John Muir: The saving of 100 million acres begins with a first word on paper

July 19, 2012

John Muir’s place in American history endures constant assault.  Not only did businessmen and politicians of his own day find Muir’s policies anathema to their hopes of profiting from the destruction of the American wild, so today do we hear that profits cannot be had without the rape of the environment.

Muir knew better, and so should you!

On July 19, 1869 — in the middle of the administration of U. S. Grant, Muir began his journals on the beauty of life in the Sierras, to be published 42 years later as My First Summer in the Sierra.

It should be required reading in more American classrooms:

John Muir

Watching the daybreak and sunrise. The pale rose and purple sky changing softly to daffodil yellow and white, sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks and over the Yosemite domes, making their edges burn; the silver firs in the middle ground catching the glow on their spiry tops, and our camp grove fills and thrills with the glorious light. Everything awakening alert and joyful…John Muir,
Entry for “July 19“ from
My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911.
“California As I Saw It”: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900

John Muir
John Muir,
1902.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

On July 19, 1869, naturalist John Muir set pen to paper to capture his experience of awakening in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Published in 1911, My First Summer in the Sierra is based on Muir’s original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the vicinity of the Yosemite Valley. His journal tracks his three-and-a-half-month visit to the Yosemite region and his ascent of Mt. Hoffman and other Sierra peaks. Along the way, he describes the flora and fauna as well as the geography and geology of the area.

Muir immigrated from Scotland to Wisconsin as a child. He attended the University of Wisconsin and began working as a mechanical inventor. After an 1867 industrial accident nearly blinded him, he abandoned his career as an inventor to work as a naturalist.

California, El Capitan, Yosemite Valley
El Capitan,
Yosemite Valley,
California,
William Henry Jackson, photographer,
1899.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

An early defender of the environment, Muir in 1876 advocated adoption of a federal forest conservation program. His popular articles and books describing Yosemite’s natural wonders inspired public support for the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890 and expansion of the park in 1906.  At the same time, Muir continued to work and write as a serious scientist whose fieldwork in botany and geology enabled him to make lasting contributions. Alaska’s Muir Glacier is named for him. In 1892, Muir co-founded the as an association explicitly dedicated to wilderness preservation and served until 1914 as its first president, shaping it into an organization whose leadership in political advocacy for protection of the natural world continues to this day.

The popularity of President Theodore Roosevelt’s groundbreaking conservation program owed much to Muir’s writing. In 1903 Roosevelt and Muir visited the Yosemite region together. In 1908, Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation establishing the Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, in Muir’s honor. Muir died six years later. Although sorrow and disappointment at his failure to save Hetch Hetchy Valley from becoming a reservoir for San Francisco may well have contributed to his death, Muir had succeeded more than any other single individual in establishing the preservation of wild nature as a major American cultural and political value. The clarity of his vision and the eloquence of his writing continue to inspire environmentalists throughout the world.

Learn more about John Muir and the conservation movement in American Memory:

5 Comments | Conservation, Environmental protection, History, Literature | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Silent Spring’s 50th anniversary: Birds sing, air is cleaner, water is cleaner

June 16, 2012

Fifty years ago today New Yorker published the first of four parts of Rachel Carson‘s epic research book, Silent Spring.

Cover of New Yorker Magazine, June 16, 1962 -- the issue which carried the first of four parts of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Cover of New Yorker Magazine, June 16, 1962 — the issue which carried the first of four parts of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

What a difference five decades make!

People outside of it claim claim Carson started the entire environmental movement .  Historians, politicians and people inside the movement don’t forget the contributions of John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Moran, John Wesley Powell, Laurance Rockefeller, John Muir, Thomas Meagher, Gifford Pinchot, William H. Jackson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and dozens of others of more or lesser fame and prominence.  Carson’s book still stands tall among the contributions of those giants, for its literary achievement, its voice, and its scientific foundations.

Contrary to the history of history-turning books, the controversy over Silent Spring grows stronger in the last decade.  Upton Sinclair‘s fictional works on Chicago meat packing company misdeeds gets lionized in high school history courses.  Thomas Malthus‘s work on population growth crops up in economics texts.  Adam Smith shows up on ties.  Few read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but no one defends slavery nor calls Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s book inaccurate even though it was a work of fiction.

In contrast, the attacks on Carson and Silent Spring grow more shrill — today’s Google searches find many more listings for scathing and wildly inaccurate critiques of the book than there are tributes to either.

Carson and her book deserve the praise most often denied, and they deserve little if any of the criticism.  Fifty years on Silent Spring’s influence is almost universally positive.

  1. Carson forced the public, and scientists, to look at the wild as an integrated whole, including the plants and animals and mineral, land and ater resources, and also including the towns speckled among wild lands, and especially the farms sprawling in verdant production across most of America.  Carson, almost as much as Darwin, forced scientists to see their science as part of a larger whole — study of ecosystems became important, perhaps more important that the study of individual species or locations.
  2. Silent Spring alerted humans that all actions in the wild have consequences in the wild, and that the tyranny of numbers affects the entire out-of-doors as much as smaller parcels.  Human effects were seen as world-wide.
  3. Carson’s writing found firm footing in science and showed literary flair, with more than 50 pages of careful and thorough footnotes including precise citations to science research publications.  This demonstrated what Richard Feynman later brilliantly described, that a knowledgeable, scientific view of nature makes it more beautiful, and more charming.  This near-refutation of Mark Twain‘s philosophy of learning from Life on the Mississippi opened a new genre of literature that is non-fictional and floridly descriptive, but readable and persuasive because of its scientific accuracy.
  4. Silent Spring made it clear that local actions can make big environmental effects.  The bird-killing, spring-silencing actions that could cause the silent spring fable in the books introduction was not a massive federal project, but was instead the result of actions of small towns and cities, county governments, and even individual farmers.  Planet-saving action could be started at home, next door, in the block in the neighborhood, in the county — and did not require first approval from a national government.
  5. Silent Spring unabashedly pointed a finger at all of us as the culprit of the damage, and not some “other” as a bad guy.  While this troubles many today, it carries with it the explicit realization that our own actions can start our own salvation.  Personal responsibility becomes real in Silent Spring.
  6. Silent Spring made nature appear accessible to anyone with a yard, or a patch of grass nearby.  This gave rebirth to the parks movement, and it encouraged countless thousands to recreation in the outdoors, and to careers outdoors as farmers, ranchers, scientists, forest and park rangers, land managers and gardeners.
  7. Carson specifically addressed the trade-offs required to stop pollution.  DDT was a key part of the campaign to eradicate malaria from the planet, she noted.  But overuse or abuse of DDT would surely lead to insect resistance to the stuff, she documented with research already a decade old that showed exactly that.  If DDT overuse were allowed to continue, she said, DDT would stop being effective in the fight against malaria.  The book was published in 1962.  In 1965 the World Health Organization stopped its campaign against malaria in Central and Subsaharan Africa that relied on DDT.  Getting support from the not-strong national governments in the region had delayed implementation (80% of all households must be treated with DDT in this program and medical care must be improved to cure malaria in human carriers to make it work).  Worse, in areas yet untouched by the WHO campaign, mosquitoes were already resistant and immune to DDT due to overuse in agriculture and other fields.  Within 18 months after her 1964 death, Rachel Carson had been revealed as a reluctant prophet.
  8. Carson alerted the world to alternatives to technological fixes, especially those that carry high costs.  Carson worried about the effects on the fight against malaria if DDT was to be rendered ineffective by overuse.  Few planned for that eventuality, but it happened.  Happily, she also pointed to other solutions.  At peak DDT use, 500 million malaria infections annually killed 4 million people worldwide.  Today, mostly without DDT but instead with wiser policies of medical treatment and the use of bednets, malaria infections have been cut in half, to about 250 million annually, and malaria deaths have been reduced by 75%, to under 1 million annually.  This is more impressive when one realizes the total world population more than doubled in the same time, and the area where malaria is endemic also increased.  Carson told us it was possible to defeat a disease without poisoning our selves and our environment, and we have done it, to a great degree, with malaria.
  9. Birds still sing in the spring, the bald eagle is off the Endangered Species List, America’s air is cleaner, America’s water is cleaner, and more land is set aside for the regeneration of America’s renewable resources and our national, collective psyche in recreation.  Much of this can be attributed to actions by people inspired by Rachel Carson’s book.
Rachel Carson in New Yorker, 2007, illustration by Tom Bachtell

Rachel Carson in New Yorker, 2007, illustration by Tom Bachtell

Rachel was right.  Careful research, care in writing forged by years of research and writing about research, gave Carson the voice and the research chops to write a readable, scientifically accurate call to action.

That call still sounds today, even if one must strain to hear it over the chorus of ill-informed or ill-intentioned hecklers.

More, resources and related articles:

7 Comments | Books, DDT, History, Literature, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science, Turning Points | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bloomsday 2012 – pubs, and copyright. Yes!

June 16, 2012

James Joyce fans, and other literati fans:  Happy Bloomsday, June 16.

It was on that fictional June 16, 1904,  that the fictional Leopold Bloom worked so hard to find his way home in Dublin, lured by the sirens of this pub, hampered by the Scylla and Charybdis of that pub, but finally — Yes! — finding his own doorway, yes, and entering into it, yes, and making literary history, yes.

Bloomsday

James Joyce caressing, or torturing, a guitar. Bloomsday (Photo credit: bluelephant)

Oh, yes! Yes!  Yes!

Is anyone reading Ulysses in your town?  Public performance?

2012 heralds, or laments, the ending of the extended copyright on the novel in the UK.  James Joyce’s son Stephen has been a close and controlling shepherd of the rights to use the words of the book.

In 2004 the threat of disruption from the Joyce estate to the planned Bloomsday centenary was deemed so great – Stephen Joyce warned he would sue for copyright infringement if public readings formed any part of the festival – that the Irish government was forced to pass emergency legislation to protect itself. In 2007, a US court upheld the claim of a Stanford academic that the Joyce estate engaged in abusive conduct in exploiting its copyright.

This year, Dublin’s New Theatre have organized an entire festival dedicated to Joyce’s entry into the public domain, featuring new work only made possible by the expiry of the Joyce copyrights. Scholars from around the world – including a few former targets of legal action from the estate – will gather at Trinity College Dublin for a week-long symposium on the author. Experimental film, cabaret, even an iPhone app, all form part of the city’s program of festivities.

Bloomsday performers outside Davy Byrne's pub

Bloomsday performers outside Davy Byrne’s pub, in Dublin (in 2011?) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s not clear that the copyright is ended in the U.S.  I doubt that will slow any of the scheduled readings.

How will you celebrate Bloomsday? 

Have you read the book?  Of those who show up to readings, or to lift a pint in a Dublin pub, what percentage do you think have actually read Joyce’s book?

Bloomsday, More, and Related Resources:

Leopold Bloom's gorgonzola sandwich

Leopold Bloom’s gorgonzola sandwich (perhaps you need to have read the book . . . ) (Photo credit: Dunechaser)

Leave a Comment » | Books, History, Literature, reading | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Film in a high school class: Atticus Finch as a role model

April 30, 2012

This year is the 50th anniversary of the release of the film “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

In the American Film Institute‘s polling to find the greatest hero in the movies, Atticus Finch finished first.  Interesting that a class from Arlington, Virginia’s Washington-Lee High School found one of the best venues anywhere to watch the film to study it.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ranks 25th on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list of greatest American films, and AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest hero in this history of American film when it announced its AFI’s 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains list in 2003. AFI also recognized the film for its #1 ranking of Best Courtroom Dramas in AFI’s 10 Top 10 list and its #2 ranking on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers America’s Most Inspiring Films list, just behind IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. The film, which premiered in Los Angeles on Christmas day in 1962 and opened wide in 1963, was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula.  [Screenplay was by the great Texas playwright Horton Foote.]

From the White House YouTube site:

President Obama hosted a film screening of To Kill a Mockingbird in the Family Theater at The White House to commemorate its 50th anniversary with guests including local students from Washington-Lee High School, Mary Badham Wilt, the actress who played Scout, and Veronique Peck, widow of Gregory Peck who played Atticus Finch. The President also acknowledged the American Film Institute for their commitment to the fine arts and NBC Universal and USA Network for their efforts to commemorate this important film.

What venues could one use in Dallas?  Check with the Sixth Floor Museum, to see if their 7th floor facility is available.  Check to see if there is a room available at the Earl Cabell Federal Building, or the George L. Allen Court building.  The old, renovated Texas Theater on Jefferson Boulevard might cut a deal.  Surely there is a room big enough at the Belo Mansion, the home of the Dallas Bar Association — if it’s not totally booked up for other events.  With the Horton Foote connection, perhaps the Wyly Theater could find a rehearsal room to throw up a screen. Odds are pretty good you could get an attorney to come talk law and civil rights at any of those locations.

How could a teacher sneak a viewing of this movie into the curriculum?  Isn’t it tragic that we have to sneak in great classics?

More: 

Leave a Comment » | Citizenship, Civil Rights, History, History and art, Lesson plans, Literature, President Obama, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Not averse to a verse? National Poetry Month

April 9, 2012

In spring, a teacher’s fancy turns to thoughts of poetry.  Fortunately, April is National Poetry Month.

2012 National Poetry Month Poster, designed by Chin-Yee Lai

2012 National Poetry Month Poster, designed by Chin-Yee Lai – did you send off for your poster?  From ACA:  Sponsors:  The New York Times, National Endowment for the Arts, Random House, Inc., Merriam-Webster, EBSCO Publishing, and The Poetry FoundationThe 2012 poster features the line “…wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life” from U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine‘s poem “Our Valley.”

What is it?

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

How to celebrate?  Read poetry. Use poetry in your classroom, or at your job. And don’t forget these other activities:

Poem In Your Pocket Day: Thousands of individuals across the U.S. will carry a poem in their pockets on April 26, 2012.

Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.

30 Poets, 30 Days: Throughout each day during National Poetry Month, a selected poet will have 24 hours to post on Tumblr an array of ephemera—in the form of text, images, audio, and video—before passing the baton.

Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.

Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.

Poem Flow for iPhones: Available through the iTunes store, this innovative mobile app features daily poems presented as both fixed and animated text.

National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map.

Surely you can find something fun to do.

12 Comments | Literature, Poetry | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The anti-teacher, anti-lawyer, anti-education, anti-math, anti-civil rights truth behind “Kill all the lawyers”

March 10, 2012

Mostly an encore post — something we shouldn’t have to repeat, but thoughts that deserve a place in everyone’s mind in an election year.  I originally posted this back in 2006.

Poster from Michael Boyd's 2000 production of Henry VI, Part II, at Stratford

All this murder of lawyers, teachers, accountants, education and civil rights, is bloody business. Poster from Michael Boyd’s 2000 production of Henry VI, Part II, at Stratford; PBS image via Wikipedia

In an otherwise informative post about a controversy over alternative certification for school administrators, at EdWize, I choked on this:

The Department leaders, Klein, Seidman and Alonso, lawyers all (perhaps Shakespeare was correct), are rigid ideologues who have alienated their work force as well as the parents of their constituents

Did you catch that? Especially the link to the Shakespeare line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers?”

This is not exactly history we’re fisking here — it’s drama, I suppose. Still, it falls neatly into the category of debunkings, not too unlike the debunking of the story of Millard Fillmore’s bathtub.

The line from Shakespeare is accurate. It’s from Henry VI, Part II. But it’s not so much a diatribe against lawyers as it is a part of a satirical indictment of those who would overthrow government, and oppress the masses for personal gain.

It is Dick the Butcher who says the line. Jack Cade has just expressed his warped view that he should be king, after having attempted a coup d’etat and taken power, at least temporarily. Cade starts in with his big plans to reform the economy — that is, to let his friends eat cheap or free, while other suffer and starve.

Dick chimes in to suggest that in the new regime, the lawyers ought to be the first to go — they protect rights of people and property rights, and such rights won’t exist in Cade’s imagined reign. Cade agrees. The purpose of killing the lawyers, then, is to perpetuate their rather lawless regime.

At that moment others in Cade’s conspiracy enter, having captured the town Clerk of Chatham. The man is put on trial for his life, accused of being able to read and keep accounts. Worse, he’s been caught instructing young boys to read.

There is no saving the poor Clerk at that point.  Cade orders the Clerk to be hanged, “with his pen and inkhorn around his neck” (even the pen was considered dangerous!).

Thus Shakespeare relates how terrorists of old steal government and rights, by killing the lawyers, the educated, and especially the teachers.

It’s still true today. Those who would steal rights from people, those who would oppress others, assault the rule of law, education, and those who spread learning. Beware those who urge death to law and learning; they are related to Dick the Butcher, philosophically, at least.  (No offense to honest butchers, I hope — especially to members of the UFCW.  Dick the Butcher was not a member of any butcher’s union.)

Here is the text, from the site “William Shakespeare — the Complete Works”:

CADE
Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped
pot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony
to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in
common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,–

ALL
God save your majesty!

CADE
I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

CADE
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. How now! who’s there?

(Enter some, bringing forward the Clerk of Chatham)

Smith the Weaver and Dick the Butcher seize the Clerk of Chatham, Bunbury print of Henry VI, Part II scene

Smith the Weaver and Dick the Butcher seize the Clerk of Chatham, in Act IV, scene ii of Henry VI, Part II. Engraving by Henry William Bunbury, from collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library; original published by Thos. Macklin Poets Gallery, London, 1795

SMITH
The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and
cast accompt.

CADE
O monstrous!

SMITH
We took him setting of boys’ copies.

CADE
Here’s a villain!

SMITH
Has a book in his pocket with red letters in’t.

CADE
Nay, then, he is a conjurer.

DICK
Nay, he can make obligations, and write court-hand.

CADE
I am sorry for’t: the man is a proper man, of mine
honour; unless I find him guilty, he shall not die.
Come hither, sirrah, I must examine thee: what is thy name?

CLERK
Emmanuel.

DICK
They use to write it on the top of letters: ’twill
go hard with you.

CLERK
Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up
that I can write my name.

ALL
He hath confessed: away with him! he’s a villain
and a traitor.

CADE
Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and
ink-horn about his neck.

>Exit one with the Clerk

More, Resources (some from Zemanta):

4 Comments | Books, Education, Famous quotes, Freedom - Political, History, Law, Literature, reading, Revolution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Scenes from a beach: At the edge of the sea

December 20, 2011

Interesting little bauble in the Biloxi-Gulfport (Mississippi) Sun-Herald, I think from their columnist George Thatcher:

Cover of Rachel Carson's "The Edge of the Sea"

Good teacher resource for National Environmental Week, April 15-21, 2012

December 20 Scenes from the beach

“To stand at the edge of the sea,” wrote Rachel Carson, “… is to have knowledge of things that are as eternal, as any earthly life can be.”* The things that we see this morning–a cerulean sea and sky, the shorebirds, the sun still near the horizon — are identically the same objects that could be seen in Cambrian times, eons ago. There is a sense of the eternal in the objects viewed today. And I suppose there will be little change in a faraway eon that lies in some future age. — Diary, autumn 2011

* At the Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson; Signet Books, New York (1955)

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/12/19/3641733/december-20-scenes-from-the-beach.html#storylink=cpy

One should read Rachel Carson to get closer to the universe, not for political reasons, not necessarily for the science.  But being scientifically accurate, and being close to the pulse of the universe, Carson’s views will change your politics for the better if you really read and listen.

2 Comments | Biology, Books, Environmental protection, Literature, Natural history, Nature, oceans, Philosophy, Rachel Carson, Science, Science Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Birthday of Twain and Churchill: Happy Whiskey and Cigar Day!

November 30, 2011

Mark Twain, afloat

November 30 is the birthday of Mark Twain (1835), and Winston Churchill (1874).

Twain had a comment on the Texas Education Agency and State Board of Education:

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.

– Following the Equator; Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar

The Nobel literature committees were slow; Twain did not win a Nobel in Literature; he died in 1910. Churchill did win, in 1953.

Both men were aficionados of good whiskey and good cigars. Both men suffered from depression in old age.

Both men made a living writing, early in their careers as newspaper correspondents. One waged wars of a kind the other campaigned against. Both were sustained by their hope for the human race, against overwhelming evidence that such hope was sadly misplaced.

churchill-time-cover-man-of-the-year-1941.jpg

Both endured fantastic failures that would have killed other people, andboth rebounded.

Each possessed a great facility with words, and wit, and frequently said or wrote things that people like to remember and repeat again.

Both of them rank near the top of the list of people to whom almost any quote will be attributed if the quote is witty and the speaker can’t remember, or doesn’t know, who actually said it.

Both men are worth study. And wouldn’t you really love to have had them over to dinner?

Twain, on prisons versus education:

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Speech, November 23, 1900

Churchill on the evil men and nations do:

“No One Would Do Such Things”

“So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.”

—1923, recalling the possibility of war between France and Germany after the Agadir Crisis of 1911, in The World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 48-49.

Image of Twain aboard ship – origin unknown. Image of Winston S. Churchill, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1941, copyright 1941 by Time Magazine.

More on Mark Twain

More on Winston Churchill

Orson Welles, with Dick Cavett, on Churchill, his wit, humor and grace (tip of the old scrub brush to the Churchill Centre):

Yeah, mostly this is an encore post from past years.

3 Comments | Books, History, Literature, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Poet Devona Wyant, “On the difference between 1 and 99”

November 14, 2011

On the difference between 1 and 99

 

1% is when you spend the winters at your house on Fiji.

99% is when you heat your living quarters

with a single space heater.

1% is when your prescription is automatically

in your medicine cabinet and you don’t have to think about it.

99% is when you count the remaining pills of your

prescription and know you’ll run out before your SS check comes.

1% is when you tell your driver which car to drive today.

99% is when you walk everywhere you go

if your town doesn’t have buses.

1% is when you walk into the trendiest restaurant in town

and you don’t even need a reservation.

99% is when you buy outdated meat and produce

or stand in line at a soup kitchen.

1% is when you turn on the news and nod at the politician

who says if you can’t work, you shouldn’t eat.

99% is when you don’t know what the politician said

because you couldn’t pay the electric bill.

1% doesn’t have to go to work.

99% can’t even apply for a job because you’re unemployed

and they aren’t accepting applications from the unemployed.

1% turns away from the bottom 99% because if they don’t work

or pay taxes, they have no value.

99% may be buried in a Potter’s Field before the expected life span

because

. .you were malnourished, sick, numb from cold and depression,

. .and told you have to get off the sidewalk.

One will die acclaimed.

One will die unclaimed

. .because America can’t have street beggars.

But it does have an invisible army of the poor…unarmed,

under-housed, under-fed, under-educated, out of hope, out of time,

and out of social uniform.

Just so much cannon fodder for our Class Warfare.

Devona Wyant

I subscribe to Poem-a-Day and a couple of other services that deliver poetry to my mailbox.  I subscribe to a couple of list-servs that feature poets.  A precious few favor me with e-mails, somehow listing me among their friends.

I got this one today, probably unpublished elsewhere.  Watch for it.

[This poem above is not quoted, though it is the work of Ms. Wyant, because the quote formatting changed the formatting of the poem itself.  Please be sure to attribute the poem correctly to Ms. Wyant, who holds the copyright.]

Poet Devona Wyant, center. Caption from Lincolnton, North Carolina, Times-News: Poets Morgan DiStefano, Shane Manier and Devona Wyant and their group, Poetry Lincolnton, released their first anthology in June [2013].

Poet Devona Wyant, center. Caption from Lincolnton, North Carolina, Times-News: Poets Morgan DiStefano, Shane Manier and Devona Wyant and their group, Poetry Lincolnton, released their first anthology in June [2013].

Save

98 Comments | History, Literature, Poetry | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Walter M. Miller, Leibowitz’s shopping list

October 22, 2011

Cover of Miller's Canticle for Liebowitz

Cover of Miller's Canticle for Liebowitz

“Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma.”

– Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

Leave a Comment » | Books, Capturing history, Literature, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: William Saroyan (again)

September 28, 2011

On the 30th anniversary of the death of William Saroyan, we repeat an earlier post on his typewriter:

William Saroyan's typewriter, photo from the Bancroft Library, University of Caliornia - Berkeley

William Saroyan's typewriter, displayed at the Saroyan Museum at his home in San Francisco - photo from the Bancroft Library, University of California; Berkeley

William Saroyan’s niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, recently gifted the Bancroft Library with a significant part of the archives of Saroyan’s work. The press release on the gift included a photo of Saroyan’s Fox typewriter, which is displayed at the Saroyan museum in San Francisco.

Saroyan came from an Armenian American family, born in Fresno, California in 1908. His writings illuminated the experience of Californians and Armenian Americans, especially during the Great Depression.

In many ways Saroyan’s work symbolizes the uniqueness of the Armenian community in America, especially California. [You still out there, Ben Davidian?] Wikipedia strikes the right tone:

Saroyan’s stories celebrated optimism in the midst of the trials and tribulations of the Depression. Several of Saroyan’s works were drawn from his own experiences, although his approach to autobiographical fact contained a fair bit of poetic license.

His advice to a young writer was: “Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell.” Saroyan endeavored to create a prose style full of zest for life and seemingly impressionistic, that came to be called “Saroyanesque”.

The complete May 19, 2010, press release from the University of California is below.

a sketch "from a Turkish admirer," a photo of the author in his youth, and a framed sketch of Saroyan

The Bancroft Library's new archival material on William Saroyan includes (left to right) a sketch "from a Turkish admirer," a photo of the author in his youth, and a framed drawing of Saroyan with a passage of his writing on Armenia. (Images courtesy of the Bancroft Library)

The Bancroft Library accepts gift of William Saroyan archives

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 19 May 2010

William Saroyan

William Saroyan (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

BERKELEY — The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has received a spectacular gift of hundreds of books, drawings, correspondence and other personal communications to and from one of America’s best-known writers, the Armenian-American author and playwright William Saroyan.

The rich collection includes approximately 48 cartons with 1,200 books and other archival materials assembled by his niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, of San Francisco, who also is the founder of the William Saroyan Literary Foundation International. A celebration of the gift is set for noon on Friday (May 21) at The Faculty Club on campus.

“UC Berkeley is such an incredible place of learning and growing and intellectual exploration,” said Kazarian, who earned degrees in communication and decorative arts at UC Berkeley in the early 1950s. “I know that my uncle wanted his library, manuscripts and galleys to go to Berkeley. Students will be inspired by the collection.”

Apart from this gift, The Bancroft Library already retains significant holdings of Saroyan’s work that it collected over the course of his life and career, and it continues to add to that collection. Most of the latest materials come from Saroyan’s home on San Francisco’s 15th Avenue that is now a Saroyan museum directed by Kazarian. Those materials were supplemented by Kazarian’s extensive personal collection, as well as by items of Saroyan’s that she acquired through a prominent Boston archivist and via a Saroyan friend.

“Jacqueline Kazarian’s new gift is the largest and most substantial augmentation to the Saroyan collections at Bancroft that we have ever received,” said Peter Hanff, Bancroft’s deputy director.

The author’s classic manual typewriter, as displayed at his San Francisco home

The author’s classic Fox manual typewriter, as displayed at his San Francisco home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Saroyan, born in Fresno, Calif., in 1908, drew extensively on his Armenian-American heritage and childhood experiences for his books, plays and short stories. Much of his writing was considered impressionistic and reflected a hearty optimism often hard to find during the gritty Great Depression. He died in 1981 at the age of 72, with his niece at his side.When Story magazine editors Martha Foley and Whit Burnett printed Saroyan’s “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” in 1934, it was an immediate success, triggering Saroyan’s fame and standing as one of his many literary achievements.

“Uncle Bill’s writing revolutionized the short story,” said Kazarian, adding that she has always found his work “almost spiritual and fable-like.”

His five-act play, “The Time of Your Life,” is the only American play to have won both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Saroyan’s work as a screenwriter with Hollywood director Louis B. Mayer on the film “The Human Comedy” won an Academy Award in 1943, and Saroyan later wrote a widely acclaimed book with the same title.

Kazarian’s gift to The Bancroft Library includes multiple first editions of Saroyan’s works, such as “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” “My Name is Aram” (1940), “The Human Comedy” and “Obituaries” (1979), and many materials personally inscribed by the writer. Also among the new items according to Steven Black, the head of acquisitions for Bancroft, are letters, telegrams and notes written by Saroyan to relatives and others close to him, mostly during the 1930s and 1940s.

antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard of Berkeley, shown here poring through Saroyan materials

Antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard of Berkeley, poring through Saroyan materials. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

“He personalized a lot of what passed through his hands,” Black said, noting that much of the material features marginalia reflecting Saroyan’s thoughts and interests.

There also is a copy of Henry Miller’s “Aller Retour New York,” an 80-page journal about a 1935 visit by Miller to New York City and his journey aboard a Dutch ship back to Europe. It is inscribed by Miller to Saroyan.

And a Saroyan scrapbook in the collection contains press announcements about the Pulitzer Prize for his book, “The Time of Your Life.” He scoffed at the award, contending that the arts should not be judged by commerce.

The new Bancroft collection also contains a pre-publication proof of “Burnt Norton,” the first poem of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which Black said the publisher may have given to Saroyan “when he crossed the pond” on a trip from his temporary home in France to England.

There also is a wide range of magazines, including issues of Horizon and the Partisan Review, a leading publication of the Anglo-American intelligentsia during the 1930s and ’40s, Black said.

The first major deposit at The Bancroft Library of Saroyan’s papers was recorded in October 1980, and the library agreed to organize the collection and give Saroyan a general description and an index. After Saroyan died in 1981, the Saroyan Foundation paid the library to continue assembling the papers for official archives, which the foundation ultimately decided to place at Stanford University. That happened in 1996.

William Saroyan's niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, surveys materials at his San Francisco home

William Saroyan's niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, surveys materials in his home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Kazarian’s donation is in honor of Berkeley antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard, who has provided appraisal assistance to Bancroft on Saroyan materials and other collections for decades. While director of The Bancroft Library, the late James D. Hart also developed strong professional and personal ties to Saroyan over the years, according to Kazarian and Black.

“Now, the Saroyan family materials come to a place that Saroyan himself would have been happy to see accepting them,” Black said, noting that Bancroft is proud to have so much of Saroyan’s “intellectual remains” to be able to share with the public.

Scheduled to speak about the acquisition at Friday’s event are Jacqueline Kazarian; David Calonne, vice president of education for the Saroyan Literary Foundation International and a Saroyan scholar; San Francisco novelist Herbert Gold; theater director Val Hendrickson reading Saroyan’s short story, “Common Prayer,” and the credo to “The Time of Your Life”; and Charles Faulhaber, director of The Bancroft Library.

UC Berkeley already is home to an Armenian Studies Program, which is focused on contemporary Armenian history, politics, language and culture. And Bancroft, a rich, special collections library containing historical and literary documents and other materials relating to California, the West, Mexico and Latin America, is known for its strong collections on California writers, including Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Bret Harte, Frank Norris and others.

More information about The Bancroft Library is online. Bancroft is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

More:

William Saroyan commemorative stamps from the U.S., and U.S.S.R.

On commemorative stamps issued in both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Saroyan wears the Armenian-style moustache he wore through most of his later life. For a stamp to honor a man in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union was extremely rare -- maybe unique.

2 Comments | Books, Libraries, Literature, Technology, Typewriters, Writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Saroyan, gone 30 years

September 28, 2011

Time fills up with anniversaries, if we remember history long enough.

Today is This year marks the 30th anniversary of William Saroyan’s death (on May 18).  A few hits on my post about his typewriter made me aware of the date.

There’s a nice tribute by Tom Vartabedian to the legacy of Saroyan, a man who loved books and who understood the value of knowledge, literature, a library, and what it means to be Armenian, at the Armenian Weekly.

An interesting guy, with interesting stories most often about one of our planet’s more interesting groups of people.  In 1936 Saroyan wrote about the resiliency and vibrancy of Armenians, in Inhale and Exhale.  One quote can be purchased from the William Saroyan Society on a poster:

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

30 years since he passed?  Really?

2 Comments | Armenian genocide, Books, History, Literature | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Charles Dodgson and Tea Party logic, “six impossible things”

September 27, 2011

John Tenniel's drawing of Alice A-dressing the White Queen, in "Through the Looking Glass" 1865 - Wikimedia image

John Tenniel's drawing of Alice A-dressing the White Queen, "Through the Looking Glass" 1865 - Wikimedia image

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Through the Looking Glass, Chapter V, “Wool and Water.” 1871 (Gutenberg edition)

Below the fold; the quote in larger context.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Books, Famous quotes, Literature, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Shakespeare: Still viral after all these years

September 19, 2011

A little sketch in her notebook, an off-the-top-of-her-head list of common phrases.  Common today, but originating with William Shakespeare.

Becky's tumblr image: Things we say that we owe to Shakepspeare

Becky's quick summary of some of the best-known phrases we use everyday, invented by Shakespeare. From Becky, age 20, in London.

Becky’s quick work caught a lot of eyes.  One of NPR’s blogs brought it to my attention.  English teachers, take notice (maybe someone at your school has a large format printer, and can make for you a poster . . .)

Someone could write a book explaining the original Shakespeare meaning of these phrases, the play, the context, and the value in the story. (Perhaps it’s already been done.)  It’s really quite stunning to consider how many phrases trace back to the Bard — surely he did not originate each and every one.  But Shakespeare’s works are rivaled perhaps only by scriptures in producing so many common phrases and aphorisms.

Is this graphic design of a sort that would meet with approval from Edward Tufte and his followers?

2 Comments | Books, History, Humor, Linguistics, Literature, Technology, Writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Still quote of the moment: Martin Niemöller, “. . . I did not speak out . . .”

August 16, 2011

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

— Pastor Martin Niemöller

German theologian and Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller on a postage stamp, painted by Gerd Aretz in 1992 – Wikipedia

Some time this year school curricula turn to the Holocaust, in English, in world history, and in U.S. history.

Martin Niemöller’s poem registers powerfully for most people — often people do not remember exactly who said it. I have seen it attributed to Deitrich Bonhoeffer (who worked with Niemöller in opposing some Nazi programs), Albert Einstein, Reinhold Niebuhr, Albert Schweitzer, Elie Wiesel, and an “anonymous inmate in a concentration camp.”

Niemöller and his actions generate controversy — did he ever act forcefully enough? Did his actions atone for his earlier inactions? Could anything ever atone for not having seen through Hitler and opposing Naziism from the start? For those discussion reasons, I think it’s important to keep the poem attributed to Niemöller. The facts of his life, his times, and his creation of this poem, go beyond anything anyone could make up. The real story sheds light.

Resources:

Noted here last February.

Save

Save

Save

1 Comment | 1941-1945, Dissent, Famous quotes, History, Holocaust, Literature, Poetry, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »