Dream Tree

Arts Fact -- Biggest US Customer for Musical Instruments

2009-10-26T16:40:24Z

The following arts fact blew me away. I woulda said high school marching bands. But NEA Director Rocco Landesman says:

“The Department of Defense is the single biggest purchaser of musical instruments in this country.”

This means something. Something about military ritual and public relations. It can't be all Taps. But it seems to me that Americans at large know very little about military culture these days. And that's not a good thing -- it takes us out of sympathy, out of the equation.

Which isn't to say that small town American is ignoring its men and women in service. We are celebrating them, and rightfully so. But military culture is an enigma for non-military families. And the band plays on.

_________________________________________________

source: musicalamerica.com 10/23/09 Susan Elliott "Reviving the NEA: A Chat with the New Chair"

Changlish Fortunes

2009-08-19T21:08:00Z

I've always longed to get one of those charming fortunes uttered in Changlish tucked in one of my cookies. Finally, today, the good thing has come:

Action is louder than talks.

And just in case this approximation has wiped the idiomatic source from mind, the conventional phrase is "Actions speak louder than words."

But I like the Changlish better. The old made new again. Rice wine in a green glass coke bottle.

I'm sure the word Changlish exists already, btw -- but for the moment, it's an invention inspired by the Japanglish / Janglish / Engrish phenom, which I think should be a celebration of cross-cultural exchange rather than a cry against the degradation of a "pure" tongue -- the value of language is always, for me, in its use and play.

Odd Michael Jackson Funereal Facts

2009-07-08T00:41:10Z

I've resisted knowing anything about Michael Jackson's final hours, death, will, or memorial service. He was a troubled entertainer, a man of great gifts and equal troubles. I wish his family well. But, I don't believe his life's work was important enough to merit the attention he's being given, which rivals, and may ultimately exceed, Princess Diana's. She is a less troubling icon for the age, at any rate. And yet, I have not been able to escape knowing something, and as usual, it's the odd bits that stick to my brain pan. Speaking of which...

Michael Jackson's body has been buried without a brain. The brain has been retained in order to "harden" for chemical testing. Thanks to the Guardian for this.

Michael Jackson's coffin is the same style and make as James Brown's -- gold-plated solid bronze with blue velvet lining. It's the Promethean from the Batesville Casket Company. And thanks to Hollywood Grind for this.

Looking to invest $25K? Here are the Promethan's details (source):

PROMETHEAN By Batesville Custom Products

Z94-665-LH
Bronze/Custom Interior
Blue Onyx Velultra Velvet
(also available in white, red, and green)
48oz. Polished/Monoseal

Z94 Promethean Bronze/Custom Interior
48 Oz. Polished Bronze/Monoseal

FEATURES:

Semi-Precious Metal, Naturally Resistant to Rust and Corrosion

Interior Chemically Protected Against Rust and Corrosion

Batesville's 4 Point Protection Package

Locking mechanism plus a one piece rubber gasket to completely seal the top

Continuous weld to completely seal the bottom

Each casket factory tested for resistance to entry of outside elements

Fully insured warranty

Round Corner Design

Hand Polished Mirror Finish

14-Karat Gold Plated Hardware

Safety Seal, Swing Bar Hardware

Adjustable Bed and Mattress

Unique Family Memorial Portfolio

Memorial Record System

Living Memorial Program

Batesville Casket, btw, sells a variety of high-end coffins, including the Dimensions series, which is the big and tall version. Here's their line of basic bronze, prior to the gold.

It is strange to me that we still create such odd closed beds in which our loved ones are to find their final (and permanent) rest. It's such an outdated concept for a secular society, and, in my imagination, cold and lonely. I'm much more in favor of green burials -- they make more sense. I got my first good introduction to the concept in Stiff. Now if we could equal their consoling power, we would have something. Thanatopsis, anyone?

When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings,
The powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man!

--William Cullen Bryant (ll. 8-45)

gothic bat lamps: reproductions from Rejuvenation

2009-05-20T23:04:03Z

Rejuvenation, a high-end home fixtures reproduction house, makes two bat lamps that are to die for (cue Romanian accent). Goth meets art nouveau beautifully in these pieces, which, alas, most of us can't afford.

The Sunset

The Drake

source

Shift Happens

2009-02-14T22:20:30Z

Last week, this short film on the exponential growth of information technology concurrent with the rise in global creativity and industry (and waning of European and American influence) made the rounds: Shift Happens by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman. It drew strong reactions from everyone.

Shift Happens on YouTube

Garlick and Dandelions

2009-01-23T16:39:54Z

In Trollope's political novel Phineas Redux (1874), a once idealistic young parliamentarian expresses his hard-won cynicism thus:

Lady Laura: "I understand. I know that you have meant to be honest, while this man has always meant to be dishonest. I know that you have intended to serve your country, and have wished to work for it. But you cannot expect that it should all be roses."

Phineas: "Roses! The nosegays which are worn down at Westminster are made of garlick and dandelions!"

Oh Tenenbaum, More Ancient Than We Knew

2008-12-22T18:35:32Z

Most of us know that our Christmas rituals, including the Christmas Tree, date back to the Victorian period, but are rooted in pagan rites and rituals. The ancient complement to this cultural leap back in time is the Ancient Bristlecone Pine. This is not your parking-lot tenenbaum.

The Ancient Bristlecone Pines are arguably the oldest living things on earth. We have discovered several stands of them in the Western United States, most famously in the White Mountains of California, just North of Death Valley. There these silent witnesses to natural history grown amdist outcroppings of dolomite in near waterless conditions, with temperatures that range from temperate to subzero, at or below the usual tree line. Harsh winds blow off what little snow provides their drink, and lightning storms frequently light the ridges where they grow. Yet they have endured, these individual wonders, for over four thousand, nearly five thousand, years. The eldest, Methuselah, is located somewhere in this range, but its location is a closely guarded secret. (How do we know their age? Dendrochronology, of course -- counting the growth rings.)

Image Source: Some are Boojums
click to enlarge

The best site on the web for learning more about these ancient wonders is Leonard Miller's Ancient Bristlecone Pine. The wiki gives this wisdom to account for the incredible longevity of this species:

"The wood is very dense and resinous, and thus resistant to invasion by insects, fungi, and other potential pests. As the tree ages, much of its vascular cambium layer may die. In very old specimens, often only a narrow strip of living tissue connects the roots to a handful of live branches."

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine may not glitter like a Star of Bethlehem or endure like the myth of resurrection, but they carry with them this wisdom: that which endures, abides. Being matters.

Vote for Art: Have an Art Attack

2008-09-25T17:10:58Z

A local group of Artists and Art Lovers--Fireswallow--is staging "art attacks" across our college town, such as sending a fella out at night dressed in an LED lit suit (dubbed Particle Man) to pass out glowing art cards. They are for imbuing daily life with art, taking it out of the galleries and into our homes, yards, and public spaces. A life of the mind, spirit, and heart is what they are about. And they are doing something about it -- finding ingenious ways to get noticed, get coverage, and get art awareness up. We can all join in this cause, just by spreading art awareness and giving art support as we go. They've asked us to spread the banner, spread the word.

Twike Sighting

2008-09-24T14:58:23Z

The far-off dream house my husband and I often discuss has many architectural and artistic dimensions, but they all share in common that the house is a green one. We love the idea of low-impact and self-sustaining domestic environments. We are also discussing our next car, which we plan to make a hybrid or electric, if that is practical. This is why a recent encounter with a Twike caught our eye, even if it's out of our price range. The car looks like a toy, but moves like a car, and seems to have both style and the regular ammenities. I'm not so certain how well it would do in a crash, and its storage capacity seems questionable, but as a quick-slip vehicle of choice, its charm and environmental friendliness are without a doubt.

Planet Century 19: The Meta-Blog

2008-09-20T17:00:36Z

With the help of my gifted computer scientist husband, Duane, I recently founded a nineteenth-century studies meta-blog site: Planet Century 19. The site presents the regularly updated entries of a selected number of blogs that cover nineteenth century matters with intellectual substance and interest. Readers can easily scroll through what's current. I am always looking for good new content to add, and encourage everyone with an interest in the area to follow the news and recommend favorites of their own.

Planet Century 19

Wearable Art: FunckLoveDesigns

2008-09-20T16:54:12Z

Etsy has provided many artists with a home for selling their wares -- more power to the site. Recently, quite by chance, I discovered an artist shop there that j'adore, Funck Love Designs. FLD creates the collage jewelry with which many lovers of the paper arts are familiar, and no doubt wearing. FLD's themes appeal to lovers of literature and the arts, with their vintage museum spin on all things from Shakespeare to Kalo. I predict a self given present in my future :).

Goya Witches on Broomstick

Blake Songs of Innocence

King A Spray of Wild Hemlock

Mottoes

2008-06-23T18:35:32Z

Today's decorative words and mottoes tend to be blandly sentimental. No doubt those who buy them -- and I have -- tend to invest them with their own meaning: Dream. Love. Follow your heart. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams (Eleanor Roosevelt).

At various times historically, mottoes have figured as devotional, familial, national / regional / civic, organizational, and personal emblems, as powerful to those who held them in their dress or home as any graphic representation of belief: the cross or herald's mark.

We find them in the medieval favor, saint's medal, and shield; the Renaissance poesy ring. The Arts and Crafts Movement of the Nineteenth Century adored mottoes, and gave them something of a revival (William Morris made motto tiles, for instance, and mottoes were commonly carved above mantlepieces). Nineteenth century authors loved a good epigraph at the start of a chapter, too. Words that condensed, that codified, a moral or emotional state, or that richly served a thought worthy of rememberance, ponderance, and even devotion.

Charles Voysey, above and below; images' source: Daryl Bennett and David Pickle's Arts and Crafts Movement site

I have long had personal mottoes, to which I add from time to time. And it's worthwhile thinking of your own. These serve as guiding lights -- stars in the dark. They don't have to be especially fancy, or in Latin, or even said by someone famous. You just have to own them and return to them, like mental touchstones.

Here are some of mine then:

leave the world a better place (than you found it)

ad astra per aspera: to the stars by hard ways

strength is not the same as anger (The English Beat)

speak truth to power (Quakers)

the pen is mightier (than the sword)

work is love made visible (Kahil Gibran)

sapere aude: dare to know (The Enlightenment)

kellysearsmith @ 2008-04-14T07:02:00

2008-04-14T12:11:12Z

There's something wonderfully trangressive about transforming a utilitarian object, like a pail or a mirror, through art. There's the surprise of the sequined shoe; the glory of the art car and the concept car both; and then, too, as I'll demonstrate here, the lean beauty of the custom or art knife. Even in this age of high tech mass production, or perhaps because of it, the art of the smith continues, organized by guilds and transmitted by masters. For the custom knife community, magazines and conventions, websites and organizations bind together the few who make custom knife work their hobby, their profession, and for some, their obvious obsession and passion.

There are as many styles of art knife as there are types of knives. Pure ethnic, hunter (or rustic), and military styles I don't feature here, because, for the most part, they are about authenticity to a cultural tradition (a type of utility, but more sociological and psychological) or a functional utilitarian end that evokes a masculine culture that just doesn't interest me. Despite my love of the fantastic in the arts, I also pass over pure fantasy blades -- they are too over the top to suit my aesthetic tastes.

The knife smiths and studios that I feature here work in these styles, but have also created pieces that strike a fine balance between the cutting essence of the knife and its realization as something for the gaze, much beyond any practical end. In that sense, these are truly interstitial works of art.

[Rick] Dunkerley Handmade Knifes

for more, follow the link

William Henry Studio

Warren Osborn Custom Knifemaker

John M. Cohea Knives

[Jerry] Corbitt Custom Knives

[Stephen] Olszewski Knives

Merlin's Knives [Don Hall]

Recipe for Life: Just a Few Conditions Short of Primordial Soup

2008-03-19T23:35:16Z

For years, science fiction narratives have duked it out over whether life forms elsewhere will be carbon-based, as we are, or something else -- say, silicone based. Who can forget Star Trek Next Generation Episode 17, "Home Soil," in which the intelligent sand aggregrate refers to our type of life as "ugly bags of mostly water"?

Today, we may be closer to an answer -- we have found our very first evidence of carbon on a planet outside our Solar System. Does that mean when we find alien life (at least life we recognize) it will be carbon-based? Hard to say, but the evidence of planetary carbon is tantalizing.

According to the BBC's science reporter, Helen Briggs, reporting a study published in Nature, methane (an organic--and so inherently carbon-based--compound) has been found in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star that is approximately 63 light years from earth. The find was made by Dr. Giovanna Tinetti and co-authors Mark Swain and Gautam Vasisht from NASA's JPL (Pasadena CA) using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Why does methane matter? Briggs writes, "Under certain circumstances, methane can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry - the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life."

To date scientists have confirmed the existence of 270 planets orbiting stars other than Sol, our own. This most recent study also found water vapor in the planet's atmosphere, but scientists say they believe it is too hot to support life. Ah, but if not there, then where? and when?

source: BBC GCSE Science page on Atomic Structure and Bonding

Working the (Graduate) Program: Shootings at NIU

2008-02-15T22:57:02Z

I am saddened today by the shootings at NIU, shootings we now know were done by a former graduate student there (27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak) who had since moved here, where I adjunct and work (at the same university, btw, from which I received my doctorate) -- to our School of Social Work. I didn't know him, and I hope I don't know anyone exactly like him, but I understand the emotional pressure of graduate school, and I've seen many gifted minds crack under the strain. So I write this post to explain to others, who puzzle over why a bright young man with a bright future, in this case a successful student, might find working the graduate program too much. Which is not to say that graduate school pressures alone turn the trick. Those commentators who have already theorized about the American post-Baby Boom generational tendency to externalize blame, refuse personal responsibility, and turn to gun violence in extremes of emotion are not off the mark as to why such pressure might lead to what was historically an unthinkable result.

"By all accounts Kazmierczak was a good student. Serving as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association and a teaching aid as an undergraduate. In 2006 he received a Dean's Award from the sociology department." [ABC News]

Graduate school is more of an emotional than an intellectual challenge, in my experience. It's about incredibly long hours, with little direct reward and no certainty of a place in the field. Grad students are poor, live poorly, and are low on the totem pole within department life. The value judgments of professors and, later, hiring faculty can sting deeply -- they can pierce the soul. And they hit right where the graduate student is most vulnerable, at the self-esteem that is so often mainly if not entirely based on intellect and a forming identity within a professional field. There can be a terrible loneliness too, for some -- away from home, matched or mismatched with other grads, some of whom find little time to socialize or make little time for themselves. Even when resting, many graduate students feel they are wasting time -- they could always be working harder, smarter -- getting ahead, finding an edge. And now for a more personal observation: The myth in popular culture is that book-learned people are often impractical, unable to make it in the real world. Not so much in my experience. But very smart people tend to overthink things -- they're often neurotic and unhappy. Their constant worry over the judgments of others (since their work products tend to be intellectual and conceptual rather than concrete and material) doesn't help.

Students who come to graduate study with strong family support and / or a positive sense of self weather these slings and arrows better than others (Steven's mother father had moved to Florida in 2004, where she passed away). For the rest, it's a constant struggle not to feel a fraud, soon to be discovered. And for many, this feeling lasts well into junior faculty years. I think the feeling is especially hard on students in fields that society at large does not necessarily applaud, those of basic science or social sciences or literature or the arts. Not only are they suspect, but their field is suspect -- of what value is it, aside from that they like it and are good at it? This lack of value is reflected back to them by undergraduate students who carry with them a social bias against learning for learning's sake and a desire to get to the real business of life, what they and others call "the real world." Those who can do, and those who can't...teach. It's also communicated through scarcity of funding opportunities -- summers without support, and having to teach (sometimes long hours) rather than research for pay.

It's not that I blame the faculty, not at all. The critical assessment of students in professional training for the doctorate is especially important. Faculty must have rigorous standards, both of the person and their demonstrated ability in the field, and most take their role not only as judges but mentors very seriously. And yet, the competitive job market, which has led about 50% of English Ph.D.s to die on the vine and go outside the professoriate for positions, means that only the most productive and polished have a shot at a position, let alone the plum positions that precocious youth dream of. And this means a drive to earlier demonstrations of professional accomplishment, and deeper and earlier feelings of worthlessness and self-recrimination. If the competition between school girls for differentiation and outside value too often results in anorexia and bulimia these days, the same amongst graduate students can lead to equally dysfunctional behavior.

We don't speak of the nervous breakdown -- we try not to stigmatize those already on shaky ground, but we can all tell who's losing it. The brilliant poetry specialist-to-be living in a house packed with bags of garbage he won't take out -- his friends hoping he doesn't commit suicide over break and can finish out his degree when he returns with a clearer head. The sensitive but bright Americanist who disappears in the night, food on the table, the lights left on, to turn up to everyone's relief months later in another city, her degree program in shambles. The articulate "life of the department" who attends lectures and functions and classes, but can't get himself to write a word. He's drowning in incompletes -- it's only a matter of time until he sinks to the bottom. The passionate union organizer who loses himself in local social causes, because they matter more than the academic work, which he can bring himself to do but not care for.

True, not everyone needs to finish the doctorate they've begun. There's a weeding process, in which the pressure in graduate school encourages those who don't have the drive, or the strength, or the sheer endurance to go into something that comes easier, that gives them happiness. But so often students cling to the program, because they have something to prove, because they don't want to be a quitter with their own world watching, and because they can't bear to give up on a dream to which they've already given so much of themselves.

What happens to a dream deferred, Langston Hughes once asked in a very different context. He warns us it can explode. In the case of the NIU shooter, that's just what happened. And I'm sorry, so sorry for everyone, that he didn't have a moment when he realized he wasn't pursuing his happiness, but a bitter and angry ghost of the man he dreamed of becoming, and now never will be. And yet, my greatest sorrow is not reserved for him, but for those many students he has hurt (undergrads in our care, and a fellow grad student doing the teaching gig)--and those who loved and cared for them--because he would not wake up and do what was necessary for his sake and theirs. They deserved a chance at their own dreams and lives, now cut so terribly short.

Wunderkammer Object No. 28: Leaden Hearts

2008-02-13T18:47:25Z

Imagine that as a young man in eighteenth-century England (though your story would have been the same well into the nineteenth), you'd forged a note and been convicted to life on the Hulks (a fleet that served as a floating prison), followed by exile to Australia. Convicts sent into exile bore a social stigma and had no rights; they were considered government property. These poor souls, in anticipation of being separated from those they loved, many forever, took up the practice of smoothing down low denomination coins (such as the 1797 copper cartwheel penny) and engraving them as mementos. Today, historians call them "convict love tokens"; in their day, they went by "leaden hearts."

According to the Pilot Destination Guide, "the inscriptions range from just the name and date of deportation to elaborate poems and etchings of convicts in chains and boats." Some of the inscriptions make political statements, while others focus on love. Many commentators note that not all coins were etched by the convicts themselves, who were often illiterate. Pilot adds, "Professional engravers were even allowed on board the hulks, and prisoners would commission them to craft a poignant keepsake on their behalf."

Witness here one such labor of love, posted by Objects through Time, courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, New South Wales). The reverse of the token pictured below showed a bird with a chain around its neck, symbolic of the jail bird.

crafted: Portsmouth, England 1786-1787

The National Museum of Australia, Canberra, which owns seven tokens, has an online exhibition of showing the three below.

Today, places like the Paramatta Heritage Center sell convict love tokens as souvenirs. Here's one in replica, embedded in the lid of a trinket box.

Douglas Burburry has shared some inscriptions from convict love tokens from The (Thomas) Millett Collection:

"Dear Father Mother/A gift to you/From a friend/Whose love for you/Shall never end"

"When this you see/Think on me/When I am in a far country" [my personal favorite]

"The rose soon drapes and dies/The brier fades away/But my fond heart for you I love/Shall never go astray"

"May the rose of England never bud, the thistle of Scotland never grow, the harp of Ireland never play till I, poor convict, gain my liberty."

Thomas Millett, a dedicated collector of the tokens, has co-authored a book on the subject: _Convict Love Tokens_, edited by Michele Field & Timothy Millett, Wakefield Press, 1998.

_____________

Objects through Time is well worth a visit for other such stories, embedded in material culture. What's more, their page covering this item goes into much more detail about the history of Australia as a site for transport; it's a bit of history everyone should know.

Return to Earth: Art Tile and Ceramics

2008-02-12T19:05:55Z

Followers of Dream Tree know that I'm a lover of art tile and ceramics, especially those that evoke the natural world in unsentimental and empirical registers. Whether these turn to the scientific, the melancholy, the grotesque, or the beautiful, these are the pieces that I think reinvoke the world with a difference, the one we peopled as children and that we can walk again with greater insight as adults. Not in the Wordsworthian sense of imagining some divinity within, but in that sense of wonder for what the natural world is in itself, and we as part of it, not wholly disconnected, if displaced.

Two of my recent finds illustrate this aesthetic.

Weaver Tile, where it comes as no surprise that artist-founder Scott Weaver received his training at Pewabic Pottery (located in Michigan), which I have featured (and purchased).

and

Alan and Ruth Barrett-Danes (Alan is now deceased), and their son Jon, who carries on in the best of their tradition, adding his own dashes of humor and whimsy.

Alan and Ruth

Cabbage Villa source

Predator Pot (1979) source

Jon

New Found Respect for the Platypus

2008-02-08T15:32:08Z

Most of us learn of the platypus with delight as children. He is the comedian of the mammal world -- a true anatomical mash-up of a beaver and a duck so oddbody that, when he was first announced to the Western world in the nineteenth century, he was considered by some skeptics to be a hoax on the order of the Feejee Mermaid exhibited in The States.

source: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University

I would warrant that if we as adults encountered a platypus, whilst meandering in Eastern Australia, we'd smirk and hoot, approaching it without the least fear. And yet, the platypus is venomous, one of the few mammals that can make that claim.

Every now and then, as I read beginner's science books with my son, I come across a new basic fact. The poisonous nature of the platypus -- male only -- is one such. The business end of the creature is its ankle, which sports a spur that is coated with venom nasty enough to cause a human being a good deal of pain if struck. The wiki enlightens:

"Although powerful enough to kill smaller animals, the venom is not lethal to humans, but is so excruciating that the victim may be incapacitated. Oedema rapidly develops around the wound and gradually spreads throughout the affected limb. Information obtained from case histories and anecdotal evidence indicates that the pain develops into a long-lasting hyperalgesia that persists for days or even months. Venom is produced in the crural glands of the male, which are kidney-shaped alveolar glands connected by a thin-walled duct to a calcaneus spur on each hind limb. The female Platypus, in common with echidnas, has rudimentary spur buds which do not develop (dropping off before the end of their first year) and lack functional crural glands."

Not only is the (male) platypus venomous, but they are monotremes (egg laying mammals) capable of electrolocation. That is "they locate their prey in part by detecting electric fields generated by muscular contractions," the electroreceptors being "located in rostro-caudal rows in the skin of the bill." Which is to say, if these suckers ever evolve, we'd do well to run for our lives.

Here, then, is an idea for the next big monster flick. After all, these fellows can compete with Godzilla for paleontological props. They were once thought to be part reptile (those crazy Victorians), then were theorized as coming from a very early branch of mammals that eventually evolved into marsupials (their nearest living relative is the echidna). Now, new findings suggest the platypus may have been around for as long as 110 million years, and that they are more closely related to eutherian mammals (cows, men, etc.) than the marsupials (kangaroos, koalas) -- at least according to their mtDNA.

One website (simpletoremember.com) recounts a charming story of origins for the creature, told by the aboriginal people of Australia:

"According to one of their myths, the platypus resulted from a young female duck's disobedience. Duck lived with others of their kind in a sheltered river pond. All of them were in constant fear of Mulloka, the Water Devil, and never strayed far from their pond. But one day, against the advice of her elders, Duck ventured downstream and eventually found herself at a patch of grass on the riverbank. Unaware that this was the territory of the lonely Water-rat, she climbed out. Hearing duck, Water-rat emerged, threatened her with his spear and, dragging her underground, forced her to mate with him. By the time of egg-hatching, Duck was ashamed to have to lead out two extraordinary offspring. They had bills and webbed feet, but instead of two feet they had four and instead of feathers they had fur, while on each hind leg they had a sharp spike like Water-rat's spear. The first members of the platypus race were born."

Brian Andreas: Story People

2007-11-26T17:50:19Z

We discovered artist-poet Brian Andreas in a little shop in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. The location predisposes one to look for magic and believe in it: nestled in the pine-curtained beauty of the Blue Ridge, the town quaint with white clapboard, brimming with flower boxes, shelved with art both folk and fine. The streets were punctuated with bubbles and happy faces. The shop was crowded with beauty and whimsy. There, we found Andreas' prints, with their childlike drawings and short, short stories -- Swimming like koi in the mind's pool, they slip, tickle, and transform the view.

Here's one such story, taken apart from its illustration -- and more's the pity. But I share it anyway:

I spent a long time trying to find my center;
until I looked closely one night and found it had wheels
and moved easily in the slightest breeze,
so now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing.

Rendered: Sending Soldiers Home 12th Century Style

2007-09-29T19:14:50Z

The return of the dead from a battlefield far from home conjures images of sacred duty, honor guards, an air of reverence. How much more would we expect this in the medieval era and in the case of the Crusades, when Catholic doctrine required the burial of bodies intact? Yet, how oddly this jibes with one practice common enough to require ecclesiastical legislation to prevent it:

Some dead Crusaders were dismembered and boiled down for transport home.

In answer to which the Council of Tours in 1163 ruled against the dissection of human bodies, citing the Church's abhorrence of bloodshed. Oh, the irony.

This tidbit is from The People's Chronology, Rev. Ed. by James Trager (Henry Holt).

The practice is confirmed to have continued for well over a hundred years more, per the online Catholic Encyclopedia, which says on its entry on Cremation, "In all the legislation of the Church the placing of the body in the earth or tomb was a part of Christian burial...Once in the course of the Middle Ages did there seem to be on the part of some a retrogression to the pagan ideals, and as a consequence Boniface VIII, on 21 February, 1300, in the sixth year of his pontificate, promulgated a law which was in substance as follows: They were ipso facto excommunicated who disembowelled bodies of the dead or inhumanly boiled them to separate the flesh from the bones, with a view to transportation for burial in their native land. 'Detestandae feritatis abusum,' he calls it, and it was practised in case of those of noble rank who had died outside of their own territory and had expressed a wish to be buried at their place of birth. He speaks of it as an abomination in the sight of God and horrifying to the minds of the faithful, decreeing that, thereafter, such bodies are either to be conveyed whole to the spot chosen or buried at the place of death until, in the course of nature, the bones can be removed for burial elsewhere. Those who were party to these enormities either as the cause or agent of their occurrence were to incur excommunication reserved to the Holy See, while the body thus inhumanly treated could not afterward be given ecclesiastical burial ("Extrav. Comm.", Lib. III, Tit. vi, c. i.)."

Black Pearls: Medieval Japanese Dental Beauty

2007-09-29T17:00:15Z

Tooth whitening treatments have been popular in the West for decades, and recently surged as safe, effective at-home treatments were perfected and made affordable. We are so concerned with having whiter, brighter teeth that it comes as quite a shock to learn that in medieval Japan (beginning in the 1230s--when a royal family started the fashion), blackened teeth among noble women was a sign of being well groomed--a practice called ohaguro.

The tooth-staining dye was made from soaking iron in tea or rice wine, and was applied several times each week beginning when a girl was age 9 (onset of adulthood). The darker the teeth, the more beautiful the effect. The practice later was shared by men, until it passed out of fashion except for women of more limited means, and then became a sign of married status. This practice among commoners continued through the late ninteenth century.

Supposedly, the dye helped to prevent tooth decay as well (dentistry-dentist.com dental glossary).

A fascinating, short web essay on the subject--Teeth Color as a Cultural Form by Masahiko Fukagawa (well worth reading in its entirety)--explains the different cultural meanings the practice may have had historically for men and women:

Men: "The Japanese word ‘kuro’ is connected with night; ‘kuro’ expresses darkness after the sun sets. In ancient times, night was considered the time when evil spirits being rampant. Black was ill-omened and hated as a color which means to be wrong. However, in the Buddhist faith, black is the ‘unchanging’ color which cannot be dyed with another. It was believed to represent ‘robustness’ and ‘dignity’ from its visual weightiness, and thus the high ranking Samurais were fond of using it

According to Hara, black teeth were an aesthetic symbol from ancient times in Japan. (Hara, p.190) In the Heian Era (794-1192), ‘ohaguro’ became popular among males, especially court nobles and commanders. (Hara, p.131) The custom of ‘ohaguro’, among samurais, was a proof of loyalty, that a samurai does not serve two masters within a lifetime. It was believed to represent ‘robustness’ and ‘dignity’ from its visual weightiness, and thus the high ranking Samurais were fond of using it. In the case of men, the custom is said to have ended around the Muromati Era (1558-1572) [(Nagasaki, p.234)."]

Women: "In Junichiro Tanizaki’s ‘Ineiraisan’, one of whose themes is the traditional Japanese aesthetic sense, the reason why a married woman wears ‘ohaguro’ is to emphasize ‘oshiroi’ (white powder). During the Edo Era, women of the middle class lived in a dark house. Only candles lit up the rooms. The room was dark, a woman’s kimono was also dark, as well as her teeth. And women applied ‘oshiroi’ to their faces in order not to show their expression. (pp.46-48) It is thought that ‘ohaguro’ is effective in making an expressionless face. The black of ‘ohaguro’ was in sharp contrast with the face white with ‘oshiroi’ and had the effect of emphasizing it. We see from Fig.2 that the doll shows the results of a women’s face after makeup has been applied. By shaving her eyebrows and dyeing the teeth black, the changes of feeling do not appear in her expression. Thus expression is extinguished. That is, one may say that ‘ohaguro’ is the culture which hides expression[,] which was thought to be one of the elements of a beauty. ‘Ohaguro’ came to distinctly represent age, occupation, and marital status. This meant that a woman became obedient as a subordinate to her husband because black cannot be dyed with other colors. It is clear that black has a deep connection with the idea of fidelity [(Hara, pp.97-98)."]

source for last two pictures: U. Paris online exhibit on dental practices in historic Japan

Footnotes to History: Classics

2007-09-19T14:55:57Z

One of the more amusing footnotes to history that few outside of Classics may know is that emperors, kings, generals, and nobles of times past often claimed to have descended from mythic heroes as a way of bolstering their own standing. Two cases in point: Julius Caesar claimed descent from Aeneas. Alexander the Great one-upped him, even there. His forebearer? Achilles.

Now if I had to claim a god or goddess in my past, I'd have chosen Minerva, but she'd have to have lain with some clever trickster like Odysseus or dolorous prophet half mad with the sight (cum Tiresias) to beget my line, and I just don't see us selling that to the tribe.

Socrates

2007-09-04T02:31:58Z

What is Socrates but a name handed down to us through history, an icon for wisdom, a source for the practice of cross-examination, the first mind of Athens, father of philosphy, teacher to Plato and so to Aristotle without which we cannot conceive of Western science or political science or literary or theatrical arts being the same. Well, maybe that is enough.

But to read "The Apology," in which Plato claims to represent the last words of Socrates before the assembled Athenian court of his peers, if such peers existed, gives flesh to these bones. He was 70 years old, the father of three sons (two of whom were not yet fully grown) when the 500 nearly split even on condemning him, and split again on sentencing him to death. For what? The corruption of youth. The worship of false gods, or none. Charges he claimed his enemies cooked up because he had proven them fools and called them to account for their luxuriant practices.

The proof of his disinterestedness, he said, was that he had chosen to live in poverty. He had charged no students, nor required or sought any, and yet they came, the best of them, from the highest and the lowest places of his society and beyond. Why? Because they liked to see him test the wisdom of men and find it wanting. It entertained them, he said, who admitted he had never found a man wiser than himself. And he counted himself no wise man -- he knew the limits of his knowledge, the very little circle he could draw about his certainties.

Socrates believed himself to be driven by God or the Gods. He bore within him an inner ear, such as many Western mystics have claimed to have since. The voice of his Oracle, as he called it, did not tend toward telling him what he must do, but it told him incessantly what he must not, down to cutting off the very sentences he might utter. That the Oracle gave him leave to go peacefully to his death to him was a sign that death was good. For he was certain that he was a good man who had lived nothing less than a virtuous life.

He claimed but one message ran through his many exhortations to the men of Athens, and it was this: "You, my friend,--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?...I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought of your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest imrpovement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private."

How, though, to improve the soul? For Socrates, it was to seek after truth, the beautiful and the good. "And I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates [the oracale at Delphi had said to another that of all men, Socrates was wisest], he is only using my name by way of illustration...And so I go about the world, obedient to the god, and search and make enquiry into the wisdom of any one, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vidication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own..."

And for this he died.

A Grammarian's Funeral

2007-08-16T10:03:07Z

Although as an English professor, I teach the philosophy of culture, especially in response to cultural and aesthetic representations in texts, I've taught and continue to teach composition often enough that a little of the grammarian has slipped into my soul. I have often referred to myself as The Bun, since I do often sport just the kind of bun the old school marm is depicted as having worn. I have left the horn-rim glasses to an earlier generation.

So I was delighted today when this not yet so old grammarian learned a new trick, or, er, word rather (from OED's word a day):

sandhi
• noun [mass noun] Grammar the process whereby the form of a word changes as a result of its position in an utterance (e.g. the change from a to an before a vowel).
— origin from Sanskrit samdhi ‘putting together’.

Who knew? In praise of which discovery, I share this portion of one of my favorite Victorian poems -- this by Robert Browning, "A Grammarian's Funeral" (it is, of course, a deadly accurate lampoon, tongue in cheek throughout):

Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, " New measures, other feet anon!
My dance is finished?"
No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
Show me their shaping
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,
Give!"--So, he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
"Time to taste life," another would have said,
"Up with the curtain!"
This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
Patience a moment!
Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
Still there's the comment
Let me know all ! Prate not of most or least,
Painful or easy!
Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
Ay, nor feel queasy."
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give!
Sooner, he spurned it.
Image the whole, then execute the parts--
Fancy the fabric
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!

[...]

That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit
That, has the world here-should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
He settled Hoti's business--let it be!--
Properly based Oun--
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there:

This man decided not to Live but Know--
Bury this man there?
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily Iying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.

Reminder to Readers: Dream Tree Gallery

2007-08-14T10:46:11Z

Dream Tree includes a gallery of mid 19c through early 20c decorative arts movements, including Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Aestheticsm, from architecture to home furnishins to personal adornments. The gallery's offers are posted without regard to copyright, since they are provided only for educational purposes and personal study. The original source should be found and permissions sought for any other use.