Serene Falcon

O, Venice Is A Fine City, Wherein A Rat Can Wander At His Ease

Monday, 11 August 2008 at 3:00 am (Literature, Other, Places)

The Wind in the Willows was not my initiation into reading — the first book I was observed reading happened to be Of Mice and Men : and on review it is to be sincerely doubted that any seven-year-old would understand more than half of that — yet this was the most important book of my childhood; and nothing, absolutely nothing, can overstate the incredible importance of this work to all true English men and women. Roughly the same significance as held the Bible in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

 
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.

When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and looked about him.

‘That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,’ he remarked; ‘and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you’re a freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it !’

‘Yes, it’s THE life, the only life, to live,’ responded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.

‘I did not say exactly that,’ replied the stranger cautiously; ‘but no doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And because I’ve just tried it — six months of it — and know it’s the best, here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, THE life which is mine and which will not let me go.’

‘Is this, then, yet another of them ?’ mused the Rat. ‘And where have you just come from ?’ he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.

‘Nice little farm,’ replied the wayfarer, briefly. ‘Upalong in that direction’ — he nodded northwards. ‘Never mind about it. I had everything I could want — everything I had any right to expect of life, and more; and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here ! So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart’s desire !’

His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage, vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.

‘You are not one of US,’ said the Water Rat, ‘nor yet a farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this country.’

‘Right,’ replied the stranger. ‘I’m a seafaring rat, I am, and the port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I’m a sort of a foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of Constantinople, friend ? A fair city, and an ancient and glorious one. And you may have heard, too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board his ship. When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained behind and entered the Emperor’s body-guard, and my ancestor, a Norwegian born, stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave the Emperor. Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me, the city of my birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between there and the London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of their quays or foreshores, and I am home again.’

‘I suppose you go great voyages,’ said the Water Rat with growing interest. ‘Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing with the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?’

‘By no means,’ said the Sea Rat frankly. ‘Such a life as you describe would not suit me at all. I’m in the coasting trade, and rarely out of sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports ! The smell of them, the riding-lights at night, the glamour !’

‘Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way,’ said the Water Rat, but rather doubtfully. ‘Tell me something of your coasting, then, if you have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might hope to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant memories by the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me to-day somewhat narrow and circumscribed.’

‘My last voyage,’ began the Sea Rat, ‘that landed me eventually in this country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as a good example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my highly-coloured life. Family troubles, as usual, began it. The domestic storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small trading vessel bound from Constantinople, by classic seas whose every wave throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the Levant. Those were golden days and balmy nights ! In and out of harbour all the time — old friends everywhere — sleeping in some cool temple or ruined cistern during the heat of the day — feasting and song after sundown, under great stars set in a velvet sky ! Thence we turned and coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as the sun rose royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his pleasure ! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food — do you like shellfish ? Well, well, we won’t linger over that now.’

He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled, floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.

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To Combat With The Moore

Thursday, 7 August 2008 at 4:30 am (Art, Places, Self, Videos)

Puppetry over here was mainly confined to the rather dismal exploits of Punch and Judy. Over in Sicily though it was, and is, rather more swagger. A richer cultural life despite the poverty, and a stern tradition of memorising friends and neighbours for deathworthy offence, together with evergreen recollections of one of the major cultural enemies of Christendom — the Barbary states kept this alive until fairly recently by frequently removing Sicilians, and others as far as Ireland and points north, to become slaves in what was, mainly, all things considered, mainly a vast slave plantation just called Islam — made their pupi quite resplendent.

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Strays

Monday, 14 July 2008 at 3:30 pm (Art, Places, Self)

Two weeks ago I hired a van/driver and emptied the garage mentioned earlier to a temporary ( alas ) near location: most of the boxes can be, with some trouble, disposed of without much consideration; but this event does mean that I need never see the far-off town evermore. British cities being what they are, this is excellent. I may detail some of the recovered books later; however this, and some continual intimations of chest trouble — which susurration ironically has led to an annoying semi-cessation of smoking at the precise time when I have obtained a supply of Marlboros from the Philippines — has extended a neglect of this minor blog. Even once one has taken Marcus Aurelius on board and recognised the unimportance of nearly everything transient, one still waits upon events, seeking a succession of resolutions… In the longer term, I still have no idea where to move finally even when most of these minor annoyances of storage for that move are fixed…

So, in lieu of an entry, I’ll post a few links that have been hanging around in Firefox for weeks waiting for a mention.

I too have never heard of Anders Zorn ( splendid name, though ), and his figures of Scandanavian young womanhood seem slightly robust compared to the more familiar coming-of-age visualisations of the art-photographer David Hamilton later in the century — I should confess a distaste for styled studio photography — but I liked this more fugitive piece

The first Pre-Raphaelites no matter what the skill can also often be too strenuous, however here is the site of the Delaware Art Museum; and here is a site with some of Kate Greenaway’s still more delicate works that betray at least a faint influence of Morris.

 
Here’s a stray Lady Gouldian Finch in a blog; and here’s a history of Lost Wax Casting by an expert.

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The Breath Of A Buffalo In The Wintertime

Friday, 4 July 2008 at 7:00 am (Animals, Manners not Morals, Melancholy, Places, Self, The King of Terrors)

“What is life ? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

By now Americans via Roosevelt II are blamed for both Pearl Habor and Jap internment camps as if horrors right up at the top of the genocide contest; Pilgrim Fathers and white invaders of America are blamed for being immigrants [ in order to defend further unfettered life-changing immigration into the USA now, in a retarded mislogic ] and their successors blamed for having an empire now — economic and military ruling through satrapies rather than direct rule.

Now, these are some people i severely despise: liberal, and puritan, and homo americanus alike, but… they were doing what they would do; they were acting fairly correctly: you have to do various unpleasant things in war; all land grabbing is founded on Wordsworth’s Good Old Rule * — we are all the sons of slaughter — and at certain stages in a country’s life it will become an empire — if it is lucky…

FDR’S possible sin over allegedly permitting Pearl Harbor was venial compared to the Japanese assaults on humanity during WWII ( i am not blaming the Japanese for making war here ), although incorrect as regards care for his own people: yet even there, after all, a president does not have the mutual obligation of a King to his subjects and should not be held to any high account; as for the nisei camps, they were paralleled by the nazi internment of jewish people as potential traitors ( and in that case worse as an economic slave-force ), but not comparable, although again the same republican defence can be made of the fuhrer: basically, there is no way Americans then could have been expected not to consider that Japanese-Americans would not all automatically refrain from acts meant to aid Japan; if the Americans committed their fair share of war-crimes as usual, they weren’t as unpleasant occupiers as were the Japanese Imperial Army, and an easily panicked populace naturally did not want to experience the latter — a repeat of Nanking in San Francisco or Los Angeles seemed a possibility at the time. Maybe the taking of the continent, and relentless expansion of population by the invaders, was rough on American Indians, but face it: they would not be any better off if the Japanese had invaded in the 16th century instead. And had during the first two centuries of post-columbian America the natives driven the invaders back into the sea they certainly would not be now bemoaning their ancestors’ past brutalities and indulging in despicable self-guilt.

One of the troubles with the previous native occupation of the land is that the Native American Indian was an appallingly bad custodian of Mother Earth and had no respect for Nature. He destroyed animal life wantonly and without care for any future: wiping out entire species as efficiently as modern man manages with the far superior tools we have presently **, and set forests ablaze, incinerating the inhabitants, merely to attract meat-bearing animals to the ashy remainder. From the destruction of birds and animals in pre-California researched by Jack M. Broughton, “Depending on when and where you look back in time, native peoples were either living in harmony with nature or eating their way through a vast array of large-sized, attractive prey species.” Early California: A Killing Field, to modern-day reservations with uncontrolled hunting rights, “Over the past 25 years Shoshones and Arapahoes, equipped with snowmobiles, ATV’s and high-powered rifles, have virtually wiped out elk, deer, moose and bighorns on the 2.2 million-acre Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Repeated motions for modest self-regulation emanating from within the reservation have been defeated by vote of the tribal leaders…. [I]n one confined area 31 dead elk were found. In another, a retired Indian game warden mowed down an entire herd of 14. Meat piled up at local dumps. Antlers were exported to the Orient where antlers and horns are ground to a power and hawked as an aphrodisiac.” Dances with Myths, the record of wasteful slaughter is as grim as Chinese bodycounts.

The whites finished the job of destroying the buffalo of course — ironically in order as primary purpose to destroy the life and freedoms of the Indians who had massacred the buffalo so much — yet if the mass executions by rifle were hideous, the previous methods were still more vile; particularly the Bison Jumps scattered throughout the continent. A favorite buffalo hunting technique was to stampede huge herds of them over cliffs. Many such Buffalo jump sites have been found in the West, some with remains of as many as 300,000 buffalo. The technique is detailed here.

 
From wiki, here is one little fellow galloping through the rare art of Eadweard Muybridge: watch him go !

en sequentia…

 
** Investigations into the fossil record and carbon dating techniques have shown that 80% of the North American animal population disappeared within 1000 years of the arrival of man.

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Why The Children Of Wiking Division Go Goth

Saturday, 14 June 2008 at 5:30 pm (Manners not Morals, Places, Self)

It is well that anti-racialists are so terrible, otherwise we might grow too fond of anti-racialism… However, the converse also applies, and the rancid rancour of those who incontinently attempt universal love mixed with private self-loathing is well-matched with the dubious pretensions of those who proclaim the excellence of their own race. Whenever a superlative standard such as ‘best’, or ‘better’ is involved the question, ‘better for what ?‘ has to come into play… If not especially fond of races not my own this has to be balanced by the fact that I’m not massively in love with my own people, nor even with other related peoples whom I slightly prefer — the major faults of any race are so amazingly obvious.

In general, people prefer for all sorts of reasons, but mostly those of safety, to live in at least vaguely homogeneous neighbourhoods; the downside to that is a certain continuous increase in dullness. Be it understood that in this instance I am certainly not criticizing the area involved, and I’m sure that it has many splendid qualities which shall attract others, and their lives are as happy as can be expected in a vail of tears — although the predominant mix of Norwegian, Swede and German may induce that overpowering foreboding gloom characteristic of refined Nordics — just that it seems so depressingly wholesome, allied to the essential existentialism of American life, that some ( pointless ) rebellion might seem the only proper response…

Anyway, I found this in a eBay advertisement for one of those oddly flimsy looking American dwellings. It would be unfair to link to it, not merely because such things are even more transient than the lives of men, but because the seller had no wish nor notion of giving offence. It included details from the town’s website…

The residents and city officials of Maddock would like to extend an open invitation to come visit the peaceful, rural community of Maddock and experience small town hospitality at its finest. Maddock is rural North Dakota

* Rural North Dakota, where you still find children playing carefree outside and people that greet each other as they walk down the street
* Rural North Dakota, where there is plenty of fresh clean air and little or no crime.
* Rural North Dakota, where the pace of life is slower and the concept of helping one another still exists.
* Rural North Dakota, where a short drive in the county finds more wildlife, than oncoming traffic.
* Rural North Dakota, where your child doesn’t know everyone in their class…they know everyone in the school.
* Rural North Dakota, Where the loudest noise heard at night is the 10 o’clock whistle.
* Rural North Dakota, where the American dream of owning a home is still affordable.

What sets Maddock apart from rural North Dakota? Plenty!! In Maddock you will find all the benefits of rural North Dakota plus: beautiful parks, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, volleyball courts, a swimming pool, a nine-hole golf course, bowling lanes, and an internet cafe. Maddock is home to a 29,000 square foot event center, a 12,000 square foot state of the art business and technology center, and a multi-function community center.

Maddock has an active business district, boosting more businesses than many communities two or three times our size. We are proud to have Summers Manufacturing, an internationally know farm implement manufacturer, call Maddock home.

Is your passion outdoor recreation? The Maddock area is in the middle of the Central North American Flyway offering some of the best goose and duck hunting found. Each year millions of ducks and geese migrate through our area creating fantastic outings for the avid hunter. Maddock is in the heart of Benson County which offers some of North Dakota’s finest fishing for anglers. Like the ducks and geese, sportsman from around the nation migrate to our area each fall to experience not only our abundant hunting and fishing, but our outstanding hospitality and our fantastic way of life. Young or old, novice or pro, our area will prove to be more than just another trip, it will be an experience long remembered!

then, after the words Rural North Dakota have been so seared into the mind forever more, gave rather more gratuitous information that I found amusing:

Races in Maddock:

* White Non-Hispanic (99.4%)

Maddock, North Dakota is virtually made up of 100% Caucasian Race.

Statistically only 1 person in the entire city is not American or of European Descent.

Maddock, ND

First ancestries reported:

* Norwegian: 277
* German: 111
* Swedish: 12
* Other groups: 12
* Dutch: 11
* French (except Basque): 11
* Scottish: 11
* Scandinavian: 5
* English: 4
* Irish: 4
* United States or American: 4
* Danish: 3
* Slovene: 2
* Polish: 1

It is both poignant and puzzling to ponder on the statistical single person not of American nor European descent; but it’s weird to consider that Americans still base their advertisements on the promise of racial exclusion much as in Sinclair Lewis’s day. I can’t really give even the tiniest of flying fucks — less than the most fleeting fucks upon the wing of the two tiniest flying ducks winging away from Maddock in the autumn twilight if they have the faintest sense — about laughable issues as supposed equality or racial sensitivity which obsess petty minds; but it seems so obnoxiously damn ill-bred…

 
I had a choice here for the illustration: one for the holocaust of shot birds; and one for the ethnic make-up ( which is, I repeat, in no way a bad thing per se: but, uh, dull ), so here are both:

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And God Said, “Let There Be Blood”

Thursday, 28 February 2008 at 9:00 am (Animals, High Germany, Literature, Places, Self, Spengler)

Lingering self-respect has oftimes preserved me — ‘gainst all temptations — from the more egregious effects of the zeitgeist of sentimentality: a modest pride holds in that I have never ever seen either It’s A Wonderful Life or The Wizard Of Oz, f’rinstance. Now, Upton Sinclair was a notable story-teller, but a Hemingwayesquely poor writer — ‘What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke ?‘ as Gore Vidal wrote of his native land — and his themes here are rather trite; bad capitalists… bad religion… exploiters… the family saga genre… so it’s rather unlikely I shall bother to watch There Will Be Blood. Having a nearly all-male crew probably clinches it — single sex movies suck as much as single sex communities… However the title is awfully good — especially considering the vast importance of titling and it’s common neglect — so I tried to find from whence it came.

The Boston Globe attributed it to Byron:

Tears Like Mist

It makes good on the film’s title, which may be taken from Lord Byron. “The king-times are fast finishing,” he said. “There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”

This is pretty painful stuff even for Byron, who ever veered precariously betwixt plodding doggerel and occasionally splendid fustian, and rarely hit the rocks of glorious lyricism. And as with Marx — But Hubbard’s superb record for inaccuracy of statement clouded any of his positive remarks with a fog of doubt. to quote Stewart H. Holbrook on a notable capitalist of the latter’s era — it’s not easy to ascertain the finished construct of the promised Paradise: presumably it will include peace, love, harmony, compulsory gender and racial equality, an incredible amount of daily uplift though one way communication, and a total absence of thought. Or, let us say, no class whatsoever.

 
Fortunately though, the probably ever-reliable China Daily gave the definitive origin:

Smite The Waters

The film’s resonantly Old Testament title comes from the seventh chapter of Exodus where God, via Moses, orders Aaron to smite the waters so that “they may become blood; and that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt“. In the context of the film this biblical blood is oil, the contaminating element dealt in by its forceful central character.

The Bible is so beautiful…

 
[sarc] And God said, “Let there be Blood.” [/sarc].

***

More importantly, a link from the China Daily went on to better news; in Düsseldorf the police are equipping their dogs with shoes.

Small, Medium And Large

“All 20 of our police dogs — German and Belgian shepherds — are currently being trained to walk in these shoes,” Andre Hartwich said. “I’m not sure they like it, but they’ll have to get used to it.”

The unusual footwear is not a fashion statement, Hartwich said, but rather a necessity due to the high rate of paw injuries on duty. Especially in the city’s historical old town — famous for both its pubs and drunken revelers — the dogs often step into broken beer bottles.

“Even the street-cleaning doesn’t manage to remove all the glass pieces from between the streets’ cobble stones,” Hartwich said, adding that the dogs frequently get injured by little pieces sticking deep in their paws.

The dogs will start wearing the shoes this spring but only during operations that demand special foot protection. The shoes comes in sizes small, medium and large and were ordered in blue to match the officers uniforms, Hartwich said.

It’s rarely one sees police-dogs in Great Britain — nearly as rarely as police-horses — but I hope they institute it here: broken glass on the streets, however, is not rare at all. [ If randomly picking up shards, I've found that one hand can hold a dozen of any size, but not more; and of course, one can only fill one hand... ]

 
I was born in Düsseldorf, and that is why they call me Rolf…

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“War Is A Matter Of Expedients” Said Von Moltke

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 at 8:20 am (Correctitude, High Germany, Places, The King of Terrors, War)

Manstein ordered a signal to be sent back: “Withdrawal must be stopped at once.”
But the signal no longer got through. Corps headquarters did not reply any more. Count Sponeck had already had his wireless station dismantled. It was the first instance of a commanding general’s dis­obedience since the beginning of the campaign in the East. It was a symptomatic case, involving fundamental principles. Lieutenant-General Hans Count von Sponeck, the scion of a Düsseldorf family of regular officers, born in 1888, formerly an officer in the Imperial Guards, was a man of great personal courage and an excellent com­mander in the field. While commanding the famous 22nd Airborne Division, which in 1940 captured the “fortress of Holland” with a bold stroke, he had earned for himself the Knights Cross in the Western campaign. Subsequently, as the commander of 22nd Infantry Division, into which the Airborne Division had been converted, he also distin­guished himself by outstanding gallantry during the crossing of the Dnieper.
The significance of the affair lay in the fact that Count Sponeck was the first commanding general on the Eastern Front who, when the attack of two Soviet Armies against a single German division faced him with the alternatives of hanging on and being wiped out or with­drawing, refused to choose the former alternative. He reacted to the Soviet threat not in accordance with Hitlerite principles of leadership, but according to the principles of his Prussian General Staff upbring­ing. This demanded of a commanding officer that he should judge each situation accurately and dispassionately, react to it flexibly, and not allow his troops to be slaughtered unless there was some compel­ling and inescapable reason for it. Sponeck saw no such reason.

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Jerome I : The ‘Falcon’ At Gravesend

Sunday, 6 January 2008 at 11:30 am (High Germany, Melancholy, Other, Places)

Not merely because that year was a turning point, making a far truer start to the 20th century than 1901: the publication of ‘Three Men in a Boat’ in 1888 signalled a sea-change in literature: writing became more accessible — unlike, say, Scott — and humour became actual — unlike, say, Dickens.

However, this is from Jerome K. Jerome’s autobiography, which I found in a bookshop in Canterbury maybe five years back: it seems intensely rare… He began as a Cromwellian, and ended up as a socialist, but was generally agreeable. In this passage there is a really perfect joke; but it’s only gonna be accessible to those teutonophiles who are at least vaguely acquainted with America’s less than optimal entry into the Great War.

 
I cannot help fancying that London was a cosier place to dwell in, when I was a young man. For one thing, it was less crowded. Life was not one everlasting scrimmage. There was time for self-respect, for courtesy. For another thing, one got out of it quicker. On summer afternoons, four-horse brakes would set out for Barnet, Esher Woods, Chingford and Hampton Court. One takes now the motor ‘bus, and goes further; but it is through endless miles of brick and mortar. And at the end, one is but in another crowd. Forty years ago, one passed by fields and leafy ways, and came to pleasant tea gardens, with bowling greens, and birds, and lovers’ lanes.

Of a night time, threepenny ‘buses took us to Cremorne Gardens, where bands played, and we, danced and supped under a thousand twinkling lights. Or one walked there through the village of Chelsea, past the old wooden bridge. Battersea Park was in the making, and farm lands came down to the water’s edge. The ladies may not all have been as good as they were beautiful; but somehow the open sky and the flowing river took the sordidness away. Under the trees and down the flower-bordered paths, it was possible to imagine the shadow of Romance. The Argyll Rooms, Evans’ and others were more commonplace. But even so, they were more human — less brutal than our present orgy of the streets. Fashion sipped its tea, and stayed to dinner, at the lordly “Star & Garter,” and drove home in phaeton or high dog-cart across Richmond Park and Putney Heath. The river was a crowded highway. One went by steamer to “The Ship” at Greenwich, for its famous fish dinner, with Mouton Rothschild at eight and six the bottle. Or further on, to “The Falcon” at Gravesend, where the long dining-room looked out upon the river, and one watched the ships passing silently upon the evening tide. On Sundays, for half a crown, one travelled to Southend and back. Unlimited tea was served on board, with shrimps and watercress, for ninepence. We lads had not spent much money on our lunch, but the fat stewardess would only laugh as she brought us another pile of thick-cut bread and butter. I was on the “Princess Alice” on her last completed voyage. She went down the following Sunday, and nearly every soul on board was drowned. So, also, I was on the last complete voyage the “Lusitania” made from New York. They would not let us land at Liverpool, but made us anchor at the mouth of the Mersey, and took us off in tugs. We were loaded up to the water line with ammunition. “Agricultural Machinery,” I think it was labelled. Penny gaffs were common. They were the Repertory Theatre of the period. One sat on benches and ate whelks and fried potatoes and drank beer. “Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street,” was always a great draw, though “Maria Martin, or The Murder in the Red Barn,” ran it close. “Hamlet,” cut down to three-quarters of an hour, and consisting chiefly of broad-sword combats, was also popular. Prize fights took place on Hackney marshes, generally on Sunday morning; and foot-pads lurked on Hampstead Heath. Theatre patrons had no cause to complain of scanty measure. The programme lasted generally from six till twelve. It began with a farce, included a drama and an opera, and ended up with a burlesque. After nine o’clock, half prices were charged for admission. At most of the bridges one paid toll. Waterloo was the cheapest. Foot passengers there were charged only a halfpenny. It came to be known as the Scotchman’s bridge. The traditional Scotchman, on a visit to a friend in London, was supposed to have been taken everywhere and treated. Coming to Waterloo Bridge, his host put his hand in his pocket, as usual, to draw out the required penny. The Scotchman with a fine gesture stepped in front of him. “My turn,” said the Scotchman. Before the Aerated Bread Company came along, there were only three places in London, so far as I can remember, where a cup of tea could be obtained : one in St. Paul’s Churchyard, another in the Strand called the Bun Shop, and the third in Regent Street at the end of the Quadrant. It was the same in New York when I first went there. I offered to make Charles Frohman’s fortune for him. My idea was that he should put down five thousand dollars, and that we should start tea shops, beginning in Fifth Avenue.

Jerome K. Jerome : My Life and Times

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God Will Hearken To Thy People !

Monday, 31 December 2007 at 3:00 am (Other, Places, War)

Not many weeks later, committing the charge and defence of his capital to Ooryphas, the Prefect, Michael again set forth to invade the Caliph’s dominions. But even, as it would seem, before he reached the frontier, he was recalled ( in June ) by the alarming news that the Russians had attacked Constantinople. When the danger had passed, he started again for the East, to encounter Omar, the Emir of Melitene, who had in the meantime taken the field. Michael marched along the great high-road which leads to the Upper Euphrates by Ancyra and Sebastea. Having passed Gaziura, he encamped in the plain of Dazimon, where Afshin had inflicted on his father an overwhelming defeat. Here he awaited the approach of the Emir, who was near at hand, advancing, as we may with certainty assume, from Sebastea.

An enemy marching by this road, against Amasea, had the choice of two ways. He might proceed northward to Dazimon and then westward by Gaziura; or he might turn westward at Verisa ( Bolous ) and reach Amasea by Sebastopolis ( Sulu-serai ) and Zela. On this occasion the first route was barred by the Roman army, which lay near the strong fortress of Dazimon, and could not be advantageously attacked on this side. It would have been possible for Omar, following the second route, to have reached Gaziura from Zela, and entered the plain of Dazimon from the west. But he preferred a bolder course, which surprised the Greeks, who acknowledged his strategic ability. Leaving the Zela road, a little to the west of Verisa, he led his forces northward across the hills ( Ak-Dagh ), and descending into the Dazimon plain occupied a favourable position at Chonarion, not far from the Greek camp. The battle which ensued resulted in a rout of the Imperial army, and Michael sought a refuge on the summit of the same steep hill of Anzên which marked the scene of his father’s defeat. Here he was besieged for some hours, but want of water and pasture induced the Emir to withdraw his forces.

It is possible that the victorious general followed up his success by advancing as far as Sinope. But three years later, Omar revisited the same regions, devastated the Armeniac Theme, and reached the coast of the Euxine ( A.D. 863 ). His plan seems to have been to march right across the centre of Asia Minor and return to Saracen territory by the Pass of the Cilician Gates. He took and sacked the city of Amisus ( Samsun ), and the impression which the unaccustomed appearance of an enemy on that coast made upon the inhabitants was reflected in the resuscitation of an ancient legend. Omar, furious that the sea set a bound to his northern advance, was said, like Xerxes, to have scourged the waves. The Emperor appointed his uncle Petronas, who was still stratêgos of the Thrakesian Theme, to the supreme command of the army ; and not only all the troops of Asia, but the armies of Thrace and Macedonia, and the Tagmatic regiments, were placed at his disposal. When Omar heard at Amisus of the preparations which were afoot, he was advised by his officers to retire by the way he had come. But he determined to carry out his original plan, and setting out from Amisus in August, he chose a route which would lead him by the west bank of the Halys to Tyana and Podandos. The object of Petronas was now to intercept him. Though the obscure localities named in the chronicles have not been identified, the general data suggest the conclusion that it was between LakeTatta and the Halys that he decided to surround the foe. The troops of the Armeniac, Bukellarian, Paphlagonian, and Kolonean Themes converged upon the north, after Omar had passed Ancyra. The Anatolic, Opsikian, and Cappadocian armies, reinforced by the troops of Seleucia and Charsianon, gathered on the south and south-east ; while Petronas himself, with the Tagmata, the Thracians, and Macedonians, as well as his own Thrakesians, appeared on the west of the enemy’s line of march. A hill separated Petronas from the Saracen camp, and he was successful in a struggle to occupy the height. Omar was caught in a trap. Finding it impossible to escape to the north or to the south, he attacked Petronas, who held his ground. Then the generals of the northern and southern armies closed in, and the Saracen forces were almost annihilated. Omar himself fell. His son escaped across the Halys, but was caught by the turmarch of Charsianon. The victory of Poson ( such was the name of the place ), and the death of one of the ablest Moslem generals were a compensation for the defeat of Chonarion. Petronas was rewarded by receiving the high post of the Domestic of the Schools, and the order of magister. Strains of triumph at a victory so signal resounded in the Hippodrome, and a special chant celebrated the death of the Emir on the field of battle, a rare occurrence in the annals of the warfare with the Moslems.

J. B. Bury : A History of the Eastern Roman Empire — A.D. 802 - 867

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The Künstler’s Paintbrush: ‘Entropy Made Visible’

Saturday, 24 November 2007 at 5:30 am (Melancholy, Places, Self, Spengler)

Attempting to find via Google — an increasingly futile exercise — why the USA, which has so many marvellous resources, and so much ( misdirected ) energies, should have created rather awful urban and rural landscapes, James Howard Kunstler seems to have as much of the truth as the article in the first quote. Certainly the author over-romanticises, say the British experience, yet our countryside, both rural and wild, will still retain some beauty awhile. For naturally the rest of the world has ugliness too, and increasing with both population rises and the copying of the American and soviet models for humanity; yet it is the contrast between the vast wealth — which of course mostly ends up with the money-chosen elites — and the reality which makes America ever more depressing yet. Inevitable destruction is one thing, but still better played out before a noble and harmonious backdrop; anomie is one thing more, but still I should prefer to be alienated from a civilisation I could respect rather than the trite horror of the endgame of the last few centuries.

…

 
A talk by Mr. Kunstler on The Tragedy of Suburbia at Ted Talks : Mp4 video

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That Was Quite Common In Those Days

Monday, 5 November 2007 at 2:35 am (Music, Places, Videos)

I could not finish the book, and even the rather stagy film showed the good doctor to be modelled on the faint-hearted spirit of his creator — only a fool provokes tyrants : only a craven fears them — and yet… at school I whistled this theme each lunchtime. Unfortunately, whilst Cheltenham looks a bit better in places than most English towns, it didn’t look anything like this…

Not that most ex-soviet housing areas do either.

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Democratic Jack Priestley Creates A Word For The 3000 Mile Long Street Of Final Democracy

Monday, 29 October 2007 at 4:00 pm (Melancholy, Other, Places, Spengler)

It was easier to see what was happening if you were a visitor from a less frantically prospering land. J. B. Priestley, affronted by the impact of Texas on his English prejudices in 1954, described the ugly results with pungency in Journey Down A Rainbow. He summed up the system of increasing productivity plus high-pressure advertising and salesman­ship, plus mass communications, in the word Admass — ‘the creation of the mass mind, the mass man.’ One of the characteristics of Admass was the uniformity of the food on offer. ‘If a good Admass man does not order a steak, either he is not hungry or he can’t afford the price.’ Between Fort Worth and Dallas he found the nomads wandering from motel to motel, ‘the tuneless gipsies of the machine age‘, along roads lined with trailer courts, gas stations, second-hand car dealers, super­markets, drive-in banks, movie theatres and restaurants, all serving the same food, movies, television, songs and cigarettes. ‘It offers movement without any essential change,’ he wrote, ‘It is a street three thousand miles long. You burn 150 gallons of gasoline to arrive nowhere.’ This pattern of life was being copied in Britain and all over the motorized world with greater or less fidelity.
Priestley’s warning was that it was essentially a cheat. It did not offer more choice but less than there was before. The freedom to wander at will is illusory if all fhe destinations are indistinguishable. ‘The people who live there are dissatisfied, restless and bitter,’ he warned, ‘Especially the women — still girls in a mining camp‘. It may be unfair to picture the horrors of Texas as if they are worse than the horrors of industrial Britain. The motel-supermarket-hamburger civilization has now been superimposed on what was left of nineteenth-century towns, and has further worn down the differences between one region and the next.

Peter Lewis : The 50s

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St. James’ Chapel

Wednesday, 10 October 2007 at 3:24 am (Places, Self)

For the first time in ages, rain was bucketing down this morning — since sadly, and contrary to forecast, having stopped — I had to go and purchase electricity, and so went to Hadleigh, discovering another new useless métier in that driving through heavy rain is sheer delight, giving some purpose to the mindless activity… This meant going through tiny twisting lanes generally at 30mph since families of pheasants wander, devoted to kamikazi tactics — most motorists here aver that pheasants and partridges are the most stupid of all birdlife when confronted by cars, but this seems as deeply incomprehensible as most human assertions: they are goddamned pheasants after all; one can’t expect them to spend their rather short lives until shot or with wrung neck studying motor mechanics.

Anyway, en route I saw signs, and so discovered St. James’ Chapel, and took a few quick snapshots. It’s an absolutely perfect little building.

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Dutch Chivalry Of The Olden Time — In Its Most Derogatory Sense

Sunday, 7 October 2007 at 5:40 pm (Generalia, Other, Places)

Usually, however, the Dutch were practical in their naming, and like the Indians considered that the various parts of the river should have secure names even if the whole did not. To a boat­man the stream could be simply “The River,” but he needed terms for every section, to locate himself, or give directions, or to gossip about past voyages. In the very first years, before 1625, the skippers named every reach and point, so that still along that river men say names ending in rack and hook, like Claverack, “Clover Reach.”

With the Indian names the Dutch did as all the others had done, making the words over to be more like their own language. So arose Hackensack, and Poughkeepsie, and Scheaenhechstede ( which became Schenectady ) looking enough like Dutch to de­ceive an Englishman.

With Hopoakan-hacking the Dutch went even further. This was a place across the river from Manhattan, meaning in the local dialect “at the place of the tobacco-pipe.” But Hopoakan sounded like the name of a village in Flanders, and there were also Dutch people of the name, one of whom came to New Netherland as a schoolmaster. So the name soon came to be, and remained — Hoboken.

With their towns and villages the men of New Netherland fol­lowed no system. Often they used names from the old country, as with their chief settlement, New Amsterdam. So they also transplanted Breukelyn, Vlissingen, and Haerlem.

Sometimes the name arose from the landholder. One settler was Jonas Bronck, a Dane, who had a farm just north of Man­hattan. From him men came to speak of Bronck’s River. Also apparently they said “the Broncks,” as men say in English “the Smiths,” meaning where the Smiths live, and so came the Bronx.

Still a little farther north was the settlement known officially as Colen Donck, “Donck’s Colony.” But this Adriaen van der Donck bore a courtesy title “Jonkheer,” meaning about the same as “Squire.” By that title his tenants usually addressed him; be­fore long they began to call Colen Donck merely “the Jonkheer’s,” and so came Yonkers.

In later years there grew up a legend that these early Dutch were dull-witted and ox-like, notable mainly for baggy trousers. But more truly those first Dutch were as wild a crew as any that ever landed in Virginia, and they looked upon the New Eng­landers as parson-ridden snivelers with no appreciation of rum or a bawdy song or an Indian wench. Their word gat which they used so freely for “channel” or “passage,” meant also “hole” in its most derogatory sense, so that a map of New Netherland must have impressed a contemporary Hollander as of a peculiar pungency. They named a Hoeren Eiland in the Fresh River, and a Hoeren Kill on South River. A tradition is preserved about the naming of the latter, and though it may not be wholly correct, it shows what the next generation thought a likely story:

These men or traders came ashore with their goods, where they traded with the Indians and frequenting so much with the Indian women, till they got the country duties, otherwise called the pox, and so they named that place Whore-kill, that is in English the Whores’ Creek.

This writer told also of another name on the South River:

remembering ( I suppose) how they had been served at the Whore-Kill, they went some ten or twelve miles higher, where they landed again and traded with the Indians, trusting the Indians to come into their stores ashore, and likewise aboard of their sloop drinking and debauching with the Indians till they were all at last barbarously mur­dered, and so that place was christened with their blood and to this day is called the Murderer-kill, that is, Murderers Creek.

And so to this day also there is on that coast a stream called Murderkill River.

George R. Stewart : Names on the Land [1945]

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Upward And Onward

Friday, 5 October 2007 at 1:00 am (Other, Places, Self, The Building Blocks of Democracy, The Enemy)

These important changes in the social role of women ought to be considered alongside the 1978 amendments to the Code of Personal Status introduced by the Ba˘th. The preamble states that the new code is bas