Turn and Jump: How Time & Place Fell Apart

by Howard Mansfield

Overview

Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be one and the same. Turns out, they were separate things altogether. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable. Time keeping was once a local affair, when small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun. Then, in 1883, the expanding railroads necessitated the creation of Standard Time zones, and communities became linked by a universal time. Here Howard Mansfield explores how our sudden interconnectedness, both physically, as through the railroad, and through inventions like the telegraph, changed our concept of time and place forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892728169
Publisher:	Down East Books
Publication date:	08/16/2010
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Howard Mansfield has contributed to The New York Times, American Heritage, The Washington Post, Historic Preservation, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Yankee, and other publications on the topics of preservation, architecture, and American history. Mansfield has explored issues of preservation in five books including In the Memory House, The Same Ax, Twice, and The Bones of the Earth.

Editorial Reviews

Early in this fascinating gem, Mansfield (In the Memory House) explains how time and place, "once inseparable" (as with fire and light before Edison's electric bulb), became distinct concepts in the late 19th century when railroads created Standard Time Zones. This is the simple yet enthralling premise that forms the jumping-off point for Mansfield's investigation into the meaning of progress. "What we want from the past is presence," writes Mansfield. "We want the moment restored," and a handful of chapters detail examples of bygone times: an ancient grandfather clock, hollowed and packed with generations of children's mittens, marks time in a more profound way; a clever young man's money-making scheme gives birth to "Continuous Vaudeville," where shows run for 12 hours; a farmer's almanac from 1860 reveals a time kept by season and sun ("the hour and the minute were not important," writes Mansfield). Mansfield inspires readers to contemplate accepted definitions and measurements of commonplace, yet elusive, concepts. "Throw out your clocks," he instructs, carve out a little time and place for yourself, and enjoy this book. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Mansfield's writing is lyrical and figurative, but clear and simple. On describing the town of Turners Falls, MA, where British colonists massacred Native Americans in 1676, and where the falls where salmon once spawned were dammed, Mansfield writes, Turners Falls is divorced from deep time, from the true history of the land. For thousands of years this place kept time by the salmon leaping the falls and the Indians fathering to fish. He tells readers he realizes why he was uncomfortable there: What I had felt on my first visit was the pain of divorce. This synthesis of history, sociology, and personal reflection makes Turn & Jump both contemplative (like wabi, which Koren tells us refers to the inward, the subjective) and informative (like sabi, which refers to the outward, the objective). Ranging from vaudeville (where the title comes from) to outlet damn on a small lake in New Hampshire to a family store in a small town, covering everything from the standardization of time to suit railroad schedules to the nonlinear view of time held by native peoples, Mansfield guides readers along routes of inquiry well researched but never dry. Mansfield is a great writer, and a great thinker. Read his book and you'll feel as if you're talking with your smartest friend.

Deb Baker's Book Blog

Hyperactive moderns, running late and never quite catching up to their schedules, are apt to fret that there is simply not enough time in the day. Howard Mansfield would argue that there is too much time-too much consciousness of time, anyway, and too much uniformity in the way we think about it. Throw out your clocks, he advises in Turn & Jump, a series of essays on the cleavage of time and place.

BILL KAUFFMAN