Libraries

Thanks to Anecdotal Evidence, a description of our living room: To Read. So many books, so little time...

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You would think

that having to lie abed sick would give you more time to read. Turns out you need energy to concentrate, and eyestrain is a problem.

Ojibwe Singers

by Michael D. McNally : Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion

It's about Ojibwe hymn singers, who usually show up at wakes and funerals to sing Christian hymns in Ojibwe. Never heard of that before? Me either.

This is from 2000, so things may have changed. Most of the singers were older, and it wasn't clear then if youth would aspire to joining the singers, who held a position of respect in the community by their willingness to be there for others in this ritual. I know none of these people, though people I know might know somebody who knows.

Ancient Ojibwe traditions in music have the drum as a central (and spiritual) component. Songs typically have few words with much repetition and vocalisms, many are sacred, and many come from dreams. Catholic and Epicopalian missionaries judged that providing Christian hymns to them in their own language was essential for discipleship. They and gifted converts did their best. Some concepts don't have easy analogs in the other language – even "spirit" isn't simple, since the closest analog in Ojibwe seems to have a primary meaning of "mystery."

From the book:

The way the holy prophets went
The road that leads from banishment
The King's highway of holiness
I'll go, for all His paths are peace

Re-translated back into English from Ojibwe:

The way they were going, those who were wise
The little path that leads straight there
I, too, will go off on it
On the little path that is greatly pitied/blessed

The religious situation on the reservations is complicated: some are adamantly pagan/animist, some are Catholic, some Episcopalian, some various other denominations (Baptist, Pentacostal, etc), and some, to judge from the gang activity, have invested their faith in drugs and guns. Many looked on the hymns as impositions by the whites when they were introduced, and still do over a century later.

But in the meantime singing Ojibwe hymns a capella has become a tradition of its own, most especially among "those who pray" but recognized by the rest as well. So much so, indeed that the author cites:

When one Ojibwe man heard hymns at a ceremony honoring a new drum, for instance, he whispered his opinion that such "Christian" music was disrespectful to the drum. For this man, hymn singing stood in opposition to the other music of Ojibwe tradition in that hymns do not involve a drum. The irony of this particular interchange is also instructive. The drum in question was being initiated or welcomed into the community by entrusting it to the safekeeping and discretionary use of the White Earth singers.

The hymns are often sung very differently, though often the original European tune can be discerned, with much more stress on the individual syllables than either the tune or the lyrics as such. They are sung (not "performed") in a ritual, almost liturgical way, with a clear starting and ending hymn but much variation of songs and silences in between.

The author seemed most interested in the things that made the hymn singing specifically Ojibwe and traditional, and seemed to overlook a different aspect: the hymns are a way of saying two things at once: "This is our tribe's" and "We are also part of a bigger tribe."

The author (and apparently others) found no evidence that there was any intent to subvert the meaning of the hymns in any sort of anti-colonial push. Of course the mere fact that they were in Ojibwe during the era when the government was trying to suppress the language might have been a bit of push-back.

If the subject and its history sound interesting, by all means read it, but be prepared: it is painful to read. Not just the history part – plowing through sociological jargon was not fun at all. (Can you possibly say this in five words instead of a hundred words referencing two different other sociologists?) But his personal experiences and observations made it worth it for me.

And yes, one of the White Earth singers was non-native, but he lived like them and next to them, learned the language, and met the standards of hospitality and respect.

Fast Breaking News

often reminds me of Twain's story of The Admiral in Roughing It.

Vanya Da Dua

One of my sisters gave me this memoir for Christmas. Erik d'Azevedo was abouit 6 years old when his family went to Liberia in the late 50's for his father's anthropological research. It is profusely illustrated with black and white photos, mostly of places and people I never saw, but looking very familiar.

His family lived up-country in a village in a compound owned by the Chief. I lived (at first) in a school campus (500 students) about 30 minutes from the capitol (not that far, but the roads were poor). He made friends easiy, and remembers details to a degree I can't come close to.

There are a few glitches: termite queens are 3-4 inches long, not 3-4 feet. But you won't care.

The title was a name given to Erik after the people heard his stories about America. It was the name of a folk hero of the Gola, who was as famous for his tall tales as his deeds. Bridges that can stand the weight of many cars? You're joking with us.

He started as an object of fear, and then of fascination. The friend he called Bobby suffered injustices Erik couldn't do anything about, and many of their friends were thieves. His sister was almost of marriagable age by village standards. Her story would have been an interesting addition.

The obligations of the children impressed him--they had roles from young ages. Some of the tribal rules seemed reasonable, and some crazy.

The supernatural played (and still does) a huge role in village life, and he had some close calls when his curiosity about the secret societies' doings got him in trouble.

Read it. Yes, the formatting is sub-par and an editor should have caught a duplicate story. Don't worry.

Great books

The "Great Books" set opens with a volume titled "The Great Conversation", and that's not a bad way to think about such a collection. Recently they've added some non-Western tradition books to the set, but those probably should be their own series: Great Books of China, or Great Books of ... well, maybe not India exactly, since that's more a modern construct, but you get the idea. Until recently each different culture family's conversations have been more internal.

I don't think you'd get quite the same kind of collection from Africa, or the Americas. Africa has oral traditions--a variety of them, not all in communication/conversation with each other. A problem with oral traditions is that if an idea goes out of fashion for a couple of generations, it's lost. Books, though still fragile, are a bit more permanent, and a tradition may be only temporarily lost.

Creature Feature

Creature Feature is out!

The cover images must be for other people's stories. I wrote my story quite a while back--I haven't been able to write very much the last few months. It's encouraging to see this.

The Ancient City

(La Cite Antique) by Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889). The title could more appropriately be The Ancient Cities of Greece, Rome, and the Hindus, since he does not really deal with the constitution of the cities of Persia or Egypt--possibly because of a lack of information through translation issues and fewer sources. I suspect he would have found substantial points of difference with his thesis in those cities.

His thesis is that the family, with its attendant ancestor worship, was the foundation of the clan and eventually the city, and that what bound all of these together was the worship of their ancestors.

The priest was the father, his successor his son, and everything--all ancestral lands, rights, authority came though the rituals about the ancestral tomb and the sacred fire. When families clustered, they retained individual worships, though the city would develop its own sacred fire. The eldest son gets it all; the rest of the family are subsidiary branches.

Without a recognized sacred fire, you have no right to property. In fact, the family owns the land, and the family is governed by the patriarch. Foreigners are suspect, without religion or rights; laws don't really apply to them.

Of course this develops over time, and one winds up with a city with a tiny aristocracy of priest/proprieters, a large number of clients of the same, and of course slaves.

That can evolve further, as with Rome, to include a pleb population as well--not clients and not slaves.

Stability gets to be a problem here, and cities begin to undergo revolutions (the poor side with kings against the aristocrat/priests), and the old religion begins to matter less. He describes the rise of Rome, attributing part of it to Roman early efforts to appropriate the religions and ethnicities of their neighbors, making alliance (and eventual domination) easier, and describes the effects of the empire effectively removing the religious/political rites that held conquered ancient cities together. Eventually the only citizenship that mattered was Roman, which became easier and easier to acquire (up to Caracalla's decree that gave it to every free man).

He ends with the rise of Christianity and the replacement of local gods with a universal one. The gods of the city vanished.

I'll assume that his historical references are all correct. The thesis is interesting, and plausible--within some limits.

As he says himself, Spain and Gaul didn't have these kinds of cities, so Rome established them after the conquest. He doesn't mention Egypt at all.

Over and over he hammers home the point that without the sacred fire and ancestor worship, you had no religion. But I don't think that's true. It doesn't quite match human experience: there were other gods than those of the hearth, even in the same land, and worshippers of one would have had some kind of common bond. The Eleusinian Mysteries is well known. (not sure how old it is, though)

Without a better background in the field (and no way to read primary sources myself) I take this as a partial description of the formation of some of the cities of antiquity.

Have a look yourself.

The Kindle copy I have looks like somebody quit checking for OCR typos somewhere around part 3.

Library

An interesting question: what will become of the library? Kurp quotes Longgood's short poem about bees and bookshelves. "In sly self-portaiture, The colored spines in crates Depict his buzzing mind"

My shelves display some of my interests, some of my wife's, some things we thought (silly us) the kids would like, and some of my parents' interests--books we inherited. There's a lot of Africa, a lot of history, poetry, religion, teaching kids, and of course a lot of textbooks in science and math.

None of the youngsters have exactly this spectrum of interests, and most have a slight "but not that many books worth" interest in this topic or that.

Vanity of vanities, etc

Systems

AVI linked to an essay Magical Systems Thinking about problems with complex systems, which in turn references the book Systemantics by John Gall.

"Systems in general work poorly or not at all."

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

"Great advances are not produced by systems designed to produce great advances."

"Efficiency Expert. Someone who thinks he knows what a system is or should be doing, and who therefore feels his is in a position to pass judgment on how well the system is doing it. At best a nuisance, at worst a menace."

I have claimed that in computer management, there is a "Conservation of Complexity": e.g. a tool that makes some things easier for 90% of your systems will demand horrible hacks to work with the rest. I've also spoken of myself as a political Godelian--any set of laws and regulations will have situations it does not justly address, and adding new rules creates a new set of failures in an infinite and increasingly unwieldy game of whac-a-mole. John Gall takes the analysis further, and amusingly.

The Face in the Frost

by John Bellairs.

A few days ago someone on a writers' group posted that they re-read this every year. That kind of endorsement gets my attention, especially when the subject sounded like something that might give me an idea or two to goose a stalled fantasy story into motion again. Two wizards, Prospero and Roger Bacon, try to survive and defeat a malicious evil force.

It didn't get into the mechanics, and the two wizards weren't different enough to give my story (about conflicting sources of magic) any useful ideas, but the book was OK. It keeps one reading, and the descriptions and scenery are quite good. I wasn't too thrilled with the ending, but it made sense.

Writing has been like pulling teeth the past few months. Not sure why, but I suspect it's due to energy being diverted to trivia like healing.

Old encyclopedia

Growing up we had two encyclopedia sets: one the Britannica (14'th), and the other the Book of Knowledge, which aimed at a younger readership with a wildly different approach. The Britannica had all entries alphabetical, as you'd expect.

The older (not the New, which turned strictly alphabetical too) tried to entice the reader to read on into different topics. If you wanted all the articles on some topic (or summaries of all of the stories by e.g. Shakespeare) you looked in the index and perhaps had to get several volumes off the shelf. It was designed for browsing.

There was a Canadian version also, with some of the articles and stories in French.

On facing pages (5246 and 5247) of the 1912 edition linked above you find "Simple Simon Met a Pieman" and a philosophical essay "Must all Things End?" and a few pages later "The Marvels of Electricity and Magnetism." The latter article knows nothing of the nucleus, attempts to prove the existence of the ether, and includes a howler "Why the Earth's pull is believed to be caused by electricity."

I don't recall anything quite that egregious from the edition we had, which I think was from the late 50's. For me, their organization plan worked. I browsed, jumping around to things that seemed interesting at whatever age I was at the time. When I was too old for the little kid's summaries of great stories, I was old enough to read about rockets and explosives. And eventually I started browsing in the Britannica too.

My parents also got the Great Books set and its associated teaching guide, but never got around to actually trying to teach out of them, though we kids read here and there in the Great Books. (horrible font, btw) I inherited both, and we never got around to using the teaching guide with our kids either.

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

I didn't read his "The Martian," but I did see the movie at my sister's house. The framework is quite similar: alone (mostly) facing problem after problem, and building solutions. Once the premise is admitted, the book is hard sci-fi.

In The Andromeda Strain the virus-like thing is able to use extreme energy to reproduce (which drives the cliff-hanger ending). Here the premise is a bacteria-like thing that takes that to another level, able to draw enough energy from the Sun to significantly dim it--though reproduction requires CO2 from Venus--a space-traveling bacteria that is multiplying fast enough to result in disaster in a few decades.

Our hero wakes up with amnesia, and slowly learns about his spaceship and his memories, with parallel stories of his adventures on the ship and what led up to it on Earth. He's not left in the dark about "why" for long (the reader wouldn't stand it)--every nearby star system save one is clearly also infected and dimming badly. Their job--a "Hail Mary" desperate gamble--is to go find out why one of the stars stopped dimming and see if the information can save the Earth before everybody starves.

The strands are wrapped up, and the decisions are mostly plausible--though the final revelation of character isn't well motivated and didn't ring quite right.

The degree of cooperation among nations is a bit implausible, and the director, though a well-drawn character, isn't the most plausible choice for the project either. Perhaps the population of scientists willing to go on a one-way mission has different characteristics than the ordinary crowd, but the two that paired off didn't resemble anybody I knew.

Without giving away the ending, I see why Weir chose that option. It would have been much harder to write the complicated reactions and interactions the alternative would demand, and I think Weir wants to stick to what he does well.

A little axe-grinding, but on the whole a fun read.

Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson.

The first part of the book introduces the main characters, taking quite a while to tell their adventures--which is appropriate since you quickly learn that the main characters are immortal, albeit killable. He researched this pretty heavily, and describes cultures from Rus to the Commanche.

The second part turns on the effect of long life and computerized entertainment on humans, and seems surprisingly timely.

He has his own theories about sexual fidelity and religions (for immortals both can be temporary, though he's a bit friendlier to Buddhism), but he's a good story-teller and his ideas about what an entertainment society does to people seem apropos.

Grim

There's an interview with Grim about his Arthurian novel Arms & White Samite. Check it out. Read his book.

Perhaps Chesterton had an off day

Chesterton had ideas about Gilbert and Sullivan, which might interest someone curious about his ideas about satire. Somehow, though he calls their works masterpieces, he seems dubious somehow:

For instance, in some of his best operas, notably in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Gondoliers, he seems obsessed with the notion that there is something very funny about the idea of two babies being mixed up in their cradles, and the poorer infant being substituted for the richer. But there is nothing particularly odd or original, or even amusing, about the mere idea of a substituted baby. That baby has been a stock property of many tragedies and numberless melodramas. To blast it with a yet more withering bolt of criticism, it has even happened in real life.

I've read The Bab Ballads, and not found myself returning to it. Perhaps that's a defect in my appreciation, but I think Gilbert did better work with Sullivan than alone.

Maxims revisited

Going on from a maxim, I decided to have a look at the most famous: Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld

Most of the corpus is clever, though not always edifying or wise. A little acquaintance with The Four Loves clears out some confusion he suffers from. It took me quite a while to read through the work, not because I was slow, but because I found the cynicism (especially about love) a bit hard to take. ("63.—The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation." Um. No.)

A few caught my eye.

• 8.—The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.
• 36.—It would seem that nature, which has so wisely ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has also given us pride to spare us the mortification of knowing our imperfections.
• 127.—The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.
• 150.—The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.
• 152.—If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not hurt us.
• 159.—It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the management of them.
• 300.—There are follies as catching as infections.
• 313.—How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
• 318.—We may find means to cure a fool of his folly, but there are none to set straight a cross-grained spirit.
• 327.—We own to small faults to persuade others that we have not great ones.
• 372.—Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.
• 423.—Few know how to be old.
• 432.—To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them.
• 437.—We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.
• 439.—We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired.
• 442.—We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.
• 462.—The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.
• 477.—The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to make our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by passions are seldom really possessed of any.
• 481.—Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.
• 483.—Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.
• XXIV.—The most subtle folly grows out of the most subtle wisdom.
• LXXVI.—Many persons wish to be devout; but no one wishes to be humble.
• LXXXII.—It is more easy to extinguish the first desire than to satisfy those which follow.

Some of these are really good: "To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them." That may sound a hair familiar: "he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward."

Hiding from troubles

I think this story was in American Negro Folk Tales; I paraphrase somewhat.

There was a man who had a bad time with his wife, and got angry with all women. He had a little boy, so he took the boy way back in the hills with him and raised him there, where the boy never saw a woman or girl at all. When the boy was about 13, his father reckoned he couldn't keep him in the hills forever--he'd have to go to town sometime--so he brought the boy with him to town this time.

He explained the things the boy had never seen before--a cart, a store, and so on. Some girls came by.

"What are those, Daddy?"

"Those are ducks, son."

"I want one, Daddy."

His father sighed. "Which one, son?"

"I don't care, any one."

The tale ended with a "moral" that the father had planned poorly, so his son didn't know how to be appropriately picky when the time came.

I'm not a student of folklore like my Mother's aunt, but that didn't sound like any of the other tales I'd read before, or since. (I didn't see the motif in Thompson's list.)

For irrelevant reasons I was reading Barlaam and Ioasaph supposedly by St. John of Damascus (died 749AD): a fantasy based somewhat on the mythic(*) history of Gautama. Honestly, I skimmed a lot of it. It included this story, told by Theudas as part of his advice to Ioasaph's father.

"A certain king was grieved and exceeding sad at heart, because that he had no male issue, deeming this no small misfortune. While he was in this condition, there was born to him a son, and the king's soul was filled with joy thereat. Then they that were learned amongst his physicians told him that, if for the first twelve years the boy saw the sun or fire, he should entirely lose his sight, for this was proved by the condition of his eyes. Hearing this, the king, they say, caused a little house, full of dark chambers, to be hewn out of the rock, and therein enclosed his child together with the men that nursed him, and, until the twelve years were past, never suffered him to see the least ray of light. After the fulfilment of the twelve years, the king brought forth from his little house his son that had never seen a single object, and ordered his waiting men to show the boy everything after his kind; men in one place, women in another; elsewhere gold and silver; in another place, pearls and precious stones, fine and ornamental vestments, splendid chariots with horses from the royal stables, with golden bridles and purple caparisons, mounted by armed soldiers; also droves of oxen and flocks of sheep. In brief, row after row, they showed the boy everything. Now, as he asked what each ox these was called, the king's esquires and guards made known unto him each by name: but, when he desired to learn what women were called, the king's spearman, they say, wittily replied that they were called, "Devils that deceive men." But the boy's heart was smitten with the love of these above all the rest. So, when they had gone round everywhere and brought him again unto the king, the king asked, which of all these sights had pleased him most. "What," answered the boy, "but the Devils that deceive men? Nothing that I have seen to-day hath fired my heart with such love as these." The king was astonished at the saying of the boy, to think how masterful a thing the love of women is. Therefore think not to subdue thy son in any other way than this."

I wonder if there's a connection.

The story of Ioasaph is freighted with emphasis on the monastic and austere life--explained that baptistm only works once, and you're liable for all the later sins, unless expiated with extreme penitence and austerity. Logical, but not attractive, and I think misses an aspect of incarnation.

(*) I mean "mythic" in a good way. The parable that however hard you try, you can't escape the limits of life is always useful--especially to those who think they can hide limits from themselves. "Tomorrow will be like today, but more so."

Shattered Sword

The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by John Parshall and Anthony Tully:

A lot of Japanese sources are now available in translation, and the authors took advantage of this. A number of stories about Midway (including some by a now-debunked (at least in Japan) Japanese) are myths, based on either posterior-preserving (as with the Japanese writer) or American misunderstandings and attempted propaganda.

A couple of things: the early attacks on the Japanese carriers were scattershot (the US had lousy command and control of its planes), and that kept the carriers dodging. Dodging meant they couldn't spot planes for an attack on the American carriers, though they could get a few fighters off. But even if they'd gotten an attack off, it was too late; the American planes headed their way had already taken off. If they'd used the American methods, they might have gotten enough planes up to take revenge, but their doctrine demanded a full attack group, and the way they spotted planes, though quite fast, wasn't fast enough under the circumstances.

The Japanese didn't store planes on the flight deck; they fueled and loaded them below and elevatored them up. That meant a bomb that penetrated the flight deck found a very rich environment, and since the lower decks were not open, the bombs' effects were contained and intense.

The story that the American torpedo bombers, though unsuccessful, had kept the defending Zero fighters low enough that they couldn't intercept the high-flying dive bombers that followed--it's a fable. The Zeros were perfectly capable of climbing back up in the minutes before the dive bombers' arrival. What seems to have been more of a problem is Japanese command and control of their own planes--the defending fighters, finding a problem in one sector, piled on, and left the other sectors less defended.

There's more of the backstory too--the surface fleet was kept far away to maintain secrecy, but that meant it was too far away to be of any support. The Attu invasion was not a feint, but part of their 3-pronged grand strategy. Their failed southern prong attack denied them the use of 2 carriers, so they only had 4 at Midway. Yamamoto's directions were ambiguous. And so on.

They write well. I met Parshall a few years ago--he's a nice guy and very knowledgeable. If you're interested in Pacific World War II, read the book.

That previous line reads a little strangely, doesn't it--a peaceful war?