Smartphone-Free in Ward 6

For the month of July, I'm part of a formal group not using their smart phones. The group gave us each a flip phone, which we can use to call and text. Also we can use our other devices in whatever way we want during this month. Right now I'm on Zoom with my writing group, paying attention to emails, and writing this blog post. Each week we meet in person and do various activities. I can say that one week in this experience is so wonderful and deeply meaningful. 

As a sociologist in Ward 6, I notice a few things. First, I am in my mid-50s and I am pretty certain I'm the oldest person in the group. Many of the participants seem to be in their 20s and 30s. There is so much that could be said about this, but I am going to continue to other things. 

Second, the formal group encourages us to make the world around us as addictive as our phones were: building new social relationships and community, reclaiming phone-free space in our minds and in our locality, and importantly learning more about DC. While I like turning to locality myself, as a sociologist of globalization, I know that the phone-free movement is global and has been for several years. There is the bipartisan Phone-Free School Movement (called the Smartphone Free Childhood movement in the UK), which likely exists in every country in some way. People go to phone-free tourist locations and with phone-free travel groups. There are phone-free bars. Reddit has a variety of groups, such as r/dumbphones and r/nosurf. This is a global movement to create other pathways and other ways of interacting outside corporate-Smartphone worlds. How might we remember the globalness we had back in the 1980s and early 1990s (and much earlier too) before cell phones (see my discussion about DC here)? 

Third, so many people say that AI is inevitable and the expansion of Smartphones use is inevitable. Sociologists really get upset when people say something is inevitable. People make things seem inevitable or commonsense or natural. Sociologists also get interested when people say something is inevitable because this phenomenon and the social investment in it are then in fact fascinating and worth investigating and thinking about. And as I said above, there are global movements making other worlds. 

Just my first sociological thoughts on this from Ward 6.  

Updates

Greetings, I just wanted to announce that I made some updates to my blog and will continue to make new updates and postings! 

New DC Archives Finding Aids!

I just found out that the DC Archives now has online finding aids and online collections. This is really exciting. 

• Finding aids available online: https://archives.dc.gov/finding-aids#  
• Online collections: https://archives.dc.gov/collections
• Including the Recorder of Deeds Land Record Index: https://archives.dc.gov/collections/recorder-of-deeds-land-records-index

I've been searching for ANC 6B records! City Council records! And so much more!

Revisiting "George Washington (Hanadagá•yas) slept here"

Across the landscape, there are claims that George Washington slept here or visited. For example, at Friendship House (also known as Duncanson House and the Maples) on Capitol Hill, he was supposed to have been a guest. In 1940, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) installed a sign on the building stating that, yes, George Washington was a guest here. People have questioned the veracity of such claims, but really why make these claims at all? To start, it seems as if these are claims to significance or value; this building and the homeowners are worthy because they are linked to George Washington. 

A new fascinating article on George Washington by Janine Yorimoto Boldt just came out in American Art, "The Portrait of Hanadagá•yas; or, George Washington Reconsidered," which provides insight into my question. In the article, Boldt discusses the first portrait of George Washington in 1772 as a celebration of militaristic white nationalism and later linked to the Lost Cause. The landscape in the portrait is the Ohio River Valley, where, according to Boldt, Washington said that the Seneca leader Tancharison named him, Caunotaucarius (in English) or Hanadagá•yas (in the language of the Haudenosaunee), "the Town-taker" or "the Town-Destroyer." Other Native American groups referred to him this way, and he called himself this name when communicating with them. Charles Cooke (Thawennensere) translated Hanadagá•yas as: 

"He bites villages"..."A sacker of villages"; a destroyer of towns, a ravager of communities; a plunderer and pillager of encampments...Hyperbolically this verb denotes to destroy, to sack, to plunder, to pillage, to devastate, to demolish, to ravage, to cause havoc, to eat in secret the provisions and crops of others. It is used only in instances of savagery and discomfort. (Boldt 2022: 6)

So, what is the significance of Hanadagá•yas, the Town-taker or the Town-destroyer, visiting Friendship House on Capitol Hill and the DAR putting up a sign about it centuries later? Why the need to claim that he visited?

Could the declaration that Hanadagá•yas was a guest here be a hope by the DAR to take the town of Washington, DC, or ravage communities within it? In 1935, a year before the white segregated Friendship House organization moved into the building soon to have the DAR sign, the director wrote to a government official, "Since your visit here the other evening I have been thinking a good deal about our problem at Friendship House due to the increasing number of [African Americans] in our immediate community. I also have been thinking of the possibility of developing a housing scheme for white people...I believe it would change the character of quite a bit of the surrounding area" (NARA, RG 302 Records of National Capital Housing Authority, Box 4, Letter from Lydia Burklin, Friendship House, to John Ihlder, Aug. 16, 1935). In 1940, the DAR placed the sign on the recently renovated Friendship House. At the same time, this housing scheme displaced about 146 African American households and built the white segregated Ellen Wilson Dwellings in their place. This housing scheme also bolstered other work to expand white segregated areas on Capitol Hill. 

By making claims that George Washington slept or visited here, people bring Hanadagá•yas, George Washington, the Town-destroyer and Town-taker to life. Hanadagá•yas helps them realize their racist urban visitions. Maybe there is a kind of terror that should be recognized in Hanadagá•yas sleeping or visiting anywhere?

What is Psychogeography? A Journal of the Plague Year

According to Merlin Coverley, the first psychogeographic survey of London was Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. The book, in his telling, is "an imaginative reworking of the city in which the familiar layout of the city is shown to be transformed" (Coverley, p. 37). I dove into the novel without much knowledge about it. It is a completely fascinating book that, in my opinion, is in no way a psychogeography. 

Basically, the book is a fictional story of a saddle maker, who decides to remain in London during the plague of 1665. Defoe published the book in 1722, basing it on his childhood memories, statistical data, and many works that had already been published. In a very journalistic style, the saddle maker talks about what life is like being isolated and about the city when he often goes out around town, which is very life threatening. All those who can have left for the countryside. He has to stay because of his business, and he doesn't have adequate funds to leave town. He reports on conversations and stories, and on people screaming in pain, people wailing in grief from the discovery that their family members were ill or had passed away, people trying to continue to work, people escaping London to live in the forest, and so on. During his relatively short complete isolation, the saddle maker's friend, a doctor, came over, and, like everyone today, the saddle maker was so glad to talk with his friend. Importantly, I started reading a version of the book, which had been rewritten in language of today, which was very easy to read. I also read another version with language of the time, which took some getting used to reading. The whole book is just so interesting about what life was like at that time. I highly recommend it. 

Now, I don't think that the book is psychogeography. He talks about London, but it seems like a newspaper reporter going out and talking about all the crazy things he sees. Here is my earlier discussion of psychogeography, which, in my opinion, doesn't include this (great) book.

What is Psychogeography? Rorschach Theater

I have had a very enjoyable time doing the first two boxes of "Chemical Exile," the psychogeographical theater piece by the Rorschach Theater. Each of the seven boxes directs you to a specific location and provide you photos, letters, objects, etc. as a chapter in the "Chemical Exile" storyline. The theater's definition of psychogeography is:

It’s the intersection of psychology and geography and while the idea existed long before him, the term was coined by philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s as an instruction for urban exploration.

A GREAT PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION includes these key elements:

• WANDERING as you explore your physical world in a leisurely way
• SUBVERTING your everyday relationship with the city through a fresh perspective
• DISCOVERING the present through the prism of the past
• ...and maybe a dash of the occult

As a sociologist, I tend more towards the understanding psychogeography as a method of urban exploration, but the theater is working within the literary tradition of psychogeography, which Merlin Coverley's Psychogeography fascinatingly and convincingly argues is even more important. 

Regarding the theater's definition, the wandering is different from drifting because we "audience members" are directed to a location and are exploring the psychological and geographical experiences of the main character. Of course, our own experiences of the spaces are interwoven and are encouraged in the call to be leisurely. 

Regarding subverting my everyday relationship with the city, I greatly appreciated going to a new part of Adams Morgan. Seeing the pool (see left image), the mural (see image below), and the wonderful picnic tables at Marie Reed Rec Center, as well as other very cool destinations, made the city even more marvelous! These destination also made me re-discover the present through the past. As Coverley writes, "the topography of the city is refashioned through the imaginative force of the writer [or the theater]...a kind of historical consciousness that exposes the psychic connectivity of landscapes" (p. 16). This was definitely the case. 

The occult also appeared! This play is in some sense about the city changing in confusing ways. In the midst of Box 2, which is very much about this, I ended up walking behind three men. I met one of them, Jerome, who was just explaining to his friends how different the area was from when he was growing up and pointing out the new buildings all around. I feel as if these kinds of woo-woo synchronicities are an important element of psychogeography. They highlight or emphasize a point or a significance in the space.

The theater piece sent me walking in new directions, which I am very grateful about. Among other things, I saw a strange portico on the side of a row house near 16th and Florida St, NW, (see below, any ideas about that??), and a kind of informal gallery or political statement near Ontario and Kalorama (see below). On the side of a garage planned to be razed was a series of photos of houses on the 1700-block of Seaton Place/Street, NW. In Shirikiana Aina's movie "Brick by Brick," the fight by the residents of this block to stop eviction as a result of gentrification is documented (here is more information, saying they were one of the first groups to use the new TOPA rules).

"Chemical Exile" is a great psychogeographical experience so far!

What is Psychogeography? Drifting

As discussed in my previous post, one psychogeographical method is aimless strolling and drifting through the city. First, French situationalist Guy Debord understood this drifting as a way investigate the emotional terrain of the city. Everyone senses the mood or ambiance of different parts of town. Here Debord suggests that we systematically explore the "zones of distinct psychic atmospheres," their currents, and their edges, as a way to understand the city in a deeper way (Coverley's Psychogeography, pp. 81-103). 

Second, these strolls might move in a more sociological direction, as a way to detect multiple social worlds crossing through the city. Sociologist Ruth Glass understood London as an often invisible constellation of many unfamiliar worlds:

We can see them in the mean streets, in luxury flats, along the roads of suburban ribbon development; in places like Eel Pie Island, where various cliques of teenagers congregate; in jazz clubs, coffee bars, Soho joints, and expense account restaurants; in the withdrawing rooms of earnest religious or political sects; at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park or the Earls Court Road; at meetings in Trafalgar Square; in public libraries, senior common rooms, and at soirées of the Royal Society. We get an inkling of the existence of other remote and yet nearby worlds through migration statistics; through fascist news-sheets and...scrawls on the walls of back alleys; through unsavoury court cases or complaints before rent tribunals; in reading Press items about witch rites, ghost hunts, visits from Martians, and take-over bids. And then again, we may hear of the ‘hidden’ societies through reports of hospital almoners [officials who determine if someone qualifies for assistance], N.S.P.C.C. [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] inspectors, or social workers who bring ‘meals on wheels’ to lonely old people. It is an amazing, still largely obscured, panorama that thus begins to be visible— a conglomeration of groups who move, so to speak, on separate tracks, even if they do meet occasionally at a station. (Glass, introduction to London: Aspects of Change, 1964)

Aimless strolling (and other methods) builds on our already existing human abilities to pick up on this panorama of social worlds and expand our understanding of cities beyond mass media and real estate's simultaneous "cliches of urban doom" (Glass 1989) and celebration of, what she termed, "gentrification" (Glass 1964). 

Third, drifting also accesses our unconscious/subconscious and its amorphous knowledge of the city, which might also be considered a psychogeographical method. Back in September, I did a drift through Georgetown. I was born in Columbia Hospital for Women, and my family during my first year of life lived in a basement apartment in a Georgetown rowhouse around 27th and P Street, NW. So, I started on that block and drifted with the idea that my unconscious/subconscious might have retained knowledge of that time or might be open to knowledge embedded in the geography. Animals defined the drift. After being accompanied by crows flying overhead, I found myself in Mount Zion Cemetery/Female Union Band Society Cemetery, where I spent some time. Walking around Dumbarton House (the national headquarters of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America) and along Oak Hill Cemetery, I didn't feel like going into this cemetery, but I did and followed a cardinal to two headstones with family names -- Boswell and Merrick -- related to my Capitol Hill research. I believe that I walked down 29th St. On tiny Cambridge St, which made me think of Cambridge, MD, and Harriet Tubman (though maybe not the intention of the street name), I encountered a small rabbit on someone's side lawn. I returned to 29th on Dent St, possibly named after the large-scale enslavers from Charles County, MD. Paying attention to people and further animals, I mysteriously found myself again at Mount Zion Cemetery/Female Union Band Society Cemetery with at least one hawk flying overhead. And I walked down the hill to the Rock Creek path below. I found the aimless strolling very interesting. Obviously, my drift picked up on certain historical connections in the geography, while others would likely have a very different drift. To try to make sense of the drift, I took notes immediately, described the entire drift on paper soon afterwards, and drew a map.

I'm soon going to experience the Rorschach Theater psychogeography, which, of course, begins in Mount Zion Cemetery/Female Union Band Cemetery...