Transcript

7.24.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated July August
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first article, which is part
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two of Go Behind the Scenes of the Running of
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the Bulls by Tony Perrette. Part one explored the historical
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and cultural significance of the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain,
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famously known for the Running of the Bulls. The article
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began by recounting Ernest Hemingway's transformative visit to the festival
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in nineteen twenty five, which inspired his novel The Sun
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Also Rises. Hemingway's vivid descriptions of the festival's electric atmosphere,
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including the bull fights, fireworks, and lively street parties, helped
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elevate the event's profile on the global stage. The festival,
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which was once a local celebration, became internationally renowned, attracting
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over a million visitors annually. We delved into the deep
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rooted traditions and modern day allure of the festival. Part
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one explored the enduring American connection to Pamplona, with many
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American runners and spectators participating in the festivities. Part one
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also shed light on the lesser known cultural dimensions of
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the Sanfermines, such as the lectures at the New York
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City Club to Reno and the passionate fans who appreciate
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the festival's rich history and pageantry. The festival is portrayed
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as an all encompassing social and cultural event, with concerts, dances,
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social clubs, and religious processions. Part one also provided a
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contemporary perspective on the festival, describing the authour's own experiences
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and observation. The author retraced Hemingway's steps, visiting iconic locations
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in Pamplona and engaging with local traditions. The running of
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the bulls was depicted as a thrilling yet dangerous event,
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with medical workers on standby to assist the injured. Here
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now is Part two. At six thirty Pamploneses converge on
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the central and most controversial ritual of the festival, the
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corridas or races, as bull fights are known in Spanish.
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Some scholars speculate that bullfighting's origins were in the Roman
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Era or the Middle Ages, but the corrida began to
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take its modern form in the seventeen hundreds, when Spanish
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cattle ranchers vied to breed the most powerful and handsome
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bulls like thoroughbred horses. Towns all over Spain developed festival
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rights that included different versions of the bull runs, and
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often ended with men fighting the finest animals with matadors
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and ornate, tightly fitting outfits, taking to plazas on horseback
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and on foot. These diverse traditions were codified into a
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ritual that has changed little in the centuries since today.
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The evening starts with the procession, when three bullfighters, their
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teams and stadium workers enter the ring and salute the
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president who runs the event. The matadors each fight two
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bulls in contests that last for roughly twenty minutes and
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end with the animal's death. The only way for a
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bull to survive is if the crowd demands that it
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is too beautiful and should become a stud, an extremely
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rare occurrence in Pamplona. The corridas occur only during San
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Varmin and are held in the majestic Plaza de Toros.
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The approaching road to the stadium was renamed the Passio
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de Hemingway in nineteen sixty seven, and a bronze statue
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was erected of him at the arena's entrance in nineteen
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sixty eight, glowering at visitors as he once did at
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anyone who questioned the value of bullfights. Tastes, of course,
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have changed in recent years. Animal rights activists in Europe
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and the United States have called for an end to
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the contests. There are critics even within Spain, and bullfights
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were banned for a time in Catalonia. They have also
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been banned in much of Latin America. Many foreign attendees
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at San Fermin have no stomach for the spectacle and
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spend their early evenings carousing in local bars instead. Hemingway
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tried to explain to critics that bullfighting was not a sport,
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it was a tragedy, and his obsession with bull fights
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had a philosophical side. He was both fascinated and horrified
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by the senseless, random violence of modern life, having nearly
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been killed by an artillery shell at age eighteen while
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volunteering as a Red Cross ambulance driver on the Italian
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Front in World War One. In bullfighting, Hemingway discovered violence
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that was ritualized and controlled, and which death was openly confronted.
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As Michael Reynolds in hemingway The Paris Years puts it.
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For Hemingway, it was like watching the war from a
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ringside seat. Even in nineteen twenty five, not everyone shared
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Hemingway's passion for bull fighting. His first wife, Hadley Richardson,
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would turn her eyes away and embroidered during the gorreoust parts,
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while another in Hemingway's group, Harold Loeb, admitted he was unimpressed,
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saying we all have to die, but I don't like
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to be reminded of it more than twice a day.
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Whatever your opinion, the event's extravagant pageantry makes it a
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living relic from the time of Servantes and Valesquez. The
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vast open air arena, lit by the Golden Sea and
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packed with nineteen thousand, five hundred people in white outfits
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and red scarves, roaring and singing. Seats are reserved year
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to year by the same families, and everyone knows their
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neighbors and brings wine and delicacies like tortilla sandwiches to share.
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The stadium seats are divided into soul and sombra, sun
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and shade, with the cheap upper tiers of the sun
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blasted side taken up by the social clubs, whose bands
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play cacophonous music with tubas, trumpets and drums. These range
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from traditional romantic tear jerkers to outbursts of jingle bells
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and even Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline. The gleeful air of
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anarchy and Pamplona is very different from bullfights in Madrid
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and Seville, where the ambiance is so reverent that the
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expression goes you can hear the bull breathe after a
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few days of revelry, going to sleep at three a m.
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Waking up at six a m. Bull runs, lunches, apertivos, dances.
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My constitution was reeling a hundred years ago. The same
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regime made the expat's behavior go from bad to worse.
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The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise
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went on, Hemingway wrote, And the sun also rises. The
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men in Hemingway's group, Patrick Guthrie, Loeb and Hemingway himself
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jousted with one another to gain the attentions of Lady
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Duff Twisden, who provoked her admirers by flirting with the
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young matador Ordunez. One night, she disappeared at a party
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and turned up the next morning with an unexplained black eye. Guthrie,
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her fiance, took to casually goading Lobe about how Twysden
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now spurned him. While Lobe accepted the insults with the
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stoic passivity mooning over Twysden, the others felt like a
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love sick puppy. Meanwhile, Richardson was a palled to observe
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Hemingway's evident infatuation. On the sixth night, tensions came to
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a head over after dinner Brandy's in the plaza, beneath
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exploding fireworks, Hemingway told Loeb that he should go back
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to Paris. You've already done enough to spoil this party.
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Loeb declared that he would only depart if Twysden asked
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him to. She refused, making Hemingway snarl, you lousy bastard
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running to a woman. Lob challenged the much larger Hemingway
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to a fight, and the pair went down an alley
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to punch it out, But as soon as they got there,
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the tensions diffused When Loeb took off his spectacles, Hemingway
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joked that he would hold Loeb's jacket. Loeb offered to
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hold Hemingway's. They both laughed, duff Loeb wrote later no
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longer seemed to matter. Hemingway even left Lob a letter
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of apology the next morning, saying that he he was
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thoroughly ashamed of his behavior. On the last day of
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the vacation, when everyone was preparing to leave Pomplona, Twisden
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and Guthrie declared that they had no money to pay
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their hotel bill. Another member of their party, Donald Ogden, Stuart,
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lent the pair funds that he knew were as good
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as gone. The exhausted crew went their separate ways, scattering
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around Europe. The fiesta was over, but their literary after
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lives were just beginning. Hemingway left Pamplona with a lousy feeling,
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he later wrote, but it faded as he and Richardson
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took the train south in a compartment with a wine
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salesman who shared his samples. The vacation may have been
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a fiasco, but it provided him with literary inspiration. In Madrid,
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he threw himself into writing in the mornings scribbling furiously
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by hand on loose leaves of paper and watching bullfights
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with Richardson in in the afternoon. Hemingway's first pages were
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a cross between a memoir and a travel book, but
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soon he changed his friend's names and fictionalized the situation,
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in particular altering the narrator's name from him to Jake Barnes,
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a war veteran who was wounded in the groin and
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made impotent, adding a hopelessness to his infatuation with Lady
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Brett Ashley As Twysden was renamed the free living, hard
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drinking Brett uses Wit a jollity to mask her inner desperation.
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She also runs off to Madrid with the young bullfighter,
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and after refusing to marry him, has to be rescued
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broke by Jake along the way. The lovelorn Harold Loeb
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became Robert Kohane in a harsh and blatantly antisemitic characterization
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that turned Hemingway's once close friend into a figure of derision.
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One writer has noted, who was a cross between a
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Boosube and a bore. Richardson, meanwhile, was written out of
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the story entirely within eight weeks. Hemingway had completed a draft.
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His friend F. Scott Fitzgerald helped him edit the manuscript,
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convincing him that the rambling first two chapters should be cut.
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The finished novel was published by Scribner's in October nineteen
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twenty six to strong reviews and sales, with Hemingway's terse
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style appearing to both high brow literary circles and mainstream readers.
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The novel was elevated from a gossipy romanoclef to a
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literary event by an epigraph from Gertrude Stein, who proclaimed
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that the poorly behaved characters were in fact part of
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a lost generation, the first usage in print of this
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now famous term. It's difficult to imagine the book's impact today,
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when every generation from the Beats to Gen Z has
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itself felt lost, but it gave expression to the existential
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malaise left by the First World War, which shattered traditional
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values and left its survivors purposeless. The novel was, biographer
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Mary Dearborn writes, perhaps the first great novel of disaffected youth.
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For the real life characters, it meant the end of friendships.
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For the rest of his life. Loeb was puzzled as
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to why his friend Hemingway had betrayed him. Loeb had
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even helped get some of his early writings in print
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and tried to set the record straight in a nineteen
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fifty nine memoir The Way It Was and nineteen sixty
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seven essay Hemingway's Bitterness. Although Lady Twysden has been reduced
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to the promiscuous Lady Ashley, an alcoholic nymphi maniac Hemingway
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later called her character, she appears to have been more philosophical.
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Telling one mutual friend in Paris. Of course, Hemingway said
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nasty things, but after all he was writing a novel.
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Who cares not me? Still, they soon fell out of touch.
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In Paris, Hemingway's marriage to Richardson had also been damaged.
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His wandering eye soon focused on a mutual friend, the
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American heiress Pauline Pfeiffer, and the two began an affair.
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When Hemingway invited both his wife and lover to Pomplona
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in nineteen twenty six. The trip was predictably strained, and
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when he and Richardson returned to Paris by train, they
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left via different station exits to separate homes. When he
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returned to the Festival in nineteen twenty seven, Hemingway was
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accompanied by Pfeifer as his new wife. By then, The
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Sun Also Rises had put Hemingway on track to become
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one of the most celebrated American writers of the twentieth century,
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establishing the macho persona he would build on for the
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rest of his life. Zelda Fitzgerald, for one, thought his
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perfua a fraud, sniffing that nobody could be as male
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as all that her verdict on The Sun Also Rises
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was just as caustic. It was all about bull fighting,
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bull slinging, and bullshit. Even so, it consistently appears to
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day on lists of great American novels. Hemingway continued to
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visit San Fermin throughout his life, although with a long
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interruption of twenty two years thanks to the Spanish Civil War,
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which he reported on and made the subject of his
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novel For Whom The Bell Tolls, and the subsequent military
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dictatorship of Francisco Franco. When he returned in nineteen fifty
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three with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, he was still
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not well known among the Spanish public. The Sun Also
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Rises had filtered into the country only through stray copies
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printed in Argentina, and many regarded it with amusement. The
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following year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. By
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his next visit to the festival in nineteen fifty nine,
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Hemingway was at the height of his fame, now the
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bearded bear like Papa and mobbed by well wishers, autograph
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hunters and journalists from Spain and beyond. As for the
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San Fermin festival, it ends as it has for centuries,
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with thousands of townsfolk gathering before the town hall to
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sing Popre demi poor me, a lament that the nine
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days of madness are over. As people leave their bandanas
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by candles at the near by church door, the mayor
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exhorts them to start their countdown for the next year's party.
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I don't know how you're going to write a story
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about San Fermen Club Terino president lore Monegue said when
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we met for one last drink on the way to
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the train station. It has no beginning and no end.
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You think it's over, but it's not. Once you've been here,
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you'll never really leave. Next. With their bravery during World
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War One, these daring American women doctors proved their might
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to Folks back Home by Amy Zohone. In late March
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nineteen eighteen, the German Army began pursuing the Spring Offensive
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in France, its most ambitious advance since the First World
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War began four years earlier. Back in the United States,
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an enterprising group of suffragists was mounting an ambitious advance
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of its own. The National American Woman's Suffrage Association NASA
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was lobbying to get women doctors into the trenches. Though
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their own government tried to deter them, NASA succeeded sending
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a pioneering group of seventy four doctors and support staff
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to some of the most dangerous areas of wartime France.
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The heroic service of this group, known as the Women's
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Overseas Hospitals, wh would be the most professionally demanding undertaking
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in the lives of these doctors, who had proved to
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the world the competency and courage of women's physicians. Archives,
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memoirs and personal letters passed down to the doctor's descendants
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reveal a thrilling, politically relevant chapter in women's medical and
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World War One history that has been largely unknown until now.
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By the spring of nineteen eighteen, New York and eleven
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other states had given women the right to vote. The
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House had passed a federal suffrage amendment, and voting rights
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advocates were lobbying the Senate to do the same. Many
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members of NASA hoped that President Woodrow Wilson would be
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more likely to support women's right to vote if they
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contributed to the war effort in visible dramatic ways, as
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Carrie Chapman Catt, the group's president, wrote in a letter
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to several of the w o H doctors that spring,
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we have staked our reputation on the maintenance of a
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hospital unit which will win laurels for womankind. In nineteen ten,
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women made up only six percent of all American doctors,
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many of them practicing in traditionally feminine fields like obstetrics
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and public health, while facing limited opportunities for faculty appointments.
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Surgery in Battle, on the other hand, was of the
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greatest educational value and an opportunity all surgeons must covet,
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in the words of Mabel Segrave, a w H doctor
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from Seattle. In April nineteen seventeen, when the US entered
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the war, Caroline Finley was forty two and director of
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Obstetrics at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
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The Infirmaries Women's Medical College, founded in eighteen sixty eight
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by doctors and sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, had been
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the first American medical institution run by and for women. Now,
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in addition to their patriotic feelings, Benley and a group
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of her colleagues were concerned about the suffering of women
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and children in war torn regions of Europe, and particularly
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about rape, neglected prenatal care, and malnutrition, and they wanted
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to help first hand. Seeking an official sponsor, the doctors
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went to the Red Cross and then to the U. S. Army,
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both of which promptly rejected them. Secretary of War Newton
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Baker declared that he did not believe commissioning women would
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help win the war. With their own country turning its back,
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the infirmary group applied to the French at the outset
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of the war in nineteen fourteen. The French government had
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not allowed women physicians to serve in any capacity, including
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as nurses, by now, though they were desperate. After a
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meeting in the fall of nineteen seventeen with the French
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High Commissioner in Washington, Finley received a cable from Premier
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Alexandre Ribaut send Doctress Finley and her associates at once.
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The French decree allowed WOH doctors to provide civilian care,
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but stipulated that those services could only extend to the
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wounded in the French military upon request if the need arose.
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In November nineteen seventeen, days after New York became the
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first Eastern state to grant women the right to vote,
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Finley went to Paris to place the first unit. Thirty
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one other WOH medical and support staff, including plumbers and chauffeurs,
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all women, arrived in Bordeaux in February nineteen eighteen on
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the ocean liner Espagne, docking at six in the morning.
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The group looked as Anna von Schally of Queens, an
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infirmary doctor and WOH treasurer, wrote to the NASA headquarters
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like a traveling circus. After several delays, one hospital site
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was destroyed in a bombing raid and another was deemed
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too dangerous. About half the group, led by Finley, was
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indeed called to a military hospital in us Vuoisa, north
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of Paris. Finlay's group, known as unit one traveled by
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truck to Chateau Oyon, a stately home that a week
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before had been turned into an evacuation hospital, a few
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miles north of Senley's on the road to Campegna, the
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eventual site of the armistice. The group emerged into the
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courtyard of the beautiful bazard chateau. The salon where the
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women slept rivaled the splendor of the palace at Versailles,
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with sealing cupids and velvet tapestries. Finley marveled at her
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surroundings in a letter to her mother, rhapsodizing about the
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old statues, with wonderful walks bordered by old trees, and
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the flowers violets, narcissi, and little pink and white ones.
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But there wasn't much time to smell the flowers. In
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the central portion of the chateau, beneath the stately portraits
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hung on the walls, mostly empty hospital cots filled the hallways.
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The only medical staff were two French military doctors and
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a few nurses. The men initially refused to give orders
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to the domes Americanes, soon though they had no choice.
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Following a major offensive nearby. Ambulances rushed in bringing three
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hundred patients in twenty hours. At first, Finley and the
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other w H doctors served as nurses, assisting the men
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with life saving amputations, while French priests serving as orderlies,
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held lanterns. When morphine and anesthetics ran out, the French
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doctors operated on conscious patients. The soldiers, Finley wrote to
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her mother, have arms and legs hanging by a shred.
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Many have horrible chest and head wounds. The limited medical
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supplies included a pot bellied stove, a pail of water
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for sterilization, sheets torn into strips to be boiled in
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the pail, anti tetanus serum, and bandages. At daybreak, chloroform
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and ether arrived from pairs, along with further staff, including
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the male chief surgeon, doctor Covalaire. The women worked sixteen
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hour days, gaining confidence. By early May, the chateau was
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home to five hundred beds. The women's friendships quickly deepened.
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The French doctors were not so kind. When Finley asked
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Covalaier for permission to treat septic shock cases, he said no,
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but loud that perhaps the Unit one doctors could be
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given more important work once they proved themselves. A week
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after Finley's request, Covalier got too desperate to be sexist,
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and he gave her control of an entire septic shock ward.
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I think to have been given the only thing I
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have asked for. After week's proof of the kind of
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work we do is a very good augury for the future,
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she reported in a letter to Nausea. Soon she was
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performing major operations such as amputations and deep dissections, assisted
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by a French doctor. She had never done an amputation
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until she went to France, but quickly became an expert.
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The w O h T found that the work took
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a toll. The other day, I was terribly depressed, Finley
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wrote in a letter. It was necessary to hurt the
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men so in dressing their wounds that sometimes I can
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hardly stand it. One soldier had been groaning and crying.
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When she finished operating, he patted my arm and said, pover, madame.
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As debilitating as war surgery could be. Finley took pride
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in her new skills. Lately, I have been operating a
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good deal and have had very interesting work, she wrote
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her mother. I did eight secondary operations without a doctor
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to assist me. My arms ached when finished. To the
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chateau's misfortune, it sat along the course that German warplanes
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followed on their nightly raids to Paris. The evening of
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June seventeenth was calm and clear, but close to daybreak
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a German warplane bombed the chateau, so leaving a crater
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in the earth and a trail of carnage. By the
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time Finley, Fellow, w h Doctor Mary Lee, Edward and
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the rest had picked through the debris, they tallied eighteen
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orderlies and stretcher bearers killed and twelve wounded, all men
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they had come to know. The house was bombed two
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more times, but perhaps remarkably, no women from Unit one died.
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Among the most prolific healers. According to French military record
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at the time, the women never seemed to slow for anything.
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During the final German offensive of the war in July
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nineteen eighteen, Chateau Agnon's medical staff performed three thousand operations
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in eighteen days. On September third, officers from the French
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government honored Finley, Edward and von Shaley with the prestigious
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Qua deguiere. There One time adversary, Couvalaire, wrote a commendation
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that sighted their bravery under fire. The women were commissioned
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as lieutenants in the French army, complete with insignias for
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their uniforms. There was clear evidence that the w H
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was swaying hearts and minds back home too. The same
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month that the women received the quadiguerre, President Wilson gave
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a speech to the Senate calling for the passage of
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suffrage nationwide. We have made partners of the women in
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this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership
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of suffering and sacrifice and toil, not to a partnership
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of privilege and right. On November eleventh, nineteen eighteen, the
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women celebrated the armistice at at Ougnon, but their work
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was nowhere near done. They moved around France treating German
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prisoners of war and British soldiers alike who had pneumonia
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and flu, which would go on to kill more than
26:48
fifty million people worldwide that year, more than three times
26:52
all the death in World War One. In mobile hospitals
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in various French villages, more than one thousand refugees and
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repatriots were arriving each day. Though the w o H
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women had won the right to vote. Their fight for
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equality was hardly over by the time of Pearl Harbor.
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Two decades later, the Army was still denying commissions to
27:18
women doctors. It wasn't until April nineteen forty three that
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Sparkman Johnson Act into law,
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allowing the first women doctor, an O. B. G. Y
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N named Margaret D. Craighill, to be commissioned into the
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Army Medical Reserve Corps. Reflecting on her wartime experiences in
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nineteen thirty seven, Von Shahey told a reporter that World
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War One had changed attitudes about women, both in medicine
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and in society. Overall, women seized the opportunities, showed what
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they could do, and have continued to do it ever since.
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This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
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have a great day.