New Co-Author!

Because this summer I ended up with a very exciting but very time consuming internship at Monticello and I have an 80-120 page thesis to research on the public reception of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (I have overcommitted myself yet again, but it’s alright! I always make it through–somehow), I have recruited a co-author/co-Tweet editor to help me with this project–my lovely and very intelligent girlfriend and fellow Lewis and Clark enthusiast, Lynn! So she may make posts on this blog about her Lewis and Clark reflections (on Tweet making or just in general), and she will also help run the two Twitter accounts. So a gigantic THANK YOU to her for basically saving this project (because I was getting a bit worried about continuing it all by myself). Now that the expedition has really begun, there are a lot more journal authors writing–trusty Sergeant Ordway writes for every single day of the trip from May 14, 1804 to September 23, 1806! Clark writes for all of those days except nine, when he goes out on a hunting trip, and he recaps those days when he returns. (For more info on Ordway, see Moulton’s intro to his journal. I believe I read that tidbit about Clark in Clay Jenkinson’s FANTASTIC book The Character of Meriwether Lewis: Explorer in the Wilderness.) Anyway, point is, there’s much work to be done! Also, since Lynn has a more thorough English background than myself, she may be able to share some interesting literary insights into the journals–because they are works of literature (especially Lewis’s, which can be viewed, as Jenkinson and others claim, as a draft of the book-length expedition narrative he never wrote). I am thrilled to have her on board!

My Lewis and Clark Adventures, Summer and Fall 2011

This is a very belated and brief post–I’ve been so busy making the tweets and with other academic work that I seem to have neglected the blog!! I spent my summer living in Philadelphia, and when I wasn’t working, I visited many Lewis and Clark related sites and even got to see and touch some artifacts, including Lewis’s telescope, the Peale portraits of Lewis and Clark (well I didn’t get to touch those…), the le Page du Pratz History of Louisiana that Lewis borrowed from naturalist/botanist Benjamin Smith Bratton and took to the Pacific, and (at the New Jersey Historical Society), the letter Lewis wrote to Mahlon Dickerson on Nov 3, 1807, in which he bemoans his unlucky love life, his state as an “old bachelor,” (he was 33 when he wrote this letter), and declares, “I never felt less like a heroe than at the present moment.”

I recently returned from studying abroad in London, and I visited Kew Gardens, which holds some of the plant specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Though I didn’t get to see the actual specimens due to other academic commitments, I did walk around the gardens on the anniversary of Lewis’s death, October 11, and noticed many placards from the plant genus Lewisia–a reminder of the scientific legacy of the expedition.

1803 tweets are DONE!!!!

Hooray!!!!

I have compiled all of the tweets for 1803!!! My plan for the rest of the summer is to go through a month of the journals each day and make the tweets. I am really having a tremendous amount of fun with this. Lewis and Clark sometimes make me laugh out loud. Creating the tweets is a harder task–and MUCH more time consuming–than I thought. Sometimes I have five quotes that I like and I have to choose just one, and sometimes I have no idea what to pick because nothing jumps out at me. But when I can FINALLY condense it to 140 characters, I get so excited! Success is sweet

An Epiphany Moment

Hello all!

 

I am currently in New York City participating in the Gilder Lehrman History Scholars program. It’s a five week program in which ten undergraduates perform a research project. This year, we are researching the Civil War. It is fun and informative, but I found myself missing early America quite terribly! So I figured I would take a break from 1861 and finally try my hand at writing some Tweets (which I know I said I was going to do earlier in the summer, but a forty hour workweek and lingering questions about the project prevented me from beginning).

 

Initially, I intended to write a summary of the daily journal entry (in 140 characters of course). That way, people following could get an idea of what happened on the expedition each day. But something was troubling me about this method which I could not identify for the longest time. Finally, I figured it out. First, I was worried about condensing some of the longer entries (Lewis in particular–when he is at his peak, he writes entries that are pages and pages long) into 140 characters. The June 14, 1805 entry, in which Lewis describes the Great Falls, is my favorite expedition moment, and one of my favorite journal entries (the “Birthday Entry” of August 18, 1805 is my favorite journal entry). How could I possibly capture everything Meriwether Lewis addresses in 140 characters? I told myself that this was the challenge of the project.

 

Then, I realized that something else about this summary format bothered me, something much more important. If I merely summarized the events of the day, I would lose one of my favorite things about the journal entries–their prose. Lewis’s stunning use of adjectives and Clark’s charming misspellings would disappear under terse summaries of the events. The journals would be reduced to pithy narrations, and while the events of the journals are fascinating, one could learn what happened on the expedition from a number of sources. I encourage people to read the journals, and I read them, to hear the voices of the men of the Corps, to hear them tell the story.

 

So, I am going to let the Corps of Discovery tell their own story. I will, using my “editorial power,” choose a quote for each day from each entry (so now other writers besides Lewis and Clark will be included, which makes me feel better–I felt so bad about leaving the other journalists out!) that I find interesting, or exciting, or one that encapsulates the entry as a whole. Hopefully, seeing these little 140 character snippets of the journals will intrigue my followers and motivate them to read the entire entry for the day. This method will also make me less stressed out, will allow me to update this blog more often, and will give me more time to educate myself about the expedition and therefore provide you all with more information! It’s a win win situation

 

See you all on the 30th of August! (Hint: The journals start off with a bang–LITERALLY!)

Summer is here!

Now that summer has arrived, I will now be able to start reading the journals and writing my tweets, but remember, the first tweet will not be posted until August 30th! I expect to begin sometime in the next few days! I admit, I am a bit nervous to begin–but also thrilled at the prospect of familiarizing myself (and hopefully others) with the journals–for me, in a very in-depth manner!

A note on my tweets: I think I will be only writing tweets for the entries of Lewis and Clark–not to minimize the importance of the journals of the other writers (Gass, Ordway, Waterhouse, Floyd, etc) but to make this a little easier on myself. I will be posting links to the full journal entries, and their entries will be on that webpage, so everyone will still be able to see them!

In the meantime, if you would like a Lewis and Clark-related blog to read, go check out Frances Hunter’s blog, franceshunter.wordpress.com. Frances Hunter is the author of two FANTASTIC Lewis and Clark related novels–To the Ends of the Earth and The Fairest Portion of the Globe. I am planning on re-reading both of those novels in the coming weeks (as soon as I am finished my current book).

Perhaps I should take this moment to explain how exactly I became interested in Lewis and Clark. On the East Coast (at least in my personal experience), the Lewis and Clark expedition does not get much attention in school. I never actually learned what happened on the expedition–just that it happened. I was also never much for the outdoors when I was younger, so I assumed that I would find the travels of the Corps of Discovery boring. Oh, how wrong I was!

I “discovered” just how interesting the expedition was in a very indirect manner, through Cokie Roberts’s book Ladies of Liberty. She devotes about ten pages to Sacagawea, and I found myself riveted to that section. I could not believe the trials that Sacagawea needed to endure–and with a baby on her back the entire way! I needed to learn more, so my dad gave me his copy of Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is when I–if you’ll permit me the use of the phrase–fell in love, with a tall, young handsome soldier with a funny sounding name that seemed to roll off the tongue–Meriwether Lewis. Undaunted Courage also made me even more aware of the excitement, the danger, and the (at times) hilarity of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And here I am today, still very much interested in the expedition, and hoping that, through my project, others will become interested as well.

Now, I have a confession to make: I have never actually been to any of the places on the Expedition route. I have been to Europe multiple times, but in terms of travel within the continental United States (so not including Alaska and Hawaii, because I have been to Hawaii), I have never left the East Coast. Perhaps, then, that I am inherently drawn to the Lewis and Clark Expedition because of some inner wanderlust. When I read the journals of the Corps, it’s as if I am traveling with them, as if I am making the arduous journey too, as if I am living their pain, feeling their hunger, swatting at the clouds of mosquitoes, collapsing into exhausted sleep at the end of the day.

I think that is enough for now. Thank you all for following!!

Second Twitter Account!

I just set up a second Twitter account where I can interact with my followers and post the links to the full length journal entries!

Follow: @aliciatweetsL_C

Welcome!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to ExploringWestWords! My name is Alicia, and I am almost a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, studying history. I enjoy following the historical tweets of Jason from PatriotCast (@PatriotCast, follow if you don’t already! He will Tweet daily reports of the American Revolution for eight years!) and the diary entries of John Quincy Adams from the Massachusetts Historical Society (@JQAdams_MHS). I have always loved early American history, but I only recently (about two years ago) discovered just how fascinating the Lewis and Clark expedition really was (being from the East Coast, Lewis and Clark doesn’t get discussed much in school). I searched on Twitter to find if anyone was Tweeting the Lewis and Clark journals, and could not find any results! This surprised me, so I decided that I would Tweet them.

So, starting on August 30 of this year, I will tweet each entry from the Lewis and Clark journals, until September 23 of the year 2014. Be sure to follow this blog, where I will post updates about the project and fun things such as Lewis and Clark related readings and other webpages or blogs to check out!

I will be using the online version of the journals, which (if I am not mistaken) correspond to the University of Nebraska Press editions, edited by Gary Moulton. (http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/) The format will be thus: if both Lewis and Clark write a journal entry for a respective day, then I will Tweet for each of them. If only one writes, then I will only tweet for one. I will also (somewhere) post the link to the full journal entry, either on the ExploringWestWords Twitter feed, here on this blog, or on a separate but related Twitter feed–I haven’t quite figured that out yet (I don’t want the links to interrupt the flow of the feed, but it may be convenient to have everything in one place).

If any of you have questions, reading recommendations, comments–anything!–please feel free to email me at exploringwestwords@gmail.com. I am really excited for this project to begin–it’s a way for me to combine my love of social media with my love of history! If I can spark just one person’s interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition from this little project, my goal will have been fulfilled.

Also, thanks to my friends Lynn and Liz for helping to come up with the name! You guys are awesome!