the decisive step taken by the U.S. government to normalize race relations and to give the colored minority equality within the American society.
The essential provisions of this law are:
1. To enforce the constitutional right to vote.
2. Injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations.
3. Equality in public facilities and public education.
(This means the desegregation of public parks, playgrounds, pools, libraries and public schools.)
The execution of these provisions will basically change American society in the decades ahead. There is a special symbolic significance to the circumstance that the Civil Rights Act was signed on the evening before the Fourth of July Weekend.
West Newton, July 11, 1964
The Boston Pops Orchestra
In summer time, Boston and the surrounding New England villages have a festival atmosphere, which by comparison is not much different from that of the tourist resorts in Europe. Above all a great deal of music and theater is offered. Especially liked are the concerts of the Boston Pops Orchestra on the Esplanade. The 36th season of the Pops with their remarkable program has just ended. The open air concert conducted by Arthur Fiedler took place free of charge in the Hatch Shell on Memorial Drive in the Back Bay of the Charles River. We heard an excellent rendition of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
[Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979) was born in Boston, but had descended from a family of musicians in Vienna. In 1930 he took over the direction of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a position he maintained until his death in 1979. As conductor Fiedler was master of a wide-range repertoire that reached from classical to popular music. The Pops had on their program familiar tunes from operettas and musicals, and Fiedler conducted with equal verve the march music of John Philip Sousa. The concerts on the Esplanade in Boston attracted hundreds of thousands of people. Fiedler was one of the most liked and successful figures, indeed an institution of the musical scene in America.]
West Newton, July 12, 1964
Salem, Massachusetts
Salem is situated on the Northern coast of Massachusetts Bay at a distance of about 20 miles from Boston. The township, which was first settled in 1626, belongs to the oldest settlements in New England. Salem has become known by the witchcraft trials of 1692 and as the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64). The unhappy victims of those notorious trials were sent to the gallows. Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter (1850), was born here and spent most of his life in the Puritanical environment of this small town. In total seclusion, Hawthorne wrote here his psychologically profound tales. In Salem, the houses from the early colonial period are kept preserved with great care. On the grounds of “The House of the Seven Gables,” which served as the backdrop for Hawthorne’s romance of the same title, a Hawthorne Memorial has been established. Thus, the simple house where the author was born was transferred there and opened for visitors.
West Newton, July 13, 1964
The Plight of the Inner City
The inner districts of the cities on the East Coast are for the most part neglected; they virtually suffocate by their own debris. The flight to the residential areas in the suburbs is constantly increasing, what again contributes to the growing plight of the inner cities.
[Plymouth and New Bedford, Massachusetts], July 18-19, 1964
After the Mayflower had landed on Cape Cod on November 11, 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers were looking for a suitable place where they could establish a permanent settlement. They found such a place on the shore across the Bay and named the settlement Plymouth after the harbor in England from which they had ventured into the unknown. On December 16, the Mayflower dropped anchor at Plymouth Rock. The Pioneer Village of Plymouth gives a vivid impression of how the pilgrims lived during the first years following their arrival in the New World. During the severe first winter close to half of the 102 settlers died of disease and hunger. But in October of the following year 1621 the pilgrims together with the Indians, who had helped them to survive, could celebrate their first Thanksgiving. Out of that, the very own American celebration of Giving Thanks and of families coming together has emerged.
[George Washington declared the Thanksgiving of November 26, 1789 a national holiday. But only in 1941 was it determined by an act of Congress that Thanksgiving Day should be observed on the fourth Thursday in November.]
New Bedford
New Bedford, which at its peak had a fleet of 329 whaling vessels, was by the middle of the 19th century the most important whaling harbor in America. When mineral oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1857, the whaling industry lost its economic significance. In addition to that, the New Bedford whaling fleet lost about half of its ships during the Civil War 1861-65. The historic New Bedford has a special relationship to American literature. Herman Melville (1819-91) had come to New Bedford by the end of December 1840 with the intention to sign on to a whaler. On January 3, 1841 he began from Fairhaven aboard the whaler Acushnet the long voyage that led him around Cape Hoorn into the South Pacific. This adventurous whale hunt and the odyssey through the South Pacific archipelagos, which altogether lasted for four years, was the decisive experience in Melville’s life. Ten years later, it offered him the narrative material for Moby-Dick. The New Bedford Whaling Museum holds a number of documents and objects that are instructive for the understanding of Moby-Dick. Especially impressive was the visit to the Seamen’s Bethel of New Bedford. Most likely, that church served as a model for the Whaleman’s Chapel in Moby-Dick (Chap. VII) from whose pulpit Father Mapple delivers his sermon to the sailors.
[Transl: In January, 2003, the Melville Society Archive was inaugurated at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the Kendall Institute.]
West Newton, July 20, 1964
Goldwater Nominated
As expected, last Wednesday, July 15, Senator Barry Goldwater was nominated by the National Republican Convention in San Francisco as the Republican Party candidate for the presidency. The nomination of Goldwater demonstrates that the ideology of the Republican Party has changed from a liberal to an extreme conservative political attitude. The center of gravity of the Party has shifted from the East to the West concentrating its power in the Southwest, California, and the Northwest. The new, extremely radical tone became apparent by the acceptance speech of the nominee. Goldwater verbatim: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
West Newton, July 25-27, 1964
Racial Incidents
Recently, there occurred a racial incident which prompted the New York Police to cordon off the residential area north of 125th Street. A similar incident happened over this weekend in Rochester, New York, after a police patrol helicopter had crashed into the colored section of town. Due to the emergency situation in the ghettos of the northern cities, more and more of the black population are venting their anger by violence. The American dilemma of racial conflicts is still far removed from a solution. But nevertheless, the America of the future can only be imagined as an integrated society in which whites and blacks have equal rights and live together in peace.