Human Origins at the Folklife Festival

By Gary Berg-Cross

It’s early summer, just past the Solstice and the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrates the season near and on the Mall between 7th & 14th streets NW. This year it runs until July 6 and features the cultures of China & Kenya. . Kenya: Mambo Poa  focuses on various aspects new and ancient history of the East African country. There’s daily music & events. For runners every morning of the Festival (10:30–11 a.m.) one can meet at the Kenya House, just off the Mall and join Olympic athlete and long-distance track runner Tegla Loroupe for a jog through the National Mall.  If that doesn’t resonate there is a humanist connection to consider.  Some of the oldest artifacts of human/Homo Sapiens existence have been discovered there. Kenya is thus one of the early cradles of human kind. The festival a very nice exhibit on the mall called Searching for Human Origins in Kenya noting this

Kenya has been the epicenter of millions of years of human evolution leading up to our species, Homo sapiens. Before we came along, however, another species roamed the earth for over a million years. Homo erectus was the longest surviving species in human history, and evidence of their success can be found throughout Kenya.

I was there on the first Sunday and was really excited to see Paleoanthropologist  Rick Potts (director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution who has significant wok in Kenya AND China!).

The longest running Smithsonian excavation is in Kenya at site called Olorgesailie. Where Rick Potts and his team have worked to uncover evidence to explain how early humans in Kenya adapted and survived harsh, changing climates.  This Sunday Potts wasn’t at the museum or in Kenya.  He was  signing certificates of kids of all ages as they successfully dug into the fossil

realm as part of the exhibit. It is always wonderful to see kids interested in a science like anthropology exercising its tools and feeling the thrill of discovery and connection.

You could see a range of human origin fossils, replicas & artifacts including the recent, notable Homo erectus discovery in Kenya now widely known as “Turkana Boy.”  It’s an almost complete skeleton that dates back to about 1.6 million years.

A final nod to humanism at the event is a wall that allows visitors to past up ideas on “what makes us human.” It’s a nice thing to explore in the presence of our origins. Poets, like Christy Chiang,  have tried

What makes us human?

Is it love?

So many of us take it for granted

Yet so precious few know how to give it.

Is it hope?

So many of us fall into despair over tiny things

Yet so precious few know how to find strength in it.

Is it intelligence?

So many of us ooh and ahh over what technology can bring

Yet so precious few know how to live in harmony with nature.

Has two thousand years of civilization

Really brought nothing more than destruction?

Has it not also brought realization?

Within time, there is change.

Change for the better, bringing us back from the fringe.

There is always love,

To guide us through storms and roads that are rough.

There is always hope,

To back us while we cope

With our troubles, every day that we live

Every day that the sun rises from the heaving sea.

And though we face a heating Earth,

A dimming of our days,

With our intelligence we can fix it in a thousand small ways.

Human qualities come shining through

They almost always do.

It is the "always" that we dwell upon and have faith in,

So that a new, better age may begin.

There’s a Festival Blog to keep up on this and more.

An Opportunity to Visit and Understand the Jefferson Bible

By Gary Berg-Cross

At a recent secular humanist meeting I heard from Steve Lowe, he of the great DC Ingersoll tour, that Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, aka “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” is set to return to public display. It will be unveiled in an exhibition (November 11-May 28, 2012) at NMAH’s Albert H. Small Documents Gallery. In 2009 a preservation team led by Janice Stagnitto Ellis, paper conservator at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), discovered that the book’s binding was damaging its fragile pages. To save them she temporarily removed it and in March started a conservation treatment of the text to ensure its preservation.

The exhibition will tell the story of the Jefferson Bible and explain how it offers insights into Jefferson’s ever-enigmatic mind. Visitors will see the newly conserved volume, two of the New Testament volumes from which Jefferson cut passages and a copy of the 1904 edition of the Jefferson Bible requested by Congress. Visitors to the exhibit will also be able to view each page, as well as videos about the Bible’s meticulous conservation. Others may want to see a very small video snippet of Chris Hitchens citing the TJ Bible in a debate on Religion.

This is an event many of us will enjoy and indeed Steve in looking into arranging special docent tours for members of the WASH community.

Smithsonian Books will also release the first full-color facsimile of the Jefferson Bible on November 1, and the Smithsonian Channel will air a documentary, “Jefferson’s Secret Bible,” in February 2012. You can to purchase a copy of the facsimile.

I had heard a little about Jefferson’s cut-down and de-miricalized version on the Good Book, but the anticipated resurfacing has sparked a number of articles that updated my knowledge base in the topic. The Wikipedia and other sources have articles on the history, from which I learned the following.

When he was in his 70s, ex-President Thomas Jefferson had time to complete a project that had occupied to him some two decades. We know a little a bit about his early thoughts from an 1803 letter sent to Joseph Priestley, dissenting clergyman and natural philosopher, who believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress.

In the letter Jefferson states that the idea of writing his own view of the "Christian System" grew out of a conversation with Dr. Benjamin Rush just before he became President, sometime around 1798–99. Jefferson had long been convinced that the original words of Jesus written into the New Testament had been contaminated over time to serve pressing needs. Early Christians, he reasoned were motivated to sell their religion. They needed to make it appealing to the any pagans” such as the Romans, Gauls etc. But in doing this they may have conflated the words of Jesus with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the teachings of Plato that were a basis for Roman and European thinking. These "Platonists" he believed had thoroughly muddled Jesus' original message. Jefferson assured his friend and rival, John Adams, that the authentic words of Jesus were still there and could be unmuddled. The task, as he put it to Adams, was one of “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.” For more see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/jefferson.html#ixzz1c72fDPcj and also the Jefferson Bible

For the 1803 project Jefferson proposed reviewing the morals of the ancient philosophers, and then moving on to what he called the "deism and ethics of the Jews. " From there he would conclude with what he called Jesus’ "principles of a pure deism. This would be the unmuddled message. We see a bit into Jefferson’s mind when he added a note on "omitting the question of his deity." With the project laid out Jefferson explains that he really doesn't have the time to do a proper job and urged Priestley to take on the task as the person best equipped to accomplish the task. But Priestley didn’t take up the task so Jefferson scaled back to a more limited goal. Around the time of his 2^nd term in 1804 he finished "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth". This was the predecessor to Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Alas no copies of this 46 page Octavo are known to exist.

What we do have is the later construction of a book he entitled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what the Smithsonian has a copy of and which is now known as the Jefferson Bible. In it moral lessons are drawn from the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark and John. With his usual precision Jefferson cut verses from editions of the New Testament in English, French, Greek and Latin. He then pasted these onto loose blank pages, which were then to be bound into a book. In his 70s Jefferson apparently found this project fulfilling saying to a few friends that he read a bound version before retiring at night. But he realized that this was a project that might stir emotional responses in traditional religions, so he kept the work private.

Jefferson’s views on religion were private and complex. He was clearly reluctant to express them publicly and said to a friend:

“I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself to speak on it.”

He also provided this Source: "Jefferson's Religious Beliefs", by Rebecca Bowman:

"I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."

For all of these reasons he kept the book a secret & only mentioned the book to a few friends. He never allowed it to be published during his lifetime. How did we find it?

Back in 1895, a Smithsonian librarian purchased the original Jefferson Bible, a collection of these clipped documents which now are assembled as the text, from Jefferson's great-granddaughter Carolina Randolph for $400. They were preserved and collated by Cyrus Adler. By 1904 we had assembled what we call the Jefferson bible. which was put on display in the United States National Museum. Congress was able to buy the rights to it. In the Progressive era of 1904 the Government Printing Office printed 9,000 copies for the Congress (3,000 for the Senate and 6,000 for the House). This began a nearly 50-year tradition of giving copies to new senators. This is perhaps not so popular a thing for Pols now, but the book remains in the public domain and you can access a copy in bookstores, museums and libraries. The Jefferson Bible is available through SmithsonianStore.com.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Jeffersons-Bible.html#ixzz1c1DvJDXz

Scientific and Political Culture in the Capital

By Gary Berg-Cross

Talking about the culture that exists inside the DC area Beltway sometimes evokes pretty negative responses and with good reason. The culture of modern national politics is less the art of the possible than of endless, silly shallow hypocritical ideological confrontation and posturing. Its a place where a pumped up version of American Exceptionalism exists with blistering criticism of current government. Government workers are increasing looked down upon as part of an inept culture just like public school teachers. To some the whole mix that makes up the public sector is seen as inefficient and ineffective. Workers and politicians are lazy they say. They lack good judgment and aren't serious about serving people. I don't hold to those views and their non sequitur reasoning, but I do see political conversation (and action) in the Capital as an unrealistic mix of group and party interests dressed up with bumper quote principles. The faulty reasoning of some is evident when conservatives say things like closing lobbyist-developed tax loopholes is a tax increase which they must oppose. In the past Washington’s summer have been called the silly season, because that’s when politicians went on expensive, taxpayer-funded, “fact finding” vacations around the globe. There’s less government money for such junket silliness, but the exercise of perks has grown into adventurous national tours paid for by campaign contributors. This silliness reflects the fact that there are now enormous wads of money to push ideological ideas and values.


But our DC Beltway culture also contains a good deal of wonderful values to celebrate. Some of this is generated by the non-political and secular institutions in the area. They may be less plush with money but they still generate events like the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival each June-July organized by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The festival celebrates cultural traditions around the world. I’m particularly fond of those which present a secular, scientific culture. As locals we can partake in quite a few of their events, but through grants and research efforts they send rational ripples outward throughout the country. I’m thinking of such institutions (a short list) as NIH, AAAS, the National Academies of Science, the Carnegie Institute, the NSF, the National Geographic and the many parts of the Smithsonian Institution (SI) including its Zoo (which I visited yesterday -try the Think Tank for some fun observations of our Ape cousins). They all have events, lectures and programs that celebrate science and often the larger culture. So there is lots to enjoy in the area and together they continue to inspire generations of Americans through broad access knowledge and digestible nuggets of human creativity and discovery. And they are often depend on exceptional people to make them survive in hard, financial times.

2011 Marks the 165th anniversary of the Smithsonian and I like the vision being implemented by SI’s 12th Secretary Wayne Clough. Clough combines sounder scientific and management values than his immediate (Small) predecessor while “expanding the Smithsonian’s global relevance and helping the nation shape its future through research, education and scientific discovery on major topics of the day. “ This is American Exceptionalism at its best.
One of his first initiatives has been a consensus-based new strategic plan that articulates four grand challenges whose goal is to leverage diverse resources of the Smithsonian’s museums and science centers through interdisciplinary approaches. The parts we see in DC are only the tip of SI’s iceberg of science with many moving parts across 769 Acres involving 500 scientists and 9 big research centers.

I feel especially close to the first challenge, called Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe. It reminds us that science is an ongoing enterprise that builds on the shoulders of past progress. While I tend to think of the SI icons of the Natural History such as human origins, SI’s Science Centers operate out of town and are interested in science broadly and include astronomical investigations to better understand inflation in the early phase of the universe. This gets at current mysteries such as the nature and role of dark matter in the evolution of the universe, and the properties of the dark energy that is speeding up the expansion of the universe.

I also feel excited by the 2nd challenge, Understanding and Sustaining a Bio-diverse Planet. This stands in sober contrast to the way large part of the political system have dealt with issues around climate change. SI continues thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifo work to increase knowledge of the evolutionary and ecological history of species and ecosystems, and the processes responsible for population declines and extinction.

The next grand challenge - Valuing World Culture is also something that political DC sometimes has trouble agreeing on. Even harder to get a good objective stance and agreement on is the last challenge - Understanding the American Experience. It perhaps represents a more sober and balanced take on experience rather than a slanted view of American Exceptionalism (as I discussed in a previous posting). And I believe our science institutions remain one of the real prize realizations of the aspiration of American excellence.