Dowbrigade Interviews Under-Secretary of the Army<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n Several Taking the pulse of the group, we decided to retire One of our students commented on the inordinate number Glancing optimistically Two weeks ago, we had been in New York City, and searched This is not our own idea, and we understand (although Finally, as we waited for our students this morning, Finally, about 11, we reached the Harvard Museum. After Waiting for the 71 bus to take us back to our car in "Some kind of military maneuvers," he answered, "They What now? War games in Harvard Square? Where? We hurried It only took us twenty minutes to get home and back Surrepticiously, notebook in hand, playing the reporter, It was a public celebration, not a war game or military It struck us as passing strange that we had heard nothing Their signs were amusing and clever. Their chants We wandered around, looking at the military vehicles Over in the corner some bigwig was holding court, addressing He was talking in sound bites: "There is no wavering Finally, as he was finishing up and his handlers were Dubois actually smiled at that, as though we had served On that, at least, we were in complete agreement.<\/p>\n \n "Protests Break Out At Flag Day Ceremony" from the TheBostonchanel.com<\/a><\/p>\n Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words Dept. – Steve Garfield has an excellent Video Blog Report<\/a> of the event.\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dowbrigade Interviews Under-Secretary of the Army Several times a year, we take our students on the patented Dowbrigade tour of the Harvard University campus, ending at the Harvard Museum complex. It is usually at the beginning of a semester, and … Continue reading
\n times a year, we take our students on the patented Dowbrigade tour
\n of the Harvard
\n University
\n campus,
\n ending
\n at
\n the Harvard
\n Museum complex. It is usually at the beginning of a semester, and functions
\n as a bonding experience, as well as the raw material for their first
\n essay assignment, which is to write a detailed physical description
\n of a single exhibit of their choice among the four museums we visit.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/huddled.jpg\")
This morning, as we huddled under the awning of the
\n Out-of-Town News Agency with a bedraggled gang of eight students, exactly
\n half of our summer group, we wondered if this semester’s edition would
\n be the first to be rained out. The streets were awash with a cold, inhospitable
\n downpour which had started exactly at 9:30, the time we had arranged
\n to meet.<\/p>\n
\n to Au Bon Pan and regroup over latte. We watched the people ducking out
\n of the rain, scurrying for shelter, or enjoying the drenching downpour.
\n 15 minutes later the missing half of our class had miraculously appeared
\n like wraiths
\n out
\n of the mist,
\n and just as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. <\/p>\n
\n of Army guys on the street and asked if it was normal. We had noticed
\n them too, and wondered if there was something going on. We explained
\n that it was unusual to see people in uniform on the streets of Cambridge,
\n unless, for example the Fleet was in port, or the President was in town. The
\n Army guys we could see, however, were not a security detail, or lowly
\n young grunts. They were middle-aged and competent looking.<\/p>\n
\n at the clearing skies, we gathered our charges and headed across Massachusetts
\n Avenue to Johnson Gate and the inner sanctum of Harvard Yard. This
\n year, as we launched into our spiel, passing social-cultural and FIDE
\n judgment on the Chess Master of Harvard Square, we had a parallel agenda.<\/p>\n
\n in vain for a downloadable museum guide to the Metropolitan Museum. All
\n we could find was a guide to the damn MOMA. The Dowbrigade can’t
\n stand most of that modern crap, and some of the pieces make us physically
\n ill, especially when we read how much these alleged works of art are
\n worth. But the idea of independently produced, quirkish, iPoddable walking
\n guides to popular museums fascinated us. Individualistic takes
\n on the artwork, by other artists or art students, backed by weird, new
\n music they choose to provide appropriate ambiance, much superior to the
\n canned cannonic drivel of the official museum audio tours.\n <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/delmonic.jpg\")
Later
\n we ended up wandering the lower lip of Manhattan, near Delmonico’s in
\n the financial zone, and the old, tiny, twisted streets
\n near the Seaport. Every
\n old, narrow building told a story, but unfortunately, we knew none of
\n them. How wonderful it would be to be able to download narrated
\n street guides, block by block, and listen to some squirrelly history
\n buff (you know the type, every neigh hood has one, who know all the legends
\n and the factual history of every family, store and building) or architecture
\n buff, spin stories on your iPod as you wander from spot to spot.<\/p>\n
\n we have not found it) that there are aggregations of these kinds of guides
\n springing up in nooks and crannies of the internet. One of the
\n most useful, fascinating new ideas we have heard of in some time, and
\n we couldn’t help thinking that we would love to contribute to the genre,
\n if there was anything about which we could conceivably consider ourselves
\n an expert.<\/p>\n
\n it hit us. We could do the Harvard Tour! We’ve only done it about
\n 30 times already, and we could spice it up with risque, gonzo stories
\n and flashbacks to the many memories of the year we lived in Harvard Yard
\n three decades ago that inevitably invade our mind when we cross those
\n tree-lined paths. So we were, to the unquenched curiosity of our
\n students, furiously scrawling notes, timing ourselves, and recording
\n comments in our little silver notebook.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/3lies.jpg\")
We
\n led them pst Wadsworth House, the second oldest building still standing
\n on campus, built in the 1720’s. We explained the
\n historical significance of the place as the residence of Col. George
\n Washington in the days before he formally assumed command of the very
\n first Colonial Army in 1775, a few blocks away on the Cambridge Common
\n before the United States was even a country. We took them by the Statue
\n of the Three Lies, and cajoled a hapless Japanese tourist to take our
\n picture in front of the statue. Since most of our students are
\n Asian and all of them are rich, this involved snapping at least a dozen
\n times, once with each camera. We showed them Thayer North, the
\n dormitory where the Dowbrigade spent his freshman year.<\/p>\n
\n a quick tour of the four museums just to give them the lay of the land,
\n we released them to gather the information they would need to complete
\n their assignment, promptly snuck out a little-known side exit and
\n headed for the T station.<\/p>\n
\n Watertown (Norma Yvonne had called us in the museum with an urgent shopping
\n list), we got our first inkling that something was up. An MBTA
\n official was directing passengers to walk up the underground roadway,
\n into the light at the end of the tunnel, to catch the bus on the street
\n rather than in the station. We asked why.<\/p>\n
\n got paratroopers dropping onto Harvard Square, and they cut off the electricity
\n to one whole sector. Can’t be having our paratroopers getting fried
\n now, can we? Whole side of the square is closed off. Think its
\n some kind of war games…"<\/p>\n
\n up the tunnel after the other passengers. Where the hell was this happening?
\n Paratroopers invading Harvard? Should we walk around and try to find
\n it, or get our car and come right back? Just then the bus rolled up and
\n we decided to search in the White Whale. Norma’s groceries could
\n wait.<\/p>\n
\n in the car. It was clear that the center of the commotion was the Cambridge
\n Common. The entire area was closed off by police cruisers, motorcycles
\n and army vehicles. We approached as close as we could and found a place
\n to park, not caring that it was resident only. For a story this big,
\n we would risk a ticket!<\/p>\n
\n we approached the Common. Nobody tried to stop us, and as the armed,
\n uniformed soldiers swarmed around us, we realized why.<\/p>\n
\n takeover! It was the 230th Anniversary of the very event we had
\n been telling our students about. The foundation of the first American
\n Army! And the Army had decided to celebrate at the exact same spot
\n where Washington had accepted that initial command.<\/p>\n
\n of this event in advance, and only stumbled on it by the purest of chance. Perhaps
\n the Army had kept a lid on the event, knowing the People’s Republic’s
\n propensity for protest.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/gardenparty.jpg\")
In
\n fact, there were a few protesters, no more than 20 or 30, standing behind
\n a line of police, off to one side of the common. They
\n too seemed to be celebrating something. Fashionably dressed in
\n straw boaters and white canvas tennis shoes, they looked like they
\n were at a garden party rather than apolitical protest.<\/p>\n
\n were astute but delivered in a cheerful rah-rah which made them sound
\n more like football cheers than rage rising from the streets. Pedestrian
\n stuff, like "Fund Kindergarten, not Combat" "Don’t Believe the Lies".
\n Quite frankly, they
\n were an embarrassment
\n to the history of the American anti-war
\n movement,
\n and made us sadly remember the days when an anti-war march in Harvard
\n square meant barred and chained gates to Harvard Yard, clouds of tear
\n gas at multiple flashpoints, buildings occupied, windows smashed, banks
\n trashed. <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/btwins.jpg\")
We wondered where our buddies the Black Flag Anarchists
\n were. They presented well against a scraggly band of brain-dead
\n Nazi’s, but show them a real Imperial machine and they were nowhere to
\n be found. This protest was literally a walk in the park, a mocking shadow
\n of the street struggles of our youth, on this very spot.<\/p>\n
\n and displays. There was a troop of soldiers in their original 1775
\n uniforms. There were weapons caches. there seemed to be an inordinate
\n number of recruiters wandering around, scouting for prospects. We
\n were glad we were way beyond that certain age.<\/p>\n
\n a gaggle of microphones and looking cool and professional in a thousand-dollar
\n suit and a million-dollar smile. He turned out to be Undersecretary
\n of the Army Raymond Dubois, who had placed a wreath and given a speech
\n as part of the ceremony.<\/p>\n
\n from the All Volunteer Army". <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/dupois.jpg\")
He
\n was asked about the military missing almost all of its recruitment goals
\n in the past months. He hemmed and hawed
\n impressively, noting that in business they set their sales goals
\n year to year and only count monthly totals mostly to make adjustments
\n along the way. He mentioned that reenlistment rates were actually coming
\n in
\n higher than expected. He lamented that the news media don;t pay
\n attention to all of the positive, non-combat things the Army does, building
\n schools, and fixing water systems.<\/p>\n
\n moving in to hustle him away to the next undisclosed location, the Dowbrigade
\n got in a last, timorous question. "Sir, (at this point we still didn’t
\n know exactly who this dude was), do you feel that the protesters over
\n there in any way represent a legitimate voice from the American public?"
\n Lame, we know, but we were winging it.<\/p>\n
\n him up a nice fat softball. "Let me tell you," he practically purred,
\n " When I came back from Vietnam and went to Princeton, now there were
\n some real protests. This," he tossed his head dismissively at the pathetic
\n handful of protesters behind him, "This is chump change."<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/1775.jpg\")
<\/p>\n