It’s only rock n’ roll (but I like it)

I’m a diehard Port­lander, but I spent two years of my high school career at Phillips Acad­emy, a school out­side of Boston, learn­ing the ways of the East Coast. I had some pretty rad teach­ers at that school, in par­tic­u­lar a dude named Edwin Quat­tle­baum, who taught my 8:30am mod­ern Euro­pean his­tory class. He was the very first teacher I expe­ri­enced at ol’ Andover. Because of that, I felt that he always had my back. I was a lit­tle out of my league back East, and I think he under­stood my West Coast sen­si­bil­ity more than most peo­ple did, maybe since he was a Berke­ley stu­dent when the city was under mar­tial law.

Here’s the email exchange. Things worth not­ing: we often ref­er­ence the Rolling Stones in emails, Palmer is one of the edi­tors of the his­tory book we used in his class, I played a lot of vol­ley­ball in high school, and I <33333333 Dr. Quattlebaum.

from Claire Fox
to equattlebaum@andover.edu
date Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 9:28 PM
sub­ject amer­i­can his­tory, james spader, research
mailed-by gmail.com

hey dr. quattlebaum,

i have a ques­tion for you in the name of arts and human­i­ties research. i have this mem­ory of his­tory 340 when you were describ­ing james spader to us kids, and you men­tioned that you were teach­ing a par­tic­u­lar time period (in hist 300, i think) where mr. spader became obsessed with a par­tic­u­lar event within that time period and researched it with a cou­ple bud­dies, never really mov­ing on from that moment, even as the course pro­gressed and even­tu­ally left him behind.

if you remem­ber what i’m talk­ing about (and i real­ize this is a pretty inane ques­tion): do you remem­ber what that moment in his­tory was that con­sumed james spader’s atten­tion? i’m indi­rectly using it to jus­tify some research i’m doing.

also: HI! how have you been? what’s new? i hope all’s well in andover.

it’s only rock n roll (but i like it),
claire (fox ’06)

from Edwin G Quat­tle­baum
to Claire Fox
date Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 11:46 AM
sub­ject RE: amer­i­can his­tory, james spader, research
mailed-by andover.edu

Dear Claire,
Great to hear from you.
You have an amaz­ing — Palmer-like — mem­ory, for the IMPORTANT things of His­tory 340.
Your rec­ol­lec­tion is absolutely cor­rect. The topic was the scan­dal in the Andrew Jack­son admin­is­tra­tion, from 1829–1837, and it involved the alleged loose morals of one Peggy Eaton, in about 1830. I think one of Jackson’s cab­i­net mem­bers, per­haps John Tim­ber­lane?, wanted to marry her, and all the other Cabinet-members’ wives devel­oped catty hatred for her. But Old Hick­ory him­self stuck up for her, partly because his beloved late & lamented dead wife had suf­fered sim­i­lar cat­ti­ness from Cab­i­net wives?
Some­thing like that.
Google it. Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine had a big arti­cle on it, I think, and JT [my nick­name for him] obsessed in a hilar­i­ous fash­ion about
the whole scan­dal, although he may not have done a whole lot of research about it. But he sure talked a good game.
As for Rock ‘n’ Roll, it was Billy Joel: “It’s All Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me.” Itunes it.
Hope you are still liv­ing in Port­land, Ore­gon, and still spik­ing a mil­lion vol­ley­balls.
As ever,
Ed Q.