Tea at Trianon: Life in Hungry Horse, Montana

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Life in Hungry Horse, Montana

From the New Yorker:

In 1960, John Steinbeck set out in a pickup truck with his French poodle, Charley, to reacquaint himself with a country from which he felt disconnected. His main inquiry—“What are Americans like today?”—formed the basis of his book “Travels with Charley: In Search of America,” published in 1962.

Four decades later, with Steinbeck’s question in mind, the Dutch photographer Pieter Ten Hoopen embarked on an American road trip of his own. In need of a starting place, he recalled a passage from “Travels with Charley”: “I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love.” After travelling around the state for a week, Ten Hoopen spent ten days in the tiny town of Hungry Horse, tucked in the Rocky Mountains outside of Glacier National Park.

Over the next decade, Ten Hoopen returned to Hungry Horse nearly two dozen times, getting to know the landscape and building relationships with town residents (many initially suspicious of the imposing European). At the end of his decade-long inquiry (which resulted in a book and a short film, made in collaboration with MediaStorm), Ten Hoopen was troubled by the problems he had encountered: the effects of the economic downturn, widespread meth addiction. But he was also amazed by the resilience of the people he came to know. “I think it would have been much harder for me to make the work in many small European towns,” he told me. “People are more suspicious there. In the U.S., it’s easier to start a dialogue.” (Read more.)