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Index to Athabasca University essay assignments

2011-05-05T06:00:00.001-06:00

From early in 2008 to early in 2011 I dedicated much of my time to taking courses at Athabasca University. I completed eleven courses and withdrew from a couple more. My general aim was to get the Bachelor Degree that I should have achieved in my twenties. (Oh well).
While I promise to write more soon on what went right and what went wrong with my university education; in this blog I will simply write an index or table of contents for the essay submissions that I recently translated into blogs.

Course: HIST203 Western Art I

Course: HIST201 Western Culture I

Essay: The writings of Plato and Aristotle and their Influence on the Philosophy of pre-Renaissance Europe

Course: HIST307 The Pacific Century

Course: HUMN360 East Meets West

Course: ENGL384 Writing Creative Non-Fiction

Course: ENGL353 Intermediate Composition

Course: HERM301 Heritage Resources Management

Essay: Totem Pole Art: Changing Perceptions with comments on Collection, Preservation and Renovation

Essay: Totem Pole Art: Changing Perceptions with comments on Collection, Preservation and Renovation

2011-05-04T08:00:00.029-06:00

Much of my time in 2008 to 2010 was spent taking some university courses. It might be of some general interest if I convert a few of my essay assignments into blogs. One of my courses was titled ‘Introduction to Heritage Resources Management’. I wrote an essay on the following topic:

Discuss how Northwest Coast native art has been collected, restored and preserved. Give emphasis to the totem poles found in villages of the upper Skeena River valley. Include a discussion of how they were viewed by earlier visitors and how that view has changed.

The following is an edited version of my student submission:

The native peoples of the northwest coast of North America created monuments – especially totem poles – from the Western Red Cedar which grows abundantly in local forests. This is a wonderful carving material, but in the wet coastal climate anything created in wood requires care, preservation and restoration if it is to survive. The practices and policies that promote totemic preservation and renewal have changed several times in the last century. These changes have brought conflict between the Canadian government and local Native[1] nations.

Changing times have brought new respect for totem art. To illustrate changes in attitudes and practices, it is useful to include a history of a representative sample of the many totem poles that were carved in a few small villages near British Columbia’s upper Skeena River. This small area contains perhaps the best preserved collection of totem poles still found in the same original locations where they were first raised. It is an area that the author has known from both readings and personal experience.

While it is uncertain when free-standing totem poles were first created, it is certain that the Natives were making fine carvings with metal tools before they were ‘discovered’ by English, Spanish and Russian explorers. When Captain Cook visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island in 1778, he observed that the local people’’’s “great dexterity in works of wood, may, in some measure be ascribed to the assistance that they receive from iron tools, for, as far as we know, they use not other; at least we saw only one chisel of bone.”[2] Apparently, iron tools were in common use before the coming of the white man. Some were received in trade with other tribes who had European contact. Other iron had drifted ashore in wreckage, so much so that Haidas believed these “iron logs” to be the original source of the metal.[3]

Edward Keithahn notes that other Europeans, visiting before 1800, described large communal houses with big vertical support poles. Some of these poles were carved and painted. Free standing poles were seen in front of a few houses but they appeared to be rare. Their carved surfaces were commonly painted red, green and black. Shorter mortuary poles were erected with wooden boxes at the top where the remains of chiefs were placed. He concludes that “interior house posts were in general use throughout the region before the coming of the white man; that the mortuary pole was common in Tlingit and Haida villages; that the exterior house post is Haida in origin.”[4] Exterior poles became more common and became known as “totem poles”.

The heyday of totem pole creation started about 1830 with the acquisition of new wealth from the fur trade and new steel tools. By the 1880s the art was already in slow decline. The Native population was devastated by smallpox and other disease, Canadian policy discouraged the carving of totem poles, and perhaps most importantly, government policy discouraged the ceremonies required to raise new poles as replacements for the old ones which had fallen.

On the subject of Totem Restoration[5], Edward Keithahn says that the act of moving, repainting, altering or replacing a pole would require a potlatch and the same ceremony as though he were erecting a new pole. It required great expense and brought no prestige to the owner. “Wind and weather, fungi, insects and plant life all contribute to the decay of a totem pole… once fallen it is generally left to return to the earth”. To raise it again requires a new potlatch ceremony. “A contemporary pole raising may include traditional elements such as a full-blown potlatch that involves the feeding of many hundreds of people at a lavish sit-down dinner.”[6] In the wet coastal climate a wooden totem pole could barely be expected to outlive the lifetime of its creators, yet the traditional cycle which created new copies to replace the old eventually became almost completely broken.

Totem poles were collected by the great museums of the world. Museums sent collectors to gather as many ethnographic objects as they could persuade the Natives to part with. Between the 1870s and the 1920s hundreds of poles were purchased or simply removed without permission. When a village was empty for a few years – or even just for a season of fishing and harvesting – the totems became fair game for removal by unscrupulous collectors. Museums from Chicago to Stockholm to New Zealand treasure their totem collections. In Canada, one finds prime examples in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.[7]

In the 1890s, parks were created in Alaska near Sitka and Wrangell. Many totem poles were moved there for restoration and preservation.[8] In the illustrations of a 1905 Worlds Fair guide book one finds a photo labelled “Totem Poles – The finest collection in existence, arranged in a semi-circle in front of Alaskan wing of Government Building. Made by Indians from the Prince of Wales Island. ... Vary rare and valuable curiosities.”[9] These totems appeared to be well appreciated by their American audience, but perhaps the appreciation was quaint curiosity in a dying art more than it was any artistic appreciation. The same guide book has a photo depicting a sculpture of four roughrider cowboys mounted on horses. The cowboys appear to be drunk and shooting pistols in the air. The description reads “A striking group of sculpture, characteristic of early days in the great Northwest. The sculptor has certainly caught the right spirit in his interpretation of the daring cowboys of the plains—a type that is rapidly disappearing and giving place to the onward march of civilization.”[10]

Between 1920 and 1945, more than 50 American totem poles were restored and moved to locations that ranged from Seattle to Ketchikan. Keithahn uses the term “purloined” to refer to the 1899 totem in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. The restoration and removal was a joint effort of the US Forest Service, the U.S. Indian Service, the Governor’s Office and many other public agencies.[11]

In Canada restoration projects were carried on “to a certain extent” ever since 1900. Up until 1925, the official policy was to acquire totem poles from deserted villages and then bring them to Victoria and Vancouver where they would be restored, placed in museums or displayed in public parks.[12]

In 1925 an extensive restoration project was started in British Columbia along the Skeena River. Keithahn mentions Barbeau writing about the difficulty in getting Native permission to restore the poles. “’Why,’ they asked, ‘do you wish to preserve totempoles which only a few years ago you forbid us to erect?’”[13]

Leslie Dawn writes of the international appreciation of Canada’s Native art in the 1920s. In Europe this art sometimes received a more favourable reception than did the works of artists who were far more respected back home in Canada. For example, in 1927 the Canadian government sponsored an Exposition d’art canadien at the prestigious Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. There were several rooms of fine landscapes painted by all the great Canadian painters including the complete Group of Seven. There was also one small table with eleven small Native pieces; mainly Haida works carved in black argillite slate. A prestigious French reviewer wrote that the works of the Canadian landscape painters were rugged and had potential. He then described the Native carvings as having “a rare perfection of execution, a remarkable character and a styling that had nothing of the banal.”[14] He noted a direct dependence of the modern painters on Native traditions. Such a dependency would have been rejected almost immediately in Canadian art circles.

Back in Canada, the general consensus was that the natives were dying off, that their culture was dying with them, and that Native “tribes” such as the Gitxsan had already given up any claim to control of their ancestral lands. For each of these ideas, Dawn provides much evidence to the contrary. He writes of the absurd situation in Alberta where government bureaucrats did everything they could to stop native dances and ceremonies at the same time that the CPR tourism department, and the organizers of the Calgary Stampede, encouraged photogenic Native gatherings in Banff and Calgary. In Northern British Columbia the CNR was encouraging the restoration of totem poles in their original locations while civic boosters in Vancouver, Victoria and Prince Rupert vied to get the best specimens for their public parks.[15]

The history of some individual totem poles can be readily tracked. One pole was purchased from Alert Bay, British Columbia in 1928 and shipped to Stanley Park in Vancouver for display. This pole was photographed in its original location and was painted there by Emily Carr. By the 1980s it was so deteriorated that the original was shipped to the Northwest Coast exhibit of Ottawa’s Museum of Civilization. A replica was carved in Vancouver and erected there in 1987. A raising ceremony was conducted by the Native peoples of Alert Bay.[16] The Stanley Park totem pole group is the most photographed and visited tourist spot in B.C.[17]

Canadians finally started to appreciate their Native arts. Starting in 1935 more than a dozen poles were moved from Massett and Skidegate to various public locations in Prince Rupert. In 1940 a Thunderbird Park was established in Victoria. Keithahn predicted that in the future the totem will be considered as significant as the pyramids of Egypt or the ruins of Rome.[18]

Marius Barbeau relates trying to purchase a pole at Kincolith on the upper coast. The chief / owner was on his death bed and refused to sell. The chief said that selling his totem would be like selling the gravestone of BC’s first governor. Barbeau says that “The figures carved on it were not pagan divinities, as is often supposed, but the heraldic emblems of the clan; they were like the coats of arms of our nobles.” He then relates his efforts to buy that same pole from the old chief’s sons after his death. Barbeau is proud that it “stands now in a better place for its preservation. Lost to all notice in the northern jungle, it would soon have tumbled to the ground and decayed, whereas it is now on display for everyone to see and may last forever.”[19]

In 1957 a group of carvers including Bill Reid went to Ninstints on Anthony Island in the Queen Charlottes. They found a fine house frontal pole on the ground: “We turned it over,” Bill Reid said, “expecting to find total decay, but to our delight the carving was intact except for some rot and a long crack.” The original was cut in half for transportation to UBC. It is on display at the UBC Anthropology museum. A 2/3 size copy was made by Bill Reid and others. It is now on display outside that museum.[20]

The villages of Gitwangak[21], Gitanyow, Gitsegukla and Kispiox have had a quite different history than many other Native sites in Canada. Their Skeena River locations were far enough from the coast that they were little visited before the arrival of the Grand Truck Railway. There was a good supply of local food and plenty of wood for carving. The local people were just warlike enough that government agents were willing to try a little negotiation before using the full force of the law.[22] New Histories for Old provides a background on the early relations between Natives and white people in the Skeena Valley. The native villages operated their own form of government. When there were conflicts between them and white intruders – usually missionaries, prospectors or fur traders – they insisted on operating according to their own rules and their own sense of morality.[23]

Writing in 1940, Barbeau reports that the best collection of totem poles, still fairly complete, was found that area. There were more than a hundred poles or carvings in scattered groups found in “eight tribal villages of the Gitskan nation. (The Gitskans are one of the three nations of the Tsimsyans.)”[24] [His commentary uses both the words nation and art.] “Their own alien and bizarre appearance was enhanced by the striking background of darkly wooded and mist-shrouded, ice-capped peaks.”[25]

George F. MacDonald writes a lot about the totem poles at Gitwangak. He notes that Gitwangak is the best-documented totem village in the Northwest. The National Museum of Man’s files in Ottawa contain more than 500 photographs of the Gitwangak poles. He states that with the exception of nearby Kitwancool, Gitwangak has the most extensive collection of old totem poles of any village in British Columbia.[26]

In 1958 the village elders of Gitanyow allowed several old poles to be moved for museum preservation as long as they were replaced with carved replicas. In 1960, master Kwakiutl-style carvers made a replica of an original that is now seen in the Great Hall of UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. This replica pole is now displayed at Thunderbird Park in Victoria.[27] In this case, native carvers from a distinctly different artistic tradition carved a Gitxsan design for public display in Victoria.

Leslie Dawn’s book has several chapters about the complicated relationships between the Gitxsan Natives, various Canadian governmental agencies, ethnographers – such as Marius Barbeau – and a variety of visiting artists. The Gitxsan nation has never signed a Land Treaty with Canada. Ever since the Grand Trunk (now the CNR) railway was built through this area, the government has been anxious to pretend that the “dying race” had abandoned their land and their culture was almost gone. Efforts were made to collect, record and preserve the remnants before all traces were gone.[28]

Barbeau writes that the totem poles of BC and Alaska are “known all over the world. The excellence of their decorative style at its best is nowhere surpassed by any other form of aboriginal art”.[29] “The art of carving poles belongs to the past. Racial customs and stamina are on the wane everywhere, even in their former strongholds.”[30]

A.Y. Jackson, W. Langdon Kihn and Emily Carr all sketched and painted extensively in Kitwanga and the other Gitxsan villages. They were encouraged by the authorities as long as they recorded a land nearly empty of people. The government – and its ethnographer Marius Barbeau – preferred a land of scenic mountains, some mighty rivers, a few ancient cultural monuments and perhaps a handful of Christianized locals.[31]

Gitwangak village, also known as Kitwanga, still has a dozen standing poles.[32] Most of the totems were originally erected facing the bank of the Skeena River. As the river banks eroded the poles were moved inland. Most now face the gravel road through the lower town. The CNR tracks are a hundred yards away but the train station is gone and passenger trains rarely stop. A bridge across the Skeena was built at Kitwanga in 1974 so access from the highway is now easy. The setting is quite spectacular. The mountain range known as the Seven Sisters can be easily seen from the totems. That is one of the most spectacular mountain scenes viewable from any paved road in BC.

It is interesting to speculate that while Natives following the buffalo would mark their flat prairie with simple stones circles; here in the midst of dense forests and steep mountains these more-settled Native peoples carved bright monumental poles to compete with their surroundings.

These individual totem pole histories illustrate how government policy, international interest and Native attention have all modified the care, preservation and restoration of Gitwangak totem poles. Illustrations from national and international sources have shown how appreciation has changed for these and other Monuments in Cedar. Wooden objects will never remain erect without care and attention in the harsh weather of the Northwest coast. If totem pole carving is to remain a vibrant living art, then future training, preservation and government support will be required.

Appendix
Looking at the varied histories of a few notable Gitwangak poles illustrates the how policies and practices have changed:

(Gitwangak Totem Pole No. 5) Pole of the Mountain Lion.[33]

This was carved and erected as a house pole about 1865. It was reinforced with back support pole about 1885. It was reinforced or moved in 1926, 1942 and 1967. After more than 140 years it has significant rot. It is still standing within a hundred metres of its original location and the original figures are still easy to distinguish.

1. A separately carved mountain lion.

2. Wolf, head down. The mountain lion is impaled on its tail.

3. Ensnared bear.

4. Wolf.

5. Ensnared bear around doorway.

(Gitwangak Totem Pole No. 9) Bear's-Den-Person

This pole was erected about 1840 and destroyed in 1969. It had an interesting story. It was one of the earliest erected after the local people moved from the Kitwanga Hill Fort. Barbeau described it as “one of the most valuable relics of the kind on the Skeena.”[34] It was photographed standing to the west of the village in 1899. It fell in 1912. By 1924 it was lying on the ground split in two. It was then moved and later fell again.

“Disaster struck in the summer of 1969 during the totem pole restoration project when one of the workers decided on his own to that the pole was beyond repair and burned it in a bonfire ‘to clean up the site’… The loss of this monument of national heritage value is a sobering reminder of the destruction that can accompany restoration projects.”

1. Eagle.

2. Bear's-Den-Person.

3. Bear's-Den-Person.

4. Split Eagle.

(Gitwangak Totem Pole No. 10) Dog Salmon

This one was erected about 1860. It was leaning badly by 1925. Reinforced and re-erected the next year. It was threatened by a 1936 flood. Re-erected and repainted in 1940's. Fell down about 1960. A copy was made with rubber and fibreglass moulds in 1969 and shipped to Ottawa. The original remained in Kitwanga and a replica was made in Ottawa. The replica was shipped back and eventually erected in Kitwanga. The fibreglass version went to Ksan village in Hazelton and the original went to Ottawa.

1. Person-with-the-Fish-Spear stand on tail of dog salmon with salmon's tail behind person's head.

2. Dog salmon.

3. Split-Person hanging onto the fin of a second dog salmon with head in mouth of first.

4. Dog salmon with two dorsal fins.

5. Split-Person in the mouth of the second salmon.

(Gitwangak Totem Pole No. 12) Halibut

Erected around 1880, blown down 1925 and re-erected in 1926. This pole was moved in 1928 without owner's permission to the side of HBC store. There it remains long after the store building was removed in the 1980s. Barbeau lists it as "among the best at Kitwanga." It faces train tracks and road crossing; therefore is the only one easily seen from the railway.

1. Person-with-Drum.

2. Split-Person or Half-Man merging with Bear's-Den-Person.

3. Person holding halibut.

4. Two halibut; one held in each hand of person.

5. Split eagle. Possibly borrowing on Russian eagle concept.

6. Person-with-Drum holding a crest or mask in his hands.

(Gitwangak Totem Pole No. 16) Whereon-Climb-Frogs.

Carved about 1900 to 1905. It has a distinctive appearance with a canoe containing three figures. It was featured in paintings by Emily Carr. It can be easily traced in photos from 1926, 1974 and 2007.

1. Eagle with a frog facing upwards on body.

2. Copper-Smell-Person in shape of a human being holding two animals that might be white groundhogs.

3. Climbing frog.

4. Canoe with three figures: Kewok on top, his son Nekt attached by tongue and bottom Lutraisu, Nekt's mother.

5. Climbing frog.

6. Half-Bear.

Bibliography and references used in this Essay

Barbeau, Marius Totem Poles (2 vols)
Ottawa, Ontario: Department of the Secretary of State,
National Museum of Canada, 1940

Binnema, Ted and Susan Neylan (editors) New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada's Native Pasts.
Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2007.

Dawn, Leslie National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s
Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2006.

Keithahn, Edward L. Monuments in Cedar
Ketchikan, Alaska: Roy Anderson, 1945

Lee, William H. Glimpses of the Lewis and Clark Exposition and the Golden West
Chicago, Illinois: Laird & Lee, 1905

MacDonald, George F. The Totem Poles of Gitwangak village: Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and History Ottawa, Ontario: Environment Canada, 1984

Stewart, Hilary Looking at Totem Poles
Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. 1993

Tippett, Maria Emily Carr, a Biography
Toronto, Ontario: Stoddart Publishing Co., 1979

[1] To signify aboriginal people in general this author has chosen to use the same capitalized ‘Native’ terminology as seen in Leslie Dawn’s recent book. While ‘First Nations’ is common Canadian modern terminology, the Canadian nation is still trying to sign treaties with the Native Skeena River peoples. Therefore, the exact demarcations between what defines a family, a band, a tribe and a first nation are still controversial and under review.

[2] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 24

[3] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 24

[4] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 25

[5] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[6] Hilary Stewart Looking at Totem Poles p. 29

[7] Hilary Stewart Looking at Totem Poles p. 21

[8] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[9] William H. Lee Glimpses of the Lewis & Clark Exposition [The pages are not numbered in book but this is approximately p. 17; the photo shows seven totem poles; apparently brightly painted. In front is a great dugout canoe.]

[10] William H. Lee Approximately p. 37 the photo is labelled “Hitting the Trail”

[11] Paragraph based on Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[12] Paragraph based on Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[13] Paragraph based on Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[14] Quote from Thiebault-Sission, “Une exposition d’art Canadian au Jeu-de-Paume”, in Le Temps March 25 1927 as referenced in Leslie Dawn’s National Visions, National Blindness p. 101.
This entire paragraph is based on Dawn’s chapter Canadian Primitives in Paris.

[15] This section is based on several chapters of Leslie Dawn’s book, including Chapter 5 Barbeau and Kihn with the Stoney in Alberta, Chapter 6 Barbeau and Kihn with the Gitxsan in British Columbia, Chapter 7 Giving Gitxsan Totem poles a New Slant and Chapter 8 Representing and Repossessing the Picturesque Skeena Valley.

[16] Hilary Stewart Looking at Totem Poles p. 89

[17] Vancouver Sun newspaper’s online edition of Aug 02, 2008 Totem poles most-visited site in B.C.

[18] Edward L. Keithahn Monuments in Cedar p. 118 - 128

[19] Marius Barbeau Totem Poles p. 32

[20] Hilary Stewart Looking at Totem Poles p. 54

[21] A note on naming terminology: Every explorer, ethnographer and writer seems to have used a different spelling system. I chose to use Gitwangak, Gitanyow and Gitsegukla for the Native villages. (These groups themselves commonly use this particular spelling). The Gitxsan tribal nation is also spelled as Gitskan. I refer to Kitwanga (Gitwangak), Kitwancool (Gitanyow) and Kitsegukla (Gitsegukla) where appropriate for the actual physical locations. These are the most common spellings seen on modern maps.

[22] This paragraph is somewhat based on personal observation. Regarding militancy, it is interesting to visit the Kitwanga Fort National Historic Site. It is the only such Native fortification in Canada.

[23] Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan (ed.) New Histories for Old. Skeena native govt. is mentioned in several chapters; especially “Gitxsan Law and Settler Disorder: The Skeena ‘Uprising’ of 1888” by R.M. Galois

[24] Marius Barbeau Totem Poles Introduction p. 4

[25] Marius Barbeau Totem Poles Introduction p. 4

[26] George F. MacDonald The Totem Poles of Gitwangak Village Preface. The National Museum of Man is now known as the Museum of Civilization.

[27] Hilary Stewart Looking at Totem Poles p. 107

[28] See note 12 regarding Leslie Dawn’s book

[29] Marius Barbeau Totem Poles Introduction p. 1

[30] Marius Barbeau Totem Poles Introduction p. 1

[31] See note 12 regarding Leslie Dawn’s book

[32] The comments on the current state of Gitxsan art is based on a tourist visit by this essay writer to the area in July 2007. Many photos were taken. This writer also spent most of 1974 working in Kitwanga. Scenery comments are also based on personal experience.

[33] The pole numbering, pole naming, figuring numbering and figure descriptions used in this section are from George F. MacDonald’s book. MacDonald based his descriptions on the research of Marius Barbeau. The figures described are seen from top to bottom.

[34] As quoted in MacDonald p. 75.

Essay: Characteristics and Development of Middle Period Byzantine Art

2011-05-03T08:00:00.003-06:00

I took some university courses a few years ago. One course was titled ‘A Survey of Western Art I’.
I thought that it might be interesting to convert a few of my essays into blogs. The following is one of my early efforts. The given assignment was:

Discuss the main characteristics and development of Byzantine art of the middle period (from the time of the Iconoclastic Controversy until the beginning of the 13^th Century). Include an explanation of when the Iconoclastic Controversy occurred, what it was and how it affected secular and religious art.

The Byzantine Empire is the conventional name of a medieval Christian and Greek-speaking state. The Byzantine people themselves referred to their state as the Roman Empire and Byzantium was just the city name of Constantinople. (Hollingsworth, "Byzantium" The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium) This essay refers to the middle period of Byzantine Art that started with the Iconoclast Controversy and ended with the Fourth Crusade sacking of Constantinople.

This is era is commonly known as the Dark Ages; but most of the art created was quite luminous and anything but dark. In fact, many[1] refer to this as a Second Golden Age.

To appreciate the developments of the Middle period it is necessary to consider what came before. Under Emperor Justinian, the monuments of Constantinople justify the claim of a First Golden Age. Byzantine culture and art gradually came under more Christian and Greek influence. (Davies et al, Janson’s History of Art p. 253)

The early and middle periods of Byzantine Art are divided by the Iconoclast Controversy. This was a religious and political conflict that raged over the interpretation of a few biblical words. It was seen as vitally important to prevent worship of images as idols.

Strict prohibition of idolatry is one of the most distinctive features of Israelite religion: Yahweh, the God of Israel, could not be represented in physical form and would not tolerate the idols of any other gods. This aniconic principle is articulated in the Ten Commandments. (Metzger et al: The Oxford Companion to the Bible p. 297)

In the Byzantine early period the rules on idolic images were less strict. In 695 CE, Emperor Justinian II put a full-face image of Christ on the obverse of his gold coins. (Hollingsworth, "Justinian II") On the other hand, much of the empire was being lost to the new Muslim religion and the new rulers of those lands were hardly as tolerant about such imagery. Some have said that this Muslim push sparked the Emperor Leo III and the image destroyers, who were known as Iconoclasts; but the origins of their actions are obscure. (Hollingsworth, "Leo III")

In 726 CE Leo III ordered the removal of an image of Jesus from over the ceremonial entrance to the Great Palace of Constantinople. Some of those assigned to the task were murdered by a band of image lovers who were known as Iconophiles. (Hollingsworth, "Leo III")

The Iconoclasts insisted on a literal interpretation of the biblical ban. “They wanted to restrict religious art to abstract symbols and plant or animal forms.” Their opponents, the Iconophiles, were lead by the monks. “The strongest argument in favour of the icons was Neo-Platonic. Because Christ and his image are inseparable, the honor given to the image is transferred to him.” (Davies et al, pp. 264-265)

Besides being a theological controversy over “the relationship of the human and the divine in the person of Christ … the conflict was a power struggle between Church and State, which in theory were united in the figure of the emperor.” (Davies et al, p. 265)

Political affairs reached a low point after iconophile Irene—the wife of Emperor Leo IV and the mother of Constantine VI—ordered iconoclast writings destroyed and the icons restored. She was in such conflict with her iconoclast son that in 797 CE she had him blinded and ruled herself as Emperor for 5 years. (Hollingsworth, "Irene")

A synod in 809 declared that the Emperor was above the law of the church and excommunicated anyone who disagreed. (Hollingsworth, "Moechian Controversy") One emperor would declare himself devoted to icons while his successor would fight for iconoclasm. Finally in March 843, Patriarch John the Grammarian was replaced when he refused to preside over a church council to rehabilitate icon worship. (Hollingsworth, "John VII Grammatikos")

The edict barring images had not been enforced throughout the Empire. It was far less strict in Greece and Bulgaria. “It did succeed in greatly reducing the production of sacred images, but it failed to wipe it out entirely, so there was a fairly rapid recovery after the victory of the Iconophiles.” (Davies et al, p. 265)

Icons were now produced to be “venerated” but not “worshipped”. As sacred objects they had to conform to strict rules, with fixed patterns repeated over and over again. Most icons are therefore noteworthy more for their exacting craftsmanship than artistic inventiveness. (Davies et al, p. 273)

Iconoclasm brought about a renewed interest in secular art, which was not affected by the edicts. (Davies et al, p. 265) In the Middle Byzantine period Islamic and classical themes were apparent in the secular art of emperors and in many aspects of material culture. (Hollingsworth, "Islamic Influence On Byzantine Art") There was a revival of Byzantine artistic traditions, as well as classical learning and literature. (Davies et al, p. 266)

The Joshua Roll of ca. 950 CE showed its classical style in the form of a scroll, an archaic type of manuscript which had been replaced by the codex a full eight centuries earlier. (Davies et al, p. 266)

The Paris Psalter of the same era had a free-flowing consciously classical style. Despite that, its style qualities, such as the crowded composition of space-consuming figures indicate its later date. (Davies et al, p. 266)

While large scale statuary had died out, small-scale objects especially made in ivory and metal, were made in large numbers “with a variety of content, style, and purpose.” (Davies et al, p. 268)

In The Harbaville Triptych it appears that there is a continuation of the style “whereby different figure types require different representational modes.” Figures have an attitude of refinement and control. (Davies et al, p. 268)

Religious construction after the Iconoclastic Controversy was initially monastic and modest in scale. Later, much larger monasteries were erected in Constantinople under imperial patronage. They served social purposes such as schools and hospitals. (Davies et al, p. 269)

The interiors of later churches were emblazoned with mosaics such as had been done in the early period; but now, as seen at the church at Daphni (Davies et al, fig. 8.44), they showed a “classicism that merges harmoniously with the spiritualized ideal of human beauty that we encountered in Justinian’s reign.” (Davies et al, pp. 269 - 270) Creating a realistic spatial setting was not important, but the compositions had a monumental balance and clarity. (Davies et al, p. 270)

Just as in Early Byzantine architecture, the material structure was less important than “the creation of immaterial space … the glitter of the mosaics must have completed the illusion of unreality, fitting the spirit of these interiors to perfection.” (Davies et al, p. 259)

In a similar way, exact human physical depiction was less important than emotional depiction. Scenes of the Passion of Christ became common. (Davies et al, p. 270)

To have introduced this compassionate view of Christ into sacred depiction was perhaps the greatest achievement of Middle Byzantine art. Early Christian art lacked this quality entirely. … Early Christian artists depicted the Crucifixion only rarely and without pathos, though with a similar simplicity. (Davies et al, p. 270)

The Second Golden Age also gave emphasis to Christ the Pantocrator. This is a depiction of Christ as both Judge and Ruler of the Universe, the All-Holder who contains everything. The bearded images of Christ resembled those of a Roman Zeus. (Davies et al, p. 270)

Middle period Byzantine churches have been described as having a depiction of cosmos in the great domes, with the Holy Land seen in the vaults and in the squinches. The earthly world is depicted in the walls and supports below. (Davies et al, p. 270) As the viewer moves around the building to witness the events of Christ’s life, the viewer becomes a symbolic pilgrim to the Holy Land. This is combined with a virtual vertical journey heavenward. (Davies et al, p. 271)

Conflicts between the Eastern Byzantine and Western Catholic churches lead to a split known as the Great Schism. On the surface the dispute was over a single Latin word, filioque, meaning “and from the Son,” as inserted into the creed of Nicaea-Constantinople. This was a short brief exposition of the principles of Christian belief expressing the hierarchy between the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Hollingsworth, "Filioque") The dispute was also about determining the more earthly power hierarchy of the Pope, the Eastern patriarch and the Byzantine Emperors.

Finally in July 1054, Cardinal Humbert of the Papal delegation lost patience, and laid a excommunication edict against Patriarch Michael. Michael and his synod retaliated by doing the same against Humbert. (Hollingsworth, "Schism")

After the schism Venice was brought forcefully back to the Western camp, but when the Venetians started on a new St. Mark’s church they looked to the culture and art of Byzantium, and Constantinople for inspiration. (Davies et al, p. 272) The church’s Greek-cross plan is emphasized with a separate dome on each arm of the cross. The spacious interior was decorated by visiting Byzantine artists and locals trained by them.

“Oriental influence may be attributed the taste for costly and many-coloured stones and woven fabrics, for goldsmith-work, and enamel.” The “church of the eleventh century was transformed into a veritable treasure-house.” (Gietmann, Gerhard. The Catholic Encyclopedia)

The Byzantine manner was also popular in Sicily after that island was taken from the Muslims and united with southern Italy in 1091. The mosaics of the Cathedral of Monreale cover vast wall surfaces. The Pantocrator of a Byzantine domed church now controls the space of the apse. (Davies et al, pp. 272-273)

Within a structure displaying Romanesque characteristics, the nave at Monreale flaunts a Byzantine trademark—an interior as elegant and as costly as the throne room of an emperor. The art of the eastern empire traveled to every corner of Christendom—in textiles and mosaics, in paintings, in objects of gold, silver, and carved ivory. (People and Places of the Past p.168)

The Christian Crusades, which started in 1095, changed Byzantine art by bringing Western influences. (Davies et al, p. 273) The soldiers of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204. This led to the establishment of the Latin Empire throughout the Greek Byzantine Empire. (Hollingsworth, "Latin Empire") This signalled the end of Byzantine art’s Middle period.

References used in this Essay

Davies, Penelope J.E. et al. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition, 7^th edition.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., 2007.

Gietmann, Gerhard. "Byzantine Art." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3.
New York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
(Available online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03095a.htm)

Hollingsworth, Paul A. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press 1991.

Metzger, Bruce M. and Michael D. Coogan (editors) The Oxford Companion to the Bible.
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press 1993

People and Places of the Past / The National Geographic Illustrated Cultural Atlas of the Ancient World
Washington, DC: National Geographic Society 1983

[1] Such as the NY Metropolitan Museum discussion of Byzantium

Essay: Influence of Concrete on the Development of Roman Architecture

2011-05-02T09:47:00.000-06:00

Just a few years ago I took some university courses. One course was titled ‘A Survey of Western Art’. I thought that it might be of interest if I converted some of my assignment essays into blog posts. This early example was ‘A Discussion of the Influence of Concrete in Roman Architecture as contrasted to previous builders’:

Introduction

The use of concrete by Roman builders defined much of what made Roman architecture distinctive and familiar to us today.

In a sense, the history of Roman architecture is a dialogue between the traditional rectilinear forms of the Greek and early Italic post-and-lintel traditions on the one hand, and the freedoms afforded by this malleable material on the other.
(Davies et al: Janson’s History of Art p. 182)

Concrete allowed the Romans to create great spanning arches, vaults and domes that often remain standing 2000 years afterwards.

The Romans borrowed many architectural concepts from their earlier neighbours such as the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Egyptians. Those previous builders never attempted to roof over spaces as high or as wide as the Romans did. While the best attempts of the earlier builders looked wonderful on the outside, their interiors often depended upon a thick forest of supporting columns. Much of roofs and ceilings were built of wood. Therefore, most of their best interior spaces have long since collapsed into the soil of history.

Earlier Builders and Building Methods

Earlier builders did create public buildings that projected a powerful image. By looking at three representative ancient buildings – the Great Ziggurat at Ur (2100 BCE), the Temple of Amun-Ra (ca 1290 – 1224 BCE) and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos (ca 359 – 351 BCE) – we can see how pre-Roman builders tried to create durable exteriors and great interior spaces. Their efforts would have dazzled with their exterior splendour; but few visitors would have been allowed to enter the small interior rooms which were more like reception rooms than large gathering spaces. These building used massive amounts of material in a manner that was quite inefficient when compared to the use of concrete and the arch.

The Ziggurat of Ur was 190 feet long by 130 feet wide and 50 feet high. This is only one third as long, one third as high and one quarter as wide as the Colosseum in Rome. Its construction required massive quantities of mud and baked brick which created an impressive exterior yet the only interior space was some long lost temple set upon its summit. (Janson’s p. 31–32)

A visitor to the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak walked up great sculpture-guarded avenues and through impressive open courtyards. The most impressive interior space was the Hypostyle Hall. Massive amounts of stone spanned relatively small aisle ways. Its roof is long gone. According to Janson’s:

Here, a visitor would be awed by a forest of columns, their sheer mass rendering the human form almost insignificant. Unlike wooden lintels, these had to be kept short to prevent them from breaking under their own weight. (Janson’s p. 65)

The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos in some ways was a combination of the ziggurat and the Egyptian temple. Its base was nearly as big as the Great Ziggurat of Ur while its roof rose three times higher to about 140 feet. Its outside decoration was so spectacular that the word Mausoleum was been applied to any great monumental tomb. It was basically a solid artificial hill with a relatively small interior space enclosed in the upper temple structure. Eventually an earthquake knocked most it to the ground.

What is concrete?

Concrete is made by mixing mortar and pieces of aggregate stone. When pozzolana sand was added Roman builders found the key to a durable building material. It could be poured into temporary wooden forms assembled into a wide variety of shapes.

The advantages of concrete were quickly evident: It was strong and cheap, and could be worked by relatively unskilled labourers. It was also extraordinarily adaptable… builders could mould it to shapes that would have been prohibitively time-consuming, if not outright impossible to make using cut stone, wood, or mud brick. (Janson’s p. 181)

How did the Romans use concrete?

The Romans used concrete in ways that were both mundane and sublime. They used it to create great public warehouses such as the Porticus Aemelia (Janson’s p. 182), aqueducts such as in Segovia (Janson’s p. 209) and public theatres such as the Theatre Complex of Pompey (Janson’s p. 184). Concrete was even used in domestic architecture and enabled the builders to create insulae having “many features of a present-day apartment block…. Some were as many as five stories, with balconies above the first floor.” (Janson’s p. 214)

Writing about the vast Theatre Complex of Pompey the textbook notes that:

It was not, for instance, nestled into a pre-existing hillside. Instead the architect created an artificial slope out of the concrete, rising on radially disposed barrel vaults, which buttressed one another for a strong structure. Concrete, in other words, gave the designer freedom to build independent of the landscape. (Janson’s p. 184)

Two of the greatest examples of Roman architecture – The Colosseum and the Parthenon – are both available for us to view today. Neither would have been imaginable without the use of concrete. The Colosseum was constructed as a colossal permanent amphitheatre. It was ordered by Vespasian for gladiatorial games and completed by his son Titus in 80 CE. It was far larger and more massive than more ancient theatres, mausoleums or temples. Yet its archways were honey-combed with open spaces for crowd movements and storage of animals. “Concrete faced with travertine, was the secret of its success…. Each barrel vault buttressed the next, making the ring remarkably stable.” (Janson’s p. 205)

“Of all the masterpieces Roman architects accomplished with concrete, the Pantheon is perhaps the most remarkable.” (Janson’s p. 205) The Pantheon has a vast domed roof set on an upright drum. Inside it is 143 feet tall and just as wide. (That might have been enough to completely house the fabled tomb at Halikarnassos). Its building materials are used in for durability and efficiency:

The Pantheon is the extraordinary result of a developed confidence in the potential and strength of concrete. The architect carefully calibrated the aggregate as the building rose, from travertine to tufa, then brick, and finally pumice, to reduce its weight. (Janson’s p. 208-209)

Late Roman builders

Caracalla’s baths, built in 211 to 216 CE, must have been quite astounding in both size and opulence:

By the time of the late Empire, architects in Rome had more or less abandoned the straightforward use of post-and-lintel construction…. Column, architrave, and pediment took on decorative roles, superimposed on vaulted brick-and-concrete cores. Imperial bath buildings demonstrate this well. (Janson’s p. 223)

The builders of the Great Hagia Sophia church that was ordered by Emperor Constantine in the year 532 demonstrated that there was more than one way to cover an immense interior space. The great dome was built on pendentives and rose 40 feet higher than the Pantheon. New technique including “thin bricks embedded in mortar, permits the construction of taller, lighter, and more economical domes”. Once we are inside Hagia Sophia all sense of weight disappears. (Janson’s p. 258)

For more than 500 years there would be few attempts to span such a vast space and none would be as successful as the Hagia Sophia or the Pantheon. “Byzantine architecture never produced another structure to match the Hagia Sophia.” (Janson’s p. 268)

Conclusion

It is probably fair to say that Roman architecture has had a more lasting impact on western building through the ages than any other ancient tradition. (Janson’s p. 179)

Much of what that impact endurance was due to the use of concrete. The Romans architects created on a massive scale using an efficient use of materials that would not be rivalled for many centuries afterwards. One can only speculate what heights the builders of Greek temples, Persian palaces or medieval cathedrals might have attempted if they had known the secrets of concrete construction.

References used in this Essay

Davies, Penelope J.E. et al. Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition, 7^th edition.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., 2007.

Essay: A description of the Minoan Snake Goddess

2011-05-01T08:00:00.001-06:00

A few years ago I took a university course titled ‘A Survey of Western Art I’. This was my first essay assignment for that course and I thought that it might be interesting to convert it into a blog. I was trying to write succinctly since the assignment was for just 500 words. The instructor was apparently not impressed with my basic premise, the level of detail provided nor my essay writing ability. (Oh well). Here is my essay:

The First Assignment was to describe the Minoan statue commonly known as the Snake Goddess. The meaning of this art object is open to interpretation. Since the statue is almost – but not quite – unique we must go with the evidence of our eyes and some reasonable speculation. There were no inscriptions and similar figures were not recorded in Minoan frescoes. Some imagination is required to give it meaning.

My description is based on illustration 4.15 in Janson’s History of Art and the accompanying text. Viewing her there we see a foot high statue holding two live snakes in her upraised arms. She has a fierce expression in her eyes. Her head is topped with a hat and a cat. Her breasts are bare and she is an obvious fertility symbol. The label says Snake Goddess so we can categorize her as such and continue on to the next exhibit. Upon further research and reflection though, these conclusions seem far less certain.[1]

Context is important to both archaeology and art history. This object was found broken into pottery pieces. One arm, the head and parts of the skirt were missing.[2] The missing pieces were reconstructed according to the discoverer’s imagination and the whole piece was reassembled. In the illustration we can clearly see the small crack lines delineating the reconstructed and original parts. It is uncertain whether the feline creature belongs with this statue at all.

It is a familial size. This was not some grand Athenai for great temple worship. This was a small personal object to be viewed up close; perhaps even to hold clenched in one’s own hand just as the figure itself grasps the snakes. The height is shown as 29.5 cm high, but since much is a reconstruction the exactness of this measurement seems doubtful.

This is made of faience. That is technical sophisticated tin-glazed pottery. The flesh is white. The clothing patina has a variety of browns and smoky yellows.

Female figures similarly dressed in flounced skirts appear in frescoes. This particular example of clothing has a half-dozen overlapping layers extending to the floor. The layers consist of panels decorated with black vertical lines. The waist is cinched with a tight belt over a short overskirt that curves down in front. The upper bodice is open to expose and accentuate the breasts.

While the open breasts and tight waist certainly suggested female fertility to the Victorian era male mind; they might just as well have simply been a fashionable and comfortable way to dress in the Mediterranean heat.

So when we view an art object – especially one reconstructed with missing pieces – we must be aware of our cultural interpretations. In popular imagination this is a fierce Snake Goddess created for veneration. It might just as easily have been a doll illustrating bravery like the leaping dancers of the Toreador Fresco. Whether this is a magic deity or entertaining decoration is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

References used in this Essay

Davies, Penelope J.E. et al. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition, 7^th edition.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc., 2007.

Benne, Melissa Breathing New Life Into Old Art: The Minoan Snake Goddess Meets the InternetSpringfield, MO: Drury University
(http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=7561&NLID=166)

Whitcombe, Christopher L.C.E. Images of Women in Ancient ArtSweet Briar, VA: Sweet Briar College
(http://witcombe.sbc.edu/snakegoddess/votary.html)

[1] According to a Drury University student paper:
“She may be a snake charmer, a priestess, a Goddess, a festival attendee, a dancing girl, all of the above or nothing that has ever been encountered before. However, it is her appointment of ‘Minoan Snake Goddess’ that is intriguing. This label has caused the biggest response among scholars, feminists, earth-based religious followers, and others today.” (Benne)

[2] My description of the reconstruction process was influenced by the writing of Professor Witcombe, Department of Art History, Sweet Briar College

Essay: Ideas and Values of Robert Pirsig as influenced by Eastern Thought with an emphasis on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2011-04-30T07:00:00.006-06:00

I recently took some university courses. I thought that it might be of general interest to convert a few of my assignments into blogs. In 2008 I took a Humanities course titled ‘East Meets West’. There was an assignment on this subject:

A systematic analysis of the similarities between the ideas and values of Robert Pirsig and those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Includes how he was influenced by these varieties of eastern thought with an emphasis on his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance / An Inquiry into Values.

As in all of my assignments, it was a struggle to be both succinct and complete in my writing. The essay that I turned in looked much like this:

Robert Persig was influenced for many years by eastern thought and religion before he sat down to write his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance[1] masterwork. His background included an extensive education in both philosophy and religious studies. In Zen’s prefatory Author’s Note he says that the book is not particularly factual about Zen Buddhist practice, and “it’s not very factual on motorcycles either.” This is a book where the subtitle – An Inquiry into Values – might describe the theme better than the primary title does.

Mr. Persig was also heavily influenced by his studies of Greek philosophers and his personal descent into madness. His attempt to meld his inner madness into a complete functional human being; reminded me of how various prophets and philosophers have meditated upon the division between body and soul, tried to explain Ying and Yang or attempted to bridge the divide between the current human plane of existence and the unknown future that awaits us after death.

Robert Persig’s Zen is fundamentally about junctures and gaps and how they are bridged. He is not particularly interested in how a hypothesis is hatched, a plan is started or a destination is reached. He is very interested in the process and the journey. He puts relatively little importance on either classical or romantic ways of thinking. He is very interested how the thinking meshes into a syncretic whole that he labels as Quality.

Though this essay is not intended as a biography or book review, a quick description of the author and his story is required to appreciate the Eastern influences.

Robert Persig was born just over eighty years ago on September 6, 1928 in Minneapolis.[2] According to his personal story, as related in Zen, he was an exceptionally brilliant child and a gifted student. As a teenage biochemistry student he was flummoxed when he realized that as classical science proved or disproved a series of hypotheses, each one that was knocked over would lead to an infinite number of new possible hypotheses. As Alexander Elliot wrote, “man is not a problem solver so much he is a problem maker”. (Elliot, Alexander "Zen and the art of what?” p. 129)

Young Persig could not handle that his scientific study was making the world more complex rather than simpler. What should be the “hardest part of scientific work, thinking up hypotheses, was invariably the easiest”. As one possible theory was disproved a flood of new possibilities would become manifest. They increased as he went along. Phaedrus-Persig soon abandoned his study of chemical science.

This was followed by a stint in the US Army which included a posting in Korea. There Persig received an introduction to Eastern thought. He writes about an influential book on Oriental philosophy that he read at this point. He says that the book compares Western and Eastern components of man’s existence and that these components correspond to classic and romantic modes of reality.[3]

After his return to the United States he rejoined the university system to study philosophy. To polish his American studies he studied Oriental philosophy at Benares Hindu University in India. He remained an empirical scientist but he had “been exposed to a lot”. (Persig p. 141)

After his studies in India, Persig returned to the United States. He taught rhetorical English at a university in Montana followed by an attempt to get his doctorate by study at the University of Chicago’s Department of Philosophy. Through all this time he thought on the nature of Quality. He studied the way that objective and subjective ways of thinking worked together. He practised the art of motorcycle maintenance. He also became quite unable to handle the reality of normal society. In other words he became insane.

In 1960 Persig was finally admitted to a mental institution. In 1963, he was treated with a series of electroshock procedures. During these treatments – according to the Zen narrative – Robert Persig became separated from his earlier personality and much of his earlier memories. He gives the name of Phaedrus to this earlier ‘insane’ personality and writes of himself in the third-person. In a way Phaedrus can be thought as a previous incarnation of Persig the author. Eastern religions have much to say about previous and future incarnations.

In July 1968[4] Persig headed out from the city of his birth on a journey to the West. He started the trip with his motorcycle, his son, a couple of friends and Phaedrus. During the course of his motorcycle journey, he leaves his friends behind, he does a lot of thinking about Quality, he unites his rational self and his irrational Phaedrus self, and he confronts the fears of his 12 year old son.

This story of this journey might be intended as a reflection of the Toaist journey of discovery to the Western mountains and the Toaist appreciation of nature. Persig does not explicitly say this though.

In 1874 a type of summer camp for adults was founded on the banks of Chautauqua Lake, New York. This spawned a series of travelling road shows that combined entertainment and education. These road shows took place over several days and became known themselves as Chautauquas. They included lectures presented in a manner and style that would allow the ordinary citizen to understand difficult subjects. [5] Robert Persig designed his Zen book as a form of Chautauqua meant to both entertain and elucidate. Elliot points out that in classic Zen practise an artist or performer will follow the concept of a “masterpiece of the past” and then “as with Zen swordsmanship, archery, and tea, the whole point is in the performance itself. In the doing, that is to say, not the product.” (Eliot p. 126) A hundred years after that first Chautauqua show, Persig published his own skillful modern version of an entertaining presentation that also provides instruction.

Phaedrus-Persig remained an empirical scientist but he had been exposed to Eastern thought. “He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism.” (Persig p. 141) Just a couple paragraphs later, the author says that

The illusion of separation of subject from object is best removed by the elimination of physical activity, mental activity and emotional activity. There are many disciplines for this. One of the most important is the Sanskrit dhyana, mispronounced in Chinese as "Chan" and again mispronounced in Japanese as "Zen."

In other words, the subject and object are just parts of one whole system; their interaction can be studied by contemplation and meditation, and this method of study is known as Zen. A dictionary[6] definition says that “enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and devotion”. Study and activity (or the lack of such activity) are more important than prayer or faith.

According to R.Z. Sheppard’s review[7] of Zen: “Pirsig is no orthodox Zen Buddhist”. For Persig motorcycle maintenance is the equivalent of a meditative tea ceremony.

Briefly, motor maintenance requires a good deal of quiet concentration so that the underlying principles of the engine are allowed to fill the gap between the object (engine) and the subject (mechanic). A Zen monk would say that under such conditions, the fixer and the fixed are no longer opposing objects but one reality.
Phaedrus-Pirsig never thought small. His aim was to do nothing less than revamp the whole scientific method that operated from the premise that the observer and what was observed must be separate realities. (Sheppard)

Just as the story has the major theme of Persig melding with his Phaedrus self it has a secondary theme where Persig and his son Chris, “who up to this point have seemed like subject and object, are united by what might be appropriately described as the underlying quality of familial love” (Sheppard).

One of the oriental themes is that Quality matters. Otherwise one might simply throw things together without caring about the results.

“Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context that they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, photons and quants are to modern man.” (Persig pp. 33 - 34) Persig’s own ghost (Phaedrus) was real to him and belonged entirely to him. To Persig, Phaedrus was something entirely his own. (In a similar way, everyone has dreams that are entirely different from than those that anyone else has. Dreams belong only to one person and one self). Persig had a hard time giving up his personal ghost.

Persig writes about a man dividing a handful of sand into understandable parts. “This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.” (Persig p. 79) On the next page he explains that Classical understanding is concerned with the piles of sand and the classification of the same. “Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. … It’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles… To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.” (Persig p. 80)

In a later discussion, the author writes about the Japanese state of mu. It is a way of answering a question with something other than yes or no. He postulates that nature can have states other than the digital on or off. There is something outside of Ying and Yang and that something is the entire whole or mu. (Persig p. 327)

The Buddha exists independent of analytical thought but Persig says that the Buddha also “exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction”. (Persig p. 81) Persig pursued his personal ghost named Phaedrus; but he also says that Phaedrus spent his entire life pursuing “the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It is the ghost of rationality itself. … whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness.” (Persig p. 82) Being rational is incoherent. The ultimate purpose of life is an impossible paradox; “one lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.” (Persig p. 82).[8]

The book on the surface seems to be about a physical journey across a physical world. It is also about a journey to “the high country of the mind” (Persig p. 125) where one has to become adjusted to the thin air of uncertainty. The sweep of possible questions and possible answers goes on obviously much further than the mind can grasp.

Persig compares the Zen Buddhist practise of “just sitting,” and the motorcycle maintenance practise of “just fixing”. (Persig p. 303) When a person cares about what he is doing he must break out of the separateness between a person and his work. “Peace of mind produces right values, right values produces right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.” (Persig p. 304)

As the book continues, it introduces more and more influence by classic Greek and Western philosophy. There are discussions of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Thoreau and Poincaré. Persig finally pulls the East and West into the same philosophical space, “Quality! Virtue! Dharma!” he declares are simply different words for the same concept. (Persig p. 386)

While studying this book for this essay, I came to realize all the ways that the author was heavily influenced by Buddhism – especially the concepts of the Japanese Zen tradition. Robert Persig tried to combine Western classical thought and Eastern romanticism. He tried to meld the art of doing and the state of just being.

I saw little in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that was influenced by Hinduism or classic Confucianism. I found places where it might have been influenced by Taoistic concepts of a journey through life and the reverence of nature and natural surroundings. Persig did not directly refer to the teachings of Hinduism, Confucianism or Taoism. He does write a lot about Greek philosophical concepts.

He showed that the universe is not just Ying / Yang or black / white or good / evil. There is also an overriding Quality, Virtue or Buddha quality that stands outside, and also consists of, the entire whole. (Some things in this plane of existence are a somewhat difficult for human beings to fully grasp and understand). He did all this in a Chautauqua that teaches difficult religious and philosophical concepts while entertaining with a good story.

Bibliography and references used in this Essay

Eliot, Alexander "Zen and the art of what?"
Eastern Buddhist 9.1 (May 1976): pp 124-130.

Gregory, Dave “Unit 2 / Robert Persig’s Quest for Quality”
Humanities 360: East Meets West Study Guide
Athabasca, AB

Lin Yutang. (ed) The Wisdom of China and India
New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1955.

Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

Schuldenfrei “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Originally printed in Harvard Educational Review, vol 45, no 1 February 1975

Sheppard, R.Z. “The Enormous Vrooom” Time
New York, NY April 15 1974
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Steiner, George "Uneasy Rider" The New Yorker
New York, NY April 15 1974
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Toynbee, Philip “Voyage of Discovery.”
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Original printed in The Observer no 9561 October 17, 1974.

[1] This book will be referred to from here forward as Zen.
All the Zen references here are to the 2005 edition as detailed in the bibliography.

[2] The general biographic details of Robert Persig’s life are based on the endnotes of the 2005 Zen edition.

[3] Persig says that the book he read was The Meeting of East and West by F. S. C. Persig. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t mention the subtitle, An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding, which might have influenced Zen’s subtitle: An Inquiry into Values.

[4] Coincidentally, this journey occurred in the summer 40 years ago when Persig was almost exactly half of his current age

[5] Details on the Chautauqua movement are from http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/essay.htm.

[6] From www.thefreedictionary.com definition of ‘Zen’

[7] Sheppard, R.Z. “The Enormous Vrooom” Time Magazine

[8] In Zen religious practice such a paradox, containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, is known as a koan and used as a subject of mediation.

Essay: Similarities and Differences between Buddhism and Taoism

2011-04-29T08:00:00.000-06:00

In the past few years I took some university courses. One Humanities course was titled ‘East Meets West’. I thought it might be of general interest to convert some of my essays into blogs. This example looked at the question:

What are the most fundamental similarities and differences between Buddhism and Taoism?

Buddhism and Taoism have many similarities with some fundamental differences. They were both based on the teachings of two particular master sages born in Asia more than 2500 years ago. They are both concerned with the correct paths for right-thinking people and both preach simplicity and contemplation. Yet Taoism is more concerned with the riddle of life here and now while Buddhism is more concerned with breaking the eternal cycle of pain and suffering. Taoism’s basic teachings are mystical aphorisms for contemplation; while Buddhism presents many laws and precepts that can be followed to affect a person’s karma or destiny.

Buddhism is generally based on the teachings of a very real person named Siddhartha Gautama. The dates for his birth and death are commonly given as 563 BCE to 483 BCE. He became known as a Buddha or the Awakened One after his personal enlightenment. His teachings were written down by others a few hundred years after his death. While different schools of thought – such as the greater vehicle of the Mahayana Tradition and the Zen monks with their contemplative puzzles – have interpreted and expanded Buddha’s teachings in many ways, these schools are all based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.

In Siddhartha’s early life he had lived a pampered life hidden from the pain of others. Later, he spent years struggling with ritual and ascetic practices without ever overcoming the suffering of human existence. Finally he sat under a tree, meditated, cleared his mind and looked within himself. With his insight he saw the folly of struggle and realized the middle path. He overcame the temptations of Mara. He saw all that there was to be known and was ready to take the path to the ultimate stage of Nirvana; but he hesitated. He was now ready to leave this earth of dirt and suffering but in the past he had pledged to bring peace to the world.

The Buddha realized that there many who would welcome his message of the way to overcome pain and suffering; he knew that there were many who could overcome Samsara or the eternal wheel of birth, death and reincarnation. He stepped back from the brink and began to teach others his Middle Way.

Taoism is based on the writings and ideas of Lao-Tse (604-531 BCE), who was said to be a contemporary of Confucius. Some scholars have disputed the existence of a single historical person; since, once again, his teachings were written down and reinterpreted a few centuries after his death. Chuang Tzu was the most famous interpreter and recorder of the teachings of Lao-Tse

Lao-Tse saw himself as the Old Master showing others the path to contemplation and enlightenment. Just as Siddhartha Gautama stopped on the path to enlightenment, Lao-tse stopped on his path to the Western mountains. At the urging of a gatekeeper, Lao-Tse stopped for three days and wrote the small book of teachings that would bear his name. This book illustrated the methods for people to achieve inner peace and calmness. Like the teachings of Buddha, his words seem simple and at first glance many of his concepts seem quite easy to understand. In practice though it has been quite hard for people to understand and follow his simple words.

Neither Buddhism and and Taoism spend much time worrying about the details of earthly existence. The disciple Malunkyaputta[1], noted a number of points that the Buddha had not discussed. These included whether the world is eternal or infinite and if the soul exists without the body. Buddha said discussing these moot points is like a man who has been shot with an arrow and then does not want it taken out until he has learnt the name and caste of the man who wounded him. Buddha said that “I have not explained what I have not explained… and what have I explained?” He had explained misery, “the origin of misery, the cessation of misery, and the path leading to the cessation of misery have I explained”. Everything else was of much less importance.

Buddha’s offerings to his disciples included an Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. He provided practical hints for meditation. Other earthly details were not for him to worry about. For his disciples, the knowledge of details was to be achieved through self-awareness, observation and meditation.

Similarly, Lao-Tse taught the power of repose and acceptance. He said that great things are achieved by becoming as tranquil as still water. He warned about gaining too much useless knowledge. He wrote that the “reason that it is difficult for the people to live in peace / Is because of too much knowledge.” He was a master of keeping things simple. As it is written in one translation:

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.[2]

Perhaps the biggest difference between these two religious paths is that Taoism seems more concerned with what is happening here and now. Lao-Tse provided advice for governors regarding their relations with their country’s people. He was concerned with living with the Tao of nature in the world we currently inhabit. Buddha is concerned with stopping the endless cycle of reincarnation. He was more concerned with inner peace and what comes at the end of this current existence. His advice to princes and kings is simply to give everything away and prepare for the next world.

Buddhism is concerned with achieving a state of Nirvana or perfect peace of the mind. Taoism is concerned with achieving acceptance of the nature of Tao which is the fundamental nature of the universe.

In conclusion, both Lao-Tse and Buddha taught the power of inner peace, acceptance and contemplation. Buddha was more concerned with escaping from the pain of this world. Lao-Tse was more concerned with overcoming by acceptance and the lack of struggle.

References used in this Essay

Lin Yutang. (ed) The Wisdom of China and India
New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1955.

Novak, Philip. The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions
San Francisco, USA: HarperSanFrancisco 1994

Tao Te Ching as translated by Stephen Mitchell Tao Ching
Harper Perennial; compact edition
(Quotation from this translation was retrieved
from http://www.mindfully.org/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-tzu.htm)

[1] This paragraph largely based on Page 63 and 64 of The World’s Wisdom.

[2] Stephen Mitchell translation chapter 67.

Essay: Lu Xun, Kita Ikki and their struggles for the “national souls” of China and Japan

2011-04-28T08:42:00.040-06:00

A couple years ago I took some university courses. I thought that it might be interesting to convert a few of my assignments into blogs. For a course titled 'The Pacific Century' I wrote an essay for the assignment question:

Describe and discuss the ways in which Lu Xun and Kita Ikki struggled for the “national souls” of their respective countries in their writings and their actions.
Which of the two was the more influential, and why?

This is what I wrote:

Introduction

Lu Xun was the pen name of a Chinese writer of short stories and political criticism who became a left-wing hero. As a young man he spent about five years in Japan and was inspired by the modernization that he saw there.

Kita Ikki was the pen name of a Japanese writer and polemicist who became a prophet of the right. He spent about eight years in China and – after seeing the aftermath of the 1911 revolution – he was inspired to make things happen differently in Japan.

They were contemporaries. They both believed in educational and language reform. They both wrote about the distribution of wealth and revitalizing the souls of their respective nations. They were both revolutionary thinkers “cheering from the sidelines”. Both of them had influence that continued after their deaths.

Ultimately though, they were quite different. Some of Kita Ikki’s ideas spurred a decade of Japanese militarists; but many of his arguments – such as breaking the economic power structure, increasing social welfare and democratic reforms – were never convincingly written or followed. His influence, even in Japan, was never strong except for a narrow group of right-wing academics and hot-headed troops.

Lu Xun was a far more compassionate and intelligent writer with universal appeal. He changed the soul of China and is often listed as one of Asia’s greatest writers. His stories are still popular and influential today.

LU XUN

Early History of Lu Xun

He was born September 25, 1881 at Shaoxing, Zheijiang Province and given the name Zhou Shuren. His father had tuberculosis and died after taking local herbal remedies. Shaoxing was drowning in superstition.[1]

China’s future Premier Zhou Enlai shared the same family name and the same ancestral home town. From a biography of Zhou Enlai:

“Shaoxing was, still is, a lovely city with a crisscross of canals, and charming old houses. It was a great center of trade and learning … It provided the Empire with its best civil servants, cultured and competent”.[2]

From 1898 to 1901 Zhou Shuren studied at a naval academy and the School of Mines and Railways. He learned that the West had things such as modern science that China had not. He travelled to Tokyo in 1902. There he saw ways that an Asian country could modernize. He became a medical student at Sendai University. As he later wrote:

“I dreamed the beautiful dream that on my return to China I would cure patients who, like my father, had been wrongly treated; and if war broke out, then I would serve as a doctor in the army and simultaneously strengthen my countrymen’s faith in reform”.[3]

While at Sendai he saw photos of a Chinese crowd that was watching some Chinese spies being beheaded. He saw no expression on their faces. Wanting to change the national spirit more than he wanted to fix bodies, he returned to China to become a writer.[4] For his writing he took the pen name of Lu Xun (also spelled Lu Hsun).

He saw that China was no match for the destructive power of the west. He believed that literature should be on the vanguard of creating new nations. He said that culture was a prison house with no escape. He looked squarely into the soul of the Chinese people.[5]

By 1909 he was a teacher at Zhejiang Bi-level Normal School in Hangzhou city. In 1911 the Xinhai revolution overthrew the Qing imperial dynasty. In 1912 Lu Xun moved to Beijing to take a position with the Department of Education. By the twenties he was a professor at Beijing University.[6]

The Writings of Lu Xun

According to the textbook “Lu Xun had unquestionably emerged as the most brilliant writer of the movement, and his words were guaranteed an inquisitive audience.” [7]

In his stories he wrote about a backward corrupt China. His most famous satire was the “True Story of Ah Q”. It portrayed the 1911 revolution as

“a muddled and inconclusive event, one controlled by charlatans and issuing in the deaths of the innocent and gullible. Lu Xun saw it as his task to direct the searching beam of his critical gaze onto the cultural backwardness and moral cowardice of the Chinese. He was harsh in his criticisms and often pessimistic in tone, even though his stories are full of compassion”.[8]

Lu Xun hated the Confucian legacy and attacked it with bitter satire. He constantly reiterated the “Ah Q” theme, that the so-called “revolution of 1911” had changed nothing of significance in the Chinese character but had just brought a new set of scoundrels into office. He felt that revolutionary political activism might one day bring about constructive social change, but he feared that the admixture of progressive thought with superstition and apathy made that possibility problematic. He regretted bitterly the difficulties in China of speaking across class lines, and of keeping any hope alive in such a fragmented world.[9]

Lu was attacked for exaggerating China’s plight. He said that reality was worse than his fiction. Ancient culture was China’s greatest enemy. In the story Diary of a Madman the lonely hero reads a history book. The truth was written between the lines. The “madman” writer saw people eating each other. The writer saw society differently than others did. After a “cure” the madman had no clear vision. Only a madman could see the horrors. [10]

In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek and Kuomintang (KMT) troops took over Shanghai. There was a general worker’s strike organized by the communist. On April 13 the KMT troops fired on a demonstration and 100 workers and students were killed. The Chinese seemed to be eating themselves just as in Lu’s story of the Madman.

Later History and Influence of Lu Xun

Lu Xun moved to Shanghai and lived in the relative freedom of the Japanese concession. He wanted to ventilate China with Western ideas.

“Lu Xun devoted a great amount of time to the visual arts; he was especially drawn to the forceful simplicity and immediacy of the cartoon and the woodblock print, which he had long admired and now began to sponsor vigorously through the league of Left-Wing Artists, founded in the summer of 1930”.[11]

Lu was not a romantic. He was a writer and not a direct revolutionary. Significantly the title of his first book of stories is Cheering from the Sidelines[12]. He wrote that

“Revolution is a bitter thing, mixed with filth and blood, not so lovely or perfect as the poets think. It is eminently down-to-earth, involving many humble, tiresome tasks, not so romantic as the poets think … it is easy for all who have romantic dreams about revolution to become disillusioned on closer acquaintance, when a revolution is actually carried out”.[13]

In 1931 China bombed the Chinese sector of Shanghai. They invade Manchuria and set up Manchukuo. There was great anti-Japanese feeling. This culminated in massive ant-Japanese demonstrations in December 1935.

In the mid-thirties the Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong battled the Nationalists under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and retreated into Shaanxi province. In 1935 and 1936 there was a storm of controversy around Lu Xun and the League of Left-Wing Writers. “Lu Xun became enmeshed with Communist Party cadres in a battle of slogans.” Lu was enraged after the League of Left-Wing Writers was disbanded in the spring of 1936.[14]

Many zawen were written – “the short, sharp, critical essays that had been Lu Xun’s stock-in-trade during the last years of his life, and in which he mocked or parodied aspects of the communist style.”[15]

He imagined people trapped in a closed iron room with no hope of escape. They were in danger of suffocating in their sleep. “In other words, they would slip peacefully from a deep slumber into oblivion, spared the anguish of being conscious of their impending doom.” Should the writer awaken some of them to “a certain death fully conscious of what was going to happen to them”? Lu Xun believed that though the writer was convinced that there was no escape he “couldn’t dismiss hope entirely, for hope belongs to the future.”[16] He finishes his story Hometown[17] with the words that hope is “like a path across the land—it’s not there to begin with, but when lots of people go the same way, it comes into being.”[18]

According to Spence: “The central idea here was not far from Mao Zedong’s … But whereas Lu Xun believed that through his work the Chinese at least would die thinking, Mao insisted that they die fighting.”[19] Lu died of tuberculosis – as his father did – in Shanghai on October 19, 1936. 10,000 people were in his funeral procession.[20]

Lu Xun’s name has often been invoked when the role of writers was discussed. In 1942, Ding Ling[21] wrote about Lu Xun that “we have not sufficiently acquired his courage in sparing no details. I think it will do us most good if we emulate his steadfastness in facing the truth, and his fearlessness.”[22]

The next year Mao Zedong argued that Lu Xun’s zawen weapon was never used to ridicule or attack “revolutionary people or parties, and his style in those essays was completely different from the style he employed against the enemy.”[23] (Criticism was to be saved for external enemies). Mao “often quoted Lu Hsun [Lu Xun], praised his courage and studied his writings. Some of Mao’s essays in the 1940’s show the influence of Lu Hsun’s sharp satirical style.”[24]

In the sixties Lu Xun was made into a cult figure revered by the Gang of Four. By 1979 Deng Xiaoping took the apposing view that he was “a prescient critic of the Gang of Four’s own future machinations.”[25]

Whether or not one believes that Lu Xun was predicting the future in his essays; and whether or not one believes that he was only criticizing external enemies; it is quite obvious that his writing had great influence on China and other nations long after his death. William Lyell writes that Lu was “More than just a great writer, and without a trace of the sentimentality that often clings to those who preach the brotherhood of man, Lu Xun was one of our century’s great internationalists.”[26]

KITA IKKI

Early History of Kita Ikki

He was born less than 2 years after Lu Xun on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan. He was given the name Kita Terujiro. He later adopted the pen name Kita Ikki for his published writings. He was educated at the prestigious Waseda University in Tokyo.

From 1911 to 1919 he was in China where “as an observer for the Amur River Society, he had been deeply involved in post-1911 KMT politics. The murder of his friend, KMT master strategist Song Jiaren[27], had deeply embittered him against the Japanese government. In his book entitled A Private History of the Chinese Revolution he blamed the government for Song’s death because it had not backed the KMT.”[28]

Kita modified his overall thinking during his career. The crucial turning point was his involvement in the 1911 Chinese revolution. [29]

In the 1920’s Japan was dancing to a modern beat. Strikes were common. There were struggles between left and right. Kita retreated to Sado Island which was his childhood home.

This was a period of naturalism and realism in Japanese literature. Some would say that Kita was a fanatic. He was on cocaine the last thirty years of his life. He started as treatment for childhood eye injury. The use of cocaine lead to visions and seeing ghosts. Kita Ikki was “a frail, one-eyed visionary, clad in a Chinese robe”.[30]

Kita promoted a pan-Asian movement. He wanted Chinese to free themselves from Western domination. The Chinese did not see the Japanese as liberators.

The Writings and Influence of Kita Ikki

In Kita’s first major treatise, The Theory of National Purity and Pure Socialism, he proposed an identity between ancient political society and socialism and equated the traditional absence of private property with the diminished role of state structure. To him the emperor symbolized the common ownership of property and hence a communal form of social existence.[31]

He became convinced of the importance of the imperial figure as a unifying principle of politics. In his estimation the Chinese revolution failed precisely because of its leadership’s inability to establish a persuasive centralized political order. … While still in Shanghai, Kita began to draft his program for total political reorganization, in a tract called An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of the Japanese State.[32] Unpublished until 1923, the book was heavily censored by the authorities, but clandestine uncensored copies circulated among his adherents.[33]

Kita Ikki had some leftist thoughts. He believed in land reform for farmers and profit sharing with workers. Kita was inspired by 19^th century Japanese slogan: “Rich Nation Strong Military”. Peace without war was not the way to heaven. His book reached few people but his radical ideas spread like a slow fuse.[34]

In his Outline Plan “he advocated overthrowing the prevailing leadership in a swift and conclusive coup d’état. By reconstituting the structure of authority, he believed, Japan would rid itself of Western political institutions and economic practices as a necessary condition for a final confrontation in Asia.”[35]

Underlying Kita’s writings is a sense of national crisis unleashed by capitalist and bureaucratic exploitation and leading to extreme inequality and misery in society.[36]

He saw the importance of the emperor not so much an institution that had survived from ancient times but as a symbol of community. … In Japan, Kita argued, the imperial institution had been preserved to represent the national culture, but its potential as a social monarchy had been suppressed by the rise of bourgeois and bureaucratic politics within the constitutional order. …. Kita was indifferent to the idea of a divine emperor.[37]

Kita’s theory of revolution depended on establishing the principle of a “people’s emperor” as a necessary condition for the eventual implementation of a socialist order. … The new socialist order in Japan would come without class warfare yet would include the new forces of industry and science. A socialist revolution in Japan, moreover, would be the first step in a chain reaction leading to the liberation of all Asian countries from Western political and economic domination.[38]

The Japanese flag, he boasted, would one day be emblazoned on the minds of all Asian people … darkness … would be lifted in the near future when Japan engaged the West in a conclusive naval confrontation. … Only through such an “ultimate war” would peace and power in Asia be secured.[39]

Once cleansed of foreign impurities, “he wrote, a revitalized Japan was destined to triumph in the cataclysm of nation-states at war.”[40] According to Kita: “after making India independent and China autonomous, the Rising Sun Flag of Japan shall offer the light of the sun to all mankind”[41]

The destruction of privilege, the reconstitution of community, the regulation of working conditions, such as the establishment of an eight-hour workday, equality of employment for both men and women, and numerous other proposals shaped this theory of mobilization.[42]

Kita advocated the total abolition of the use of Chinese ideographs.[43] He “warned that the English language poisoned the Japanese mind and should be replaced with Esperanto.”[44]

He “ended his outline with a passage from the Lotus Sutra … calling attention to the saint’s determination to lead the populace from passion and chaos to light, knowledge and salvation…. Kita no doubt saw himself as a latter-day saint in a time of grave national peril.”[45]

Later History of Kita Ikki

While Kita himself mostly pursued a quiet, apolitical life of teaching[46] his Outline Plan became popular with young army officers.

They were especially attracted to some of the most incendiary aspects of his plan, which called for the replacement of the ruling elite by a coup d’état, the suspension of the Constitution, and imposition of martial law. His ideas combined democracy, imperialism, and fascism in a self-contradictory brew that nevertheless intoxicated a growing number of the enthusiasts in the military.[47]

On February 26, 1936, 1400 soldiers attempted a military coup. They assassinated some key government leaders and called on the military to rise up. “The main object of the rebels was to wipe out the leaders of Government and the elder statesmen who advised them and the Emperor. They would thus, they believed, create a vacuum which only the army could fill.”[48]

They phoned Kita to inform him. He was stunned.[49] Although he had been informed of the plot, Kita Ikki had no direct role in it.[50] The impetus of the movement was the “field-grade officers, most of them sons of the soil, their heads stuffed with martial dreams of grandeur but little formal education, their political philosophy a pungent and potent admixture of National Socialism, Fascism and medieval superstition.”[51]

Emperor Hirohito was under siege. He denounced the rebels as traitors. “’I want them crushed, not martyred,’ he said”.[52] “There would be no public trial, no fighting speeches, and definitely no martyrdom.”[53]

The rebels were defeated but their military leaders now had an excuse to take complete control of the country. Kita was put away, tried in a military court, and executed as a communist in 1937. (Lu Xun’s death was just a year earlier).

Enshrined thereafter as a martyr, Kita’s image resurfaced in future decades in conservative Japanese literature. Nor did his death and that of the insurrectionists slow the momentum toward a military takeover of the government: Many officers who had been sympathetic to the goals of the rebels remained in the ranks.[54]

Military control expanded. “Asia for the Asians” became a slogan for conquest. Kita Ikki’s ideas were used to defend an apocalyptic war.

Conclusion

Both Lu Xun and Kita Ikki both started with good ideals. Both saw the need for change in their respective nations. They both had roles as writer revolutionaries.

Kita Ikki though was a naïve idealist who was shocked when his ideas were actually put into play. In his imagination the image alone of the emperor and the rising sun should have been strong enough to inspire many Eastern nations to rise up and throw out Western imperialism. He was a believer in symbols.

Lu Xun saw the failures of his fellow Chinese; but he also foresaw their ability to change. He was a realist who never thought that revolution was going to be easy. He was a believer in hope.

Lu Xun left a greater and more enduring legacy to his nation than Kita Ikki did to his.

Bibliography

Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia, 3rd Ed.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2007.

Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century: Vol. 4 (Writers and Revolutionaries)
An documentary video series co-produced by
PBS and the Pacific Basin Institute, 1992.

Hall, John W., Marius B. Jansen, Madoka Kanah, and Denis Teitchett
The Cambridge History of Japan: Vol. 6: The Twentieth Century
Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1988.

Han Suyin Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976
New York, NY: Hill and Wang (a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 1994.

Han Suyin The morning deluge;: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese revolution, 1893-1954
Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1972.

Lu Xun (translated with introduction and preface by William A. Lyell)
Lu Xun / Diary of a Madman and other stories
Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

Mosley, Leonard, Hirohito / Emperor of Japan
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980
New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1981

Totman, Conrad A History of Japan, 2nd Ed (The Blackwell History of the World)
Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

[1] Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4 (Writers and Revolutionaries)

[2] Han Suyin Eldest Son p. 13

[3] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 64 (quoting from Lu Xun’s Selected Works)

[4] Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4

[5] Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4

[6] Biographic details are from several sources especially the introduction by William Lyell to Lu Xun / Diary of a Madman and other stories

[7] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 177 [The section on Lu Xun is a selection from Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990) pp. 318-319]

[8] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century pp. 177 – 179 (quoting Spence The Search for Modern China)

[9] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 178 (quoting Spence The Search for Modern China)

[10] This paragraph and the next two were based on the video Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4.
Other sources give quite different dates and casualty figures. These were confusing times.

[11] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace P. 241

[12] Title as translated by William Lyell and discussed in introduction to Diary of a Madman and other stories. Others have translated the title as Call to Arms or Cry Out

[13] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 64 (quoting from Lu Xun’s Selected Works)

[14] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace pp. 257 - 258

[15] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 288

[16] Lu Xun (translated by William Lyell) Diary of a Madman… p. 27

[17] The title is translated elsewhere as My Old Town

[18] Lu Xun (translated by William Lyell) Diary of a Madman… p. 100

[19] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 179 (quoting Jonathan Spence The Search for Modern China)

[20] Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4

[21] According to an article at the Encarta Encyclopaedia:
Ding Ling (1904–1986) was assumed name of Chinese novelist Chiang Wei-Chih.
She was persecuted by both the KMT in the thirties and the communists in the fifties.

[22] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 288 (quoting from Hsia Tsi-an’s The Gate of Darkness, Studies on a the Leftist Literary Movement in China. Seattle, 1968)

[23] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 293 (quoting from Bonnie S. McDougall’s Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”. Ann Arbour, 1980)

[24] Han Suyin The Morning Deluge p. 353

[25] Spence, Jonathan The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 360

[26] Introduction by William Lyell to Diary of a Madman and other stories p. xxx

[27] According to an article at the Encarta Encyclopaedia:
Song Jiaren (1882-1913) was a Chinese political leader and advocate of democracy in China. In 1904 Song fled to Japan where he studied law at Waseda University – which is where he probably met fellow Waseda student Kita Ikki. Song was a founding member of the Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance). He returned to China in 1910. The Tongmenghui and several smaller political parties merged to form the KMT. Song’s energetic campaigning won the KMT a majority of seats in 1912 elections, but his speeches angered President Yuan Shikai. Song was assassinated in March 1913 at the Shanghai Railway Station.

[28] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 197

[29] This and the next four paragraphs were based on Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4

[30] quote from Totman, Conrad The History of Japan p. 378

[31] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 717

[32] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 718

[33] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 197

[34] This paragraph is based upon Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century Vol. 4

[35] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 719

[36] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 718

[37] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 719

[38] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 720

[39] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 721

[40] Totman, Conrad The History of Japan p. 378

[41] Quote is from George M. Wilson Radical Nationalism in Japan: Kita Ikki 1883 – 1937 (Cambridge, MA HUP, 1969) as mention in The History of Japan (Totman, Conrad p. 378)

[42] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 721

[43] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan p. 721

[44] Totman, Conrad The History of Japan p. 378

[45] Hall, John The Cambridge History of Japan pp. 721 – 722.

[46] Totman, Conrad The History of Japan p. 378

[47] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 198

[48] Mosley, Leonard, Hirohito p. 140

[49] Gibney, Alex The Pacific Century: Vol. 4 [video]

[50] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 199

[51] Mosley, Leonard, Hirohito p. 133

[52] Mosley, Leonard, Hirohito p. 145

[53] Mosley, Leonard, Hirohito p. 146

[54] Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century p. 199

Essay: Western influence and penetration into late nineteenth century China

2011-04-27T09:53:00.005-06:00

A few years ago I took some university courses. One course was titled 'The Pacific Century'.
I thought that it might be interesting to turn a few of my assignment essays – such as this one – into blogs. The assignment was “An Examination of Western influence and penetration into China from mid-nineteenth century to the eve of the Chinese Revolution in 1911”. The following is what I submitted. (My instructor was quite dismissive of some of my conclusions about outside influences; but I found little to change during my most recent re-edit).

Introduction

By the middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century Chinese society and the Chinese political system were at a tipping point. I suspect that a visitor to the typical Chinese village in 1894 would note little obvious change from the way that things had appeared a century before. The average citizen was still dressed much as before, Christian converts were few and the language and educational systems were little changed. The Chinese world was changing underneath though and greater change was to come.

At the summit of the Chinese system, great upheavals were about to happen that would modernize the entire society. Once the political structure cracked at the top change came to the very depths of Chinese society. In the Confucian view of society, when the leadership changed the rest of society naturally followed.

Fundamental change was caused by direct political and economic forces originating with the powers of Europe and North America. Other changes were pushed by internal Chinese influences or from external Asian sources – especially from Japan. Even these changes from Asian causes were just a second-hand version of Western modernization. The people pushing the hardest from inside Chinese society were all Western educated and Western influenced.

This essay discusses they types of change in Chinese institutions from the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of the Revolution of 1911. The emphasis is on the ways that Western powers and ideas altered Chinese political power. When not otherwise noted, many of the ideas here are based on the assigned course textbook[1].

Classification of change

There is a tendency to classify events and movements into tidy decades and eras. Therefore, one might think that there was a steady progression through the First and Second Opium Wars to the Boxer Rebellion and then the Chinese Revolution. According to this simple way of viewing events, history happens in neat decade by decade chunks. History rarely does happen in such a tidy manner. There was no five-year plan or ten-year plan for change. Much of what happened in China during this period was not planned “progress” or “modernization” but simply a reaction to external events.

In another classification system, individual events of Chinese history were matched by individual foreign sources. One observer might say that the Opium Wars were planned by the British government to force open trade and conquer territory. Someone else might say that the Japanese government had a central policy of conquest against China in 1894-95. In actual fact Chinese history was much more complicated, misunderstandings were common and events all seemed to be happening at once. In some cases a person might be executed for their liberal views and just three or four years later those same views were being used as a blueprint to change all of society.

In an American pamphlet written in 1895 there is a section titled Modern Progress and Enterprise. Examples of this “modern progress” are listed. The pamphlet goes on to provide perceptive classifications for these changes:

(1) Compulsory, or those necessitated by force or treaty obligations. The compulsory occupation by the allies, in 1860, of the imperial capital was followed by a treaty which gave commerce and missions the right of unmolested access to the entire land.
(2) The semi-compulsory changes, or those initiated with a view to adjustments. The Chinese knew that the treaty must be fulfilled, and that in reorganizing their government they could not do better than copy the strong points of their late adversaries. Hence, the innovations of foreign military camps, arsenals, customs, schools, coast surveys, etc.
(3) Spontaneous-voluntary changes. International relations become cordial. The press is called into acquisition, newspapers and books are translated. China has become conscious of her wants; a mint, banks, post-offices follow.
(4) Imperial or those which define the position and policy of the country.[2]

When studying Chinese history of this era it is important to realize that change happened all through this era and people saw it happening. China was not a homogeneous society walled of from the world. At mid-century the most perceptive people in the Imperial government knew that change had to happen. By the end of the century the need for change was apparent to almost everyone. The need for self-strengthening seemed obvious. Picking the correct path to national strength was far more controversial.

Wars, Rebellions and Upheavals

The Opium Wars seemed have been caused more by mercantile considerations than any central British governmental military plan. There were vast sums of money to be made in trading Indian opium for Chinese textiles and silver. Old established companies such as the East India Company were competing with independent traders such as Jardine Matheson and the always scrappy Americans. Relatively minor incidents with a few brawling soldiers, or some insults against Lord Napier, were relayed back to the British parliament. Hot-headed British politicians took sides and insisted on reparation and forced opening of trade. Soon a small British fleet returned to extract punishment through force of arms. By the end of the process huge reparation payments were owed to the west, Hong Kong was ceded, extraterritoriality was the new norm, and foreign trade was open to all European traders.

The Americans and French and Germans soon jumped on the bandwagon and demanded the same rights and profits for their sides. Much of history happens when small events create landslides of change. Policies are well rarely planned and often were slapped together in reaction to events as they unfold.

For someone politically aware in the 19^th century Chinese administration it must have seemed like the country was constantly under attack. There were at least a dozen[3] different rebellions, uprisings or wars between just 1840 and 1900. China was rich in resources and people but lacked military strength. The government forces were strong enough to suppress internal revolts but even so these could drag on for years.

The worst case of internal rebellion – the Taiping Revolt from about 1853 to 1864 – was a violent upheaval in Chinese society that dragged on for more than a decade. By the time it was over more than 20 million people had died. The leader of this madness received visions and commandments from “his elder brother Jesus” and from the Christian god after he read some Christian proselytizing literature[4]. I expect that if he had never received those Western religious tracts he probably would have had another native source for his visions; but having visions based on ancient Chinese sources would not likely have been so provocative and revolutionary in nature.

While wars with foreign powers were limited in both time and area, they brought more profound changes to Chinese society. They did not last long because the Imperial government was so weak militarily. Defeat happened fast. The biggest check on the foreign military forces was the squabbling between the Western powers. One suspects that if other events such as the Franco-Prussian war and the American Civil War had not happened during this same period, the Western powers would simply have had a friendly conference and divided China among themselves like a big apple pie.

The Western approach was greed and free trade at any cost. Whenever there was a chance to approach events in a moderate manner of compromise and accommodation the decision was taken to send in gunboats, flatten a town or two and then force a result quite out of proportion to the insult that started the war.

In Japan the Meiji government was far more successful than the Chinese administration at changing their society and embracing the Western way of doing things. By 1894 their armed forces had weapons as modern as any European army and navy. In the Sino-Japanese war the Japanese forces triumphed in both Korea and Manchuria. The imposition of an “Asia for Asians” policy on Japan’s bigger neighbour was a triumph of Western armament, training, tactics and knowledge.

By the end of the century it was obvious to almost everyone in China that changes were required. It was not yet obvious what those changes were and how the country could unite to make them happen. In the Confucian system when the top leadership changes the rest of society should naturally follows along. Unfortunately, in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty it was far from obvious just who the leader was. The emperor might have progressive ideas, but the Empress Cixi was the true power behind the Mandate of Heaven. Even if both of them could agree on a plan of action there was a vast conservative bureaucracy and noble family establishment.

Western Culture, Education and Religion

There were many Christian missionaries working in China. Missionary work was supposed to uplift the Chinese people from their “heathen state” but there were few actual converts.[5] The missionaries set up colleges, hospitals and universities. Their students included such prominent people such as Chiang Kaishek and Sun Yat-sen. In the midst of Western commercial greed these schools provided a place for free discussion of political ideas and the need for change.

Eventually many students travelled abroad or had western educations. Sun Yat-Sen attended college in Hawaii and Hong Kong. Chiang Kaishek’s education included military academies in both China and Japan. Even Japanese education in those years was quite Western influenced. In many ways Japanese education was just an extension of Western education. The Japanese people, and especially the Japanese military, were eager students of Western knowledge and thinking. In the new century many Chinese intellectuals and future politicians went abroad to learn foreign ideas and concepts.

Industrialization, transportation and trade

There were certainly some Chinese government officials who realized early that change was required if China was going to stand up to outside forces. A prime example was Li Hongzhang. By the 1860’s he was governor general of Tianjin and gradually became the de facto Foreign Minister of China. “Li understood as well as any Japanese leader the urgent need for his nation to adapt Western learning if it was to survive.”[6] Progress was slow though and reactionary forces were strong. The true power at the top of the nation was the Empress Dowager Cixi. “To maintain herself in power and to ensure that political control did not devolve to the provinces, the Dowager Empress allowed the reactionaries in her court to block all reforms on a national scale, including those proposed by Li”[7].

By the 1890s new railways and industrialization were being created. This progress happened especially in the foreign concessions and was imposed from outside. “The Russian, French and German railway concessions put at the service of the country badly needed transportation facilities without cost and entirely at the risk of the foreign interest involved. But, Chinese noted that the government of each country was working closely behind its nationals. In fact, private finance served as a mere mask in deference to the decencies of diplomatic usage”[8]. These facilities were the result of laissez-faire capitalism. These were not benevolent missionary works designed to improve the general welfare of the Chinese peoples.

Change and Revolution

After the violent events of the Boxer Revolution there was a period known as the Hundred Days when it seemed like peaceful fundamental change could actually happen. The most prominent philosopher of this period was Kang Youwei. He read a wide range of contemporary Western thinkers. His books promoted an optimistic vision of a strong world where every man and woman was equal.[9]

Kang promoted a strong democratic China based on Confucian ideals and loyalty to the emperor. As quoted by Spence, he warned against revolution “If we now seek to purchase liberty at the price of infinite suffering, it may not be attained after seventy years, and even if it is, what will have happened to our ancestral country?”Sun Yat-sen – perhaps because of his many youthful years outside China – took an “utterly different approach, and decided that the Manchu regime would have to be overthrown before China could be strong”. [10] Both men wanted to strengthen China using Western ideas and methods. Many of Kang’s idea for change were tried in 1908; but in 1911 Sun’s revolutionary ideas triumphed. Kang’s vision seems to me more complete, universal and enduring.

Conclusion

During the pre-revolutionary period the forces of conservatism were based on Chinese tradition while the forces of liberalism and change were based on Western ideas. After the Chinese revolution and the short-lived Presidency of Sun Yat-Sen, the lives of the common people did change, though not always as expected and not always for the common good.

In the twenties, Chinese society was broken into petty provinces with individual governors. Each was directly influenced by Russia, Japan and the Western powers. Rampant Western Capitalism ruled the great cities. Western technology allowed factional fighting to sweep over the countryside. The Western political concepts of both communism and democracy were taught throughout the country. The strongest factions were those with the best Western technology.

Bibliography

Baker, John Earl Explaining China
London: A. M. Philpot Ltd., 1927

Borthwick, Mark Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia, 3rd Ed.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2007.

Gracey, J.T. Rev. China, (Outline missionary series), 7^thAmerican Ed. Revised
Rochester, New York: J.T. Gracey ‘Publisher’, 1895.

Gracey, J.T. Rev. China in Outline
Rochester, New York: J.T. Gracey ‘Publisher’, 1900.

Seagrave, Sterling Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China
New York: Vintage Books, 1992

Spence, Jonathan D. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980
New York: The Viking Press, 1981

Spence, Jonathan D. God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, 1^st Ed.
New York: W.H. Norton and Company, 1996

[1] Borthwick: The Pacific Century

[2] This is taken from J.T. Gracey’s 1895 pamphlet on China where he quotes the ideas spoken by Rev. Young J. Allen at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1890.

[3] Borthwick The Pacific Century Map 3.2

[4] Spence God’s Chinese Son

[5] In 1890, according to Dr. Gracey (Gracey 1895) there were only 37,287 Protestant “communicants” in a population of approximately 300 million. He takes care to note that one out every three people on earth was Chinese.

[6] Borthwick The Pacific Century p. 134

[7] Borthwick The Pacific Century p. 135

[8] Baker Explaining China p. 212)

[9] Spence The Gate of Heavenly Peace chapter 2

[10] Spence The Gate of Heavenly Peace p. 16

Essay: The writings of Plato and Aristotle and their Influence on the Philosophy of pre-Renaissance Europe

2011-04-26T11:13:00.004-06:00

A couple years ago I took some university courses. I thought that it might be interesting to convert a few of my essay assignments into blogs. For a course titled 'Western Culture', I selected the essay assignment: “Discuss the writings of Aristotle with emphasis on how they became lost and were later rediscovered in the Middle Ages. Include a discussion of how European thought was influenced by his ideas during the 12th to 15th centuries. Contrast the influence of Aristotle's works to the influence of Plato's writings”.
This was one of the essays where, after struggling to fit into the assigned essay length, I got instructor feedback asking for more detail and comment in every section. (Sigh). I have no problem in increasing my output. My problems are in making the thing succinct and readable. My submission was as follows:

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato (429 -347 BCE) and his student Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE), following the example of intellectual exploration that was forged by Socrates (c. 469 BC - 399 BCE),wrote theories that fundamentally influenced European philosophy in every subsequent period; especially in the late Middle Ages. Plato conceived of an unseen ideal Form that was outside the more mundane ordinary human world of our senses. Aristotle saw the ideal Form and the mundane world as one and the same; and he emphasized studying the sensory world around us. In some periods—such as when the Neo-Platonic Roman writers were working—their writings were springboards for further investigation and commentary. In other periods—such as when they were being studied by Averroës or being taught in thirteenth century Scholastic schools—their writings were seen as having ultimate authority. Plato appeared to pluck his concepts from the realm of ideal Forms while Aristotle developed his philosophy using a more analytical approach that we might now term scientific. They both expounded in ways that left much room for interpretation, expansion and argument over the centuries.

In the eighteenth century, Diderot’s Encyclopedia praised their equal status while recognizing their differing methods:

“We see Plato walking in equal steps with Aristotle … Plato led with his suite of eloquence, enthusiasm, virtue, honesty, decency and grace. Aristotle had the method on his right, & the syllogism on his left: he looks, he divides, he distinguishes, he argues, while his rival seems to make divine predictions.”[1]

Socrates forged a Sophist path for Plato and Aristotle. He believed that man is the measure of all things and encouraged his students to follow inquiries to their logical destinations. Plato followed that same path, coming to conclusions based on observations and reasoning.[2] Western idealism was born from Plato’s philosophy, “a thought system that emphasizes spiritual values and makes ideas, rather than matter, the basis of everything that exists.”[3]

Plato emphasized the world of Forms or Ideas rather than the ordinary world of matter and the human body. In Plato’s “Parable of the Cave”, he imagined some humans chained so they can only view the reflected shadows of events that were unfolding behind them. In his universe, ideal Forms remain as template patterns; outside of human perception observed only as shadows on a wall or, perhaps as it is stated in the Bible, reflected in a mirror darkly.[4] In his conceptual universe, perfection was achieved through awareness of those perfect Forms outside the realm of our perception. Plato concentrated on learning ideal universal truths without worrying about the details of the common world.

Plato wrote of an ideal Republic where social status was determined by intellectual ability rather than wealth or inherited class. Social status was the consequence of a long and rigorous period of intellectual training.[5] This training though, wasn’t book learning, or the rigorous observation of human life, it was something much closer to the divine inspiration that later Christians might describe as Faith or Grace. In Plato’s theories the ideal Forms are somehow already built into the human mind, “suggesting that at some point the soul must have received some kind of illumination”.[6]

Following Plato’s theory of ideal prototype Forms leads to interesting conclusions. On the subject of justice, Plato thought there must be an unambiguous example of ideal justice, “not in this world but in some other, and that we must once have been acquainted with it. This is what he calls the ‘Form’ of justice.”[7] We are born into this world with a dim recollection of this prototype Form and therefore some imperfect inkling of what justice is all about. Intellectual training opens the doors to further understanding by divine revelation.[8] As an other example of where Plato’s theories lead, Professor Weber says[9] Plato thought that the truths of geometry were not simply the result of logical reasoning, or the end result of a thought experiment, but rather they were “ideal memories of geometric shapes, existing in some timeless realm that reason could barely comprehend”[10].

Plato’s writing seems almost designed for intellectual argument. Perhaps because of the fate of his teacher Socrates, who drank hemlock rather than recant his controversial ideas, most of Plato’s books consisted of conversational dialogs between Socrates and several students instead of straight-forward lectures or exposition. All sides of arguments were examined without any clear declaration of a winner. Consequentially his writings left much room for interpretation, expansion and argument.

Aristotle was a student under Plato and remained at his Academy for 20 years until Plato’s death around 348 BCE. Unlike Plato, whose conceptual universe included both universal Forms and separate incarnate embodiments, Aristotle wrote of a universe where the ideal Forms and their embodiment as viewed by humans, were one and the same. Aristotle was “the first to develop the study of deductive inference”[11]; he thought that by starting from a few common observations or syllogisms – such as observing that all trees have leaves and only plants have leaves – that he could deduct a more universal truth such as concluding that all trees are plants.[12] According to Matthews and Platt, the Aristotelian philosophy emphasized that the natural world is the only world. He emphasized empiricism; the role of human senses was to observe and human intellect to classify and compare. Each material object contained a potential purpose. With training and nourishment it tended to grow towards this ultimate end.[13]

Aristotle “had the most comprehensive mind of the ancient world. His curiosity and vast intellect lead him into every major field of inquiry of his time except mathematics and music.”[14] Like Plato, what Aristotle wrote left much room for interpretation. Both of these philosophers would expound on both sides of an argument without clearly declaring which side they considered the most correct. Aristotle’s arguments could be quite circular. For example, he writes what the “virtuous see what is good, but elsewhere writes that what is good is so because it appears good to the virtuous”[15].

Aristotle’s God was “purely rational, self-absorbed, and uncaring about the world and its inhabitants.”[16] Obtaining knowledge did not require divine intervention. Aristotle rejected Plato’s dualism and devised an ethical goal—a sound mind in a healthy body—that he called happiness. Like Plato he believed “that the cultivation of the higher intellect was more important than that of the body.”[17] Aristotle believed in a “golden mean” in ethics.[18] All behaviour should be balanced between extremes. “For example, courage is the mean between the excess of foolhardiness and the deficiency of cowardice.”[19]

The school, or Lyceum, founded by Aristotle continued long after his death in 322 BCE. His manuscripts were edited in the first century BCE, and up to the sixth century CE his ideas were not only studied and interpreted but also criticized. In this period he was certainly not seen as an unimpeachable ultimate authority.[20] To the extent that he was seen as authoritative, it was “not because he was above criticism, but because he deserved to be studied carefully.”[21]

In the centuries after the deaths of Plato and Aristotle, several Roman schools expanded on the writings of Plato. Their leaders were Plotinus (204/5 to 270 CE) and his disciple Porphyry (234? to 305? CE). They saw themselves not as revolutionaries but as interpreters of the Platonic tradition. They rejected the essential dualism of Plato and put his thoughts into a monist unified system. Much later, in the early nineteenth century, their philosophy became known as Neo-Platonism.[22] Plotinus wrote the Enneads where he:

affirms the themes common to the general Platonic tradition, namely, (1) the non-materiality of the highest form of reality, (2) belief that there must be a higher level of reality than visible and sensible things, (3) preference for intellectual intuition over empirical forms of knowing, (4) belief in some form of immortality, and (5) belief that the universe is essentially good. The difference, however, is that Plotinus affirms all of these as a monist interested in asserting a real identity between the natural and the supernatural both in man and throughout all of nature.[23]

Porphyry was a Boswell to Plotinus’s Johnson, writing an extensive biography of his mentor; in addition though, he was also an important independent thinker. Porphyry was the one who made Aristotelian logic an important subject within the Neo-Platonic curriculum.[24] He saw Aristotle as one of the most effective expositors of Plato, as someone who knew Plato personally and understood the true meaning of Plato’s writing. He adopted many Aristotelian arguments and distinctions; accepting them both as compatible with Platonism and as useful for articulating the Platonic position.[25] As seen by Porphyry, briefly, there was a super-ordinate principle, the One, on which the Platonic Forms were based. Similarly, according to Porphyry’s view of Aristotelian ideas, Intellect was the principle of intelligent differentiation; it was the essence that all mankind, uses to make sense of the One by dividing up the Forms according to their separate “whatness”. The One and Intellect interact with the Soul: “As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so Intellect is paradigmatically what Soul is.”[26] (These concepts can be difficult to simplify and summarize).

In the Early Middle Ages, the most learned scholar was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 475–7 CE to 526? CE). A Roman aristocrat and courtier, he was a rare intellectual of his time. Boethius used his knowledge of Greek to translate much of the vast writings of Aristotle into Latin. Later Latin scholars knew of Aristotle solely through these translations.[27] He was “one of the most important intermediaries between ancient philosophy and the Latin Middle Ages”[28]. Boethius chose Porphyry as his main authority in logic.[29]

The Byzantine Christians broke significantly with Aristotle on the nature of the universe. John Philoponus (c.490 to 570) taught philosophy at Alexandria and placed a decidedly Christian interpretation on the universe of the Greek philosophers. In his On the Eternity of the Universe, Philoponus wrote that God had created the universe out of time and therefore it could not be eternal as written by Aristotle. He concluded that God, in making the cosmos, made no distinction between heaven and earth. God had created a universe that unfolded through natural laws and was therefore no difference between celestial and terrestrial bodies.[30]

In the eleventh century, at Chartres and at the St. Victor monastic school in Paris, the teachers emphasized the Greco-Roman classics in general “as a means of gaining insight into universal truths. Gone was the guilt reflected in many early medieval thinkers when they read the pagan classics.”[31] These new cathedral schools used the same curriculum as codified by Boethius in the sixth century. The liberal arts were taught from basic texts based on the works of the classical authors and the early church scholars. Student and teacher communicated in Latin and the works studied by the students were written in Latin. Classic Greek works were known only by misleading Latin summaries.[32]

These new educational ideas, and new ways of thinking, have become known as Scholasticism. These Scholastic thinkers attempted to harmonize both Aristotle’s rational thought and the Christian emphasis on faith. Scholasticism also involved a formal way to attack intellectual problems and find solutions during oral debate. Questions were “set forth for intellectual analysis; next, a discussion thoroughly summarized the arguments for and against the question, usually citing the Bible, the church fathers, Aristotle and other ancient authors; finally, a solution was offered, reinforced with support from religious and secular sources.”[33] The scholastic method was not used to discover and promote new ideas. It was certainly not meant to question religious beliefs. It was used to clarify existing issues and explore their intellectual ramifications.[34]

Many of these scholastic debates were about the problem of whether universals or Forms truly exist. The Realists, following Plato, reasoned that there were general universal concepts—accepted by faith—that existed independently of those real objects that we can see and feel with our senses. For example, they conceived of an ethereal universal “human being” or “humanity” that was manifest in our everyday material human bodies. The Nominalists denied the existence of universals. They followed Aristotle’s emphasis on things that can be seen, counted and measured.[35] A major figure in these debates was French theologian Pierre Abelard (1079 - 1142), a “brilliant and controversial”[36] scholar. Abelard showed that “extreme Realism denied human individuality and was thus inconsistent with church teachings”. He taught a more moderate form of Realism where the universals were simply useful human intellectual conveniences. They were not some ideal concept outside of the plane of material human existence.[37]

Arabic scholars became familiar with Aristotle and other thinkers of classical Greece much earlier and more thoroughly than their western European counterparts.[38] “For example between 750 and 1050 all of Aristotle and much of the work of his ancient commentators were translated into Arabic. Muslim thinkers did not simply accept the works of Greek writers; they corrected them, commented on them, and made their own original and brilliant discoveries.”[39]

The Arab scholar, Ibn Rushd ‘the Commentator’ (1126 - 1198), known in the West as Averroës, produced comprehensive commentaries on nearly all the works of Aristotle, reconciling the Greek thinker’s ideas with Islamic thought. He believed that Aristotle “both initiated and perfected the study of logic, natural science, and metaphysics”.[40] He saw Aristotle as an ultimate authority. After Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085, clerical scholars in Spain and then Sicily began translating classical works; first from Arabic and later from Greek.[41] Western scholars used these Arabic versions of Aristotle, translated into Latin, to help reconcile Aristotelian and Christian thought. Ibn Rushd’s writings remained basic texts in Western schools and universities until modern times.[42]

The University of Paris set the standard for advanced learning in the High Middle Ages. They issued degrees in several faculty specializations. Achieving their liberal arts degree basically meant that a scholar was a master of the new translations of Aristotle.[43] The new translations and commentary from Averroës elevated Aristotle to the status of an unquestionable authority. “By 1300 Aristotle’s writings virtually monopolized the curriculum at every educational level.”[44] Ethics was added to study of grammar while the study of logic absorbed Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The sciences of physics, ethics and metaphysics were taught in addition to the study of the liberal arts.[45] These scientific studies created fears by theologians that accepting pagan Greek philosophy would also bring acceptance of pagan concepts about God’s creation of the world. There was growing conflict between philosophy and theology. In the thirteenth century, the bishop of Paris condemned errors taught in the arts faculty of the local universities. This played a strong role in turning philosophy away from strict Aristotelianism.[46]

Also in the thirteenth century, the Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas (1224/25 - 1274) created a theological system that reconciled the study of Aristotle with more orthodox Christian beliefs. Known as Thomism, it remains “in its complex design and sheer elegance … one of the outstanding achievements of the High Middle Ages”.[47] Aquinas saw that mankind had two paths to divine truth: reason and faith. He saw the Aristotelian path of sensory perception as the way to learn the truth about the world that we live in. Reason based on our senses was the only way to prove certain truths. At the same time, Aquinas claimed that certain universal concepts, such as the immortal soul or the role of the Holy Spirit, existed outside the doors of human perception; they could only be learned by faith. In other words, some types of knowledge required the path forged by Aristotle and other types kinds of knowledge were found along the path as described by Plato.

While Thomas Aquinas was fundamentally an Aristotelian, that doesn’t mean he did not have other influences; but whatever he borrowed from other sources was carefully examined as to its relationship to Aristotelian concepts.[48] He wrote arguments against both the Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle and the Franciscan tendency to reject Greek philosophy. “The result was a new modus vivendi between faith and philosophy which survived until the rise of the new physics.”[49] Aquinas was eventually canonized by the Catholic Church and his theological writings accepted as part of the official church dogma. His close textual commentaries on Aristotle represent a cultural resource which is even now being recognized and studied.[50]

In fifteenth century Florence, a group of scholars organized themselves as an Accademia Platonica, under the leadership of Marsilio Ficino (1433 to 1499). Ficino translated the Enneads of Plotinus into Latin and harmonized Platonic concepts with Christian teachings. He taught that love and beauty were divine gifts with the ultimate goal being union with the divine; a concept still popularly known as Platonic love. Ficino also revived the Platonic concept of free will; each human being had the choice of loving God and accepting God’s gift of love in return.[51] Ficino’s concepts contrasted with Plato’s idealism where the Forms are the basis of everything yet represent an unattainable ideal outside the world of everyday substance.[52] Neo-Platonist writings, as influenced by Plotinus and translated by Ficino, brought broader humanism into Italy and other European countries.[53]

In conclusion, both Plato and Aristotle expounded on the most basic foundations of how we see the universe. Theologians have subsequently argued about how the world was created and how all those animals managed to fit on the Ark; cosmologists have argued about whether the sun revolved the earth or, perhaps, it was the other way around; but Plato and Aristotle at their most basic, thought about whether the world of our senses was the entire universe or perhaps there is some universal ideal or Form, unseen by human senses, that can only be recognized by faith or divine revelation. Thinkers of differing times, and differing religious faiths, have found concepts in both Platonic and Aristotelian writings to bolster whatever side of these basic questions that they choose to explore. In some periods of the Middle Ages, their writings were seen as having impeachable authority in any intellectual question.

Bibliography and references used in this Essay

Bostock, David. "Plato" The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Oxford University Press 2005.

Charles, Dr David. "Aristotelianism" The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Oxford University Press 2005.

Charles, Dr David. "Aristotle" The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Oxford University Press 2005.

Diderot, Denis and Jean le Rond D'Alembert (eds). Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
University of Chicago : ARTFL Encyclopédie Projet (Winter 2008 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed)

Falcon, Andrea. "Commentators on Aristotle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/aristotle-commentators/

Gerson, Lloyd. "Plotinus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/plotinus/

Harris, Prof. R. Baine. "Neoplatonism" The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Oxford University Press 2005.

Marenbon, John. "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/boethius/

Matthews, Roy T., and F. DeWitt Platt. The Western Humanities Volume 1: Beginnings through the Renaissance. Fifth Edition.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

McInerny, Ralph and John O'Callaghan. "Saint Thomas Aquinas", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/aquinas/

Pasnau, Robert. "Divine Illumination", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/illumination/

Peters, Edward Europe And The Middle Ages (3^rd Edition)
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997.

Riddle, John M. A History of the Middle Ages, 300-1500
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

The Western Tradition (Video Series)
Video 6: Greek Thought
Barzyk, Fred (Executive Producer) with Professor Eugene Weber
Boston, MA: WGBH Boston with Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989.

[1] Denis Diderot and D’Alembert eds, Encyclopédie p. 12:745
(Personal translation with some assistance from Google Translate). The original:
On voit Platon marcher d'un pas égal avec Aristote … Platon conduit à sa suite l'éloquence, l'enthousiasme, la vertu, l'honnêteté, la décence & les graces. Aristote a la méthode à sa droite, & le syllogisme à sa gauche: il examine, il divise, il distingue, il dispute, il argumente, tandis que son rival semble prophétiser.

[2] Eugene Weber The Western Tradition, Video 6: Greek Thought

[3] Roy T. Matthews and F. DeWitt Platt. The Western Humanities, Volume I: Beginnings through the Renaissance (Fifth Edition. (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004) p. 70

[4] Based on “Plato” article in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press 2005);
The Biblical reference is to 1 Corinthians 13:12

[5] Matthews and Platt p. 70

[6] "Divine Illumination" The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition)

[7] “Plato” Oxford Companion

[8] “Plato” Oxford Companion

[9] Weber Video 6

[10] Weber Video 6 at 18:30

[11] Quote from “Aristotle” Oxford Companion

[12] Paragraph based on “Aristotle” Oxford Companion

[13] Matthews and Platt p. 71

[14] Matthews and Platt p. 71

[15] “Aristotle” Oxford Companion

[16] Matthews and Platt p. 71

[17] Matthews and Platt p. 71

[18] Matthews and Platt p. 68

[19] Matthews and Platt p. 71

[20] “Aristotelianism” Oxford Companion

[21] "Commentators on Aristotle" Stanford Encyclopedia

[22] "Plotinus" Stanford Encyclopedia

[23] Based on “Neoplatonism” Oxford Companion

[24] "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius" Stanford Encyclopedia

[25] "Plotinus" Stanford Encyclopedia

[26] "Plotinus" Stanford Encyclopedia

[27] Matthews and Platt p. 194

[28] "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius" Stanford Encyclopedia

[29] "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius" Stanford Encyclopedia

[30] John M. Riddle A History of the Middle Ages (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) p. 124

[31] Riddle p. 288

[32] Matthews and Platt p. 239

[33] Matthews and Platt p. 239

[34] based on Matthews and Platt p. 239

[35] based on Matthews and Platt p. 240

[36] Matthews and Platt p. 239

[37] Matthews and Platt p. 240

[38] Edward Peters Europe and the Middle Ages (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997) p. 177

[39] Peters p. 177

[40] “Aristotelianism” Oxford Companion

[41] Peters p. 302

[42] Matthews and Platt p. 214

[43] Matthews and Platt p. 240

[44] Matthews and Platt p. 239

[45] Peters p. 303

[46] Peters p. 303

[47] Matthews and Platt p. 240

[48] "Saint Thomas Aquinas" Stanford Encyclopedia

[49] "Saint Thomas Aquinas" Stanford Encyclopedia

[50] "Saint Thomas Aquinas" Stanford Encyclopedia

[51] Matthews and Platt p. 350

[52] Matthews and Platt p. 68

[53] “Neoplatonism” Oxford Companion

Essay: Letter regarding: Paris Exposition 1900

2011-04-25T08:55:00.003-06:00

I recently took some University courses. One was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction.
I thought that it might be interesting to convert some of the essay assignments – such as this one – into blog postings. The essay was supposed to be History or Cultural Criticism. I looked at some old books in my personal library and then used my imagination...

I have a small collection of World’s Fairs Guide Books acquired during visits to old book stores. One particular book could have inspired this letter to an Albertan newspaper:

Regarding: Paris Exposition 1900

May 18, 1900

The Editor, Calgary Herald

Dear Mr. Young,

At last week’s club meeting you seemed quite interested the upcoming trip to this summer’s Paris Exposition that my wife and I are taking. I mentioned reading Father Lacombe’s letter in your May 3^rd edition[1] which described his recent voyage to France and I then promised to attempt a few irregular dispatches for your newspaper. Hopefully you will find room to publish an edited version of my modest efforts between the South African war news and those patent medicine advertisements that you are so fond of printing.

I would like to review a useful tourist guide book which has kept us up late as we plan our trip on recent evenings. This book is titled simply Paris Exposition 1900 and was published by La Librairie Hachette & Cie. While it is written entirely in the French language, I managed to muddle through with my grammar school skills and the assistance of my French-speaking wife.[2]

This book is a handy size similar to that of a pocket edition Bible. There are 485 pages in 16 chapters with a final Compass-Guide that I will discuss later. It is covered in a red leather-like material similar to that of a diplomatic passport. The title is embossed in gold letters. The materials are of good quality and I expect that this book could still be in excellent condition a century from now.

Exploring such a guide book is somewhat like exploring an unfamiliar city. First the traveller gets oriented, finds a home base and studies the practicalities of daily life. Then he steps cautiously into unknown neighbourhoods to discover the sights waiting in mysterious corners. A visitor to downtown Calgary does not walk the entire length of Stephen Avenue followed by the adjoining street, but rather gets quickly diverted by the new construction, mountain views and river valley parks. In a similar manner, I might begin systematically studying the names of statuary in the Tuileries Gardens of Paris on page 167 but then get quite distracted on page 169 by a long description of the Paris Commune and the events of May 1871. I read there that this was when the historic palace in that same location was destroyed using barrels of burning oil and explosive powder. The officers of the Commune “admired the savage and grandiose spectacle” from the terrace of the Louvre. In such a city – and in such a book – history and interesting distractions are always ready at hand.

Mercantile distractions are also common to both city and book. For a simple railway land surveyor such as me – a visitor from the far reaches of Her Majesty’s Empire – the advertisements for chocolates, hotels, theatres and clothing stores are quite educational and tempting. One department store has a prominent illustration of “The Exposition Suit” complete with pin-striped fabric, monocle, bowler hat, cane, white gloves, cigarette and lapel boutonnière. (I suspect that such an Exposition Suited dandy would not survive very long among the boisterous crowds of a Calgary stampede!). Along with these advertisements, near the end of the volume, I found fifty coupons for theatres, sporting events and cabarets. If clipped and presented upon admission, these will save 10 to 30 per cent on the ticket price.

Before overcoming the allure of such distracting merchandise, it is first necessary to reach the exposition city; but the book points to a solution. Several maps show the distance, travel time and cost to the major world cities. They show, for example, that travel to Paris from Vancouver is 10774 km by train and ship, it takes 13 days and the ticket costs 825 francs. (A handy Money Chart indicates that 5 francs equals a single American dollar). The reader is then directed to “Agence Cook” to arrange passage. (Of course, I have myself booked tickets from my railway employer. I refer you to the prominent CPR advertisement in the current issue of the Herald).

As a CPR employee I took particular notice of the practical hints given for railway travel. For example, I am directed upon arrival to adjust my pocket watch since the official time in Paris is 9 minutes ahead of that in London. Apparently France does not match their time zones to the Greenwich Meridian as we do in North America.

Passengers are instructed to arrive well before train departure. Then, after choosing our seat, the guide suggests we mark our seat with a small possession if we need to leave momentarily. We are then warned that

Certain travelers, loving their ease, scatter their effects on all the banquettes to pretend that the car is full; a great way to prevent this is to count the umbrellas and canes: their number shows the occupants. In case of opposition, call a company employee.

The book writers might be surprised at just how few residents of our Alberta district travel carry neither cane or umbrella!

The book contains a veritable mine of practical advice. The General Information chapter includes two pages crammed with the details of postal, telegraph and telephone communication. We discover that it costs but 15 centimes to send a short letter anywhere in France; but a 3 minute telephone call to London will cost a full 10 francs. To put such prices in perspective, we learn there are 100 centimes to each franc, the daily wage for a parlour maid is about 1 franc and 10 francs pays for a visit to the dentist and a tooth extraction.

Telegrams are the obvious lower cost alternative to telephone service. A half-page is dedicated to the intricacies of the Petit Code Télégraphique. There we discover that if we use the code BLÉ it has the meaning “Received your letter. I will mail a reply” while the code DERBY means “Arrived well, excellent trip, will write tonight or tomorrow. Greetings”.

Practical fashion advice is provided for travellers, both man and woman. An example is a section titled “The Cleavage” which I have myself translated as:

If dinner is a great ceremony, or if the theatre is not one where you can show bare shoulders and arms, there is a moderate behaviour which we are committed to: that is the dress of lace or silk muslin rising with long sleeves, under which one perceives discreetly the bare neck and arms.

Such practical notes are followed by a chapter of 140 pages dedicated to a general guide to the hotels, cafes, museums, theatres, art and general city sights. Engraved maps, some of which are unfortunately printed too small for easy viewing, are provided for the major parks and cemeteries. For the major museums descriptions are provided for each display room. Engraved reproductions with descriptions are provided for the major art works. If one has a taste for the macabre, visitation details are included for the catacombs and major cemeteries. (One can even arrange a tour of the city morgue). The amount of detail is quite impressive and a traveller could stay for many years without exhausting the list of essential sights.

Nearly half the book is dedicated to the World Exposition. The buildings are centred on the River Seine and the Champs de Mars. Dominating the centre is Eiffel’s Tower which was erected for the previous exposition of 1889.

Here are found pavilions from the major civilized countries and some quite small and remote nations. There is even a pavilion complete with farm and gold mining exhibit from The Transvaal where the Boers are now fighting such a fierce war. There are smaller exhibits from even the most obscure French overseas colonies. I searched carefully though and found no exhibit for the wonders of Eastern Canada let alone these North-West Territories where we are so fortunate to live. To me such an exposition seems an obvious place for Canadians to show off their scenic beauty and offer our diverse products to the world market. (I must wonder why we have not done so).

Among pavilions of world interest there are a few that seem rather mundane with little general interest. The Palace of Hygiene includes a wide variety of heating and ventilation machinery which might interest a plumber or building engineer; but I suspect that my wife would get quickly bored. Having a professional interest in trains and machinery, I am planning to travel just outside the city to the Vincennes Annex which has 20 tracks full of various railway equipment surrounded by a field of agricultural and industrial machinery. There is even a building for the Exposition d’Automobiles.

Some exhibits are designed for amusement rather than education. Back in the city there are several on my “must-see” list. One entire pavilion is dedicated to Russian Alcohol, while another, Le Cinéorama, promises to reproduce the effect of a balloon voyage across Europe to Africa! Another sure to amaze, is Le Maréorama which is said to mimic an ocean voyage on, and even under, the Mediterranean Sea complete with smoking volcanoes, mermaids and spectacular storms.

My wife has a far greater appreciation of the arts than I do. She has promised to educate me on things both ancient and modern. For the latest in modern style there is the Rodin pavilion just outside the Exposition gates. There the great sculptor is displaying his greatest achievements including his Gates of Hell and Statue of Balzac. I expect my cultural tastes are rather more ancient and I will prefer the paintings of Rembrandt and da Vinci that hang in the Louvre.

I also look forward to the many sporting events happening this summer. The agenda includes running, rugby, golf, gymnastics and shooting. Professional and amateur races are listed. Contests have been scheduled for Automobilisme, boating, horse racing, lifesaving and aeronautic ballooning. (I think some of these were organized as a successor to those Olympic Games which were first held just four years ago, but such is not indicated in this book).

Near the end of the guide book, I find a section on sights reachable as day-trips outside the boundaries of Paris. After that is a four-language phrase book followed by a commercial business directory. The listings range from abat-jour (lampshades) to vitraux (windows); though I don’t expect we will be buying either of those this summer!

At the very end of the book is one of the most interesting, unique and yet ultimately frustrating features of this book. There is a removable section built like a thin cardboard box. It is the size of a book page and about 3/8 inch thick. The title declares this to be a Boussole-Guide d’Orientation or Compass Orientation Guide. In the middle is a small functioning compass surrounded by three circular paper disks; these are printed with maps on both sides. By changing map disks and rotating the same to align with the magnetic north compass indication, the user should be able to navigate with ease. Unfortunately the small book size means the uncoloured maps are intricate and difficult to read. Then the user has to hold the Boussole-Guide level while walking and touring. This would be quite impractical while navigating busy city streets in inclement weather. Finally, the instructions to change disks are surprising complex and it might take several minutes to make the switch. I suspect that I could navigate the streets easier with my sextant and surveyor’s log books than by using this Orientation Guide!

While that final compass feature is rather unwieldy, the rest of the book is highly recommended. While currently our days are quite full as we prepare for our upcoming departure, we will have almost a fortnight to study this book and relax during our voyage. By careful planning, I expect to make effective use every hour of Exposition time that is available to us.

I will keep you informed of my progress and discoveries,

Yours truly,

Albert A. Livingston, Surveyor

[1] The Herald and Father Lacombe’s letter can be read online at www.ourfutureourpast.ca

[2] While this letter writer is a literary invention, a copy of the actual Paris guide book is in my personal collection.
In the year 2010, the Google Translate web page was of great assistance in writing this piece.

Essay: English Bay: The Tide Always Returns

2011-04-24T08:52:00.002-06:00

Two years ago I took some University courses. One was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction. I thought that it might be convert some of the essay assignments – such as this one – into blog postings:

June 21, 1792

Local women, carrying baskets and digging sticks, stopped at the sandstone bluff where the forest trail emerged into the bright afternoon sun of the place known as Ayyulshun. This was a season to gather food and then relax in the sun reflected on the salt water, yet their eyes still made a precautionary sweep for war canoes. Tribal raids and slave taking were common coastal events. Immediately before them the tidal sand flats extended for a hundred yards out from the shore. They knew that clams waited there to be dug and steamed. At the water’s edge a couple of harbour seals basked with eye’s wary for hunters. But what was that strange sight the women saw on the far southern shore of the bay? Holding their hands up to shield the bright sun, they saw what appeared to be several great canoes with bare trees growing from their decks.

These were ships where explorers from England and Spain were meeting to rename the coast. Captain George Vancouver and his crew had already spent six weeks of 1792 exploring the northwest coast of North America. One inlet he named after his friend Sir Harry Burrard; that inlet would later become the main harbour of the city that was eventually given Vancouver’s name. Now on the longest day of 1792, Vancouver was surprised to come upon the boats of Spanish captains Galiano and Valdés. This was at the edge of the great sand banks which are created from the soil that the nearby Fraser River carries from the interior mountains. Twice a day the tide recedes to reveal a sandy expanse extending a mile from the thickly forested shore; and twice a day the fish-laden water rushes back to hide those same sand banks from human view. The Spanish and English captains anchored just offshore in the same area where great cargo ships would anchor in the coming years. The European captains met cordially and compared notes. Vancouver “was mortified” to discover that the Spanish had already explored much of the area where he was now doing his detailed surveys. In honour of this meeting, George Vancouver would mark the location on his map as Spanish Banks. Later map makers would give the name of English Bay to the outer harbour where they met. None of these “discoverers” noticed the native women digging clams on the eastern shore of the bay.

June 21, 1929

On the first summer afternoon of 1929 a young boy made a short detour to English Bay while walking home from his first grade classes at Lord Roberts Elementary School. He was my father, known as Milton, age 6 ½. He stopped at a pushcart vendor on the Beach Avenue sidewalk. He plunked down a nickel for a brown-paper bag that leaked the melted butter which the vendor poured from a kerosene-fired kettle. Milton walked across to the half-block of Morton Avenue – the shortest street in Vancouver. There he sat on the front steps of a wealthy family’s beach cottage; he shook the bag to get the last popcorn kernels and then licked the butter from his hands. From his perch – just as the native clam diggers did in the same spot – he shielded his eyes and stared into the sun reflected on the bay.

Life was good and the stock market crash was still several months in the future. His family lived in a nice apartment building and his father still had money to spend on the Hotel Vancouver dinners that were captured in family photo albums. Young Milton noticed supplies being delivered for the dance-hall on the short pier jutting from the shoreline bluff. Gentle waves pushed by the onshore breeze lapped against the creosote-coated pilings of the pier. The dance-hall staff prepared for the Friday night crowds that would soon arrive by streetcar.

A few years earlier, sand had been dredged to expand the bathing beach. Between the road and the shoreline, a large wooden bathhouse had been built. In it were change rooms, concession stands and Vancouver’s first aquarium. With all the industry in nearby False Creek – everything from sawmills to the gasworks – the water was noticeably polluted and anyone wishing to harvest for clams and oysters would now first travel well out of the city. Small boys still swam in these waters and occasionally a seal would pop his head up from the sea to discover what strange things the humans were up to.

June 21, 1969

I was seventeen years old in 1969. I was at the end of grade 11 and it was a time of great change. My parents had recently separated and, along with my mother and sister, I lived just two short blocks from English Bay Beach.

I delivered the Vancouver Sun in the afternoon. My route ran along Morton and Beach Avenues just across from the beach. Most of my customers were on the inland side of the street since the only beach-side residence was the eight-story Englesea Lodge which anchored the entrance to Stanley Park. I had more than a hundred newspapers in that short distance since the residences were largely apartment buildings ranging from six to sixteen stories. It was just three blocks from Denman Street to the park. Along Beach Avenue there remained only three of the big wooden summer homes that my father would remember so well.

On that particular afternoon it would take more than an hour to complete my route. I pulled my big stack of papers on a child’s wooden wagon. As I often did in nice weather, I stopped half-way to buy a paper bag of popcorn from a pushcart vendor. I sat on a bench and squinted into the afternoon sun. Between Spanish Banks and me a few ships waited at anchor before being loaded with wheat or coal in Burrard Inlet. To my left the old wooden bathhouse had long been replaced with a concrete version. Immediately before me, since it was low tide, I saw a few barnacle-covered rocks emerge from the sand. Among them were the stunted remains of creosote pilings from the long-destroyed dance-hall pier. I licked the popcorn butter from my fingers and finished delivering my route.

Summer 2009

Having moved out of the city, my visits to the beach at English Bay are now rare. The width of the beach sand was tremendously increased in the seventies and the last house replaced by concrete. The Englesea Lodge apartment building was knocked down and replaced by a patch of lawn. On warm summer afternoons, local residents gather to bask in the sun much as the seals once did on that same beach.

When I do get a chance to walk along that shore, I sometimes notice the dark shiny head of a seal pop up from the sea to look around. As always, the tide recedes twice each day to reveal the sand flats; and as it always does, the tide soon returns to hide so much from human view.

Essay: Close Reading of “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee”

2011-04-23T08:42:00.002-06:00

Two years ago I took some University courses. One was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction. I thought that it might be interesting to convert some of the essay into blog postings. The assignment for this essay was a detailed reading analysis.

My essay subject was The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee by Paisley Rekdal.

As I read a story, I attempt to anchor it within the frame of my own life. I compare times and places. Internet research reveals that in 1959, Bruce Lee was 18 and working at Ruby Chow’s Restaurant in Seattle. The mother in the story must therefore be ten years older than I. In my personal 1959 life, I was tormenting the only Chinese student in my second-grade classroom until she wrassled some boy to the ground. That proved her ability at “judo”. After that, she had many friends. In addition, from a young age, I’ve spent days in cheap restaurants eating chow mien drenched in soy sauce while drinking cup after cup of hot green tea. From my experience, this story illustrates a very real time and place.

The first thirteen paragraphs occupy almost two pages with some long descriptive sentences. The first sentence is 41 words and sloshes around like the weak tea that it contains. Red tubs, teacups and rice clumps are all glued into that single sentence. In the next few lines, the characters, including a gaggle of cousins and aunties, are introduced.

The restaurant setting is described simply in a few words as having “red napkins, red walls, red carp in the tank”. Later on, Bruce Lee compares it dismissively with the “real Chinese” in Hong Kong. The action is more important than the setting. The mother’s physical appearance gets no description at all.

The author uses more space describing the seemingly irrelevant tale of the soy sauce bottles, than she spends describing the restaurant or even the meeting with Bruce Lee. This paragraph—the one immediately after she reveals that her mother is “practical in all things”—is my favourite. She starts with a 14 word sentence, “So it’s the University of Washington in two years with a degree in education”. Then a brief dramatic “Fine. She slams down full vials of soy sauce…”. The mother plays the role of obedient student. But her anger, like that “black, sweet-smelling pool on the white tablecloth” attempts to escape. The final paragraph sentence is an emphatic “Smith is not for girls like her.”

I like how the mother’s feelings are revealed without explicit description. The author could have used words such as “angrily” or a phrase like “she thought of her decision” while she cleared the stuck chewing gum. Instead, she reveals thoughts and emotion through action and scene description.

Another lovely paragraph is the short twelfth one that starts with the quote, “It’s all the rage in China” and follows that with a longer sentence about words getting repeated and “coming out another way”. In the final two sentences of the paragraph, the opening words come out written in another way. “All the rage. In China.” This is clever writing.

The first section of the story is told in an omniscient adult voice talking mainly in long clever sentences. It ends with a description of the door repeatedly going “back and forth”. This repetition implies passing time, which allows the coming big jump in time to arrive without surprise.

The final seven paragraphs are short and take up little more than a half page. The sentences are short. The description is brief. It has the language and cadence of a thirteen year old girl.

During this story the mother’s determination, learning abilities, work ethic and teaching career are all shown. She fights to get ahead, sometimes in opposition to people such as the guidance counsellor who denies “the dream of Smith”. Yet to the daughter, the “now officially only cool thing” about her mother is a brief connection to Bruce Lee. At the beginning the mother is age sixteen, setting tables as might any teenager. At the very end—from the daughter’s viewpoint—a light flicker reveals her to be once again ordinary.

This story is a good example of writing a concise story by making every word matter. (My own personal writing has a tendency to ramble about). Explaining with action is much more interesting than straight forward literal description.

Essay: Irish Letters: Kate Armstrong Overin

2011-04-22T08:34:00.005-06:00

Two years ago I took some University courses. One was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction. I thought that it might be interesting to convert some of the essay assignments – such as this one – into blog postings:

The history of my mother’s family includes many people who are now recorded by just a name and a few dates. For one of my distant relatives though, the details of birth and death remain undiscovered even as her thoughts and feelings were preserved in a remarkable series of nineteenth century letters mailed from Dublin, Ireland.

These letters were revealed to me after the death of my late grandmother. (I have photocopies of others that had been inherited by my cousins). I transcribed, sorted and recorded their contents. Fifteen of these letters were from Catherine Armstrong Overin – whom I refer to as Kate –and ten more were sent from her father. They were all sent to Kate’s sister Mary who married a British Army Sergeant named William McCoy. He was sent to Canada to suppress rebellion. Mary later emigrated and they had eight children.

I have an 1869 card-sized photo of Kate. She stands in a photographer’s studio wearing a stiff formal borrowed dress. She stares at the camera with an expressionless face. This contrasts with the letters which express so much feeling ranging from determination to utter despair.

The first note from Kate is dated August 1837 and is addressed to Halifax. The others were addressed to several small towns in Upper Canada. Kate must have been a teenager when she wrote that first letter. Her mother had just recently died. Kate was living with her father and raising her youngest brother.

In the 1840’s the letters were mostly written by Kate’s father James Armstrong. He had been encouraged to emigrate to Canada,but he writes that I cannot bear intense cold and I'm sure one of your severe winters in that country would kill me. These were the years of Irish crop failures and he reveals that the times never was so bad in Dublin as they are at present. Every year gets a little worse and James often complains about the dear prices and poor provisions. Eventually the Harvest is so wet that a great quantity of the Corn rotted on the ground and was only drawn home to be thrown in the Dunghill. In one note Kate writes that a poor man may walk the old Brogues off his feet before he would meet with a man that would give him one penny to earn.

The father writes that his son, James Junior, has a most infernal Blaggerd Drunken Wife (if she be a wife) and Kate gradually becomes responsible for raising their three children. James Senior writes of Kate that i'm afraid she'l hurt herself by working so hard. Kate spent her life in poverty, caring for the children of others yet having none of her own.

In March 1847 James Armstrong reports, I think that between the famine and Emmagration that Ireland will shortly be depopulated. His own brothers had departed for New Brunswick and Pennsylvania. By 1851 James Junior and his brother Robert were in Cincinnati where they write that we are in the hopes to see my father and Kate out here by Christmas, but that would not happen. A common thread in many of these letters is Kate begging for assistance to escape from her poverty. One time her sister sent an Order for £5 which Kate carefully saves for her own departure.

Kate reports in October 1853 on my Poor darling Father in Eternity since the 15th of june. Even though he was 65 years old and already in poor health, he had started a job where he laboured from before seven oclock in the morning and he wouldent quit nor Eat anything until the Same hour in the Evening. He died within a week of starting. Kate wishes as soon as ever I can I will go out to America. She has long periods of unemployment broken by intermittent drudgery. She turns her hand to Service again, for in 1857 she writes: I hold the situation of Cook in a House of Lodgers… the salary is very small, and the work very hard. Later she works in Turkish-style steam bath.

As I write this, I have before me a large sheet of paper that was folded and refolded to fit a small envelope. The words on this June 1858 letter express Kate’s great despair. The sepia coloured ink starts with a fine careful hand:
My Dear Sister, Your kind and welcome letter of February came safe to hand. She reports waiting for news of the Wanderers – that would be her two brothers lost somewhere in America. She has almost given up hope since I feel sure that if they were on the land of the living they would not neglect writing a few lines… it is a Melancholy reflection but it is one I cant shake off, for the feel of loneliness and desolation that the thought brings with it, is very hard to bear up against. She interrupts with I fear I Must give up the writing of this to Night for my spirits are to low… so good night for the present.

On June 30^th she resumes writing. This time her pen drips with a darker ink:
I have snatched another hour from the night to try and finish what I commenced more than a fortnight since. She reports on her very good health and the severity of her work. She has a dread of being any length of time out of Employment and she expresses her love for Mary and her family. Now it is getting late. She sits in her little room, perhaps with some cheap gin and a single candle. Her hands would be red and cracked from years of scrubbing floors. (The very next year lack of feeling in her hands led to a long period of unemployment). As she continues this letter her penmanship deteriorates and the letters get large and sloppy. There are some splotches which my imagination sees as tear drops falling upon the fresh ink.

Kate then mentions Jane, a hometown cousin. She is now Nine Years since she left Ireland and I have never received one line from her since she left. At this point she writes that I am getting very sleepy so I will conclude… I remain your ever affectionate sister, Kate Armstrong. In the letter’s postscript she begs once again for a reply for if you dont I will conclude that you are angry with me and remember that would be a sin.

The bad years continued. In January 1861 Kate writes that it is such a lonely thing to be without one Friend in the whole wide world, to care whether you live or die, sink or swim… I suppose this will share the place of its Predecessors, and be condemmed to oblivion, but though I am prepareing myself for another disapointment still I couldent help making one more effort to try and win you from your silence. But tragically, Mary McCoy’s eyesight had gone, and she never replied. The news was eventually sent by her daughter, Catherine Maria McCoy, who would eventually preserve the collection of letters. At age 56 William McCoy left his blind wife Mary and married again. He had six more children and I am descended from that second batch.

In 1863 Kate’s youngest brother Robert fought in US Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. He was strok with a shell in the side of his head and killed instantly as his widow so graphically described it.

Any good news seemed fleeting. In 1864 Kate writes that after being thrown once more upon the world she is happy to report her marriage to Samuel Overin. He was a widdower, but without any Family. She started to sign her letters as Catherine Overin; but the happiness was short. In early 1870, Kate wrote that she had not written in seven years and had been a widow for five. Her husband had died of cancer. Two years before I took Rhumatism through a heavy wetting I got and was four Months a Cripple in Consequence and then when I thought I hadent a Friend in the World, God was pleased to send me one. Her brother Henry, who had not written since leaving for Australia 15 years previously, sent word and remitted five pounds which seemed like a gift from Heaven. She writes her sister Mary that though not Superstitious I have been greatly troubled about you in my dreams lately. When Kate addressed that letter, Mary had already been dead for a year.

The final letter was sent in November 1870 to Mary’s daughter. Kate writes that Mary was a good Faithful Wife and Mother and deserved to be long and kindly remembered, peace be to Her Memory.

While other members of my family tree had their lives briefly recorded in letter fragments or old photo albums, Kate remains the one whose fate I ponder over. Did she live to an old age? Did she marry again? Did she escape the drudgery of her Dublin life? Perhaps she emigrated to live with her brother in Melbourne. I like to imagine that her final years were spent in warm Australian sunshine.

Essay: Photographic Memory Fish

2011-04-21T08:30:00.004-06:00

Two years ago I took some University courses. One was called Writing Creative Non-Fiction. I thought that it might be fun to convert some of the essay assignments – such as this one – into blog postings:

Like salmon pulled from great depths, my memories are hooked from a vast sea of photographic images. These images began to accumulate after I received my first Kodak camera on my eleventh birthday. Behind my Vancouver childhood home, family members were captured as they squinted into the summer sunshine. These black and white memory-captures would have long faded if they were not glued onto the black-paper pages of my first photo album. They remain there, complete with pencil captions so carefully written in my seventh-grade hand.

Memory images from later decades were captured on film slides that I shot, sorted and boxed. I wrote short comments on the paper borders: “Bangkok Reclining Buddha” or “Sam in Edmonton”. From their storage boxes I can dredge up images that would otherwise have long ago escaped. Looking at these pictures, I recall the exact colour of the South China Sea or the precise shape of my moustache in 1989. Among my clearest memories are certainly those “frozen” on film.

Yet, that is not entirely true. Many of my memories remain so alive that they leap above the surface without ever having been developed on film. More than three decades ago, a friend drove me from Texas to Alberta in an ancient Volkswagen Beetle. At the trip’s end, when I opened my camera, the film had not rewound and an entire roll was ruined by the bright sun. Even so, I can easily recall our non-air-conditioned desert drive into Las Vegas. The car radio announced the temperature as 113 degrees Fahrenheit. (I remember not 112 or 111, but precisely 113). We slaked our desert thirst with ice-cold low-alcohol low-taste Coors beer. While I can recall the taste of that beer, my memory contains few images from that particular trip. No photographs were processed for storage in my boxes and albums.

During one of my earliest jobs, I worked on the railway for just a few mid-winter weeks in northern British Columbia. Even though no photos were taken, I remember quite precise details. The cold weather was intense, painful and frightening. The crew included the Blangy brothers, plus a tough Ukrainian named Heller whose face retained a jagged scar from a grizzly bear encounter. Otto Caputo, our Italian foreman, prodded us with exhortations of “The trains a-coming! The trains a-coming!” We longed for lunch breaks and the solace of hot coffee. Once, after the glass in my cheap Thermos broke, I discovered my coffee to be frozen solid. Now decades later, I remember my disappointment. Why are those memories easier to recall than the names and faces of people I worked with just last year?

Memories are such mysterious fish. Some struggle from great depth and never emerge into full clarity. Others exist solely in old photographs. Yet other memories refuse to stay hidden and leap unbidden to bite me at the oddest moments.

Essay: George Orwell’s Writing: a Criticism of Language

2011-04-20T13:08:00.013-06:00

A couple years ago I took an Athabasca University course in Intermediate Composition. I thought that it would interesting to convert a few of the assignments into blogs. This assignment was a research essay and I wrote a general comment on the writing of George Orwell:

The English author George Orwell campaigned for every person’s right to free speech and press freedom, yet he did not see everybody’s writing as having equal beauty, clarity and truth. As he might have written, but apparently did not, all writing is equal but some is more equal than others. His essay Politics and the English Language provides suggestions to improve not only political writing, but all kinds of written English. He provides examples which are pulled apart so the entrails can be examined to determine possible improvements. Upon examining a few of his other published works we see that while his logic could be gullible and fuzzy, his writing, especially his political writing, was normally plain, clear and full of meaning.

In Orwell’s essay (Orwell, Politics) he deplores writing created carelessly without expressing clear thought. In particular, he singles out “Operators or verbal false limbs” which are defined as phrases such as “render inoperative” or “militate against” that a lazy author might choose instead of a simple single word such as “break” or “stop” (120). He preaches against “Pretentious diction” including “banal statements… given an appearance of profundity” (120). Another short section titled “Meaningless words” (121) warns that in certain kinds of writing “it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning”. He points out the debased language used by political speech writers who defend the indefensible through mechanical repetition of familiar phrases (125). Finally, he provides six rules for writing to prevent “bad English”. (See Appendix 1) While the emphasis is on political writing – and he specifically states that he had “not here been considering the literary use of language” (128) – his rules and precepts can be applied anywhere that language is meant to express meaning.

It is easy to find published criticisms of Orwell’s work that provide bibliographical detail, ponder the hidden meaning of his plots, discuss his political thinking and then compare his satire with that of Swift. It is more difficult to find criticism that discusses his choice of phrasing and words. A welcome exception is Anthony Daniels’ critical article on Homage to Catalonia which was Orwell’s personal memoir about the Spanish Civil War. Daniels praises Orwell’s writing as being “almost always lucid, never pretentious or wilfully obscure, and gives the impression that what the author is trying to communicate is more important to him than the mere fact that it is he who is communicating it.” (Daniels) Daniels then points out that “he often lacked the imagination to see the consequences of what he said, he accepted political clichés uncritically, not-withstanding his brilliant essay on that very subject”. (Daniels) He points out places in Catalonia where Orwell accepts children fighting as soldiers, accepts leftist political dogma on faith without reason and accuses Orwell of producing “just as much dialectical claptrap as his opponents”.(Daniels) I noticed some of these trends myself.

Down and Out in London and Paris was his first published book. It is a first person narration based on Orwell’s observations of the working-classes of Europe during a period of brutal economic conditions. It starts with stories gleaned from the weeks he spent labouring in the dungeon-like bowels of several Parisian hotels and restaurants. It concludes with his adventures in London where he slept in quite horrid conditions as imposed by charities and local government councils before they would provide basic support to the indigent. Some of the chapters consist solely of some particularly interesting story that he overheard while drinking at a local bar. The prime example is Chapter II which has the motif of someone named Charlie relating his sexual attack “like a tiger” on a young woman in a Parisian brothel. Orwell relates this tale without criticism or comment “just to show what diverse characters could be found flourishing in the Coq d’Or quarter” (Orwell, Down and Out 12). During the course of the book, the author shows the essential goodness of the people that he associates with, but then he casually relates tales of greedy immigrants; especially Jews. Reading from a modern perspective, I cringed when I wrote read a multi-cultural story which concludes with “After knowing him I saw the force of the proverb ‘Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don’t trust an Armenian’” (75).

This book has plain and outspoken language that is quite unusual in a main-stream book published in 1934. He offers some clear references without condemnation to the activities of those he refers to as “nancy boys”(169); and even though most swear words are reproduced as '——' there is even a story based on a fight which started when one man miss-hears another say “Bolshevik” when he really said “Bullshit”. (206)

It is interesting to compare the language as transcribed from the low-life characters he meets in Paris with that recorded in London. In Paris he translates the French words of his companions in standard plain English with only an occasional italicized Mon Dieu or Merde inserted for local colour. There is little attempt to distinguish class or origin by the manner of speaking. However, when relaying the speech of his English characters, he takes care to plug them into their class and social position by carefully reproducing their accent and choice of slang words.

Some of the most interesting chapters are short political essays. Near the end, in Chapter XXXVI, he discusses drudgery and lack of worth in most common labour. He writes about the satisfaction of producing one’s own food on a farm versus government make-work schemes. This concern over the value of a person’s labour is also a major theme in Animal Farm which was first published a dozen years after Down and Out. Many have seen Animal Farm as only as an allegory about the events of Soviet Russia. But it can also be read in a more general way as a treatise on the way that any dictatorship or oppressive regime controls and debases language.

In the Introduction to the Everyman’s Library Edition of Animal Farm, Julian Symons writes that “the telling of unpalatable truths was to Orwell a kind of duty… it was at times also a pleasure”(Intro, Animal Farm xii). Symons says that “his gift could best be employed in narratives where the people were symbols rather than realistically drawn characters”. (xix)

Some of the best writing in Animal Farm is political speech writing. Early in the book is a centrepiece political speech by the old boar named Major.(Orwell, Animal Farm 3-6) Using short plain words and concepts he summarizes the life of animals: “Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious and short”; and then asks rhetorically, “But is this simply part of the order of Nature?” He then proceeds to his main point “Man is the only real enemy we have”. Finally he drives it all home by providing direct examples relevant to individual cows, chickens and horses as to how much better their lives would be if men were not stealing their milk, eggs and foals. The words are plain and the precepts are simple: “Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers”. During the course of the book, this superb multi-page speech is reduced to a flock of sheep bleating “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad”.

In conclusion, we see that Orwell was capable of accepting common political dogma as truth without logical reason to do so. In Down and Out he relates stories from the lower classes without the criticism they often deserve. In Animal Farm, by the end of the book there is a sense that everything the pigs do must be bad; just as Major earlier presented everything human as essentially bad. The plot allows little room for compromise or pure logic. But when George Orwell wrote his political essays—even when they are found in the chapters of a novel—the language is plain and clear with sentences that are stirring and memorable.

Appendix 1

The rules provided in George Orwell’s essay on Politics and the English Language are:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

ix: Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word
if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Bibliography

Daniels, Anthony. “Orwell's ‘Catalonia’ revisited.” New Criterion (25.6) Feb. 2007: 11-20.

Meyers, Jeffrey.A Reader's Guide to George Orwell. London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1975

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. London, England: Martin Seeker & Warburg, 1945.
(Introduction by Julian Symons in Everyman’s Library Ed copyright 1993)

—. Down and Out in Paris and London. London, England: Victor Gollancz, 1933

—. “Politics and the English Language.” The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Ed Roberts, Tammy, et al. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002. 117-129.
(Also available online at http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html)

Essay: Learn Communication Skills with Toastmaster International

2011-04-19T07:51:00.004-06:00

A few years ago I took a University course in Intermediate Composition. I thought it would be interesting to convert some of my assignments into blogs. For an assignment asking for a persuasive essay this was my student submission:

Intermediate Composition teaches the methods and techniques allowing you to create concise, clear and stylish writing; but true communication requires an audience for your words. Attending a Toastmasters International club is a great way to give your writing a public audience while overcoming fears and learning useful skills. I was a club member for several years. What I learned there allowed me to overcome my nervousness to talk calmly before an audience when it really mattered. I urge you to overcome your own fears and find an audience for your writing skills at Toastmasters.

University courses in English Composition teach us how to string words, phrases and sentences into meaningful essays and stories; but sometimes written words are not enough. There is a point where persuasive and effective words need to be spoken in a public setting. Successful authors eventually hit the road for television interview shows. There they are expected to respond quickly to probing questions. Thinking and responding “off the cuff” is something that Toastmasters teaches. An advertising copy writer might labour for weeks on an advertising campaign but eventually that same writer has to verbally present his efforts to his agency management or clients. Giving such formal presentations is something that Toastmasters teaches. Other successful writers might want to speak before political meetings, church services or at management seminars. Speaking at such events is something that Toastmasters teaches.

So just what is Toastmasters? Toastmasters International is a world-wide non-profit organization dedicated to developing speech-craft and public speaking skills. According to their web site, they have national and district organizations in 106 countries along with many local clubs. These local clubs often advertise in local newspapers or phone directories and most are eager for new members. The international web site lists 63 clubs in Edmonton alone. It is accepted practice to attend meetings in several different local clubs before finding the individual club that fits your schedule and specific needs. Most local clubs have a diverse membership but some are aimed more towards specific industries, levels of competence or age groups. In my experience, club membership contains a high percentage of super-achievers who are already comfortable in front of an audience. These people want to rise to an even higher level as salesmen, teachers or preachers. But the membership also contains a similarly high percentage of people who consider three to be a big audience and grow pale at the thought of standing to read the shortest prepared question or criticism.

Local clubs organize weekly meetings where members practice skills according to their individual competence and comfort level. Since the meetings are run by local members, meeting preparation and organization are also learned. Listening skills are taught as well. Beginners might help with the timing of speeches or help in opening the meeting. They are given encouragement for their first quavering attempts at speaking scripted words while standing on their feet. Another member – having years of experience – might bring the club audience to tears or laughter while practising their entry for an international speech contest. The meetings can be quite fun and entertaining.

I have the natural ability to appear outwardly calm and to speak in an apparent intelligent manner when seated before a small group such as at a job interview; but I tremble when the collective gaze of a larger audience focuses in my direction. Teenage stuttering and family put-downs all make their presence felt. Even though I have a loud speaking voice, I am known as the quiet introspective member of my family. In the mid-nineties I attended my first Toastmasters meetings. There I took my first baby-steps at speaking before groups. My little speeches gradually grew in length and people actually laughed in the appropriate places when I attempted humour. I was genuinely shocked when some other club-members said that I had a voice made for radio.

Ten years ago, my brother David died of cancer. There was a memorial service in Vancouver that more than a hundred people attended. After the preacher spoke he asked if anyone wanted to say a few words. My eldest brother rose to speak but quickly became overcome with emotion and retreated after a few mumbled words. I rose with my hastily prepared speech clutched in my hand. I took a deep breath and remembered the calmness practised at my local Toastmaster club meetings. In my eulogy, I managed to both humorously praise the sunlight that David shone into the lives of others but also confronted the ways that he could be so utterly unique and difficult. There was laughter along with tears. Afterwards, many thanked me for my spoken words. Two years ago my mother died and I also managed some similar eloquence at her memorial service. I remain somewhat tongue-tied in social groups and I am in awe of those who utter long memorized speeches without referring to any written notes; yet my proudest life achievements include those two important occasions when I stood and publicly honoured the members of my family. I could not have done that without the skills that I learned at Toastmasters.

Every writer will eventually have an opportunity to speak in front of a seminar, wedding or business group. I urge you to take the writing skills learned in university courses and combine them with the public presentation skills taught at Toastmasters. Wherever you live, there is a local club seeking new members. Look them up today to discover more about Toastmasters International.

Essay: Variability of Weather in Alberta and Vancouver

2011-04-18T06:49:00.003-06:00

A couple years ago I took an Athabasca University course in Intermediate Composition. This was in 2009 while I was living in the city of Edmonton. I recently thought that it would be interesting to convert some of my class assignments into blogs such as this one:

The weather in Edmonton, Alberta – where I currently reside – is very distinctive when compared to that in other cities where I have lived. The differences are particularly noticeable when compared to my home-town of Vancouver, British Columbia. Almost everyone in Canada has heard of Edmonton’s extremely cold winter climate. Though an even more unusual aspect to the local climate might be just how quickly the weather can change. Back in Vancouver the weather sometimes stays almost the same for days at a time. Even though the Edmonton weather changes rapidly in short time periods, this area has little geographic variability. When it is cold and snowing in Stony Plain, it is likely to be cold and snowing in Sherwood Park. In a place with more geographic variety – such as Vancouver – the weather varies within a short distance even while it changes relatively slowly over time.

The Environment Canada web site [1] provides many interesting statistics. There we find that last winter at 3 AM on January 22, 2009, the temperature at the Edmonton International Airport was -7.2°C. By 3 PM that afternoon it was 12 degrees colder and then by the very next morning it had fallen to -36°C. That was a 29 Celsius degree temperature drop in just 36 hours! While the weather was also particularly cold at that time in Vancouver; there the high and lows for the entire week varied by just 15 degrees. Vancouver is famous for its winter rain but that tends to come down in a slow steady drizzle instead of cloudbursts. The city’s one-day extreme rainfall record of 89.4 mm arrived on Christmas Day 1972. Even though Edmonton is not famous for its rainfall, the comparable record of 75.6 mm, which arrived on mid-summer day in 1990, is not a great deal less.

When I was much younger I got a job working outdoors just south of Edmonton at Nisku. There I was surprised to see the many weather changes in a single summer day. When the rain starts in Vancouver, workers don their rain gear and return to work because they know the precipitation can continue for days. When it rained in Alberta I was surprised to see the outdoor workers take an indoor break since they expected that the wet weather would stop very soon.

Edmonton is in a flat plain and has little weather variability over distance. While there are a few low hills, the elevation only drops a hundred metres from the Edmonton International Airport to the depths of the North Saskatchewan River. It takes more than an hour to drive the hundred kilometres from St. Albert to Vegreville, yet the elevation at the destination is only 36 metres lower than at the start. The average weather varies little over a quite large area. For example, according to Environment Canada, the average temperature for the entire month of May varies by less than 2/10 of a degree from Camrose (10.7°C) to Athabasca (10.6°C) to Vegreville (10.5°C).

Edmonton is far from the influence of the mountains or the ocean. Unlike in Calgary, there are no Chinook winds roaring down from the Rockies to create a micro-climate and melt mid-winter snows. Here the weather seems more influenced by vast province-wide bands of clouds or sun with few hills to stop the onslaught. On local weather forecasts the predicted daily temperatures vary little over a wide area centred on Alberta’s capital city.

Edmonton’s continental climate variability is especially impressive for someone like me, who has moved from the coastal climate of British Columbia. There the weather is moderated by the sea. In the winter, when clouds often block the sun and winds blow in from the temperate Pacific, the Vancouver area can go many days without the temperature varying by more than a few degrees. In mid-summer it is not unusual to go several weeks without any sign of rain. Thunderstorms are quite rare. In Vancouver I lived for many years in apartment buildings overlooking the sea. Now I rent an eleventh floor apartment in Edmonton and I probably saw as many thunderstorms here last summer as the combined total of all my years in British Columbia.

The all-time record high temperature at the Vancouver Airport is 33.3°C and the all-time record low is -17.8°C. (Environment Canada) Edmonton International’s official range of extreme high and low temperatures is more than 30 degrees wider! Of course, coastal British Columbia does get occasional fierce wind storms but tornadoes are quite unheard of. Vancouverites still discuss the relatively small and quite unique Typhoon Frieda which struck way back in 1965 even though there was little building damage and just one death.

What Vancouver lacks in weather variability measured over time, it makes for great variability over short distances. The region has several quite distinct micro-climates. I have spent many summer hours lazing on the sunny beaches of Vancouver while watching clouds build up nearby on the mountains of the North Shore. From those same mountains it is less than 50 km south to the American border, yet the annual rainfall near the border is less than half the amount recorded in the mountains. The temperature, rainfall and snowfall on the coast vary greatly according to the distance from the ocean or the elevation above sea level.

There are many tropical locations where weather shows even less seasonal variety than that found in Vancouver. An example is Singapore where the all-time record high of 36°C is only 17 degrees greater than the all-time record low. (Herrera) Thus the most extreme recorded temperature change there is less than Edmonton can change in single day! But among locations outside of the tropics, Vancouver is noteworthy for its placid weather; while there are few locations—and certainly few large cities—that experience quicker weather changes than happen right here in Edmonton.

Bibliography

Environment Canada National Climate Data and Information Archive

Weather Underground Web Site

Maximiliano Herrera’s Extreme Temperatures around the World

[1] The Canadian weather statistics and land elevation data used in this essay are from the Environment Canada National Climate Data and Information Archive.

Essay: Judging a Book by its Cover

2011-04-16T10:25:00.004-06:00

I took an Athabasca University English Composition course a couple years ago. I thought that it would be interesting to turn some of my assignment essays -- such as this one -- into blogs. I have moved since I wrote this but my books accompanied me to my new home:

My Edmonton apartment feels a bit cramped; perhaps there are too many bookshelves? Their contents vary from software manuals to great literature. Many of the shelves are stuffed with the accumulated flotsam and jetsam from my foreign travels. These books are valued literary friends. In many instances though, they are judged by their covers even while the contents remain unread. They shout out to be opened and have their contents read; but how do I choose?

I have travelled far from Canada. When I planned foreign trips, the destination was rarely a particular country but instead an experience or perhaps a person. I did not set out to visit India but rather I set out to go “around the world” and then filled in the gaps. Going to Australia – at least on my second and third visits – was represented by a certain friend from the beach more than any desire to see the Outback. Rather than planning for East Asia, I was making efficient use of the airplane ticket rules; cramming in every possible stopover. But then, once I had arrived in some new country, the destination became interesting and I would gather travel guides, atlases and history tomes. I have read more about countries after I left them for the final time than I ever read before my first arrival.

Many of my favourite books were discovered at bargain prices in the back bins of dusty bookstores. Others are more recent eBay discoveries. When I have time for pleasure reading I browse my shelves for something interesting. But which unread book will it be? I enjoy books where cultures and civilizations intersect. Perhaps something about Western travellers in China will be a good choice tonight?

How about an imposing thick volume: Borderlands of Eternity embracing ''Across China on Foot'' by Edwin J. Dingle? (Dingle) Hmmm. A peak inside reveals that Edwin John Dingle was the “Founder of the Science of Metaphysics” and the original publication date is 1911. A page flip reveals photos of walking trips through Burmese mountains and boat travel on the upper Yangtze River. Fascinating I am sure, but this doorstop of a volume is rather too thick, embracing as the cover declares, two books in one.

Maybe I should attempt Behind the Ranges, Fraser of Lisuland, Southwest China by Mrs. Howard Taylor. (Taylor) First published in 1944, this appears to be the earnest and sober biography of missionary James Outram Fraser. (He certainly looks earnest and sober in the preface photograph). A label inside the front reveals that it was “Awarded to Arnold Fenton” by a Sunday school in 1959. I wonder if young Fenton read it himself and what life-lessons he gleaned from its pages. It covers the same interesting geographic area as the Dingle volumes, so I must someday give it an earnest and sober read.

Something with less heft would be a better choice. A Thousand Miles Of Miracle in China is described on its cover as “Extraordinary, Absorbing, Thrilling”. The title page reveals it as a 1904 personal account “by Archibald E. Glover, M.A. (Oxon.), of the China Inland Mission”. There are detailed maps and some photos of the nineteenth century Boxer Rebellion. The chapter titles promise high-adventure: “A Hairbreadth Escape”, “Travelling to the Execution” and “Left to the Mob”. (Glover) I do suspect that its Christian sermonizing might be too heavy for my current taste.

No, I think that something slightly more modern and somewhat less earnest will be better. Here is the novel Nanking Road by Vicki Baum published in 1939. The cover has a lovely impressionistic sketch of old Shanghai’s main shopping road. The hotel in that scene looks quite like the one where I stayed during my own Shanghai visit in 2000. While I have not read her books, I do know that Ms. Baum’s Grand Hotel was a big thirties hit. The 805 page length does seem a bit intimidating and I am not sure I want to spend weeks enmeshed, as promised, in the lives of a “multi-millionaire who began life as a rickshaw coolie”, “a celebrated gynaecologist flying from Nazi persecution” and a wealthy Englishman “dabbling in espionage”. (Baum)

Perhaps a view of Asia by an Asian will be tonight’s final choice. I own a copy of The Silent Traveller in Japan by Chiang Yee. From the forties to the seventies, Mr. Chiang wrote a series of Silent Traveller books illustrated with personal pen sketches, poetry, calligraphy and pithy observations. A couple years ago, I quite enjoyed reading his Silent Traveller in San Francisco. He noticed things out of the ordinary and met such interesting people. So the Silent Traveller it will be. Pushing back my keyboard, I leap into the first sentence: “I have paid Japan four visits so far…” (Chiang) and I continue reading long into the night.

Works Cited

Dingle, Edwin J. Borderlands of Eternity embracing “Across China on Foot”. Bristol, England & New York, NY: J.W. Arrowsmith & Co., 1911.
(Copyright 1939 Edwin John Dingle)

Taylor, Mrs. Howard Behind the Ranges, Fraser of Lisuland, Southwest China. London, UK: China Inland Mission, 1944

Glover, Archibald E. A Thousand Miles of Miracle in China. London & Glasgow: Pickering & Inglis, 1904.

Baum, Vicki. Nanking Road. London, UK: Geoffrey Bles, 1939.

Chiang Yee. The Silent Traveller in Japan. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. 1972

Essay: Cutting Gizmo's Hair

2011-04-15T19:32:00.007-06:00

I took some creative university courses the last few years. For one assignment I was supposed to describe an everyday process or system. Here is an updated version of what I wrote:

My Gizmo is an eleven pound dog, a five-year old bundle of flesh, bone and most especially, a coat of thick woolly hair. People see him as a cute fluff-ball of active energy; yet I know that a skinny snarling beast can appear when I start trimming all that hair. And that hair must be trimmed or he would soon become an immobile matted felt-ball. My ongoing adventures in Gizmo maintenance might be helpful when, or if, you find yourself caring for a similar pet.

Gizmo is a cross between a silky-haired Maltese and a woolly-haired Poodle. The silky Maltese hair dominates on his legs and belly, while the coat on his back and head more closely resembles that of a young lamb. Unlike short-haired dogs, Gizmo does not shed hair. Also unlike short-haired dogs, his coat continues to grow absolutely everywhere. If left to grow untrimmed for just a year, his entire body – including face, belly and feet – would be entirely covered with matted hair more than 6 inches long.

Many people with similar dogs entrust them each month to their favourite groomers. Being a thrifty do-it-myself type, I do the work myself. After buying a few tools, the ongoing cost is negligible. I have a big pair of dressmaker’s shears which work so much better than cheaply made snips. I keep them beside my favourite television-watching chair. Gizmo jumps in my lap, and when my hands discover a matted lump in his hair I grab the scissors and quickly slice it into pieces. A good brush with steel bristles is also essential. The third essential tool is a set of electric dog clippers.

In the winter he grows a long insulating winter coat. In springtime he is ready for a much shorter haircut. Since the job is easier when he is clean, I give him a bath a day in advance. To be more exact, I wash him with the hand-held shower attachment since he hates standing in a bathtub of water. Baby shampoo works great.

Now to find a good work location: outside wearing shorts on a summer day makes for the easiest cleanup. Standing him on a firm table also helps since he is much quieter and obedient when up off the ground. I start with the shears and scissor-cut to a rough shape. I keep my fingers in the hair between the blades and his skin. Therefore, if something gets nicked it will be my hands and not him. I finish with an electric clipper trim. The clippers have plastic guides which can be set to a chosen depth allowing an even cut.

The back is first and then the top of his head. Those are the easy parts. When you get near his face or legs he snarls and snaps. Fortunately for me, Gizmo has never quite figured out that I am the one directing the tools of torture. Instead of biting my fingers he goes for the object in my hand! I let him bite the steel and plastic as much as he wants; he quickly tires of that game. The haircut is an interactive process. It is a time for having both a firm voice and much patience. If he gets too upset as I attack one body part, then I move to another area and later return.

To trim his face, I hold him in my lap with one hand clasping his head firmly against my chest. Holding the big shears sideways so that I they don’t poke anything vital, I clip him close around the eyes and sides of the mouth.

The legs are always a struggle; there I could use an assistant. If I can achieve a rough trim on the legs I am happy. I can always trim some more on another day. Using the clippers without the plastic guides allows me to cut close around his nails and foot pads. The first time I gave Gizmo a haircut, after I had the top all complete, he would not let me near his legs. So he spent several days short on top and quite long down below. He did not seem to mind looking so silly.

Gizmo enjoys the end results even if he hates the process. He would be even more stressed if I left him for a day at the local puppy grooming parlour. I hope this tale of do-it-yourself Gizmo care might provide some useful ideas if you ever take control of a woolly Fifi, Fluffy or Rover.

For hygienic reasons, it is good to keep things fairly short on his belly and under his tail. The secret is to get ones fingers in under the blades. Delicate doggie bits won’t be accidentally snipped if the barber’s fingers protect them from the cutting blades. This is not the place to be overly squeamish.

High-Level Contempt for Canadian Parliament (I was naive)

2011-03-21T22:29:00.001-06:00

I was naïve until today when my innocent eyes were pried opened by the report of a Canadian parliamentary committee. I have seen the light.

As an antidote to depression brought on by wars, rebellions, meltdowns and earthquakes, I spent much time in the last week watching the Canada's CPAC channel. I have giggled at clever Kady witticisms, been awed at Tabatha eloquence, questioned the legal legitimacy of Bev Oda's Autopen and twittered my own naïve tweet/rants in response.

The big show was called the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (sometimes known by the Twitter hash: #PROC).
A couple weeks ago the Speaker of the House of Commons passed on to that noble committee the thorny question of just how contemptuous -- or ^NOT contemptuous -- the 'Harper Government' is of the Canadian parliament, the Canadian electorate and the country as a whole. We observers -- whether watching CPAC from a Brick Warehouse LazyBoy, iPhoning tweets at work or reading the coverage in our local Sun tabloid -- were entertained by the attempts at wit as the members (at least 'some' and perhaps des membres) slogged through witness list towards the final report conclusion.
The evidence showed the Minister in Charge of CIDA was guilty of nothing more than having been appointed way over her level of competence. She had risen to a position that expected to her read and initial the executive summaries of 760 memos last year! (That is more than two signatures each and every day. Imagine the carpal tunnel injuries if she had attempted to do that by hand!) Therefore, the Minister used her smarts and her smart phone as she drove herself around Thunder Bay. Instead of using a real legal-type pen to legally sign all those memos, she simply directed her assistant -- or perhaps an office temp or the night janitor -- to push the button on the office Autopen and let it do the signing. Ms. Oda can honestly plead not contempt but simple incompetence.

In addition, in this country at least, the Mulroney Doctrine has established the legal principle that full honest and open disclosure doesn't require exposing every little possible illegality but only requires exposing the narrowest possible answer of the question as asked.

At the same time though, the testimony before the PROC clearly showed that the Harper Government -- meaning the privy council working collectively under the direction of Stephen Harper -- was operating in contempt not only of the elected members of parliament but was also contemptuous of the institution of parliament and the country of Canada as a whole. In the vernacular, they sent a big fuck-you to the people of Canada, their elected representatives and the Speaker of the House.

Now I finally get to the sad moment where my naivety was revealed and my eyes opened. I was reading today's Report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the Question of Privilege Relating to the Failure of the Government to Fully Provide the Documents as Ordered by the House. On Page 7, there is a paragraph that starts:

Also on March 16, 2011, the Hon. Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice, and the Hon. Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, along with a number of departmental officials appeared before the Committee to give testimony.

I suddenly realized who were are dealing with. This is not some anonymous cabal flicking a middle finger to the Canadian public. Here was the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety -- in other words the authorized head lawyer / chief law-maker along with the prosecutor in chief / head cop of the Queen's Privy Council of Canada -- presenting a contemptuous and obviously report to our elected representatives!

In respect of the testimony of the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety, a number of questions arose from some Committee members. There were also comments, including that members found it difficult to understand why the FINA deadline was not respected, and why it took the government four months to provide FINA and Parliament with the information that it had requested.

There is much detail on the next couple of pages, but lets summarize by saying that after watching last weeks testimony and reading today's report, I can easily imagine Mr. Toews and Mr. Nicholson snickering over their morning coffee as they reviewed those obviously inadequate binders which they intended to slap before the committee as 'evidence'. They must have know that this was not the answer that the speaker had asked for.

My eyes are open. The only thing those binders proved was the utter contempt by our head cop and chief lawyer towards the committee process and committee review by our elected representatives.

Edmonton, Remembrance Day 2008

2008-11-11T13:46:00.010-06:00

I normally stay home on Remembrance Day, make excuses and feel bad about it. But the old guys are dying off and I am feeling more patriotic this year so I made the extra effort and attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Edmonton Cenotaph in front of City Hall.

It was a good day for people watching. Snappy uniforms and some nice music. Yes there were few old guys marching any more but they had a full complement from the nearby army base. (I think that there was another indoor ceremony somewhere else in Edmonton where the Mayor attended).

John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Sarah Palin

2008-11-01T09:28:00.003-06:00

I was doing some Internet research after watching John Cleese on the Keith Olbermann show yesterday. Mr. Cleese is just as smart and funny now as he was 40 years ago! He apparently thinks both John McCain, Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly are all funnier than Michael Palin. Why are there so many Americans that don't understand this?

I just discovered John Cleese's Eulogy for Graham Chapman. I do wish that someone writes something half as lovely about me when I am finally expired, dead, gone and no more. Here is some classic Graham Chapman.

And now for something completely different. The Lumberjack Song
This is completely wrong! Since I have spent much time in the backwoods of British Columbia (see photo), I hate Canadian stereotypes, I would never refer to a logger as a "lumberjack" and I have never worn suspenders and bra... I should write a letter of complaint but instead I just giggle and sing along.

West Virginia Vote Flipping Caught On Tape (VIDEO)

2008-10-29T10:34:00.001-06:00

Speaking as a software developer who has personally counted paper ballots in a country where they still do things the old-fashioned way:

Why don't Americans put the waitresses in charge of the election with some help from SQUIRREL? Waitresses know all about counting cash and making things balance at the end of their shift, they know about keeping records for any tax audits, they know that their credit card receipts have to balance with the total in the cash register and -- from their first day on the job -- they know the chaos that results when they accidentally ask for a well-done Obama burger when they really meant the refried McCain special.

I am sure that the average waitress -- and perhaps even the average waiter -- knows more about technology and the need to track orders and money straight far more than the elderly semi-retired people that American counties hire at minimum wage to run their elections.

I also expect that the average point-of-sale machine manufacturer knows far more about keeping data accurate, keeping machinery working in difficult conditions and making things easy to use with minimal training than Diebold does.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost