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Stuart Carlton 0:00
Hey everybody, this is Stuart and I'm here with a. Hey, everybody, this is Stuart and I'm here with a quick disclaimer, which I haven't had to do for, I don't know, four or five episodes now. The interview interview you're about to hear was something that we originally recorded for our teach me about the Great Lakes election special that we released a couple of weeks ago. However, we didn't end up talking about the election that much. And so as a result, I just decided to release it as a separate episode, because I think it stands on its own just fine. In fact, I think it's a really interesting conversation about environmental politics in the Great Lakes region and some stuff on the Upper Peninsula that I had no idea existed, plus a cool sandwich story. So all around, it's a great episode on its own. So thank you for listening, please take a minute if you can to give us a review or a subscription. Or maybe you tell your friends about us and stay safe. This holiday season is starting to get a little nuts out there. Teach me about the Great Lakes, teach me about the Great Lakes, John, welcome back, everybody to teach me about the Great Lakes unless I screw something up. This is part two of our election special. And you know, it's election season, everybody's getting fired up to vote. Hopefully you have voted if you haven't, hopefully, we'll vote. But I wanted to talk with some people who know more about politics in the Great Lakes that I do, because we spend a lot of time thinking about what a wonderful resource is a cultural and environmental and economic resource. Well, you know, politics ties right into that. And so I thought we would call up some folks who are smarter about that than I am and talk to them about it. And so I'm pleased to introduce today's guest, who is Dr. Kim bird. He is an assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University home of New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton. As I'm sure you knew. Camden. How are you today? I'm great. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Thanks. We're in the homestretch now, election wise and so I don't know. I guess your job doesn't really have you necessarily following all that closely. But I still there. I'm still feeling it, man. That's what it is still feeling it?

Dr. Camden Burd 1:53
Yeah, I hear you. I mean, I'm, you know, following everything as closely as I can still have to write lectures now and again, and teach. But yeah, I mean, it's a it's an energizing time. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 2:02
energizing time, it's one way to present. So let's sort of look this your professor of history, not poli sci, but you're looking at kind of environment and politics in the in the Midwest and elsewhere, maybe. And so my understanding tell me if I'm wrong is that your research sort of explores the interaction between nature, business and culture, especially in like, the 19th century. So what can you tell me about how do people view the Great Lakes, kind of, you know, in the early days of America, or the 19th century, you know, how do people interact with or view the Great Lakes? And?

Dr. Camden Burd 2:32
Yeah, it's interesting, it's, a lot of it is in your right to point out I study sort of the history of humans relationship to the natural environment over time and to be 100%, you know, like, accurate, like, there's not one way that people view it, because it often depends on who we're talking about their cultural baggage, their desires for the natural environment, and their preconceived notions about what nature is supposed to be. So really what I do is study different groups and how they perceive the environment, how they hope to harness it or not at all, and how that relationship changes over time, because it does, in fact, change over time. So it's also that question of history is just because this group felt this way about it at one point, how does that change what sort of encourages changing perceptions to occur? And sort of essentially, sort of, you know, I am a historian, we study change over time. So that's very much a question that I'm interested in. So broadly speaking, if we're talking about the 19th century, and we're talking about early, early America, in the 19th century, the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes region was seen as sort of this duality of both daunting and it's sort of rugged, wild, untamed wilderness, but also potentially very profitable. I'm thinking if you were to go back and read, let's say, the journals of Henry Schoolcraft, who was an early naturalist and an explorer who was tasked to sort of go through the Great Lakes region and see what was going on in the early 1820s. He would have sort of hit you with descriptions that are both, you know, you know, he sees the the grand stable dunes and he talks about as being desolate, barren, devoid of life up in the up, but then also seeing, you know, evidence of French or Native American agriculture, and seeing this as a potential for development that, you know, certainly not for Native Americans. Let's be clear, Henry Schoolcraft and part of that American Imperial agenda was to open it up for Americans and Euro Americans broadly, but it was wilderness to be tamed and turned into profitable landscapes.

Stuart Carlton 4:52
Okay. And so I don't know this Schoolcraft off to read about them but but so the idea was that it was devoid of life but life to find As you know, white European dudes and their women folk, I suppose. Right? Okay. It wouldn't be something to look at agriculture see the signs of ag? Like is elsewhere?

Dr. Camden Burd 5:14
Its potential, but it's not it's not as enlightened or civilized as perhaps, as he would describe it to be. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 5:21
it's always up on the up. So it was there was no Sioux Sainte Marie then or maybe there was I don't know. And so so there's a duality of like this nature and the frontier. And if I hadn't been fixing the YouTube link, I would have heard the second part of that duality. However, I was fixing YouTube, like so the second part of that duality is

Dr. Camden Burd 5:38
it's the duality of being sort of a wilderness scary frontier, but also very, sort of, there's a ton of potential in this area, right. Like they know that the the fisherman's are incredible, and the Great Lakes that this could be harnessed somehow, you know, if there's a way to get these to a market that can use them. There's a lot of technological issues there. But early on, that's certainly a concern, seen as a growth opportunity.

Stuart Carlton 6:01
Yeah, it really was. And so so back then it makes you century. How far back? Do you know how far like West people had explored in terms of up in the Great Lakes? So the up was new? Where else had won? Again, by people? I have the very specific definition of Europeans. Yeah. So no,

Dr. Camden Burd 6:20
that's a great, it's a great question. And, yes, obviously, Native Americans, this is their homeland, traditional homelands. They've used this landscape know very well, the French, though, have been tromping around in the Great Lakes region, throughout the 17th century and know it very well, you know, to Sioux Sainte Marie, right. This is a French town's French settlement name. And so by the time you know, Americans are really sort of moving into an exploring this region. Not only are they seeing plenty of evidence of Native American culture, but they're they're also seeing evidence of French Canadian culture. Okay, that is still existent in the region as well. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 6:58
And so when you talk about potential again, it seems to me like we're getting this idea that it strikes me as very big in the early in the 19th and 20th centuries by like, harnessing but dominating nature for our benefit, right? Or another good example would be the Erie Canal, which I think you've done a little bit of work on. And you know, that's another thing where you're building a canal, and you're constructing something so that we can control nature. Right. Is that was that a big kind of theme of the early early days?

Dr. Camden Burd 7:24
Yeah, well, I mean, what you know, this the 19th century mentality, except for some outliers that we can talk about maybe some romantics, but the idea was like, what is good, what good is all this potential if we're not for not capitalizing, which is to say something like the Erie Canal, which is going to be critical to open up the Great Lakes region for trade and commerce by get making it possible for farmers and other goods to actually move to Eastern seaports where it could be sold and actually be a valued commodity? And I think that's a key point there is the natural goods are valued based on their potential market right worth and sort of maximizing that is the key here in the 19th century.

Stuart Carlton 8:06
I see. And so the big idea was we got it we got to get these goods get this potential and then get it to the population centers. through whatever means nets by hook or by crook, I suppose. Or by train or by one plane, train canal boats, all of it. Yeah, you name it. Yeah. There's gonna be mules involved ships. He said, ships people. Yeah, they're they're mules. I know.

Dr. Camden Burd 8:26
Is that a boat? I know there's a critical distinction.

Stuart Carlton 8:28
No, no, I don't know. I just wanted to be sure. We've had two episodes in a row with a euphemistic split. And so we wanted to be very clear about what was being said. You mentioned romantics, let's talk about the couple outlier. Romantic so so who were these romantics, who might be felt differently?

Dr. Camden Burd 8:50
I mean, certainly, we can talk about and it's a complicated relationship, because nature can mean different things. But you have people who are clearly skeptical of the sort of purely market driven philosophy and some of the biggest ones, you know, when I teach an environmental history course American environmental history, of course, you can't ignore people like Thoreau, right? Who has he was very uncomfortable with an increasingly market driven society so much so that he sort of is he sees it as disorienting he sees it as sort of a degradation to the the human spirit. And so he's just gonna go out. This isn't New England on the Great Lakes region, but he's just gonna walk out and, you know, go live and be a bean farmer, or plant beans and live out in Walden Pond for two years and explore that life. I mean, obviously, think about someone like Teddy Roosevelt, who was interested in conservation. You see the rise of the Forest Service at the turn of the 20th century, as well. Obviously, John Muir, who see is very much a romantic in the sense that he sees nature, specifically the Sierra Nevadas but he sees nature as a cathedral. You know, he sees it as this is where you meet God, not at church. So

Stuart Carlton 10:01
yeah, that's already right. It didn't occur to me. But of course, you're talking about kind of the roots of the whole environmental thing in the United States. And, and like the, you know, preservation versus conservation. Gilbert, what's his name? And John Weir and all that stuff? Yeah. Oh, interesting. And so, yes, yeah. And so you see, and so you see that in the Great Lakes themselves, and, and you have, you know, that there was really the idea, it seems what you're telling me if I'm using nature for what it's worth, whether or not people were thinking about conserving, you know, conservation wise use or just, you know, sucking it till it's dry. It's not clear.

Dr. Camden Burd 10:39
Yeah, and especially in the Great Lakes. And I will say, you have this transformation that occurs in the second half of the 19th century, particularly in the the Upper Midwest, right, these are logging areas are not as good as agricultural. So they are actually seen as for various reasons and escape from modern life escape from urban centers, like Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and you see an entire tourism industry that has redefined what, you know, the healthful benefits of nature are, and specifically talking about the Upper Midwest as a healthful retreat from the overt anxieties of urban living, right. So you, in many ways, that time period is redefining what the role of particular natural landscapes can mean to American culture. So you see a reinvention of the idea of nature in that in that sense,

Stuart Carlton 11:30
really, hmm. I didn't realize that that was kind of a novel idea at the time, this notion of nature is refuge, right? Which we think about a lot as we don't get to spend as much time in nature or travel this far. You know, there's not a lot of beautiful nature in West Lafayette, there's some, but you know, it'd be really great to be able to go and spend some weeks in a place, but that's just not really on the table right now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, so then we have environment as of course, something that we, you know, should dominate and control in order to expand society produce more, and we have environment as refuge. But it was later much later. Well, I don't know how much later wasn't when we started to think of the environment, either generally, in the Great Lakes as something that we are affecting, in a negative way. You know, because you know, about the environmental movement of the 60s and 70s, you have Rachel Carson, and what have you, was there a lead up to that? Or do you see that anywhere in the Great Lakes?

Dr. Camden Burd 12:24
Yeah, what's what's interesting about what makes like the 60s and 70s era different than previous conservation efforts, because I will say, especially in the Great Lakes region, again, in the upper Midwest is what I'm most familiar with, but you start to see conservation districts, right, you were in a see, National Forests get put into place, I believe, like the Hiawatha national forests in the 1930s. You're gonna start to see, you know, even during the great deal, you know, the Depression era, and you have federal programs that are rebuilding, you know, destroyed ecosystems, because of, you know, rampid capitalism of lumber mining, in lumbering and mining and whatnot. So there is precedent, what I will say is, what the 60s and 70s was, or some of those efforts were about conservation of pure natural resources. The 60s and 70s, we'll see sort of a chemical element brought into the conversation in an unprecedented way, which is to say the question of, well, two things, right? How does a chemical affect the environment or potentially human health, right, because that's a big part of this as well. But then you start to see the rise of like ecology as a science as opposed to environment as, as a particular sign that that environment is not a science, but the notion that all these organisms are connected and related. And it complicates, you know, notions of conservation, which is to say, if you're a Forest Service conservation person, you're interested about trees, you're not necessarily interested about specific birds, you're not interested, you know, or lichen or things like that, that starts to change during this time period, as well. And it throws off sort of that has, you know, that relationship, that people have built their landscape in some ways?

Stuart Carlton 14:11
Oh, that's interesting, huh? So seeing so with the rise of ecological sciences, what you're really seeing is a more holistic, I guess, view of how things work, or talking to some students the other day at a high school. We're talking about, you know, conserving individual species, and I was describing the importance of habitat or whatever. And, of course, that's an exact thing never even occurred to me, because I'm kind of stupid. Okay. So

Dr. Camden Burd 14:35
I think it makes sense. There's a history to these things. Yeah. And that's the reality. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 14:40
All right. Um, and so then, but So, in the Great Lakes, specifically, its environmental region took off. This is also the seat of so many industries, right? In the 60s and 70s. You think of steel, and I don't know the exact history here, but they're steel. There's the auto and there's all these extractive industries, probably because of just What you're saying everybody saw the wonderful natural resources? And like, Heck, yeah, let's send them back east baby. And, and, and but this is the economy in many ways, right and Michigan, I don't know a ton about Michigan, anything about Michigan specifically it has that duality right there where it's or maybe it's a different duality where it's like, unbelievably beautiful place to go. But also we're taking everything we can for cars and, and whatever. So once the environmental movement, you know, I imagine that was met with a little bit of resistance, at least in some places in the Great Lakes region.

Dr. Camden Burd 15:29
Absolutely, absolutely, I think you've absolutely nailed the sort of how shattering environmental movements or conservation and preservation movements can be, because in many cases, you have, especially in the Upper Midwest, and that's not even just Michigan, but you know, places like Minnesota as well, where there is both great, you know, timber to be harvested, but you also have, you know, historically prolific iron mines, in those regions to iron is the, you know, the backbone of the economy of many of those towns, many of those communities. And absolutely, you know, to mine is to, you know, is potentially a very harmful environmental action. And it is necessary for local economies, but it is, you know, if you're balancing the notion of, you know, environmental preservation against mining that, you know, that's a tough, that's a tough line to sort of navigate there, and that it does come with some political pushback. And this is an article that I had written right for the this recent collection of the history of conservative politics. In in the Upper Midwest is this conversation of what does the environmental movement do to the economy? And how does that get politicized?

Stuart Carlton 16:52
Yeah. And so I forgot to plug the article in the book in the very beginning. So yes, Kevin, and much like the guests from part one of our politics extravaganza, contributed or chapter to this book called, you will look up the title and link to it in the show note, conservative heartland. Yes, that's right. Yep. And, yeah, the conservative heartland, political history of post war, the post war American Midwest, and we'll have a link to that you should check that book out. It's actually I've read bits of it as prepping for this. And it's very interesting stuff.

Dr. Camden Burd 17:27
It's timely to I'd say, you know, I mean, you know, I saw, you know, I've seen bits of what you do with the previous interview and talking about the timeliness of the debates of Midwest as swing state as politically relevant. I mean, it's a great publication for understanding today.

Stuart Carlton 17:40
Yeah, no, that's great. I plug to Yeah, there we go. So go get the book, this is two times in a row, just buy the book. It's not that expensive. Or get it from the library. I don't care. But anyway. And so we did spend some time with Chris Devine, talking about, you know, how the Midwest is a battleground. And one thing that didn't occur to me is one of the reasons that the Midwest is a battleground is because it could go either way, right? So many of the states when you're not a battleground, Alabama is not going to be a battleground, where Louisiana where I come from, it's not going to be a presidential battleground, at least on a consistent basis, going forward. And so, but it's part of that, and this may be outside your field. So you can tell me if so it's part of the reason that it's so close, it has to do with this relationship you're talking about where on the one hand, you know, we're extracting and using, and on the other hand, it's all this beautiful place where people want to preserve, and it's sort of that that dual nature right there. Do you think that contributes to kind of the closeness of a lot of the politics in the region?

Dr. Camden Burd 18:32
Yeah. And that's, that's a great question. And that that was really sort of the heart of the question that I started with, with the essay is to say, the traditional sort of, you know, the brief rundown of the political history of the Midwest is essentially, you know, you have your new do a New Deal coalition, which is Democratic voters who are very pro union, they're very industrial workforce, blue collar. And that is why, you know, knowing the history of places in the Midwest, Illinois, Michigan, Milwaukee, you know, like, these are industrial centers, that tend to, obviously support policies that are supporting of blue collar workers, as you start to see a variety of forces that come about in the 60s and the 70s, those politics start to shift has made this region more of a battleground than obviously, you know, as you said, your home state of Louisiana. So it's interested in like, the traditional narrative is, you've got social unrest in the 60s, you've got Vietnam War, which starts to shake things up. You have the rise of this new political left in the 60s as well, and it starts to shatter things. But what I was hoping to answer with this essay was to say, Well, what about the pipe politics of environmentalism, which had been largely ignored in the American Midwest, political history, and in fed have almost focused exclusively on places out west places that are huge, you know, huge swaths of land owned by the federal government. And the traditional narrative is that an environment anti environmental politics starts to build in the 70s Out west with people critiquing how much the federal government owns how much wilderness preservation is happening. And the backlash starts out there. I was interested in what happens when environmentalism comes to the mining regions of the Upper Midwest,

Stuart Carlton 20:14
right? And so, so Right, so the narrative is that there's backlash out west and we can still see that going on today with some of what's happening with the BL o holdup Bureau of Land Management that BLM protests and things like that. And so, but so what is the deal with the anti environmentalism in the Midwest? Did you find that it was a significant seed of it, maybe because of some what we've been talking about or what?

Dr. Camden Burd 20:37
Yeah, it was interesting in it, there's this really, it's a you know, it's funny when I wrote the history, because if you, if you live, like north of the 45th, parallel and the Upper Midwest, you sort of know the history, you at least know that, at certain points in American history, the Upper Peninsula itself has attempted to secede from the state of Michigan. And I was sort of interested. This is sort of, in some ways, seen as like Poppy history and not a sort of kookiness, but I was interested in sort of studying that as a real historical phenomenon by saying, like, uh, who is this? Who's leading this? How serious is this movement? And what are they talking about, and it started by doing some research up in Northern Michigan University. They have great archives up there, and I can't promote them enough. But the papers have a state rep named Dominic Jakob Betty who was on paper. Like a classic New Deal Democrat. He is, you know, born he's raised in the up in Ghani, which is very steel mining town. He works in the mines, after he graduates from high school, Joey rises, the ranks of the local union organization becomes the president of the Union, you know, it's following that sort of very blue collar. He's a Democrat. But he starts to break away from the party line, when these environmental issues, these environmental laws start coming into place. Protect particularly things like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, because he sees these as potentially damaging to the industries of steel mining in the Upper Peninsula. And so he starts a backlash. Yeah, sorry.

Stuart Carlton 22:23
No, that makes sense. Right? Because it was a local issue for him takeover. I'm not. Anyway, I was gonna try and draw some parallels for current but I don't actually know it. Well, no.

Dr. Camden Burd 22:33
Absolutely right, which is to say he sees himself still as a New Deal Democrat, but this this issue is starting to change that coalition in some ways. And so much so that he is going to begin in the late 60s to organize and 70s He's going to organize a secession move. Okay,

Stuart Carlton 22:49
now, this is interesting. So yeah, he's gonna organize a secession, like, secede, like from the US or become Europe, from Michigan, from

Dr. Camden Burd 22:59
he wanted to be his own state. So you want the up to be the 51st? state, the state of superior superior? Yes. And so he starts an organism starts organizing, right? This is a grassroots movement. And he does this a few different ways. Right, he starts, he he's reaching out to local industry leaders to start having them talk about why environmental laws are bad, right? He's reaching out to them, Hey, right, like this Clean Water Act, this Clean Air Act, like, talk to me, how is this going to hurt you? Right? He's seeking for them to inform his sort of political movement. And in you know, he gets he gets the answers he wants, he gets people saying like energy companies saying, Oh, well, like, we'll have to pass these on to the consumers. And we have to understand that like, in the 1960s, we have underground mines that are going out of business, because mining out west is taking off. It's it's much easier out west, you know, like this mining in this part of the country has been going on for 100 years, you got to go pretty deep down to find it in the upper Midwest. So it's much easier to get out west or you have steel coming in from places like China. Yep. And so it's just the economy is collapsing. He's looking for someone to put this on. And it is going to be environmental laws and environmentalism, that it's going to be the

Stuart Carlton 24:13
right the target. Yeah, that often is the target there without commenting on the wisdom of that. Um, and so.

But, so what so what was the strategy there? So the idea is, these are bad, so we're gonna pull out of Michigan, but you're still going to be subjected to the laws, right?

Dr. Camden Burd 24:40
So subject, yes, subject to the federal laws, but not subject to because also the state of Michigan is passing a series of laws at this time period as well, which they see as just too much. And so therefore, the logic is, well, you have a local community who might not be so interested in enforcing Some of these laws, because a lot of you know, a lot of the EPA rules, especially like, you know, require sort of a, a motivating body to sue or or, you know, monitor environmental hazards. And so the notion is that we can dodge the Michigan stuff, at least if we become this 51st. State.

Stuart Carlton 25:20
Yeah. And if it's a more laissez faire place for a lot of that, yeah,

Dr. Camden Burd 25:25
I mean, yes, local communities are gonna be inclined to, you know, shut down the mind. Right.

Stuart Carlton 25:31
Yeah. So, uh huh. That's interesting. And so they wanted to create the state of superior, which is just wonderfully named. If you're going to name yourself something, you might as well roll right. But, but and so how did obviously it didn't happen? Were they that close to it? Or were they close together? The closest

Dr. Camden Burd 25:49
they got was in this 70s. The 70s Push. And again, like historically, thinking the seven years are, you know, this is the time of incredible recession, this the economy, you have stagflation, it's a bad time to be in America in the 70s. It's an anxious time, this is also in DC, national politicians start to flip on environmental issues. What used to be a bipartisan agreement to get at some of these environmental rules will start to turn more partisan in the 1970s. Because of these economic issues, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 26:22
Because I've always, I've always wondered about that, like, like, how did the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, those would never pass today, in a bipartisan way? Right. And so I've always kind of wondered, and I didn't know if it was, because that was also when Watergate was happening. And so there is a need to be seen pushing back, but you're saying that it, it didn't really become partisan environmentalism? Well, the specific mechanisms by which we tried to achieve environmental quality or whatever didn't become partisan until a bit later than or was later in the 70s. Okay,

Dr. Camden Burd 26:52
yeah. And there's a great book, if anyone's interested in this. It's called the Republican reversal, which is also tracking sort of the long term historical trends of conservative politics and, and sort of the laws of it. And it's complicates the narrative quite a bit, doesn't sort of simplify it. But yes, the broad strokes are the 70 start to flip things around with minor successes since then, as far as if you're, you know, environmentally minded, but but as far as the up goes, they did get the Attorney General of the State of Michigan to weigh in and say, Okay, what steps do you need to take to become a separate state and one of those, you know, there's three things, you have to get the majority of the residents of the Upper Peninsula to agree to secession, you have to write a constitution, the US Congress has to approve it. And then of course, the state of Michigan also has to vote and approve it as well. Those are significant hurdles. They never Yeah, they never quite make it to the second task, because Jack Abadi will start sending out these promote, you know, these these questionnaires, these promotional flyers saying why we need to become a separate state and really gauging the interest of, of local residents to how serious are you? Right, there's, there's always sort of this lingering downstate tension with those who live in the Upper Peninsula. And so but early on, it became clear that the budgets couldn't possibly make it work, you know, like, who's gonna pay for the roads? Who's gonna pay for the universities and colleges? What about hospitals, like the tax base of the Upper Peninsula, simply really, you know, does not need downstate urban centers to help fund those things that they've come to appreciate? Yeah, I've

Stuart Carlton 28:39
been it's not there's not a lot going on in terms of like population. I mean, there's a bridge and a lock and a lot of woods. And that's wonderful. But it's not it's not driving the whole state, I guess. Exactly. Exactly. So it's, it's, is there a separatist movement today, or a secessionist movement today? Still, people so fired up about this,

Dr. Camden Burd 28:56
it lingers, it does linger and it tends to happen. It tends to get louder during the recession, right. So you did have a bit of some rumblings about it in let's say, after the 2008 recession, there was a, you know, a group of people who are interested in this, it tends to, and by no means am I trying to sort of sound political, but it is often a libertarian sort of argument, sort of, like manage our own sources be our own economy, our local, it's very local. You know, when I published this piece, I mean, I got a few emails from people saying, like, Thank you for giving, you know, you know, calling attention to this history, we still need to do it. And I don't I don't think I advocated for secession or the point my peace. But I think they read into that perhaps, but I would say it's still there. You know, there are people on Twitter who advocate for it, whatever that means. And yeah, I think you'll see signs around every once in a while.

Stuart Carlton 29:54
Interesting. I had no idea this was a thing. So that's that's fascinating to hear about. though, let's shift gears minute later, something else I wanted to ask you about. So one thing we talked about a lot is methods here because I love to hear about how people do their work, whether that's and usually what we end up doing is saying, you know, we need to fund more scientists to collect more data, because it's all important, but you call yourself a digital humanist. And I will be honest, even though I was an English major, and spent a lot of times around the humanities, I think I must be old enough that digital humanism did not exist when I was in college, or if it did, they didn't tell me about it, maybe it's too powerful a tool for me. So how do you use digital tools to study humanities in histories? What kind of questions can you explore and stuff? Like, how is that different from you know, just go into the archives, what you'd like to do, but But what what is what is what is unlocked in the digital era, I guess,

Dr. Camden Burd 30:45
Stewart, I can assure you, as someone as you who does science, I can assure you, that technology that a lot of humanists are doing are in fact, well, in your wheelhouse, we are just playing catch up in many ways. Digital humanist, as far as I see, and that is a, you know, obviously is a big tent.

Stuart Carlton 31:01
Ya know, it's my own ignorance. I'm sure that

Dr. Camden Burd 31:04
but my philosophy there is, and then I'm sort of trained cultural historian, which is I'm interested in sort of the feelings, the meanings, how people construct identity and things like that. So it's not always conducive to the methodological approaches of Digital Humanities, I'm interested in using digital humanities to combine large data sometimes to sort of add depth in meaning to some of the cultural history questions that we ask of the time period. So, you know, projects that I'm interested in are going back and historical records of, you know, old bureaus, or old associations, looking at the statistics that they're throwing around at the specific time period, recovering some of those statistics, to get a sense of real physical, you know, material changes that are happening in natural environments, as they are recording that this is data that was published, it's not accessible without like, either Great Machine Learning, and or, you know, the skills of historians, which are, you know, just digging in the archives for hours and copying over data to databases.

Stuart Carlton 32:14
I see. So you'll go and look at just old ancient report ancient, not ancient, literally, metaphorically, ancient reports and, and find out what's there and then essentially, create datasets that you can then analyze, that were otherwise just buried in books or in maybe in PDFs, if you're lucky.

Dr. Camden Burd 32:31
Yeah, yeah. And my philosophy is that that data will give us more information than we had before to start talking about meaning and and cultural history. Yeah, I'm still, you know, I have to in case my advisor were to ever see my former adviser ever to see this. I am not sort of like this techno optimist techno determinist I very much believe that you know, that this is just more evidence that we can use to reconstruct the past, right, because the more evidence we have, the better you know, the better idea we might have of how people lived experience and knew the natural world of the of yesterday.

Stuart Carlton 33:06
That's fascinating stuff. It really is. But that's actually Kamden not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes. The reason that we invited you here teach me our threat lake. So these are two questions, the first of which is this. If you could choose to have a great doughnut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose and why?

Dr. Camden Burd 33:26
Oh, I'm going to hit you in the middle ground there, Stuart. Plug. This is maybe my biggest accomplishment while I lived and in Rochester, where I did do my graduate studies. As you probably know, the dissertation needs to write you know, you need to sit down you need time. There was a great coffee shop slash brewery called fifth frame in downtown Rochester that I would spend my weekends writing in the morning so it was coffee only I just need to like make sure okay.

Stuart Carlton 33:57
I was more intrigued than ever before. It was like this is an avenue hold on the podcast has now changed Alright so what's in Rochester the fifth it's in Rochester

Dr. Camden Burd 34:04
the name is fifth frame fifth. I was event I am a vegetarian and they mostly had meat based breakfast sandwiches. So I kept custom ordering just an egg sandwich. And after about a year of this, they finally added the bird bu R to the video. And this is like still like the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in the city of Rochester. I've got a sandwich named after me. And then I like moved away like two days later but it happened it's real it's still there. It's on the menu. Oh you can take it to go you know don't have to sit there I am at

Stuart Carlton 34:36
their website. Now. I encourage everybody listening to look down at your telephone or whatever and find this out the bird. This is amazing. We have never interviewed a celebrity before.

Dr. Camden Burd 34:49
This is I suspect if you actually ask them why they named that there that that local story is gone but it's just because you know that's the name they saw on the credit card every time we custom to order this there it is

Stuart Carlton 34:58
to Eggs cheddar. Now I do notice I call it a bastard roll. So I don't know if that's a little something for you to eggs and cheddar on a bastard. Nice.

Dr. Camden Burd 35:09
Yes. So that's like, Yeah, this is I will endorse that all day. And Rochester is a great town, great, great lakes city that people don't often assume as a Great Lake City, but I, I will say it is

Stuart Carlton 35:19
that we're gonna look at that the bird. Okay, great. We've gotten totally distracted. The second, we have to redo this whole deal. The second question is this. What is one piece of life advice that you have for our listeners that can be big or small, serious or silly? We'd like to give somebody something to take home and sort of think about, in addition to reflecting on the environmental history of the Great Lakes and you know, digital humanities, what's what's a bit of life advice from Dr. Kennedy?

Dr. Camden Burd 35:46
Wow, that's tough. Um, no, I listen, we are in COVID times we are we are in lockdown mode. I have gone deep into the well of podcasts like I'm I'm a pretty regular podcast listener. But I feel like I've really tried to find new ones or interesting ones, ones that are really good at narrating stories. And I actually think one that is applicable. It's not great lakes focused, but does get at sort of an environmental history of community engagement with this rise of ecology, science, and in the modern environmental movement. Is this new and it's pulled out of Portland, Oregon, I believe it's called timber wars, timber wars. Yeah. So it's about like this larger debate between environmentalists and local logging communities. And I think it's really well done. It's a great environment. I will assign it to an environmental history class, because it's a great story and gets at some of the larger questions of and debates about environmentalism.

Stuart Carlton 36:37
Well, that is really cool. That is some great advice. Go listen to the timber wars. That's any book about wars, like, in general, but not actual wars. Those Those are not pork, I guess, here. It's a podcast. I'm not as interested in actual wars, because that's too intimidating for me. But other other that sounds really

Dr. Camden Burd 36:54
no formal war though. I, from what I've listened to, the tensions get high and perhaps because of a little violent, but not war, violence.

Stuart Carlton 37:03
I've got enough violence in my day to day existence. I don't need any more. Wonderful. Well, Kevin, great. I know you're on Twitter at Kempton bird bird with a you not with an AI or why. And we'll link to that is there anywhere else that people can go to find out more about your work?

Dr. Camden Burd 37:18
Yeah, I my personal website, which is very complicated WWW dot Kamden bird.com Nailed it. You can get all my publications are there and feel free. I mean, if anyone's interested in reading my work or you know, ideas about where to go for environmental history, in general, I'd be happy to, you know, suggest books or whatever.

Stuart Carlton 37:40
Wonderful. Well, everybody do that. And also make sure to go check out the book that came down and part one's guest, Dr. Chris Devine, contributed chapters to what's called the conservative heartland, a political history of the post war American Midwest, Dr. Ken Imbert of Eastern Illinois University. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Camden Burd 37:59
Yes, thank you, Stuart. This was great.