This week’s readings were a rollercoaster of emotions. At first, I thought of how I wanted to be buried, to audibly gasping at almost every page of the last reading. The thing I was most fascinated by in David Sloane’s ‘’The Nature of History of the American Cemetery’’ was the newer burial practice of ‘’woodland burials’’ or ‘’natural burials’’. I love learning about burial costumes, rites, cemeteries, or anything relating to death or dying. Being buried in mostly unmarked graves is honestly appealing. I don’t need anything fancy, I’m dead. That being said, I’d prefer to be cremated so no one in the future could unearth my bones. As well as that, I hate the consumerist aspects of businesses capitalizing on grief to charge as much as they can to grieving families.
As someone who grew up in New Jersey, my first experience with business parks was going to my hockey rink as a kid which was located in one. The poor public transit system and the reliance on cars for travel in America are something that deeply saddens me. These business parks contribute to that problem. ‘’Campus, Estate, and Park: Lawn Culture Comes to the Corporation’’ by Louise Mozingo helped me better understand urban sprawl, or as I learned in high school- urban sprawl was a good thing and had nothing to do with race or class in any way. Companies moved out of cities, cities in which the Fortune in 1967 said, ‘’ New York is becoming an increasingly Negro and Puerto Rican city’’. (Page 261).
Gendering in the office and workforce overall still exists, and continues to be a problem. Angel Kwolek-Folland’s article ‘’The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace 1880-1930’’ analysis insurance offices during this time period and the idea of an ‘’office family’’. Which of course, falls under the fatherhood of the executives, reinforcing a male-dominated space through language. Women were made to eat in separate spaces from their male coworkers. Women’s bathrooms were also more inaccessible than males, as they were sometimes on different floors or just generally further away than the men’s bathrooms. The thing that stuck out to me most was the dynamics in the executive offices. They shared these offices with female secretaries, who were often referred to as ‘’ office wives’’ or ‘’office housekeepers’’. How incredibly demeaning and controlling! This exact language is still used. I’ve heard my dad’s friends referring to coworkers as their office wives. Both language and the material culture of offices separated and treated women as others. I don’t even know how to begin talking about Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now by Naa Oyo A. Kwate. I decided to choose only one restaurant to discuss and that’s Richard’s Restaurant and Slave Market. Open in 1952 by couple Joseph and Helen Wilkos, they marketed themselves as an upscale place that included a room with aristocratic trappings and food such as $3.25 ‘’lobster tail with drawn butter’’. They also host events and did marketing for weddings to be held there. Richie’s was open until 1980, and the family’s 3 restaurants were bombed with dynamite. Nothing to do with the racist themes, but because of testimony given before the Senate on rackets. The popularity and acceptance of such a place in a sundown town that drew political figures and celebrities to the location are appalling. The atmosphere of ‘’Authentic African’’ which was animal heads and guns on the wall which feels more American than any other country to me, offered dishes that had nothing to do with Africa such as Alaskan crabs. It’s clear they were capitalizing on and perpetuating racist ideas. One of the four rooms they had included waitresses in slave girl costumes. There aren’t records as to what that means exactly. Everyone should read this book. Which coincidently is free online.