We received great feedback from the public! In fact, this was the largest response PHC has ever received from a survey. As an added bonus, the first ten people to respond received a Humanities on the Road DVD of their choice. We want to give a special shout-out to the 'first 10': Susan from Media, Linda from Harrisburg, Nancy from Philadelphia, Christine from Rutledge, Silas from Allentown, Gloria from Philadelphia, Maria from Mars, Karen from Harrisburg, Galen from Newville and Janis from Reading. Thank you to everyone who took our survey.

So, what did you tell us about Humanities on the Road? The episodes most viewers watched were "Lincoln and the Widow Bixby" presented by Judith Giesberg at the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia and  "Thaddeus Stevens: The Politics of Freedom" presented by Steven Anderson at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg. Both episodes focused on how regular citizens were impacted by the Civil War. You can watch these episodes, as well as other episodes from seasons 1 & 2, on PHC's YouTube page. Here's a clip of "Lincoln and the Widow Bixby":

A majority of the responders (63%) rated Humanities on the Road series as 'excellent' and even more responders (91%) told us they learned more about the humanities and the PHC as a result of watching the show. Here's a sampling of what other responders has to say:

"What I like the most (about the series) is that there is no other programming focusing on these issues anywhere on TV, and this makes each show a great resource for learning more about topics that you would otherwise only read about it books."

"I love the diversity of presentations that enlighten me about traditions and history and talents that are new to me. Most topics are entirely new to me and I learned so much."

"PHC does a wonderful job of providing programs that entertain and educate. I look forward to hearing more programs in the future."

PHC thanks all of our responders for taking the time to share their opinions. We invite readers to share their thoughts with us in the comments section.

Remember to visit the blog for more Humanities on the Road news and information about our current Commonwealth Speakers program.

In "Blacks and Jews on Stage and Screen," Warren Hoffman, who is Director of Arts and Cultural Programming at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, uses clips from two films, The Jazz Singer and Liberty Heights and the play, Fires in the Mirror, to spark discussion of the “other” in American society – a role played by both groups throughout history. He asks the audience at Temple Sholom in Broomall to consider how the separate histories of each group, histories filled with discrimination and slavery, connect Jews and African Americans in surprising ways.

“[Film] is a way to see traditions or experiences of people we may or may not get to see in our everyday lives or learn something more about them,” Hoffman says. “The power of film allows us to engage with very particular moments in time and create that dialogue. The power of these films is reminding us of what that history was.”

Visit our Youtube page to watch this episode and all of Season 2's episodes. Thanks to all who voted!

We invite you to join us in the new year for a Humanities on the Road marathon on Monday, January 2nd. Episodes will begin airing at 9:00 am and continue through the day on PCN-TV. In honor of the occasion, we are asking our viewers to vote for their favorite episode and post comments on our HOTR message board. Voting ends January 31st.

Thanks for watching!

Middleman is a career educator and currently serves as Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Classical Symphony.  He is known as an “extremely versatile musician” and beloved in the Philadelphia music scene. Recently, PHC asked him to reflect on Dvorak’s influences and legacy.

What should we know about Antonin Dvorak and the New World Symphony?

Dvorak’s New World Symphony (NWS) was composed in New York in the fall of 1892, making it nearly 120 years old but if it is showing any signs of aging, I certainly don’t see them. Dvorak’s New World Symphony is still the single most popular symphony ever composed on American soil. On the grounds of durability alone the NWS stakes a major claim. And the main reason it stays so popular is that this big-boned, big-hearted music is beautiful, lofty and inspiring. All this on just musical grounds, apart from the fascinating stories about America it tells. Yet it also has its own little mysteries we may never fully understand.

Can you explain these mysteries?

There are great works such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that are immaculately crafted, amazingly balanced and that have something new to say – musical masterworks akin to Leonardo's Mona Lisa, in which every element pulls together in perfect balance of form with expression. Then there are works such as George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and his opera, Porgy and Bess, that are filled with formal flaws and are sometimes thought of as artful collections of tunes.  In these works the balance between expression and form is not totally convincing,  but their communicative thrust is so sincere and strong we love and admire them all the same. I would place Dvorak's NWS in just this category. Although we are not accustomed to thinking of high-brow music in this way, Dvorak wanted to play both sides. He worshipped the serious Austrian-German idealistic traditions of Beethoven and Brahms. But he also was at heart a kind of folklorist like Pete Seeger who wanted to root his music in the expressions of people close to the earth.

Where does the story of the New World Symphony begin?

The story is incredible! Back in Prague in the 1870s the unknown Dvorak made a big hit with his Slavonic Dances. These pieces smacked of bagpipes, swirling skirts and the sensuality of Eastern European music hitherto scorned by European elites. These Dances represented all social strata and implied that Gypsies could sit at the table of high art along with the barons. Very populist for their time, and the Slavonic Dances swept the boards and went right to the top of the BillBoard charts and helped make Dvorak into the Elvis of his time. He was 51, scraggly, earthy, plain-spoken, shy and retiring, when he settled in New York later in 1892, but he was a pop icon whose salary was five times higher than the mayor of New York.

When the American patron Jeanette Thurber brought Dvorak over here, he was expected to repeat a similar synthesis by bringing the music of African Americans and American Indians to the table of high art. Dvorak believed that these indigenous groups were more authentically American, and that the future of American music depended upon including music reflective of their experience. All of the other existing American composers were like little German-trained  Brahms clones writing in the old German style.  Mrs. Thurber recognized that Dvorak had this populist streak in him that would make him the perfect torchbearer to be the founder of a new and distinct kind of American music.  For the NWS Dvorak based some of his music on African spirituals and also on themes derived from a literary source, the Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow.

How did your presentation take hold with the Altoona Symphony?

By the happiest accident! I must say that I had the greatest luck to attend a party on the Bard College campus in New England a couple years ago where I met the marvelous conductor, Theresa Cheung. I found out she directed the Altoona Symphony at which I had been confirmed to tape a Humanities on the Road presentation on Dvorak's New World presentation. We were both entranced by the idea of telling the story of Dvorak's American adventure with live music as a sort of Leonard Bernstein-patterned commentary with live orchestra. Through the enormous diligence of PHC’s Assistant Director Laurie Zierer and the rest of the staff, we worked for a year to make it happen. I've never had more fun in all my life!

Tune in for a night of beautiful music! Watch “Dvorak’s New World” on PCN-TV this Friday, December 9 at 6pm. Watch it again on December 10 at 2pm and December 12 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after December 12.

Major support by:

Camp William Penn, which operated from 1863-1865, was based in northwest of Philadelphia and trained almost 11,000 black soldiers and several hundred white officers who fought in major battles of the Civil War, tracked Abraham Lincoln's assassins and cornered Confederate Robert E. Lee. We asked Scott to talk about this little know slice of Philadelphia history and why it is important to him.

What will viewers learn from your Humanities on the Road episode on Camp William Penn?

The episode will provide fascinating historical information about Camp William Penn, the largest and first official Civil War facility to train black federal soldiers. A major focus will be on the incredible life stories of several soldiers, including a slave named Josiah Walls. Josiah was forced to serve with Confederate forces, but was captured by Northern federal forces and then joined the 3rd United States Colored Troops before likely being inspired by a speech of the great Frederick Douglass on the grounds of Camp William Penn. After this service, Josiah, with the equivalent of a one-year education, would go on to become a state and U.S. politician as well as own and operate what was reputed to be the largest farm in the Florida. I will also discuss accounts of horrific battles and stories of courage, survival and victory, including stories of three Medal of Honor recipients from the camp and the major abolitionists who helped to organize and/or delivered stirring speeches to the men. Those freedom fighters included Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Lucretia Mott, who lived next store to the camp.

How did you first hear about the story of Camp William Penn?

I first learned about Camp William Penn as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer's Montgomery County bureau. I wrote stories about the community of LaMott, formerly called Camptown, where Camp William Penn began on land adjacent to the home of the famous abolitionist Lucretia Mott, today known as Cheltenham Township. Then in 1989, I saw the movie Glory starring Denzel Washington about the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. I had never been so moved by a movie depicting multiple black men as heroes. I immediately realized that that depiction of the 54^th Massachusetts, essentially a state militia, was just the proverbial "tip of the iceberg," especially considering that the troops trained at Camp William Penn were among the nation's first federal forces. They were the first regiments organized directly under Abraham Lincoln's United States Colored Troops bureau with its major training facility at 1210 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Since then I've also written dozens of articles for my Journal-Register newspaper chain and several national publications.

Your book, Images of America: Camp William Penn, is full of moving pictures and stories of the USCT. Is there a particular story that inspired you?

There are so many favorite stories in the book! Probably the most representative is the story of the chaplain of the 6th Regiment, the Reverend Jeremiah Asher, whose grandfather, Gad Asher, was captured as a slave in Guinea during the mid-1700s and brought to New England via the Middle Passage. There, in the Connecticut area, Gad agrees to replace his so-called master in the Revolutionary War and is promised freedom once his service is over.  After serving in such battles as Bunker Hill, Gad loses his sight while his owner reneges on the agreement once the warrior returns home. Gad is forced to serve the dishonest man for many more years before being able to purchase his freedom. Yet, Gad passes on his religious fervor to his grandson, Jeremiah, who becomes a preacher at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Philadelphia before the outbreak of the Civil War. Jeremiah’s dedication to the black liberation movement and the principles of America convince him to leave his wife and children and provide religious sustenance to the 6th USCT of Camp William Penn, likely the fiercest and most battle-tested unit from the facility. In the end, Jeremiah also pays an incredible price for his service.  The Ashers' generational story reflects the courage of just one black family and its dedication to the American Republic's ideals. They gave everything to this country even though personal liberation was often kept out of their reach.  There can be nothing more valiant. I will be expanding on many of the topics in an upcoming Schiffer Publishing book scheduled for release next year.

Learn more about the United States Colored Troops and how they contributed to the war. Watch “Saluting Camp William Penn” on PCN-TV this Friday, December 2 at 6pm. Watch it again on December 3 at 2pm and December 5 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after December 3.

Why was the one-room school house celebrated in American poetry?

It was celebrated in poetry, quite simply, because the one-room schoolhouse was the most commonly shared experience of American youth in the 19th century. Into the early 1900s, half of all kids who went to school attended a single-room school. Since American poets often highlighted the innocence and spirit of their youth, it made sense to focus upon the institution that educated them. The classic poem in this vein was by John Greenleaf Whittier, entitled "In School Days."

Why were one-room schoolhouses criticized during the Progressive Era?

The Progressives sought to bring order, rationality, and scientific knowledge to public problems. So they took special aim at one-room schoolhouses, which frequently lacked trained teachers, usable textbooks, and sometimes even a floor or roof. The Progressives instead touted consolidated schools, which had better facilities and a wider array of curricular choices.

How did both the political left and right use the idea of the one-room schoolhouse to promote their own agendas?

In the 1960s especially, the Right and Left both embraced the one-room schoolhouse, but for totally different reasons. To conservatives, it embodied discipline, authority, and religious faith, all qualities that present-day schools seemed to lack. To the Left, meanwhile, the one-room schoolhouse was the lodestar of group learning, age-mixing, and the other so-called "progressive" pedagogical techniques. Both views were deeply distorted: one-room schoolhouses were often cesspools of disorder, which used heavily authoritarian methods, not progressive ones, in a vain attempt to keep the children in line. But these ideas also help keep the memory of the one-room schoolhouse alive, even as they distort its history for political ends.

Dust off those textbooks and get to class! Watch “The Little Red Schoolhouse” on PCN-TV this Friday, November 25 at 6pm. Watch it again on November 26 at 2pm and November 28 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after November 28.

(A version of this interview appeared in PHC’s September 2010 e-newsletter.) 

You taped your episode at Pittsburgh’s Rivers of Steel Pump House which has a rich history relating to the labor and coal mining industries. What was it like to perform there?

By the time we recorded Humanities on the Road, I was quite familiar with the history of the Pump House and I had visited several times, but I cannot tell you how moved I was when I first realized that it was the actual site of the Battle of Homestead, the most famous of all labor events in American history. I honestly didn't know that such a visible remnant of that battle site even existed. It was a great honor for the folks at Rivers of Steel to invite me and host my show.

The songs you write explore coal mining history and the miners' struggle to achieve the "American Dream." Can you tell our readers why these themes and stories are important to you?

You can't grow up in West Virginia, not even its Northern Panhandle, without feeling some connection to the coal mining industry and its history. I grew up in Wheeling, WV, which was once a small, but vibrant and thriving city. During the 1980s I watched the downtown area dwindle away to nothing. I was disheartened then, and I am still saddened by it today. As I grew older and developed my songwriting skills, I was naturally compelled to write about it, particularly after realizing that the problems of Main Street USA were not exclusive to the region I where I grew up. I had several friends who grew up in mining families and discussions about the mining issues of the time weren't uncommon in my own family. I became more interested when I learned of the history on my wife's side of the family - her grandfather died at a young age from a mining accident.

Was music always a big part of your life?

I always go back to my childhood years in the early '70s and how I was moved by those old radio ballads - American Pie, Brandy, Midnight Train to Georgia and the like. The idea of telling stories through song always came naturally but it took many years for me to develop this simple process into the craft of writing effective songs.

You’ve been a part of the PHC’s Commonwealth Speaker program for years. Tell us why you keep coming back for more.

I am blessed to be a Commonwealth Speaker with the PA Humanities Council. It is always important for me to share my songs and stories with an audience who appreciates it. I have met great people through this program. The audiences for my Commonwealth Speaker shows always consist of civic-minded, pro-active individuals with great histories of their own. It is a pleasure to share my songs with them and I love when they share their own stories with me.

Sing along to songs of Tom Breiding and learn about the coal and steel industries of Pennsylvania! Watch “Steeltowns, Coalfields and the Unbroken Circle” on PCN-TV  this Friday, November 11 at 6pm. Watch it again on November 12 at 2pm and November 14 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after November 14.

Giesberg, who is Associate Professor of History at Villanova University, introduces audiences at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia to the story of Lydia Bixby, a mother living in Boston who allegedly lost five sons on Civil War battlefields. Moved by the family’s sacrifice for the country, President Lincoln wrote Bixby a condolence letter after hearing of her loss.

Why is this letter still relevant more than one hundred years after it was written? Giesberg says the letter was – and still is – a symbol for a country dealing with the effects of war and the mind-boggling number of casualties it yielded. She suggests that Bixby’s loss, no doubt just one case of thousands, distressed the president as well. Although Lincoln knew his words could never assuage Bixby’s pain, writing the letter could have been a way for him to express his own sorrow and grief over the loss of thousands in a war he sanctioned.

What happened to Bixby after the letter was delivered? Massachusetts, where Bixby lived, co-opted President Lincoln’s letter and held it up as a symbol of the state’s sacrifice and Union patriotism. Bixby’s neighbors, on the other hand, shunned her. They didn’t see a woman dealing with unfathomable loss; they called her “unworthy” of such a letter and rumors were spread that she ran a brothel and was a Confederate sympathizer.

Discussions involving Lincoln’s letter still continue today as the public and historians debate its authenticity, its writer and Bixby herself. The story of “Lincoln and the Widow Bixby” asks us to consider how we find closure amidst terrible loss and honor our dead in times of war. Women on the home front wanted to properly bury their loved ones. For grieving families, this was a way to show respect for the dead and move towards closure. Bixby, like so many others, was one of the unlucky women who never got a chance to bury her sons. Giesburg tells us she lived out the rest of her live in anonymity and died the same way in a grave marked with three numbers, 423.

Learn more about Bixby and how other women dealt with loss during the Civil War. Watch “Lincoln and the Widow Bixby” on PCN-TV this Friday, November 4 at 6pm. Watch it again on November 5 at 2pm and November 7 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after November 7. 

Hoffman, Director of Arts and Cultural Programming at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, uses clips from two films, The Jazz Singer and Liberty Heights and the play, Fires in the Mirror, to spark discussion of the “other” in American society – a role played by both groups throughout history. He asks the audience at Temple Sholom in Broomall to consider how the separate histories of each group, histories filled with discrimination and slavery, connect Jews and African Americans in surprising ways that manifests itself on stage and in film.

Both Jews and African Americans were not considered equal to white Anglo-Saxon Americans and the result of this shared inequality bonded them but also caused tension between the two groups. Whatever the root cause of these connections and the tensions it created, Hoffman points out that ultimately this issue is about something much deeper: individuality and identity. Both Jews and African Americans, groups with rich and distinct cultures, were looking to define themselves in a country that had already put them in categories. What kind of a bond, even if it is forced, does this create between two seemingly different groups? And does this warp the identity of the individual who is already struggling to reconcile his individuality with the American ideal?

Studying Blacks and Jews on stage and screen is one way to learn about their contributions to popular culture and to discuss the individual and connected history of both groups. “[Film] is a way to see traditions or experiences of people we may or may not get to see in our everyday lives or learn something more about them,” Hoffman says. “The power of film allows us to engage with very particular moments in time and create that dialogue. The power of these films is reminding us of what that history was.”

Be a part of the dialogue! Watch “Blacks and Jews on Stage and Screen” on PCN-TV this Friday, October 28 at 6pm. Watch it again on October 29 at 5pm and October 31 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? This episode will be available on our YouTube page after October 31. 

Savage and Walker, who have more than 20 years of dancing, teaching and public speaking experience, one and two-step their way through time, highlighting social dances from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. Waltzes, ragtime favorites and the tango are re-created with attention to correct technique. Time also is given to discussing the significance of each dance and the fashion of men and women throughout history. Savage and Walker have fun too, demonstrating "animal" steps that were popular back during the height of ragtime music:

Savage and Walker are more than just instructors, they are re-enactors. “It’s important that dance reflects the culture in which it comes from,” Jef Savage says. Savage and Walker talk about the role of dance in social matters like courting rituals, politics and hospitality – and how dance might different from country to country. Savage and Walker explain how learning proper dance technique was closely linked to educating an individual about social etiquette - which would be important for choosing a mate or establishing one’s position in a class system.  Here they demonstrate proper tango technique:

Savage and Walker believe that learning through dance is a way to make history accessible to everybody. Walker, who teaches at Wilson College and Gettysburg College, understands that not everyone has her passion for learning about the past. She believes that teaching history through dance can give life to the past. “History is not a boring thing,” she says. “If you try to re-create and see how people moved, what they wore, what they lived, what they danced, I think it becomes so much more exciting.”

Tune into “May I Have the Pleasure of this Dance?” on PCN-TV this Friday, October 21 at 6pm. Watch it again on October 22 at 2pm and October 24 at 10am. Visit the show page for more information and resources. Missed the episode on PCN-TV? "May I Have the Pleasure of this Dance?" will be available on our YouTube page after October 24.