You all have in your folders cards like this which are an invitation to commemorative activities, a celebration at the witch trials memorial tomorrow. I am here to introduce our keynote speaker. I have noticed that we have not really talked about the people who have sponsored this symposium. I mentioned the Salem Award Foundation. I have to tell you, donna has been driving this bus. [applause] i know she has pulled the entire History Department along in her wake. I wanted to make sure she got credit for the incredible amount of hard work that it takes to pull off an event like this. It has been a wonderful day. On to what i am supposed to be talking about. I am glad our keynote address is in the afternoon rather than in the morning because, i think, we have all had time to stop and think about what the problems we face in commemorating something that happened 325 years ago. Perhaps nobody has given it more thought than our speaker today, dr. Kenneth foote. I had planned to pull a few choice nuggets from his resume to use for my introduction but that has not been possible. I am not an academic. I am from the business world, where the mantra is a onepage resume. I was somewhat unprepared for these 10 pages. Instead, i am using a little bit from what he has posted on the yukon website where he chairs the department of geography. He joined the faculty there in 2013. American and european landscape history, and issues of geography in higher education. Instructional technology. He is here today because of his interest in what we might call the landscape of tragedy. His book, if you have not read it, i recommend it, it really awakened us to think about how we deal with places where bad things happened. How those sites are marked or not marked continues to be one of his main areas of interest. He is a graduate of the university of wisconsin, masters and his doctorate at the university of chicago. He has authored 10 other books. Enough articles and chapters and contributions if i listed them, it would take up his entire speaking time. Prior to joining the faculty, he had been associated with the university of texas in austin and the university of colorado at boulder. He has been the president of several geographic associations and has won numerous prizes. I know we are all going to value what he has to say today on how what happened here in salem has played out across america. It is my honor to introduce dr. Kenneth foote. [applause] dr. Foote thank you very much, shelby. I would also like to thank the Salem Award Foundation for helping organizing this as well. Maybe give a call out to the Geography Program at salem state. [applause] it is an honor for me to be here at salem state for this symposium. My first visit to salem was in 1984. It changed my life. I have been haunted by what i found in 1984. What i saw has shaped much of my research over the last 30 years. For the next 45 minutes, i would like to focus on the four questions on the first slide. Other sites have been stigmatized. Salem is not alone in that context. The first thing i want to do is focus on comparisons between salem and other sites. I would also like to focus on why it is that sites like salem are so difficult to commemorate. I would like to go from there about the comments that came from the previous panel. We have zombies walking down the streets and so forth. [laughter] i do not think i have to say a lot more. It does raise the issue of what comes next. Over the last couple of weeks, i have been reviewing the growth and i do not think there can be enough material on the salem witch trials. Im impressed by the number of books, websites, movies, television that up and focusing on witchcraft. I was a bit humbled by the people on the panel and you gave lectures earlier today because we have so much expertise here in the room today that i do not want to claim to be an expert on salem. My expertise is as a geographer. Do not take me to task if i get a name wrong. We really do have some wonderful experts. My interest in geography comes from the standpoint of geography. I was very much interested in this study of the sense of place, the deep emotional bonds that people develop to places where they live. It might be a persons home, where you go as a retreat with your family. It may be a place like marblehead, a wonderful place for recreation. Or it might be someplace you might enjoy going with friends. Domino park is one of the centers of community. It may just be a place i have this photograph around walden pond. People go there by the hundreds to honor thoreau. When i first came to salem, i was interested in these ideas. I just came up from boston and it was a day trip. I spent the day looking at maritime history and industrial history, interesting places because there was nothing much about the witchcraft episode. This is 1984. At one point, i asked people, where did the executions take place . People said, we do not know, nobody really knows. I find that curious. I was in germany and i was in berlin to give a talk and i was struck again by the highly stigmatized sites. The wall in central berlin was put up to isolate sites of nazi power so people could not get to them. That summer was the time of one of the worst mass murders in American History. The shootings at a Mcdonalds Restaurant in california. What happens when these events occur . How do these events affect the emotional bonds . Do people feel a deeper attachment . Since then, ive been very interested in this idea of how events of violence and tragedy affect the bonds we have with place. I visited dozens, hundreds of sites in the United States and europe, because much of my work is in Central Europe and hungary. I visited sites of individual tragedies, murders, mass murders. I have also visited sites like this mine disaster. All of the men in the community were lost. I have also visited sites associated with the revolutionary war, the civil war where we have different approaches to the portrayal of history. The history of japanese americans, chineseamericans, hispanic americans. The Branch Davidian fire, that horrible event near waco, texas, where 69 people died in a fire. Leading to the bombing in Oklahoma City. After many of these visits, there is no single outcome when tragedy strikes. Some events are so important, they become judge does so important, they become sanctified. They become so important, people dedicated, consecrated for that particular event. The opposite side, we have obliteration. Rectification is the most common outcome. We do not see any great significance in this event and we will put it back right. There is another outcome which i call designation. Something important happened here but it did not quite it is not quite enough to push it toward sanctification. That designation is a step toward sanctification a little bit later and i have some examples. We will come back to gettysburg in a minute. In the 1920s, the terrorist attack on wall street in new york, the last physical evidence of that bombing, a few shrapnel scars along wall street. That has faded from view. We have the chicago river, a cruise ship tipped over as it was loading. It claimed as many passengers as the titanic. If you looked on the right hand corner of this powerpoint, you will see an important point. Sanctification occurs rarely but people think it happens more often because it is so visible. We tend to see sites that are sanctified because they are very visible in the landscape. We see them because they are very pronounced. They only occur typically in about three sorts of situations. The first one is when there is a moral or ethical lesson. I point to gettysburg because it is one of the most decorated landscapes in america. Many of you have probably visited and every engagement is marked on the ground at gettysburg. It may be a sense of community loss. I have a memorial in wisconsin, destroyed in the largest forest fire in u. S. History. Heroes and martyrs, president s, great leaders, even great entertainers john lennon, we have Strawberry Fields in central park just across from where he was shot. Those sorts of things. Sanctification is important because it means we are setting aside a part of the environment and setting it aside for a purpose. This is dedicated to the memory or remembering or commemorating some event or person. Designation is a step often times on the way toward sanctification and the examples i have, i can tell you about that process. The first photograph is in memphis, tennessee. That is the balcony where Martin Luther king jr. Was assassinated. That is why it was marked for years and years and years. That marking was done by the owner, walter bailey, and he lost his wife the next day. It took 20 years for him to move this toward sanctification, getting support from the city of memphis, the state of tennessee, and finally the National Government to turn this into a civil rights educational center. The lower lefthand corner, one of the japaneseamerican internment camps, also was a step from sanctification. The families went back as a pilgrimage and those pilgrimages were very important in providing restitution for the families. Rectification is the most common. We do not see that significance in some of the daytoday violence and daytoday tragedies that go on in American Society and many of these sites are put right. I was not born yet when this crash occurred in madison, wisconsin, but my mother told stories about it because she heard it happen. The window to our kitchen looked out toward the University Arboretum and she saw the plane spiraling in. The last one of the four is obliteration. Events seen as so shameful, tragedies involving gross negligence, taboo subjects, are so shocking and shameful that communities try to they do not want to be reminded of it. In the upper righthand corner, the site of the homestead of ed gein. He is the inspiration for norman bates in psycho. He is also the inspiration for the texas chainsaw massacre. When he was caught and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward, the neighbors were upset because people kept coming to visit and they were vandalizing the farmstead and someone went out and burnt all the buildings. That is what it looks like. In newtown, connecticut, the horrible mass murder at the elementary school. When the building was torn down, the contractors walled off the entire site. The contractors had to agree to keep it completely anonymous so nobody would visit those sites. They have decided on putting up a memorial there. It has been a struggle for the community to lose so many children and teachers. This is a case just across the river from cincinnati. It was a very popular supper club and the owner was careless. A fire broke out and claimed almost 300 lives. Nobody has been able to rebuild on that site. What i found in my research, it is constantly moving back and forth. We can see these changes occurring through time. An example of like to show is an invention, the way we see the national past. The lower righthand corner, a site you may have walked on. This is the precise location where the revolutionary war broke out. This is a test. Where is it . The boston massacre. The center of that walkway is the precise place. That was not marked for another 100 years. Now we have gotten past the first 100 years. Now it is time to mark the sites associated with the war. Bunker hill, we see this big obelisk, that almost never was completed. It was finished in 1875. That took a long time. This was raised by private donations. This was not done by the National Government. This is a significant event because the american troops held their ground. Then we get very distinctive points. The photograph second from the right is the High Water Mark of the confederacy. This is the point where the civil war began to go in the favor of the union. Right in the middle of the war, troops were turned back. Very specific in terms of telling the story of the nation. I point to this last slide on the righthand side because that is the site, we are looking from the custis mansion at Arlington National cemetery across from John Kennedys grave. This was the weekend after Jacqueline Kennedy onassis had been buried. By the time of the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, when Jacqueline OnassisJacqueline Kennedy was picking that position of the grave, she wanted it to align with the lincoln memorial. She wanted to be able to see the National Capital to the right and the white house to the left representing John Kennedys contributions to the nation. The same thing happens in other places. I used to live in texas. I used to be focused on texas history. Texans are very proud of the texas war of independence and this was in 1835 and 1836. The commemoration emerged very gradually. The first commemoration was 50 years later. They wanted to be buried with their comrades near houston. By 1905, the alamo, which had been completely abandoned, becomes curated by the daughters of the republic of texas. 100 years later, you have the tallest masonry obelisk in the world. Over a span of 100 years, this becomes an incredible invention of how the tradition has been built and described. It happens in places like chicago. In chicago, the city flag has two blue stripes, one representing Lake Michigan and one representing the chicago river. The century of progress, 1933. Two others represent the chicago fire of 1871. Another one represents fort dearborn, which represented a massacre. In the photograph on the left, you see the fire academy of chicago. The fire academy, you see a little sculpture. That is called pillar flame. That stands on the exact point where the chicago fire began. The exact spot. After all of these years, they see it as a point of pride because after the chicago fire, chicago modernized its police and fire programs. It is a starting point for the modern city of chicago. The fire changed the city government, police and fire and so forth so they see it as a mark of progress. Many of these things, we can see looking at the landscape, what i find interesting visiting salem is how the witchcraft episode is described. This is not just the markers on the battlefield but the whole landscape has been named. We can look on this map and we can find important engagements in that battle. If you look at the center of the map, you may recognize the peach orchard. There is also the wheatfield. These are major features which have been marked in terms of memorials. I was reminded of some of the work of david lowenthal. That is very true here for gettysburg. We can contrast this with an event that happened a year later in colorado. The sand creek massacre. It is during the civil war and there is a lot of fighting going on. Young men are attacking white settlements. Many of the older adults are staying home with children. It escalates in 1864, militias are gathered in colorado and they slaughter an entire village early in the morning. This was recognized as shameful almost immediately. This is really way out in the plains of colorado. You can see from the photograph that there is nothing marked. This has disappeared. This reminded me, this idea of shaping of the past worthy of public commemoration in the present is it is very important to keep that in mind in remembering things. I have to remind us all that very often these debates revolve around where and what to do. What to do up there, what to do here in salem. That is the focus of debate. What about salem . I am not an expert in salem witchcraft episodes. In many cases, there is great tension going on here between sanctification and obliteration. We know there is something important we need to remember about the salem witchcraft episode. This is very difficult to come to terms with because it is something that is shameful and shocking when a Community Turns on itself and kills people. It is worth reflecting on some of the reasons i think it is difficult to resolve that tension from other sites i have looked at around the country. One of the major points of tension is whenever we memorialize an event like this, it calls attention to the perpetrators and the killers themselves. In the upper lefthand corner, it is the dedication of Columbine High School memorial for those who died in the columbine shooting in 1999. This was put up in 2007. People really objected to it. A couple of people push this forward because people said, we love to honor the victims but by doing that, we are calling attention to the killers. We are putting up a shrine to those two High School Students who killed our neighbors. This site in the middle is the house of terror in budapest. It was the headquarters for the gestapo and it was taken over by the secret police after the second world war. People said, look, great, we should Say Something about the victims. Doesnt this create a shrine . Doesnt this create a shrine for the people who have oppressed all of these people . I point to the controversy in dallas, texas. People said, we do not want that building. That is where oswald was situated when he shot the president. If you create a museum in that building, you are creating a shrine oswald. I think very often, when debates starts about what to do after these tragedies, there is an attempt to other the killers. Lets dismiss this as next ordinary event that was caused by some outsider. And so, we think of president lincolns killer, a deranged fanatic or a crazed anarchist shoots president mckinley or a homophobic bombs olympic park. It is interesting that because you can explain away the violence by explaining the way the perpetrator. Was not part of our community. It is very difficult to do that because it is a kind of denial. It is difficult to do that if people come from the community. In salem, this happened so long ago, really. Think of what has happened. The maritime power, the industry, house of seven gables. A lot has passed. Maybe it is just not necessary to bring up the witchcraft episode. I do not agree with that. Sometimes people say, it is time to let that rest. Another thing is that a lot of people might say, compared to the violence in early america, the witchcraft episode does n