OPENING SALVO // WE ARE ALL FOUNDERS
What do we want next 250 years of our country to be?
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
I recently had the chance to walk the path at Pendle Hill at night. In the dark, my eyes adjusted and tuned in to the soft needles and bark at my feet on a wide path that circles the Quaker retreat center near Wallingford, PA. I could see the tops of the trees swaying against the sky, and hear the bullfrogs in the pond, no stranger to humans reorienting themselves to a simpler way of looking at the world.
I hadn’t been alone in the woods in the dark for a while, and I tried to imagine what America’s original forests would have felt like to Native Americans who lived here, and to the colonial settlers who came here to make a new life, both of them pre-modern humans who had to survive on their own, coming into contact as combatants, allies, and as families—intermarriage was not unheard of, and was sometimes a way of solidifying allegiances. (I would like to think, as a romantic, that a few of them were love matches.)
I was only partially successful in my bid to feel history; it’s 2024, and even at the retreat center I could still hear the hum of the highways, as I can nearly always from my home in the Queen Village neighborhood of South Philadelphia; modernity is hard to escape. So is history—we’re all part of this strange American experiment with all its flaws and opportunities.
My oldest ancestor on my mother’s side, Philip Bossert, was born in 1706 and emigrated here from Alsace, Germany (now France—it’s a border area that’s been contested for centuries), just in time to be thrust in the middle of the French and Indian Wars. A historical marker in Cherry Valley, PA, says, “Homesite of Philip Bossert, born 1706, died 1797 - Pioneer Settler of Cherry Valley, Donor of Land for Hamilton Square Church, Cemetery, and School - Here was a place of refuge from Indian Raids during the French and Indian Wars of 1754 - 1760.”
From research that other families and my own family members have conducted, I know that while his stone home was a place of refuge, he still lost three of his four sons in the conflict, who undoubtedly inflicted their own casualties on the native population trying to keep the settlers out. The Blakeslees, my father’s family, came to America in 1620, via Connecticut. Jacob Blakeslee, Sr., settled in Tobyhanna Township in 1812 and became the area’s first postmaster, a justice of the peace, and one of the group who erected the Tobyhanna Methodist Episcopal Church in 1853. Tobyhanna Township is land that William Penn’s ignoble sons swindled from the Lenape (also called the Delaware) during the Walking Purchase.
If you look at the roads from the area where my parents are from, you can tell the immigrant enclaves they lived in, which have English, German, and French names for many of the streets, intertwined with Native American names. The town of Blakeslee is still there, as is Bossardsville, and as are many relations (though the Bossards are now called the Buzzards). But I live by the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers and walk weekly on Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia, where the newer immigrant enclaves—Mexican, Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamese—are settling in the old Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods. The most recent arrivals are from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. What a neighborhood I live in. What a country we live in.
Just over 500 yards from my home is a pier that used to be a major hub of immigrants from all over the world disembarking to make a new home in the United States, and it’s very likely that Philip Bossert arrived there when he came around 1745. At the turn of the century, ships with names such as the Kensington, Southwark, Haverford, and Merion—all neighborhood place names still—would have come up the Schuylkill River from the sea. Now, it’s a park where you can actually put your feet in the river if you want, with native plant swales and plenty of places to sit and watch the river go by—even if what you mostly hear is I-95.
While my ancestors would have considered themselves pioneer settlers, and founders of a new country, I’ve recently begun to wonder why I don’t think of myself the same way—why we all don’t. A thousand years from now, 2024 will still be part of early American history—our country is still trying to get its footing and find its way into the next 250 years, preferably not in the dark.
I’ll submit to you that we are not finding our way right now. That’s not because we can’t get along as, for instance, black and white Americans, or urban and rural Americans. We can, we have, and we will. It’s not because we’re holding each other back as men or as women. It’s because we’re in a political straightjacket. We’re not currently oriented to seeking out the truth together. We are not communicating or disagreeing well.
As the National Liberty Museum puts it in their current year-long focus on free speech: We need to talk. I recently visited the museum and watched as school children learned about our constitutional protections for freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. Through interactive displays, they sorted through what was and wasn’t protected speech and learned about times throughout our history when those boundaries have been tested. It was a joy to watch.
But our predicament is not merely legal—it’s cultural. It’s not just about what will keep us out of jail, it’s about what we value, and whether we can mobilize people who share those values, to move past mere toleration and get to collaboration. We have, I believe, begun to shut down the critical function of social learning and teaching that sociologist Nicholas Christakis identifies as a species-level component of good societies.
In Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, his fascinating research points us toward the idea that we need to create more conditions and opportunities to teach and learn with one another. Christakis highlights that when the Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was stranded with his ship and crew, as the captain he rationed food and kept order. But he also ensured that they took breaks to perform for and entertain one another. That’s not for nothing.
I’ve come to understand that art in particular is a way that we escape from our present moment, process our experiences, and learn about our environment and each other, transmitting ideas, traditions, and culture through time. We forge bonds, and better understand each other, through music, dance, and other art forms.
But in the last ten years especially, we’ve done our best to disable this important cultural phenomenon. When you shut it down—when you squeeze artistic practice down into a tiny little black square on Instagram, or when you tell creatives that due to the happenstance of their birth they must not sing certain songs or explore certain characters—you shut down a vital part of social learning and teaching. In short, art may actually be critical to the survival of the species.
I may be a Daughter of the American Revolution, but more importantly, who will I be to future humans? Someone who tried, I hope, to bring people together. Not finding our way here is a civilizational-level problem. If we’re to solve it, we probably have to spend less time on the specifics of who our ancestors were, and more time on what defines our common humanity, now.
Whoever my own ancestors were, my fealty is to those kids at the National Liberty Museum who are counting on us to show them the way, not stumble around in the darkness that comes with shutting each other down. I’d like to ensure that a state called Pennsylvania, a country called America, and a broader human civilization exists in the year 3025. I hope that you’ll join me, because we are all founders.
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