Bedlam is the nickname of the Bethlem Royal Hospital which was built in London.  Its current location is in Beckenham, UK. Knowing this, it’s easy to see how the name Bedlam came about.  Here you can read a bit more of the hospital’s history.

Best of all, the reason for this teaching site is this:

The prejudice surrounding mental illness and the stigma attached to those who suffer from it remains considerable. We hope that this resource will help to challenge assumptions and prejudices, encouraging students to become more informed citizens.

I found this 1903 picture of a flatiron building in New York City on Eyewitness to History in their photo of the week section. It reminded me that there’s one in San Francisco.

Many of the prejudices against the poor and the uneducated sound the same over 100 years later. “The poor are poor because they spend their money on frivolous things or don’t apply themselves to work.” “If only everyone was educated and would avail themselves to our schools, life would be just peachy.” Christians doled out help to only those they deemed worthy, i.e. the submissive who promised to behave as the charity wanted them to.

I’m finding this all resonates into today. Discussions about the poor, the uneducated, the sick, etc. follow the same lines and the solutions don’t always fit.

I don’t look at neighborhoods the same way after this class.

For anyone interested in learning more about America’s urban history I recommend not only this book but the following as well:

• City People: The Rise Of Modern City Culture In Nineteenth-Century America by Gunther Barth
• The Evolution Of American Urban Society (6th Edition) by Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith (NOTE: This is a textbook but fairly easy to read and very interesting.)
• The Immigrant Experience: The Anguish Of Becoming American edited by Thomas C. Wheeler. (NOTE: A slim volume of essays written by children of immigrant parents discussing what it was like to be a first generation American.)

a fanatic of jazz, alcohol, and cabarets who defiantly carried a flask hidden in a hip pocket

Source:
William Howland Kenney, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History 1904-1930, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 152.

I was like a brain-damaged child born into the bosom of a hearty, muscular clan, and I felt guilty for a long time.
Young black writers will go through the same thing until we have established as a race here in America a tradition of books, literature, and writing. Once in this nation, it meant death for a black man to even learn to read; but we are freeing ourselves of this fear.

John A. Williams in his essay, “Time and Tide: Roots of Black Awareness.”

The Immigrant Experience: The Anguish of Becoming American ed. Thomas C. Wheeler (New York: Penguin Books, 1971)

According to Gunther Barth in “Ball Park,” a chapter found in his book City People we can blame it on William H. Cammeyer, builder of the first enclosed baseball field in the country.

Cammeyer left his mark on the atmosphere of the ball park by playing at the beginning of a game a popular song, “The Star Spangled Banner,” which in 1916 by presidential order became the official anthem of the United States.

Let’s parse this some shall we?

• The national anthem did not became the national anthem just because Francis Scott Key wrote new lyrics in 1812 for a popular drinking song. Why this particular song with its peculiar melody was so popular is still a mystery to me.
• Cammeyer built his baseball field in 1862. “Star Spangled Banner” was a popular patriotic song of the time but still not the national anthem.
• By the time the “Star Spangled Banner” became the national anthem, the tradition of singing it before sporting events had been in place for 54 years.

So I think we can blame baseball for the tradition of singing the national anthem before sporting events.

Source
Barth, Gunther. “Ball Park” in City People. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 167.
(required text for “American Urban History,” Spring 2008)

Tonight while perusing the internet, I found “Herodotus and the Power of Women”, an article which is really about what goes behind closed doors to move history forward.

Herodotus’ version of the story about Gyges, King Candaules and his gorgeous, unnamed queen and the role the queen had in the overthrow of the king is retold. But retold to make the point that there is much that goes on behind closed doors between men in power and their women that has an impact on history.

Go read the article, if only to see the humour in this:

The history of more than half of humanity is a side or specialist issue. How does this happen? To see the marginalisation clearly, imagine trying to frame a project entitled “The Role of Men in History”, and be taken seriously.

But thank the heavens for Whoopi Goldberg, who gently tries to guide Sherri into a more educated path. Whoopi often fails because it is clear that Sherri will not be guided, especially when it comes to matters of her Christian faith.

And it all started with a discussion of Epicurus and his definition of happiness, which somehow evolved into a discussion of religion (or rather, Christianity) in which Sherri showed her ignorance again by saying nothing predated Christians. Further, she argued, the Greeks knew about Christians because they threw the Christians to the lions.

This is a teachable moment, but the student needs to be willing to listen. Yes Sherri, there was a time when the Christ hadn’t been born and Christianity didn’t exist and Epicurus predated Christianity.

I certainly hope there was further discussion backstage afterwards in an attempt to make Sherri understand the meaning of BC and AD, or as I prefer BCE and CE.

Take, for instance, the fascinating intersection of Islam and Christianity. Margaret Smith in her book The Way of the Mystics devotes an entire chapter (VI) to the influence of Christianity on Islam in the early stages of Islam’s development.

This came up for discussion in class a few weeks ago and I was satisfied to read in our assignments something I have been saying for years, Christianity had a profound influence on Islam. In fact, Mohammad (pbuh) believed Islam to be the logical extension of Christianity building upon the teachings of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

Mohammad was a trader which meant he traveled through the Middle and Near East, meeting people of all stripes along the way. Of course he talked to them, learned from them and exchanged ideas with them. How can you not when your business, indeed your livelihood, depends upon making contacts?

We cannot think that Islam just sprang into being, like Athena born full-grown out of Zeus’ head. Islam grew as time went on and was influenced by the cultures around it and Mohammad’s influences, one of which was Syriac-Christian. The Qur’an was not written in a vacuum, and this needs to be acknowledged.

I think if people knew a little more history, they might be more tolerant of the world around them. Every day I encounter people who believe that Islam is a hateful religion based simply on a minority of maniacs who slammed planes into buildings. These people have not bothered to look beyond those images to see what the truth of Islam is and what its influences are, and that’s just sad for the entire world.

My topic is Sufism and my approach will be a descriptive narrative using mostly secondary sources.  I want to write about the origins of Sufism and its impact upon Islam itself.  The book I am currently reading is J. Spencer Trimingham’s The Sufi Orders in Islam which turns out to be a book about the origins of the many different orders of Sufism.  It wasn’t what I was expecting but it’s a good read anyway.

I choose this topic because mysticism always fascinates me and I remember copies of Idries Shah’s books about Nasrudin in the house when I was a teenager.  I had no idea what they were all about and wanted to explore that.  I am not reading any of Shah’s books for this paper but I am beginning to understand that Nasrudin is the clown found in all mystic traditions.