Happy Horticulture! Books celebrating the Philadelphia Flower Show

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase six regional Temple University Press titles about gardens and parks in honor of the Philadelphia Flower Show, coming to town March 2-10.

A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region, Text by Adam Levine, Photographs by Rob Cardillo

Finally, for every resident and visitor to the region, a comprehensive guide to the gardens of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware. Magnificently illustrated with nearly 200 full color photographs, A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region provides essential information on how to locate and enjoy the finest gardens the area has to offer.

As the horticultural epicenter of the United States, Philadelphia and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and countryside are blessed with more public gardens in a concentrated area than almost any other region in the world. Stretching from Trenton, New Jersey through Philadelphia and down to Newark, Delaware, this area (often called the Delaware Valley) offers more horticultural riches than a visitor can possibly see even in a couple of weeks of hectic garden hopping.

The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring Through Creative Design, by Lolly Tai

Children’s gardens are magical places where kids can interact with plants, see where food and fibers grow, and experience the role of birds, butterflies, and bees in nature. These gardens do more than just expose youngsters to outdoor environments. They also provide marvelous teaching opportunities for children to care for vegetables and flowers and interact in creative spaces designed to stimulate all five senses.

In The Magic of Children’s Gardens, landscape architect Lolly Tai provides the primary goals, concepts, and key considerations for designing outdoor spaces that are attractive and suitable for children, especially in urban environments. Tai presents inspiring ideas for creating children’s green spaces by examining nineteen outstanding case studies, including the Chicago Botanic Garden, Winterthur, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The Magic of Children’s Gardens features hundreds of comprehensive drawings and exquisite photographs of successful children’s outdoor environments, detailed explanations of the design process, and the criteria for creating attractive and engaging gardens for children to augment their physical, mental, and emotional development.

Exposing youth to well-planned outdoor environments promotes our next generation of environmental stewards. The Magic of Children’s Gardens offers practitioners a guide to designing these valued spaces.

City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park System, by James McClelland and Lynn Miller

Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of more than one hundred parks, squares, and green spaces totaling about 11,000 acres, and is one of the largest landscaped urban park systems in the world. In City in a Park, James McClelland and Lynn Miller provide an affectionate and comprehensive history of this 200-year-old network of parks.

Originated in the nineteenth century as a civic effort to provide a clean water supply to Philadelphia, Fairmount Park also furnished public pleasure grounds for boat races and hiking, among other activities. Millions travel to the city to view its eighteenth-century villas, attend boat races on the Schuylkill River, hike the Wissahickon Creek, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, hear concerts in summer, stroll the city’s historic squares and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and enjoy its enormous collection of public art. Green initiatives flower today; Philadelphia lives amidst its parks.

Filled with nearly 150 gorgeous full-color photographs, City in a Park chronicles the continuing efforts to create what founder William Penn desired: a “greene countrie town.”

Community Gardening: A PHS Handbook, by Pete Prown  

Community gardens unite neighbors and friends who plant and tend thriving gardens that provide fresh food and flowers but also fellowship. Community Gardening, by the experts at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is an indispensible resource for budding and established gardeners who want to work together to transform patches of unused land into bountiful green spaces that nourish and inspire.

Community Gardening is full of practical information on everything from securing land for building a garden to working with local businesses and the wider community to sustaining a garden over many years. The full-color book features examples based on PHS’s highly regarded Philadelphia Green program, as well as brief profiles of community gardens in other cities.

Distributed by Temple University Press for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

The PHS City Parks Handbook, by Peter Prown

In many cities, park management is no longer the sole province of government, and committed citizens are increasingly becoming involved in park stewardship. At the same time, cities across America are beginning to recognize that investments in parks and other green spaces pay big economic dividends and are viewing them as an essential component of urban revitalization. The PHS City Parks Handbook shows how volunteers, community organizations, and government can work together to create thriving green spaces that not only provide fresh air and beauty but also help build stronger communities and more livable cities.

Drawing on the experiences of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia Green program, the nation’s most comprehensive greening program, this manual provides a wealth of information from creating an organization’s fundraising framework to running a workday and beyond. The accompanying DVD contains inspiring stories, insightful interviews with PHS staff members, city government employees, and park activists, and instructions for planting trees and involving youth in park activities.

Distributed by Temple University Press for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

Travels of William Bartram Reconsidered, by Mark Dion

Combining humor and seriousness, this picture-filled book beautifully documents an artistic collaboration across more than two centuries. The 18th-century naturalist/artist William Bartram is renowned for his Travels, a volume recounting his 1770s trip through the American Southeast and for his revelatory drawings. Mark Dion is a contemporary artist famous for working with historical and museum collections, and for site-specific displays that mimic the historical exhibits surrounding them. Commissioned for the landmark John Bartram house at Philadelphia’s Bartram’s Garden, the “Travels Reconsidered” exhibition and Dion’s 21st-century journey that produced it are evoked in Travels of William Bartram – Reconsidered, a book filled with copious photographs, drawings, and texts. Essays by the organizing art curator and an art critic; the first history of Bartram’s Garden published in 50 years, by its Resident Bartram Scholar; and excerpts from Mark Dion’s travel diary and reproductions of letters and texts about the project and its people make this book a treasure trove of exploration that encompasses different times, spaces, and ideas of natural history and art. Distributed by Temple University Press for The John Bartram Association.

Addressing marijuana legalization and policy reform

This week in North Philly Notes, Clayton Mosher and Scott Akins, provide talking points about the legalization of marijuana, the subject of their new book, In the Weeds. 

In the Weeds is a historically grounded examination of marijuana policy reform and ultimately the move toward legalization over a period extending back more than 100 years, that also deconstructs the arguments of marijuana prohibitionists/demonizers. Examined under a larger historical lens, and given use of the substance for both medicinal and recreational purposes for thousands of years, we emphasize that prohibition of marijuana constitutes a historical anomaly.  We review the findings of several government commissions on marijuana from a variety of countries from the 1890s to 1970s, almost all of which concluded that marijuana was not a dangerous drug, was not physiologically addicting, and was not a “gateway” to the use of harder drugs. Marijuana prohibitionists (conveniently or deliberately) ignore this history.

Beginning with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act  in 1937, the U.S. federal government has taken a negative, science-optional, and essentially evidence-free approach to marijuana, most notably reflected in its refusal to remove marijuana from Schedule I status (i.e., no medical applications and high addictive liability/potential for abuse) under the Controlled Substances Act.  This refusal has several negative implications, including depriving scientists from accessing quality marijuana for the research needed to demonstrate its medicinal applications, as well as its possible negative effects; it affects the ability of marijuana-related businesses to secure financial services from banks; prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating pesticides and other chemicals used on cannabis crops, and, allows companies to fire, or refuse to hire, people who test positive for marijuana. The placement of marijuana in Schedule I also ultimately gives the federal government the ability to overturn both medical and recreational legalization of marijuana in states.

In the Weeds also assesses the outcomes of current marijuana legalization “experiments,” with a focus on Colorado and Washington State (the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, in 2012, with sales commencing in 2014). Marijuana prohibitionists predicted that legalization would lead to skyrocketing youth use of the substance, and that our highways would be full of carnage due to “stoned drivers.” Neither of these outcomes have manifested. Youth use of marijuana in both Colorado and Washington State has stabilized and even declined. And while there have been modest increases in drivers involved in collisions (fatal and otherwise) testing positive for marijuana, and somewhat greater increases in the prevalence of drivers testing positive for marijuana in combination with other psychoactive substances,  we do not have sufficient data to prove that marijuana “impairment” caused these collisions (i.e., finding mere traces of marijuana in one’s system does not prove that the person was impaired, nor that the alleged impairment caused the collision). We also do not have sufficient historical data (i.e., pre-legalization) to determine whether there has been an actual increase in such incidents. It is important to stress that people drove under the influence of marijuana well before its legalization. Legalization did not invent marijuana.

Marijuana prohibitionists emphasize that marijuana use among adults in the U.S. is increasing, as is heavy and frequent use among certain individuals. There are legitimate concerns regarding these increases in heavy and frequent use. However, marijuana prohibitionists have not acknowledged the emerging research indicating that cannabis may serve as a substitute for other drugs such as alcohol, opiates, and even stimulant drugs. And importantly, it is by no means clear that increases in heavy and frequent use of marijuana is attributable to the legalization of recreational or medical marijuana – that is, marijuana use, including heavy use, began increasing in the mid-2000s.

Marijuana prohibitionists (conveniently or deliberately) ignore that, although cannabis is now legal for recreational purposes in 10 U.S. states, pursuit of the substance by law enforcement continues to be a major component of the ongoing war on drugs. In fact, the most recent FBI data indicate that marijuana arrests nationally increased in both 2016 and 2017, reaching almost 600,000 arrests for possession alone in both of these years. Over the last two decades, police in the United States have made more than 11 million arrests for marijuana possession.

Marijuana prohibitionists also conveniently or deliberately ignore the fact that the defining characteristic of marijuana (and other drug law) enforcement in the United States is the gross racial/ethnic disparities in these arrests. Nationally, blacks, who consume marijuana in roughly similar proportions to whites, are about four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession – in some U.S. jurisdictions, the disparity ratio is as high as 30.

Even in the rare cases where they do acknowledge the number of arrests and disparities, prohibitionists will claim that none of this is a big deal, because “no one goes to jail for marijuana possession.” This is simply not true. A 2015 report by the Department of Justice found that 11,553 people in the United States were in prison on marijuana-related charges (compared to only 5,800 for heroin). In addition, each year, tens of thousands of people arrested for marijuana possession are held in jail for several days or months because they cannot post bail. There are also collateral costs associated with these arrests – they commonly result in criminal records that show up on background checks when individuals apply to rent apartments or obtain and keep their jobs.

Marijuana prohibitionists have emphasized the fact that the marijuana available today is “not your father’s marijuana” – in particular, that the THC levels in marijuana available in states where the substance is legal is much higher than in the past. This assertion is debatable to begin with – people in the United States and elsewhere who wanted high potency marijuana have always been able to obtain it (consider hashish, for example). While high potency marijuana (especially as contained in edibles and other such products) may be problematic for novice users, there is scientific evidence that more experienced users will respond to higher potency marijuana by titrating their doses to achieve their desired high.  And importantly, one of the advantages of legalization is that consumers are informed of the content of the product they are consuming.  This obviously does not occur when marijuana is only available through the black market.

Marijuana prohibitionists (especially, recently, Alex Berenson in his book Tell Your Children) have emphasized a connection between consumption of cannabis and psychosis/schizophrenia. As we document in In the Weeds, prohibitionists have overstated the results of the complex science on this issue, and confuse correlation and causation.

Among the most significant incentives for recreational marijuana legalization is that the substance can be regulated, controlled, and taxed by government entities rather than the regulation and profit remaining in the hands of criminal enterprises. For governments that have legalized recreational marijuana, the tax revenue has been substantial, far exceeding expectations, and these revenues have been used to fund a variety of societal needs, including drug prevention and treatment programs, general health services, and public education.

In the Weeds concludes that marijuana has been legalized, and the sky has not fallen.

Celebrating Black History Month with Temple University Press titles

This week in North Philly Notes, we focus on some of our favorite African American titles to commemorate Black History Month.

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, by Tommy J. Curry

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore, is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines. Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1870-1914,  by Brian Shott

Until recently, print media was the dominant force in American culture. The power of the paper was especially true in minority communities. African Americans and European immigrants vigorously embraced the print newsweekly as a forum to move public opinion, cohere group identity, and establish American belonging.

Mediating America explores the life and work of T. Thomas Fortune and J. Samuel Stemons as well as Rev. Peter C. Yorke and Patrick Ford—respectively two African American and two Irish American editor/activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historian Brian Shott shows how each of these “race men” (the parlance of the time) understood and advocated for his group’s interests through their newspapers. Yet the author also explains how the newspaper medium itself—through illustrations, cartoons, and photographs; advertisements and page layout; and more—could constrain editors’ efforts to guide debates over race, religion, and citizenship during a tumultuous time of social unrest and imperial expansion.

Black and Irish journalists used newspapers to recover and reinvigorate racial identities. As Shott proves, minority print culture was a powerful force in defining American nationhood.

Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?

In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.

Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.

Suffering and Sunset: World War I in the Art and Life of Horace Pippin, by Celeste-Marie Bernier

For self-made artist and World War I soldier Horace Pippin—who served in the 369th African American infantry—war provided a formative experience that defined his life and work. His transformation of combat service into canvases and autobiographies whose emotive power, psychological depth, and haunting realism showed his view of the world revealed his prowess as a painter and writer. In Suffering and Sunset, Celeste-Marie Bernier painstakingly traces Pippin’s life story of art as a life story of war.

Illustrated with more than sixty photographs, including works in various media—many in full color—this is the first intellectual history and cultural biography of Pippin. Working from newly discovered archives and unpublished materials, Bernier provides an in-depth investigation into the artist’s development of an alternative visual and textual lexicon and sheds light on his work in its aesthetic, social, historical, cultural, and political contexts.

Suffering and Sunset illustrates Pippin’s status as a groundbreaking African American painter who not only suffered from but also staged many artful resistances to racism in a white-dominated art world.

The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama, by Alexander Wolff

While basketball didn’t take up residence in the White House in January 2009, the game nonetheless played an outsized role in forming the man who did. In The Audacity of Hoop, celebrated sportswriter Alexander Wolff examines Barack Obama, the person and president, by the light of basketball. This game helped Obama explore his identity, keep a cool head, impress his future wife, and define himself as a candidate.

Wolff chronicles Obama’s love of the game from age 10, on the campaign trail—where it eventually took on talismanic meaning—and throughout his two terms in office. More than 125 photographs illustrate Obama dribbling, shooting free throws, playing pickup games, cooling off with George Clooney, challenging his special assistant Reggie Love for a rebound, and taking basketball to political meetings. There is also an assessment of Obama’s influence on the NBA, including a dawning political consciousness in the league’s locker rooms.

Sidebars reveal the evolution of the president’s playing style, “Baracketology”—a not-entirely-scientific art of filling out the commander in chief’s NCAA tournament bracket—and a timeline charts Obama’s personal and professional highlights.

Equal parts biographical sketch, political narrative, and cultural history, The Audacity of Hoop shows how the game became a touchstone in Obama’s exercise of the power of the presidency.

Temple University Libraries and University Press’ Diversity Statement

This week in North Philly Notes, we post the Temple University Libraries and University Press diversity statement that recently posted on the library’s website.

Introduction

In 2017, the Temple University Libraries & University Press (TULUP) Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Committee was charged with mapping the trajectory of diversity and inclusion initiatives at TULUP. The TULUP D&I Committee facilitated the creation of a Diversity Statement in order to guide TULUP’s commitment to the range of human representations in all areas of our work. In an effort to exemplify a commitment to engaging diverse voices, all TULUP staff were invited to share their input on the statement. The TULUP D&I Committee used these suggestions to shape the Diversity Statement you see below and continues to work diligently to facilitate TULUP’s upholding of the principles within it.

Diversity Statement

The staff of Temple University Libraries and Press strive to engage, include, and serve the full diversity of the Temple academic and local communities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, socioeconomic status, veteran status, culture, language, political views, citizenship status, or diverse abilities.

We are dedicated to the principles and practices of social justice, diversity, and equity among our staff, collections, and services.

While our staff is not as diverse as the communities we serve, we are working toward our commitment to the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce.

We hope to act as a catalyst to our users to challenge their own assumptions and viewpoints, while also intentionally building collections and services that let users see themselves reflected. We strive to create safe spaces in our buildings and on our websites, and do not tolerate harassment or hate speech in any form.

We’re fully committed to eliminating barriers to learning and fostering access for our communities. The development of a diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment is a continuous process. We’re taking small steps every day towards our goals, including regular attention to these issues and calls to action from our standing Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

How could we be doing better? Let us know at asktulibrary@temple.edu.