One man down

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-01T22:04:00.002+04:00

(I'll come back to this).

1. More poetry.
2. Update this journal more -- to many stories are going unwritten, and memory is a slippery fish.
3. More kung fu. More qi. So handsome!
4. Graduate school.
5. Better scheduling starts with a calendar and post-its.
6. Earlier to rise.

2011-08-11T05:13:00.001+04:00

Waiting for the Ship

by Charles Brownell

We are ever waiting, waiting,
Waiting for the tide to turn—
“For the train at Coventry”—
For the sluggish fire to burn—
For a far-off friend's return.

We are ever hoping, hoping,
Hoping that the wind will shift—
That success may crown our venture—
That the morning fog may lift—
That the dying may have shrift.

We are ever fearing, fearing,
Fearing lest the ship have sailed—
That the sick may ne'er recover—
That the letter was not mailed—
That the trusted firm has failed.

We are ever wishing, wishing,
Wishing we were far at sea—
That the winter were but over—
That we could but find the key—
That the prisoner were free.

In Memoriam Rudy Riefstahl

2011-07-29T05:17:00.005+04:00

I was in the middle of researching William Bradford, and reading Rudy's essay on Bradford's frames when I got an email informing me that he had passed away. Worse than that, I had just started making headway on This Side of Paradise, a book set largely at Rudy's alma mater -- I was preparing an email to him to ask him how much of it was true (though he clearly graduated a few decades later). I haven't experienced very many deaths in my life yet, but this one hit me hard. I had to put down my work and sit for a long while.

Rudy was a great friend -- he was one of my mentors at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Every Wednesday, we'd get lunch with Robert Hauser and talk about art philosophy, everything from forgery, to proper conservation technique, the differences between "objects" and "artifacts," artist's intention, art's value. He made me promise him that if I ever did an exhibition on what was to become my thesis work, that I wouldn't fail to publish some sort of catalog. He was extremely sharp, irascible, hilarious, and wonderfully honest in the sort of way that only an old man can be. I always made sure to send him an update message with how I was doing, what I'd been up to lately, because I always wanted Rudy to be proud of me. He taught me everything I know about frames and frame conservation -- he is the reason that I'm always gawking at the edges of paintings and considering whether they are appropriate to the subject, period, style, etc.. He was a true mentor and friend, and though I found myself dripping tears on my research, there really is no reason to cry -- at 82-years-old, with children and grandchildren who loved him and a brain full of art, and a firm grasp of virtue

I was intending to visit him this coming August.

Obituary

Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl II, 82, of Rochester, Massachusetts, died unexpectedly on June 25, 2011. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, the son of Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl and Elizabeth Titzel Riefstahl, Rudy was raised in New York City, where he attended the Brooklyn Friends School. He was a graduate of The Hill School, and Princeton University. After serving in the United States Army in Germany during the Korean War he pursued graduate studies in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. He was employed by the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University and The Toledo Museum of Art before working in private practice in conservation of works of art and curatorial services in Michigan for many years. After moving to Massachusetts he found new outlets for his love of art, history, classical and choral music and reading. He found community through his many years of volunteering in the conservation department of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and through singing with various local choral groups; the Sippican Choral Society, Sine Nomine, and, most recently, Mastersingers by the Sea. An avid reader until his death, Rudy could often be found enjoying the Rochester library, or perusing yard sales on Saturday mornings, from which he often brought home trinkets for his granddaughters, books or old tools to add to his collection. Rudy was married to Deborah Lockwood Riefstahl, who died in 1989. He is survived by his son, Rudolf Meyer Riefstahl III of Grayling, Michigan, his daughter, Sophia Arnfield of Rochester, and three granddaughters; Deborah E. Riefstahl, Albertine A. Arnfield and Beatrice C. Arnfield. Burial and private ceremony will be held at a later date at Oakwood Cemetery in Traverse City, Michigan. Donations in his memory may be made in support of the conservation department of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Friends of Rochester Plumb Library, or to Mastersingers by the Sea of Falmouth, Massachusetts.

19th Century Green Writing: Teaching the Art of Fascination

2010-11-18T03:10:00.006+03:00

A lover of plots, action, drama, passion, tension, mystery, deception, climax, conflict and resolution, might have trouble with Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain. Much of Green Writing has very little interest in what is expected of the most basic novel. But if we are to judge Austin's book by the measuring stick of the novel, we would be entirely missing the essence of the genre, which aims to teach a whole new way of looking at the world around us. What then, we might ask, holds our interest in this book? What moves us?

Austin's style is a formally anti-progressive style, in the tradition of contemporary and earlier Green Writers such as John Burroughs, Emerson, and Thoreau. In an anti-progressive style, there can also be no narrative progress. These writers were downright sick and tired of “progress” in all its forms; they were sick of efficiency, of the never-ending search for the next frontier, of the silly belief that the history of man was one of gradual advancement, that everything was moving forward to some great, more-perfect evolution of man (as many gleaned from Darwin). Green writers were sick of trains, steam boats, coal, tanning, power lines, and Speed, that popular God whose worship would flower into the awful cult of Futurism, a cult beheaded by the realization of its own desires: war; progress; efficiency. Future-oriented narrative, plot-oriented writing, the obligatory exposition, rising action, denouement, and resolution, which pull the reader along in anticipation of the next page are not sufficient to convey the values of a Green Writer. Slow down, dear reader, slow down. Don't worry about what is on the next page; instead, enjoy what is on this one.

Rather than plot, the Green writer prefers observation-driven writing. Austin, for example, examines very closely the world around her, her local environment, and she analyzes those everyday details that the casual observer would quickly relegate to the realm of the mundane. Her sentence structure is similar to Burroughs’ in its directness and simplicity; she is not trying to dazzle or confuse, she merely presents what she sees. Her vocabulary only verges into the esoteric out of necessity: she needs Latin binomial nomenclature to differentiate all the different species of flora and fauna she discusses. She presents a close, detail-oriented analysis of generally overlooked topics in a very accessible manner, giving us readers matter-of-fact wisdom in the trappings of humble diction and syntax.

The name Austin gives to her role as a nature-observer is the “true idler” (Land of Little Rain, 12), which is a name that has similar connotations to what Burroughs calls the “Sharp Lookout” (Signs and Seasons, Ch.1), the “keen-eyed observer” (“Art of Seeing Things,” 146), or what Thoreau called the “saunterer” (“Walking”, 592-3), all of which derives from Emerson's “transparent eyeball” (“Nature”, 6). These names all share in common the idea of slowing down, looking, closely observing, and waiting. By means of this waiting and watching, we as waiters and watchers might obtain a sort of transcendental enlightenment (as with Thoreau and Emerson), or at least a certain level of wisdom (as with Burroughs and Austin).

I would argue that there is a very definite connotive shift between Emerson's and Thoreau's idea of the “saunterer” or the “transparent eyeball” and Austin's and Burroughs' “idler” and “sharpshooter.” The former pair attaches a very religious and moral set of implications to the role of the nature-observer, that the nature-observer has the potential to become a sort of wiseman, prophet, or achieve some sort of union with God that is beyond what Austin and Burroughs are willing to admit. Following in the tradition of realism, and moving away from the moralizing/sermonizing force of Thoreau and Emerson, Austin and Burroughs are content simply to observe, and through observation achieve a more muted, toned-down sense of wisdom. They are less likely to make a statement about the world or nature of man and more likely to simply record the observation, allowing the reader to make his/her own extrapolations—though often, they too cannot resist the temptation to take an observation and apply a more universal metaphor to it. Take the following quotes for example:

As the weather grew hot, her position became very trying. It was no longer a question of keeping the eggs warm, but of keeping them from roasting. The sun had no mercy on her, and she fairly panted in the middle of the day. In such an emergency the male robin has been known to perch above the sitting female and shade her with his outstretched wings. But in this case there was no perch for the male bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I thought to lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside the nest.
(S&S, 73-74.)

The quick increase of suns at the end of spring sometimes overtakes birds in their nesting and effects a reversal of the ordinary manner of incubation. It becomes necessary to keep eggs cool rather than warm. One hot, stifling spring in the Little Antelope I had occasion to pass and repass frequently the nest of a pair of meadowlarks, located unhappily in the shelter of a very slender weed. I never caught them sitting except near night, but at midday they stood, or drooped above it, half fainting with pitifully parted bills, between their treasure and the sun. Sometimes both of them together with wings spread and half lifted continued a spot of shade in a temperature that constrained me at last in a fellow feeling to spare them a bit of canvas for permanent shelter.
(LoLR, 7-8.)

We see in the above paragraphs Burroughs and Austin observing the same phenomenon of birds keeping their eggs cool in a hot environment. Both authors have the same impulse to give the birds some sort of parasol to ease their plight. But note that these paragraphs avoid any moralizing statement. Rather than mention something about the relationship between mother and child, the natural, self-sacrificing altruism of mother bird to baby egg, the intimate relationship that is built during this crucial period of incubation as an edifying metaphor for human relationships or for the world at large, Austin and Burroughs are content to simply make the observation. Observation perseveres for observation's sake; the metaphor that is extrapolated from it is left for the reader to put together on his own. This is not to say that the extrapolation is unimportant, merely that it is left to the reader to apply the analogy to his or her own circumstances:

Man can have but one interest in nature, namely, to see himself reflected or interpreted there, and we quickly neglect both poet and philosopher who fail to satisfy, in some measure, this feeling. (S&S, 37.)

Nature remains the engine of metaphor for these later Green Writers, but they refrain from the antebellum tendency to do the moralizing for the reader. We have moved into the realm of realism, where the goal is to depict objective reality in a clear, literal fashion. What we glean from the observations (and we most certainly are supposed to glean all sorts of various connections and comparisons from these observations) is entirely up to us as readers.

It is important to note that, following the trend of realism, Burroughs and Austin also describe the unpleasant sides of nature. Austin spends a fair share of her pages describing the unfriendliness of the desert, the death that haunts it, its pitilessness. Nature is described not in the terms of the sublime, as it so often is in Emerson and Thoreau, but as it is: thorns, vultures, death and all. This is the post-Melvillian understanding of Nature, that Nature, beautiful though she may be, is not simply a place of butterflies, sunshine, and transcendentalism. The Melvillian perspective is much more akin to the Puritan relationship with Nature, and takes into account that Nature is full of all sorts of dangerous things; that if you go out into nature, all the time looking for some sort of sublime experience with God, you may just get your leg bitten off. Burroughs and Austin have thus shifted to an unidealized relationship with nature, a very respectful one. The “dark side” of nature is faithfully portrayed, and presented as further metaphorical inspiration.

While we as readers have an experience that is one of quiet pleasure, of slow marvel at another ecosystem likely different from our own, we are not meant to want to go to the place described. Austin and Burroughs are not writing a travel guide; their primary concern is not enticing tourism to their neck of the woods. There is no mention of monuments, or specific “must-see” natural phenomena as in Bryant's Picturesque America; indeed, a tour guide interpretation of these works would be completely contradictory to the anti-progressive outlook. Rather, these essays aim to teach how one without any training (for surely, Austin's and Burroughs' writing is relegated to the realm of the naturalist rather than that of the scientist) can, by spending time and careful examination, find such wonders in his or her own backyard. Their message is much more profound than the travel guide, which simply states “come here and look at this!” Austin and Burroughs are saying that there are all sorts of natural phenomena to be studied, that there is fascinating stuff happening all over the world all the time, and if Austin can find it in the middle of the desert, and Burroughs can find it in the Hudson Valley, then surely we as readers can find it wherever we may be. The Progressivist travels to Paris in order to have a fascinating experience; the Green Writer recognizes that wherever you go, there you are, that “one has only to stay at home and watch the process pass” (S&S, 3).

Ultimately, that's the brilliance of late-nineteenth century Green Writing: it teaches us how to become fascinated with where we are, how to become satisfied with what we have. It is trying to bring about a whole new way of life. Stop looking for plot. A plot is a destination, and a destination implies a purpose, and a future-oriented world view; not everything needs to be viewed in terms of progression; not all who wander are lost. By becoming fascinated with where you are, there are all sorts of wonderful things to be learned. Lewis Mumford notes the outcome of regionalism:

With local history as a starting point the student is drawn into a whole host of relationships that lead him out into the world at large: the whaling ships that used to cast anchor at Poughkeepsie and other river towns will carry him to the South Seas; the discovery of the Hudson will take him back to the Crusades; one begins to follow the threads of local history, local manners, local industry, local peoples, one finds that they lead in every direction. And that is the proper method. ("The Value of Local History", 25.)

The Green Writer is thus saying by example, by the explanation of his or her observational processes, the following to his reader: “This is my place, and here is how I love it. You too can find a similar love for your place, wherever that may be. And as you love your backyard, soon you shall love also your neighborhood, your city, your country, indeed, soon you'll find that you possess a love for and responsibility to the whole world.” They are conveying a sense of pride in regionalism; they are demonstrating a non-narrative way of life. Austin and Burroughs are not just teaching the art of observation, they are teaching the art of fascination.

Bibliography

Austin, Mary H. The Land of Little Rain. The Modern Library classics. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

Burroughs, John, and Jeff Walker, ed. Signs & Seasons. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2006.

Mumford, Lewis, & Marranca, Bonnie, ed. "The Value of Local History," A Hudson Valley Reader. Woodstock, N.Y: Overlook Press, 1995.

Thoreau, Henry D, & Carl Bode. The Portable Thoreau. Viking portable library. New York: Viking Press, 1964.

Inspiration and Transcendence as an Aspect of Monumentality: The Courtyard of Louis Kahn's Salk Institute

2010-10-09T11:50:00.004+04:00

Creating an environment designed to inspire inspiration itself is no easy task. In many ways, it is equivalent to creating a religiously transcendent place. How does one represent inspiration in form? How does one prepare a place for enlightenment to occur? This paper strives to analyze Louis Kahn's Salk Institute as a place of both rational and spiritual transcendence; that is, how Kahn links inspiration in architecture with his understanding of monumentality.

The Purpose
The Salk Institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine. He hired Louis Kahn as the chief architect in order to create an institution that would unite people “from different disciplines and backgrounds” to explore “the organization and processes of life.”¹ Kahn sought to construct a space that would facilitate collaboration and synthesis across the sciences as well as foster thought, meditation, and genius; the challenge was to create a space for the greatest scientific minds to work, and also to think. Perhaps the most interesting concept Kahn tried to realize was the idea of “a lab fit for Picasso”.² Science and art were meant to meld at the Salk Institute; intuition, inspiration, and rational thought ought to blend; genius must be accommodated, nurtured, and given space to roam. In order to achieve a space that supersedes these boundaries and combines these various elements, whether they be disciplinary, rational, or divine, Kahn had to find a way to seamlessly integrate poetics and science into a single unit, a transcendent but utilitarian architectural chimera.

The Plan: Beaux-Arts
The Salk Institute is a Beaux-Arts plan: perfectly symmetrical. Perhaps Kahn chose a Beaux-Arts design because so many successful monumental structures have employed symmetry in achieving timelessness. Kahn himself was educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and its influence is visible in Khan's revival of the reflective plan.³ In essence, the Salk Institute is two identical, parallel buildings, each lined with five wings of offices. The two buildings are separated by a wide, concrete courtyard which itself is bisected by a long, narrow strip of water that drops off into a lower-level fountain and sitting area. The courtyard below terminates into a sloping canyon of sandstone Southern California coastal sagebrush which leads out to the Pacific Ocean a half-mile or so away. When one stands at the head of the fountain, one cannot quite see the termination of the courtyard, and the gray concrete seems to meld with the Pacific, as if the whole ocean were pouring into the Salk institute through this narrow strip of water, or as if the fountain were flowing directly into the ocean. This is the great moment in art in which Kahn incorporates the ocean, horizon, and sky as integral parts of his architectural whole, or perhaps visa versa—the Salk institute becomes an integral part of the sea and sky.

The Open Courtyard and Infinity
The overall design of the Salk Institute in many ways parallels Thomas Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia. With the University of Virginia, Jefferson used a Beaux-Arts, neoclassical design on top of a small hill with a central lawn that terminates on one end with the famous Rotunda (the pinnacle of education), and on the other end with an open view of the beautiful Virginian landscape. Jefferson thus directly incorporates a symmetrical layout with a central garden for meditation, reflection, breathing space, and clarity of mind. The one end is closed by the architectural symbol of knowledge (the library), and the other open into the wide world of nature and the sublime.⁴ The central courtyard area in both cases delineates clearly between places for work, study, science, and places for thought, relaxation, and meditation.⁵

The power of Jefferson's famous lawn relies heavily on the incorporation of the surrounding landscape and the connection of the building to the larger world, just as Kahn's open courtyard derives its perspectival force in part from uniting the courtyard with the sea and sky beyond. The Salk Institute is an example of the Renaissance conception of correspondences, that the microcosm of the earth is a reflection of the macrocosm of the heavens, that all things are are connected within some great, cosmic synecdoche. Kahn's thin fountain seems to extend into the infinity of the Pacific, and even further to unite with those blue sunny San Diego skies. It is the miraculous nature of infinity (the perspectival wonder), that reminds the viewer standing in the Salk Institute courtyard of his place in the world, his smallness or greatness, that his actions, ideas, and study will extend outside the property of the Institute into the infinity beyond, and conversely, that this power of creation and infinite propagation seems to be a divine gift, handed down from the sun itself.

Infinity is a quality that relates both to monumentality and inspiration. According to Kahn, “The sense of wonder is so very important to us because it precedes knowing. It precedes knowledge... The immeasurable is the one thing that captivated the mind; the measurable makes little difference.” It is those many aspects of the universe that are simply beyond human comprehension (the profound, the infandum) that confound and dumbfound the human mind and create a sense of wonder in man. To comprehend something is to have knowledge of it, and to have knowledge of something is to ruin its mystery. When one looks down the thin fountain stream that divides the courtyard, the illusion of infinite continuation is created as the concrete and horizon blend. Rationalizing the courtyard, measuring and quantifying it potentially destroys the phenomenon. Kahn's fountain, set within the grid of the courtyard, creates a one-point perspective in concrete and water, the vanishing point disappears in the sea. Kahn gives any person standing in his courtyard the opportunity to experience the sublime, to transgress the empirical, scientific perspective and instead to become captivated, fascinated, to hand oneself over to the wonder of infinity.⁶

The Elemental Temple
Part of the greatness of the Salk Institute is the way it combines all the classical elements (earth, wind, water, fire, air) in a modern structure. The element of water cuts through the textured concrete, which is the structural, earth element of the institute. From here, the sky brings us into the element of air and finally, burning in the sky, the fiery sun illuminates the whole structure. Each element interacts and depends on the others. Water we might take as a symbol of the flow of energy, the lifeblood of the Salk Institute, while the concrete is the bones, the structural form. The sky then becomes the realm of the divine, the space the courtyard seems to extend infinitely into, while the sun's rays make the whole structure visible. Kahn said that “Integration is the way of nature. We can learn from nature”, and though this quote isn't referring specifically to the merging of the primeval elemental forces in his architecture, it fits nonetheless—by integrating the primordial elements into the Salk Institute, he achieves the feeling of ancientness and timelessness requisite for any monumental work.⁷

Kahn uses water in the Salk Institute to give it a zen-like atmosphere, and he employs the element in a way not unlike Mies' Seagram Building in New York City. The Seagram Building, which Kahn described as “a beautiful lady in corsets” used reflecting pools in front of the skyscraper to attain a temple-like atmosphere, tranquil, calm, separating the building from the street and muffling the noise of the chaotic New York hustle and bustle.⁸ Water is integral to the creation of a silent space. And silence, in turn, is integral to meditation and the birth of inspiration.

Light, “What slice of the sun does your building have?”
Kahn paraphrased the above line from a poem by Wallace Stevens to express his understanding that structure is defined by light. He felt light is a magical substance. Light is utterly invisible, undetectable unless it reflects off of something. It seems not to exist unless there is something for it to bounce off of, and reciprocally, any object must also remain invisible unless there is light to bounce off it. We might also note that the immeasurable quality of light, the paradox of its simultaneous existence as a wave and a particle, fits it neatly into the realm of the immeasurable, and thus the awesome. Perhaps Kahn's sensitivity to light and shadow was particularly acute on account of the fact that he regularly hid his scarred face under a deep hat as a young man, thus his eye for light and shadow became particularly well-honed.⁹

In any case, his tour in Greece reveals his unique perception of light as it plays across the ancient temples, their forms shifting with the lability of the sun. Note how the forms of these ancient temples become colorful, and attain an almost mirage-like ephemeralness, as if they might evaporate into steam. Kahn's point here is that, while these structures are solid, permanent and mute, they come alive, speak, change colors, moods, even seem to have movement when hit by the sun. Light gives life to their form.

Natural light is therefore paramount in Kahn's works. The Art Historian Alexandra Tyng relates the following anecdote regarding Kahn's fascination with natural light:

Kahn was intrigued by the nuances of mood created by the time of day, the weather, and the seasons. Scorning the static artificiality of electric light, he would often sit at his desk between the tall windows of his office, waiting until the daylight was completely gone from the room before deigning to reach for the light switch. He believed that the changeable quality of daylight gave life to architecture because one's relationship to a building changed according to the light surrounding and penetrating it. For this reason, no space was truly a space unless it received the life-giving touch of natural light.¹⁰

If, as Kahn thought, form is a result of the interplay between an object and light, then we can say that the form of architecture changes depending on variations in light, color, intensity, as a result of the time of day and year. And what a perfect place to observe the power of light: San Diego has one of the most moderate climates worldwide; it is sunny almost perennially. As a result, Kahn angles the windows of his parallel office/lab towers westward toward the sea and setting sun; each window reaches out to grasp its own slice of sun; the whole structure is heliotropic.

Silence: the Void
Kahn believed that silence was the opposite of light, and the combination of the two creates inspiration. Silence, strictly speaking, is the absence of sound; it is a void, emptiness, nothingness. It can be compared to structure: structure has no form without light, it too is nothing, a void; without light, structure and silence are merely the potential for form. In Alexandra Tyng's words, silence is “the desire to express” whereas light is the “means of expression.” At the point where these two forces meet lies the instantaneous moment of inspiration. Tyng extends the analogy further to compare the relationship between silence and light to the poetic versus the rational, the yin versus the yang, the feminine versus the masculine:

The poet, who is comfortable in the realm of feeling and intuition, will follow his urge to express for as long as possible before finding the means of expression that would put his images into concrete words. On the other hand, the scientist, who is at home in the rational world, might stay as long as he could in the realm of light, collecting facts and figures to prove his hypothesis before acknowledging its connection with wonder and mystery.¹¹

There is something almost Blakeian about Kahn's sense of duality and paradox in the universe. The idea that something can come from nothing, that the void is a vast expanse of potential that merely needs to be animated or illuminated is an almost mystical conception of architecture. To many, it might seem an implausible philosophy—yet miracles often seem dubious to those who have never experienced them.

Poetics and Inspiration
The poet and teacher Dr. Gideon Rappaport argues that the relationship between inspiration and the human mind is a reciprocal one: “It takes two, the poet and his muse. But the muse cannot be compelled. She may be invoked or appear uninvited, but she can dwell only where a place is prepared for her.”¹² The courtyard of the Salk Institute is a place uniquely prepared and equipped for the arrival of the inspiring muse. Inspiration is an ephemeral, divine phenomenon. It is an enlightenment in the miniature. One can only prepare one's mind, make a place ready for the muse—but inspiration cannot be forced.

Similarly, monumentality is a quality that is eternal, but also seemingly random. One can beg for monumentality, incorporate all the attributes whose aggregative force seems to make monuments monumental, but the quality itself simply cannot be compelled. Monumentality is a divine phenomenon, a transcendent feature of a work that usually is not present, and seems to only occur by thaumaturgy.

Furthermore, inspiration takes effort, patience, and time—thus, for 360 days of the year, the sun sways north and south along the western horizon of the Pacific as the seasons pass and the Earth tilts on its axis, and it does so out of alignment with the line of the fountain. Only for a brief few days does the sun perfectly line up with the fountain, and the whole structure takes part in a galactic alignment, an inspirational equinox. By incorporating the essential element of time into the architectural experience, the building becomes part of time itself, and achieves monumentality through the melding of eternity and form. The whole structure is a monumental metaphor for inspiration, a metaphor for the rare, divine moment when the muse speaks to man and ideas are born from the void.

It's been said that part of the difficulty with discussing architecture is the fact that buildings are, in and of themselves, inexorably mute. And so is Kahn's Salk Institute. It is monumental in the gravity of its silence. Yet when the right moment hits, when the light suffuses it and ignites the strip of fountain, the structure comes alive in a transcendent event that speaks volumes to those present to witness, volumes that must remain in the realm of the unspeakable.

End Notes

¹ Vincent Scully, “Works of Louis Kahn and his Method”, Louis I. Kahn, (Tokyo, Japan: Architecture and Urbanism, 1975) 288.

² Qtd in Ezra Stoller, The Salk Institute, (New York, NY: 1999), 2.

³ Jonas Salk, “A Proposed Institute: A Statement [in connection with consideration by San Diego City Council of proposal to make land available...],” typed manuscript, March 15, 1960.

⁴ Unfortunately, as a result of one of the world's many architectural travesties, the quad is now closed on all four sides on account of the construction of a new building, blocking Jefferson's intended view of the landscape.

⁵ Stoller, 6.

⁶ Louis I. Kahn, “I Love Beginnings,” Louis I. Kahn. (Tokyo, Japan: Architecture and Urbanism, 1975) 279.

⁷ Qtd in Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, (New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1966) 50.

⁸ Louis I. Kahn. “Architecture is the Thoughtful Making of Spaces”, (1957) 272.

⁹ Ravi Kalia, Gandhinagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India, (U of South Carolina Press, 2004) 77.

¹⁰ Tyng 265.

¹¹ Alexandra Tyng, “Silence in Light”, Louis I. Kahn: l'uomo, il maestro. (Rome, Italy: Edizionie Kappa, 1986) 271.

¹² Gideon Rappaport, “While Standing on One Leg”, 8 Nov. 2009, http://raplog.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html.

Bibliography

Kahn, Louis I. “Order in Architecture,” 1957.

Kahn, Louis I. “Architecture Is the Thoughtful Making of Spaces,” 1957.

Kahn, Louis I. “Monumentality,” 1944.

Kalia, Ravi, Gandhinagar: Bulding National Identity in Postcolonial India. University of South Carolina Press, 2004.

Louis I. Kahn. Tokyo, Japan: Architecture and Urbanism, 1975.

Ed., Latour, Alessandra, Louis I. Kahn: l'uomo, il maestro. Rome, Italy: Edizionie Kappa, 1986.

Giurgola, Romaldo., Mehta, Jaimini. Louis I. Kahn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976.

Maki, Fumihiko., ed. Futagawa, Yukio. Louis I. Kahn: Richards Medical Research Building, Pennsylvania. 1961 and Salk Institute for Biological Studies, California, 1965. Tokyo, Japan: A.D.A EDITA Tokyo Co., 1971.

Stoller, Ezra. The Salk Institute. Friedman, D.S., “Introduction”, New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

Tyng, Alexandra. “Form, Order, Design: The Inspiration Process”, Beginnings: Louis I. Kahn's Philosophy of Architecture. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1984.

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.

Cornelisen Fellowship Report

2010-09-26T04:20:00.004+04:00

My experience during my Cornelisen Fellowship was a blast. I went with three goals: to improve my Russian; to study post-Soviet states; and more generally, to examine all those parts of Russia that aren't relegated to Moscow or Saint-Petersburg. My program was in two parts. First I spent three weeks enrolled in the Tallinn University intensive Russian program, and then I spent the following two weeks traveling across Russia on the trans-Siberian railroad, all the way to Vladivostok.

In Tallinn, I tested into the advanced Russian course with a motley crew of two Italians, one Finn, and two Americans; our teacher, who was born in Russia but emigrated to Estonia, was an involved, dedicated woman who never got tired of my constant strings of questions about Estonian identity and her own migration. Our discussions generally revolved around the summer school cultural program, which we participate in during the afternoon, and involves a number of lectures (my favorites were on the Estonian economy—who knew Skype was an Estonian company?—and the history of Estonian art), weekend trips to neighboring Estonian cities such as Tartu, guided tours in the local art museums, tours of the cities bastions, and its winding Medieval streets. Historically I was most impressed by how this country, whose entire history is defined by subjugation, still manages to define itself as a unique cultural and political entity.

Estonians have a fascinating history. In a nutshell, from the very founding of the Medieval city of Tallinn, Estonia has been successively occupied or controlled by one of its powerful neighbors, such as the Danes, the Livonian Knights, the Swedes, the Imperialist Russians, the Nazis, and the Soviet Russians, with only very brief respites of independence. True independence was established after the fall of the Soviet Empire. The Soviet occupation was so brutal, (it was based on a program of cultural genocide, eradicating all things Estonian, even bulldozing graveyards to erase cultural memory), that when the Nazis briefly took power, the Estonians welcomed the Nazi armies as liberators. You know you are in hell when the prospect of a Nazi invasion inspires hope.

Nothing, however, was more inspiring than watching videos from the 1991 “Singing Revolution”, which stretched across all the Baltic States as a result of the fall of the Soviet Empire. As its name implies, the revolution was a remarkably peaceful one, and Estonians were faced with the challenge of establishing their own system of self-government, economy, and culture. The Kumu Art Museum was in my opinion the most valuable representation of this effort to define Estonian identity, as it demonstrated the winding route Estonian art took from the fascination that early 19th century German artists took with the idealization of the Estonian peasant, to the Soviet period where large, formal paintings depicting happy Estonians freely and graciously handing over Estonia to the communists, to present art which, while often very personal and specific in subject matter, as a whole is constantly struggling with the difficulty of creating something uniquely Estonian without relying on the precedents set by another people. By far my favorite work of art in Tallinn was the Jewish Synagogue, a testament to freedom of speech with architecture that speaks for itself.

The trans-Siberian offered me a number of epiphanies. While I spent the majority of my time looking out the window, reading, walking up and down the train meeting passengers, and stepping off to bargain with babushkas, these ideas dawned on me slowly. The first of which is the most obvious: Russia is enormous—plainly enormous. And when you sit there on the train for a really, really long time, looking out the window, just chugging away the landscape, you start to come to a new understanding of this fact. Your sense of time gets pretty zonked while you are on the train, and one thing I noticed was the vast majority of the cities we stopped at were small, post-industrial cities, cities that had been built because of the railway, and whose economies depended on the railway. Yet these many cities are still few and far between when you look at what an expanse you're traveling across—Russia, for all its size, holds almost all its people and money in the two nodes that are Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Out East, these people are practically off the map of government concern, apart from major lumber and oil industry operations.

The other thing I realized was the border between Mongolia, China, and Russia is, for all intents and purposes, defined by this railway; tensions over Chinese border encroachment would make the trans-Siberian a modern Rubicon. Finally, and this was the most harrowing realization, because the trans-Siberian runs primarily along the southern border of Russia, you forget that there is a huge amount of land up north in Siberia, enormous tracts of land that, as far as I can tell, there is only very limited access to. The Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, for example, has no infrastructure with the main body of Russia, and is only accessible by ship and by plane (though it is physically connected to Russia). Looking at this enormous amount of mostly empty territory, I still marvel at the fact that Russia’s control here was established by the construction of the railroad, and to this day depends on it. While on the one hand, one might look at the untapped wealth of land and natural resources in Eastern Russia as indicative of Russia's ability to remain a world power well into the 21st century, I am skeptical. Government corruption makes such a venture extremely difficult. Moreover, I still cannot tell to what extent the Russian government directs its gaze eastward. Powerful neighbors such as North Korea, and especially the booming economic and military power that is China seriously threaten Russian dominion over these lands, and whether or not they remain in Russia’s control over the course of the next century is, in my opinion, extremely tenuous.

I'd like to conclude by thanking the Cornelisen Fellowship fund for providing me this experience. It was a once in a lifetime journey, and I learned so much from it. What an expanse!

John Burroughs Q of the W: Santa Claus

2010-07-06T08:56:00.002+04:00

Vol. 9, pg. 36; Dec. 19, 1886 (morning)

19 Julian said this morning soon after waking up that he felt as if a great change was coming — "as if a great joy was passing away" — he is beginning to doubt the existence of Santa Claus! Poor boy! Such a discovery does leave a void.

Burroughs spends a fair few pages of his journals railing against organized religion in favor of his agnostic, semi-transcendental religious beliefs. When his son, Julian, first came to doubt the existence of Santa Claus (above), Burroughs followed up with eight straight pages in his journal comparing the belief in Santa to the belief in an anthropomorphic God. In fact, the majority of the journal is consumed questions of religion and god... nonetheless, even after such persistent argument and refutation of the existence of God in any biblical sense (such ideas, he would say, are the result of mankind's imaginative childhood), he still found himself trumped at what to do when his own son became and apostate of Ol' Saint Nick.

Vol. 9, pg. 44; Dec. 19, 1886 (evening)

-- The same evening Julian remarked with a sadness that went to my heart, "The world has told a great many lies if there is no Santa Claus; making pictures about him and telling so much about him in books."

Needless to say, it was a rough Christmas at the Burroughs family home that year.

Forget the Princeton Review.

2010-07-06T01:09:00.002+04:00

Forget Kaplan. Forget Barrons. Forget Peterson's. Forget Sparknotes. I like standardized testing about as much as I like a rousing bout of dysentery. I did it their way for the SATs, but for the GREs, I'm doing it my way -- with one book, and only one book:

Leviathan Melvillei

2010-07-02T01:53:00.001+04:00

Things used to be bigger on our little planet. Everything: trees, animals, fishes, all bigger. I wonder if there is an evolutionary explanation as to why organisms are overall smaller than they were in, for example, the Triassic Period. Was the Earth simply more fertile millions of years ago, such that it could support such organisms? Well damn. They discovered this little guy, the whale-eater-of-whales, two years ago and just published the discovery yesterday. Awe-some.

Update: more on this prehistoric whale.

John Burroughs Q of the W: Round 2

2010-07-01T04:20:00.011+04:00

Vol. V, p.56 [June 19, 1884]

It is a greater consolation to me to know that the universe is governed by unalterable law, than that it is subject to any capricious and changeable will. I like to know that what we call God is without variable-ness or shadow of turning. We know now what to depend on. Strict justice is and must be done to every creatur else life and nature would miscarry. I ask but justice, yes, I demand it, and let me not flinch and whimper.

Vol. V, p.65 [July 18, 1884]

- Ours is a mechanical age. Its voice is the steam whistle loud, dissonant, hideous.

Vol. V, p.74 [July 22, 1884]

- Some people are not susceptible of much culture. Some of the most learned men have little culture; it all stops with the memory and does not reach the spirit. The person who remembers the most of the book he reads, is probably influenced the least by it; its words stick in his memory, but its spirit fails to sink into his heart.

Vol. V, p.79 [July, 1884]

- The newspaper gives currency to all manner of flippancies, levities, irreverences, ephemeries; its tendency is undoubtedly to beget a shallow, gossipy, loud, tonguey, irreverent type of mind. In the course of generations, the most serious consequences must flow from it - elephantiasia of the lip and tongue, metaphorically speaking.

Vol. V, p.78 [July, 1884]

- Up to certain grade of intelligence, I consider it a good sign if a man belongs to the Church. Then there is a higher grade in which belonging to the Church implies a certain hypocrisy, or insincerity. An intelligent, disinterested seeker of the truth cannot be found inside the Church in these days.

Vol. V, p.80 [July, 1884]

Rousseau was in many ways like a bee drowned in his own honey. His imagination swamped him.

Moby-Monday: Sea Fever Blog

2010-06-28T20:56:00.004+04:00

Go check out my blurb on Peter Mello's Sea-Fever blog. A photo I took from the John Burroughs Sharp Eyes Conference made it into the Moby-Monday series.

Burroughs Quote of the Day: On Death

2010-06-24T20:49:00.008+04:00

Jan 5 1885, VI p.57

Tis a year to-night that father had his stroke. How surely the present and the future become the past, and how surely the past becomes sacred - the cemetery of our days.

Jan 1885; VI p.59

The stages of an orb's life, say the astronomers, are stages of cooling. So are the stages of a man's life. It is a process of cooling and hardening from youth to age. The gassy, nebular youth out of which the man is gathered together and consolidated! Fiery, strong, vapery, at first; then cold, hard, impoverished at last.

Nov 6 1884, VI p.11

- If I can look with complacency upon the eternity past, when I was not here, when I existed only potentially, I can look with complacency upon the eternity to come when I shall not be here, when I shall exist only in the memory of nature.

March 1885; VI p.86

- I shall live in the future, just as I have lived in the past, namely, in the life of humanity, in the lives of other men and women. When the last man perishes from the earth, then I perish — to reappear in other worlds, other systems. No doubt that man has always existed on some of the myriads of worlds of space, and no doubt he will always exist. So far as consciousness or personality is concerned this life is all. We do not know ourselves again, we do not take form again, except in others.

Inappropriate?

2010-06-21T01:12:00.003+04:00

Maybe. But a really good gift.

The Burroughs and the Bees

2010-06-17T23:31:00.027+04:00

John Burroughs was one of the foremost nature writers at the end of the 19th century, and is credited today with being the inventor of the modern nature essay and a huge proponent of modern environmentalist movements. In his day, he was enormously popular, and traveled in the same circles as Walt Whitman, Thomas Edison, John Muir, Edward Curtis, Louis Fuertes, Henry Ford, R. Swain Gifford¹, Edward Harriman, Harvey Firestone, etc. As the great wheel that is the canon of American Literature turned, he fell into relative obscurity after his death in 1921.

Fortunately, he left behind a huge amount of writing. He also left behind some 53 journals, all of which are available in the Vassar College Library Special Collections. These journals have been transcribed twice already, once by Clara Barrus, the woman who took care of him in his fading years after his wife Ursula died, and once again by his granddaughter Betty Kelley. While these transcriptions are invaluable, full of information, and make clearly available Burrough's often cryptic handwriting, they also have their downsides. Both of these transcriptions were highly edited, punctuation added, spelling corrected, and only selections published. Essentially, until the advent of my project (thanks to the work of Dr. Jeff Walker), these journals were available only in the glimpses that Clara and Betty felt appropriate.

My voyeuristic research scholarship comes from a grant Vassar received to scan these journals in toto, all 3,300 leaves. I essentially transcribe these journals while staying as true to Burroughs word as possible. These transcriptions are then uploaded to a website [http://www.hrvh.org; search "John Burroughs" and select one of the journals] in which one can view an extremely² high quality scan of the journal page. Thus, for easy legibility, my transcription is available alongside the image of the real thing. In short, my job is to carefully read the personal journals of a great, wise old American author.

His journals are extremely interesting. He is constantly noting the weather, and changes he perceives with the seasons, trees, animals, etc., but more interesting to me is his musings on what makes good writing, who the bests authors/poets are, the dual nature of the soul and the body, the place of science and religion, Darwin, his visits with Walt Whitman, his troubled relationship with his wife -- I've managed to find a way to get paid to study!

For the remainder of my project (my goal is to transcribe a decade of his journals this summer, the next student will tackle the following decade), I'll be publishing his gems of wisdom on my blog here, and perhaps commenting myself on the words of the great Naturalist.

To start:

If I can look with complacency upon the eternity past, when I was not here, when I existed only potentially, I can look with complacency upon the eternity to come when I shall not be here, when I shall exist only in the memory of nature. The past concerns me just as much as the future. An immortality that begins is not immortality.³

¹ Whom I will be writing my Art History these on.

² By "extremely", I mean 8 megabyte image files that you can zoom in so close, the grain of the paper is visible, any palimpsest discernible, and one might argue that you couldn't get better resolution even if you had the actual journal sitting in front of you.

³ Vol. VI, p.11, November 6, 1884

Summer Session at Fairmont University

2010-06-10T00:51:00.006+04:00

Ah, hot days, warm summer afternoons! Lazy lazy lazy. What a summer it is going to be. I've got two main things I'm up to this summer, and a number of goals.

I'm so glad to move onto summer. Watching all of 2010 graduate was very difficult, and then I had to move all my stuff a very, very long ways all by my lonesome, which was made particularly difficult by the fact that I claimed an enormous amount of furniture from SWAPR (a Vassar program which reclaims all the furniture students throw out, stores it for the summer, and then resells it to next year's students) all of which was very heavy. But now that I'm moved in and all my stuff is safely stored away, this summer is cruising.

All my stuff on the lawn of Fairmont where it remained and I quietly prayed for no rain.

For the first half of this summer, a Ford Scholarship with Jeff Walker, an awesome professor of Earth Sciences, one of a handful of experts on our project (John Burroughs), and a remarkable human being. He is one of those people who you want to be: if all the dice were rolled, and I ended up like Jeff Walker, I'm pretty sure I'd be a happy man. He is a legend around campus, highly respected, extremely knowledgeable, and a titan of sustainability and locavore mentality. He lives on a farm nearby Vassar known as the Walker Family Farm, has a huge family of talented, good-hearted children (two of whom I've had classes with; they really are remarkable people) who all play music together in the Walker family band. This is a rare, wise man to get the chance to know. I am lucky.

Then, for the second half of my summer, I'm headed off to Estonia (via Berlin, where I will take a day to see Shinkel's Altes Museum, and whatever else I have time for—probably just a day or two) where I will take intensive Russian courses for three weeks in tandem with a culture program that guides me all around the city museums, and even to the outskirts of the little country. At the end of those three weeks, I'll be getting on the trans-Siberian Railroad from Saint-Petersburg (where I will have another day or two) all the way to Vladivostok by way of Irkusk, Lake Baikal, and numerous other spots. The best part about this whole scheme is it is completely free on account of me winning a scholarship. I've been inspired to apply to every scholarship under the sun from here on out, because my luck is downright absurd and I need to keep capitalizing before my well runs dry.

I've matriculated into Fairmont University, which is absolutely the coolest place to live at Vassar. I've learned the value of porches on a house—so shady for hot summer afternoons, fresh lemonade, crushed garden grown mint, a splash of rum (or two), kicking back with my bad guitar playing; I'm in Evan-heaven. Fairmont University is off campus with my best pal Misha – and what a pal he is. He is an amazing chef, and is going to be teaching me as we cook our summer away. So that's the first goal (and the rest, in no particular order of importance):

1. Learn to cook; do it well.
2. Plant a garden. So far, I have some 25 tomato sprouts, three or four sweet pepper sprouts, and am looking to plant a hedge of sunflowers to block some of the more or less unsightly sides of our college house.
3. Work on my Ford Scholarship work, transcribing the Journals of John Burroughs.
4. Get my essay published. And the other one too, if possible.
5. When in Saint-Petersburg, organize a way to get into the basement of the Hermitage and see if I can't find the missing Rockwell Kent piece in their collections (more on this later).
6. Exercise a bunch; soundness of body : soundness of mind – consult Bruce Lee's Art of Expressing the Human Body.

It's my Birthday

2010-03-17T00:44:00.002+03:00

Yeah! Made it another year.. I'll have to write something later. Why, this time last year I was in Russia. And it looks like I'm going back.

The Omnipresence of the Gods

2010-02-21T02:22:00.011+03:00

Whether by means of the Sortes Virgilianae or simply by choice, every Latinist has his favorite line from the Aeneid. My favorite line has always been from Book IX, when Nisus asks Euryalus the following question:

Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,
Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
(184-85)

Do the gods not give this fire to our hearts, O Euryalus,
or does each man’s mad passion become to him a god?

This question is one of the seminal questions of the Aeneid and one of the great questions of all philosophy: what is it that ultimately motivates man? Is the source of what moves man divine, or is it simply himself, his own psychology? While Virgil never explicitly answers this question, he sets a number of equivalent situations where he entertains this question, and how the reader understands this question is pivotal to the understanding the final scene in Book XII, in which Aeneas slays Turnus.

Nisus’ dira cupido (“mad passion”, “dread desire”) refers to his wish to abandon his guard post and venture into the sleeping ranks of Rutulian troops. Nisus knows perfectly well that this wild risk is a nearly suicidal endeavor, but the payoff is glory—and that is the stuff of heroes. To win glory, or at the very least, to bite the dust in the flames of battle is the goal of any Classical warrior worth his mettle. To die anonymously at sea (as Aeneas almost does in Book I), or with a whimper after days of siege wear down the battlements, is abhorrent.

The Nisus¹ and Euryalus episode is a retelling of a scene from Book X of the Iliad, in which Odysseus and Diomedes spy on the Trojan camps at night. Capitalizing on the vulnerable sleeping Trojans, the pair behead their victims, sending a mess of Trojans from Hypnos to Thanatos. Both Homer and Virgil recognize this scene as distinctly heroic, but to Virgil, it is Greek heroism, an example of timê. Roman heroism is something which Virgil spends the entirety of the Aeneid defining, but might be truncated to the idea of pietas: a combination of personal responsibility to the gods, family, and homeland. In the context of a Greek war, the heroism of Diomedes and Odysseus is therefore highly effective. In the context of a Roman war, however, the Greek heroism embodied by Nisus and Euryalus ultimately leads to nothing. While the Trojan pair successfully murder a slew of sleeping Rutulians, they fail to achieve the primary objective of informing Aeneas that their camp has been surrounded, and also fail to obey orders and keep guard.

Nisus' question touches on the idea of gods as both anthropomorphic figures physically living within the heavens and affecting the course of humanity, while simultaneously being projected representations of aspects of the human psyche and other phenomena. Thus, Hypnos is both the god who controls sleep, as well as sleep itself; Thanatos is both the god of death, and death itself; Venus is both the goddess of love, and love itself; Juno is the goddess of wrath (among other things), and wrath itself. Nisus' question is similar to the dilemma of the chicken or the egg: did the gods give him the impulse, or did his impulse give him the god?

Virgil explores the mystery of the source of human impulses further at the end of Book I, where Eros disguised as Ascanius breathes poisonous love into Dido's heart. On one level, this scene is entirely the result of divine will. Venus tells Eros to poison Dido so that she falls in love with Aeneas, and by doing so Venus guarantees Aeneas' safety in this foreign land ruled by Juno. On another level, this scene can be described entirely within the context of human emotion. Dido certainly cannot deny being a tidbit smitten with Aeneas long before the arrival of Cupid. The first time she lays eyes on him, she is described as obstipuit aspectu² (“standing agape at the sight”, “marveling at the sight”) and immediately addresses him as nate dea³ (“goddess born”). Her words give away her attraction to Aeneas long before Eros crawls into her lap. When Ascanius/Eros eventually does sit in her lap, can we blame Dido for thinking of her own empty womb, her own dead husband, her sworn widowhood, (all of which she will lament later in the book)—is not this hero, who washed up on her shores, the perfect suitor for her? Is it not only natural that she fall in love with Aeneas, a proper king for her new land, leader of seasoned warriors to help defend against Iarbus and other surrounding enemies?

The next time we see Dido is in Book IV, where “burning” nearly becomes her epithet as her passion is associated with fire and madness. She is compared directly to the raging Bacchante (the wild hedonist worshipers of Bacchus), howling in their orgies as she herself bacchatur (“rages”)⁴ through the entire city of Carthage. The flame of love “eats at her marrow”⁵, driving her more and more insane. She is described repeatedly as infelix⁶, “unlucky”, a word which implies that Dido is a victim of bad luck, that she could not have controlled this situation. Her passion, as with Nisus dira cupido, has become her god. Fittingly, she ends her life by making literal the metaphorical wound referred to in the second line of Book IV.⁷

Another example is drowsy Palinurus at the end of Book V, whom Hypnos persuades to fall asleep at the tiller of Aeneas' ship. Palinurus initially rebukes Hypnos' argument, so the god takes drastic measures, enchanting him to sleep and pushing him off the stern of the ship (but not before the determined Palinurus rips off a piece of the tiller). Here, it seems that the situation is more a matter of direct divine intervention, yet the description of this scene (as with Dido) is allegorically equivalent to the human phenomenon of drowsiness. It is not for nothing that we “fight” sleep, “struggle” to stay awake, but ultimately, capitulate, “falling” asleep or, in Palinurus' case, off the taffrail.

Examples of this conundrum are numerous. For example, Allecto drives the firebrand of wrath into Turnus' heart, and releases the viperish snake of hatred on Amata.⁸ Yet it is important to note that every action taken by any character in the Aeneid can be read both as effected by the gods, or as a psychological phenomenon. Thus, even in scenes where the name “Juno” might not ever be mentioned, we can still see the presence of Juno via actions, thoughts, or impulsions that are Juno-esque. Seas cannot storm without the permission of Neptune, so if we see a storming sea, we must assume Neptune is present. Though the gods may be absent in name, they are omnipresent in numen.

Understanding the above paradox is crucial to understanding the final scenes of the Aeneid. When Juno is told to stay out of the fight and quit interfering with the war between Trojans and Rutulians, she complies, and we don't see her name for the remainder of the epic. Bodily, she is absent; yet the emotions she represents are terribly present. Thus, when Aeneas stands over the suppliant Turnus, sword hanging above the vanquished man's head, he has to decide whether to kill or spare Turnus. Turnus begs him, ulterius ne tende⁹ odiis (“stretch no further with hatred”), and asks him to consider the grief his father Daunus would feel, and notes that Anchises would have had pity in his situation (no doubt this is true—the last time Aeneas talked to Anchises in Book VI, the shade of Anchises reminded Aeneas that the powers of Rome will be to battle down the haughty, and spare the suppliant).¹⁰ This is the moment of stillness, the brief pause of consideration where, in a way, the whole future of Rome hangs in the sway of this one, crucial decision. Whether Aeneas kills Turnus or spares Turnus will set the example for all future generations of Romans.

And then Juno swoops in. Seeing the baldric of Pallas, Aeneas is furiis accensus et ira terribilis (“enflamed by rage and terrible anger”)¹¹—Aeneas is at last overcome by Juno; whether or not he realizes it, his apotheosis into the annals of Roman history is adorned with the attributes of Juno, Queen of vengeance. Juno, while ceding the fight to Jupiter, is more present here than ever before, becoming the conquering emotion of Aeneas himself.

Furthermore, Nisus' great question is just as present as ever, and we as readers are supposed to ask this same question in all scenes of the Aeneid, and perhaps too within our personal lives. Perhaps Virgil found himself asking the same question of Nisus—do the Muses inspire the poetry of his pen, or does his poetry create the very Muses that inspire him?

¹ nisus, us m. a pressing or resting upon or against a) a striving, exertion; b) step, flight, push, ascent; c) a giving birth; Virgil is no stranger to etymological puns.

²Book I: 613.

³ Book I: 615.

⁴ “Saevit inops animi totamque incense per urbem
bacchatur, qualis commotis excit sacris
Thyias ubi audito stimulant trieteria Baccho
Orgia noctuernusque vocat clamore Cithaeron”,
Book IV:300-303.

⁵ “Est mollis flamma medulla”, Book IV: 66.

⁶“Uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur / urbe furens”, Book IV: 68-69.

⁷“vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni”. Book IV: 2.

⁸ One might further compare the scenes between the poisoning of Amata by wrath/Allecto and the poisoning of Dido with love/Eros. Analysis of these scenes reveals that, despite these two emotions seeming to be opposites, the effects they have on Dido and Amata are remarkably similar: both women burn with the emotion, both rage, both go insane, and both can only be cured of it by suicide. If we read the competition between Venus and Juno as a competition between Love and Vengeance, there are some very interesting implications for the end of the Book XII, when Aeneas stands over Turnus and must decide between Love (thus, sparing Turnus) and Vengeance (slaying him).

⁹We might recall the first book of the Aeneid, line 205 tendimus in Latium (“we stretch into Latium”), where this word tendimus appears for the first time. Aeneas heroic speech is the mark of his leadership in Book I, and here Turnus reminds us of that speech by the use of the imperative form tende. We are reminded that the question of the epic has never been whether or not Aeneas will make it to Italy and found Rome, but rather how he will go about doing it.

¹⁰tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem,
parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
(Book VI, 851-3)

¹¹ XII, 946-47.

Daisy to Daisy

2010-02-21T02:21:00.002+03:00

When reading Henry James’ Daisy Miller, one cannot help note the influences the story has on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works, particularly in regards to the character of Daisy Miller, transformed into Daisy Buchanan. In this comparison, we see the two figures are much alike in terms of name, description, and even speech patterns. It is almost as if these two ladies were the same person, as if Fitzgerald picked up Daisy Miller, gave her a new last name, and pretended she hadn’t died of malaria in Rome.

I propose that Daisy Buchanan is modeled closely after Daisy Miller, to the extent that the former can be said to be an older version of the latter. Fitzgerald must have been captivated by the figure of Daisy Miller, and wondered what sort of girl she would have become had she not been so tragically struck down by malaria. Daisy Buchanan is his answer to that question.

I always think it best to start with the name “Daisy” itself and consider its etymology and what, therefore, the reader can expect from a so-named character. “Daisy”, as William Carlos Williams notes in the first line of his poem by the same title, comes from the combination of the two words “day’s eye”, given because its petals close at night and reopen with the sun. Williams notes some important qualities of the daisy, as the speaker of the poem closely examines one, that it is fascinatingly delicate, the petals thin to the point of translucency—a mere touch and it is bruised! The daisy is a beautiful, ephemeral flower, carefree and careless, in and of itself, a thing to be admired and looked at, growing from rich, fecund earth but reciprocating with nothing but its own radiance. Daisy Miller is such a flower. Our first description of her regards her physical beauty:

The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. She was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. (393)

This entire description is distinctly visual, and could literally be a description of a flower. She is entrancing from the first moment we meet her on account of her lavish dress and appearance, and Winterbourne soon finds himself stealing glances at her lovely features, particularly her “wonderfully pretty eyes” and her “eminently delicate” face. Daisy vainly spends much of her time smoothing out her bows and ribbons, rigorously attentive to maintaining her complexion. Fitzgerald takes the same visual route when we first meet Daisy Buchanan:

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew the curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as a wind does at sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.” (8)

Here, Fitzgerald paints an ekphrasis of Botticelli’s famous Birth of Venus, in which Daisy Buchanan becomes the golden-haired goddess herself, the enormous couch is her seashell, which she floats upon, buoyant, gently tossed by the windy Zephyr flowing through the open windows. What an extraordinary vision Fitzgerald paints for us, what an extraordinary way to introduce a character.

From the beginning, we know that both Daisies are distinctly physical specimens of feminine beauty. And, given we have the ideal daisy flower in our hands, we must assume that it is growing from only the finest, richest soil. Neither girl, I suspect, could survive without and enormous amount of wealth readily available for disposal. Daisy Miller is the daughter of a wealthy businessman from New York, a member of what Henry James calls the “reckless class”. She is empowered with money to travel abroad with her careless mother (a woman who rarely seems to have any control or concern for Daisy Miller’s situation) and meet the acquaintance of whomever she finds pleasing. In this act, she fosters a degree of boldness along with an air of innocence; she possesses what might be called the audacity of innocence, the sort of forgivable ignorance that leads to one ask inappropriately forward questions, and generally fail to understand the circumstances from which others are speaking.¹

Daisy Buchanan grows from the same pot of wealth, having married the successful Tom Buchanan, and having come from an upper-class home. She too comes from the reckless class, or as Fitzgerald describes it, she is a person who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into…money and…vast carelessness.” She is moved by Gatsby’s mansion, impressed by his wealth, and pivotally brought to tears by his shirts (“’They’re such beautiful shirts’, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘it makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.’”).

Nick Carraway is often taken aback by Daisy’s voice, the “inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle in it, the cymbals of it”. It is Gatsby himself who recognizes that her mellifluous voice is “full of money”; its beauty a function of meretricious material charm. She is, on all accounts, the epitome of Madonna’s “Material Girl”, living in a material world.

Both Daisy Miller and Buchanan share a very peculiar—and similar—way of speaking. The first thing one notices in their speech is a general prolixity. Daisy Miller is more than ready to speak—at length—about any topic regarding herself without hesitation, discretion, or even thought.² She seems to say things merely to invoke a response, to get a rise out of people, telling Mr. Witherbourne she was engaged just to see his reaction, or “prattling” on about her own affairs, or hoping for a “fuss”—“that’s all I want—a little fuss!” Daisy Miller has little concern for public reputation, and thus has little concern for what she says. She is a girl who says whatever pops into her head, with the assumption that it is both worth saying, and worth hearing. Daisy Buchanan is guilty of the same crime:

“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.” (11-12)

Daisy Buchanan literally says everything that comes to her mind, and we are given open view of her entire thought process, spelled out before us. Fitzgerald adds an extra twist, noting her short attention span, as an alarming object catches her eye, completely overriding her previous thought processes in favor of the more pressing matter that has come to light: she has cut her finger, so slightly she didn’t even notice. But this is the nature of the Daisy flower; utter vanity inspires deep concern in even the most minute physical deformation, and allows room for very little actual thought.

Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing. “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. (14)

Here we see another example of Daisy Buchanan’s lack of thought in her comparison of Nick Carraway to a rose. She repeats it to herself, as if the repetition will affirm the statement itself, and when she finds this method of corroboration doesn’t work, she turns to Jordon Baker for help. Nick, of course, notes that this comparison is completely false. It is meaningless speech—words said for the sake of saying something.

Fitzgerald reiterates this point a number of times in the scene where Daisy attempts to speak words of wisdom. Relating the story of her daughter’s birth, she says:

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around in a defiant way…and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God I’m sophisticated!”

In this, we get the Daisy Buchanan motto: be a fool. Intelligence never got a girl anywhere, so why waste your time trying to sound smart when you can just use the powers of Venus? Again, she repeats herself a number of times, indicating a degree of self-affirmation, as well as uncertainty in what she is saying. Her source to back up her statements is narrowed from “everybody” to the vague concept of “the most advanced people.” Realizing this is not necessarily a reliable source, she then falls back on personal experience as the basis of her wisdom, ending in an exclamation that seems painfully ironic. We are left to wonder if she believes any of this herself, or if she is just blowing hot air.

Henry James focuses on Daisy Miller’s naiveté in a more indirect way, as Winterbourne notes that she could care less for visiting castles or historical landmarks.

The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. “Well, I must say I am disappointed,” she answered. “we had heard so much about it; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn’t help that. We had been led to expect something different.”

Daisy and Mrs. Miller reach Rome in all its majesty, walk around, see the sights, and find themselves disappointed. They believe they have been let down, that it is the fault of the art, not the fault of their own ignorance. Daisy and Mrs. Miller forget that the art is not on trial. They are so self consumed that they cannot appreciate the great city of Rome, full of some of the most magnificent art and architecture in the world. The daisy flower, as we have already noted, is not meant to admire other things—it is meant to be admired. Its ability to appreciate anything beyond itself or without direct relation to itself is incredibly limited.

Note also that both Daisies are, by their nature, flirty. Upon arriving to Nick’s house, Daisy Buchanan asks Nick if she has secretly invited her over because he loves her. Daisy Miller coolly flirts with Winterbourne, specifying that she wants him to visit her in Rome not because of some side trip to see his Aunt, but because she wants him to want to see her. Indeed, Winterbourne spends the vast span of Daisy Miller debating whether the young lady is innocent, or a coquette.

“Coolness” is an attractive trait for both Daisies. For Daisy Buchanan, it is this word that publicly reveals her love for Gatsby: “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.”… “You always look so cool.” For Daisy Miller, the first quality she points out in her young Italian suitor is his coolness: “But there’s Giovanelli, leaning against that tree. He’s staring at the women in the carriages: did you ever see anything so cool?” For both of them, there is something about coolness which they find distinctly alluring. Note that in both cases coolness is something they observe, not something that is necessarily there, just appears to be there. The sense of this word in both cases is “deliberate, calm, not hasty,” which seems to be—apart from wealth—a winning quality for a man to possess, perhaps because any other sort of man would be too much for the delicate flower, anything but careful deliberation would undoubtedly lead to tragedy—and it does.

It does not take much to see that there are many parallels between Daisy Miller and Daisy Buchanan. Clearly, Fitzgerald saw something in the character of Daisy Miller, something about he wanted to explore, namely: what happens to all the Daisy Millers in the world who do not die young of malaria? How does such a person proceed into later stages of life? Daisy Buchanan is his answer.

¹ “But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence.” (415)

² “Of her own tastes, habits, and intentions Miss Miller was prepared to give the most definite, and indeed the most favourable account.” (407)

Redefining One Man Down

2009-12-03T10:11:00.012+03:00

This website was meant to be a place for me to keep a journal of my junior year abroad. Now that's well over, so this will become a place that I'll periodically publish some of my writing, thinking, essays, arguments, etc.

Cheers as I work towards my Bachelor's.

Conclusions to a Year Abroad

2009-09-09T23:14:00.000+04:00

When there is trap
Set up for you
In every corner of this town..

Fate, chance and free will. Yes, Melville had it right, it’s these three that tumble around and mess with the flow of things. Some things happen by chance (good things are serendipitous, bad things are accidental), something things are predetermined (pleasant predetermination means God loves you, unpleasant predetermination means…?), and some things you-in-all-your-limitedness get to choose.

That’s what I was thinking about after the Belarusian military put me on a train to Minsk because they caught me in Belarus without a transit visa.

I thought about that, and I also thought about the number of times that my host mother told me that it would be “absolutely no problem” to take this train to the Ukraine; that, in fact, "they do not even check passports at the border, and sometimes you don’t even notice you’ve crossed the border because it happens around dawn”.

Dawn is when the military got on the train.
Dawn is when they meticulously checked/stamped passports.
Dawn is when I was given 30 seconds to grab my bag and get the hell off the train – or else!

When there's a trap set up for you
In every corner of your room,

And so you learn the only way to go is
Through the roof.

Was this fate, or chance? It was fate a month earlier, when I left Saint-Petersburg to renew my visa in Helsinki and discovered that, due to international passport laws, what I thought would be a 3 day trip ended up being a two week trip. But what of it? Sure I didn’t have enough clothes… but I ended up with a whole journey, meeting a couple random Canadian opera singers and an architecture student, following them to Tallinn, where we met a crazy old hippy named Yura who lived permanently in the hostel. Yura had long white hair, small round sunglasses, American flag shower shoes and a persistent wish that I go with him to an Estonian strip club.

And then onto Riga, a city which is nothing short of an Art Nouveau masterpiece, where I ended up hanging out with some guy who’s “wife” became a “serious girlfriend”, and whose “serious girlfriend” became just a “girlfriend”, and finally not mentioned at all (drink by drink) as he catcalled other birds. I lost track of this catcaller somewhere and spent the meanwhile almost getting into a fight with some random kid a full head shorter and 40 pounds less than I (and a death wish!) who seemed to think I was dancing with his girl; but I did indeed run into the same - though much drunker - cat sometime around dawn as I was returning to the hostel and he gave me a million dollar grin as he closed the door behind him and the three girls he’d just then led into his room.

Oooo ooo ooo through the roof, underground!

Or back in Helsinki, where I was reintroduced to civilization (Russians are a long way from it), where people are exceedingly polite and helpful and human. Every day I’d sit for an hour or so with the Finns in the sauna and discuss sauna strategy. The secret is getting a delicious Karhu (fantastic Finnish beer, recognizable by the grizzly bear on the front) and pouring it over the coals so the whole sauna fills with beer steam and the yeast burns and everything smells like fresh baking bread and I, too, bake. Normally, they tell me, they also roast sausage on the coals, but they couldn’t understand why I thought that was a funny thing to say.

And as we're crossing border after border,
We realize that difference is none.
It's underdogs who, and if you want it,
You always have to make your own fun.

But that’s just it. You get your fate, or your roll of the dice, and then it's up to you how you decide to respond to the snake eyes or the double sixes. Which is why I started to get really excited about going to Minsk—despite the circumstances: pulled from a train, without means of getting more money and a little under 100$ in cash—because chance/fate had not screwed me yet. It worked in Riga. It worked in Tallinn. It worked in Helsinki. And it got me to Saint-Petersburg in the first place. When the hell was I ever going to see Minsk? Where is Minsk anyway?

So that’s the most important thing I learned with my year abroad. You get your lot from a whole set of circumstances you have no control of, but whether you see it as serendipitous luck or bad luck—well that’s completely up to you.

It’s sort of an extension of that quote that Quincy taught me, which her father taught her which, at some point, he got from Abraham Lincoln: “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Just like their meanings, they lay between the lines:
Between the borders the real countries hide.

And so I finally made it to Odessa after sweet talking the Transportation Office ladies in my well-practiced I-am-pathetic-please-help-me American accent and enjoyed this hot strange land of gold, stray cats and beaches before getting on my flight home.

Eighteen hours later I had another one of those moments. You know, one of those moments I described earlier that only occur when you’re flying .3 miles per second thousands of feet in the air and things get plainold contemplative. And I stared out the window at the mountains in east county San Diego. A storm had just blown over and the residual patches of rain left six or seven quarter rainbows poking straight up out of the tops of mountains... and I was really happy to be home.

Серебряные зайцы водят хоровод!

Russians are Relativists

2009-07-11T17:11:00.002+04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about a hypothetical creature. This creature lives for a thousand years, and has a memory of a thousand years. It watches humankind as generations upon generations pass. What does it see? To it, we appear to be a species that is constantly spawning like any other animal, and making the same mistakes over and over again. We as a generation must learn the very same lessons as the previous generation. So to this hypothetical creature, we seem a blind species, bumbling about in the fog of the limitations of our memory—but we have one defense: monuments. Through our monuments (whether they are architecture, literature, art, or now—the internet), we have the ability to set place markers, reminders which say “Hey there, next generation. Here is where we left off. Take a good look at this stuff and continue from this point."

We humans are the only creatures on this planet that have the capacity for this sort of memory, and—unfortunately—we often fail to acknowledge that the very fact that we have this power means we have a duty to use it responsibly.

Is history just what we say it is?—or does it exist in a true form beyond ourselves?

It’s a really tough question to answer because, on the one hand, of course we as human beings write our own histories, and thus all our histories are inherently flawed and only portray the limited perspective of the author, or even firsthand participant. (Note: even the participant has a very limited perspective on what he or she has witnessed; history is the sum total of human choices, natural phenomena, and whatever divine phenomena—thus, even without accepting divine phenomena, we have too many variables for the human mind to fully take account). One can’t help but mention 1984 in this regard, where the argument between the captive protagonist and the authoritarian government hinges upon the retroactive creation of history: whether any history is indeed “true”, or whether it is just what we all agree to have happened. At the heart of this argument is the question of absolutism and relativism.

Acknowledging that humans can never know perfectly what has taken place, and therefore every history is to some extent a confabulation, we can nonetheless endeavor to write histories as accurately as we possibly can, given the resources available—which is exactly what Orwell’s thought police do not do; they, on the other hand, assume that since there is some subjectivity in the compilation of history, the slippery slope fallacy allows them to invent histories entirely. Thus, if everyone agrees the world is flat, then the world is flat. They see no responsibility to do their best to be as accurate as possible. They do not believe in any “true” version of history outside of human experience. And for them, inevitably, the ends always justify the means.

Russians put ketchup in all the wrong places.

2009-05-29T08:52:00.010+04:00

Eggs. Rice. Vegetables. Pizza. All places ketchup should not be.

But I expected that. I knew when I came to Russia that I wasn't doing it for the food. I mean, it's Russian food! They eat beats and cabbage and potatoes and mushrooms and all those other things that grow underground and survive long winters and heavy snows. Heck, if I wanted delicious food and good weather I would've gone to Italy [someone please remind me: why didn't I go to Italy??].

I was wrong. Russian food is delicious, and a testament to the saying that limitations inspire innovation. Borsch, blini, pickled tomatoes, "salads" (which generally contain meat and potato, no lettuce), jam, fresh bread and Russian cheese, yum.

Fine fine pickle brine,
Salt and sweet intertwine!
Together we can dine divine..
I'll be yours if you'll be pickle

Bureaucratic Sharks

2009-05-25T23:14:00.000+04:00

Dealing with Russian bureaucracy is a lot like being mauled by a shark. It's awful, messy, painful and terrifying - but if you survive, at least you have a cool story/scar to tell people about at cocktail parties.

I say this on the eve of my attempts to get:

Paid for my job.
A Russian tourist VISA for the summer.
A Chinese VISA for the summer as well.

Wish me luck.

Consulting Ghosts

2009-05-13T17:48:00.023+04:00

I've applied to Brown as a transfer student for Fall 2009, and my response should come from Admissions any day now. I'm not sure what I should do if I'm accepted - I have great friends at Vassar (I really miss my pals), it's a beautiful school, great reputation, great professors (whom I've already located), the departments I'm interested in may be stronger at Vassar than they are at Brown, it's safe, comfortable, and I just picked out my classes for next semester and they look fantastic:

Art 385 - The Art of Nature (Peck/Lucic)
Eng 328 - Literature of the American Renaissance (Peck)
Art 370 – Rome of the Imagination (Adams)
Art 331 – Durer and Rembrandt (Kuretsky)
Eng 235 - Old English (Amodio)
[Audit] Russ 371 Myth of Saint-Petersburg (Firtich)

Tatyana tells me it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than a nobody in the ocean.

So, when my Tarot cards failed to give me an answer I could reasonably decipher, I went to consult with my main man - the local hero - my idol, Peter the Great, and ask him what he'd do. Generally, it's important to be careful what sort of advice one asks of Peter; for example, when drinking, it is never a good idea to ask this man (who, along with his colleagues, drank so much in his lifetime that the stereotype of the "vodka guzzling Russian" lives on to this day and whose death was the result of slow, painful kidney failure, followed by a gangrenous urinary tract infection, peeing blood, and the removal of extraneous fluids via whatever was the 18th century equivalent of a giant syringe) whether or not it is a good idea to have another beer.

However in matters of war, leadership, vision, actualizing potential, and building cities in awkward places, he's really quite good. So I went to the grave of Peter the Great and asked:

"What do I do if I get in, Peter? Should I go?"

And he sighed, and stared, and mentioned something about the frivolity of asking the man who changed the capital of Russia whether or not to change schools.

"And if I am denied?"

To which he replied: "Work harder, sleep less, burn the land before your enemies, and never, ever let that asshole Charles XII dictate the terms of defeat".

"Victory" Day

2009-05-09T19:39:00.011+04:00

Some weeks ago our teacher asked us if anyone knew what День Победы ("Day of Victory") was. I joked that it was the day for dinner (the word for "dinner" sounds similar to the word for "victory") and got a good laugh.

Unfortunately, I had never heard the word "victory" before, and — jokes aside — actually didn't know what the holiday was for; so I asked. This was my teacher's response:

You don't know?
—No.
Are you serious?
—Yes.
You're joking, right?
—Really, I don't know. Seriously.
Do you know what WWII is?
—I am American. We Americans don't know anything.

At this point in my public humiliation, a friend of mind just whispered it to me in English and I spent the rest of the class simmering simmering simmering, outraged to be asked whether or not I knew what WWII was and condescended to for not knowing a word that wasn't at all obvious, nor was I the only one ignorant of it.

They say Necessity is the best teacher — I think Humiliation wins a close second.

Well here we are, it's May 9th at last : Den Pabyedi!

The "Day of Victory" is so called by the Russians who lost some 23 million soldiers and civilians in WWII before embarking upon another half decade of Stalinist repression and persecution.

No wonder I had trouble understanding why the end of WWII would be considered a "victory day" for Russia: the name demonstrates the residual, Soviet revisionistic view of history with sickening irony. 23 million dead civilians and a ruined country is not a victory by anyone's standards (except Stalin's, for whom the ends always justify the means).

In America, where WWII casualties are around half a million, there is a similar holiday at the end of May known as "Memorial Day".

God, however, is a true lover of irony. I'm not one to invoke God, but today I really think something was there. I watched a blue sky darken and an enormous black cloud billow up from the Gulf of Finland and spill over the Admiralty into Palace Square where, at first, gusts of winds inspired whirlwinds of dust, followed by heavy, heavy rain just as the Parade was arriving.

Ironic fact number 2: Tatyana, who is always reminding me not to forget my jacket, or wear a hat etc., forgot her jacket today.

I did publicly drink a Coke in honor of Victory Day.

Found a baby bear

2009-04-26T22:54:00.003+04:00

Held it... carefully.

He makes little baby-bear grunts.

Spring in Saint-Petersburg

2009-04-21T18:37:00.010+04:00

Ah spring... when thousands of middle-aged Russian women shed their fur coats, throw out their tanning spray, stumble into their thongs, and trek out to the Peter and Paul Fortress to sunbathe on the "beach".

[click to enlarge]

The weather here is getting nicer and nicer, so I went to Saint Isaac's recently. The bad part about climbing onto the cupola of Saint Isaac's Cathedral is you don't get a very good view of Saint Isaac's Cathedral.

The good part is you get a great view of everything else, like the Menshikov palace.

I can see my school from here!

The 9th Wave, so the mariners say, is the most dangerous.

Thanks to Bimini for the photos, and for the cool video at the bottom of this post.

When I found myself

2009-04-08T19:48:00.007+04:00

Sitting in the cafe of the Kunstkammer
Sharing a couple pieces of awful plastic pie
With an Aussie drama major (the normal-est person I could find) —
A boom box blasting Ghost Busters nearby,
I realized Saint-Petersburg is a weird place.

I ain't afraid a'no ghost!

Natalya Pushkina

2009-04-01T17:39:00.002+04:00

Смотреть в глаза Элена...

The Hermitage Cattery

2009-04-01T00:04:00.006+04:00

Most visitors don't realize that the basement of the Hermitage is home to some 70 cats who eat, sleep, and are paid regular wages. Yes indeed, the Hermitage cats have been around since 1745 when Empress Elizabeth summoned the most experienced warriors in the nation to the to help with the rodent problem. The 5 original cats, legendary for their proficiency, came from Kazan. The Hermitage has had cats ever since.

Unfortunately, none of the original line of hunter-kitties survived the Seige of Leningrad (the same fate can be said for the unfortunate inhabitants of the Leningrad Zoo, and the city's populations of pigeons, which has since replenished itself) however, the Hermitage likes to take a day each year to recognize this quirky bit of living history.

Literary Saint-Petersburg

2009-03-31T01:24:00.011+04:00

One of my favorite things to do in Petersburg is track down all the sites mentioned in Russian literature; i.e., following path of the Nose, climbing Raskolnikov's staircase, finding Akaky Akakiyich's overcoat, searching for the house of the devil moneylender.

It's sort of like Geocaching, except my geocaches are left by Pushkin.

Here is a link to a file you can open in Google Earth, and have a look at the map I've been building of Petersburg. I'll be updating and re-updating this map often as I make my way through the reading, so check back if you nerd-out on this stuff like I do. So far it contains:

Gogol

The Overcoat

The Nose

The Portrait

The Diary of a Madman

Nevsky Prospect

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

White Nights

Notes from the Underground (soon)

Pushkin

The Bronze Horseman

Note: I get equally excited for anything to do with Peter the Great.

How to say “Apathy” in Russian

2009-03-29T16:40:00.020+04:00

Все равно (It’s all the same to me.)
Меня это не интересно (It doesn’t interest me)
Меня это не касается (It doesn’t concern me)
Меня это не волнует (It doesn’t concern me)
Без разницы (There’s no difference)
Мне без различно (For me there’s no difference)
А мне какое дело? (What is there for me to do?)
А мне-то что (What am I to do?)
Мне все до лампочки (I couldn’t care less)
Ну и что (So what?)

Yesterday my Russian language class began a chapter on how to talk politics. On my list of political vocabulary phrases, a little more than a quarter of them meant “It’s not my problem”. This list reflects the level of political apathy that is, has, and will continue to destroy Russian society.

It's been said that "with freedom comes responsibility", but Russians have never really had freedom, and have never successfully made an effort to control their own fates. In the words of historian Kluchevsky, "for this national apathy, for the thoughtless silence of the whole land, the country is punished".¹

Only in the educated strata of Russia society do you meet anti-Putin democracy-loving people. The other 99% of the country is happy with the current government, political assassinations, censorship, mock elections, mafia rule and corruption, all of which is common knowledge.

I've asked many people: "if everyone knows that what is happening is wrong, then why don't you all do something about it?" The answer:

"It is not so bad".
Stalin is good. Putin is good. It is the foreigners who are poisoning our country.
"What am I to do?" [or another among the above list of apathetic answers]
"As long as I can put food on the table, and subsist on meager week-to-week wages, I am content."

This is the response of a thousand years of serfdom. Up until the 20th century, Russians have been ruled by divine monarchs and believed fully in their Tsar as "the fixed point, the sun, the source of all beneficence and light".² The peasants believed that their bad lot was the result of the evil boyars coming between the common people and the Tsar—with this myth, the Tsars were able to keep the respect of the people and use the boyars as their scapegoats.

Combine this belief in the Tsar with the deep-rooted, Russian-Orthodox inspired Jesus-complex, and there you have 900 years of complacency and slavery (with occasional exceptions, all of which were brutally crushed by royal armies).

Thus, it no surprise that when, at the turn of the 20th century—at long last—the myth of the divine Tsar was dispelled and communism came into full swing, Russians did the only thing they knew how to do, which is the only thing they have ever known: they installed an Almighty totalitarian patriarch, who once again quickly ascended to the point of divinity.

That's the whole difficulty with freedom: to have freedom is also to have the freedom to self-impose slavery. This is why the Declaration of Independence stipulates that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Most Russians don't feel a duty toward their country or their fellow man. They are unwilling to accept the responsibility necessary for freedom and have chosen time and time again the familiar bonds of slavery to the unfamiliar duties of freedom. And sadly, when, by chance, the sort of leadership that can galvanize the people pokes its head out of its hole, the hammer of the mafia-government is ever smashing it back into oblivion like some tragic game of whack-a-mole.

News headlines note the assassination. Nobody cares:
"А мне-то что? (What am I to do?)" the citizen asks, "Выбирать тут не из чего; Хрен редьки не слаще (There is small choice in rotten apples)".

There is a reason that the Russian word for "ballot box" ["урна" ("urna")] also means "trash can".

Каждый народ имеет то правительство, которого заслуживает.
You get the government you deserve.

¹ Vasili Klyuchevsky, The Rise of the Romanovs, translated by Lilian Archibald (London, 1960) p.87.

² Edward Crankshae, The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917, (New York: Viking Press, 1976) p.18.

Frozen Ocean

2009-03-05T20:12:00.008+03:00

The Neva pours tons of fresh water into the Gulf of Finland, so it freezes pretty easily.

So today, I walked on the ocean.

I meditated.

I drank a Coke for America.

It was awe-some.

O to be Prince Caspian
Afloat upon the waves

Wherever you go, there you are.

2009-02-25T20:27:00.009+03:00

Because that’s always the question: how can we be not us? How can I be not me?

Thus abroad, thus de Tocqueville.

What’s been up? I've been moved from the beginner Russian class to the intermediate one. Then immediately to the next one after that (for intermediate intermediates, I think). The class that is much farther ahead than I've ever been in Russian, and I've been doing my best to keep up. I might be the dumbest kid in the class, but I am also the one who is learning the most. The trade off?—dignity, of course. Always with the dignity.

Completely out of the blue, I was offered a job. Every Monday from here on out I'll get two groups of advanced English students, and I'll lead conversation sessions with them. I was given a list of things to talk about with them, such as “art, politics, utopias, environment, religion, vacation, foreign countries, stereotypes, food, etc”.

I had my first classes, and all my students were confused about there being any book for the course, and generally had no idea what we were supposed to be doing. So I just started a conversation about Russian Orthodoxy (for my first class) and peanut butter (for my second class) and let them take the conversation from there.

Peanut butter, interestingly enough, does not exist in Russia. Not proper peanut butter.

Yes, I get paid to talk with Russians about whatever strikes me as interesting at that moment. And the best part? I'm supposed to teach them how to debate and argue. That's right: I get to teach them how to argue about whatever I want to argue about. I have found a way to get paid to argue = my calling in life.

What's my pay? 300 rubles an hour, two classes, two hours each, so 1200 roubles a week (which comes out to a little less than 10$/hr, or, 10 cokes an hour, or more than enough money to feed a Russian family of 3 for a week—however you want to look at it.)

Speaking of arguments, I keep getting sick here and I've been trying to convince Tatyana that wearing a hat or not wearing a hat in cold weather has no effect on whether one gets a cold.

She argues: "I saw you yesterday. You went out in the cold without a hat, and now you have a cold!"

No! To "catch a cold" is a figure of speech. Multiple studies have proven that the reason people "catch colds" is because they are exposed to the cold virus; whether or not they are chilly at the moment of exposure makes no difference.

"Well, twice I've watched you go out without a hat, and twice you've gotten a cold now. I don't care what any doctor says, I've seen proof otherwise!"

At least she's not trying to bleed me to balance my humors.

Heck, maybe I need to be bled. Too much yellow bile, get the leaches! More like, too much phlegm. In my nose.

What do I miss when I get homesick? Driving, I always miss driving a lot. I remember back when I had my convertible, and I’d cruise home from school every day taking the coast from La Jolla to Del Mar – fantastic.

I remember driving around in my old red Corvair which only had AM radio; I got to the point where I started to rock out to country music like Juice Newton (“Playing with the Queen of Hearts / Knowin’ that it ain’t very smart / The Devil ain’t the only fool / Who will do anything for you”, John Michael Montgomery (“Life’s a dance, you learn as you go / sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow”), Conway Twitty (“Lord have mercy, Baby’s got her blue jeans on!”) and the Kendalls (“Heaven’s just a sin away / I can’t wait another day / I think I’m giving in”) all on AM 600 KOGO – “THE ZOO” followed by intermittent sessions with Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, and occasional Jesus programming; god I loved late night with Art Bell, who has made me a real junkie for alien sightings and 2012.

Or eating a California burrito or having a beer and kicking it with the Del Mar Crew up on the ridge. Yeah, it’s always the people you miss. They'll be back soon enough.

I guess I don’t get homesick all that much. Not consciously at least. Usually when I’m anywhere that I’m not used to my dreams go crazy, but my dreams are always crazy.

But anyway, I go places so I can get perspective on where I come from. That's the whole point of traveling abroad. And you set out expecting revelations, and ultimately, there you are. Here I am.

Luff! luff, you may!—steady!—port! World ho!—here I am!

Your Own, Personal Jesus

2009-02-21T16:24:00.007+03:00

When I walk down the street, and I pass another person, I make eye contact. If I’m feeling really good, I’ll maybe add a smile, perhaps a “howdy!”, but at the very least: eye contact.

This seemingly meaningless gesture, usually done with little thought and almost automatically is actually immensely important. An enormous amount of information is conveyed simply by looking another human being in the eye. Without a word, I am communicating:

I am a human being.
You too, are a human being.
We together are human beings, acknowledging each other’s existence.
Today, at this moment, our paths have crossed.
We share this sidewalk as we share this community, and, macrocosmically, the world—we have duties and responsibilities towards each other.

Ah, a refreshing moment between two people; ah Bartleby! ah humanity!

Which is why it discourages me so much that Russians do not make eye contact; most especially, they do not smile, and saying hello to someone you don’t know is absolutely out of the question. If you try to make eye contact with a woman, you will (if successful) receive a brief glance and an immediate redirection of her gaze, along with a tightening of all her facial features, often times accompanied by a frown (which, in most cases, was there before you tried to establish a moment of mutual-humanity—so you’ll inspire a deeper frown). If you try and make eye contact with a man you are basically challenging him to a fight; thus, you will either be met with the immediate redirection of his gaze (which, as far as I can tell, means submission, as with making eye contact with dogs) or be met with …other unpleasantness.

And let’s not even talk about smiling, because smiling, I'm told, is for fools. This concept, I guess, comes from the idea that everything in Russia is serious, unpleasant, and should be met with a face that is appropriately dismal. Thus, if you are smiling, you must be an ignoramus, or some foreigner [in my case, both], because no true Russian with true Russian problems would walk around with a pleasant, approachable look on his face unless he were really stupid, or really foreign.

For the most part, Russians don’t look at each other at all; they quickly shuffle down streets, staring at their feet, wrapped in coats, collars up to their noses, in silence. What is communicated when two such people cross paths?

I do not acknowledge your existence; whether you walked past me or not today does not matter.
I have no respect for you as a human being or even as a fellow existing creature, you are merely another object in the background of my life.
Only my own life and introspection is important, so important that I cannot leave it ever, not even for a second.

I think there are several reasons why Russians insist on staring at their toes—but I am going to have to speak in generalities...

First and foremost, there is a lot of crime in Saint-Petersburg, so everyone assumes everyone else is a bandit and tries to avoid all contact as much as possible. Here's my well-practiced and mastered "I'm-not-really-a-foreigner-I'm-really-a-Russian-and-a-badass-so-don't-mug-me" face:

But even I acknowledge the humanity of bandits. Heck, American bandits acknowledge the humanity of me, too.

My hypothesis is that the real source of this unfriendliness is the deeply ingrained Russian Orthodox mentality that permeates Russian society. For all Christians, the ultimate goal in life is to be like Jesus, emulate his virtues and his deeds, to care for each other, mercy, etc. For Orthodox Christians, the ideal is to be Jesus. I literally mean that the Russian Orthodox church teaches that Russians ought to be Jesus, that to live is to suffer horribly, publicly, and die for everyone else’s sins—

There is some perverted part of human nature that enjoys being unhappy, that likes pain (e.g. "I just needed a good cry.")—something that impels people to, given the choice to be happy or to be miserable, choose misery (i.e., Milne's Eeyore or, Dostoevsky's Marmeladov). The Russian Orthodox church has been playing this tune to Russians for over a thousand years, and there is a deep-set chord here that resonates in the Russian psyche. Couple a thousand years of oppressive, brutal monarchy [including Stalin and Putin] with a thousand years of teaching people to be satisfied with their bad lots (and the promise of a grand afterlife) and what you have is a system of complacency and acceptance of travesty where righteous indignation and active resistance should be.

Thus, a practical pessimism pervades the logic of the common Russian. He expects bad things to happen, waits for them to happen, and if—by chance—bad things don't come, he assumes they will in the next minute. What, historically, has ever proven otherwise for Russians?

Each sees his own suffering as the noble suffering of Jesus; each feels himself crucified and simultaneously relishes the crucifixion; he has been taught not to be like Jesus, but to be his own, personal Jesus.

Published!

2009-02-08T22:02:00.002+03:00

My first published article came out in the Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill. Although it was really edited down (honestly, they took out all the information that was new and exciting!), I'm really proud to have published something. I recommend reading the complete version on my blog, which I've updated with all the good stuff (such as the discovery of multiple other artifacts from the Resolute timbers, previously unknown).

Fed and Clothed

2009-02-04T19:14:00.015+03:00

Tatyana, in addition to feeding me every day, has decided that I'm obsolete; so she bought me the following bunch of coats and shirts, and a single pair of white, womens' corduroy pants. Given I've never owned so many clothes in my life, I decided the occasion demanded a photoshoot.

No comment.

Please, sir!

Very blue.

I think my favorite, but dangerously close to being a used car dealer.

Sadly, this one doesn't have elbow patches.

Blue #2.

I need orange pants for this jacket.

This one could be ironed.

If you know what this is, you'll understand why it's such a travesty that it's too small.

I left out the orange jacket with tiger striped lining, only because I am not sure where I put it.

Total cost of clothes?: About $4.

Look both ways.

2009-02-01T19:29:00.010+03:00

Crossing the street in Saint-Petersburg is a serious decision that needs to be made with the greatest care and vigilance.

In New York City, and in just about every city in America I’ve been to, one ought to look both ways before crossing the street, preferably do so in a crosswalk, and—ideally—when the little man is blinking green. However, if any of the aforementioned circumstances have not been met, you can still sue any asshole who runs you over for his house, his car, and his childrens' childrens' college savings.

The pedestrian has more than the right-of-way: he has the right-of-morality, of environmental superiority, ah—that we would all walk or bicycle, the world would be a safer, happier, conscientious, smogless place!

Not so in Saint-Petersburg. In Saint-Petersburg, if you are walking, it is because you are one of the low class bums who is too poor to get a cool car, and therefore must walk. It’s the logic of the horse and buggy days: the rich had horses and the poor walked. I, in my cool car, am of a higher class; thus I always have the right-of-way, and you, with all your uncool bipedal trumblings, ought to move your ass the hell out of the way.

Remember the Marquis from A Tale of Two Cities after trampling a man’s child:

I would ride over any of you [poor proletariat commoners] very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.

Don’t expect a successful lawsuit either.

Turn the news on just about any day of the week and you’ll hear reports of some unfortunate fellow who was run over. One young lady, maybe 25, was mid-step to get on a bus when the driver (perhaps intentionally) drove away. She fell down and both her legs were run over at the shins. Reporters recorded her as she called the bus company from her hospital bed, and the bus company told her that it would be “impossible” to figure out which driver was responsible (despite knowing the bus number, and the time she tried to get on the bus).

“Well, what are you going to do then? I'm going to lose both my legs" she asked.

“What do you expect us to do, would you like us to send you a fruit basket?” they mocked.

Let’s also not forget that it is completely legal to drink on the streets in Russia, and as far as I can tell, M.A.D.D. have yet to establish a branch here in Saint-Petersburg, so you run into stuff like this once in a while.

(This car met end was abandoned here in the middle of downtown Saint-Petersburg).

So look both ways. Because in Russia, drivers are drunk, entitled, and human life—like the ruble—is worth less.

Shurik

2009-01-27T21:16:00.006+03:00

This film is truly a gift of Russian Cinema.
http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=jw1Mpis87oE

Winnie the Pooh is also much better in Russian.
http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=UGIlHolPZ_A

Humility sometimes tastes like asphalt

2009-01-22T16:22:00.006+03:00

and snow.

That was my first thought when I wiped out, banana peel-style, in front of the Hermitage. Actually, my first thought was: “did anyone see that?”

That's always my first thought when I do something humiliating.

Yes. The answer is always yes.

It’s cold here, really cold. Cold like my heart, except a hundred or so degrees colder. I now understand why my pal Robby grew out his beard when he was in Saint-Petersburg:

I’m living in downtown Saint-Petersburg, right next to the Moyka river and near the famous Nevsky Prospect. The Hermitage is two blocks away and free to students; it’s amazing. But I’ll write about that later. I’m taking intensive Russian classes at the Saint-Petersburg University Department of Philology (ha!) for four hours every morning, and despite being here only a week so far, two days of which I slept, and two days of which I was really sick, I feel I am picking up a lot of Russian.

Things move slower in Saint-Petersburg. I go to bed around 10 pm or so, and I wake up at 6 am. I eat meals slowly. It’s a welcome change of pace.

I am still learning my way around. It’s a huge city, and I’m having trouble finding a place to buy Q-tips. I’m concerned that Russians don’t use Q-tips, and that I’ll have to conserve my small supply for the next semester. I never feel clean until I step of out the shower and use a Q-tip.

I’m living with Violetta’s mother and grandmother. Their house rocks, it is covered in flowers and pictures of Violetta. Her mom is hilarious. Every meal is a lesson on Russian history, why Russia is screwed, and why Putin is a murdering psychopath. If the KGB doesn’t murder us both, I’ll come out of here with a interesting grasp of Russian politics.

She also lives to feed me. Seriously. Every time I think dinner or whatever is over, and I couldn’t eat another bite, she brings out the main course. She is also nuts about her three cats, Mysya, Vasya, and Pysya. I’d put up a picture of her and her cats, but I can’t find the cord for my camera. I’ll have to hold off until I get a new one.

Pysya hates me.

Well I don't know what I'm looking for...

2009-01-18T09:44:00.005+03:00

But I know that I just want to look some more
And I won't be satisfied
'Till there's nothing left that I haven't tried
For some people it's an easy choice
But for me there's a devil and an angel's voice
Well I don't know what I am looking for
But I know that I just want to look some more

I am in Saint-Petersburg, which will be spelled like so from here on out, not Petersburg, not St. Petersburg, not Petrograd, not Санкт-Петербург.

I just slept for two days. That’s some intense jetlag. It was a great plane ride over though. Polish Airlines. They kept showing this little animated video in which a cartoon lady demonstrates how you can exercise while remaining in your seat. As she’d demonstrate exercises, the video kept cutting to other animated men who turn their heads and watch her intently. Too intently for comfort, methinks.

Every time I get on an airplane I sit down and immediately complain to whoever is sitting next to me that seat belts on planes are useless. If this plane crashes, we are all going to die: simple as that. They don’t have seat belts on public buses, do they? Heck, even with schoolchildren (many of whom need to be chained down) there are no seat belts on buses. I feel strongly about not enforcing the fasten-your-seatbelt rule on planes; we ought to take our flights like the Roman warriors took their battles: if it is my day to die, so be it.

And then I read stories like this.

What the heck is up with the “no smoking” icon? Of course there is no smoking on airplanes! What, you’d have to have not been on an airplane since 1970 to not know this!

There was an old man on my flight who stood for the entire time. I only slept a couple hours, the rest of the time I watched movies, and periodically glanced over at this guy. He periodically glanced over at me. We had a conversation, without speaking.

“You’re old”, I said.
“You’re young”, he said.

“You’re standing”, I said.
“You’re sitting”, he said.

“You’re not watching the movie”, I said.
“You are watching the movie”, he said.

“You sure use the bathroom a lot. Perhaps that’s why you are standing”, I said.
“You haven’t peed once this flight. That's amazing!” he said.
"And I'm not going to, old man. I'm gonna hold it."

“We are opposites, you and I, old/young, standing/sitting, peeing/not, yin/yang, and here we both are, hurtling through the sky at 1000 miles per hour.”

Which made me think about 1000 miles per hour: that’s a lot of miles in an hour. A thousand of them. That’s 16.6 miles per minute. That’s a third of a mile every second. Seatbelts—really?

And then dawn hit, which I swear hits faster and harder when you are rushing towards it at 1000 miles per hour. At first, it was just a line of red in the black, then orange, then deep blue, cold blue (-60 degrees), then that great, NASA blue, and finally the sun starts to poke up and the whole thing becomes too brilliant to look at without burning your eyes.

It is at moments like these, when I’m traveling at .3 miles per second tens of thousands of feet in the air, with dawn breaking and the clouds rolling under me like scrolls of silver that I begin to quietly wax poetical to myself.

Sometimes I feel like I am 20, a lot of the time I feel like I’m 70, and in either case, I feel like a fool.

In medias res...

2009-01-09T07:29:00.019+03:00

Well, I'm really in the middle of things now.

My internship finished well. All that glossophobia stuff was bunk; apparently people were interested and entertained, and I had record attendance. I'm told that I'm a natural! I was also told that, next time, I should avoid referring to my audience as "you guys", especially when my audience is in part comprised of trustees and the museum President.

Dashing lecturer, drunk with power:

Dashing lecturer, drunk with celebration!

I packed up all my stuff in New Bedford and journeyed back to San Diego. It has been a pretty eventful break. Misha visited from Vassar for one leg of his west coast adventure. Violetta was down here to do some music in Los Angeles, so we went to the Wild Animal Park and took some photos next to these boganvalias.

And then she was touched by God. I witnessed.

Back when the Chargers were 4-8, I told my dad that the best Christmas present he could get my brother and me would be tickets to the improbable "playoff" game versus the Denver Broncos.

We kicked the crap out of the Denver donkeys. We beat them so badly, their head coach was fired the next day. You can see victory in the sky.

I also found out that Balboa Park had an honorary plaque put up for me.

I spent New Year's with these kids.

James Clark got really drunk, challenged me to a fist fight, stole several packs of cigarettes, and then fell off a cliff. This cliff:

Seriously.

I have no idea what James Phelps did on New Year's, but take a guess as to how I know he shouldn't have driven home:

Generally, I've been doing a lot of application stuff, and a lot of moving out of our house, which is a huge pain. So much to do and so little break time remaining.

Next week: Saint-Petersburg. (Holy cow).

Kobo, Quasimodo and ?

2008-12-14T08:49:00.007+03:00

Meet Kobo:

Kobo is a 60 foot adolescent blue whale who puts the "scent" into adolescent. His bones weren't cleaned properly, and are still full of oil...so the gallery sort of smells like whale oil. And...cleaning staff has to wipe up when he drips. Every day. It's best to keep your mouth closed when you're looking up at him in awe.

The museum held a contest to name the new skeleton when he was first hung, and the winner, a fifth grader, came up with Kobo: King of the Blue Ocean.

This is our sperm whale skeleton. He doesn't have a name, but he's still cool. We also have a small humpback whale skeleton hanging beside Kobo, acquired in 1935. He was the museum's first whale, inspiring William Tripp (then curator) to say:

We are no longer a whaling museum without a whale, as some in the past have chosen to call us.

Just a couple weeks ago, the NBWM put up their fourth skeleton. She started like this.

She required a bit of dental work.

I directed the construction.

Adjusting the ribs.

This is how I know she was a she.

Raising the whale fetus. (Quasimodo can be seen in the background).

Mother and child reunion, back view.

Bottom view.

Mother and child have no name yet--but there is another contest! That's right, you could name the whale (I think there may be a 12-year-old age limit).

Ask me in person, and I'll tell you some funny stories about these skeletons. A band camp story? Maybe.

And one time, and the whaling museum...

"Conservators make it last longer"

2008-12-13T06:07:00.003+03:00

"He has a whiskey collection? Now that's something I could get behind. That's the sort of collection that deaccessions itself."

Glossophobia

2008-12-02T06:37:00.015+03:00

Which do you fear more: public speaking, or death?

In just a couple weeks, I’ll be presenting a lecture on the research I’ve been doing to all my professors here at NBWM. The good news is I've got great material to work with, and there are no grades. The bad news is that, instead of teachers I've got professors watching me, and instead of grades, there is the serious possibility of humiliation. This will be my first real attempt at public speaking since high school, at which time I was devoting much more of my effort to making fun of the assignment/teacher rather than actually saying anything worthwhile.

I thought I’d copy over some of the tips from the book I’ve been reading, because they are brilliant:

First of all, don’t worry about being nervous—most experienced speakers are. If you are well prepared, this nervousness will feel like exhilaration instead of terror, powering your talk with energy that you can transmit to the audience. People who are too calm usually end up giving lackluster presentations. It’s like taking an exam—you do better if you are keyed up because the adrenaline sharpens your wits.

Nervous. I can do nervous.

Remember that, with very rare exceptions, the audience wishes you well, and that they are just poor mortals like yourself, in need of love and approval.

Love. They need my love.

Because you are onstage, you become in their eyes an authority figure, so it is up to you to make them them feel good.

Right. Make them feel good. I am an authority figure: respect my authoritah.

Try to feel affection for them, projecting as much warmth as you can.

Project warmth. Gotcha.

If you can forget about yourself and be genuinely concerned about the audience and their need for information and stimulation, you will not have time to be afraid.

...genuinely concerned...

Try to be the kind of teacher Carl Jung admired:
"One looks back with great appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."

Warmth again. Must have warmth so my audience can grow, like the soul of a child. Yes.

Woodrow Wilson (another authority figure) was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, “That depends. If I am to speak in 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes, 3 days. If half hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.”

Luckily, I've still got two weeks.

"Ten Things I Learned" Reading Whaling Logbooks

2008-11-26T02:50:00.003+03:00

Whaling jokes... (from a volunteer here at NBWM).

1. Just because you're the son of a captain doesn't mean he won't list you as a deserted to get out of paying discharging fees in a foreign port when he sends you home early.

2. Tetanus shots would have been a good idea in the 19th century.

3. If you're planning to desert and use "taking your clothes to be washed on shore" as an excuse, make sure you don't include boots and shoes when you ask the captain, 'cause, you know, boots and shoes don't need to be washed...and the captain knows that.

4. When in Chile, beware "One Arm Pete". He will ply your crew with spirits and convince them to desert. Then they will laugh at you from the deck of a Chilean warship in the harbor while you watch helplessly.

5. If you leave the ship in protest of the captain's behavior, don't be surprised if he leaves you behind to fend for yourself on some small Pacific island.

6. There are no strikes on whalers, only mutinies.

7. If you're going to set fire to the ship, make sure that you are close enough to shore to get off before she burns. Unless your crazy...in which case, you really don't care what happens now, do you?

8. Turning the ship into a rum-soaked den of iniquity while the captain is sick ashore is not going to win you any points with the owners. And using the captain's cabin while he and his wife are sick ashore...that's just gauche.

9. If you want to toughen up your recalcitrant son with some real world work experience, you might want to think about something other than working on a whaler. Like working in a mine, or factory, or the army.

10. But, if your brother complains to you that going on a whaling voyage is a fool's errand when you could be in the more stable army or navy, you should remind him that it's the middle of the Civil War and the open sea is significantly less dangerous than the fields of Gettysburg.

The White Whale

2008-11-18T07:31:00.003+03:00

A friend at the museum found this, a fantastic addition to my collection of whale cartoons.

While I'm at it, here's the Hindenberg on a pillow.

Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition

2008-11-13T04:59:00.011+03:00

Check out my meticulously constructed 1':.75" model of the upcoming Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition! It's not done yet, but it's getting there. Here's a walking tour of my souped up curatorial dollhouse.

Here're the Hulsart prints you see when you first enter (yellow paper just represents information plaques).

Then immediately on your left is the seventeenth century Dutch whaling prints.

There are a bunch of French prints behind you.

The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt.

(Moby Dick, Chapter 56)

Back to more Dutch stuff. And the narwhal tusk. Grey cardboard indicates a display case, yellow a door.

British prints.

Then onto the American prints! Apparently, if things go according to my model, a large number of prints will remain in plastic bags on the floor in front of you.

More American prints on all sides. America rocks.

The Benjamin Russel 1871 Arctic Abandonment series, both water color originals and print versions.

Closing with Japanese and Eskimo whaling prints. Unfortunately, the Eskimos never really made very many prints of any sort, but the Japanese sure as heck did. That green piece on the table is a scroll.

The exhibition opens in late February if you'd like to see something more than scale three-quarter-inch place markers on foam core.

Election 2008

2008-11-05T09:11:00.013+03:00

I knew it was going to happen.
I watched it happen.
And I just can't believe it happened.

Art by Josh Lermon

NYTimes, Reactions Worldwide

NYTimes, Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Worldwide

One Day to Change the World (gets me every time)

"We have a lot of work to do"

Signs of Hope and Change

Rain in Virginia

Acceptance Speech

News Headlines

Scrimshaw Thursday Update

2008-11-04T06:00:00.009+03:00

Gosh I haven't updated in a bit. These past few weeks have been crazier than Right Whale mating season. But here's a Scrimshaw Thursday update (there's been a lot of great stuff I haven't uploaded, unfortunately). Hopefully you'll find this stuff as neat as I do.

The bounty!

I'm definitely the youngest member of the scrimshaw crew.

Sweet tooth!

The above tooth has Garneray's Pêche de la Baliene carved into it. Garneray's prints are not only awesome in their own right, but also because Melville describes this very picture in chapter 56 of Moby Dick, "Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes":

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his back weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shellfish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons fo tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.

(Ambroise Louis Garneray, Pêche de la Baliene, 1835
Photo courtesy of the the New Bedford Whaling Museum.)

Another bit of scrimshaw, with what we think might be a scene from The Merchant of Venice carved on it. Alongside is a 19th century ruler (not King George IV).

I thought this thing was neat. It's a stamp, though we're not sure what the purple ball is supposed to be. Maybe an ink blotter.

When writing logbooks for whaling voyages, whalers would use these stamps to indicate when they had caught a whale, and then write the specifications next to the stamp. Stamps are often forged, but with a collection of 2500 logbooks here at the museum, we could (theoretically, given an intern and a lot of time) check to see if any of the stamps match up. Interestingly enough, this one seems to have an Orca on it.

Here is the painted Alaskan whale rib, followed by a bunch of closeups of my favorite drawings on it.

It's an eskimo! Note the toes.

Frog.

Snake.

I love this guy. Fantastic ears.

My favorite.

Election day is tomorrow! Make sure to have a beer for Obama, and the future of our country.

Ra Ra Riot

2008-10-24T04:57:00.012+04:00

was GREAT! I showed up really early because I was worried about getting tickets, but it turns out Allie put me on the list, so I got Remo to come down for the concert too (it was great to see him). I have never been on the list. It will probably be a while before I'm ever on a list again. People on the list get free tickets. Allie took me backstage. I like being on lists. Except for those years when I was on the government watch list and got automatically searched on every plane I tried to board. That list was really unpleasant.

Not a single one of these photos is in focus, but I'd say they're pretty reflective of the experience.

Each year at the fall

Silhouettes in a window frame!

Death?o baby i

It all goes slow-mo

Can you tell? I can't even explain.

Turns out Ra Ra Riot was actually headed to New Bedford the following week! So Tuesday, Mathieu and Allie came over and made a huge Italian dinner that I'm still recovering from.

I'll close with this one:

Oh la!

Money for Books

2008-10-19T07:29:00.008+04:00

"Dear Evan,

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that you are the 2008-9 Dana Prize winner. Professor Kane and I found your reflections on your revised summer reading project both thoughtful and evolved. It is clear that you began with quite a general idea of what line of inquiry you would pursue and found a thread even among books of an ostensibly varied character: science fiction, proper, and Christian fiction.

I will submit your name to the proper office in the Spring when prizes are announced and awarded. You will be receiving a financial award in June.

Congratulations,
Wendy Graham"

Scha-wing!
This week has been nuts. Here's a comic.

Ra Ra Riot @ The Bowery Ballroom

2008-10-15T02:57:00.012+04:00

This Thursday I’m headed to NYC to see Ra Ra Riot, my favorite, college startup, kids-my-age, kick-ass-and-take-names band. My friend Allie plays the cello, which is pretty neat to know someone in a popular band.

Generally, when your friend is a band or whatever, of course you go and support them and listen to their stuff regardless of how good it is. But this is not the case with Ra Ra Riot. I love them. They are incredibly talented, incorporating cello and violin seamlessly with guitar and bass, along with clever lyrics and a dynamic stage presence (particularly when Mathieu Santos rocks out too hard and clobbers his bandmates with his bass).

My favorite song by them is Dying is Fine, a song that brings the following E.E. Cummins poem to life:

dying is fine)but Death
?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

And, in case you missed it, here is the basis for the music video.

And here is another music video.

Another Sarah Silverman link

2008-10-02T09:33:00.001+04:00

Her lines are the real gems:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1832128

Optical Illusions Are My Anti-Drug.

2008-09-30T09:40:00.003+04:00

"All I know is that I know nothing":
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-illusion

Colors:
http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_aug2006/RotatingIllusion.htm

Left brain? Right brain? Visual ambiguity:
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22492511-5005375,00.html

(Thanks to Taylor and Lia for the first two links).

Mid-Internship Reflection

2008-09-29T07:39:00.003+04:00

Howdy Professor Lucic and Peck:

This is my mid-internship report, which I’m writing so you’ll know what I’ve been up to these past two months and where I’m headed with my final three here at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The best way I can summarize this is by describing my general daily schedule and projects.

Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition
I’m currently working with Stuart Frank, the Senior Curator and director of my internship, on the Classic Whaling Prints exhibition, which will be going up in a few months. Generally, a good portion of Monday’s and Tuesdays are devoted to working on pulling this exhibition together.

When I initially got here, my first task was to locate approximately a hundred artifacts for the upcoming exhibit within the stores of the Museum’s collection—not a simple task. Things aren’t always where they are supposed to be, and when you’re new, and not even sure where you are supposed to be, it’s easy to find yourself lost deep within spirals of accession numbers. But for a geek like me, getting lost is a happy thing—I find all the coolest stuff when I am lost, like the wall of jarred whale oil and harpoon guns, or the ethnographic collections of Pacific Islander tools and weapons, or carved porpoise and shark skulls.

Once I’d located everything, the next task was to measure the dimensions of all the prints/objects. Since many of the prints were unframed, I had to make the best guesstimate could. Then I took all the measurements of the exhibition gallery and began to build a scale model of the exhibition (.75 inches to a foot) with miniature scale versions of the artifacts so Stuart can plan out what he wants on each wall. Cutting out and labeling a hundred-ish tiny scaled prints is a painstaking process, which I’ll be finishing later this week. It's a dollhouse, basically.

I can’t emphasize enough how cool the Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition is. I personally handle beautiful prints from the Dutch golden age of whaling dating back to the 17th century, not to mention prints by Huggins, Currier and Ives, Benjamin Russell, Rockwell Kent, Durand-Brager and Garneray—Garneray’s in particular are fantastic; Melville himself saw these prints (Pêche du Cachalot and Pêche de la Baliene) and referred to them in Moby Dick as the best examples of art “conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt”. Garneray’s Combat de Scies et de Baleines en vue de l’Ile Sainte Hé lè ne (“Combat of the sawfish and the Whales, in sight of the isle of St. Helena”) is perhaps the inspiration for the smoky painting Melville references in Moby Dick, Chapter 3, “The Spouter-Inn”!

Conservation
Every Wednesday I work in with Robert Hauser, the museum Conservator who specializes in paper conservation, and Rudolph Riefstahl, a volunteer/retired Curator and Art Historian. Our activities vary widely.

For one, I’m the primary liaison between Stuart (the Curator of the CWP exhibit) and Robert, so it’s really my job to make sure that the two of them are clear on expectations. It’s really exciting, because there are basically three people putting on this upcoming exhibition—and I am one of them.

Robert and I work together to assess the condition of the artifacts up for exhibition (primarily the prints), and I help organize paperwork and group sets of artifacts to be conserved and framed for exhibition. In the future weeks, he promises to teach me matting/cutting/framing techniques.

Robert also teaches me a lot about Conservation as a profession—a combination of art, craft, history, science—and a philosophical worldview. Here are a few of his maxims so you get the idea:

Conservate hodienum diem crastino (“Preserve today for tomorrow”)
There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.
The treatment was successful but the patient died.
Do as much as necessary and as little as possible.
Conservation is 65% preservation, 30% vigilance, and 5% treatment.

He has been showing me his tricks for safely packing artifacts, such as these tiny devices one can put inside a package that indicates if the package is ever tipped beyond a certain angle, or shaken particularly violently, and strips of paper which blot different colors if they are exposed to high humidity for extended periods of time, and safety mounts to deter would-be thieves. It’s all about due-diligence.

Rudy Reifstahl and I work primarily on his expertise: paintings. Generally, we’ll get a painting that’s going to be loaned to a different museum (so far, two different paintings by William Allen Wall) and he shows me how to write up these very detailed condition reports so that if they are returned with any issues, we have documented evidence of how they were before. Rudy knows an incredible amount about paintings, and particularly frames, so he’s been teaching me a lot about American period frames and frame anatomy, as well as burnishing, bole, gesso, outer/middle/linear elements, the process of painting, the conditions which lead to various different forms of painting deterioration (crackle, tenting, flaking, abrasion, fading, etc). Next week, we’re writing up furniture condition reports for two Dutch tall clocks.

Probably my favorite part of Wednesday’s conservation is our lunch break, where Rudy, Robert and I go out for food and discuss all sorts of issues, such as the ethics of Photoshop, touching up vs. redoing artist’s work—at what point is one intruding upon an objects natural aging or over-treating an object? How do we match paintings and frames? What was the artist’s intent and are we violating that? What would you save from the museum if it were on fire? Would you die for a work of art? Which one? What is art? What is an object? What is an artifact? What should we eat?

Thursday Scrimshaw Challenge
Thursday mornings (and occasionally other days) are reserved for the public to bring whaling artifacts to the Library for Stuart Frank (the world’s leading expert on scrimshaw) to analyze. Generally, these artifacts are scrimshaw (carved whalebone), and there is a team of other interested museum volunteers and employees who show up with magnifying glasses to see what’s on the table. I’ve seen quite a few of sperm whale teeth already, and Stuart explains everything from Ivory Legislation to methods of identification and authentication, such as patination, pigment migration, microscopic analysis of the individual cuts, etc—I’m told I’ll be pretty good at this myself by the time I leave. Just the other week, a guy showed up with a van full of almost 30 harpoons, which has impelled me to start reading about the history of harpoon technology.

Miscellaneous Curatorial
I’ve had the opportunity to attend a number of Curatorial Meetings, and have really enjoyed watching the various Curators discuss the upcoming redesign of the main museum exhibitions. Particularly interesting is the discussion of the place of the Museum within a community (1. Preserve history; 2. Present it to the public; 3. Research), and the best way to present information to the public that is accessible to different levels of the public. Furthermore, just last week the museum hired a new President, so it’s been really interesting to be at the museum at a time of major transition.

Stuart also sends me off on all sorts of odd missions. For example, a dentist who was studying anomalous whale teeth came to photograph our specimens of sperm whale teeth suffering various different pathologies. Just last week, I was assigned to work with a volunteer to catalog the museum’s extensive scrimshaw Swift collection (complex machines for converting skeins of yarn into balls of yarn, probably the most labor-intensive object to make out of whalebone). Or computer repair. Or local concerts of sea chanteys, or auctions—he promises a trip to Nantucket and Mystic Seaport before my time's up.

Photoarchives
On Fridays, I work with Michael Lapides, the curator of the photographic archives. Again, the work here covers a wide gamut—but generally it is a much more technology intensive department. I’ve learned quite a bit of Photoshop techniques, as well as how to do proper scanning for the collection and how to catalog items into Rediscovery, the Museum database. I’ve also been learning a lot about the history of photography, as I am expected to be able to identify different types of photos. Occasionally, I am sent out to NBWM events to photograph our activities, etc.

Because I am a big computer nerd, I’ve been really helping with steering advertising and publicity for the Whaling Museum on the internet. Since I’ve arrived, we’ve created a Facebook group and a Flickr page for sharing photos (which involved a decent amount of reading regarding copyrights and Creative Commons) with a wider community. Right now, I’ve taken up the project of updating and expanding the currently scant Wikipedia article on the NBWM.

We’ve also been significantly updating the Museum webpage and better advertising our current exhibitions as well as creating new internet-only exhibitions. Once I finish writing this progress report, I’m going to write a short article to publish as an online exhibit about the HMS Resolute desks. (An unofficial version of it can be found here: http://spellbananas.blogspot.com/2008/09/hms-resolute-was-british-ship.html)

I also have a larger project involving Benjamin Russell’s Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World, which is a 12' tall panorama that stretches almost 1300' feet painted in 1846-48, which Russell would bring on stage and unravel in sections to give the audience a feel for what whaling was like—it’s a kind of 19th century film in a way. The museum actually owns this thing; it’s amazing. My project is to take the photographs the museum already possesses, and see if it isn’t possible to combine them into a digital panorama that can we can put online for people to look at, given it is too fragile to display otherwise. I’m actually a bit apprehensive about this project—I’m pretty certain we have complete photos, but in order to make a panorama, these photos need to be taken from the same angle, from the same distance, under the same lighting, and my bet is all these factors are highly labile given no sane photographer was able to photograph 1300 feet of delicate canvas in a single day. There is a limit to what Photoshop can do to make these images panoramic—and there’s a limit to what Photoshop should do, but I’m very excited to give it a try.

Final Internship Project
I am expected to produce a final project as part of my internship. Initially, my plan was to write an annotated edition of Moby Dick, a project I’ve been compiling slowly for a couple years now. However, I discovered that—just this year—that very project had been completed by someone else! It's a considerably different from how I would have done it, but it's pretty darn good: (http://powermobydick.com).

So I’m thinking about a new project. I’m considering doing an annotated version of a different work of Melville (maybe White Jacket?), but I don’t think I’ll have enough time given I’m starting from scratch.

Alternatively, I might do a project on the early (16th century) depictions of whales and whaling by Olaus Magnus, Conrad Gessner, Ambroise Parè, Sebastian Munster—I love these prints.

That’s a brief summary of what I’m up to here at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. This internship is unbelievable—I haven’t even gotten close to describing what an opportunity and experience it has been. In all honesty, I’ve already learned more in my two months here than I would have learned during a semester at Vassar; I make that statement not to diminish the quality of the Vassar education, but to emphasize the quality of my time here.

The Great Schlep

2008-09-27T21:09:00.004+04:00

My secret, long-held celebrity crush on Emma Watson has just come to an end. There's a new woman in my life now:

Sarah Silverman

Quick Weekend Update

2008-09-22T08:37:00.020+04:00

Saturday, I went sailing in Boston with some friends and it was beautiful!

We got a big boat.

Thanks to Barbara.

Steven made a documentary out of the event. I'm just glad we didn't get that camera wet.

Jonah and Swilf trade off at the tiller.

We only got the boat because Barbara had connections with the staff there... so it was really a group challenge/effort to get the boat rigged and not hit anything. (Success! Thank you Mission Bay Aquatics!) I possess the well-practiced skill of putting the boat in irons, (all I do is turn the boat the way I think will make us go fastest) which was nice for kicking back and drinking mimosas.

Ah...

I’m always walking into random stuff happening in downtown New Bedford. I guess I never put up the video of the day there was a bagpipe marching band going down Purchase Street…but here’s what was going down on Pleasant Street today.

Note the little girl in sunglasses and tie.

And they're off!

Great Moments in NFL History:
------------------
Patriots: 13
Dolphins: 38
------------------

Let Us Tell You About Our Desk

2008-09-16T07:32:00.033+04:00

Published version available in the Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill, Winter/Spring 2009

Special thanks to: Michael Lapides, Stuart Frank, Laura Pereira, and Rudy Riefstahl

If you’ve watched the film National Treasure: Book of Secrets, then you probably recall Nicolas Cage’s daring break-in to the White House and Buckingham Palace in order to steal ancient Olmec rune stone maps secreted away in hidden compartments within what he refers to as the “twin Resolute desks”. While Nicolas Cage is unarguably resourceful and clever in his fanciful investigation, the New Bedford Whaling Museum would like you to know that there is more to this story than meets the big screen.

Cage finding a treasure map in the Resolute Desk

The HMS Resolute was a 600 ton British ship under the command of Sir Edward Belcher specifically designed for exploring the freezing Arctic. The Resolute set out in 1852 with the goal of finding the lost Franklin expedition, a team of explorers that had disappeared around 1848 and had, by that point, already perished.¹ Ironically, the HMS Resolute promptly became ice-locked, and the crew was forced to abandon ship in 1854.

HMS Resolute from the Illustrated London News²

A year later, the empty Resolute—having drifted some twelve hundred miles with the icepack—was found by Captain James Buddington of the whaleship George Henry. Daring harsh weather conditions and forfeiting the whaling season, Captain Buddington and a skeleton crew piloted the ghost ship back to New London, Connecticut.³

The British magnanimously waived their claim to the Resolute. However Congress, goaded on by Henry Grinnell (a wealthy business man who had funded several rescue attempts for the Franklin expedition), decided to buy the Resolute from Buddington for $40,000 and return it as a gift to Queen Victoria, symbolizing the friendship between the two countries.

For the record, I'm sure Buddington would like everyone to know the he never received a penny of that $40,000—by the time it was disbursed in 1857, the company who owned the George Henry had been bought up by Henry P. Haven, who left Buddington completely out of the loop.

Queen Victoria receives the HMS Resolute⁴

The Queen graciously accepted the salvaged Resolute with a characteristic “I thank you, sir”. In 1879, the entire ship was dismantled, and its timbers were fashioned into a number of artifacts which the Queen presented to some of the parties involved.

Back to Nicolas Cage, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower: by talking to a few French policemen and performing some impressive acrobatics of free association, Cage solves the latest riddle⁵ and determines that the “twin Resolute desks” contain his next clue.

Cage correctly identifies the first desk—it’s in the Oval office. The Queen gave this large, robust desk to President Rutherford B. Hayes, and it has been used by just about every President since (notable exceptions: Johnson, Ford and Nixon).⁶

Two Kennedys at the Resolute desk.⁷

Nicolas Cage figures that the second desk (containing the second half of the ancient Olmec treasure map) is located in Buckingham Palace. Not so, Mr. Cage! The second desk, which is considerably smaller and modest in comparison to the President’s desk, has been on loan to the Royal Naval Museum (Portsmouth, UK) since the 1980s. However Cage makes a far greater mistake by assuming that there are only two desks.⁸ What Mr. Cage failed to account for is that the HMS Resolute was constructed from fine aged English oak—and a lot of it. Theoretically, there should be enough wooden artifacts to account for the entire ship, minus sawdust and shavings.

The third delicately fashioned lady’s desk, known as the “Queen Victoria Desk” or the “Grinnell Desk” was a gift from the Queen to Henry Grinnell’s widow (Henry died in 1874), in gratitude for his contribution toward the Franklin rescue attempts.⁹

Henry Grinnell (1799-1874)¹⁰

And just where do these priceless whaling artifacts end up when they’ve run their course?
You guessed it: the New Bedford Whaling Museum. In 1983, Peter S. Grinnell was kind enough to donate the Grinnell desk to the Whaling Museum.

Although we here at the Whaling Museum are grateful that Nicolas Cage never busted into our collections in order to try to find portions of ancient Olmec treasure maps, we are certainly disappointed that the producers of National Treasure: Book of Secrets would prefer to invent a fantasy Grinnell desk at Buckingham Palace rather than film the real one here at the Whaling Museum. It's really a movie-crushing error in what was otherwise a factually sound documentary.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum invites you to come see the real Grinnell desk, though we politely ask that you not search for secret compartments, or hidden treasure maps.

The Grinnell desk, at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library.¹¹

¹Those interested in the fate of the Franklin expedition should refer to: Carey, John. "Answers From an Icy Grave", Newsweek. 8 Oct. 1984.

²Illustrated London Times, 27 Dec. 1856; available under Public Domain.

³Colby, Barnard L. For Oil and Buggy Whips. Mystic, Connecticut: Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc., 1990. (pp.78-88).

⁴Image published Jun 7, 1859, “England and America: the Visit of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to the Arctic ship Resolute”; Image courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

⁵The following is the riddle Nicolas Cage solves (quoted from the movie script):
“Across the sea these twins stand resolute to preserve what we are looking for. —Laboulaye 1876”.

⁶The President’s desk was also altered: Franklin Roosevelt had it raised and couple inches to accommodate his wheelchair, and also had the front panel attached so that his leg braces wouldn’t be in view.

⁷Photo by Stanley Tretick (1963), available under Public Domain; note Kennedy’s scrimshaw on the desk.

⁸Cage also gets his dates confused; the riddle quoted above is dated 1876, at which point the HMS Resolute was still in service, and three years away from anything resembling a desk.

⁹There are also rumors of a fourth desk, a gift to Captain Buddington. However, desks are not the only ends for Resolute timbers. For example, there is a set of wooden bowls which may have been made from the Resolute, though the provenance remains uncertain.

¹⁰Kane, Elisha Kent. Picture from front plate of Arctic Explorations in the Year 1853, ’54, ’55: vol.II. Philadelphia: Childs’ and Peterson, 1856. Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum; Henry Grinnell was born in New Bedford.

¹¹ “A Royal Desk,” The Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill: A Newsletter from the Old Dartmouth Historical Society & Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA. Spring 1984. Photo courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Spectacles Magazine

2008-09-09T01:43:00.004+04:00

Go check out my article on Spectacles Magazine! If you're pressed for time, you can get a pretty good gist of it by reading the first and last few sections. And make sure to take a look at James Phelps' art while you're there.

I really like Baby, a drawing of a creature blissfully sucking on its own foot, so completely overwhelmed by the joy of it, that he completely misses the fact that it is just a disgusting foot. The baby's ego is so consumed with the foot, that it is consumed by the foot, becoming a mere, flat cartoon of an actual being, while the foot becomes all the more three-dimensional and real in its fleshy repulsiveness. These qualities of the foot are corroborated by Toe.

At least, I think that's what James was getting at.

Alex Remo's article about the FHA is hilarious too. He told me he intends to write another two follow up articles to it, more oriented toward San Diego. Hopefully I can coax him into following through.

Here's the link:
http://www.spectaclesmagazine.com

Interesting Whale Facts:

2008-09-08T07:39:00.009+04:00

In General:
--In order to adapt to life as a water mammal, whales evolved complete control over their respiratory systems. A whale has to consciously make a decision to breathe.

--Because whales have to consciously think to breathe, they have a unique problem when it comes to sleeping. They solve this by a process called unihemispherical sleeping, in which a whale shuts down one half of its brain (and the opposite eye), while the other half remains in operation. They switch sides every few hours until rested.

--Whales easily swim hundreds of miles and specific whales have been sighted in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans within just a few months.

--Whales have the largest brains of any mammals, up to 20 pounds, easily besting the largest human brain (2kg) achieved by Turgenev.

--There have been multiple incidents during which a whale has exploded.

--There are two main suborders of whales, the mysticeti (“mustached whales”, because they sort of look like they have beards) and the odontoceti (“toothed whales”)

--Odontoceti only have one blowhole, usually off center. Mysticeti have two.

Right Whales
--Are so called because they were known as the “right” whale to hunt, being slow, generally docile, blubber-ful and buoyant when dead.

--Northern Atlantic right whales are so over hunted (there are 300 or so remaining) that all come from only three unique family lines (yes, marine biologists mapped the family trees of these remaining whales).

--There is a theory that whales have an acoustic map of the world memorized, an enormous echolocation map of the sea floor.

--Right whales gangbang.

Humpback Whales
(megaptera novaeangliae "big-winged New Englander")

--Humpback whales have a unique feeding strategy: they exhale bubbles in a great spiraling cone formation in order to confuse and entrap a school of fish in a concentrated bubble tornado. The whales then take a big bite out of the center.

--40 ton humpback whales bash each other bloody for mating rights.

--Humpbacks have an amazing whale song, or booty call, which consists of a theme which they continually make variations on. Whole groups of humpbacks will sing the same song in time with each other.

Sperm Whales
(Physeter macrocephalus “big-headed blower” or Physeter catodon “lower-toothed blower”)

--Can easily dive to 10,000 feet and stay under for up to two hours.

--Largest nostril of any animal (only one), and largest head of any animal.

--Begin to erupt teeth around 10 years of age.

--Exchange 85-90% of air in lungs.

--Most ribs aren't connected to the sternum, allowing compression under pressure.

--Largest toothed mammal, but only has teeth on its lower jaw.

--Periodically eats people. Prefers squid.

No one is quite sure why sperm whales have their characteristic enormous heads, which early whalers really did think was full of sperm. Hypotheses include:

Regulating buoyancy and somehow allowing it to hold its breath longer.
Sperm whales use them for battle, ramming each other like pachycephalosaurs competing for a mate. This might also explain their tendency to ram ships.
Echolocation amplifier (to the point at which marine biologists suspect sperm whales even stun their prey with sonic bursts.) The sperm whale was known as the "carpenter of the sea" because its clicks sounded like hammering through the hulls of ships.
Sperm whales communicate in specific sets of clicks, known as codas, which marine biologists are currently attempting to decode. Different click dialects have been noted among different groups of sperm whales

Why I Bought the Axe "Shower Tool"

2008-09-04T05:56:00.022+04:00

1. It’s a tool.
2. Better than one of those foofy, puffy things.
3. I wanted one of those foofy, puffy things.
4. I expect the experience to be similar to the commercial.
5. Compensation for my new “ride”.

Take me baby. Take me now.

Sunday Morning Breakfast:

2008-08-31T21:46:00.011+04:00

Variations on a theme

cinnamon roll is a nice touch.

Note: Gorilla Munch with banana and frozen cranberry juice ice cube in grapefruit juice.

Honey peanut butter toast goes a long way, too.

Simple, perfectly cooked bacon.

Thursday's Scrimshaw Identification Challenge:

2008-08-29T07:33:00.019+04:00

Is this an authentic piece of scrimshaw?

(as always, click to enlarge)

Provenance: the guy who brought this purchased it off of ebay from a dealer out of Honolulu. He did a bit of research on it, thought it was pretty neat, and, comforted by a money-back guarantee, decided to take a risk

Description: the handle is made from bone (you can tell bone from ivory because bone generally has capillary specks). The metal of the blade is ferric (just put a magnet up to it), which means it is partly or completely composed of of iron. The bone handle seems to be filled with a non-ferric metal, perhaps lead.

The knife was probably meant to be a skinning knife, hence the wide blade that allows space for a person’s fingers to keep clear when making cuts, and notches on the back of the blade for tearing hide.

There are a number of images carved into the knife. On the blade itself is a rather buxom mermaid, who—unfortunately—doesn’t show up too well on my picture.

On the handle is a wide spiral pattern, in between which is written the author's name, the date, the ship, along with a carving of a little American flag and a hopeful little sperm whale.

What's your diagnosis? It’s nearly impossible to tell whether or not a work is authentic based on a picture; you’ve really got to handle the object. So if you guessed the knife is authentic, you can comfortably blame the photo.

Here's how you can tell it's fake:

The metal is still burred, as if it were recently carved.
The pits in the metal occurred before the carving did (you can tell this by looking at how the lines travel across the metal under a magnifying glass), meaning the metal first corroded, and then carved. Why would a whaler carve on an unpolished knife?
The dye is brown—99.9% of authentic scrimshaw uses pitch black dye.
The name is inconsistent with the ship and date (you have to check actual records to find this out, or just have it miraculously memorized, like all the guys in the Whaling Library do).
The handle is unworn. It is odd for a workman’s tool to be completely unused—whalers rarely bring stuff on board that they aren’t going to be using!
The scrimshaw looks as if it were carved by a two-year-old. It’s really just not good scrimshaw.

So the poor guy is going to have to go see how good that money-back guarantee is. Hopefully it is good, but he made the mistake of having the knife shipped to him by FedEx. Never do this. Always use USPS. Why? Because if you ship a forgery via the United States Postal Service, you've officially perpetrated a federal crime, which a nice trump card to be able to pull out if you find yourself dealing with an obstinate refunder. However, if you use a private company such as FedEx, you are S.O.L.

Scrimshaw that is fake is cleverly called fakeshaw (as opposed to fungshaw, which is refers to scrimshaw carved out of fungus, which is not to be confused with funshaw, which is what I call the larger category of carved art).

In closing, here is a picture of the hopeful little sperm whale that lives on my door.

Case Closed on Coffee

2008-08-26T04:00:00.024+04:00

How come no one ever told me that Starbucks Coffee was named after the stalwart first mate to Captain Ahab himself?!

Gordon Bowker, one of the founders of Starbucks, originally wanted to call his coffee shop the Pequod, but changed his mind. [Who wants a big, hot, steaming cup of “PEE-quod?”] My views on drinking Starbucks coffee have changed completely. No wonder Starbucks is so successful; they are the ultimate, American coffee.

I used to avoid coffee—despite its deliciousness—in order to hold back yet another vice. No more! Recent studies from Harvard (so it must be true!) find that not only is coffee not bad for you, it’s actually good for you! Everything in moderation, friends—aurea mediocritas.

Granted, when I drink my coffee, I usually down it like a cheap beer: big gulps, little time. I’m not drinking it for deliciousness; I’m drinking it for results!

Now I can sip my coffee casually, guilt free with a corporation that really understands me!
*sip*

Auctions & Artifacts

2008-08-24T06:29:00.013+04:00

It looks like my photo from the Over the Top museum auction/fund raiser made it into the paper (click to enlarge):

I'm excited to say that this will be the second time I’ve made it into the Standard Times, or as locals so affectionately call it, the Substandard Times. Neat!

Speaking of auctions, I made it up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire last Sunday for the Northeast Maritime Auction. It was great to see such a beautiful little town, and to spend the afternoon writing down the selling prices of numerous fantastic artifacts. My Director was kind enough to introduce me to a number of the big name maritime collectors who were at the auction. And then I got to see them in action:

“I see 85, 85, 85 can I get 90? 90 thousand. 90 thousand. Going to 95—gentleman in the blue, 95 grand anyone for 100k?—105, who’s got 105? No one? No one? This is a great deal here guys, a genuine X, really no more?—SOLD to 7732 for 105,000 thousand dollars!”

That’s basically the auction in a nutshell, with items selling for as little as 100$ to as much as 150k (or, if I had come the previous day, up to 300k). The highest selling items (75-125k scrimshaw sperm whale teeth) went to the collectors Stuart (my director) introduced me to, which was exciting in and of itself. What really took the cake was going to work the next day, only to find all those collectors had shown up with their newly purchased scrimshaw artifacts so Stuart could analyze them.

I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me: Stuart wrote the dictionary on scrimshaw, literally.

…and the sequel.

So I spent my Monday looking at hundred thousand dollar whale teeth under a microscope with maritime collector juggernauts, each armed with his own magnifying glass.

Tooth identification is pretty interesting. With a microscope, you can see exactly how the cuts were made into the tooth, exactly how the knife or tool responded to the surface of the tooth, and generally get an idea of the artist’s style. Close inspection of letter formation, or how the artist depicts eyes, or other characteristic features also helps to identify who the author might have been. Newly carved teeth are soft, and harden with age, allowing one to make long smooth cuts in its surface—so if you see scraping or fracturing, you can be pretty certain that the scrimshaw is a forgery. We took the teeth into the museum collections to compare them to a number of other teeth to see if we could find a common artist, but the comparison led us to believe that we’d come across a completely new artist altogether. I guess that means another entry for Stuart’s dictionary. He promises me I’ll be well versed in tooth identification by the time I leave here—a party trick that, no doubt, will leave the ladies swooning!

I got a chance to talk with a few of the collectors, and got an earful on auction dynamics. Basically, if you go into an auction without full knowledge of the artifacts that you want to purchase, how much they are worth, how much you are willing to spend, and especially who else is bidding, then you’re asking to be screwed.

I love this job because stuff is always just falling onto my desk, and it’s always cool. I walked into Stuart’s office the other day and he had a full on harpoon head just laying across his desk—“sure, touch it, poke it, see how it’s aligned, just put it back on my desk when you’re done.”

Thursday a lady came in who was a descendent of George Lyman Howland, (Howland is a big-name whaling family here in New Bedford). She had brought in her great-grandfather's liquor box, a wooden box divided into six compartments with nice glass bottles with frosted glass stoppers. A couple of them even had residual alcohol in them, one of them was still half full of gin! Basically, I was looking at the original, 19th century, Quaker six-pack.

Sundance Film Festival: Green Porno

2008-08-21T06:02:00.005+04:00

I got this link from the Vassar Ultimate Frisbee Team mailing list, reminding me once again why I will never drop off the list, despite not being on the team.

Sundance Film Festival: Green Porno

It's not actually pornography. I haven't laughed this hard in a while. It might be better than my favorite YouTube video:

TISA - Obama

(Turn up your speakers, trust me.)

Mouse Hunt

2008-08-20T06:23:00.012+04:00

I’ve been on a mouse hunt the past few days.

I remember when my dad used to set traps around the house, and I felt bad for the mice and rats he was killing.

No more.

These little buggers dart around in my peripheral vision. They think they’re so quick, but I know their game. Part of the problem is, when you live inside a library with a lot of important stuff on the floor below you, there is no room for messing around with any liability.

The mice did hit me back. I recently found a “bonus” prize: the half-decomposed, half-mummified body of a mouse who had been stuck to one of those glue traps and dragged himself under the fridge to die—it really must have been an awful way to go, but his revenge lasted weeks; I’d been wondering why my fridge smelled sour despite all my cleaning efforts.

I’m very convinced of the humanity of the classic spring snap mousetrap. There is really no quicker way to go. You take a bite, and it’s over before you even taste the cheese. I hope I go that quickly, I just hope that when I ultimately bite the cheese, mine comes with a small side of dignity.

I figured my journal would be a-okay without a picture gallery of my murder spree, so instead, here is a collection of shattered childhood fantasies:

Haircut

2008-08-17T06:27:00.002+04:00

I got a haircut...
here:

Week 2: Bagpipes, Floods, Facebook, Auctions, Bread and Breakfast

2008-08-16T06:27:00.025+04:00

New Bedford puts on all these fantastic citywide events on a regular basis. I love this little town. Walking downtown yesterday afternoon, I encountered a whole marching band of bagpipes, and an entire temporary skatepark set up in a nearby parking lot. All of this was fun to watch, but I was just out to hit the farmer’s market for fresh bread.

Yum. This lady makes such good bread. I make it into toast everyday for breakfast.

Cereal with banana, bacon, grapefruit juice, bread and strawberry jam—now that’s a breakfast you can be excited to wake up for! I’m going to ask her to make me honey bread for next week. I’m thinking French toast.

On Monday, a huge storm dumped five inches of rain in about an hour. It completely flooded the Museum’s library basement, which is a huge problem from the standpoint of humidity and mold issues for priceless stores of original whaling journals and literature one floor above. This meant lots of helping move stuff out of the basement—damage control. Not to mention the internet and phone systems were down all last weekend and through the middle of this week, adding more trouble to the organization of flood-control efforts. I did get to adopt a bunch of neat books that got soaked. Thankfully, nothing historical was damaged, just a small portion of the bookstores overflow storage.

I also was invited to sit-in on the planning committee for redesigning the Museum, which was absolutely fascinating with regards to their goals and philosophy when it comes to setting up exhibitions. I made some suggestions about marketing the museum on facebook, redesigning the website (something which has been in the works for a while), and advertising the NBWM to all nearby major universities in order to see if any American History and Literature professors might want to incorporate a fieldtrip to the NBWM into their curriculum. I’ll write more about all this later.

We’ve also been in a discussion at the museum about forgery in artwork, which has lead to some conversations that nerds like me really enjoy. I’ll post on that later, too.

Last Saturday was the Over the Top fund raiser and auction at the Whaling Museum, where I went around and got the names of all the people the photographer was taking pictures of, and I even got a few pictures of myself!

It was really pretty fun: I had a good excuse to meet a bunch of NBWM patrons; there was delicious food and catering; and I really enjoyed being at a party under an enormous blue whale skeleton.

This Sunday, I’m bussing up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the North Eastern Maritime auction where I’ll be shadowing the Senior Curator while he does whatever he does at auctions. This is definitely going to be really exciting.

I'll close with the following, a more whaling museum-appropriate watercolor of a Madonna and Child:

Disaster Preparedness

2008-08-14T07:11:00.006+04:00

At the museum, we’ve been in a discussion on and off for the past several days about whether or not one would die for a piece of artwork. We came to this question after the Conservator brought up the topic of his position as co-chair of the Disaster Preparedness Committee, and the museum’s need to prepare a list of the top ten most important objects to retrieve in the event of a fire, flood, bomb threat, etc.

Though everyone agrees that such a list should exist, it is difficult to compile on account of different curators having different ideas of what is most valuable. Is our basis of value entirely pecuniary, or does it emphasize historical and/or cultural significance as well? The value of a given object, after all, fluctuates. As decades progress, different generations relate more or less to certain works of art—so just listing the top ten most expensive items in the collection is often not adequate; the question requires the expert consensus of curators with a powerful sense of foresight.

But say the decision were up to you. Say a fire broke out and you could save a monument, or you could save yourself, what would you do? Or say some mobster came knocking on your door, asking for the access codes to a safe containing the View of Toledo or the Pietà , and he would kill you if you didn’t give it to him, what would you do? Any number of hypothetical situations will suffice for this question, as long as the core remains the same: at what point is a human life worth more or less than a work of art?

For several of the other interns and for the registrar the answer is a resounding “never!” Their argument is that no object is worth more than human life, that things are things, but people are on a wholly different value scale, entirely incomparable. The Registrar related to me the story of how she lost her entire family photo collection when her basement flooded, a tragedy that made her understand that things are just things, and never so important as people. Her response is the result of experience-based pragmatism, and seems on the surface to be a sound argument. But she doesn’t see any difference between her family photos and the The Birth of Venus (just look at her!)

Before I explain why I disagree with the Registrar, I have to, for the sake of our hypothetical situation, clarify the issue of instinctual responses in life-or-death situations—that is, no one can know what his or her actual response would be in a life-or-death situation until it actually occurs, when the adrenaline is rushing, when the fight-or-flight animal impulse and Lady Irrationality take the reins and high-tail your scared butt out of the hypothetical burning building faster than a Nantucket sleigh ride. (Does anyone else hear the Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing right now?)

Furthermore, one who jumps into a life or death situation usually understands the situation to be just that: life or death. Rarely is the situation so clear cut, as in the case of Harry Potter, that death is guaranteed. Most heroes genuinely expect to survive—it is their willingness to take the risk at all that makes them heroes. For the sake of our hypothetical situation, there is no chance of survival. Only one survives: you or the art.

My judgment that my life is worth less than the Pietà comes from my assessment that whatever effect my little life will have in this world, whatever I may do, wherever I may go, it will never amount to the positive effect that the Pietà will have on humankind as a whole for generations to come.

Take Edward Jenner’s discovery of the small pox vaccine. I’m sure there is a precise number, but generally we can say that Jenner's discovery has directly saved the lives of many thousands. This object therefore is directly worth human lives. In this case, there is no longer even a question of whether or not this vaccine is worth dying for because there is a direct relation to human life.

But artwork doesn’t save lives, right?

Let’s take a monumental piece of literature, the Aeneid, or the Platonic Dialogues, or whatever. These are works that have been read by countless people, changed the way people live and continue to do so, sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly. I (and many others) can physically point to passages from the Aeneid that have changed my world view and life for the better. Just about everyone can say this for some great work of art—though the specific works may vary on an individual basis. Great art has this effect. My point here is that these monuments are very much like the small pox vaccine. All one has to do is receive the inoculation, and suddenly they have a better chance at a happy, healthy life. Similarly, all I had to do was read that book or experience that art, and suddenly I live a happier, richer life.

Now that it is clear that objects can be valued in comparison to human life, the question of whether or not one should die for a monumental work of art is no longer interesting. Of course one should! Particularly if it is a work that is of special significance to the person; but even if it is not, one should recognize his or her own limitations in the appreciation of great art and respect that, even if one doesn’t particularly like the Mona Lisa, the failure of appreciation is the failure of the viewer—the greatness of such monuments is no longer in question.

Am I suggesting that some people’s lives are worth more than others? Am I suggesting that there is a hierarchy of value to human life?—that Edward Jenner ought to really consider running into the burning museum to save artwork before he finishes his vaccine, because perhaps his life might actually be worth more than a work of art? Yes—absotively! This logic stems from the very same logic that puts women and children onto the lifeboats first and asks a security guard to take a bullet for JFK: the value of a human life varies based on the potential for goodness.

So if it came down to destruction of some hypothetical original manuscript of the Aeneid, or some like form of it, yes—take me instead.

But to return to the concerns of the Conservator, one seldom expects life or death situations to occur, and when they do, there is rarely time to consider the right course of action—one must act! So take some time now. Sit with yourself. Consider your own disaster preparedness.

Conservators’ Lament

2008-08-13T01:44:00.003+04:00

Deep in the night, a small family of rats enters through the ventilation shafts of a museum, enticed by spilled breadcrumbs accumulated by the young new intern. The swift copy pasting of information in the artifact database will lead to the propagation of a typo which will not be resolved for upwards of a decade. Several boxes of newly donated artifacts arrive at a particularly busy time; they will remain in the corner for that week and be forgotten for that month—when they are finally cataloged, no one will remember who brought them to the museum in the first place. Upstairs in the gallery, direct sunlight will hit the same painting every day for the next six months of exhibition, causing irreversible color fading. Downstairs, in the library, thousands of books continue to yellow, slowly oxidizing, ever so slowly burning. A failed water pump will lead to flooding in the basement during the next serious downpour. Mold is inevitable. In the vault, a tired old journal opened too wide will suffer cracks along ancient fault lines in its spine. Later, pulled from its shelf, the spine will crumble entirely. In the exhibition room, a lady will accidentally bump a painting with her shoulder while backing up for a family picture. Somewhere nearby, the grease from her child’s handprint won’t be doing any good to whatever unfortunate object his fingers find appetizing. In transporting a painting on loan to another museum, the hydraulic shock system fails. Despite careful packaging, vibrations will cause a failure between the gesso and paint layer—too soon bubbling will be visible. Poor framing will flatten the fine indentation on an ancient print, dulling the impressed ink; poor matting choice will press it against acidic paper. Nothing is static. All things are dynamic. Everything is falling apart.

Yet soldier on, Conservators, you tireless warriors in the noble battle against entropy!

My Internship is Kriller.

2008-08-08T06:23:00.001+04:00

I stepped outside my room today after work to find this:

Apparently, today is the New Bedford 1950’s Car Rally Day…or something. It was pretty eventful. I’m sorry I couldn’t get an audioclip of the 1950’s cover band that was blasting all evening, but here are some cool cars instead:

I love this Mustang.

The Man-Mobile.

James Bond?

Angriest car I've ever seen.

My Corvair! In a show!

I have a really cool job. They put me in a big storage room, and I go through a list of accession numbers and pull incredibly valuable maritime prints and stack them carefully on a table for the Classic Prints exhibit the museum is putting up in a few months. Then the Conservator comes by, and we look at each print and he teaches me about what needs to be done with regards to framing, touch-ups, and general conservation for the prints. This process involves everything from matting and cutting, mounting, frame choice, mold and spot removal, UV protection, tear and corner repair, handling and manipulation of works, and identification of media. We go through each print and do this, and then he has me practice locating these features of the prints myself. It’s a really neat, detail-oriented job. Then, for “homework”, I go read a big book on how printmaking works, another on identifying prints, and another on how one goes about forging prints.

Once my Director/Curator gets back (he is out for the next week, though I’ll be meeting up with him next weekend for the Northeast Action), he and I will go over the same paintings, discuss their historical and artistic relevance, and decide for certain which should go in the exhibit. (I have a whole different set of books to read for this, one of which I just finished, Herman Melville’s Picture Gallery was written by the man himself, and was fantastic). In a nutshell, today I read a book about the art Melville is referring to in chapters 55-57 of Moby Dick (“Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales”, “Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales”, “Of Whales in Print; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars”, respectively), then I went and physically found and handled the drawings Melville was referring to, and discussed their condition with the Conservator. Scha-wing!

I did manage to come up with the proper Latin version of the phrase my Conservator wanted on his wall (“Preserve today for tomorrow”): Conservate hodienum diem crastino!

We also got into a heated discussion in the registrar’s office with the other day-interns about what does one save when a fire hits a museum (god forbid!). This quickly degenerated into an argument about whether or not one would give his or her life to save a work of art. I was surprised to find that the registrar, the gatekeeper of the museum’s artifacts would, unquestionably—be it the Pietà or even the Mona Lisa—save her own life over the art. The Conservator and I felt that we’d definitely prefer the existence of a great work of art to our own; where would civilization be without the Aeneid, or Shakespeare, or—horrible to even think—Moby Dick?

Did I mention the wall of harpoon guns and jarred whale oil I found?

First Days in New Bedford

2008-08-07T04:23:00.000+04:00

I’ve made it to New Bedford and I’ve officially done two days of interning. It was a bit of a journey to get here—initially I landed in Providence, Rhode Island, and had to look up a friend to stay with in Boston before busing myself down to the Whaling Museum on Monday.
Currently, I’m living in the “Scholars’ Quarters” (very posh sounding, I know), where I have basically the entire third floor of the Kendall library to myself. There is my room, which contains an office and a bedroom bisected by a small wall, three or four other bedrooms, two bathrooms, a conference room, a kitchen, a living room, several random supply closets, and a huge common room all for little ol’ me. Right now, I live alone, but I’m told other people (“scholars”, I presume) will come through occasionally.

The first order of business was moving all the best furniture into my room, which I’ve just about accomplished.

The second was buying food.

I keep finding new parts to the Scholars’ Quarters. I found a couple random doors that go out to different parts of the roof. I also keep finding random TVs and trinkets squirreled around in various cabinets, as well as notes and things from previous interns, which generally contain advice, and happy little pictures in all sorts of unexpected places.

At first I was worried that I was going to be lonely up here in my scholarly tower, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to be a-okay. I have an absurd amount of reading and research to do as it is. But I’ve also done some patrolling around New Bedford, and there is quite a bit going on. The best part is everything is on my block. There’s a bank, Chinese food, dollar store, Rite Aid, Mexican food, sea food, several churches, music venues, cool coffee shops, cool clothing shops, and other young people, all within two blocks. There was a movie store too, but it is shutting down this month, so I got a whole bunch of DVDs for incredibly cheap.

My interning has been fantastic. I literally walk around all day with a notebook, and write down whatever anyone is saying, because it is always good.

This morning, I helped a dentist from the Harvard School of Dentistry photograph sperm whale teeth with various different pathologies, which he explained as we went along. I saw the world’s largest piece of scrimshaw (an enormous carved whale jaw) and learned that sperm whales are the only mammal with an unopposed set of teeth. That’s right, the world’s largest toothed mammal only has those big honking teeth on its bottom jaw—and biologists don’t even know why. My bet is that, since sperm whales clearly aren’t chewing their food with only one set of teeth, they probably dive deep, grab those squid, and drag them quickly to the surface in order to quickly depressurize/kill them. The dentist also said that the function of the Narwhal horn has been discovered: it is densely packed with very sensitive nerve endings which it uses for detecting the movement of prey in the water. Neat! [For more information: http://narwhal.org/]

I always assumed the horn was just for mating, like peacock feathers. You know what they say, big horn, big… …horn. I am, as they say here, 100% blubber-brained (this is a compliment).

I spent most of this afternoon working with the Whaling Museum’s conservator, a nice old man who spends his time making sure historical artifacts don’t decay. We sat around and he showed me all the different possible ways things can decay, and how he can repair and prevent that. Soon he will be showing me the actual techniques for getting stains, mildew, rips, etc out of prints, and how to properly package paintings, etc. We discussed the ethics of Photoshop, paintings and their frames (is the frame appropriate for the time period of the painting? Is it an original frame? If so, how do you maintain the two?), and the ever pressing question of at what point are you over-treating an object and intruding upon its natural aging process; that is, at what point are you violating the artist’s work/intent? What was the artist’s intent? He recited some of the conservators’ mottoes:

“Preserve today for tomorrow.” (He wants me to translate this phrase into Latin for him.)
“There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”
“Do as much as necessary and as little as possible.”
“The treatment was successful, but the patient died.”
He also strictly adheres to Murphy’s Law.

I gave him my favorite motto:

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

Tutoring Job

2008-07-16T21:48:00.000+04:00

Things I did at work today:

1) ate candy
2) armwrestled every 9th grade boy in Mr. Loveday's class
3) tried to play Scrabulous with Jenay
4) drank my coffee
5) stretched
6) confiscated people's sunglasses
7) wore many pairs of sunglasses
8) read the news
9) superglued Mr. Loveday's stopwatch to his desk
10) discussed proper naming and usage of butlers
11) updated my blog

Hancock

2008-07-12T23:14:00.000+04:00

Yesterday at work I rented a water tricycle—in a nutshell, I have one of the best summer jobs working as a 9^th grade algebra math tutor at Mission Bay High School. I work five hours, from 7 a.m. to noon and my job mainly entails pacing around, keeping kids on task, telling jokes, and making sure kids are being challenged by their math. In my downtime, I flirt with the many other cute tutors, drink coffee, tell stories, hang out with the kids, think up clever word problems / math jokes (which rarely get the laughs I feel they deserve), and yes, go to Mission Bay to rent water tricycles and paddle around the bay. Education is definitely the field for me.

I saw Hancock last night and realized several things. First, a quick review: this movie was fantastic for the first thirty minutes, in which we meet Will Smith, who is essentially the black superman with a hilarious drinking problem, stumbling around destroying Los Angeles and catching bad guys while Jason Bateman (Michael Bluth from Arrested Development) convinces him to turn himself into jail and join a 12-step program. Brilliant!

The movie quickly disintegrates into a shoddy love story, clearly put there to appeal to the sentimental saps who want some shallow, drippingly dramatic excuse for a romance which bases itself on complications that a starry-eyed fourteen-year-old girl probably could have come up with after watching Pride and Prejudice. (“We’ll say he’s an angel! And all angels are made in pairs! And they love each other! But they can’t stay close because if they get close they’ll lose their superpowers! It’s like the hedgehogs dilemma and it’s so tragic!” *sob*)

Speaking of the fourteen-year-olds, the Del Mar Highlands shopping center is an absurd place. Kids these days, honestly! What are they wearing? Do these kids look at themselves before they leave their houses? Do they have any concept of their appearance? What is up with these thirteen to fifteen-year-old kids trying to dress as if they are dark, mysterious, badass hobos? It is hard to describe this fashion, but it generally includes tight pants of dark color, some sort of studded belt, a hoodie, terrible posture, and a number of bits of flare meant to emphasize their world-weary, life-hardened nature (ha!)

Not to mention the girls. In fact, I won’t mention the girls. I’ll just say that 1) girls under eighteen should be forced to wear some sort of badge that declares this fact and 2) I hope I never have a daughter.

Introduction

2008-06-11T05:27:00.000+04:00

Here we go.
This'll be my place for writing stuff during my year abroad, primarily for my family, but also for my Professors at Vassar, so they know what I'm up to and feel justified giving me credit for my internships, and also for whoever else is interested. I'm going to Massachusetts to do an internship at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in the fall, and then be heading off to St. Petersburg for the spring and possibly part of summer 2009. Details are hazy, but I’m very excited. Who knows what could happen?