Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to our casual
Speaker 1: Friday chat. I'm Holly Frying. I'm Tray p V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: So the first thing we talked about this week was
Speaker 1: Canary Row in the Monterey area and how the thing
Speaker 1: it is today references the thing it used to be,
Speaker 1: but the fishing and canning industry there is is not
Speaker 1: what's driving it anymore. Yeah. Something that this reminded me
Speaker 1: of from the very beginning, UM, was how it wasn't
Speaker 1: called Canary Row when the book Canary Row was written, correct,
Speaker 1: And it reminded me of the House of the Seven
Speaker 1: Gables in Salem, Massachusetts, UM, which which you and I
Speaker 1: have been to and recorded some videos out a while back,
Speaker 1: which was not known as the House of the Seven
Speaker 1: Gables and did not have seven gables when that book
Speaker 1: was written, but as part of a settlement houses fundraising efforts, UM,
Speaker 1: like the the house came to reflect what had been
Speaker 1: depicted in fiction. Yeah, it's interesting, Um, it's to me,
Speaker 1: it's I'm very fascinated by this idea that um Cannery
Speaker 1: Row is a historic district, but like it's not as
Speaker 1: though those canaries still exist, although the buildings still do.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit different than like, this is a
Speaker 1: historic home. We have preserved it and it's well restored
Speaker 1: it to the way it once was, which is both
Speaker 1: a departure from what I would normally expect from something,
Speaker 1: uh that is so steeped in history. But also there's
Speaker 1: the part of me that admires that what could have
Speaker 1: become kind of like a dead space of you know,
Speaker 1: abandoned businesses became a thriving thing that still references it's past.
Speaker 1: Just it evolved in a in a way that it
Speaker 1: could sustain itself. Yeah. Yeah, so many places I've had
Speaker 1: to go through that kind of a trajectory for for
Speaker 1: so many reasons. Um, Like when I grew up, the
Speaker 1: nearest city to us was Winston Salem, UM, which of
Speaker 1: course had a lot of cigarette and tobacco uh facilities,
Speaker 1: many of which have been converted into various other things.
Speaker 1: Um now that cigarettes and tobacco are a much smaller
Speaker 1: industry than they were, uh, just even a couple of
Speaker 1: decades ago. Yeah, it's super interesting. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: out to Monterey? I have not. Um, it's it is
Speaker 1: a really interesting mix because it's smaller than I expected.
Speaker 1: For some reason, when I think of places with like
Speaker 1: warehouses and like village settlements that have been moved to
Speaker 1: various places, like I think a few miles of stretch,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's way more compacted than that. Um
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the episode that like from the place
Speaker 1: at Point Alone is where the Chinese fishing village was,
Speaker 1: which sounds like it was like a really impressive interesting
Speaker 1: place on its own because they built their homes like
Speaker 1: right up to the water and sometimes overhanging the water.
Speaker 1: To the place it got moved down the beach is
Speaker 1: just not a far walk at all. Um. So the
Speaker 1: idea of it being considered a move even almost seems
Speaker 1: strange where you like but you just walked up the
Speaker 1: beach because they're very close together. But uh, that was
Speaker 1: another thing that we I didn't really get into. There
Speaker 1: was sort of a mini tourism industry that started before
Speaker 1: even um Hotel del Monty was built, which is that
Speaker 1: because these Chinese fishing villages were so unique architecturally and
Speaker 1: some of it was shanty town and some of it,
Speaker 1: but some of it stood for a really long time
Speaker 1: and they were in these strange what seemed very strange
Speaker 1: to UM, you know, European descendant locals, these structures that
Speaker 1: were built out over the water and people could literally
Speaker 1: just like pull their boats up and get in and
Speaker 1: out of the boat from their house. There were sometimes
Speaker 1: people that would come in, like from San Francisco and
Speaker 1: just take their carriage on a ride down through the
Speaker 1: very you know, narrow streets of this Chinese village because
Speaker 1: it was like this mini tourism thing where they would
Speaker 1: just be curious, looky loose about how other people lived,
Speaker 1: which is a whole interesting thing, especially when you consider
Speaker 1: that almost no evidence of those people in those villages remains. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned this in the episode about the
Speaker 1: San Francisco fire UM, but there is an episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast Invisible Um about the Chinese community's rebuilding of
Speaker 1: Chinatown that touches on some of those same themes about
Speaker 1: how UM tourists are just kind of coming to gawk
Speaker 1: at the Chinese neighborhood and what that meant for the
Speaker 1: people who live there in the rebuilding process. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very very interesting. It's it's also interesting looking even at
Speaker 1: different reference materials. There are some that kind of painted
Speaker 1: almost like the Chinese and Chinese American inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: Monterey area had an easier time in terms of dealing
Speaker 1: with racism than the Chinese community in the city, for example,
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, but ultimately they still had to deal
Speaker 1: with racist attitudes, people complaining about them, undoubtedly professional jealousy
Speaker 1: over how well they were able to manage their fishing business. Um,
Speaker 1: so it is I'm like, is this a rose colored
Speaker 1: glasses situation or was it to some degree a little
Speaker 1: bit better there? And I don't honestly know, I have
Speaker 1: not I don't feel like I have a wide enough
Speaker 1: data set to feel like I can confidently say one
Speaker 1: way or the other. But it is something, especially if
Speaker 1: any of our listeners go looking for more information, to
Speaker 1: take into account that those accounts, all of them, are written,
Speaker 1: for the most part um through the lens of the
Speaker 1: white person's experience and not the experience of the people
Speaker 1: living in that fishing village, who probably had a much
Speaker 1: different point of view, in a much different perception of
Speaker 1: of how things were and how they were treated. But
Speaker 1: so prosperous. I wish we still had more evidence of that.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that to the archaeology of San Francisco
Speaker 1: and how it's only getting harder and harder and harder
Speaker 1: to find historical evidence, particularly of the Asian immigrants who
Speaker 1: came and really made that part of the California coast
Speaker 1: what it is today. So our second episode this week
Speaker 1: was my interview with John Dryden, who makes Too Mumbay,
Speaker 1: which is a really interesting podcast and if you're into
Speaker 1: historical fiction, I think you would probably really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It is extremely compelling, as I mentioned in the course
Speaker 1: of that interview, when I first started listening to it,
Speaker 1: um because in in full disclosure, it was a project
Speaker 1: that when it came over to my heart, I kind
Speaker 1: of helped ussure it into being republished on our side,
Speaker 1: so I got to hear it all kind of before
Speaker 1: it got wide release, and I remember just being sort
Speaker 1: of wowed by how um, how rich an experience it
Speaker 1: is in audio format, and I think people would really
Speaker 1: be into it. What's interesting is that it is full
Speaker 1: of of intrigues and uh there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: as as John and I mentioned, of uprising and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of power shifts going on within that world,
Speaker 1: which is again obviously fictional, and and sort of fantastical. Um,
Speaker 1: but as as Tracy and I have been talking about
Speaker 1: it and are programming for this week, it feels very
Speaker 1: weird to talk about something like that and not talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about current events because they're everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: It honestly feels weird and a little like odd and
Speaker 1: and wrong to talk about anything else and to sit
Speaker 1: here and do our jobs, even though are our jobs
Speaker 1: and they they have meaning in their own way. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a strange time where everything feels sort of inconsequential
Speaker 1: unless we're dealing with the multitude of problems facing us
Speaker 1: at the moment, right right, well, and you were out
Speaker 1: last week. Um, Normally we try to be in a
Speaker 1: place where when we record something it is like the
Speaker 1: following week's episodes at the earliest. Because you were out
Speaker 1: last week. When Monday rolled around with the Canary Row
Speaker 1: episode that had already been recorded two weeks ago, basically
Speaker 1: we had already recorded the behind the scenes for it
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, right after we were recorded it. Um.
Speaker 1: I got to work on Monday morning to do the
Speaker 1: q A on that episode, and I that it was
Speaker 1: the biggest disparity between the tone of the episode that
Speaker 1: was coming out and what was happening in the world
Speaker 1: that I think I have ever experienced in my time
Speaker 1: working on the show. Um, and you and I had
Speaker 1: this conversation of like, should we acknowledged it would like
Speaker 1: add on some kind of announcement like we couldn't. We
Speaker 1: had a kind of the head scratching conversation about how
Speaker 1: to handle it because it just really felt like, uh,
Speaker 1: incongruous between what the show was going to say on
Speaker 1: Monday and what the United States was doing on Monday
Speaker 1: and what the response worldwide has been to what was
Speaker 1: happening in the United States on Monday. Uh did not
Speaker 1: have good answers anything. Yeah, I mean it's interesting. And
Speaker 1: I kind of was like, I don't think anyone is
Speaker 1: going to think like that we are evil for having
Speaker 1: made a show before this happened right like on a
Speaker 1: Monday morning, when like I'm just coming back from literally
Speaker 1: a week of completely like not having any access to
Speaker 1: work stuff. Um, and then like, are amazing editor Casey
Speaker 1: is is busy with his own workload, Like it was
Speaker 1: a going to be a huge weird thing to try
Speaker 1: to add on something that may or may not have
Speaker 1: added value to the episode, and then we also have
Speaker 1: to consider okay, but somebody that discovers this episode in
Speaker 1: two years, will that then be a whole other kind
Speaker 1: of discordant if we have it. So please know that
Speaker 1: if you didn't like how that played out, it's not
Speaker 1: something that we're mindlessly doing. We're making choices and they
Speaker 1: may or may not be the right ones ever, but
Speaker 1: decisions kind of have to get made and sometimes on
Speaker 1: the fly. Um. I had a similar moment completely unrelated
Speaker 1: to our podcast, where I was uh watching television and
Speaker 1: there was an ad for the launch of a new
Speaker 1: game show that clearly was recorded like before the pandemic started,
Speaker 1: before any of this, and it was just so strange
Speaker 1: because it's like news, news, news, what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world right now, Hey, look at all these people
Speaker 1: having a wacky time on a game show. And I
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, this is really weird. But again, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing where they made that show and are
Speaker 1: on a whole other schedule, and sometimes those are harder
Speaker 1: to shift than you might think. Um, it's just it's
Speaker 1: there's I don't think there's any way to get through
Speaker 1: times like this as a human, but also as someone
Speaker 1: who works in media. And and makes things and publishes
Speaker 1: them to know the right path. Yeah, what we ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to do with the Canary Row episode, UM was
Speaker 1: just not to put it on our social media because
Speaker 1: especially social media, felt like that would come off as
Speaker 1: thoughtless and death that there was no possible way we
Speaker 1: could frame it in a social media post where it
Speaker 1: would seem like it meant something. UM. And we had had,
Speaker 1: like we schedule social media stuff ahead of time, and
Speaker 1: we had like a post sandules it for over the
Speaker 1: weekend that was about I think Walt Whitman's birthday or
Speaker 1: something like that. UM. And there were folks on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page who I think I thought that we had
Speaker 1: gotten up on Saturday or Sunday morning and like talk
Speaker 1: about Walt Whitman, And it was really the opposite, Like
Speaker 1: we had scheduled the Walt women thing ahead of time,
Speaker 1: and then I spent the whole weekend not looking at
Speaker 1: work social media almost at all. I didn't even open
Speaker 1: the app on Sunday because I was like focused on
Speaker 1: what was happening in the world and whether my friends
Speaker 1: were safe and whether the people I knew were okay.
Speaker 1: Like I was not even thinking about what's on the
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class based page. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing, right, I completely understand or
Speaker 1: at least like can appreciate people being angry about things
Speaker 1: that seem very frivolous popping up in their timeline. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. I don't begrudge anybody for being like,
Speaker 1: what the heck are you talking about? Right? Um, but
Speaker 1: it is just when it's like I said, it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the perils of our line of work, Like
Speaker 1: there will always be moments like that where it's like, um,
Speaker 1: well that happened. It was planned because we don't have
Speaker 1: um precognitive abilities when it comes to that's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the world. Now. We have been for the
Speaker 1: last several weeks, most of our episodes have been in
Speaker 1: some way influenced by the pandemic, and definitely neither of
Speaker 1: us foresaw suddenly that not seeming relevant anymore, Like I
Speaker 1: was not not at all, and like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I I we we said this, uh in the in
Speaker 1: the intro of the interview episode about Tom Bay. We
Speaker 1: have talked about the historical context for what is happening
Speaker 1: right now. So much on this show we have talked
Speaker 1: so many times about especially black people, but also indigenous people,
Speaker 1: also other people of color, either making advancements in their
Speaker 1: lives and then having the white community say no, like
Speaker 1: we're going to pass laws to make it illegal for
Speaker 1: you to make that money, or or a white mob
Speaker 1: literally burning down a black neighborhood, like it has been
Speaker 1: part of the show so many times. I do not
Speaker 1: understand how people can have listened to our show for
Speaker 1: a long time and not understand that. And I'm so
Speaker 1: angry about what's happening right now, Like I don't even
Speaker 1: know what I'm going to research next. I don't either.
Speaker 1: I'm in the same boat where I'm like, well, where
Speaker 1: do we go from here? Yeah? Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: one of the things I said on like my personal
Speaker 1: Twitter was that, like, I know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who feel like this moment in history is
Speaker 1: unprecedented and it's not. And we've been talking about it
Speaker 1: for so long, and it feels like we're having the
Speaker 1: same conversations over and over and over again. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know what else I have to add to that, because,
Speaker 1: in addition to everything else, you and I are too
Speaker 1: white women with a lot of privilege. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not the voices that needs to be
Speaker 1: really heard. Right now, simultaneously asking for like our our
Speaker 1: black friends or asking for a black historian to come
Speaker 1: on our show and do work like for us does
Speaker 1: not feel like the time for that either. Right, this
Speaker 1: is Tuesday morning, June two. We'll see what happens because
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that's you've
Speaker 1: hit on exactly. Like the problem is that I I
Speaker 1: I mean, we both want to make sure that we're
Speaker 1: aplifying black voices, that we are supporting black voices, but also,
Speaker 1: like you, that doesn't mean that we need to ask
Speaker 1: them to come and educate people. That is problematic in
Speaker 1: its own right. Uh. So you know, we're kind of
Speaker 1: feeling our way in the dark, trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the best things to do. I'm I'm sure I will
Speaker 1: make all kinds of errors and I don't want to,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I recognize that that is a likelihood. And
Speaker 1: the stuff that's coming up on the show for the
Speaker 1: next week is also stuff that is already written and
Speaker 1: in some cases recorded, And it's like we either have
Speaker 1: those episodes or no episodes. That's the choice. Yeah, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a weird time. I hope everyone you know will
Speaker 1: bear with us. As we said at the beginning of
Speaker 1: that two ubay episode, like if this is not the
Speaker 1: time and you just don't want to hear people talk
Speaker 1: about things that don't seem relevant or right right now,
Speaker 1: like we bear you no ill will if you want
Speaker 1: to just hold onto those episodes and listen later, or
Speaker 1: if you want to skip that, Like we understand all
Speaker 1: of that. Everybody is trying to figure this out in
Speaker 1: the ways that make the best sense for hopefully them
Speaker 1: to maintain their mental health as best you can in
Speaker 1: a situation like this, and people going through experiences we
Speaker 1: cannot possibly understand. I would never presume how they would
Speaker 1: interact with such material. So um, that's where we're at. Yep,
Speaker 1: I I don't have anything else to add. I don't either.
Speaker 1: Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
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