Transcript

2.6.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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day I would be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated January
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February twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio E is
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to reprinted material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled see
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the Mysterious Winter Parade that brings tourists to the remote
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island of Sardinia. Since ancient times, a town on the
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Italian Isle has marked the season with a grim costumed
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festival by Jenny rothenberg Gritz. The first time Salvatore Gungui
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transformed into mammatone, he was fourteen years old. He pulled
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on the traditional leather sold shepherd's boots, velvet pants and jacket,
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and wrapped himself in a heavy cloak. Across his chest,
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he strapped a cluster of bells that weighed more than
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sixty pounds. He felt a strange mix of emotions as
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he paraded through the streets, a somber mask covering his face.
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There was my grandpa and my mamma and Papa, and
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also my uncle, and they were so proud, recalls Gungui
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more than four decades later, and yet he adds, it
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was a horrible day. I was tired and scared because
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it was such a long parade. I remember my feeling was,
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I can't do it any more. I can't, I can't,
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but I carried on. The Parade of Mamatones is an
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annual winter tradition in the Italian village of Memoida. The
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village of around twenty three hundred is in the heart
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of Sardinia, an Italian island about one hundred seventy five
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miles from the mainland. By comparison, Sicily is only two
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miles from the mainland. While Italian is the island's official language,
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Sardinians also speak a separate latinate language that most Italians
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struggle to understand. In villages like Mammoada, just about all
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the income is related to either agriculture or tourism. The
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Parade of Mammatones is one of the largest tourism draws
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of the entire year. Even though it isn't especially cheerful,
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it's a serious and in some ways sad carnival. Gungui
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told me, this is not like a theater for making
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people happy. If the phrase Italian carnival brings to mind
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a cast of playful characters Harlequin with his multicolored diamonds,
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Pirot with his oversized buttons, the plague doctor with his
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bird liked beak, you're probably thinking of Venice. The first
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recorded carnival took place there in ten ninety four. The
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festival had a Christian tie in as a burst of
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hedonism before the austerity of la The word carnivale means
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taking out the meat, implying one last decadent feast. The
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celebration may also have older pagan roots. During the Roman
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festival of Saturnalia, ancestors of today's Italians drank and indulged
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and turned the social order upside down. Masters served their slaves,
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and an elected king gave orders to everyone. Throughout the
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Middle Ages, carnivals popped up all over Europe and later
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spread across the Ocean in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro.
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European Jews may well have been influenced by these pre
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lent festivals when they turned the late winter holiday of
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Purim into a night of costumes, theatrics, and topsy turvy hierarchies.
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The festival of Mamutones is not part of the same
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carnival tradition, though it has its own Christian association. It
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starts on the eve of January seventeenth, the feast of
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Saint Anthony the Abbot, a legendary saint who had an
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austere life in the wilderness and lived to be one
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hundred and five. But this is a pagan festival, Gungui
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told me. Everybody knows. It has nothing to do with Christianity.
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It's unclear when the parade originated or what the word
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mamotone even means, but the character itself has a distinct appearance.
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The most startling part of the costume is the mask,
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with its severe and labored expression. Another set of characters,
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called Isohadoes literally rope bearers, march along with the Mamotones,
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singing slinging lacos. The Isodoes wear a different mask, blankly
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white and unsmiling. In an e mail, Elena Giangiuglio and
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Alice Metta, the scientific director and assistant director of Mamoe
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Yada's Museum of Mediterranean Masks, explained that the parade belongs
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to a tradition of festivals that are profoundly serious and solemn,
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unlike the modern carnival, which is light hearted and fun.
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There are other winter parades like this in villages throughout Europe.
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In the Portuguese Intrudeau Festival, the locals wear terrifying masks
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and chase people through the streets. In some German speaking villages,
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people celebrate crompus Nacht, or the Night of the Crompus,
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with the devil like figure who roars at children and
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threatens to carry them away in his sack. Heavy clanging
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cow bells are a theme at many of these events,
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all of which are less about merriment than exorcizing the
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forces of evil. As the museum directors put it, the
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somber procession of the Mammutones may have its roots in
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their neurogic civilization, which began almost for thousand years ago.
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In Venice, Rio and New Orleans. Outlandish disguises give revelers
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a chance to flaunt their individuality, but in Mamoyada there's
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a striking uniformity, as rows of Mamutones and Isojodoes parade
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together wearing the same two masks. Instead of upbending the
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social order, the Sardinian carnival seems to reinforce it. We
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feel like we're in a trance. Gingui told me. We
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don't look at the other people. It's just about all
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of us together as a group. The Mamutones and Isajadorees
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come out three times each winter. Two of those times
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are scheduled to coincide with the traditional Italian carnival season,
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the Sunday and Tuesday before Lent. Those performances our tourist
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events geared toward the public, as villagers march during the
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daytime along the town's main road, but the initial event
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is much more intimate. On the eve before January seventeenth,
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the Mamotones and Isohadores weave through the whole village at night,
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circling dozens of bonfires. Villagers spend weeks ahead of time
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collecting roots and stumps for these blazes, then they gather
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around them to roast pigs and share one another's company.
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The holiday gives the community a chance to make sure
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all their relations are good. Gungui explains their livelihood depends
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on it. All Throughout the year, Sardinian villagers work together
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in cooperatives, tending their vineyards and olive orchards and raising
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pigs for ham and salami. When one farmer needs help,
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the others pitch in. Everybody knows how much is at stake.
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I got a glimpse of this in mid September when
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Gungui sent me a message apologizing that he had to
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postpone our planned conversation. The forecast was predicting a big storm,
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he explained, and he and his neighbors needed to quickly
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harvest their grapes or they'd lose a year's work. He
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elaborated when we spoke a few days later. The weather
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rules everything, he said. Lately, with the changing climate, summers
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have been hot and dry, no rain at all for
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six months. Everything was suffering. When the rain does come now,
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he went on, it's no normal rain, it's like a
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tropical rain. When January arrives, people are more anxious than
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ever about the upcoming growing season. Can you imagine how
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we feel about the weather, he asked. It's not like
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in a city where you put up an umbrella and
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everything is all right. Gungoui has some experience with cities
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and umbrellas. As a younger man, he spent a few
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years in Wales and London, working as a carpenter. It
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was an easier life in some ways, but especially when
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the seasons changed, he felt the pull of his native landscape.
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Sardinia is known as a blue zone, one of five
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spots on the globe where people live an unusually long time.
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That could be partly because Sardinians naturally live according to
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guidelines for longevity that doctors recommend they eat locally and
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cherish their communal gatherings. I missed it a lot, Gungoui says.
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I took all my holidays in January just to make
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sure I could have a roll in the festival. Gungoui
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has dressed up as a Mammu tone just about every
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year since he was fourteen. Apart from the festival's one
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year hiatus during COVID nineteen lockdowns, he only missed a
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couple of years, and the last of those was a
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quarter century ago. There are men as old as eighty
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who still strap on the burrs and the heavy bells,
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hiding their faces behind those gloomy masks. Whether or not
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their banishing evil spirits and appeasing the forces of nature,
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their survival feels tied to this ritual, its power, its
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clamor its sense of connection. I intend to carry on,
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Ginguee told me, until I can't anymore. Next Inside the
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struggle to preserve Georgia's Butler Island, home to a notorious plantation,
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Descendants of people enslaved at the site are grappling with
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its complicated history while also honoring the region's rich culture.
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By Melissa L. Cooper. Drivers unfamiliar with this stretch of
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US Highway seventeen likely pay little attention to the remains
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of a seventy five foot brick chimney that powered the
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old rice mill or the huge kiln nearby. Bolanted in
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the lush landscape of palmetto trees and marsh grass, the
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fifteen hundred acre Tide Water Plantation was originally purchased in
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seventeen ninety three by Major Pierce Butler, a signer of
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the United States Constitution, whose grandsons, Pierce Meaess Butler and
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John Meaes Butler, inherited the property and the people enslaved there,
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relying on agricultural knowledge passed down to them by their ancestors,
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who honed their techniques in West Africa's rice growing region
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stretching from present day Senegal to Liberia. The captives on
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Butler Island waded through boggy and marshy fields, doing intensive
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grueling work to produce the rice crop that made coastal
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planters rich. Today. All that remains to acknowledge the hundreds
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who maintained the residence and work the land is a
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historical marker erected in twenty nine eighteen that shares a
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brief story of the enslaved people of Butler Island. Dehumanization
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and suffering were inherent effects of slavery, and some of
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the agonies Butler islands enslaved population endured were documented by
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Francis Ann Kemball Pierce mes Butler's wife, a well known
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British actress, who spent the winter of eighteen thirty eight
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to eighteen thirty nine on the plantation. The couple typically
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resided in Philadelphia. Absent in any detailed testimonies from Butler
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Island's enslave residence, Kemball's record singularly sheds light on the
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everyday conditions there. She recalls the pitiful sight of black
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women in the property's infirmary, most of them on the ground,
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some too ill to rise. Kemball was stunned into the
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realization that here in their hour of sickness and so
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lay those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited
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labor for us, those who perhaps even yesterday, were being
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urged on to their unpaid task. Kemball became an outspoken abolitionist,
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which reportedly played a role in her eighteen forty nine
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divorce from Butler. Through it all, the enslaved individuals on
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the Butler's plantation made families and a community, passing on
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what remained of their forebears. Traditions such as hand weaving
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baskets used to win a rice through the generations and
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adding more than captivity and suffering to the meaning of
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the place. That's what made the events of March second
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and third, eighteen fifty nine especially catastrophic. To pay off
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gambling debts and financial losses, Pierce Niece Butler sold four
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hundred and thirty six black people, a portion of those
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he enslaved on Butler Island, along with some of his
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nearby Hampton Plantation, a major cotton producing farm. The auction
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of enslaved people, held at ten Broic Racecourse in Savannah,
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was among the largest in American history. Anne C. Bailey,
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a historian and the author of a book about the auction,
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writes that the mass sale and its aftermath came to
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be known as the Weeping Time, ripping apart families and
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the community forged on the island, and scattering some of
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its members across the South. Moreover, not only did the
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Butler Auction represent a traumatic breach in family bonds for
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those who were bought and sold Bailey rights, but it
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also severed a link between present and future generations. After
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the Civil War, the Butler Island plantation would never again
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achieve the same scale of agricultural The Butler estate was
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passed down in the family until it was sold in
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nineteen twenty three, becoming a vegetable and dairy farm before
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changing hands again. Today, the island is the property of
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the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Descendants of those who
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remained on Butler Island after the auction consider it a
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sacred place for ancestral remembrance. Down every road in Macintosh
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County there is some history, says Unice Moore, an eighty
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five year old lifelong Darien resident who believes her ancestors
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were once enslaved on the Butler Island plantation. A former
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member of Darien's City Council and a representative on a
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local historic preservation board, Moore has advocated to keep Butler
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Island's history alive. She is a regular honoured guest at
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local Black history events and commemorations, dressed in African style
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attire that she says pulls my culture to me. For
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residents descended from people enslaved on Butler Island and other
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low country plantations, the customs of their ancestors are instilled
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in their culture. They point to hand woven sweet grass
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and palmetto baskets, rice banners, intricately crafted fishing nets, musical
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customs such as the ring shout, singing spirituals while keeping
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the rhythm by pounding a stick and marching in a circle.
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Spiritual traditions such as besbaptismal seeking, rituals, and patterns of
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speech and syntax that can all be traced back to
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African influences and a culture sometimes known today as Gulageechee.
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Emmy Watson Mitchell, another coastal Georgia native, has been a
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key figure in preserving local Black history. She calls herself
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a memory keeper. Born and raised in Saint Simon's, a
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nearby island settled by members of the emancipated black community
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from local plantations. Mitchell is now the historian for the
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Saint Simon's African American Heritage Coalition. She was instrumental in
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saving the historic Harrington School, a one room structure built
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on Saint Simon's in the nineteen twenties to serve three
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black communities. A few years ago, she published a book
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co written with historian Patrick J. Holliday, Gullah Geechee Heritage
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in the Golden Isles. The Old Rice Plantation on Butler
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Island also has personal significance for Mitchell. Her paternal ancestors
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are from Macintosh County and may have been enslaved there.
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She says all Black Americans, not just those with family
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ties to the plantation, should learn about it. Our people
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need to know what struggles we had for the communities
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around George's Coast. The struggle continues as efforts to preserve
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local history have grown. Urgent residents face increasing challenges, not
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the least of which is their displacement, the encroachment of developers,
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and the heirs property crisis, which is marked by the
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forced sale of family homesteads passed down without a will
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make the future of these culturally rich areas uncertain. Tax
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hikes and new proposed zoning regulations may also drive out
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residence hoping to preserve the area's history. Other dangers also
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threaten these historically significant sites. In twenty twenty, a bill
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put forward in the Georgia state legislature would have opened
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Butler Island and other heritage sites statewide to private sale.
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One proposal, which would have turned the plantation into a distillery,
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was protested by Butler Island descendants and preservation groups, including
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the recently formed Coalition to Save Butler Island Plantation and House.
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Moore was among those who fought against the sale. The
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bill died in the state Senate. Then last summer, the
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nineteen twenty's Erat mansion on the site was set on
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fire allegedly by a burglar and destroyed. Meanwhile, intensifying and
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damaging storms are battering coastal neighborhoods, and rising seas threatened
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to submerge Butler Island and other heritage sites. But Moore, Mitchell,
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and other leaders refused to lose faith, vowing to continue
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to keep the memory of their ancestors alive. Some of
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these things we can't erase, says more. You might want
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to cover them up, but you can't erase it. It's
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still there. Next The long Haul how a lively market
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on Boston Harbor became known as the Cradle of Liberty
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by Michael Snyder. In seventeen forty, when Boston was a
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colonial outpost of sixteen thousand, five hundred people, an extravagantly
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wealthy merchant named Peter Faniel offered his city a gift
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to replace the informal scrum of vendors gathered at the
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city's docks. Fanuel proposed a modern marketplace to suit the
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ambitions of a growing city that in just a few
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decades would find itself hurtling toward revolution. The project had
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its share of detractors, so to get it built, Fanuel
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and his cohort of rich merchants had to steamroll smaller traders.
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It was an ironic beginning for a building that, over
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the next two hundred and eighty four years, would serve
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as a forum for practically every significant debate in American society,
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and even as a symbol for the tradition of public
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debate itself. Born in New York to a French family.
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Fanuel moved to Boston as a young man to a
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prentice with his uncle. Soon Faniel was expanding his family's
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fortune by trading high quality New England cod for European
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luxury goods. He sent so called refuse grade fish to
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the Caribbean to feed the enslaved laborers who produced the molasses, sugar,
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and rum that returned to Boston on Fanuel's vessels. In
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seventeen forty two, the same year his hall was inaugurated,
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one of his ships, the Jolly Bachelor, sailed from Boston
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to Sierra Leone, returning with twenty kidnapped Africans. Van Nuel
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lived law just long enough to see his market completed,
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a squat red brick building, its ground floor dedicated to commerce,
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with the public meeting hall upstairs and a golden dome
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on top. When Fanuel died a year later, the city
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hosted a lavish funeral in the new hall that bore
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his name. At the time, he held five enslaved people
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on his Boston estate. The hall hosted many defining moments
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of the colonial and revolutionary eras throughout the seventeen sixties,
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Patriots met there to protest royal taxes, and in seventeen
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seventy three, Samuel Adams initiated the Boston Tea Party from
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the hall's lectern. Four years later, in the same room,
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George Washington made a toast to mark the one year
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anniversary of the Fateful Shots that had launched the Revolutionary War.
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In the early on late nineteenth century, the city expanded
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the hall with a third floor and a Greek Revival
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style market building next door, named for Mayor Josiah Quincy,
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built to contain the overflow of merchants. By then, Fanuel
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Hall was a fixture of American mythology and identity, says
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Eric Hanson Plass, a public historian and National Park Service
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ranger who ran the Fanuel Hall Historic Site from twenty
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eighteen to twenty twenty one. Figures from every corner of
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politics have used the hall for events and rallies, amplifying
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the legend that this is where the idea of American
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liberty is born. Frederick Douglas argued here before packed houses
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of abolitionists in eighteen forty nine. In eighteen fifty eight,
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that same year, Jefferson Davis, future leader of the Confederacy,
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gave a speech in what he called this sacred temple
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and in evoked Samuel Adams himself in a dubious defense
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of Southern States rights to conserve their slave economies. Suffragists
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and their opponents rallied here, as did protesters during the
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war in Vietnam. Segregationist George Wallace made a campaign stop
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here and set. Nineteen seventy two, and the following decade,
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LGBTQ activists held town halls to address the AIDS crisis.
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In a heavily Catholic city, The building's commercial activity went
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into steep decline starting in the nineteen sixties. Mayor Kevin White,
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who ran the city from nineteen sixty eight through nineteen
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eighty three, once described the view from his office in
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City Hall as a largely vacant and rodent infested old
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public marketplace behind historic Faniel Hall. The following decade, White
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partnered with commercial debat developers to transform the area into
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a leading example of the festival marketplace model, which privatized
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spaces in cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The
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Reverend John Gibbons, a Unitarian minister and activist who moved
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to Boston for college in the late nineteen sixties, notes
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that as the neighborhood was sanitized, he says, the history
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was sanitized to the fanuel of slaves ships was replaced
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with the patriotic image of the man who founded the
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cradle of liberty, the moniker by which the Market Hall
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is still widely known. Faniel Hall has since become one
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of the world's most visited tourist destinations, attracting as many
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as eighteen million people each year. Today, in light of
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a national reckoning with the legacy of slavery and its
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ongoing implications for Black Americans, Gibbons has joined for with
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clergy and activists to change the building's name entirely for
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the Reverend Kevin Peterson, the Boston born public theologian and
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Baptist minister who began the renaming campaign in twenty eighteen.
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Faniel Hall serves as a metaphor, he says, a way
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to talk about race in a city whose deep historical
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ties to the slave trade have often been obscured by
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sunnier associations with the Fight for Independence. For all the
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arguments that renaming campaigns serve merely to whitewash history, activism
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has led to deeper inquiries into both Faniel's and Boston's
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historical ties to the slave trade. Hanson Plass, the Park Ranger,
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began research in twenty twenty to uncover archival documents that
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corroborate Faniel's participation in the slave trade. In June twenty
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twenty two, the City of Boston issued a formal apology
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for its role as a major port for enslaved Africans
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and singled out Peter Faniel as a member of an
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oligarchical merchant class who bought and sold slaves as a
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matter of wealth building. At the end of that year,
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the City Council established a task Force on Reparations to
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advise the Mayor's office on social justice policy. The next year,
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an overwhelming majority of the City Council voted in favor
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of renaming the building. It is not by mistake that
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we moved from symbolically changing a name to we're going
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to apologize for centuries of slavery, to the mayor naming
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a Reparation's task force. Petersen says Boston's Great Public Hall
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has yet to receive its new name, but once more
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it is playing a central role in the politics of
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its era. Public buildings are not neutral, as Gibbons says,
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they speak of our values. This concludes readings from the
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Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebeccashore. Thank
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you for listening, and have a great day.