Under the Mountain

Catching Up

2011-09-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

This one goes on the lifetime top 25 list. Others have sa
id some of the same things, and sometimes others have been easier to understand, though that might be due to translation issues
(Ellul wrote in French!). But the fact that Ellul saw and said these things so thoroughly in post-WWII France gives him an edge others lack. This one's worthy of a lengthy review that I am not worthy of writing.

Read all the Ellul you can.

All of the Walker Percy novels I've read seem to have the same basic story. The main character is a man, usually young, who is functioning but slightly alienated from his society. He seems to sense that the reigning assumptions of his culture are insufficient and unsatisfactory, but his thinking is blurry enough that he can't get much farther than that. So he tries to think throughout most of the novel but can't. Fortunately, events unfold in such a way as to show him that, though the answers he seeks may never be disclosed to him, a healthy and satisfactory life is possible and worth pursuing. Another way to say it, at least the way I perceive it, is that he finally "grows up" or "gets with the program".

It's a good story, and Percy is a first-rate writer, so I'll read more. But I admit to some frustration with his characters that they can't see more clearly and get on with the business of living, building and creating. This may be what Percy intended; I'm not sure.

A light read but worthwhile if you have or spend much time with young children. And it won't take up too much of your time.

This was my first adventure with Hemingway. Maybe I should have started with one of his novels instead of this "experiment" of his of telling the true story of his African safari at the height of the Great Depression. (By 21st century political correctness standards it seems a little heartless to go on safari in the middle of the Great Depression!) Hemingway's sparse writing style didn't grab me the way it does others, though I am willing to recognize that may be in part because now, to a degree, everyone writes the way Hemingway did, or tries to, mostly because of his influence.

I read this one as part of a book club. We plan to discuss the book at a special zoo event. With an open bar that Hemingway would at least appreciate.

Fantastic. A great companion to Paul Johnson's Modern Times but with a spotlight on the battlefields of the Cold War. Fascinating history you won't know about unless you've read multiple histories on this period and topic. Stone is a terrific writer as well; you get his wit and opinions but, I think, in a way that doesn't unnecessarily offend those who may take issue with his assessments of, say, Jimmy Carter.

Probably the biggest takeaway for me is just how close much of the Cold War struggle was. At various stages, things could have turned out very differently, and much worse for humanity.

Gotta read some hard sci fi every once in a while. Benford can be a little slow at times and, from my perspective, get a little bogged down in the hardness of the science. But he thinks big. Very big. Here he takes us to the literal end of the universe and tells a good enough story that we forget how long a trip it's been.

19th Century Venture Capital; or, Dr. Crippen's Fantastic Adventure in Smoldering Passivity

2010-10-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

Erik Larson must be really indecisive. He has a habit of writing "two books in one", alternating between seemingly unrelated stories from one chapter to the next. But like good sitcom plots, they come together in the end in a way that, even if clearly foreshadowed all along, are interesting and satisfying none the less.

Thunderstruck is a combination entrepreneurial business development story -- Guglielmo Marconi's obsessive creation of a successful "wireless" company, utilizing family wealth connections (his mother was a Jameson, of Irish whiskey fame) and venture capital methods barely distinguishable from modern practices -- and true crime novel. The true crime is that of Dr. Hawley Crippin, who would be in the running for the title of Most Passive-Aggressive Husband in History. Dr. Crippin, who worked for and was often handsomely compensated by various patent medicine companies, was short, wore thick glasses, and was henpecked to a remarkable degree by his larger-than-life but weakly talented singer-actress-wannabe wife. He eventually formed a connection with his secretary and decided to stand up to his wife once and for all. He appears to have hit her over the head to kill her, then dismembered her corpse in a most horrific manner. Her skin and organs were found buried in Crippin's basement a few months after her disappearance, but her head, hands, feet and all her bones were never located.

By the time these portions of her remains were located, Crippin had fled London with his secretary, who was dressed as a young man. The fugitive couple was already aboard an ocean liner to America when Scotland Yard figured out what was happening. But by a combination of faster ships, the wireless technology that Marconi had sold to the shipping lines, an alert captain, and a press that knew a good story when it saw one, the whole world watched a police chase worthy of O.J. Simpson that went on for nearly two weeks. In the process, people began to realize that wireless technology might be useful for more than keeping ships at sea informed on the news of the day.

The Crippen story is gripping stuff, but I've never been much of a true crime fan. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I'm never that surprised by the depths to which fallen man will sink. Although I've never been a big reader of business stories, either, the Marconi tale really drew me in, perhaps because of Larson's talent for pulling together the hard facts of wireless technology with Marconi's sad personal story and the business impacts of the social norms among scientists of the day. (19th century scientists tended to hold the pure pursuit of knowledge above crass business interests, preferring free disclosure of scientific discoveries, and looking down on types like Marconi, who wasn't formally schooled as a scientist and who preferred to guard his trade secrets from his competitors.)

If you're pressed for time, just read the Marconi chapters. The Crippen story is easy enough to piece together in the end.

A Typical Day

2010-08-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

As all studious job seekers know, the smart candidate will be ready with questions of his own for the interviewer, at least at the appropriate moment. It shows interest in the job and the organization, and is an opportunity to demonstrate you've done your homework, usually by not asking a question the answer to which can be found on the organization's web site. A frequent question I hear in these interviews is, "What's a typical day like for you?" I never know how to answer, as every day is different. Some are ho-hum, nothing surprising, nothing unusual, no meetings to go; just answer a lot of emails and review a few documents, pushing the paper forward. Other days are filled with dread, anxiety, stress or regret, as the case may be, depending on what's happening. And plenty of days feature joy, satisfaction in a task well done, or a sense of achievement (usually when a large invoice payment comes in, but as often when a client seems genuinely grateful for quality service). I usually just say "Lots of emails and phone calls, some stress, some good things, but usually something pretty interesting."

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov's days were quite different from mine. First, each day was all too typical. Essentially, every day was the same for the ten years of his sentence in the gulag. Get up early, don't get enough to eat, cold all the time, long days of hard physical labor, often bordering on futile, and being alert on ways to cheat the system all the time, just to be able to stay alive. The sense of something akin to hope, but not hope -- maybe resigned determination to stay alive -- pervades the book, all the way down to the reason he's there in the first place. As a solider in the Red Army on the western front, Shukhov was captured by the Germans, but then managed to escape with some fellow prisoners. On the way back to the Soviet lines, some of the escaped prisoners were shot by Red Army fire before they could be identified, and only Shukhov and one other made it in. Whereupon they were promptly arrested and accused of being spies for the Germans. Shukhov, sensing he'd be shot if he didn't confess, "confessed" to being on a secret mission for the Germans, and immediately was sent to one of Stalin's work camps in Siberia. For ten years.

I understand this was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's first novel. It's a good place to start for the great project of reading Solzhenitsyn. Its great irony for me is that this novel, unlike his later work, was warmly welcomed by the Soviet establishment when it was first published in 1962. Khrushchev, you see, was on his kick to tear down the image of his predecessor, Stalin, and this book was a tremendous tool for demonstrating the inhumanity of Stalin's system. But all too often, the problem with using a great artist's work product as a tool to advance your political agenda is that the artist won't cooperate in the long term, or at least won't continue to cooperate once your agenda moves in a different direction, as the Soviet establishment later saw in the case of Solzhenitsyn.

Redemption Through Baseball

2010-06-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

Any Southern literature worthy of the name includes at least four of the following characters: the misfit ex-con, the corrupt politician, the idiot, the fallen woman with a heart of gold, the preening preacher, the grasping merchant who nearly controls the town, the drunk. This book has them all, some in multiples, with a one-armed leftist baseball coach and farm co-op manager, several Native American cattle rustlers, a Black Muslim, pro- and anti-Castro Cubans, a lesbian ex-wrestler, and a parole officer with no sense of humor thrown in as well.

Written and set in about 1980, the book is the story of Hog Durham, starting with his release from prison for three robberies of the same liquor store (he actually committed only one of them, but he did rob a bank, but they didn't get him for that, but that's another story that shows up later). Hog is an experienced cattle rustler, and a strong hitter, but he's turned 30 and doesn't have much baseball left in him. In other words, his prospects are decidedly dim. But he's recruited by Lefty, a one-armed former major leaguer and former college professor given to left-leaning projects, to play first base for a new semi-pro team in The Dixie Association, a league with teams spread all over the Southeast. The team moves into a former Arkansas state home for fallen women, in which three of the women remain.

The story is fairly predictable from there -- the team's chase for the pennant, Hog's halting attempts at a committed relationship with Pansy, one of the fallen women who remained behind at the former state home, and Hog's difficulties staying clear of the legal system, which seems to be firmly committed to destroying his life. But this predictable story is extraordinarily well told, and the large number of characters and subplots (did I mention the Cubans? and the idiot? and the grasping merchant?) keeps the reader going.

For me, a special treat was the technical discussion of baseball strategy. Not because I care all that much about baseball, frankly. I don't follow it, and I quit playing at age 15 because I'd never been very good at it and I'd found other interests. But after reading this book, I finally understand the strategy of the game, and the technical distinctions between the fastball, the slider, the curve and the spitball. In my little league days, my understanding of offensive strategy didn't get much past "try to hit the ball," and I somewhat doubted whether those "trick" pitches were real at all (they certainly didn't show up in most of our little league games!). The author does a great job of giving the reader the player's feel for the strategy of the game without getting bogged down in technical analysis that is offputting to the lay reader.

A word of caution -- Hog and his teammates on the Arkansas Reds (did I mention the Communist subplot?) are at the bottom of society, and the author doesn't bother to clean them up. At times, Hog and the other players seem to represent fallen men left entirely to their own devices, whose interests are confined to whoring, drunkenness, fighting and talking about same in crisp, crude terms. Hays reads a little like Flannery O'Connor but without the sense of tragedy and futility associated with sin in her writing.

On a personal note, I read this book as part of the only successful book club I've ever been a part of. A local group of guys read the novel, brought the author to town for a discussion (he's alive and well and teaches at a college in Arkansas, and is a former minor league baseball pitcher), and hosted him for the Rickwood Classic in Birmingham, a "retro" game held once a year in the 100-year-old Rickwood Field, the oldest ball park in America, where the teams wear uniforms from past decades. The Birmingham Barons lost in extra innings, but that didn't seem to matter. It was a good day at the ball park.

Hard Science and Tall Tales

2010-05-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've always admired Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of novels for covering such a long span of human history -- as much as 10,000 years, as I recall. Stephen Baxter expands that number by two orders of magnitude, covering five million years of human history, or at least history after the beginning of humanity (hint -- humans may not necessarily be around forever, at least in this universe!). Using wormhole and, later, string theory to explain interstellar ship technology, Baxter tells the story of a humanity that accidentally discovers that its home sun, and its entire universe, is doomed to an early death just a few million years away. How the main characters manage to be there at the beginning and the end of this five million year adventure is difficult to explain. Let's just say that when you combine advanced alien technology, time travel, and hard-wired human determination, such things are possible. If, perhaps, a little creepy when you read about what 1,000-year-old humans look like.

They Should Have Called Him "Fleshman"

2010-05-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

This, the second in the Harry Flashman series, covers Flashy's adventures with (or, more properly, against) Otto von Bismarck on the continent. Secret adventures, of course -- you didn't read about any of this in your standard history texts. That's because all of Flashman's deeds are recorded only in the Flashman Papers, discovered years after his death in an attic, and published mostly in the 1970s.

Of the three Flashman novels I've read, the first (Flashman, which covers Flashman's origins and the British withdrawal from Afghanistan) is by far the best. But be forewarned: Flashman is no ordinary hero. In fact, he is, by his own admission, "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady." Most of the humor arises because virtually no one in Flashman's life recognizes any of these characteristics. It's just you, the reader, who are let in on the big secret that this glamorous Victorian soldier decorated for bravery and accomplishment is a complete and utter coward, whose chief interests in life are protecting his own skin, chasing women, drinking, gambling and letting others take the fall for his actions. Occasionally, another character in the novels sees Flashman for what he is, but the secret never gets out, either because that other character soon dies (though not usually at Flashman's hand; he's not that brave!), lacks the credibility to make a charge against Flashman stick, or has his or her own reasons for keeping quiet.

Parts of these novels are unreadable if you have any moral sensibility if you don't consider it an exercise in seeing deep into the human heart. Even then, it may be questionable as a worthwhile selection. And the sensitive soul will feel for Flashman's many victims, particularly the women he runs over (or at least most of them). But I'm easily drawn in by something that makes me laugh, and these novels certainly do that.

I've recently been thinking that Flashman personifies, if only in a coarse or parodic manner, a central critique of postmodernism -- that most of the explanatory myths people rely on to explain themselves to others are essentially lies, and relationships are really about power and exploitation. (I realize I'm pulling a thread out of the postmodern ball of twine and running down the road with it, but just go with me here.) I suppose a softer way of reading Flashman is that he is just the ultimate illustration of Victorian hypocrisy, an Eminent Victorians in historical fiction, but I was never fully convinced by that attack on the Victorians, as every age and culture has its share of hypocrisy. The postmodern critique carries a little more weight, though of course it has its own problems.

So if you like your historical fiction with a good dose of humor, deep hypocrisy and a frank look into the mind of a man who sees no reason to seek anything beyond his own immediate pleasure, the Flashman series might be for you. Just recognize that we all have a Flashman inside us, and try not to let yours gain the upper hand.

One More Thing

2010-05-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

Oh, and possibly this is the only book I have ever bought on the strength of a blurb on the cover:

"I laughed, I cried, and then I read the book."

--Steve Martin

The Road to Mediocre

2010-05-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

As a lifetime Monty Python fan (the author being one of the Pythons), I'd hoped for more, frankly. There are a few high notes in this "post-modem novel", mostly involving the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, including this gem:

"Where's the tea strainer?"
"It's his day off."

--Ancient British joke

But that was a lot of pages to read just for this joke, memorable though it is.

There are two spacefaring comedians, one with an ex and a daughter, a robot with academic aspirations (he writes the history of comedy in his head and publishes under controversial circumstances as academia doesn't treat robots as eligible for publication -- kind of like conservatives, I guess), and a diva of sometimes mildly entertaining characteristics. And the diva's husband, and some revolutionaries, and . . . well, it took me a while to get around to reviewing this one, and I've probably forgotten some important details. Lots of talk, some of it on target, about the nature of comedy. But much of it not that . . . funny, somehow.

Eric Idle is one of the funniest people who have ever lived. Or at least in the twentieth century; it's hard to judge before that since you've really got to see -- or at least hear -- humor to appreciate it, outside of the narrow speciality of comic writing, which is a wholly different medium from standup and sketch comedy, where Mr. Idle's talents shine. As this book demonstrates.

On Place and Neighborhood

2010-05-09T17:45:00.001-07:00

I suppose it's the mark of the provincial man, but in any case I find that I have a special and lasting love for this place, which is so obviously just a place, which has no particular beauty or grace or grandeur of scene, but which is, quite simply, a neighborhood, my neighborhood, a compound of sights and smells and sounds that have furnished all my years.

--Father Hugh Kennedy in Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness (1961)

Boom!

2010-05-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

I picked up this book on the sale table at Mount Vernon while on a week-long field trip to Washington, DC, with Offspring #1. (Until you've heard 25 fifth graders singing the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution on a school bus, you really haven't lived.)

It was definitely worth the read. I knew much less than I thought about gunpowder (or "black powder", as we now think of it, since most all munitions for the last 100 years or so have been powered with a chemical substitute often known as "smokeless powder"). For example, I hadn't realized that the basic technology of gunpowder changed little from the 14th century to the 19th century. Sure, improved mechanization techniques increased production volume and made at least small improvements in the safety of the manufacturing process (gunpowder having a tendency to explode during manufacturing), but most of the improvement in firepower and accuracy of firearms came about from improvements to the gun itself, not the powder that powered the projectile.

A little dry in places, but overall the book moves along well, introducing fascinating British, French and American personalities along the way. There's also an interesting political observation: gunpowder contributed to the consolidation of nation states in a significant way because its manufacture, storage and transport were very expensive, and only centralizing states and taxing authority could raise the funds to equip and maintain the armies that determined who would control large portions of land.

I'm starting to really enjoy books of this sort that cover hundreds -- or even thousands -- of years of human history by focusing on particular technology or idea. I think it's because a general history of the world, or even a single continent, over such a span of time would be either ponderously unreadable or textbook boring, but the technology/idea focus over a wide span of time does allow the reader to appreciate the flow of history and not get stuck in any one particular era that may or may not be of lasting interest.

One More Walker Percy

2009-11-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

Percy only wrote a handful of books, so I'm trying to space out my reading of them so I don't run out of "first time" Percy reads. I plan to re-read some of them again, most notably The Moviegoer. I'm not so sure about this one, though I do strongly recommend it.

I had the happy coincidence in reading this book of picking back up with the narrator character from Love in the Ruins, an earlier Percy novel that I enjoyed for its straddling the boundaries between literary novel, Southern lit, and science fiction. That's a hard combination to pull off, but Percy has done it again in The Thanatos Syndrome. The narrator is several years older but his world isn't any better, and though his personal life has been for several years, it's coming apart again through some of the same old demons -- alcohol and the soulless science of the human body that is his profession. But what's being put into the water, and why would it have this curious effect on brain chemistry?

Wouldn't YOU like to know! (Said in my best 6th-grade-oral-book-report tone.)

I didn't really get The Moviegoer the first time through, which is why I need to read it again. I think I get at least the basic message of this novel, though -- science and the necessity of the possible have eaten away our souls, and even the heroes who would fight back are nearly engulfed in the emptiness themselves.

The Second Wave

2009-11-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

Thirty-odd years ago, evangelical Protestants in the United States rediscovered classical Christian education, and today the national movement is in full swing, with hundreds of schools and, by now, thousands of young graduates. "In the beginning," so to speak, there was an essay by Dorothy Sayers, a book or two by Doug Wilson, and some conferences with a few hundred people. How far we've come, now that books like this one are being written, digested, critiqued and built upon by today's classical Christian schools. This book is a "second wave" work of the movement, grappling as it does with the limitations -- and even historical misunderstandings (gasp!) -- of the Dorothy Sayers essay that started so much. (On a bad day, a classical education enthusiast will quote Dorothy Sayers as if she were the final authority on education, when in fact she never saw herself that way at all and never had any idea her words would ignite an educational movement forty years later.)

If you're new to classical education, don't start with the books from twenty years ago; start with this one. If you've been around the movement a long time and feel like you really understand it already, you definitely need to read this book to have your original curiosity and drive for classical education reawakened. You need to be reminded that "classical" is not a system or set curriculum that can be perfected; rather, it is a body of knowledge and ideas and, to a lesser extent techniques (an important point these authors make) that gives an great foundation and starting place for education, but leaves a tremendous variety of options for implementation. So get back to work!

The End of Western Civilization

2009-10-31T12:10:00.000-07:00

Saw this in the local paper a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy it while it lasts, Pat, enjoy it while it lasts.

Learning From Your Mistakes

2009-09-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Bob Lupton is a minor celebrity these days, at least in faith-based urban ministry circles, and with good reason. Over his three plus decades in urban Atlanta -- the decidedly unhip parts of "urban Atlanta" -- he's never lost his commitment to caring for the poor, but he has kept his eyes opened and relearned age-old principles that are forgotten every few generations. It takes open-minded pioneers like Mr. Lupton to rediscover them in the field, though I also have an appreciation for the academic/historical work that has paralleled Mr. Lupton's hands-on ministry (see Marvin Olasky's "The Tragedy of American Compassion and several other works documenting the roots of the principles Mr. Lupton covers here). But for many folks, example is much more powerful than argument, and Mr. Lupton provides the example in a very convincing manner.

I will now end this review in fifth grade book report style: Want to know what these principles are that Mr. Lupton has painstakingly learned in his years in urban ministry? Then you'll have to READ THE BOOK!!! (It's only just over 100 pages and is an easy, easy read, so READ THE BOOK!!!)

A Terrific Intro to Samuel Johnson

2009-09-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

I'd read enough about Dr. Johnson, thanks to James Boswell, so it was time to read something by Dr. Johnson. This was an ideal selection for a reader like myself who has more experience with nonfiction and struggles to keep up with poetry. Rasselas is brief (150 pages, including a 34-page introduction that is very skippable), broken up into short chapters ideal for the reader who only has a few minutes at a time, and like a good fairy tale is accessible to anyone, regardless of historical knowledge or context.

Rasselas is the story of a prince and princess who escape from a Shangri La-like existence in a secluded valley where the children of the royal family of Abissinia are kept in perpetual comfort and amusement. The prince and princess want to see the world, and Johnson gives them a pretty good tour of it. Their upbringing makes them naive about the wicked ways of the world, but they have a trustworthy guide who accompanies them with extensive knowledge of life outside the happy valley, and their idyllic training in childhood has somehow produced noble character in both of them to carry them through in their journey.

Though not parallel in structure or purpose, I kept feeling like I was reading Ecclesiastes -- something about the main characters' exposure to and sampling of all the world has to offer and seeing at last that there really isn't anything new, better and more exciting out there. Where does that leave us? Usually back where we started, but with a softer heart toward our problems and the people in our lives and their problems.

Not So Scary After All

2009-09-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

This book was a disappointment. I'd looked forward to it ever since I'd discovered that Greg Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin had written three more Foundation novels to continue Isaac Asimov's classic series, begun with a trilogy in the 1950s and followed up by at least three more Asimov volumes in the 1980s and 90s.

The Asimov novels are fantastic -- when combined with his robot stories and galactic expansion novels, they cover ten to twenty thousand years of future human history, leading up to the collapse of an empire spanning the galaxy and the careful steps to speed a return to order and peace through the science of psychohistory.

But all that's for another review. This book continues the story, all right, and pulls in some interesting new ideas and story lines, but it's ponderous for long stretches, and the "simulated personalities" of Voltaire and Joan of Arc are simultaneously too well done for the supposed lack of historical knowledge of the era and too one dimensional to be interesting artificial intelligences.

Then there's that weird part of the story where Hari Seldon and his girlfriend get mentally implanted into apelike creatures to Benford can lecture us about evolutionary biology, a subject with fascinating internal logic but one that ultimately produces a closed system with no purpose or result.

But Benford still gets credit for trying. Writing the first Foundation novel after Asimov's death must have been a real challenge; not one I'd want to attempt.

The Starting Place for New Urbanism

2009-09-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

Now fifteen years old but still the best starting place for getting a basic grounding in the design/architecture/urban planning/community renewal movements known as New Urbanism, this book summarizes the basic insights behind the movement and then gives dozens of illustrated examples of completed and proposed developments that show the ideas in action. Then it closes with a fabulous, aggressive essay by Vincent Scully entitled "The Architecture of Community" that skewers the complicity of government, architects, design professionals, developers and automobile manufacturers in the destruction of communities across our land. The reference to "the truly sinister Departments of Transportation everywhere" is my personal favorite.

"What was it that the young lady of quality said of me?"

2009-09-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

At Sir Alexander Dick's, from that absence of mind to which every man is at times subject, I told, in a blundering manner, Lady Eglingtoune's complimentary adoption of Dr. Johnson as her son; for I unfortunately stated that her ladyship adopted him as her son, in consequence of her having been married the year after he was born. Dr. Johnson instantly corrected me. "Sir, don't you perceive that you are defaming the countess? For, supposing me to be her son, and that she was not married till the year after my birth, I must have been her natural son." A young lady of quality, who was present, very handsomely said, "Might not the son have justified the faults?" My friend was much flattered by this compliment, which he never forgot. When in more than ordinary spirits, and talking of his journey to Scotland, he has called to me, "Boswell, what was it that the young lady of quality said of me at Sir Alexander Dick's?" Nobody will doubt that I was happy in repeating it.

--pages 408-09

I Bet It Was Uphill Both Ways!

2009-09-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

There are two carpenters in Col; but most of the inhabitants can do something as boat-carpenters. They can all dye. Heath is used for yellow; and for red, a moss which grows on stones. They make broad-cloth, and tartan, and linen, of their own wool and flax, sufficient for their own use; as also stockings. Their bonnets come from the main land. Hard-ware and several small articles are brought annually from Greenock, and sold in the only shop in the island, which is kept near the house, or rather hut, used for publick worship, there being no church in the island. The inhabitants of Col have increased considerably within these thirty years, as appears from the parish registers. There are but three considerable tacksmen on Col's part of the island: the rest is let to small tenants, some of whom pay so low a rent as four, three, or even two guineas. The highest is seven pounds, paid by a farmer, whose son goes yearly on foot to Aberdeen for education, and in summer returns, and acts as a school-master in Col. Dr. Johnson sad, "There is something noble in a young man's walking two hundred miles and back again, every year, for the sake of learning."

--page 343

Dr. Johnson Prefers Real Estate to the Stock Market

2009-09-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

I would never have any man sell land, to throw money into the funds, as is often done, or to try any other species of trade. Depend upon it, this rage of trade will destroy itself. You and I shall not see it; but the time will come when there will be an end of it. Trade is like gaming. If a whole company are gamesters, play must cease; fopr there is nothing to be won. When all nations are traders, there is nothing to be gained by trade, and it will stop first where it is brought to the greatest perfection. Then the proprietors of land only will be the great men.

--page 298

Dr. Johnson on an Author's Alleged Hypocrisy

2009-07-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

A little thought makes this apply to most charges of hypocrisy:

[Hypocrisy] does not make his book the worse. People are influenced more by what a man says, if his practice is suitable to it, because they are blockheads. The more intellectual people are, the readier will they attend to what a man tells them. If it is just, they will follow it, be his practice what it will. No man practises so well as he writes. I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. Only consider! You read a book; you are convinced by it; you do not know the author. Suppose you afterwards know him, and find that he does not practice what he teaches; are you to give up your former conviction? At this rate you would be kept in a state of equilibrium, when reading every book, till you know how the authour practised.

--page 283

Boswell On Hazy Memories

2009-07-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory; they grow mellow. Acte labores sunt jucundi. This may be owing to comparing them with present listless ease. Even harsh scenes acquire a softness by length of time: and some are like very loud sounds, which do not please, or at least do not please so much, till you are removed to a certain distance. They may be compared to strong coarse pictures, which will not bear to be viewed near. Even pleasing scenes improve by time, and seem more exquisite in recollection, than when they were present; if they have not faded to dimness in the memory. Perhaps, there is so much evil in every human enjoyment, when present -- so much dross mixed with it -- that it requires to be refined by time; and yet I do not see why time should not melt away the good and the evil in equal proportions; why the shade should decay, and the light remain in preservation.

--page 365

On Place and Neighborhood

2009-07-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's the mark of the provincial man, but in any case I find that I have a special and lasting love for this place, which is so obviously just a place, which has no particular beauty or grace or grandeur of scene, but which is, quite simply, a neighborhood, my neighborhood, a compound of sights and smells and sounds that have furnished all my years.

--Father Hugh Kennedy in Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness (1961)

Johnson Miscellania From Page 234

2009-07-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

On usefulness and rarity: "You must consider, that a thing is valued according to its rarity. A pebble that paves the street is in itself more useful than the diamond upon a lady's finger."

On the unpleasantness of sea travel: "Why, sir, no man will be a sailor, who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for, being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned."

On what books to take on a long journey: "Why, sir, if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let is be a book of science. When you have read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible."

Observations on Emigration

2009-07-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

In a time and place where the the demands and challenges on immigration receive so much attention, it's interesting to consider the subject from the opposite perspective of emigration - the land giving up its people, as happened to the Highlands of Scotland throughout the 18th century. Dr. Johnson offered this insight:

Emigration was at this time a common topick of discourse. Dr. Johnson regretted it as hurtful to human happiness: "For," said he, "it spreads mankind which weakens the defence of a nation, and lessens the comfort of living. Men, thinly scattered, make a shift, but a bad shift, without many things. A smith is ten miles off: they'll do without a nail or a staple. A taylor is far from them: they'll botch their own clothes. It is being concentrated which produces high convenience."

--page 169.

How Lawyers Defend the Guilty

2009-07-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

We talked of the practice of law. William Forbes said, he thought an honest lawyer should never undertake a cause which he was satisfied was not a just one. "Sir," said Mr. Johnson, "a lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir, what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of the evidence -- what shall be the result of legal argument. As rarely happens that a man is fit to plead his own cause, lawyers are a class of the community, who, by study and experience, have acquired the art and power of arranging evidence, and of applying to the points of issues what the law has settled. A lawyer is to do for his client all that his client might fairly do for himself, if he could. If, by a superiority of attention, of knowledge, of skill, and of a better method of communication, he has the advantage of his adversary, it is an advantage to which he is entitled. There must always be some advantage, on one side or other; and it is better that advantage should be had by talents, than by chance. If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim." This was sound practical doctrine, and rationally repressed a too refined scrupulosity of conscience.

--page 168-69

A Sweet Gesture

2009-07-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

We sat till near two in the morning, having chatted a good while after my wife left us. She had insisted, that to shew all respect to the Sage [Dr. Johnson, of course], she would give up her own bed-chamber to him, and take a worse. This I cannot but gratefully mention, as one of a thousand obligations which I owe her, since the great obligation of her being pleased to accept of me as her husband.

--pages 167-68

A Lesson in Economics

2009-07-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

I have found in the higher parts of Scotland, men not defective in judgment or general experience, who consider the tacksman [middleman between the lord and the tenant farmer] as a useless burden of the ground, as a drone who lives upon the product of an estate, without the right of property, or the merit of labor, who impoverishes at once the landlord and the tenant. The land, say they, is let to the tacksman at six pence an acre, and by him to the tenant at ten pence. Let the owner be the immediate landlord to all the tenants; if he sets the ground at eight pence, he will increase his revenue by a fourth part, and the tenants' burthen will be diminished by a fifth.

Those who pursue this train of reasoning, seem not sufficiently to inquire whither it will lead them, nor to know that it will equally shew the property of suppressing all wholesale trade, of shutting up the shops of every man who sells what he does not make, and of extruding all whose agency and profit intervene between the manufacturer and the consumer. They may, by stretching their understandings a little wider, comprehend, that all those who by undertaking large quantities of manufacture, and by affording employment to many laborers, make themselves considered as benefactors to the public, have only been robbing their workmen with one hand and their customers with the other. If Crowley had sold only what he could make, and all his smiths had wrought their own iron with their own hammers, he would have lived on less, and they would have sold their work for more. The salaries of superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a hundred. But if the smith could not have found an immediate purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the workmen must have reduced their profit to nothing by underselling one another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered, and the builder must have stood still til the nailer could supply him.

According to these schemes, universal plenty is to begin and end in universal misery. Hope and emulation will be utterly extinguished; and as all must obey the call of immediate necessity, nothing that requires extensive views, or provides for distant consequences, will ever be performed.

--pages 95-96

A Warmup for Boswell, and for Me

2009-07-15T06:04:00.001-07:00

The cover and title of this book drew me in long ago when I picked it up for $3.95 in a used book store. After a sufficient aging period on the shelf, I finally pulled it out and dug in. (I had recently purchased a nice leatherbound edition of Boswell's titanic Life of Johnson, which led me to seek out a decent reading copy of it so I could learn firsthand why it's so well regarded, which led me to pick up this volume to satisfy my compulsive need to read things in order -- Boswell wrote his half of this book, you see, as a kind of prepatory exercise for his much more ambitious Life.)

I'm happy to report I was not disappointed. This was a great firsthand introduction to both Boswell and Johnson, both of whom were extraordinarily interesting men. Johnson for his uniqueness and wit, Boswell for his representation of the 18th century British gentleman. The book is really two journals (Johnson's first, and then Boswell's) of the pair's months-long journey together to the outer isles of the Highlands area of Scotland in 1773, just 28 years after the 1745 rising against the king. Boswell was 32 and Johnson was 63 and a legend of English journalism and criticism at the time. Boswell had wanted to get Johnson out of London and into the countryside of Boswell's native Scotland, in particular to see the rustic ways of the Highlands before they disappeared, which they nearly had already.

This book, like most travel journals or diaries, is best taken a few days' entries at a time, or even one entry at a time. I recommend keeping it by the bedside, to turn to at the end of the night just before going to sleep. Not because it's boring; it isn't. But it's broken up in such a way to make it practical to be read in that fashion, and it usually focuses on good conversation the pair had with someone over dinner. So even if you didn't have a relaxing evening with friends, food, wine and pleasant conversation, you can sit with Boswell, Johnson and their friends for just a few minutes and escape from your own 21st century life's demands.

I'll give a few excerpts over the coming days, but will open from this one that made the back cover (and my wife's list of facebook quotes!):

When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at me as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said "You do not insist on my accompanying you?" "No sir." "Then I am very willing you should go."

--page 161 (Boswell).

Well, They Didn't Have Television!

2009-07-14T05:36:00.001-07:00

[T]he Scottish publisher William Chambers wrote the biography of his brother Robert, with whom he had founded in 1832 the famous Edinburgh company that bears their name, and recollected certain such readings in their boyhood town of Peebles. "My brother and I," he wrote, "derived much enjoyment, not to say instruction, from the singing of old ballads, and the telling of legendary stories, by a kind old female relative, the wife of a decayed tradesman, who dwelt in one of the ancient closes. At her humble fireside, under the canopy of a huge chimney, where her half-blind and superannuated husband sat dozing in a chair, the battle of Corunna and other prevailing news was strangely mingled with disquisitions on the Jewish wars. The source of this interesting conversation was a well-worn copy of L'Estrange's translation of Josephus, a small folio of date 1720. The envied possessor of the work was Tam Fleck, "a flichty chield", as he was considered, who, not particularly steady at his legitimate employment, stuck out a sort of profession by going about in the evening with his Josephus, which he read as the current news; the only light he had for doing so being usually that imparted by the flickering blaze of a piece of parrot coal. It was his practice not to read more than from two or three pages at a time, interlarded with sagacious remarks of his own by way of foot-notes, and in this way he sustained an extraordinary interest in the narrative. Retailing the matter with great equability in different households, Tam kept all at the same point of information, and would them up with a corresponding anxiety as to the issue of some moving event in Hebrew annals. Although in this way he went through a course of Josephus yearly, the novelty somehow never seemed to wear off.

"Weel, Tam, what's the news the nicht?" would old Geordie Murray say, as Tam entered with his Josephus under this arm, and seated himself at the family fireside.

"Bad news, bad news," replied Tam. "Titus has begun to beseige Jerusalem, -- it's gaun to be a terrible business."

--page 119-20.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

2009-07-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

Inscribed in a valuable Renaissance book:

My Master's name above you see,
Take heede therefore you steale not mee;
For if you doe, without delay
Your necke . . . for me shall pay.
Looke doune below and you shall see
The picture of the gallowstree;
Take heeds therefore of thys in time,
Lest on this tree you highly clime!

Posted in the library of the monastery of San Pedro, in Barcelona:

For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not. And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever.

--page 244.

Card Catalogs, Dewey Decimal and Arranging Your Bookshelves

2009-07-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

The alphabet sometimes served as a key for retrieving volumes. In the tenth century, for instance, the Grand Vizier of Persia, Abdul Kassem Ismael, in order not to part with his collection of 117,000 volumes when travelling, had them carried by a caravan of four hundred camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

--page 193.

Epitaph of Benjamin Franklin (Unused)

2009-07-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Body of

B. Franklin, Printer,
Like the cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering & Gilding
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be lost;
For it will, as he believ'd,
Appear once more
In a new and more elegant Edition
Corrected and improved
By the Author.

--page 170.

Books That Bite and Sting

2009-07-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

"Altogether," Kafka wrote in 1904 to his friend Oskar Pollack, "I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."

--page 93.

Eat This Book

2009-07-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

Manguel is fascinated by the metaphor, and on occasion the practice, of the ingestion of the word by the reader. Thus, in his chapter on "Learning to Read":

In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication. The child learning to read is admitted into the communal memory by way of books, and thereby becomes acquainted with a common past which he or she renews, to a greater or lesser degree, in every reading. In medieval Jewish society, for instance, the ritual of learning to read was explicitly celebrated. On the Feast of Shavuot, when Moses received the Torah from the hands of God, the boy about to be initiated was wrapped in a prayer shawl and taken by his father to the teacher. The teacher sat the boy on his lap and showed him a slate on which were written the Hebrew alphabet, a passage from the Scriptures and the words "May the Torah be your occupation." The teacher read out every word and the child repeated it. Then the slate was covered with honey and the child licked it, thereby bodily assimilating the holy words. Also, biblical verses were written on peeled hard-boiled eggs and on honey cakes, which the child would eat after reading the verses out loud to the teacher.

--page 71.

And in his chapter on "Metaphors of Reading", he picks up the idea again in a more extended passage:

Just as writers speak of cooking up a story, rehashing a text, having half-baked ideas for a plot, spicing up a scene or garnishing the bare bones of an argument, turning the ingredients of a potboiler into soggy prose, a slice of life peppered with allusions into which readers can sink their teeth, we, the readers, speak of savouring a book, of finding nourishment in it, of devouring a book at one sitting, or regurgitating or spewing up a text, of ruminating on a passage, of rolling a poet's words on the tongue, of feasting on poetry, or living on a diet of detective stories. In an essay on the art of studying, the sixteenth-century English scholar Francis Bacon catalogued the process: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

By extraordinary chance we know on what date this curious metaphor was first recorded. On July 31, 593 B.C., by the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans, Ezekiel the priest had a visiopn of fire in which he saw "the likeness of the glory of the Lord" ordering him to speak to the rebellious children of Israel. "Open thy mouth, and eat what I give you," the vision instructed him.

And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein;

And he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.

Saint John, recording his apocalyptic vision on Patmos, received the same revelation as Ezekiel. As he watched in terror, an angel came down from heaven with an open book, and a thundering voice told him not to write what he had learned, but to take the book from the angel's hand.

And I went unto the angel, and said unto him. Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make they belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and as soon as I had eaten, it, my belly was bitter.

And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.

Eventually, as reading developed and expanded, the gastronomic metaphor because common rhetoric. In Shakespeare's time it was expected in literary parlance, and Queen Elizabeth I hersself used it to describe her devotional reading: "I walke manie times into the pleasant fieldes of the Holye Scriptures, where I pluck up the goodlie greene herbes of sentences, eate them by reading, chewe them up musing, and laie them up at length on the seate of memorie . . . so I may the lesse perceive the bitterness of this miserable life." By 1695 the metaphor had become so ingrained in the language that William Congreve was able to parody it in the opening scene of Love for Love, having the pedantic Valentine say to his valet, "Read, read, sirrah! and refine your appetite; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes; shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding." "You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper diet," is the valet's comment.

--pages 170-72.

No Wonder I Sweat So Much

2009-07-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

We makes notes in, or about, our books. We refer back to them when we need to. We copy passages and insert them into essays, speech texts, teleprompters and blogs. We rarely, if ever, rely on memory for a text because we might miss a word.

But it was not always so. In the thirteenth century, students poured over authoritative texts and committed whole passages to memory, making their minds living libraries they could consult at will in an age when books were rare and exceedingly expensive. So much effort went into this memorization that they convinced themselves of some curious beneficial side effects to memorization:

They even believed that memorizing a text was physically beneficial, and cited as an authority the second-century Roman doctor Antyllus, who had written that those who have never learned verses by heart and must instead resort to reading them in books sometimes have great pains in eliminating, through abundant perspiration, the noxious fluids that those with a keen memory of texts eliminate merely through breathing.

--pages 60-61.

In the following pages, Manguel quotes an imaginary dialogue created by Petrarch in the 14th century between himself and Augustine on this subject. After Petrarch complains that the good books he reads are helpful while he's reading them, but "as soon as the book leaves my hands, all my feeling for it vanishes," Augustine proposes a solution:

Augustine: This manner of reading is now quite common; there's such a mob of lettered men. . . . But if you'd jot down a few notes in their proper place, you'd easily be able to enjoy the fruit of your reading.

[Petrarch]: What kind of notes do you mean?

Augustine: Whenever you read a book and come across any wonderful phrases which you feel stir or delight your soul, don't merely trust the power of your own intelligence, but force yourself to learn them by heart and make them familiar by meditating on them, so that whenever an urgent case of affliction arises, you'll have the remedy ready as if it were written in your mind. When you come to any passagtes that seem to you useful, make a firm mark against them, which may serve as lime in your memory, less otherwise they might fly away.

--page 63.

Or you could just type them into your blog!

Manguel II

2009-06-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Having been impressed with The Library at Night (see January 10 and nearby posts on this blog), my visit to the in-laws brightened when I found this book on the shelf -- an earlier collection (1996) of Alberto Manguel's thoughts on books and reading. It's hard to summarize, or even categorize, a book like this. Where does it go on the shelf? With history? Autobiography? Literature? Cultural commentary? Essays?

I don't know other than to say that it doesn't belong in any of those places; it belongs in the reader's hand, preferably late at night after the children have gone to bed and there's nowhere to be early the next morning. Or a rainy afternoon following a morning spent working in the yard. Or, in a pinch, on a long airplane trip. Any place where the reader can lose himself in Manguel's prose about, well, prose and its consumption.

Books like this are hard to find, and to be cherished when they are. I'll give a few memorable excerpts in coming days. Only one question remains: Do I have to give it back to my mother in law?

Do Unto Others

2009-06-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

"So whatever you wish that others would do for you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." --Jesus, Matthew 7:12

Now that's a unsettling way to sum up the law of God. How much should we do for others? Just however much you wish they would do for you, that's all. There goes Jesus again, setting up an impossible standard that no one can meet. To be sure, this standard points us to the good news of the gospel -- the free grace of God to cover our sins and inadequacies. God loves us through Christ even though we cannot meet this impossible standard.

But there's more at work here, at Thomas Chalmers pointed out in his sermon, "On the Great Christian Law of Reciprocity Between Man and Man." Sure, this "golden rule" calls us all to give so much more than we do; that much is plain. But Chalmers takes this bit of logic and runs with it, to distressing ends. The golden rule appears self defeating, if you think about it a little:

But, at this rate, you may think that the whole system of human intercourse would go into unhingement. You may wish your next-door neighbor to present you with half his fortune. In this case, we know not how you are to escape from the conclusion, that you are bound to present him with the half of yours. Or you may wish a relative to burden himself with the expenses of all your family. It is then impossible to save you from the positive obligation, if you are equally able for it, of doing the same service to the family of another. Or you may wish to engross the whole time of an acquaintance in personal attendance upon yourself. Then, it is just your part to do the same extent of civility to another who may desire it.

--page 258

The Christian economy would become one of voluntary 100% redistribution by everyone, all the time. At the extreme, everyone would starve because we'd all give away all our food, and no one would ever eat it because they'd keep re-gifting!

So was Jesus just not a careful thinker? Did He not see the absurdity of His logic? Or perhaps He was merely exaggerating. Maybe He meant we should be "reasonably generous" or do all for others that we can "afford" to do without impoverishing our own families (still a high calling for many of us, from which we fall short daily!). Or perhaps He knew most would not do what He said, so the teaching is just for the few who can hear. Or maybe the intent was to set an impossible standard, just to show us the need for the gospel.

None of this was sufficient for Chalmers. Instead, he kept pressing the golden rule's own internal logic. It sounds like he's trying to undo the force of Jesus' teaching at first, but stick with him for a minute; I'm certainly glad I did.

In step one, Chalmers notes that the rule doesn't command anything at all in particular; rather, it conditions its imperative force entirely on the hearer's desires:

If you would not like him to do it for you, then there is nothing in the compass of this sentence now before you, that at all obligates you to do it for him.

-- page 258

In step two, he shows the deeper answer to the riddle of the rule:

There is one way of being relieved from such a burden. There is one way of reducing this verse to a moderate and practicable requirement; and that is, just to give up selfishness -- just to stifle all ungenerous desires -- just to moderate every wish of service or liberality from others, down to the standard of what is right and equitable.

--page 259

(Chalmers notes at this point that, while the whole of the moral law may be summarized in this rule, its particulars should never be overlooked: "[T]there may be other verses in the Bible by which we are called to be kind even to the evil and the unthankful. But, most assuredly, this verse lays upon us none other thing, than that we should do such services for others as are right and equitable." (page 259).)

Of course, ridding myself of selfishness is, if anything, even MORE difficult than doing for others all that I, in my selfishness, wish they would do for me. There is some chance I could come close on "doing for others" -- I could give away all that I have and spend every waking moment trying to serve those around me. But how can I get rid of my own selfishness?

Ultimately, I can't, and I'm pointed back to the gospel of grace. But, Chalmers' insight into the internal logic of the golden rule has helped me to turn the focus from my outward deeds (how much money did I give last year, and how many people did I help out unselfishly?) to my inward brokenness (why do I want my neighbor to give me half his fortune? why do I enjoy a "free lunch" so much? why do I not really feel like it's more blessed to give than to receive? why do I get angry at other drivers who don't get out of my way?). And how can I work on putting these attitudes away and defeating them?

It's as if the passage has a different emphasis for me now. Before, I heard Jesus saying, "How much should you do for others? Well, think about how much you'd like them to do for you. Now, DO THAT MUCH." Now, I hear a different emphasis: "How much should you do for others? Well, you're really missing the point here. There are specific laws of God about helping people in particular contexts, and you know about those, and we could talk about specifics. But it would do you more good to think about this -- all God really wants is for you to do for other people the reasonable service that you, as a fellow human being, expect from them toward yourself. That's all. Oh? You expect a lot from others, do you? It sounds to me like we've stumbled upon the real root of the problem here. Let's talk about your selfishness."

I'm aware that this could be turned around on me. After all, I've taken the focus away from others and their needs and put it back on my own self and my own needs. But I think Jesus wanted me to do that, at least some of the time:

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye.

--Luke 6:41-42

One may protest that the golden rule is about serving others, and Luke 6 is about judging others, so I'm still stuck in my loop of selfish logic. I plead guilty, of course (I already admitted I'm selfish, get it?), but I also know how easy it is for my to make my "service" to others a form of "judgment". "Here's some help, now let me give you a lecture about what you did wrong to need this help." "Here's some help, but it's conditioned on you changing your behavior." "Yes, I'll help you, but only if you'll help me feel better about myself/achieve some objective I have/let me put my name on the building."

A Not So Great Read . . . So Far

2009-03-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

I've been anticipating pulling this book off the shelf and diving into it for several years. I can't remember when or where I acquired it, but there it's been, staring me in the face every time I look at the British history section of my book collection. It looks so promising from the cover and from the basic sketch I have in my head of who Alfred was and all that he accomplished. (Google him for the basic bio.) So you can imagine my disappointment when, 20 to 30 pages in, I figured out that the author is using the book mostly to grind his academic axes, giving just a little useful history along the way.

OK, to be fair, the book is brimming with facts, but virtually every fact present is marshalled to support one of the author's pet theories. They sound like pretty decent theories; that's not the problem. The problem is that this book borders on unreadable for anyone not several years deep into both traditional and current (as of the early 1990s) Alfredian scholarship. Count me out on that score. It's sad to see this happening to history; I can personally testify to the damage this approach has brought to legal scholarship -- law review articles painstakingly researched, heavily edited by top law students, and published in paper and electronic form never to read by anyone except other law review article authors looking for a source to footnote. If the Smyth book is at all typical of history as written by the "professionals" in this area, then the handwriting is already on the wall for the history profession, albeit in a language indecipherable to the lay reader.

Maybe I'm not being fair. I'm only 150 pages into this 600-page tome. Maybe it gets better. And I do have a much better idea now of just how desparate Alfred's struggle against the Dane was, and how long it continued. Three wars spread over most of his 26-year reign. His the last Saxon kingdom in Britain not conquered by the Vikings invaders. Yet he held out, even after numerous defeats, with truly historic consequences for the England that the Normans snapped up nearly 200 years later in 1066. But all I learned in those 150 pages could have been covered in 30.

Or maybe my frustration is due to the utter lack of anything quotable. All I found in those 150 pages (dealing exclusively with Alfred's military career; later sections of the book that I will get to some day, maybe, cover Alfred's considerable scholarship and cultural pursuits) were these two things worth quoting:

"I cannot find anything better in man than that he know, and nothing worse than that he be ignorant."

--King Alfred's version of the Soliloquies of Augustine (frontispiece)

And this little gem that Smyth uses to contextualize Viking raiders' violence:

Too many modern commentators on viking culture appear to have overlooked the fact that ninth-centory Northmen were as yet unaware of the terms of the Geneva Convention.

--page 129.

The Simple Life

2009-03-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

We get a lot of catalogs in the mail at my house. We like to "send away" for things. It's so much easier than loading up in the minivan for a trip to the mall. You can do the math to figure out if we are increasing or decreasing our carbon footprint; that's not something that's very high on our family agenda most days.

Anyway, since we often shop by catalog, we get A LOT of catalogs. It's like the people who sell things by catalog have a club that gets together on Thursday nights to exchange names of suckers like me. "Hey, we found this one family in Alabama that will buy ANYTHING!" crows the Williams Sonoma rep. "Anything?" replies the Solutions rep. "We'll just see about that!"

This catalog caught my eye, though not necessarily for the "Easter gardens" or "grass hatcheries" or whatever those ridiculous creatures on the cover are. The 10% off is nice, of course, and the "Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee" noted at the bottom certainly allays my concern about leg breakage for these perky critters. (I wonder if that guarantee covers tackiness? I'd regret my purchase if these freakish little things somehow became trendy.)

No, what made me hold onto this catalog for the scan pile was the tagline right under the catalog's title: "Products that make life easier". I've been trying to figure out how froggy, bunny and chick would make my complicated life any easier. Finally, early this morning, it came to me. When I'm trying to create cutesy-but-still-creepy springtime brunch decorations, I won't have to crack the tops off of real eggs anymore after I paint them festive colors and stencil in adorable little faces. I can just use these things instead.

All this leaves me with three questions:

1. I wonder what the Chia Pet people will have to say about all this?

2. Do they sell Don King and Billy Idol models?

3. Have they moved Halloween to April?

Not the Expected Result

2009-02-22T13:23:00.000-08:00

This passage brings to mind all sorts of themes -- the desperate man's attempt to bargain with God ("Save me from this and I will never cheat on my wife again!"), the apparently certain demographic decline of Europe and Japan that is underway (just google "Mark Steyn" and "demography"), even the coming disillusionment of so many Obama supporters when he fails to usher in the Millenium.

Matteo Villani, the Florentine historian, devoted a passage to the effects of the Black Death on those who were fortunate enough to survive it:

'Those few discreet folk who remained alive,' he wrote, 'expected many things, all of which, by reason of the corruption of sin, failed among mankind, whose minds followed marvellously in the contrary direction. They believed that those whom God's grace had saved from death, having beheld the destruction of their neighbours . . . would become better-conditioned, humble, virtuous and Catholic; that they would guard themselves from iniquity and sin and would be full of love and charity towards one another. But no sooner had the plague ceased than we saw the contrary; for since men were few and since, by hereditary succession, they abounded in earthly goods, they forgot the past as though it had never been, and gave themselves up to a more shameful and disordered life than they had led before. For, mouldering in ease, they dissolutely abandoned themselves to the sin of gluttony, with feasts and taverns and delight of delicate viands; and again to games of hazard and to unbridled lechery, inventing strange and unaccustomed fashions and indecent manners in their garments . . .

'. . . Men thought that, by reason of the fewness of mankind, there should be abundance of all produce of the land; yet, on the contrary, by reason of men's ingratitude, everything came to unwonted scarcity and remained long thus; nay, in certain countries . . . there were grevious and unwonted famines. Again, men dreamed of wealth and abundance in garments . . . yet, in fact, things turned out widely different, for most commodities were more costly, by twice or more, than before the plague. And the prcie of labour and the work of all trades and crafts, rose in disorderly fashion beyond the double. Lawsuits and disputs and quarrels and riots rose everywhere among citizens in every land . . .'

Contemporary chronicles abound in accusations that the years which followed the Black Death were stamped with decadence and rich in every kind of vice. The crime rate soared; blasphemy and sacrilege was a commonplace; the rules of sexual morality were flouted; the pursuit of money became the be-all and end-all of people's lives. The fashions in dress seemed to symbolise all that was most depraved about the generation which survived the plague. Who could doubt that humanity was slipping towards perdition when women appeared in public wearing artificial hair and low-necked blouses and with their breats laced so high 'that a candlestick could actually be put on them.' When Langland dated so many of the vices of the age 'sith the pestilens tyme' he was speaking with the voice of every moraliser of his generation.

. . . .

Such self-indulgence strikes one to-day as a curiously illogical reaction to the disaster which had been so painfully survived. Medieval man in 1350 and 1351 believed without question that the Black Death was God's punishment for his wickedness. This time he had been spared but he could hardly hope for such indulgence to be renewed if his contumacious failure to mend his ways stung God into a second onslaught. The situation, with sin provoking plague and plague generating yet more sin, seemed to have all the makings of a uniquely vicious circle, a circle from which he could only hope to escape by a drastic mending of his ways. Yet, undeterred, he continued on his wicked course against a background of apocalyptic mutterings prophesying every kind of doom.

--page 270-72

Pages 88-90, Wherein We Learn of the Flagellants

2009-02-21T09:26:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, those guys in Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail who passed through town chanting and beating themselves with boards were real -- except that the real guys (and gals!) used whips with spikes in them instead of boards. Our author provides a fascinating, if also sickening, picture of what these folks did to earn forgiveness in the 14th century:

The 'Brotherhood of the Flagellants' or 'Brethren of the Cross' as the movement was called in 1348, traditionally originated in Eastern Europe, headed, according to Nohl in a pleasant conceit for which he unfortunately fails to quote authority, by various 'gigantic women from Hungary.' It is to be deplored that these heroic figures quickly faded from the scene. [Could he have said this any better? I think not.] . . . .

The actual mechanism of recruitment to the Brotherhood is still obscure but the appearance of the Flagellants on the march is well attested. They moved in a long crocodile, two-by-two, usually in groups of two or three hundred but occasionally even more than a thousand strong. Men and women were segregated, the women taking their place towards the rear of the procession. At the head marched the group Master and two lieutenants carrying banners of purple velvet and cloth of bold. Except for occasional hymns the marchers were silent, their heads and faces hidden in cowls, their eyes fixed on the ground. They were dressed in sombre clothes with red crosses on back, front and cap.

Word would travel ahead and, at the news that the Brethren of the Cross were on the way, the bells of the churches would be set ringing and the townsfolk pour out to welcome them. The first move was to the church where they would chant their special litany. A few parish priests used to join in and try to share the limelight with the invaders, most of them discreetly lay low until the Flagellants were on the move again. Only a handful were so high-principled or fool hardy as to deny the use of their church for the ceremony and these were usually given short shrift by the Brethren and by their own parishioners.

Sometimes the Flagellants would use the church for their own rites as well as for the litany but, provided there was a market place or other suitable site, they preferred to conduct their service in the open air. Here the real business of the day took place. A large circle was formed and the worshippers stripped to the waist, retaining only a linen cloth or skirt which stretched as far as their ankles. Their outer garments were piled up inside the circle and the sick of the village would congregate there in the hope of acquiring a little vicarious merit. On one occasion, at least, a dead child was laid within the magic circle -- presumably in the hope of regeneration. The Flagellants marched around the circle; then, at a signal from the Master, threw themselves to the ground. The usual posture was that of one crucified but those with especial sins on their conscience adopted appropriate attitudes: an adulterer with his face to the ground, a perjurer on one side holding up three fingers. The Master moved among the recumbent bodies, thrashing those who had committed such crimes or who had offended in some way against the discipline of the Brotherhood.

Then came the collective flagellation. Each Brother carried a heavy scourge with three or four leather thongs, the thongs tipped with metal studs. With these they began rhythmically to beat their backs and breasts. Three of the Brethren acting as cheerleaders, led the ceremonies from the centre of the circle while the Master walked among his flock, urging them to pray to God to have mercy on all sinners. Meanwhile the worshippers kept up the tempo and their spirits by chanting the Hymn of the Flagellants. The pace grew. The Brethren threw themselves to the ground, then rose again to continue the punishment; threw themselves to the ground a second time and rose for a final orgy of self-scourging. Each man tried to outdo his neighbour in pious suffering, literally whipping himself into a frenzy in which pain had no reality. Around them the townsfolk quaked, sobbed and groaned in sympathy, encouraging the Brethren to still greater excesses.

Such scenes were repeated twice by day and once by night with a benefit performance when one of the Brethren died. If the details of the ceremonies are literally as recorded then such extra shows must have been far from exceptional. The public wanted blood and they seem to have got it. Henry of Herford records: 'Each scourge was a kind of stick from which three tails with large knots hung down. Through the knots were thrust iron spikes as sharp as needles which projected about the length of a grain of wheat or sometimes a little more. With such scourges they lashed themselves on their naked bodies so that they became swollen and blue, the blood ran down to the ground and bespattered the walls of the churches in which they scourged themselves. Occasionally they drove the spikes so deep into the flesh that they could only be pulled out by a second wrench.'

But though, gripped as they were by collective hysteria, it is easy to believe that they subjected their bodies to such an ordeal, it is impossible to accept that they could have repeated the dose two or three times a day for thirty-three days. The rules of the Brotherhood precluded bathing, washing or changes of clothing. With no antiseptics and in such grotesquely unhygenic conditions, the raw scars left by the spikes would quickly have become poisoned. The sufferings of the Brethren would have become intolerable and it seems highly unlikely that any Flagellant would have been physically capable of completing a pilgrimage. The modern reader is forced to the conclusion that, somewhere, there must have been a catch. Possibly the serious blood-letting was reserved for gala occasions, such as that witnessed by Henry of Herford. Possibly two or three victims were designated on each occasion to attract the limelight by the intensity of their sufferings. The Flagellants were not fakes but some measure of restraint there must have been.

--pages 88-90.

While my theology tells me quite clearly that all this self-inflicted horror did absolutely nothing to placate God's wrath or atone for any Flagellant's sin, this account does give me pause and prompt a few observations: (i) they thought this horror was necessary to atone for sin, yet they sinned anyway; (ii) I like to think I have a healthy appreciation for "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" and its viciousness, but I fear I don't take my sin as seriously as the Flagellants did; and (iii) I think my children use too many band aids.

I Sent This Quote To My Preacher

2009-02-19T17:54:00.000-08:00

Fourteenth-century men seem to have regarded their doctor in rather the same way as twentieth-century men are apt to regard their priest, with tolerance for someone who was doing his best and the respect due to a man of learning but also with a nagging and uncomfortable conviction that he was largely irrelevant to the real and urgent problems of their lives.

--page 77

Life Is Pretty Good After All

2009-02-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

Sure, we have to worry about cancer, heart disease, AIDS, al-Queda, and urban sprawl. But maybe those things aren't quite as bad as we sometimes think. At least, they probably wouldn't appear so to the Europeans of 1350. The roughly two thirds of the 1347 population who were still alive, at any rate.

It's difficult to imagine an epidemic of this magnitude. For reference, the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic killed about as many people, but spread all over the world in a time when the world's population was significantly higher than 14th century Europe's. Remember the old saw about the college dean who tells the assembled freshman class, "Look to your left and your right; in four years, one of you will be gone." Look down your street or apartment hallway and think about EVERY home or apartment losing at least one person, and the occasional home losing everyone.

Though the tone and approach of this book reflects the full bore modernism in fashion in the year of its publication (1969), it still tells a compelling, if horrifying story. A few excerpts are in order.

An interesting commentary on historical records is the extensive use made by the author of church records; a source of spirited scholarly debate has been whether clergy deaths, of which there are generally decent records, are over- or under-representative of the death rate of the general population. Perhaps clergy died at a faster rate than the lay people since their duties put them in close proximity to the sick and dying, but perhaps they died at a slower rate if they were hesitant to perform those noxious duties (plague victims smelled repulsive and obviously created great fear of infection in any who came near) and otherwise benefitted from their relatively better material circumstances. So how did the churchmen acquit themselves? The author gives us a few insights:

On the whole the churchmen of Avignon seem to have behaved creditably during the plague; churchmen in the widest sense that is, from papal councillor to penniless and itinerant monk. "Of the Carmelite friars in Avignon," wrote Knighton uncharitably, "sixty-six died before the citizens knew the cause of the calamity; they thought that these friars had killed each other. Of the English Austin friars at Avignon not one remained, nor did men care." Knighton had all the contempt of a Canon Regular for these turbulent and often embarrassing colleagues. "At Marseilles, of one hundred and fifty Franciscans, not one survived to tell the tale; and a good job too!" was another of his still harsher commitments. Yet in fact there is no reason to doubt that the mendicant orders behaved at Avignon with as much courage and devotion as they did elsewhere and that their reputation rose accordingly.

Pope Clement VI himself played a slightly less forthright part. There is no doubt that he was preoccupied by the horrors of the plague and genuinely disturbed and distressed for his people. Though by no means celebrated as an ascetic he was good-hearted and honourable, anxious to do what was best for his flock. He did all he could to ease the path of the afflicted by relaxing the formalities needed to obtain absolution and ordered "devout processions, singing the Litanies, to be made on certain days each week". Unfortunately, such processions tended to get out of hand; at some, two thousand people attended, "amongst them, many of both sexes were barefooted, some were in sack cloth, some covered with ashes, wailing as they walked, tearing their hair, and lashing themselves with scourges even to the point where blood was drawn." At first the Pope made a habit of being present at these processions, at any rate when they were within the precincts of his palace, but excesses of this kind revolted his urbane and sophisticated mind. He also realised that large concourses, attended by the devout from all over the region, were a sure means of spreading the plague still further, as well as providing a breeding ground for every kind of hysterical mob outburst. The processions were abruptly ended and the Pope from then onward sought to discourage any kind of public demonstration.

Not unreasonably, Pope Clement VI calculated that nothing would be gained by his death, and that, indeed, it was his duty to his people to cherish them as long as possible. He therefore made it his business to stay alive. On the advice of the Papal physician Gui de Chauliac, he retreated to his chamber, saw nobody, and spent all day and night sheltering between two enormous fires. For a time, he took refuge in his castle on the Rhone near Valence but by the autumn he was again at his post in Avignon. It does not seem that the Black Death died out in the Papal capital much before the end of 1348.

--page 66-67

Walker Percy's Second Novel

2009-02-09T17:33:00.001-08:00

But the third of his that I've read. First there was "The Second Coming", read with, of all things, a church group. (Hint: the title is metaphorical! Yes, we knew that before we read it, but when we bought our copy and told the bookstore clerk we would be reading it with a church group, he told us he didn't think we'd like it very much.)

Next was "The Moviegoer", Percy's first novel, which I read in New Orleans, where the story takes place. There is no better way to read a novel. I had a little trouble discerning the message of the story but finally settled in and am glad to have read it.

So what made "Love In The Ruins" third? In keeping with my random reading habits, it was on my shelf, and the hardback first edition of "The Last Gentleman" that I picked up 14 years ago for $3 at a book sale at a federal courthouse just wasn't grabbing me. Plus, I somehow suspected that Ruins might have in it something of the science-fictionesque quality that I sensed might run through some Percy novels.

I think I made a good selection. This isn't the kind of book that's constructed for excerpting, and I'm not much on traditional literary reviews of novels, having spent most of my reading life in the nonfiction arena. But I did commit a few teen years to science fiction, and Ruins delivered in that respect, though I'm quite sure that those turned off by the "sci fi" genre wouldn't categorize Ruins that way. Let's just say I was able to identify with the narrator in a way I hadn't with other Percy characters. Or at least I could see that, without a relatively clear understanding of the nature of reality and "why God put us here anyway", life is pretty pointless.

Under Pressure

2009-02-07T11:16:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you just have to read about submarines. Like when a friend gives you a book about them. In my case, it was "Blind Man's Bluff", published in 1998, or as soon as the end of the Cold War would permit the authors to dig up these stories from archival research and interviews with members of the top-secret submarine crews that secretly trailed (and sometimes collided with!) Soviet conventional and nuclear missle subs throughout the Atlantic and Pacific. These stories are shocking if you haven't heard them before. DID YOU KNOW that throughout the 1970s and 1980s United States submarine crews were placing taps on undersea Soviet telephone cables, then returning months later to retrieve the tap recordings to be translated by the CIA? DID YOU KNOW that one cable-tapping sub crew nearly perished in 400 feet of water in a Soviet port? DID YOU KNOW that part of this operation was betrayed to the enemy by a U.S. Navy traitor?

I didn't know any of these things. Nor did I understand the critical "second wave" role played by the U.S. and Russian sub forces in both countries' nuclear war strategies. (Once all air- and land-based missles had been launched or taken out by the enemy, the mobile, silent submarines could surface just off the enemy's coasts and launch a couple of dozen warheads per boat.) I also never understood the critical technology edge U.S. submarines had over the Soviets right up until the end of the Cold War, when the Soviets began to catch up, mostly thanks to the U.S. Navy traitor who handed over U.S. secrets about how to make submarines quieter (sound-based sonar being the only way for submarines to track each other under the seas).

One of the authors' goals was to tell the heroic, death-defying stories of what some of these submarine crews did in utmost secrecy. Several of the spy subs received multiple Presidential Unit Citations, the highest honor available to them, but seldom were the crews' families even aware of the awards, much less what the crews did to deserve them.

Impressive stuff, and I'm glad my friend passed it on to me.

Of course, he may have triggered an obsession on my part. It's like I took my first dose of a powerful and drug and can't look back; I've had to read every submarine book and watch every submarine movie I can find in my house. First was "The Terrible Hours", a book I purchased several years ago after reading a compelling review. Every American school kid should learn the name of U.S. Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen, the man who singlehandedly invented submarine rescue techniques and did more than anyone else to push the technology of deep sea diving forward to break the "nitrogen narcosis" barrier (if you breathe oxygen mixed with nitrogen below 150 feet or so, the nitrogen poisons your brain for several technical reasons you can google to understand, but if you mix the oxygen with helium instead of nitrogen, you can think clearly at depth and surface more quickly without developing the bends; of course, your voice sounds like Mickey Mouse, but that's better than the alternative). As if that weren't enough, in World War II he went diving to retrieve a torpedo that hadn't exploded upon impact to figure out why U.S. submarines were scoring direct hits against Japanese shipping yet failing to cause any damage when the torpedos didn't explode.

The main story of the book is the rescue of the crew of the Squalus, hopelessly sunk during sea trials due to some kind of on-board accident in May 1939 off the coast of New England in 243 feet of water. Yes, I said "rescue". Using techniques he had pioneered for over a decade, at first in the face of Navy resistance, Momsen managed to rescue all the crewmen who remained alive after the sinking. The author does a superb job of presenting this compelling story of dogged persistence coupled with cunning insight and pure heroism. It's not clear why we all don't know this story already.

These books reminded me of a couple of submarine movies I'd seen before:

U-571: It's World War II, and the Germans have a secret encoding device on their submarines that permits them to transmit coded messages across the airwaves back to their bases. The Allies have to crack the code. The only practical way to do this is to steal one of the encoding machines. But the only practical way to do that is to capture a submarine. That's a tricky proposition (think about it!). But the movie tells the (relatively) true story of how the Allies pulled it off. For reasons I can't fathom (no pun intended), the screenwriters changed the heroes from British to American, but the story is tremendous compelling, and at times downright terrifying, nonetheless.

K19: Harrison Ford is captain of the first Soviet nuclear sub. K19 fulfills its mission, surfacing through the polar ice cap to practice firing a nuclear missle at the United States. Then on its way home the reactor cooling system breaks down. The only way to repair it requires several men to enter the reactor room for several hours to construct an improvised cooling system using the crew's drinking water. They all endure massive radiation poisoning, of course, and almost all die within days. The Soviet admirals back home won't authorize an evacuation or any request for Western aid, which could have saved all the men (and this movie was before the Kursk disaster!). They get the job done in the best tradition of seamanship, but at immeasurable cost to the poor crewmen who were given nothing but chemical-proof clothing to protect them from radiation. The movie is "based on true events", and I wondered for a couple of years how "based on" it was versus "true", but reading an account of the actual events in "Blind Man's Bluff" (see above) makes it clear it was accurate in all relevant respects other than the fact that Harrison Ford's character actually died about three weeks after the event, while he lives to old age in the movie. But I guess you can't really let Harrison Ford die if you want your picture to be a hit. Frozen in carbonite, maybe. But not die.

I'm not big on watching movies a second time, at least not most movies, so it was back to the DVD shelf to see what else I could dig up. Here's what I found . . . .

Run Silent, Run Deep. Clark Gable as the Captain Ahab of the US World War II Pacific submarine fleet, angling for a chance to get back at that Japanese sub force that sank his previous boat. Burt Lancaster, his executive officer, at first resists Gable's drive into the "submarine graveyard" of Japanese shipping lanes, but comes through in the end to carry out the illegal mission. 1958, Black and White, 93 minutes. A movie from a different time but still with a story to tell.

So what next? Back to the bookshelf, of course. First American edition, autographed and inscribed by the author to my wife's grandfather. The best kind of book!

So any more submarine recommendations?

Waugh II

2009-02-05T18:03:00.001-08:00

OK, I admit it. I read this one BEFORE Decline and Fall. It's not really a sequel, but it does involve some of the same characters. And it's just as good a read.

But if you don't have time to read a book, you can always watch the movie (see blurb on cover):

Very well done, except they changed the ending.

Incidentally, since the book was published in 1930, and the movie wasn't released until 2004 (i.e., the book inspired the movie, and not the other way around), the rules at Offspring #2's crunchy preschool would permit him to pretend to be earnest aspiring novelist Adam Fenwick-Symes, and one of the girls in his class could pretend to be his fiancée Nina Blount. Even if the bright young preliterate things had seen the movie but hadn't read the book!

Great Idea; Not A Bad Book

2009-02-03T05:49:00.000-08:00

Professor Oden has had a terrific idea: undermine the destructive assumptions that equate Christianity with white European colonialism and racism by digging deep into the African roots of early Christianity. He's done a wonderful job of sketching the broad outlines of how this case might be made. Sure, there's Augustine; sure, there's Origen. But there's a great deal more as well that is little known outside some very small circles. He also tackles head on the curious treatment of so much of North African civilization as not authentically "African".

Regrettably, however, Professor Oden wrote a whole book to argue for why someone should write a book exploring his thesis. I kept going from chapter to chapter saying to myself, "OK, he's explained his thesis; now I'm ready to read some detailed exploration and analysis." Unfortunately, each chapter was just another, slightly different restatement of his thesis. To be fair to the author, he was probably just trying to stimulate research and discussion. But it felt a little bait and switchy to me as a reader.

It's a great thesis, but it's just Not A Bad Book.

I really should quit joining all those church committees . . . .

2009-02-02T05:32:00.000-08:00

"It is not my affair, of course," said Colonel Sidebotham, "but if you ask me I should say that man had been drinking."

"He was talking very excitedly to me," said the Vicar, "about some apparatus for warming a church in Worthing and about the Apostolic Claims of the Church of Abyssinia. I confess I could not follow him clearly. He seems deeply interested in Church matters. Are you quite sure he is right in the head? I have noticed again and again since I have been in the Church that lay interest in ecclesiastical matters is often a prelude to insanity."

--page 91

A Letter from Dr. Fagan

2009-01-27T05:21:00.000-08:00

In which Paul learns of Mr. Prendergast's return to his original calling:

"I have had a letter from Mr. Prendergast stating that he too wishes to resign his post. Apparently he has been reading a series of articles by a popular bishop and has discovered that there is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. This seems to be a comfort to him."

--page 188

Mr. Prendergast on Marriage

2009-01-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

I recently had a conversation with a young man who was pretty cynical about marriage. He'd seen so many bad marriages and so few (if any) good ones that he questioned the wisdom and usefulness of it, at least for him.

This young man's pseudo-empirically derived opinion on marriage made me think about Mr. Prendergast's opinions on the same topic. Prendy was a lapsed churchman who had left the church because he no longer believed. In his naivete, he thought that leaving was the right thing to do, it seems. Now teaching at Llanabba, the "School" where Paul is employed, he came out with this interesting observation at dinner with Paul and another fellow instructor:

"I don't believe," said Mr. Prendergast, "that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. Don't you agree?"

--page 135.

So, do you agree with Prendy?

I Don't Think They're Listening, Donald

2009-01-23T14:04:00.000-08:00

Donald Miller in Christianity Today, August 22, 2008:

The issue of abortion is a very sensitive one and it’s an important issue. I look at from a perspective of, what’s the best that we can do. As we elect a Republican House and Senate, and as we elect Republican leadership in the executive branch, we see very little changes on that issue. We’re electing someone who agrees with us on abortion, being sort of a tragedy in our country, and yet can’t get anything done. It’s kind of like saying, I want a pilot on my plane who feels this way about abortion, but he can’t fly the plane. The executive branch doesn’t have that much power, it has some power, but it doesn’t have much power. You look at the reality of that and say, what can I do to defend the sanctity of all human life, including the living, and the marginalized and the oppressed and the poor? What can we do to better social conditions so that less women are put in situations where they feel like they need to have an abortion. What does looking at the issue holistically look like. I hope the Democrats will listen to those of us who lean toward pro-life and those changes can be made.

Associated Press, January 23, 2009:

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.

Liberal groups welcomed the decision while abortion rights foes criticized the president. Known as the "Mexico City policy," the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

Obama signed it quietly, without coverage by the media, late on Friday afternoon, a contrast to the midday signings with fanfare of executive orders on other subjects earlier in the week.

Yes, I've been waiting since August to post this.

A Good Book

2009-01-23T05:25:00.001-08:00

When the mind is too worn from the week's cares and the day's troubles to want to tackle a book that requires work, but not quite so smoothly worn as to give up all pretense of thoughtfulness and turn on the television, there are a few authors whose works are ideal, and Waugh is at the top of the list. It might seem pretentious to title your first novel "Decline and Fall", and perhaps it was, but when your whole point is to ridicule the pretentiousness of the upper strata of your society and bring light to its rotten core, maybe it's a good choice. It IS pretty pretentious to write such a book at all, unless you can pull it off with Waugh's sense of humor. He makes you cynical about his character's cynicism; perhaps that's why he reads well in 2009.

Thanks to this book I have a new classification system for all my books. Early in the story, when Mr. Paul Pennyfeather, an orphan who's just been kicked out of college for a morals offense ("sent down for indecent behavior" was the term of the day) for which he seems not entirely responsible, has been cut off by his caretaker and is applying for teaching jobs, the placement agent describes his ranking system for schools:

1. Leading School
2. First-rate School
3. Good School
4. School

Paul has been given an assignment at a "School". "'Frankly,' said [the agent], 'School is pretty bad. I think you'll find it a very suitable post.'"

[As an aside, I note that this ranking system is suspiciously similar to that devised by the Duke of Cumberland's army for Scottish prisoners following the Battle of Culloden in 1745 (see recent reviews):

1. Really gentlemen
2. Not properly gentlemen but above the rank of Common Men
3. A lower degree than the preceding
4. Common Men

Perhaps the somewhat arbitrary four-tier system is common in English tradition?]

So, henceforth, I shall rank all books reviewed by the following classifications:

1. A classic
2. A good book
3. Not a bad book
4. Just a book

Happy reading!

"Business Casual" for the 18th Century Highlander

2009-01-21T06:01:00.000-08:00

As part of the English destruction of Highland society, the wearing of traditional Highland dress was strictly prohibited upon pain of imprisonment or banishment overseas. This hit pretty hard.

"The mountain people had no other clothes but the tartan plaid and kilt. Without them they would go naked. They did the only thing they could do at that moment. They dyed the tartan black and brown. They sewed their kilts between their legs to make breeches. . . .

"Thus Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion ended in a bad joke, with his clansmen in ragged breeches and their women dipping tartan plaids into vats of dye and mud. . . . there was resistance to the Act. Some Highlanders ignored it, a few taking to the hills rather than abandon the dress or accept humiliating compromises. Others carried tartan plaids beneath their coats, draping themselves with them when there were no soldiers about. Some wore strips of coloured cloth about their waists, blue, green and red, pleated like the kilt and worn over comic trews. When caught they were of course imprisoned. Caught again they were transported. Some were shot by the soldiers who had once hunted for the Prince, for fugitives or for arms, but who now searched the glens for rags of woven cloth.

". . . in the beginning, the law against the wearing of Highland dress or the tartan was firmly imposed and the penalties were scrupulously applied, but as the years passed it staggered and died beneath its own inertia. It had served its purpose, however. When the proscription was lifted in 1782 there was no enthusiastic return to the tartan or the kilt. A Proclamation went round the glens:

'This is declaring to every man, young and old, Commons and Gentles, that they may after this put on and wear the Trews, the little Kilt, the Doublet and Hose, along with the Tartan Kilt, without fear of the Law of the Land or the jealousy of enemies . . .'

"But the old attachment to the Highland dress had died in a generation, the old patterns (if they had ever had more than an area significance) were forgotten. Forgotten, too, was the skill of making dyes from the herbs on the hills. The clans were no longer, their true identity had gone with the broadsword and their chiefs, and the wearing of the kilt was an affectation for gentlemen or for those who joined His Majesty's Highland Regiments. It was not until forty years later still, when George IV (a post-Rebelliono Jacobite) came to Scotland and dressed himself in a ridiculous uniform of scarlet kilt, plaid, bonnet, eagle feathers, broadsword, dirk and skean dhu that a romantic and extravagant interest in the Highland dress was born. Walter Scott was hard at work creating his Gothic picture of the Highlands, helped by many Lowland gentlemen whose ancestors had regarded the clansmen as savages. Tartans were invented and ascribed to this clan or that, a religious devotion being paid to setts that would not have been recognized by any Highlander who charged at Culloden. Sentiment spins enduring lies. When Victoria's humourless German consort designed a tartan that was used on the carpets, furnishings and wallpaper at Balmoral all interest in the parti-coloured cloth should have been killed by a giggle. But it was not.

"The banning of their dress took from the clans their pride and their sense of belonging to a unique people. The abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions of their chiefs, which followed, destroyed the political and social system that had held them together."

--pages 311-14

The Ones That Got Away

2009-01-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

A few of the prisoners escaped. That made for some good stories.

"Only one man succeeded in escaping from the Tilbury transports, at least only one is so recorded. Stewart Carmichael of Bonnyhaugh had been captured in September 1745, while on his way to join the Prince. He was brought to the Thames and transferred to the Pamela. The prisoners aboard this ship were fed with the offal of diseased cattle and hogs supplied by speculators in Gravesend, and while most prisoners ate what they could of this Carmichael had the wit to see a further use for it. He saved the pigs' bladders until he had four that could be inflated. One night he forced open a port, slipped over the side into the river, and, with the bladders beneath his arms, paddled his way to the Kent shore. He remained hidden in London until the Act of Indemnity.

[As an aside, recall that the first footballs -- really rugby balls -- were made by sewing leather casings around pigs' bladders; hence the otherwise difficult to explain shape of the modern football. Remember Mr. Carmichael's story the next time you watch a football game!]

"The escape of Donald MacLaren was sudden, dramatic and successful. He was a drover from Balquhidder who had gone with other MacLarens to fight with the Appin Stewarts, holding a captain's commission under Ardshiel. For three months after Culloden he skulked with others of his name on the Braes of Leny, the wild and beautiful pass below Ben Ledi, until they were discovered by a party of soliders on a rebel-hunt. Captain Donald fought with his broadsword, shouting 'Creag an Tuire!' as the MacLarens had cried when the Appin Regiment charged against Munro's [Regiment], but a musket-ball broke his thigh and he was captured. He was taken to Stirling and then to the Canongate in Edinburgh. In August he was sent southward for trial in Carlisle, strapped to the saddle behind a dragoon. Before the Border was reached, and when the detachment was riding down the vale of Annan, he managed to free himself from the strap, or saw that it had become loose. It was morning, and the mist was thick above and within the green hollow on Erickstane Brae which local people called the Marquis of Annandale's Beef Stand. There MacLaren slipped from the horse and rolled into the hollow. Lieutenant Howison, the officer commanding, cried out 'By God, I arrest you in the King's name!', which would not have stopped Donald MacLaren even had he been able to halt his descent. The dragoons dismounted, and came down into the bowl of mist, yelling and stabbing, but MacLaren buried himself in a bog, and covered his head with sods. He remained there for some days, keeping himself alive by eating the rotting flesh of a dead sheep. He finally made his way home to Balquhidder, where he disguised himself as a woman and lived thus for two years until he felt it safe to be Donald MacLaren the drover again."

--pages 254-55

What Mysteries Await Within?

2009-01-19T12:14:00.001-08:00

Close against a rural exit off Interstate 65 just north of the Tennessee-Alabama border sits the Wyatt Archaeological Museum, pictured above. I didn't get to go in the day I passed by for . . . well, several reasons. It didn't really look open. The kids didn't seem interested. The dog that came up to the truck barking was less than inviting. The little white sign in the door said something like "OPEN SUNDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, 9:00 to 3:00; CLOSED ON THE LORD'S SABBATH".

Oh, what wonderful mysteries await the intrepid patrons of the Wyatt Archaeological Museum?

Fortunately, we have google, and you can get a pretty thorough preview here.

The Sins of the Fathers

2009-01-15T17:46:00.001-08:00

If you've seen any movies about historic European wars and rebellions, you may be familiar with the custom of taking enemy heads and impaling them on spikes erected above the local castle or market square. It's a dramatic presentation, to be sure, and you may have thought that it was invented by Hollywood to give a succinct picture of the brutality of the day. But it wasn't invented by Hollywood at all; it was quite real. And one thing I certainly didn't realize was just how long they left the heads up there. Here's Prebble on the heads of the Scottish rebels of the '45:

"Some of the skulls of the hanged, spiked above the gates of the cities in which they were executed, were still grinning down on the streets thirty years later when another King George faced another rebellion, this time in his Colonies." --page 232.

This certainly gives a little more bite to Benjamin Franklin's statement made upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Pause for a moment to remember the life and death of Mr. Thomas Syddall. Mr. Prebble tells his story interspersed with the tales of eight other prisoners, all of whom were tried and punished as a group:

"The middle-aged Thomas Syddall had been the Adjutant of the Manchester Regiment. He was the son of a blacksmith, and before the Rising he had been a reputable barber in Manchester. His family's devotion to the Stuarts was as strong as Towneley's [a 38-year-old Catholic colonel of the Manchester Regiment and commandant of the Rebel forces at the ill-fated Carlisle], and its sacrifices probably greater. They were Catholics, of course, and Syddall's father had been out with Prince Charles's father in 1715, and had been hanged for it. Throughout Thomas Syddall's boyhood he had seen his father's skull whitening on top of the Market Cross in Manchester, and his desire for revenge had grown strong. When the Rebels cam south to Lancashire in November 1745, Syddall left his wife and five children and bought himself a commission in the Manchester Regiment. Exactly one month later he was a prisoner. Sentence: death.

. . . .

"All these men were hanged on 30 July. The magazines and the newspapers kept the public well-informed about the life the prisoners led from the day they were sentenced to the day they died. The reports appeared in tightly-printed, scarecely-paragraphed columns between advertisements announcing the arrival of 'exceedingly good LIMONS and BITTER ORANGES, the Bitter Oranges are fit for marmelade; also fresh chestnuts and walnuts'. The accused were heavily ironed, wrists and ankles locked together by manacles and bars, so that they seemed to move in constant modesty or prayer. At night they were fastened to the flags of their cells by staples. The waiting, the thinking and the dark of the night acted upon them according to their natures. Syddall prayed, and said that he thought unceasingly of his family, his five children for whom the best that he could wish was that they might end their lives in a martyrdom such as his."

After the men were awakened on the morning of their execution, they were given coffee to drink and brought to the Common. Each man was allowed to say whatever he wanted to say for his final words. The men had written out their speeches the night before, or (as was customary for the less oratorically inclined) paid pastors to write speeches for them. Now the story picks up with Syddall and another prisoner giving their speeches:

"The speeches of Syddall and Deacon had been written for them by a Non-Jurant minister called Creake, who was at this moment selling printed copies of them among the crowd. 'My deal fellow-countrymen', said Thomas Deacon, "I am come here to pay my last debt to nature, and I think myself happy in having an opportunity to die in so just and so glorious a cause . . .' Mr. Creake's zeal for Non-Jurant Episcopacy was strong in what he had written for Syddall: 'If any would enquire into its primitive constitution I refer them to our Common Prayer Book which is entitled A Compleat Collection of Devotions, both Publick and Private.' Both men forgave their enemies, including King George and the Duke of Cumberland, while pointing out that neither had a right to such titles."

The nine men were then hanged for three minutes, cut down, disemboweled and had their hearts cut out, and beheaded with a butcher's cleaver. (Ever wonder where the American Founding Fathers came up with that "cruel and unusual punishment" clause in the U.S. Constitution?) The king had the legal custody of the remains. The bodies were buried nearby, three of the heads were returned to their families, and the other six heads sent in three directions to be placed high on spikes for public display and example. Syddall's head, along with Thomas Deacon's, went to his hometown of Manchester.

"Thus the skull of Syddall rested where his father's had been impaled nearly thirty years before. Bishop Deacon made a vow never to pass the Market Cross lest he see his son's head, but one day a twist in the narrow streets, taken inadvertently, brought him to the sight of it. He raised his hat and passed on. For this small act of sedition he was charged and fined by the magistrates."

--pages 260-69

The Foreshadowing of the Southern Gentleman?

2009-01-12T17:58:00.000-08:00

"The long plaid, which could be belted into a kilt and draped over the shoulders in a shawl, was the poor Highlandman's only dress. Elaborations were for his betters, and when gentlemen of high degree dressed themselves in splendor it was with a savage and vivid magnificence. A chief, since he preferred to ride a Sheltie rather than walk, wore trews of skin-tight tartan and not the kilt. His hair was tied back with a ribbon, and powdered if he had acquired the fashion abroad [chiefs, unlike their people, often went away for college]. His bonnet was trimmed with the eagle feather that marked his rank. He wore a tartan jacket and a tartan waistcoat, a plaid tartan that fell from the silver and cairngorn brooch on his left shoulder. If he chose to wear the kilt and not trews, a silver and leather sporran hung from his waist, and his calves were covered to the knee with hose of tartan fret. Tartan from shoulder to brogues, plaid, kilt and stockings often of a different sett, so that his clothes burned and glowed with green and yellow, blue and scarlet [the identification of particular setts with particular clans is a 19th century Romantic development apparently without much tradition behind it!].

"He armed himself with claw-handled steel pistols, known as Highland dags, two of them dangling from his belt. His round, bullhide target [i.e., shield; see the book cover] was studded with silver bosses, and was frequently mounted with a steel spike twelve inches long. On one hip he carried a basket-hilted broadsword, double-edged, a yard long, and two inches wide. On the other he wore his dirk, its haft richly wrought with silver, its scabbard pouched for knife and fork [in former times it was customary to carry these with you; most hosts couldn't afford to supply them, or at least it would have been rude to expect it]. Thrust into the top of his hose on one calf was a tiny black knife. And thus he stood in magnificence, a savage man who might speak French and Latin, who could distinguish between a good claret and a bad, who believed in the blood feud and the Holy Trinity, who would bargain like an Edinburgh chandler to secure a profitable marriage for his daughter, who could sell his tenants to the plantations [in the Caribbean] but who would touch his sword at the slightest reflection on his honor. A man of wild and ridiculous poetry, harsh and remorseless principle, a man who was, by 1746, an uncomfortable anachronism."

--pages 44-45

Why Didn't They Tell Me About This?

2009-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

As I began to read on my own toward the end of and after the completion of my "formal" education, I came across various references to significant events in British history, and somewhere along the way I picked up the bare fact that what was left of an independent Scotland was finally brought to heel and incorporated into Britain at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. The bare fact always seemed significant to me; certainly much more significant than much of the history I had been taught in school -- which, as far as I can remember, did not include even a single mention of this most significant of historic events for anyone living in the English-speaking world. But then again, maybe they did mention it, or included "Culloden" in a textbook chart somewhere that I studied for a test late one night.

In any case, I had no idea. There is so much to tell about this book and the history it covers. A cultural analysis of early 18th century Highland culture (intensely feudal and clan centered, poor, and independent minded), a fair amount of detail about British army life of the period (viscious, low paying, and frequently punctuated by the lash, yet still better than life in the London slums), a contextual portrait of "Bonny Prince Charlie" who recruited and led the Scottish uprising in an attempt to recapture the throne of Britain for the Stuarts, and a detailed exploration of the inhuman brutality with which the British army handled several thousand captured Highlanders (imagine weeks or months in the hold of a ship crowded with other prisoners, sleeping on ballast stones and eating and drinking insufficient quantities of raw butchered cattle and pig entrails) and crushed the "rebellious spirit" of the Highlands through a months-long occupation during which they drove off all the livestock, burned every house they could find, stole everything they could carry from the locals (often even including the clothes they were wearing) and burned everything else, and then sold what they stole and split up the profits according to rank. It is no exaggeration to say that the British approach to prisoner treatment makes Abu Graib look like a halfway house and Guantanomo look like a Motel 6.

And all of this written in an engaging, accessible style by . . . a Canadian Communist! Google "John Prebble" to learn more. To be sure, he appears to have joined in the early 20th century when huge numbers of intellectuals were pulled in to Communism, and he pulled out of the party by mid-century. In that respect his story is like many other intellectuals of his time. But that's a whole other discussion. Suffice to say that it is obvious from this book that Mr. Prebble approached his subject with honesty and and integrity, albeit with an unusual (for his time) focus on the lot of the common soldier and the common people -- the victims of history that had been ignored so long by professional historians. It's hard to appreciate now how significant a thing this must have been at the time Prebble wrote (this book was first published in 1961), since today virtually all academic history focuses on victim groups and the sweep of events, rejecting the older concept that history is a story of great achievements by great men.

Anyway, this is a very good book, and I'll share a few excerpts in coming days.

The Great Conversation

2009-01-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

"During the student revolts that shook the world in the late 1960s, one of the slogans shouted at the lecturers at the University of Heidelberg was Hier wird nicht zitiert!, 'No quoting here1' The students were demanding original thought; they were forgetting that to quote is to continue a conversation from the past in order to give context to the present. To quote is to make use of the Library of Babel; to quote is to reflect on what has been said before, and unless we do that, we speak in a vacuum where no human voice can make a sound. 'To write history is to cite it,' declared Walter Benjamin."

--page 224

No Five Finger Discounts at the Library

2009-01-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

"A dictionary from the seventh century B.C. carries this prayer: 'May Ishtar bless the reader who will not alter this tablet nor place it elsewhere in the library, and may She denounce in anger he who dares withdraw it from this building.' I have placed this warning on the wall of my own library to ward off borrowers in the night." --page 109

"All that remains of an Athenian library: an inscription stating that opening times are 'from the first to the sixth hour' and that 'it is forbidden to take works out of the library.'" --Frontispiece

Good Thing the Egyptians Didn't Have Digital Media

2009-01-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

"[A]bove all, the argument that calls for electronic reproduction on account of the endangered life of paper is a false one. Anybody who has used a computer knows how easy it is to lose a text on the screen, to come upon a faulty disk or CD, to have the hard drive crash beyond all appeal. The tools of the electronic media are not immortal. The life of a disk is about seven years; a CD-ROM lasts about ten. In 1986, the BBC spent two and a half million pounds creating a computer-based, multi-media version of the Domesday Book, the eleventh-century census of England compiled by Norman monks. More ambitious than its predecessor, the electronic Domesday Book contained 250,000 place names, 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 3,000 data sets and 60 minutes of moving pictures, plus scores of accounts that recorded 'life in Britain' during that year. Over a million people contributed to the project, which was stored on twelve-inch laser disks that could only be deciphered by a special BBC microcomputer. Sixteen years later, in March 2002, an attempt was made to read the information on one of the few such computers still in existence. The attempt failed. Further solutions were sought to retrieve the data, but none was entirely successful. 'There is currently no demonstrably viable technical solution to this problem,' said Jeff Rothenberg of the Rand Corporation, one of the world experts on data preservation, called in to assist. 'Yet, if it is not solved, our increasingly digital heritage is in grave risk of being lost.' By contrast, the original Domesday Book, almost a thousand years old, written in ink on paper and kept at the Public Record Office in Kew, is in fine condition and still perfectly readable.

"The director for the electronic records archive program at the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States confessed in November 2004 that the preservation of electronic material, even for the next decade, let alone for eternity, 'is a global problem for the biggest governments and the biggest corporations all the way down to individuals.' Since no clear solution is available, electronic experts recommend that users copy their materials onto CDs, but even these are of short duration. The lifespan of data recorded on a CD with a CD burner could be as little as five years. In fact, we don't know for how long it will be possible to read a text inscribed on a 2004 CD. And while it is true that acidity and brittleness, fire and the legendary bookworms threaten ancient condexes and scrolls, not everything written or printed o parchment or paper is condemned to an early grave. A few years ago, in the Archeological Museum of Naples, I saw, held between two plates of glass, the ashes of a papyrus rescued from the ruins of Pompeii. It was two thousand years old; it had been burnt by the fires of Vesuvius, it had been buried under a flow of lava -- and I could still read the letters written on it, with astonishing clarity."

--pgs. 75-77

When Your Books Won't Fit On Your Shelves

2009-01-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

"In the second chapter of Sylvie and Bruno, Lewis Carroll dreamt up the following solution: 'If we could only apply that Rule to books! You know, in finding the Least Common Multiple, we strike out a quantity wherever it occurs, except in the term where it is raised to its highest power. So we should have to erase every recorded thought, except in the sentence where it is expressed with the greatest intensity.' His companion objects: 'Some books would be reduced to blank paper, I'm afraid!' 'They would,' the narrator admits. 'Most libraries would be terribly diminished in bulk. But just think what they would gain in quality!' In a similar spirit, in Lyons, at the end of the first century, a strict law demanded that, after every literary competition, the losers be forced to erase their poetic efforts with their tongues, so that no second-rate literature would survive."

--page 70

A Special Gummy Hell

2009-01-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

"During the day, I write, browse, rearrange books, put away my new acquisitions, reshuffle sections for the sake of space. Newcomers are made welcome after a period of inspection. If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page. Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned."

--page 17

The Place To Be

2009-01-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

If you love books, you have a warm spot in your heart for libraries of all kinds. School libraries, university libraries (think about the RARE BOOK ROOM and salivate!), public lending libraries, and perhaps best of all, idiosyncratic private libraries little known and rarely accessible. All at once the libraries I've known come at me together -- my elementary school library with Mrs. Brown, the librarian, and the goofy little filmstrip projectors with the "beep" signaling to advance to film to the next frame, my high school library with little of interest and too many rules, my hometown public library where I once did a Boy Scout landscaping project, my undergraduate university's library where I discovered WPA Guides while browsing one night after some heavy research, my grad school library filled with a priceless collection of legal antiquities (I used to study sitting at a 500-year-old table from a European manor house), and even my own (very) modest library that everyone else in my family refers to as the "playroom" because of the children's toys scattered about. But I know the truth -- it's the library, because it contains most of my books!

Mr. Manguel knows a thing or two about books, too. His "job" for the last thirty-odd years has been editor and critic, and the dust jacket dutifully notes his impressive accomplishments, but what impressed me more was how much he'd managed to read in his lifetime, and the impressive settings in which he did so. This book is a collection of Manguel's essays about libraries and reading, and it covers some real treats -- Montaigne's tower, the original Library of Alexandria (or what little is known of it) and its modern attempted reconception, the British Library, the Library of Congress, Ashurbanipal's library (yes, THAT Ashurbanipal), the Bibliotheque Nationale, Aby Warburg's library (most curious indeed), even Hitler's libary (now part of the Library of Congress). And then there are the fantasy libraries such as Captain Nemo's that I won't even try to describe. But the crowning glory is probably Manguel's own library, built in his home in rural France by incorporating a centuries-old crumbling monastery wall. Yeah, my library's like that, too!

As you might expect, Mr. Manguel has favored us with several passages worth quoting, giving me multiple blog posts from a single book. So stay tuned!

Oh, who am I kidding?

2009-01-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

No one's going to read my review of this book anyway. And if they did they wouldn't pay any attention. Why bother?

Poke a Liar

2008-12-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Being an type-A MBA type, I really should have read this book twenty years ago when it came out. It would have helped me believe that "Wall Street jobs" really did pay as much money as people said back then. Not that that would have made me want one, at least I think not. OK, maybe it's better that I didn't read this book back then!

This book tells a story of greed, envy, maliciousness, pride, cruelty and pettiness. It ain't pretty. But it helps one understand better all the cultural references of the last twenty years to Wall Street greed. The book is the story of the author's short time at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s. Salomon was THE Wall Street firm when it came to bonds, so this was a real "insider" story. Notably, it also focused on the trading of mortgage-backed bonds, which is where all the action and profit were during the story. Events stemming from the recent mortgage market collapse led me to this book, and it was interesting to read how scandalous it all seemed to the author in the 80s, when everything he was scandalized by was about twenty times worse by 2007. (I recently read an insightful article by the author about the contemporary crisis where he recognized as much.)

There were some great lines and excerpts, but the imagery in all of them is crude enough that I'm choosing not to reproduce them here. The reader should note that the crude imagery was supplied by the Wall Street trading environment, and the author presented it fairly and honestly and not for shock value.

By the way, the "Liar's Poker" of the title was a game of chance played by the traders involving serial numbers on paper currency pulled at random from one's pockets. Let's just say that one's bluffing skills were highly correlated with one's winnings.

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

2008-12-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

It's not so much that this product exists as it is that it found its way into my house!

The Offspring report that it tastes just like regular Kraft mac & cheese but is somehow more fun to eat.

Star Wars: Episode IV.1 (with viewer commentary ON)

2008-12-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

[insert copyright-protected graphic here]

It's Friday night, and Male Offspring #1 (MO#1) and I are watching Star Wars Episode IV. You know, the one that came out FIRST. In 1977, I think -- when I was just a little older than MO#1. That makes . . . a good opportunity for blogging again after a several month hiatus to deal with, uh, life issues.

So, here's a commentary on the fly AS WE WATCH. It's like your PRACTICALLY WATCHING WITH US!

Intro: [Darth Vader and the Big Bad Imperial Cruiser capture the goofy little Rebellion spaceship with Princess Leia on board. Darth V. wants those stolen Death Star plans that have been transmitted to the ship by rebel spies (or "RE-bul SPOIS", per D.V.).] So, I was just thinking that maybe it would have been a good idea for the rebels to make MULITPLE COPIES of the plans? Maybe a million or so, scattered throughout the ship and broadcast all over the galaxy? I understand they probably didn't have internet access out there in deep space, but it's just plain goofy for D.V. to think there is only ONE COPY of the plans hidden away somewhere on the ship.

[R2D2 and C3PO sneak into the escape pod and make for the planet Tattooine. Knothead imperial officer tells gunner not to shoot at escape pod because there are no life signs on board; it "probably short circuited".] Is laser ammunition really THAT expensive that they wouldn't go ahead and shoot at one more stupid little life pod just because it's empty? REALLY? Have some target practice, at least! Given the way they shoot lasers throughout the rest of the movie, I'm not really getting this scene. Why didn't they just have the guy shoot and miss? Then the gunner should suggest sending out fighters, and the officer should respond, "Oh, don't worry about it; there are no life signs on board anyway." Or maybe the officer should just strike the gunner for missing; that would be more in keeping with the whole "empire" thing.

[The Jawa knock out R2D2 with an electronic pulse and capture him for resale.] So five of those little guys can carry R2D2? Somehow I always thought he probably weighed as much as my truck, given all that hardware he has on board. Maybe the Jawa are super strong.

[Obi Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker re Luke's father: "He was the best star pilot in the galaxy, and a great warrior."] "And I cut off his legs and one arm in a fight, so I must be a REAL badass."

Why does R2D2 always sound like he's sending a fax?

A few years ago, I went to a film conference where a speaker talked about the visual phenomenon of the Star Wars movies and contrasted it with just how terribly bad the dialogue is. He said the movies are almost better if you turn the sound off and supply your own dialogue! I think he's right. "Wait Luke! It's too dangerous!" Pretty weak. Granted, Yoda gets out a line or two of clever banter in later episodes, but that's about it.

Is Tattooine a planet given over to global warming due to all those landspeeder carbon emissions?

So here's the cantina scene with all those awkward aliens who don't move well. But points for imagination.

Now Luke is practicing with the light saber on board the Millenium Falcon. Philosophical discussion concerning "the Force" commences with Obi Wan as master teacher, Luke as naive pupil, and Han Solo as the skeptic. This is the point where the Christians began to get suspicious about the uprightness of this whole Star Wars enterprise. I think the folks who got worked up about this in the late 1970s were right on philosophy but wrong on the strength of the threat. Easy for me to say from the perspective of 2008, of course.

[M. Falcon caught in TRACTOR BEAM of Death Star.] I love the "tractor beam" idea. I wonder who first came up with it? There's a google topic for later tonight.

[Stormtroopers bring in scanners to look for stuff on the ship. They are so big they take two Imperial flunkies to carry them!] Give me a Star Trek tricorder any day! I think there's a PC vs. Mac commercial in that comparison . . . .

I just noticed that Luke has . . . Bama Bangs!

Is Bigfoot a Wookie?

I always thought those silver things in Chewbacca's over-the-shoulder "sash" were blaster clips. If so, it's odd that Han and Luke didn't take it off him when they were pretending he's a prisoner. Maybe it's just Wookie bling.

I wonder if that white pastic those stormtroopers wear will withstand a blaster shot? Or a bullet?

[D. Vader (to Tarkin regarding Obi Wan Kenobi: "Escape is not his plan -- I must face him, alone!"] Gotta hand it to D.V. -- I'd be too afraid to face again the guy who cut off my legs and one arm in the last fight. Sure, Kenobi's older now, but still . . . .

Say, that reminds me: How do you get a one-armed Jedi out of a tree? {Insert your favorite punch line here.}

[Garbage compactor scene!] I wonder why they bother to compact garbage before jettisoning it into space. Perhaps a union rule? Reminds me of that scene in Galaxy Quest where the heroes have to pass through that part of the ship with all those crazy stamping machines, flamethrowers and assorted booby traps.

Han: "One thing's for sure, we're all going to be a lot thinner!" Yeah, I wish I'd had the sound turned down for that one.

[Obi Wan at the tractor beam control, perched over a several-hundred-foot drop in the middle of a catwalk.] What devious Imperial architect designed THIS?

So our heroes have traded Alec Guinness for Carrie Fisher. A good trade, though Guiness got slightly better lines. But Fisher has those cinnabons on the sides of her head.

When things blow up in space, I don't think they make any noise. Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum.

When ships travel through space, they probably don't make a "shhhhhooooooosh" noise either.

Boy, the rebel alliance has bad graphics on their computers.

Did the Death Star have an official name, I wonder? Perhaps "Titanic"?

The D. Star makes me think about assymetric warfare. The empire builds a Death Star, which must require enormous resources to build and maintain. Maybe they could build and staff a couple more at most. But the galaxy is, uh, pretty big. All the rebel alliance has to do is become mobile and they can always avoid the one, two or three Death Stars.

I wonder what those droids do in the back of the Tie Fighters? (Or are they tye fighters?)

"Use the Force, Luke! Let go, Luke!"

Oh no, he's lost R2! Now we'll see what kind of difference a droid makes.

And Han Solo saves the day!

And the Death Star expodes into a thousand points of light!

Luke gets a new leather jacket! And a medal!

And C3PO gets a shine!

OK, I tried, but I still love this movie. I guess I'll be 8 forever somewhere deep inside.

Some People Just Can't Keep a Secret!

2008-09-13T12:49:00.001-07:00

From this week's paper. Page 6A. Why not page 1? You be the judge.

I Hope He Had Flood Insurance!

2008-09-11T04:56:00.000-07:00

This cautionary tale brought to you by . . .

. . . reminding you that you must purchase mandatory flood insurance when you obtain financing for your home or business real estate improvements located within a federally designated 100-year or more frequent flood zone.

He's Got the Whole World in His Hand!

2008-09-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

Surprised? Nope. But Hopeful Anyway.

2008-09-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

Bishop Wright (of New Perspective on Paul fame, but a seemingly devout, earnest and all around good-guy evangelical for all that) passionately believes that the way to combat Platonic gnosticism ("the material world -- and our material bodies -- are evil and will be destroyed; our only hope is a spiritual heaven that transcends materialism") is by reemphasizing the Biblical teaching on the past physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus and the future physical, bodily resurrection of His followers (and, not incidentally, the redemption of the entire physical world). If the world and our bodies are worth saving and re-creating for the New Jerusalem, the logic goes, then the physical, material world we live in now and those who live in it with us must be worth caring about and working to improve. It's not just about going to heaven when we die; instead, it's about loving people NOW and working to improve the creation NOW.

Wright's thesis seems perfectly sound. The title doesn't fit, though, at least in my view. While I haven't necessarily heard the case of caring about this present world and the people in it put in these terms, I learned long ago that God cares about these things and that we ought to do so as well. My own path to seeing this truth was through a shift in my understanding of the "end times" from a premillenial, rapture-based view (think the "Left Behind" series) to a more Reformed, at least vaguely postmillenial view (God works through us to redeem creation to usher in the kingdom). The conclusions one might draw from these differing views are fairly obvious. If the world is going to get worse and worse until Jesus comes and raptures His people away, and then there will be seven years of tribulation for those who remain, there really isn't much point in working for cultural renewal now; that's just "polishing the brass on a sinking ship". All that matters now is saving souls. On the other hand, if Jesus isn't coming back until the creation has been made "kingdom ready" by the church and its people, then we'd better get busy building churches, schools, families, nations and cultural institutions that are kingdom-oriented. Bishop Wright does briefly note the role of eschatology in these matters, but he paints it as a symptom of the problem rather than the main cause.

It could be that the eschatological problem is a peculiarly American evangelical problem, which would explain why it resonates so much with me but not Bishop Wright, who is Anglican. It may be that Bishop Wright has crafted a Biblically-based way to reach folks outside of American evangelicalism with the message of the importance of cultural renewal. If so, then this book is an important achievement.

A few personal notes -- Wright lets his politics show a little here, and the picture isn't pretty. "As far as I can see, the major task that faces us in our generation, corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago, is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world, whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable Third World debt." (page 216). Yes, yes, I agree that the Third World debt is ridiculous, and it may well be unpayable, and I am very sympathetic generally speaking with the campaign to forgive it. But "the major task that faces us in our generation"? That's way over the top. I'd think our biggest challenges are defeating Islamic extremism and protecting basing human rights in places like China, Tibet, Sudan and North Korea.

As an Anglican and world-class theologian, Wright is part of a very broad conversation, theologically speaking. Therefore, his book takes on arguments from all over the spectrum, some of which are so beyond the pale of Biblical orthodoxy that they don't seem worth his time to me. But again, as noted above, I'm probably not his primary audience. It's good to know someone as qualified and talented as Bishop Wright is writing for whoever his audience is. It's certainly a lot bigger than mine!

If I Had $10,000 and a Strong Drink . . . .

2008-09-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

Well, from the illustration, it appears that most find the narrow way, they just can't stay on it because of those massive burdens they are carrying. Note how close self-righteousness can get you, though!

Burn, Baby, Burn! I Love Your Big Carbon Footprint!

2008-09-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

[F]ossil fuels such as coal and oil, have also had far-reaching positive environmental effects that a good steward should wish to consider in drawing up a global balance sheet. The first effect is to make it possible for farmers to replace beasts of burden with machines and, therefore, to cultivate land more efficiently. (Much of the developing world is now beginning to undergo this process of agricultural modernization today.) Second, fossil fuels have been turned into fertilizers that, together with new pesticides, other means of preventing spoilage, and advances in new plant species -- the so-called Green Revolution -- have produced so much more food per acre that large amounts of land have now been spared from cultivation altogether. For example, America's forests, contrary to popular perception, have been growing steadily for the past fifty years and are actually larger than they were 100 years ago. Even in the heavily populated coastal areas, small farms have returned to forest land. The result of all of this is that, despite its vast fossil fuel consumption, NORTH AMERICAN CURRENTLY SHOWS A NET MINUS IN THE AMOUNT OF CARBON DIOXIDE IT PUTS INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. In other words, North America absorbs more carbon dioxide through plants and forests than it emits through industry. No one intentionally set out to produce these consequences but human ingenuity, aimed at doing better with greater cost efficiency and lower amounts of raw materials, seems here to reflect a providential convergence of man and nature. Now that we are conscious of the effects of our activity on nature, we can set out to do even better.

. . . It is a modern scandal, then, that out of a misguided concern for the earth, some philanthropic foundations and environmental groups from developed countries, and some international agencies as well, have discouraged, or even refused to support so-called "unsustainable" agricultural practices. These practices are, in face, necessary for saving and improving the lives of the world's poor and hungry.

--pages 50-51 (emphasis added).

Lest Anything Be Left To the Imagination . . .

2008-09-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

POSTED: No Trespassing!

2008-08-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

Judaism also resists the government taking control over more and more of a society because of its commitment to people owning property rather than a society owning property. One of the very few exceptions to this rule was the Jerusalem Temple that was, of course, owned by no individual Jew. Otherwise, much religious emphasis is placed upon people owning property, and much care is exercised to protect people from threats to that ownership.

It should be understood that the Jewish emphasis on private property is a religious manifestation of a people's relationship with their God and the moral law. Along with so many other aspects of Jewish life, this one also is intended to affirm the Genesis account of creation, whose central thesis is that we humans are qualitatively different from animals. No animal owns property. To be sure, many animals exhibit a territorial imperative. For instance, lions and elephants both mark their territories to let others know they claim dominance over that area. However, this is not ownership. Lions do not object to elephants in their territory, and they depend on deer ignoring those border markings. If all animals respected lions' "ownership" of an area and kept out, lunch with the lions would be an unusual event.

The Book of Genesis, however, details the mechanism by which humans can own land. Abraham's purchase of a burial site for Sarah is presented in such detail precisely to familiarize Abraham's descendants with the methodology by which humans can own land. This methodology turned out to be a startlingly novel concept, not only to Ephron and the men of Chet, but also to far more recent nations and races that knew nothing of land ownership by people. Yet Judaism is clear that God's plan for humanity calls for people to own land. This is partially on account of God's desire for us to recognize ourselves to be different creatures from animals, and partially on account of God's desire that we live among one another and interact with one another. Economic interaction and its attendant rewards of wealth are part of God's plan to ensure that the children of God do constantly interact with one another for mutual benefit. Land ownership helps to ensure this dynamic.

--pages 28-29

I'm a sucker for any argument supporting the concept of private property, so I find plenty to like here. However, I'm not sure the authors really nailed these concepts like they did others. For example, exactly how does land ownership "ensure that the children of god do constantly interact with another for mutual benefit"? Mind you, I think it probably does, but the means are not obvious. In fact, when I own land, I want to protect it and enhance its value and productivity. So I will fence it, fight erosion, plant valuable and/or beneficial crops, trees and plants, attempt to cultivate the right conditions for suitable wildlife, and try to prevent pollution and corruption of the property, either from my own sources or from neighboring sources. If I'm smart, I will also cultivate good relationships with my neighboring landowners, cooperating with them whenever possible and imposing on their good will as little as possible. So, it's a good argument, but the authors didn't really spell it out.

The point about animals not owning land is a little forced. Sure, the lion doesn't exclude deer from his territory. But many (if not most) humans don't exclude deer or other non-harmful animals from their property either. To be sure, there are exceptions -- people go to great lengths to exclude deer, squirrels, insects, dogs, rats and rabbits where these animals are pests because of their tendency to eat ornamental flowers and shrubs, garden produce, and automobile wiring (take my word for it!). Plus some of them dig ugly holes in places where holes aren't needed. So point taken, but it just seems like they are straining a bit to push the human/animal distinction here.

Shipwreck!

2008-08-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

It's a metaphor, see?

A Thoughtful Argument for a Hamburger

2008-08-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

A religious Jew may choose to restrict his diet to vegetables during the week, but come Saturday and most holidays, he is to eat some meat as a religious obligation. The reason for this is that God created a world of hierarchy. Minerals are consumed by a higher life form, namely plants. Animals survive by consuming plants, while the highest life form of all, humans, eat animals. It is interesting to note that those animals permissible to Jews as food are animals that eat only plants. In other words, those animals that violate the hierarchical order, such as wolves and bears, may not be eaten by Jews. Now, for a Jew to attempt to improve on God's definition of morality by refraining from eating any meat on moral grounds is another way of announcing that one is nothing more than an animal oneself. Animals are supposed to eat only plant life. Thus, a Jew who eats only vegetables is announcing himself to be a very good animal. Once each week, God demands of his people that they leave the moral refuge of vegetarianism. We are then forced to confront the reality that an animal died to provide our meal. That places an obligation upon us to be worthy of the sacrifice. Now, for an animal to die for no reason other than to provide meat for another animal is less than ideal. Thus, the plundering animal is regarded as non-kosher, or not fully worthy of being eaten by Jews. However, the Jew who eats meat on a regular basis knows that he must conduct himself in a manner that makes his food's sacrifice morally justified. He is obligated to be a human, not merely another animal.

--pages 22-23.

The Crowded Temple

2008-08-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

How exactly does raising the right kind of people help to solve the problem of too many people? The Talmud relates that during the pilgrimage festivals, the Jerusalem Temple was so crowded that people barely had room to stand. However, during the period of the service that called for worshippers to prostrate themselves upon their knees on the floor, there was mysteriously sufficient room. This is, indeed, a mysterious account since everyone knows that people on their knees require more floor space than people standing erect. During the part of the service when people were on their knees, conditions should have been more, not less, crowded than when the people were standing. The traditional explanation is that standing erect is a metaphor for a condition of arrogant self-absorbtion. Prostration is a metaphor for humility and awareness of others. Finally, the Temple itself is depicted in the Torah as an almost mathematical model of the world. It is not hard to grasp the truth of this message: If a population consists of humble people constantly aware of one another, it never feels crowded. However, is a population finds itself surrounded by even a few arrogant and self-centered individuals, conditions feel overcrowded. Overpopulation is not a question of numbers or objectively measurable figures such as people per square mile. Instead, it is a question of whether people feel oppressed by the overwhelming presence of others. This has more to do with standards of civility and behavior than with actual population numbers. Most of us would feel less pressured and more comfortable on the crowded streets of Hong Kong or Tokyo than we would on a lonely urban alley in New York City. What we really have is not a population problem, but a perception of a population problem -- a problem that results not simply from too many people, but from too many people arrogantly and thoughtlessly impressing their presence upon others. Rather than reducing the number of people, we need to reduce the incidence of selfish behavior that oppresses others and to increase the amount of creative behavior that meets others' needs.

--pages 19-20.

This is a powerfully different way of thinking about overpopulation. Importantly, it might be an argument that would penetrate the thinking of the crowded planet hand wringers in a way those everybody-on-earth-could-live-in-Texas-and-have-plenty-of-room arguments don't.

Full disclosure concerning my own cynicism: the first time I read the part about the crowded temple, I assumed that many of the people who were present for the standing part of the service had just slipped out before the humility-inducing kneeling part began. I had to re-read the passage to realize that's not what was happening!

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!

2008-08-19T18:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get books in the mail that I didn't ask anyone to send me. Some of them are pretty crazy. But this one was really, really good. For years I have lamented the pagan roots of most of the ideas animating the contemporary "environmentalist" juggernaut, but without any real notion of how to combat it effectively. Sure, I have some books about "Christian stewardship" of the environment, and some of them are actually quite good, though sadly unread and unappreciated. But here is a very ecumenical ("Jewish, Catholic and Protestant"!) but still hard-nosed (a tough combination to pull off) collection of essays and position papers on Torah- and Bible-based ways of thinking about the creation and our duty to care for and enhance it. Unfortunately the video that came with it was not nearly as compelling -- it was mostly aimed at conservative evangelical types who are already uncomfortable with environmentalism but don't really know why. A noble purpose, to be sure, but not exactly on the cutting edge of cultural progress.

Perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with Torah-based (as opposed to Bible-based) ways of thinking, I found the Jewish contributions the most enlightening, and I'll have several quotes from them over the next few days.

Herewith, the first, dealing with a Torah-friendly way of thinking about the "problem" of "overpopulation":

Is there a Torah approach to the so-called "population bomb"? Naturally, the proper approach is the balanced middle path. We should not ignore the problem, but neither should we precipitate chaos today in a foolhardy attempt to ward off a distant threat, one whose outlines are still dim and vague. What is this mysterious middle path? To discover it, we need to review our fundamental beliefs about whether a human being really is a consumer or a creator. If man is merely a consumer, then, obviously, the fewer, the better. If, however, man is a creator, then, equally obviously, the more, the merrier. And the answer is not "both." That would settle nothing. What are we asking is whether humans create more than they consume or consume more than they create. The Torah answers its own question: Humans can be either consumers or creators. This is quite a different answer from saying "both."

The Torah-true answer is that we can raise children to be either consumers or creators. If we raise them as if they were young animals, they will grow into animals -- basically consumers who are able to work like horses, but never with the capacity to truly create. In order to achieve that ability in our children, we have to raise them in the image of the ultimate Creator. That means imparting to them a sense of limits, an awareness of what is right and what is wrong. Only animals have finite needs. Humans, touched as they are by the finger of the Infinite Divine, have infinite wants. Children have to be taught that every want will demand a choice and a sacrifice, and that each of us must responsibly steward what we have been given and what we have earned. Children deserve to know that while we relate to and sympathize with their feelings, we do not expect them to follow those feelings unthinkingly. We expect them to follow their head, not their heart. They should grow into the realization that the world is not necessarily a fair place, but that it does have rules. Knowing those rules is better than whining about fairness. Finally, they should know that life judges us by our performance, not our intentions. Children raised to live by these and other similarly true and enduring principles, are a pleasure to be around.

That's enough for today; tomorrow, a striking example of what the author is talking about.

So . . . Don't Save for Retirement?

2008-08-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Bags of cash are heavy. That's why I prefer American Express Travelers Checks when journeying to the Celestial City!

Take That, Worldly Wisdom!

2008-08-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

Well, this one is pretty self explanatory. Unless, of course, you're a designer of airplanes, fuel efficient automobiles, or backpacking equipment, in which case you favor lightweight materials. Also it's worth noting that, unless you're Roman Catholic, no one takes the position that any of that stuff on the right-hand scale is of equal or greater weight than the Bible anyway. Folks may act as if creeds, councils, and confessions are of equal or greater worth than the Bible, but they wouldn't assert it as a contradiction to this engraving.

Note that the Bible is not open. I'm not sure what that means.

Maybe I'm Taking It Out Of Context

2008-08-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

See! one has left the holy way divine,
His clothes are soiled, he wallows now with swine;
Alone, the Pilgrim on his pathway speeds,
And leaves th'apostate to his worldly deeds.

But then again . . . .
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn in Jericho and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
--Jesus, as quoted in Luke 10 (New International Version)

Bigfoot? Really? That's a Little Disappointing

2008-08-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

The cynical review:

So, the big comet heading for Earth that must be blown up with a nuclear device to prevent an extinction level event for all humanity . . . turns out to be AN ALIEN SPACESHIP! Wow, didn't see that one coming. Yawn. And then a funny, intelligent probe from a distant machine civilization comes to check things out but gets chased off by trigger happy military-industrial-Dick- Cheney-how-I-learned-to- stop-worrying-and-love- the-bomb types. And then the super-genius British rocket scientist who gets all the ladies has to supernaturally channel the probe from the distant world that wants to destroy humanity so he can mourn the loss of his woman who succumbed to environmental-damage-induced autoimmune disease and hook up with the Japanese astronaut chick and figure out that the aliens were really here half a million years ago to mess with the genes of . . . BIGFOOT -- YES, BIGFOOT -- to accelerate the evolution of a fellow biological race to fight the machines. So this book is pretty much Armageddon meets Deep Impact meets The Matrix meets Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow meets Bigfoot, with an old Asian guy from Karate Kid thrown in for . . . some reason I wasn't too sure of. So pretty boring overall.

Less cynical, more honest review:

The wasn't a great sci-fi novel, but it was interesting to read as a period piece, published as it was in the early 1970s. An awful lot of bad-to-decent movies have been made out of some of the ideas thrown around in this story. I'm sure some of these ideas weren't original to this novel, but they would have had a lot less currency when Benford was writing, so you have to give credit to him for that. The use of Bigfoot -- YES, BIGFOOT -- as a plot device was unfortunate, but it was the 1970s after all, when my grade school library had books about Bigfoot. I know, because I checked them out. And read them. And believed in Bigfoot. Which is why it was disappointing when I learned sometime within the last couple of years that Bigfoot was a total fake, even that film of the large, hairy creature walking away from the camera (a film that is mentioned in this novel, by the way).

Benford has continued writing in the thirty-odd years since and I think has some pretty good stuff out there; I'm just starting to look into his work. I'll let you know if he got better.

Under the Mountain Sci-Fi Club Rating: ** (out of five)

The Unity of Faith (With Hand Tinting)

2008-08-06T05:53:00.000-07:00

Note the mask of the world still being trampled underfoot by Truth (see previous post). Yes, I know that's so we can identify Truth, just like in the old paintings of saints, but it also reminds me of someone coming out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

The Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth!

2008-08-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

Here we have a portrait of Truth. Make sure you note the oh-so-subtle symbolism, which is helpfully explained by the accompanying poem in case you missed it:

Her right hand holds the faithful mirror clear,
Where all things open as the light appear:
Her left, upon the sacred page reclines,
Where unadulterate truth resplendent shines;

Well, you get the idea. The little thing under her feet might make you think that Truth is a harsh critic of the dramatic arts, but not to worry -- it's just the "world's false mask" that she is "trampl[ing] down with scorn". And that's her temple in the background, "standing forth reflecting in the silvery stream." I hear it has granite countertops and a fantastic media room!

The Word Made Fresh

2008-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of the the nineteenth century. You desperately want to get your religious point across. Your sermons don't seem to be doing the trick, or at least they don't get disseminated far enough in this age before MP3s, blogs, cassette tapes or even a decent sound system. What to do? What to do?

Well, you could put your religious ideas to bad, maudlin poetry and illustrate them with naive allegorical engravings, some hand-colored to be sure no one misses the point. Infuse the whole thing with a good dose of pietistic legalism and you'll have a work that will stand for the ages. Or at least entertain suspicious, cynical types like me 150 years later.

The two colored engravings above are the title page sequence illustrations. I really like the one showing the sinner being rescued from drowning by the angel with the lifeline. It reminds me of the analogy a young woman used to explain Calvinistic predestination to me in college. "You might think of us as drowning in the ocean, and the Holy Spirit is throwing us a life preserver that we have to grab on to," she said. "That's how most American evangelicals think of the gospel -- as a life preserver that gets thrown out and you have to grab on to it and be saved. But really the Bible teaches that sinners are dead spiritually; they aren't treading water about to drown, they are already drowned and sitting on the bottom of the ocean, and the Spirit has to breathe new life into them for them to be able to accept the gospel."

I eventually saw her point theologically, but even she would have to admit that it would be much harder to illustrate the breathing-life-into-the- dead-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-thing than the version I held to at the time.

You Can Take My Gun When You Pry It . . . .

2008-08-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

Every once in a great while, the U.S. Supreme Court gets one right, and spectacularly so. I've been a sometime student of Second Amendment law for about 15 years, so it was nice to see this decision come a few weeks ago after so many years of waiting. It may have been another 5-4 vote, but at least it's finally official -- the Second Amendment protects an INDIVIDUAL'S right to "keep and bear arms" for self defense, not merely members of the National Guard. This is a really big, historically significant event. And Justice Scalia's opinion is so thorough and well reasoned that it's likely to stand as the definitive analysis of the question for decades to come.

It's impossible to do justice to the 64-page majority opinion in a blog post (though the whole think is really worth reading even for those generally unfamiliar with the U.S. court system), but I'll attempt to give at least a brief summary of the main argument:

Pro-gunners: The Second Amendment says the people need to be armed so that the militia, which traditionally included all able-bodied men between 18 and 45, can be called upon to resist tyranny and invasion.

Anti-gunners: No, the Second Amendment protects the collective right of the people to defend itself through the National Guard only. If you're not in the guard, the Second Amendment offers no protection whatsoever for gun owners as such. And in any case, when the Second Amendment was written, "guns" were single-shot muskets; now that the world is so different the Second Amendment is a historical irrelevance.

Pro-gunners: We have all the scholarship and history on our side, but more importantly we have five votes and you only have four. We win!

It's difficult to pick colorful excerpts from constitutional law opinions that don't seem out of context, but Justice Scalia came through for us:

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the Second Amendment was not intended to lay down a "novel principl[e]" but rather codified a right "inherited from our English ancestors," . . . [the anti-gunners'] interpretation does not even achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, . . . if, that is, the organized militia is the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment's guarantee -- it does not assure the existence of a "citizens' militia" as a safeguard against tyranny. For Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia, which must include the authority to say who will belong to the organized force. That is why the first Militia Act's requirement that only whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to exclude free blacks. . . . Thus, if [the anti-gunners] are correct, the Second Amendment protects citizens' right to use a gun in an organization from which Congress has plenary authority to exclude them. It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people's militia that was the concern of the founding generation.

--slip op. at 27.

And so falls the District of Columbia's handgun band at long last.

A Farewell to Bartram Via His Observations on Creek Euthanasia Practices

2008-07-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

Before I went amongst the Indians I had often heard it reported that these people, when their parents, through extreme old age, become decrepid and helpless, in compassion for their miseries, send them to the other world, by a stroke of the tomahawk or bullet. Such a degree of depravity and species of impiety always appeared to me so incredibly inhuman and horrid, it was with the utmost difficulty that I assumed resolution sufficient to enquire into it.

The traders assured me they knew no instance of such barbarism, but that there had been instances of the communities performing such a deed at the earnest request of the victim.

When I was at Mucclasse town, early one morning, at the invitation of the chief trader, we repaired to the public square, taking with us some presents for the Indian chiefs. On our arrival we took out seats in a circle of venerable men, round a fire in the centre of the area; other citizens were continually coming in, and amongst them I was struck with awe and veneration at the appearance of a very aged man; his hair, what little he had, was as white as snow; he was conducted by three young men, one having hold of each arm, and the third behind to steady him. On his approach the whole circle saluted him, “welcome,” and made way for him: he looked as smiling and cheerful as youth, yet stone-blind by extreme old age; he was the most ancient chief of the town, and they all seemed to reverence him. Soon after the old man had seated himself I distributed my presents, giving him a very fine handkerchief and a twist of choice Tobacco; which passed through the hands of an elderly chief who sat next to him, telling him it was a present from one of their white brothers, lately arrived in the nation from Charleston: he received the present with a smile, and thanked me, returning the favour immediately with his own stone pipe and cat skin of Tobacco, and then complimented me with a long oration, the purport of which was the value he set on the friendship of the Carolinians: he said, that when he was a young man they had no iron hatchets, pots, hoes, knives, razors nor guns, but that they then made use of their own stone axes, clay pots, flint knives, bows and arrows; and that he was the first man who brought the white peoples goods into his town, which he did on his back from Charleston, five hundred miles on foot, for they had no horses then amongst them.

The trader then related to me an anecdote concerning this ancient patriarch, which occurred not long since.

One morning after his attendants had led him to the council fire, before seating himself he addressed himself to the people after this manner –

“You yet love me; what can I do now to merit your regard? Nothing; I am good for nothing; I cannot see to shoot the buck or hunt up the sturdy bear; I know I am but a burthen to you; I have lived long enough; now let my spirit go; I want to see the warriors of my youth in the country of spirits; (bareing his breast) here is the hatchet; take it and strike.” They answered with one united voice, “We will not; we cannot; we want you here.”

--pages 119-120.

The Creeks’ Religious Beliefs

2008-07-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

In the first paragraph they sound like most 21st century Americans . . . .

These Indians are by no means idolaters, unless their puffing the Tobacco smoke towards the sun, and rejoicing at the appearance of the new moon*, may be termed so, so far from idolatry are they, that they have no images amongst them, nor any religious rite or ceremony that I could perceive; but adore the Great Spirit, the giver and taker away of the breath of life, with the most profound and respectful homage. They believe in a future state, where the spirit exists, which they call the world of spirits, where they enjoy different degrees of tranquility or comforts, agreeable to their life spent here: a person who in this life has been an industrious hunter, provided well for his family, an intrepid and active warrior, just, upright, and done all the good he could, will, they say, in the world of spirits, live in a warm, pleasant country, where are expansive, green, flowery savannas and high forests, watered with rivers of pure waters, replenished with deer, and every species of game; a serene, unclouded and peaceful sky; in short, where there is fullness of pleasure, uninterrupted.

They have many accounts of trances and visions of their people, who have been supposed to be dead, but afterwards reviving have related their visions, which tend to enforce the practice of virtue and the moral duties.

--page 119

*[Bartram’s footnote (which must have been too risqué to include directly in the text!):] “I have observed the young fellows very merry and jocose, at the appearance of the new moon, saying, how ashamed she looks under the veil, since sleeping with the sun these two or three nights, she is ashamed to shew her face, &c.”

A Sabbath Rest

2008-07-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

In the Creek village of Attasi, near Tallassee, Alabama, on the Tallapoosa River in far south Alabama, Mr. Bartram encounters an unexpected Sunday custom:

On the Sabbath day before I set off from this place, I could not help observing the solemnity of the town, the silence and the retiredness of the red inhabitants, but a very few of them were to be seen, the doors of their dwellings shut, and if a child changed to stray out, it was quickly drawn in doors again: I asked the meaning of this, and was immediately answered, that it being the white people's beloved day or Sabbath, the Indians kept it religiously sacred to the Great Spirit.

--page 106.

But Then The Other Moccasin Drops

2008-07-26T14:09:00.001-07:00

From my last post, one might get the wrong impression about the native peoples of our fair Southeast. The Seminoles may have partied hard in northwest Florida, but the Creeks (a/k/a "Muscogulges"), who lived in Alabama, took a decidedly different view of "spiritous liquors":

The Muscogulges, with their confederates, the Chactaws, Chicasaws, and perhaps the Cherokees, eminently deserve the encomium of all nations, for their wisdom and virtue in resisting and even repeling the greatest, and even the common enemy of mankind, at least of most of the Eurpoean nations, I mean spiritous liquors.

The first and most cogent article in all their treaties with the white people, is that there shall not be any kind of spiritous liquors sold or brought into their towns; and the traders are allowed but two kegs (five gallons each) which is supposed to be sufficient for a company, to serve them on the road, and if any of this remains on their approaching the towns, they must spill it on the ground or secrete it on the road, for it must not come into the town.

On my journey from Mobile to the Nation, just after we had passed the junction of the Pensacola road with our path, two young traders overtook us on their way to the Nation. We enquired what news? They informed us that they were running about forty kegs of Jamaica spirits (which by dashing would have made at least eighty kegs) to the Nation; and after having left the town three or four days, they were surprised on the road in the evening, just after they had come to camp, by a party of Creeks, who discovering their species of merchandize, they forthwith struck their tomahawks into every keg, giving the liquor to the thirsty sand, not tasting a drop of it themselves, and they had enough to do to keep the tomahawks from their own skulls.

--page 116.

So it's not just fundamentalist Christianity after all that makes it hard to buy good liquor and impossible to buy high-alcohol beer in Alabama; it turns out that temperance just runs in the Alabama soil!

Party Time in Northwest Florida, "Indian Style"

2008-07-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Maybe THIS explains why Florida State picked the Seminoles for their mascot . . . .

At the trading-house I found a very large party of the Lower Creeks encamped in a grove, just without the pallisadoes; this was a predatory band of the Siminoles, consisting of about forty warriors destined against the Chactaws of West Florida. They had just arrived here from St. Augustine, where they had been with a large troop of horses for sale, and furnished themselves with a very liberal supply of spiritous liquors, about twenty kegs, each containing five gallons.

These sons of Mars had the continence and fortitude to withstand the temptation of even tasting a drop of it until their arrival here, where they purposed to supply themselves with necessary articles to equip them for the expedition, and proceed on directly; but here meeting with our young traders and pack-horse men, they were soon prevailed on to broach their beloved nectar; which in the end caused some disturbance, and the consumption of most of their liquor, for after they had once got a smack of it, they never were sober for ten days, and by that time there was but little left.

In a few days this festival exhibited one of the most ludicrous bachanalian scenes that is possible to be conceived, white and red men and women without distinction, passed the day merrily with these jovial, amorous topers, and the nights in convivial songs, dances and sacrifices to Venus, as long as they could stand or move; for in these frolicks both sexes take those liberties with each other, and act, without constraint or shame, such scenes as they would abhor when sober or in their senses; and would endanger their ears and even their lives; but at last their liquor running low, and being most of them sick through intoxication, they became more sober, and now the dejected lifeless sots would pawn every thing they were in possession of, for a mouthful of spirits to settle their stomachs, as they termed it. This was the time for the wenches to make their market, as they had the fortitude and subtilty by dissimulation and artifice to save their share of the liquor during the frolick, and that by a very singular stratagem, for, at these riots, every fellow who joins in the club, has his own quart bottle of rum in his hand, holding it by the neck so sure that he never looses hold or it day or night, drunk or sober, as long as the frolick continues, and with this, his beloved friend, he roves about continually, singing, roaring and reeling to and fro, either alone or arm in arm with a brother toper, presenting his bottle to every one, offering a drink, and is sure to meet his beloved female if he can, whom he complaisantly begs to drink with him, but the modest fair, veiling her face in a mantle, refuses (at the beginning of the frolick) but he presses and at last insists; she being furnished with an empty bottle, concealed in her mantle, at last consents, and taking a good long draught, blushes, drops her pretty face on her bosom and artfully discharges the rum into her bottle, and by repeating this artifice soon fills it; this she privately conveys to her secret store, and then returns to the jovial game, and so on during the festival; and when the comic farce is over, the wench retails this precious cordial to them at her own price.

--pages 65-66.

A Fishing Excursion for Trout with the Bob

2008-07-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Wherein Mr. Bartram shares a great fishing story from over two hundred years ago:

Towards the evening after the sultry heats were past, a young man of our company, having previously procured the loan of a canoe from an Indian, proposed to me a fishing excursion for trout with the bob. We sat off down the river, and before we had passed two miles caught enough for our hous[e]hold: he was an excellent hand at this kind of diversion; some of the fish were so large and strong in their element, as to shake his arms stoutly and dragged us with the canoe over the floods before we got them in. It is in the eddy coves, under the points and turnings of the river, where the surface of the waters for some acres is covered with the leaves of the Nymphea, Pistia and other amphibious herbs and grass, where the haunts and retreats of this famous fish are, as well as others of various tribes.

Observing a fishing canoe of Indians turning a point below and coming towards us, who hailing us, we waited their coming up; they were cheerful merry fellows, and insisted on our accepting of part of their fish, they having a greater quantity and variety, especially of the bream my favourite fish; we exchanged some of our trout with them.

--page 61

Crossing A River

2008-07-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

It was tougher going from place to place in the old days. I can only imagine having to build my own raft -- I'm pretty sure I'd lose everything in the river. The bit about the Loyalists is a nice historical touch.

A few days before we arrived at the Nation we met a company of emigrants from Georgia; a man, his wife, a young woman, several young children and three stout young men, with about a dozen horses loaded with their property. They informed us their design was the settle on the Alabama a few miles above the confluence of the Tombigbe. [The editors' footnotes indicate that these were in all likelihood Loyalists fleeing the Revolution in the east.]

Being now near the Nation, the chief trader with another of our company sat off a-head for his town, to give notice to the Nation, as he said, of his approach with the merchandize, each of them taking the best horse they could pick out of the gang, leaving the goods to the conduct and care of the young Mustee and myself. Early in the evening we came to the banks of a large deep creek, a considerable branch of the Alabama: the waters ran furiously, being overcharged with the floods of rain which had fallen the day before. We discovered immediately that there was no possibility of crossing it by fording; its depth and rapidity would have swept our horses, loads and all, instantly from our sight; my companion, after consideration, said we must make a raft to ferry over our goods, which we immediately set about, after unloading our horses and turning them out to range. I undertook to collect dry Canes, and my companion dry timber or logs and vines to bind them together: having gathered the necessary materials, and laid them in order on the brink of the river, ready to work upon, we betook ourselves to repose, and early next morning set about building our raft. This was a novel scene to me, and I could not, until finished and put to practice, well comprehend how it could possibly answer the effect desired. In the first place we laid, parallel to each other, dry, sound trunks of trees, about nine feet in length, and eight or nine inches diameter, which binding fast together with Grape vines and withs, until we had formed this first floor, about twelve or fourteen feet in length, then binding the dry Canes in bundles, each near as thick as a man's body, with which we formed the upper stratum, laying them close by the side of each other and binding them fast; after this manner our raft was constructed: then having two strong Grape vines, each long enough to cross the river, we fastened one to each end of the raft, which now being completed, and loading on as much as it would safely carry, the Indian took one of the ends of the vines in his mouth, plunged into the river and swam over with it, and the vine fixed to the other end was committed to my charge, to steady the raft and haul it back again after being unloaded; as soon as he had safe landed and hauled tight his vine, I pushed off the raft, which he drew over as quick as possible, I steadying it with my vine: in this manner, though with inexpressible danger of losing our efforts, we ferried all safe over: the last load, with other articles, contained my property, with all my clothes, which I stripped off, except my breeches, for they contained matters of more value and consequence than all the rest of my property put together; besides, I did not choose to expose myself entirely naked to the alligators and serpents when crossing the flood. Now seeing all of the goods safe over, and the horses at a landing place on the bank of the river about fifty yards above, I drove them all in together, when, seeing them safe landed, I plunged in after them, and being a tollerable swimmer, soon reached the opposite shore; but my difficulties at this place were not yet at an end, for our horses all landing just below the mouth of a considerable branch of this river, of fifteen or twenty feet width, and its perpendicular banks almost as many feet in height above its swift waters, over which we were obliged to carry every article of our effects, and this by no other bridge than a sapling fell across it, which is called a raccoon bridge, and over this my Indian friend would trip as quick and light as that quadruped, with one hundred weight of leather on his back, when I was scarcely able to shuffle myself along over it astride. At last having re-packed and sat off again, without any material occurrence intervening; in the evening we arrived at the banks of the great Tallapoose river, and came to camp under shelter of some Indian cabins, in expansive fields, close to the river bank, opposite the town of Savannuca. Late in the evening a young white man, in great haste and seeming confusion, joined our camp, who immediately related, that being on his journey from Pensacola, it happened that the very night after we had passed the company of emigrants, he met them and joined their camp in the evening, when, just at dark, the Chactaws surrounded them, plundered their camp, and carried all the people off captive, except himself, he having the good fortune to escape with his horse, though closely pursued.

pages 99-100.

The Tale of the Unhappy Trader

2008-07-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

On our arrival at the upper store, we found it occupied by a white trader, who had for a companion, a very handsome Siminole young woman. Her father, who was a prince, by the name of the White Captain, was an old chief of the Siminoles, and with part of his family, to the number of ten or twelve, were encamped in an Orange grove near the stores, having lately come in from a hunt.

[The white trader] is at this time, unhappy in his connections with his beautiful savage. It is but a few years since he came here, I think from North Carolina, a stout genteel well-bred man, active, and of a heroic and amiable disposition, and by his industry, honesty, and engaging manners, had gained the affections of the Indians, and soon made a little fortune by traffic with the Siminoles: when, unfortunately, meeting with this little charmer, they were married in the Indian manner. He loves her sincerely, as she possesses every perfection in her person to render a man happy. Her features are beautiful, and manners engaging. Innocence, modesty, and love, appear to a stranger in every action and movement; and these powerful graces she has so artfully played upon her beguiled and vanquished lover, and unhappy slave, as to have already drained him of all his possessions, which she dishonestly distributes amongst her savage relations. He is now poor, emaciated, and half distracted, often threatening to shoot her, and afterwards put an end to his own life; yet he has not resolution even to leave her; but now endeavors to drown and forget his sorrows, in deep draughts of brandy. Her father condemns her dishonest and cruel conduct.

These particulars were related to me by my old friend the trader [not the white trader in question, it would seem], directly after a long conference which he had with the White Captain on the subject, his son in law being present. The scene was affecting; they both shed tears plentifully. My reasons for mentioning this affair, so foreign to my business, was to exhibit an instance of the power of beauty in a savage, and their art and finesse in improving it to their private ends. It is, however, but doing justice to the virtue and moral conduct of the Siminoles, and American Aborigines in general, to observe, that the character of this woman is condemned and detested by her own people, of both sexes; and if her husband should turn her away, according to the customs and usages of these people, she would not get a husband again, as a divorce seldom takes place but in consequence of a deliberate impartial trial, and public condemnation, and then she would be looked upon as a harlot.

Such is the virtue of these u[n]tutored savages: but I am afraid this is a common phrase epithet, having no meaning, or at least improperly applied; for these people are both well tutored and civil; and it is apparent to an impartial observer, who resides but a little time amongst them, that it is from the most delicate sense of the honour and reputation of their tribes and families, that their laws and customs receive their force and energy. This is the divine principle which influences their moral conduct, and solely preserves their constitution and civil government in that purity in which they are found to prevail amongst them.

pages 46-47.

I Wonder If He Dropped in at the Florabama?

2008-07-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

Between 1773 and 1776, a Quaker named William Bartram traveled by boat, horseback and foot through Georgia and what was then East Florida (now just Florida) and West Florida (now part Florida and part Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana). His sponsor, Dr. John Fothergill, commissioned him to take the journey to draw (Bartram was a talented artist) and take samples of the plant life of this relatively unexplored -- or at least undocumented -- part of North America. But like Alexis de Toqueville, whose commission was merely to inspect American prisons to get ideas for improving French prisons, Bartram didn't allow his sponsor's limited designs to curtail his human and scientific interest in all the unusual things he saw on his journey, not the least of which was the native Americans (a/k/a "savages") that were the predominant population in the area at the time.

Bartram is read fondly today for his detailed observations of nature, his beautiful drawings, and his enlightened-for-the-time attitude toward the "indigenous peoples". I appreciated the humanizing effect his account has on these people so many years later. I've spent a fair amount of time in the areas Bartram traveled, and reading about what went on here and who lived here so long ago is a lot like reading about exploration of an alien culture on an alien planet. The times they have certainly changed.

The book pictured isn't Bartram's entire work, to which he assigned the wonderfully eighteenth century title "Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogules, or Creek Confederacy, and the County of the Chactaws; Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Production of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians." Instead it is an edited compilation of selections from that work and some other Bartram writings on the Southeastern Indians with an extended background introduction and footnotes. So if you're looking for the plant stuff, you'll have to find a different edition!

The guy on the cover is the "Long Warrior", who was the "Mico-chlucco" [literally "big ruler"], the "King of the Muscogulges or Cricks [i.e., Creek Indians]". He lived in north central Florida.

An Answer for Darren's Professor, 17 Years Later

2008-07-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

In a 1991 telephone conversation, my friend Darren, parroting one of his college professors, pointed to Mr. Buckley as an example of someone who had created his own identity by adopting a British accent even though he was "as American as we are" (and that's pretty darn American, lest you wonder). I hadn't been reading Buckley long and wasn't sure what to make of Darren's professor's judgment in this regard. If it was an act, it was certainly a good one deserving of applause and the purchase of a magazine subscription ("if you don't like it, you can buurrn your back issues!" said Mr. Buckley in the television commercials for National Review of that period). Over the years, I gathered that Mr. Buckley's accent wasn't exactly a put-on, he and his family having lived in several different countries in his youth. But I'd forgotten about that conversation with Darren until I read the definitive explanation for the mysterious accent in this book:

September 15, 1989

Mr. James Fallows
Boston, Mass.

Dear Mr. Fallows:

The Best of Business Quarterly for Summer 1989 quotes you as follows: "Americans acquire the patina of old money by pretending that they are Englishmen. William F. Buckley, Jr., has basically the same lineage as, say, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was descended from rural Texas politicians, and so is Buckley, whose grandfather was a sheriff in south Texas. But instead of wearing a cowboy hat and leisure suit, like Johnson, Buckley made himself sound as if he were a tenth-generation Old Etonian. In a sense, he is the classic American, since he has completely invented a new identity for himself."

You should know that the invention of myself as a tenth-generation Old Etonian required a great deal of planning. I (and my four younger siblings) spoke only Spanish at home (my parents had lived in Mexico after they were married). At age 3, I went to my first school -- in Paris, where the language is French, even among the nouveaux. I was exposed to English for the first time in London, at age five, when I was enrolled in the Blessed Sir Thomas More School. From there I went to New England and, at age 12, back to England to a boarding school (St. Johns, Beaumont, six miles from Eton) (by the way, if you think I speak with an Eton accent, you don't know an Eton accent); then to boarding school in the Hudson Valley. During this period I visited Texas twice, once for three days, once for two days. But then the affinity between Lyndon Johnson and my grandfather was certainly strong: although my grandfather died in 1904, he voted for Johnson in 1948.

Having quoted you on the subject, I do hope you know more about the production of F-16s than you do about the production of Buckleys. If not, you should write about other things.

Yours truly,

Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.

--page 199. Darren, your professor stands corrected along with Mr. Fallows.

Dateline 1980: Buckley Renegs on Vassar College Commencement Address

2008-07-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

In the Spring of 1980, Mr. Buckley had accepted an invitation to speak at the Vassar College commencement exercises in May of that year. After his acceptance the students began agitating against him, culminating in 53% of the class opposing his appearance according to the student newspaper. "Spring at Vassar is traditionally lively," the university president explained.

Here's an excerpt from Buckley's response:

I decline the invitation to participate in Vassar's Commencement exercises.

You stressed the point, in your open letter to the student body of April 21, that you had invited me pursuant to established procedures for selecting a Commencement speaker. I do not doubt that you did, but there is no gainsaying, notwithstanding that your invitation was issued in the name of the senior class, that a numerical majority of that same class have recorded their opposition to my speaking at Commencement.

Moreover, I tend to agree that Commencement speakers are an integral part of the ceremony, broadly viewed; and although Commencement speakers cannot reasonably be expected to incarnate the institution at which they speak (unless they are Douglas MacArthur, addressing West Point), their physical presence should not ordinarily be offensive to the majority of the graduating class: indeed, it is for this reason that most colleges consult the senior class on the matter of a Commencement speaker.

The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company, and I must confess, having read specimens of their thoughts and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar. Really, they appear to be a fearfully ill-instructed body, to judge from the dismayingly uninformed opinions expressed in their newspaper, which opinions reflect an academic and cultural training very nearly unique -- at least, in my experience. I have spoken, I suppose, at five hundred colleges and universities in the past thirty years, and nowhere have I encountered that blend of ferocious illiteracy achieved by the young men and women of Vassar who say they speak for the majority of the graduating class and, to some extent, say so plausibly by adducing the signatures of the majority of that class in their recall petition. One professor of English writes to the newspaper, "It was Buckley who offered pridefully in those days the caste of mind and insinuating attitudes toward academics which intellectually veneered the crudities of Joe McCarthy, and in so doing, fueled 'McCarthyism' at its most virulent pitch with respect to the academic community." That the man who composed that sentence should be teaching English at Vassar rather than studying it suggests that Vassar has much, much deeper problems than coming up with a suitable Commencement speaker.

pp. 137-38.