Santa Fe Opera Notes

Back from Santa Fe; we caught three shows in three days: Marriage of Figaro; Falstaff; and (Handel's) Radamisto. We missed Billy Budd which, if you believe the lobby chatter, may be the hit of the season: surprising to me because I have sometimes suspected that I am the only person on the planet who actually likes Billy Budd. Evidently I need to get out more.

It's no disrespect to Santa Fe to say that Figaro is an opera that's hard to screw up: there is so much glorious invention here, and so much affability, and so much cheerful comedy, that something will survive even the limpest efforts. Indeed when you stop and think about it, the plot is pretty shambolic; tighter editing could have wound it all up in the third act. But there is so much to enjoy here that you forget all about that looseness as you kick back. In any event Santa Fe wasn't limp at all; it was buoyant and energetic altogether a delightful way to spend an evening. But who would have thought that you could have a Figaro carried by Count Almaviva? He's the villain of course, but a somewhat austere and off-putting villain, not one possessed of the malign magnetism of a Scarpio or an Iago. Mariusz Kwiecien (who? Oh, that guy.) brings it off: he's aggressive and dynamic and at home with himself--so much so that you forget that his character is mostly a rat.

I guess that Falstaff has long been a kind of favorite of mine, perhaps because it was the first opera I ever saw, back when I was 17, long before I had the least notion what it or any other opera was about. There's just an amazing amount of musical material here, almost as if Verdi, closing in on 80, felt he had to dump everything left in the trunk. In this light, people speak of Falstaff as a kind of valediction: a summing up, replete with mellow wisdom. But there is a problem here: strip off all the filigree, and you have to concede that Falstaff is one long, unkind--read "nasty"-- practical joke. It seems to me this is an issue with any production of Falstaff but for some reason, it seemed to come across more clearly in Santa Fe's setting than I've ever seen it before. It might be Falstaff himself: he is a vain, greedy, lecherous, old fool, of course, but in this production he's also a bit ridiculous: a more constrained putdown would seem a lot more appropriate than an extended and mean-spirited prank. And it might be the production: I remember seeing a Falstaff at the NYC Opera a few years back (I can't remember any names) which somehow sussed bits of darkness and melancholy behind the plot--altogether richer and more convincing.

I'm a big Handel fan, and I had never seen Radamisto before. On the whole, you'd have to say it was time well spent: great performance by David Daniels (the marquee name on this summer's Santa Fe card) with a good supporting cast. But Luca Pisaroni as the villain may have stolen the show. Remarkably: Pisaroni had played Figaro just two nights before: he was a good Figaro and he had a good comic sense, but he has perhaps a bit too much natural dignity for a role that almost requires Phil Silvers. In a posture of villainy, Handel gave him every opportunity to strut his stuff, and he rose to the occasion.

Opera insiders, by the way, seem to be treating this Radamisto as a showcase for the director, David Alden, "known" as Wiki says "for his post-modernist settings" (link). Well, whatever. Handel does present a challenge to the director, and the tendency today seems to be to declare tht all bets are off: nothing is too lurid, too excessive, too campy too--oh, go ahead and say it--to operatic for a Handel production. I guess you'd have to say that it didn't get in the way.

Biographies, Heavy and Otherwise

I see there is a new biography of Raymond Williams, the British critic (link). This is volume I; it stops somewhere short of his 40th birthday. I am an admirer of Raymond Williams (at least what he wrote before the critical wheels fell off) but--another volume? The only defense for this sort of thing is that everybody does it. Blame it on Boswell: since he initiated the genre with his Life of Johnson, any biographer has felt privileged, if he likes to write a life of his subject as long as the life itself.

It need not be so. There are counter-examples, and I wonder in particular if there has ever been a more effective short biography than Felix Markham on Napoleon? In 252 pages (not counting support material), Markham wraps up what may have been the busiest, most eventful career in modern history--and does it in a manner not only briskly readable, but to all appearances well-informed and critically detached. And he doesn't seem to strain: he finds time to tell us where and when Napoleon saw his first performance of Don Giovanni; he tells us how the Russian general Kutusov rebuked an underling for making light of his great adversary, and he records the spare, chilling log entry on the death of Lord Nelson (see infra). Oh, and he includes a final chapter (12 pages) on "The Napoleon Legend."

My copy is a Mentor paperback that dates from 1966 (and it seems to be still in print, with the same cover (link)); the original appears to date to 1963. For a sample of here is Markham discussing Napoleon's relationship with his family:

If they lacked Napoleon's ability, they were liberally endowed with individuality, self-will, and ambition; and they were seldom over-awed by their illustrious brother Their grumblings, their sulks, and their demands so exasperated Napoleon that he complained 'From the way they talk, one would think that I had mismanaged our father's inheritance.' It is true that Joseph, made first King of Naples and then of Spain, Louis, King of Holland, and Jerome, King of Westphalia, were put in an impossible position wjhen they found they were epected to obey orders like Napoleon's Prefects; but it cannot be said that they deserved their positions on their merits.

--Felix Markham, Napoleon 144 (1966)

Markham is distinctive, but probably not unique--not quite as good, but certainly in the same league--would be Duff Cooper's biography of Talleyrand (link). If Napoleon's is the busiest life in modern history, then Talleyrand might well be second. Ironic that Napoleon and Talleyrand together wind up witn not many more pages than Raymond Williams.

And come to think of it, throw in A.J.P. Taylor on Bismark (link) and you still aren't up to the girth of Boswell's Johnson. I don't to get carried away here: I cherish every word of Boswell's Johnson, but I do remember what Johnson himself said of Milton's Paradise Lost: "None ever wished it longer than it is" (link).

Oh, and on the death of Nelson. from the log of his flagship, the Victory, on the Battle of Trafalgar:

Partial firing continued until 4.30, when a victory having been reported to the Rt. Hon. Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., he died of his wound.

So Markham at 116.

Maybe We Could Get Her to Say She's a Muslim

Cindy McCain's half sister emerges
to put down 'only child' claim

(link). Thanks, Joel.

Not Until You Take Off the Rodeo Clown Suit

Idle thought from a park bench in Santa Fe's central square. A lot of women around here who were haute couture cowboy hats, along with their snap-fastener cowboy shirts. I wonder, do they wear the hats when they are like, you know, riding the range, heh heh? A little hiyo silver along with the whoopee? I rather suspect so. Not that that's a bad thing.

Oh,and speaking of snap fasteners, Joel forwards this.

What You Learn If You Get Your History From The History Channel

We're in Santa Fe for a bit of opera. More on that anon, but meanwhile, this just in on the death of the British Raj:

You know why the British lost India? Because Churchill hated Gandhi. And the Indians said: "well, if you don't like us, then we don't like you too much either." And so they left.

Non Amo Te

I certainly knew the verse before; did not know it had a clasical antecedent:

I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know, I know it well,
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.

Apparently there is some venerable folklore here. It is said to concern Dr. John Fell (1624-1686), an emphatically non-folkloric Oxford University figure. It is said that Fell summoned an offending undergraduate in order to expel him. Fell offered to set aside the punishment if the student could gtranslate an epigram of Martial. The translation is above. Here is the epigram:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

--Marital, Epigrammata I.32

Of course it is said that the unloved Fell relented and let the student stay. Both of them thereupon retreated to the obscurity from whence they arose. Believe it if you like, but you should know that the student's name is recorded as "Thomas Brown," which is grounds for suspicion as far as I'm concerned.

Sources: I find this in Gavin Betts and Daniel Franklin, Beginning Latin Poetry Reader at 119 (2007)

A Hero for Their Time

I'm not sure you can make much out of it, but has anyone noticed that Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero for Our Time, perhaps the first great Russian novel, takes place on ground zero of the current uproar? "I was travelling post from Tiflis," the novel begins.

The only luggage I had on my cart was one small portmanteau half-filled with travel notes on Georgia. ... The sun was already beginning to hide behind the snowy mountain tops when I entered the valley of Koyshaur. Roaring songs at the top of his voice, the Ossete driver relentlessly urged on his horses so as to reach the top of Koyshaur by nightfall. Wht a glorious place that valley is! Inaccessible mountains on all sides, red-hued cliffs hung with green ivy and crowned with clumps of plane-treesm yellow precipices streaked with rivulets; high up above lies the golden fringe of the snow, while below the silver thread of the Aragva--linked with some nameless torrent that roars out of a black mist-filled gorge--stretches glistening like a scaly snake.

We reached the foot of Koyshaur and halted by the inn. A score of Georgians and hillmen swarmed noisily around the place--a camel caravan had halted ner by for the night. I had to hire some bullocks to pull my cart up this confounded mountsin, since it was already autumn and there was ice on the roads, and the climb some two miles long.

There was nothing else for it, so I hired six bullocks and a few Ossetes.

--Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero for Our Time 21

(Paul Foot trans., Penguin 1966)

Comment: I can't seem to pin down "Koyshaur," but we have to be pretty close to ground zero. We know that Lermontov was exiled--twice--to the Caucasus, dying in a duel at Piatigorsk, just north of the Georgian border, in 1841.

Book Fair: Kurp on Thoreau

I’ve never met Patrick Kurp, but I think I’ve gotten to know him over the past couple of years through my regular reading of his weblog, Anecdotal Evidence. You could say that AE is a “literary” blog, but this term is imprecise. Patrick is strong on poetry, particularly modern poetry, but he reads widely; and he is especially strong on the nature and possibility of literature, on what it means to lead a literary life. I am delighted to have Patrick here today as a contributor to the Underbelly summer Book Fair

The Journals of Henry David Thoreau was published in 14 volumes by Houghton Mifflin in 1906, 44 years after the author’s death at age 44. A century later you can still find that first edition in university libraries and discriminating book shops, where its heft and stolidity lend it a misleadingly stuffy, off-putting appearance. Its contents, more than Walden or “On Civil Disobedience,” are the essential Thoreau -- flinty, funny, closely observed, beautifully written. What Whitman said of Leaves of Grass may be said with greater justice of the Journals: "This is no book, / Who touches this touches a man." The first entry, written when Thoreau was 20 and newly graduated from Harvard, is dated Oct. 22, 1837:

“`What are you doing now?’ he asked. `Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry to-day.

“He” is Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau’s mentor, neighbor, rival and landlord. One of many ways to read the Journals is as Thoreau’s prolonged wrestling match with Emerson, his senior by 14 years. Thoreau starts, like his friend, as a good transcendentalist, an heir of the English Romantics and German idealism. Emerson was merely the catalyst; Thoreau, the unprecedented American compound. Read him with precursors and historical context in mind, but mostly read him as a word-generating wonder of nature. His published Journals total more than 2 million words, a bottomless tonic for readers weary of postmodernism. At the bottom of the year, on Dec. 26, 1854, he writes:

I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crowed just as in a spring day at home. I felt the winter breaking up in me, and if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry.

A week and a half later, on Jan. 7, 1855, he notes:

The delicious, soft, spring-suggesting air, -- how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me.

Thoreau is read as a naturalist, folksy philosopher, proto-environmentalist, anarchist, cranky Yankee and abolitionist. All are true but incomplete. What unifies them is Thoreau the writer. In the Journals you witness his evolution from callow romantic poseur to a prose artist of the first rank. Readers of the Journals tend either to favor the earlier, self-consciously “philosophical” years, or the later, more densely scientific passages. I’m a partisan of the latter, though the demarcation is never absolute. His best biographer, Robert D. Richardson, has called the Journals “a vast accumulation of fact and observation across which Thoreau could strike a line of purpose at any time.” They are the American volume to take to that bookless desert island, and Thoreau is the master of American prose, his only rivals being Lincoln and Henry James. Here, chosen at random (Sept. 25, 1851), is a sample:

Some men are excited by the smell of burning powder, but I thought in my dream last night how much saner to be excited by the smell of new bread.

Afterthought: For those not ready to tackle the 14-volume Houghton Mifflin edition, there is a crisply-edited one-volume Penguin edition of the journal from 1851 (link). Again, all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Rossetti on Mankell

Sally Rossetti has known me all my life, but I haven’t known her all of hers: she’s my big sister, and was four years old when they brought me home (history does not disclose her response to the event, and it is just as well). Sally reads a lot more mysteries than I do, and I she has put me onto some good stuff I never would have found on my own. Here she joins the Underbelly summer Book Fair, with a good word for one of her favorite mystery collections:

A few years ago one of the Sunday supplements ran a piece recommending recently translated mysteries written by already established foreign authors. The name Henning Mankell caught my eye as he is Swedish, and I have Swedish roots. None of my reader friends had ever heard of Mankell then, but I went ahead and invested in one of his books: no library had them yet!! The hero, detective Kurt Wallander, is a complex, intriguing and brilliant man. Mankell just tantalizes his readers. Tell us more about what makes Wallander tick! I began with The Dogs of Riga , found it the most interesting of all the books, although I would suggest starting with the first in the series, Faceless Killers. Faceless Killers supplies the details about “who and why” that are supposedly known by readers in all the following stories.. (For instance Wallender’s artist Father,is a most memorable character. He paints the same picture over and over again. There are also recurring characters in most of the books)). All of the stories are pretty grim with layered intricate plots. There are wonderful descriptions of the southern Swedish countryside near Ystad mostly of course in bleak cold weather. Firewall is a challenge, unless the reader is computer educated that one might be almost beyond understanding, but all the others in the series are page turners. There are 12 , Wallender is the main character in most of them, but if not he is connected in some way. Start with Faceless Killers, and in the fall of 2008 you can read the final one in the series titled The Pyramid.

Afterthought: Wiki reports that Mankell is married to the daughter of Ingmar Bergman, the movie maker, and that he is a former Maoist. His grandfather, another Henning Mankell, was a composer of piano works. Recall that all the Book Fair posts here.

Japanese Movie Notes

The crowd at Chez Buce has been watching some Japanese classics lately--Mrs. B just got Netflix. Puts us in a kind of a time warp: for whatever reason, neither one of us saw much of this stuff first time around. OTOH, it does come freighted with a lairs of advance billing (retrospective advance billing?) that is tough to get past--but then, so does Shakespeare.

• Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff just might be the best movie ever made--give me a couple of years and I'll get back to you on that--but it certainly is a very good one, well worth the watching, and almost certainly worth watching again. I gather that the same director's Ugetsu might be even better; haven't seen it yet, but it's in the queue.

• Films of Yasujiro Ozu take some getting used to, but they're worth it. I didn't really get A Story of Floating Weeds, although I liked it well enough. Tokyo Story proved a lot more accessible, and made Floating Weeds more intelligible in retrospect. I'm still on the fence, though, about all those from-the-ground-up angle shots. Can't Ozu afford a tripod?

• Of course I "knew about" Kurosawa--I remember piling into a theatre with a bunch of (other) young people to watch Rashomon so many years ago (and not paying much attention). More recentlyI saw Ran in a weirdly inappropriate little concrete-block box that passes in Palookaville as an art house. I guess I hadn't caught up with the fact that the fashionable people stick up their nose at him--all show and glitz, they seem to say, and just maybe, got forbid, packaged for the western audience.

A look at Hidden Fortress gives you some clue as to why he has this rep, and as to why it is undeserved. It's a semi-comic adventure/road/caper movie: Harold and Kumar chase after Japanese gold. Some of the photography is gorgeous (he recreates old black-and-white comic books which, to my mind, is no bad thing). The music keeps reminding you (somewhat obtrusively) that none of this is really serious. It comes packaged with an endorsement by, and a blurb interview with, George Lucas, which may or may not enhance its street cred. But the fact is it's a compulsively watchable, mostly good-natured and entertaining, way to spend an evening. Random note: any film-maker who influenced so many other film-makers must have something going for him, not so?

Surprisisng-to-me Afterthought:If there is a common theme that runs through all this work, it is one of compassion--not necessarily the first stereotype that leaps to mind when you think of the nation that so brutally conquered China. But that may be the point. Especially in Mizoguchi, but also in the other two, you get a consistent message: the world's a nasty place, and precisely for this reason, it small acts of kindness, courtesy, respect, that offer whatever solace we may be able to extract. Not a bad text with which to start the week. Note to self, go check and see what else Netflix has on offer.

Been Wondering About This...

Miochael Bronner is the first guy I've noticed who responds to something I've been wondering about re Georgia and Russia (link). He forecasts

an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved.

While the Russian “peacekeepers” who entrenched themselves in the conflict zones in the 1990s (and who will now likely resume their posts anew) have proved ineffectual and uninterested in maintaining stability, they’ve been highly successful in protecting an array of sophisticated criminal networks stretching from Russia through Georgian territory. South Ossetia, in particular, is a nest of organized crime. It is a marketplace for a variety of contraband, from fuel to cigarettes, wheat flour, hard drugs, weapons, people and, recently, counterfeit United States $100 bills “minted” at a press inside the conflict zone.

Sounds right to me. This has always been a refractory little corner of the world (but aren't they all?). The interesting thing is that the Moscow brass doesn't seem to care, or to notice that they may be in the same world.

Book Fair: Rapoport on Goldman/Morgenstern

My friend Nancy Rapoport, attempting to raise the tone of the Underbelly summer Book Fair, recommends: William Goldman, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (25th anniv. ed. 1998). The Amazon blurb says in part:

The Princess Bride is a true fantasy classic. William Goldman describes it as a "good parts version" of "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure." Morgenstern's original was filled with details of Florinese history, court etiquette, and Mrs. Morgenstern's mostly complimentary views of the text. Much admired by academics, the "Classic Tale" nonetheless obscured what Mr. Goldman feels is a story that has everything: "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."

Nancy is a busy blogger in her own right (link). Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Bitten Off by a Wooden Pit Bull

Nobody beats BoingBoing at finding weird: (link).

Moral Clarity, Please

It's a bit unnerving to see the likes of Matt Yglesias (link, link) and TPM (link) go all squiggly giggly about Russian bullying in Georgia. Yes, the Georgians have bullied their little neighbors too (very likely, although the facts are not in, with our encouragement, and at least with our fatal lack of prudence and foresight). A moment's reflection will show that there are a zillion things the Russians could have done to help their little friends the Ossetians and the Abkhazian, had that been their purpose. But helping little friends is not high on the Russian agenda: showing the Georgians who is boss surely is on the agenda, not to mention making it clear to us who controls Caucasian oil flows. For starters, would it have been such a big deal to say, "look, there's a problem here, and our peacemakers are not the ones to solve it. Help us to put together an international force to secure community integrity of these minority peoples." Charging in with tanks and aircraft certainly makes a point, and I suspect it is almost exactly the point that the Russians wanted to make.

It is good fun, however, to see the uber-hawk Charles Krauthammer reduced to sputtering that we'd better revoke the Russian's library card.

For a fun exercise in just how complicated these things can be--or for a nice abstract wall-hanging, to occupy that bit of dead space in the dining room--check out this ethnic map of the neighborhood. Adygeys, Lezgins and Balkars remain to be heard from.

Report from the Cultural Frontier

The other day, not entirely of my own free will, I went to a matinee of the new Batman movie. Somewhat to my surprise, the theatre was not (a) empty, nor (b) populated by poor old lost souls like myself. No: there was an impressive array of teens-and-twenties, amply stocked with popcorn and soda. I didn't ask, but I sensed that they had been there before. How else to account for that $63 million first day gross?

Anyway, later that same day, quite by accident I found myself watching a few minutes of As the Wrench Turns, the new PBS cartoon about the car guys, Click 'n' Clack (link).

I guess I'm a hard guy to satisfy. I found the Batman movie pretty much of a yawner; as a diversion I found myself counting explosions, and remembering how much I liked the 1940s comic book version (at least I think I did). But the car guys cartoon--my gawd, it is just breathtakingly, jaw-droppingly gobsmackingly, smug-and-self-satisfied, fingernails-on-the-the-blackboard awful.

Like I say, I suppose I am a hard guy to satisfy, but press the analysis a bit further. Of these two shows, which one has the audience as tiny as Thumbelina's thumb? And which one the size of the moon? And in which audience will you find the most McCain voters? And which--ah, you get my point. Forget about the polls; forget about the betting markets: if the explosives fan club has its way, then the Obama campaign is just totally screwed. It's an updated version of the old insight, "give us NASCAR and you can have the 92d Street Y." Except at least the 92d Street Y can be fun. The Click 'n' Clack cartoon is just awful.

Afterthought: Hey, I don't hate everything. I watch Scrubs reruns. I think Reno 911 is a stitch. I think Natalie Dessay is a hottie. And this may be the sexiest babe on TV (cotton underwear division).

Assistive...?

I swear that last week I saw a paper advertising an "assistive living faciliity." Just today, getting set to lecture in a strange classroom, I saw a sign saying that if I didn't find what I want, I should call "assistive services."

Assistive? If two swallows make a summer, I think we have a new word.

And as is so often the case, the question is--why do we need it? "Assistive living" sounds like it is the person who lives who does the assisting. But this is exactly backwards: s/he is the one assisted. So "assistive" definitely puts us back behind the line of scrimmage. It is hard to imagine who would have come up with such a formulation: perhaps the same kind of person who thinks that we should use the word "better" for stuff that is less than "good" (as in "merely better"?).

"Assistive services" is not open to the same objection. It is, I suppose, the assister who does the serving. But wouldn't be enough to say call for "assistance"? Or "service"?

Assistive. Hmph. What's the world coming to, anyway?

Book Fair: FOJ on Winchester (on Needham)

My friend FOJ ventures into a too-little remembered episode of modern Chinese history and comes back with a contribution to the Underbelly summer Book Fair. FOJ's recommendtion is The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester. The "man" of the title is Joseph Needham, author of Science and Civilization in China, itself one of the masterworks history-writing in the 20th Century. Here's FOJ on Winchester on Needham:

This book which is categorized as a biography is actually four books in one and perhaps that is both its strength and its weakness. It is a biography of Joseph Needham, a fascinating guy who lived an unconventional life and lived it very well. Theme 1 is that life.

Theme 2 is a look at China from 1940 until the 1970's. Because the hero is a friend of Chou En Lai the insights are fascinating. Much of what we learn emerges through a series of journeys into parts of China that are not occupied by the Japanese to look at science departments in Chinese universities in areas that were more free of Japanese influences .

Theme 3 is the life of a politically progressive Oxford prof who believed in what Mao and Chou were doing and may have been blinded to certain excesses and the effect that has on him. (For example he was banned from lecturing in the U.S. as a result of his participation on a panel that accused the U.S. of bad acts during the Korean War.)

Theme 4 is perhaps the most exciting and dominant one. Needham spent his life investigating the extraordinary inventions, innovations and discoveries made by the Chinese from about 1000 BC to about 1500 A.D. and translating them to the Western World and making sure we could not ignore them. This helps the reader understand Chinese civilization through the ages. This should be a reminder to us that to disrespect Chinese civilization is a big mistake in many ways.The author lists some of these inventions, discoveries and innovations in an appendix and it is staggering to read them.

Theme 5 is related to theme 1 and is the love life of a person whose love and fascination with China began with his love and fascination for Lu Gwei-djen a young beautiful brilliant Chinese student and who continued that relationship both personally (along with others) and professionally for many many years along with his marriage which predated this meeting by a few years. The threesome seems to have worked out well professionally and personally and when Needham’s wife died after 50 plus years of marriage he married his Chinese Sweetheart and when she died he proposed unsuccessfully to others.

The book is relatively short at 265 pages and perhaps that is the reason that none of these themes (except perhaps theme 5) is so fully developed as the reader might like. Still, this is a wonderful story well told and its lessons both about Chinese civilization and about how much there is undiscovered that we need to know are important stories.

Afterthought: Sounds like five, not four, good buddy, but hey, who's counting? As always, for your convenience, there is a collection of all the Book Fair posts here.

Set in a Silver Sea

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself ...
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare, Richard III

Now this:

Naked workers suspended after crowd witnesses sex in office window

The naked pair could not hear the cheering from the group of dozens of passing workers, taxi drivers, and at least two police community support officers, but continued undeterred.

The staff were from a company called Unity Partnership, which is contracted by Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council to improve public services.

Only when one of the PCSOs took the decision to alert the pair's managers did they stop.

The Telegraph (link)

Thanks, David S.

Boy, I've Sure Wanted To...

... but I'll vote with Lou Whitman (and against Roben Farzad) on this one(link):

It is hard to tell if Roben Farzad is speaking on behalf of investors, customers or employees when suggesting that the parent of United Airlines Inc. should be liquidated. It is harder still to say which of these groups, if any, would benefit from his plan to put the troubled carrier out of its misery.

Without doubt UAL Corp., United's parent, is in a tough situation. The company lost $2.7 billion in the second quarter (including $2.3 billion in charges) on high fuel costs and is engaged in an ugly public dispute with its powerful pilots union, the result of years of ill will between management and employee groups.

But is liquidation the answer? Tough to think that the company's shareholders would think so. Though United does hold coveted landing rights on the Pacific Rim and a powerful hub in Chicago, it is unclear that other airlines, themselves in cash-preservation mode as they deal with the same high fuel costs that plague United, are in a position to engage in a bidding war. It seems uncertain that United would do any better than recouping its $8 billion in long-term debt (minus cash) in a liquidation, leaving little for other parties.

Employees, obviously, would not benefit. But Farzad appears to be advocating for consumers with his plan. "Travelers and the beleaguered air-transport system," he writes, "would be better served by United's creative destruction: Liquidate it and let stronger hands manage the pieces." This too, is debatable. With United's planes flying full (83% of United's seats were filled in the second quarter) other airlines would undoubtably backfill most of United's most popular routes, resulting in little relief to the beleaguered air transport system and from the resulting delays. The liquidiation would likely hurt small communities currently served by United that might find it difficult to pick up new service if current fuel prices remain.

While Farzad is correct to note that Pan Am and Eastern were split up and liquidated, moves he says shows that "industry precedent and business logic almost demand" United take similar steps, he fails to recognize how much worse off those airlines were financially compared to United's current state. UAL, with nearly $3 billion in cash on hand, is in no position to be forced to sell assets.

To be sure, customer service in the U.S. airline industry right now is abysmal. And it is easy to understand why anyone forced to endure delays, cancellations and lost baggage might in their frustration wish an airline would simply go away. But United is not unfixable, and a solution other than liquidation -- though difficult -- is almost certainly a better option for all involved. Even the passengers. - Lou Whiteman

Might Cut Down on Foreign Wars

John Not-Edwards flags this from CNN:

Troops pay baggage fees on way to war zones:

(CNN) -- Some airlines are charging U.S. soldiers extra baggage fees to take their military kits with them as they set off for war.

Some U.S. airlines give military personnel a break on baggage fees, but others levy surcharges.

Military personnel carry large, heavy kit bags containing boots, clothing and gear. In the past few months, airlines have instituted fees for all travelers ranging from $15 for one bag to $250 for a third. ...

CNN treats this as a slander on the airlines, but isn't there a bit of command responsibility here?

John mutters "only in America," but I don't know--I can easily imagine the Russians insisting that their soldiers pay their own freight to Georgia.

Book Fair: Thompson/Gagnon on Doyle, et al.

Marge Thompson, whom I knew as Marge Gagnon, once the pride of Manchester (NH) High School West, now an indefatigable organizer of a 53d-anniversary class reunion, addresses an issue on which I know she feels deeply, in this entry at the Underbelly summer Book Fair.

Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse by Fr. Thomas Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe and Patrick J. Wall. It demonstrates a deep problem that spans the Church's history. So much has been revealed since the Sexual abuse was brought to light by the The Boston Globe articles February 2002. I could also recommend 4 other books about what has been revealed since 2002.

Comment: this item does indeed appear to be available from standard sources; there is also a preview up at Google Books. Recall that for your convenience, we are still collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Go-to Guy for Georgia

For my money, the go-to-guy on Georgia right now is Mark Kleiman at Reality-Based Community. Start here and work back or (if you are reading this tomorrow) work forward. Everybody else seems to be struggling to get on the right foot here; Kleiman seems to have had it figured out for the start.

Afterthought: Well, I did also enjoy Richard Holbrooke with Margaret Warner on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer--not least his willingness to call Dimitri Simes a liar to his face (link). Here's Holbrook:

The Russians spent two years provoking Russia -- provoking Georgia. Maybe they sucker-punched Georgia; we're not sure. But the timing, the action, the unbelievable brutality of it, reminiscent of Prague '68, Budapest '56, is heartbreaking.

And I want to stress, closing this. I'm not a warmonger, and I don'twant a new Cold War any more than Dimitri does. We've worked togetherin the past. We both share a vision of Russia as an important part of the world, seeking solutions to climate change, energy, and stability.

But this is a chilling effect. The Russians wish to re-establish a historic area of hegemony that includes Ukraine. And it is no accident that the other former Soviet republics are watching this andextraordinarily upset, as Putin progresses with an attempt to re-create a kind of a hegemonic space.

What Would the High School Guidance Counselor Say?

I quoted a bit last night from The Travels of Marco Polo on how the Great Khan chose ladies for his harem. I might well have added a word or two about the situation of the ladies, or girls, or, at any rate, of their families:

It may be asked whether the people of the province do not feel themselves aggrieved in having their daughter thus forcibly taken from them by the sovereign? Certainly not; but, on the contrary, they regard it as a favour and an honour done to them; and those who are the fathers of handsome children feel highly gratified by his condescending to make choice of their daughter. "If," say they, "my daughter is born under an auspicious planet and to good fortune, his majesty can best fulfill her destinies, by matching her so nobly; which it would not be in my power to do." If, on the other hand, the daughter misconducts herself, or any mischance befalls her, by which she becomes disqualified, the father attributes the disappointment to the evil influence of the stars.

--Marco Polo, Travels (link)

Georgia in the Shadow of the KGB

I happened to be reading Steve LeVine's The Oil and the Glory this week, just as the Russia/Georgia war flared up. LeVine's subtitle is The Pursuit of Empire and the Fortune on the Caspian Sea. It's mostly about the last quarter of the 20th Century. It's mainly about the resources claimed by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, but there are passing references to Georgia, including a brief but pointed discussion of the efforts to put an oil pipeline there. LeVine offers some useful context on the long history of relations between Russia and Georgia. Georgia, he says,

occupied a special place in Russian imperial culture. It was the spectacular playland of the czarist and Soviet aristocracies, who cherished its gorgeous Black Sea beaches and sanatoria, its famous Borjomi water, and itds vineyards, the source of the wrold's first cultured grapes. Georgia was a feast, with exceedingly varied and artfully served vegetarian, lamb, and pork dishes; the country's drinking ritusals were weidely copied, reigned over by a toastmaster called a tamada. (219-20)

It was Edward Shevardnadze, a Georgian, who collaborated with Mikhail Gorbachev in the enteprise of unraveling the old Soviet Union. After the collapse, he returned to take up the presidency in his natal state, bringing with him a seemingly illitable amount of street cred with world leaders.

Per LeVine, the Georgians understood that they faced an urgent challenge: how to define themselves as independent against their much larger neighbor. LeVine credidts a Geoergian civil servant, one Gogi Tsomaya, with hitting upon the idea of an oil pipeline. Although Georgia itself has virtually no oil, its location positioned it uniquely well as a transmission ground. Such a project, Tsomaya is quoted as thinking, made "Georgia interesting to the West." And then LeVine offers this telling anecdote:

Shevardnadze sat in silence for a moment and then shouted, "Get out of here! Do you want the Russiasns to blow me up?" The men scurried back to [another] office, where the phone was ringing. It was Shevardnadze.

"You know what? You keep exploring the issue," said he Georgian leader. "Whenever I need it, we will have it."

His advisers were not certian whether Shevardnadze had actually lost his temper for a moment or was trying to confuse an eavesdropping KGB. (221-2)

Afterthought: Taken as a whole, LeVine's book is a first-class piece of reporting, but it suffers the curse of good journalism--timing. In retrospect, LeVine's Caspian oil race was a brief wrinkle in eternity, between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new assertion of Russian power. No matter what the result of this week's fracas, it is unlikely that an ounce of oil (or natural gas) will move an inch in Central without a Russian say-so.

Apprentice: The Early Episodes

Marco Polo gives an account of how Khubilai Khan restocks his harem:

[Khubilai, "the great Khan"] has many concubines provided for his use, from a province of Tartary named Ungut, the inhabitants of which are distinguished for beauty of features and fairness of complexion. Every second year, or oftener, as it may happen to be his pleasure, the Great Khan sends thither his officers, who collect for him, one hundred, or more, of the handsomest of the young women, according to the estimation of beauty communicated to them in their instructions.

The mode of their appreciation is as follows. Upon the arrival of these commissioners, they give orders for assembling all the young women of the province, and appoint qualified persons to examine them, who, upon careful inspection of each of them separately, that is to say, of the hair, the countenance, the eyebrows, the mouth, the lips, and other features, as well as the symmetry of these with each other, estimates their value at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, or twenty, or more carats, according to the greater or less degree of beauty. The number required by the Great Khan, at the rates, perhaps, of twenty or twenty-one carats, to which their commission was limited, is then selected from the rest, and they are conveyed to his court.

Upon their arrival in his presence, he causes a new examination to be made by a different set of inspectors, and from amongst them a further selection takes place, when thirty or forty are retained for his own chamber at a higher valuation. These are committed separately to the care of certain elderly ladies of the palace, whose duty it is to observe them attentively during the course of the night in order to ascertain that they have not any concealed imperfections, that they sleep tranquilly, do not snore, have sweet breath, and tare free from unpleasant scent in any part of the body. Having undergone this rigorous scrutiny, they are divided into parties of five, and each taking turn for three days and three nights, in his majesty's interior apartment, where they are to perform every service that is required of them, and he does with them as he likes. ...

Source: Marco Polo, Travels, in a modern edition based on the 1818 translation by Edward W. Marsden. This is, or was, the translation used by Everyman's Library and is thus perhaps the one most widely dispersed among English readers. I'm using a moderately spruced up 20th Century version edited with an introduction by one Manuel Komroff, first published by Liveright in 1926 The quoted passage is from pp 125-6 of a 1982 paperback version. Here's a genial review of a more recent reprint.

Did Marco Polo ever actually go to China? The skeptical case is set forth here. Smarter and better informed people than I have no doubt that he did, but I join the skeptics. He didn't attempt to publish until years after the event, at a time when he needed the money (inter alia, he was in jail). He seems to pay a lot of attention to some things while simply ignoring seemingly important items just next door. My guess is that he went part way, and assembled a lot of traveler's tales.

He's Ba-a-a-ck

Joel reads the Financial Times so we don't have to. And adds a new chapter to the chronicle of the man who has spent the last 15 years helping us to forget that he ever went to prison:

When Michael Milken entered the federal prison camp at Pleasanton, California, in 1991, it was tempting to conclude that an era in finance had come to an end.

From his X-shaped desk at Drexel Burnham Lambert in Los Angeles, Mr Milken and his weapon of choice – the high-yield bond – had revolutionised Wall Street in the 1980s, developing a market for the debt of young companies lacking an investment grade rating and raising billions for corporate raiders who could not persuade traditional investment banks to support them. But by the time he pleaded guilty to six counts of violating securities and reporting laws, his bank had collapsed, the high-yield market had fallen off a cliff and he had come to be portrayed in the popular press as a Wall Street Icarus brought to earth.

From a Wall Street perspective Mr Milken remains on sidelines, still banned from the securities industry as part of his settlement with US regulators and pursuing a second career as a philanthropist. But today former colleagues of Mr Milken – most notably at GSO Capital Partners, a debt boutique bought last year by Blackstone, the private equity group – are playing an increasingly prominent role in finance, applying lessons learnt at Drexel in the 1980s to navigate the shoals in the credit markets and generate high returns from risky debt.

The new visibility of the Drexel crowd stems from dramatic changes that have taken place in a business Mr Milken helped build – financing leveraged buy-outs. Now that the market for loans to back buy-out deals has collapsed, the leading private equity firms have changed their strategies. Today, unable to borrow money from the banks to take large companies private, they are looking to buy bombed-out debt at discount prices with the hope that a recovery will generate their customary big profits.

“The debt market is an interesting place to be now,” says Jim Coulter, co-founder of TPG, one of the major private equity firms. “We borrowed when we knew that debt was too cheap. Now that debt is more expensive [to issue], it is a good time to invest in debt.”

The turmoil of recent months has put a premium on credit-analysis skills – and calculating the ability of companies to pay back their debts under a variety of economic scenarios is the kind of work Drexel staffers grew up on. ...

--Financial Times, 10 Ag 2008

Comment:I'm a big Michael Milken fan. Yessir, always mighty proud to say it. I haven't any doubt that he violated the securities laws, though how far his violations wwere "real" and how far of the parking ticket variety--I've never had a good enough feel for securities markets to know.

But his main crime was shaking up the country club and making money available to people with five-o'clock shadow. His main profit-making insight--amazing how many people miss it--is that anything is a bargain at the right price. So, if you buy debt at 25 cents on the dollar and sell at 27, you've made a profit.

I take great joy in presenting this argument to my finance students. Or I used to: lately I find they have no idea who he is any more. For all they care, he might as well be as dead as Adlai Stevenson. or (any day now!) Ronald Reagan.

Source: I don't know any one book that is fair and balanced on Michaael M. Daniel Fischel, Payback is way over the top partisan advocacy, but he does have a lot of very good talking points.

Sober Afterthought: Is this FT story real, or just a clever bit of PR?

Airline Stories

All too believable (link).

Truly unbelievbable (link)

Comic relief (link).

Cool Map: Geography of the Mortgage Mess

Carpe Diem trolls for cool charts and maps so you and I don't have to. Here is some good stuff from the NY Fed on the mortgage mess. I'm not sure they've got the color thing nailed just yet, but you do see information that you might miss in a spreadsheet. Example: if I read the colors right, California and Florida are indeed the capital of the looneytunes loan market--but some other states in the old Confederacy may actually be doing worse on some measures of loan trouble.

Answer to a Maiden's Guy's Prayer

I know just about zilch about Japanese culture, so when I set out to read Mistress Oriki: Stories from a Tokyo Teahouse, I just assumed that the author, Matsutaro Kawaguchi, was a woman.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Mistress Oriki was raped by brothel-keeper, then kept as his mistress before she set herself up as his successor. Now in her 40s, she is the proprietor of a tea-room and practitioner--and vocal advocate of-- casual sex, with a specialty in one-night stands:

There's no such thing as going too far in playing around with men. Isn't keeping each fling to one night, then moving on to the next, a lot safer than losing your head over one man? What's dangerouus is going on and on with the same one. You get stuck on him, you drag him home, yu sit him down across the brazier from you--why, by that time, even you would never come back!

--Id. 7 (Royall Tyler trans. 2005)

Review the bidding: sexually available, lots of action, one night stands, no commitment. And the chances that this is written by a woman are---?

Hint: If you guessed "zero," you are close enough.

Book Fair: Sachs on Menaker

My sometimes friend (and sometimes sparring partner, and sometimes drinking companion) Roy Sachs, weighs at the Underbelly summer Book Fair. "My selection," Roy writes, "is The Treatment, by Daniel Menaker, a book that I read for the first time in 1996 or 97; then last month I saw a movie based on the book and decided to reread the book: the second reading was even better than the first." Roy elaborates:

This is a 269 pg novel (novella) so re-reading it required little effort. Daniel Menaker is or was an editor with The New Yorker and tells stories, probably because of this experience, more economically than the average story-teller.

The Treatment has at least three good interlocked stories going on simultaneously with an added humorous, even trenchant, insight into Freudian psychoanalysis (perhaps at its best?). The protagonist and narrator of the story is Jake Singer, an atheistic Jewish English Lit teacher at an upscale prep school (Coventry) on New York City’s west side; he is the analysand for Dr. Ernesto Morales, a Cuban ex-pat psychoanalyst, who is a Freudian, Catholic, investment connoisseur, and a wit. The wit is expressed with a slight touch of Spanglish.

Allegra Marshall is a rich beautiful widow whose son is a student at Jake’s prep school. She becomes Jake’s lover by the time we’re 80 pages into the story, but not before Morales gives Jake a push with remarks such as the following,…”Mr. Singer – 26 years of preventing yourself from healthy involvement in your feelings and your life. I swear to Christ if Marilyn Monroe came to you with no clothes on and a wet pussy, you would not know what to do with her…” and another push close by, “So if there is Mr. Weisenheimer a rich young widow making gooey eyes at you, why should you not fuck her, I ask you? Why should you not marry her when I come to think of it? Why didn’t you mention how she looked when you were speaking of her?”

Although always narrated by Jake the story seems to be told from the POV of the analyst and the Jake. There's a large digression into “The Imponderables”, which although not necessary for the main story, contribute a deeper understanding of what impelled Menaker to write the book which first concerns the unveiling of and healing of Jake’s private mishugas and secondly, life’s unpredictable twists and even more surprising outcomes.

Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

McCain the Reader: Can This be Right?

Can this be right?

Mr. McCain hungers for information. He can regularly be seen reading newspapers from cover to cover, and aides say he embraces the briefing books given to him each night. His aides say he is especially studious when it comes to economic issues, an area in which he has admitted weakness.

--In Loose Style, McCain leads a Camp Divided, NYT (link)

I admit it; I'm one who has dismissed McCain as shallow and incurious but hey, if it says so in the New York Times, it must be so (snark). My next question would be: if he sucks all this stuff up, what does he do with it? Can you really read this much and still not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia?

I'm even more intrigued by the next comment which actually, when you stop and think about it, has the ring of truth:

The bursts of tecmper fellow senators have endured are rarely directed at his underlings. Indeed Mr. McCain has a history of being surrounded by people who are intensely loyal to him — and remain so even after being pushed off his ship.

I'm willing to take this at face value, and I'm even willing to credit a generous impulse here. But I must say the Times indirectly makes an important, if cynical, point here: be kind to the little people because they are the ones who, given the right motive, can destroy you.

The Last of the Gents

I see that lots of people are picking up on the comparison between John Edwards and Grover Cleveland. Fine with me; I've been a big Cleveland fan ever since I read H. L. Mencken arguing that he was "the last of the gentlemen" (I suppose it is in that old yellow Vintage paperpack)--except that in this case, I think maybe the more appropriate nuance would be "gent."

The way I hear tell, Cleveland probably did not father that illegitimate child, but that of all the suspects, he was the only bachelor, and so he did the manly thing and took the rap. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet recalled his canonical response to the accusation against him:

I didn't enter this race as a gelding.

That would have been 1880, or thereabouts. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, and politics has never been the same.

By the way for clarity, I see not the slightest reason to dissent from the consensus view that John Edwards is an effing moron.

Update: Larry says John Edwards is "the white southern male equivalent of Bill Clinton." I guess I get that.

Book Fair: Dobris on Cooke

My longtime friend and colleague Joel ("Mr. Principal and Interest") Dobris, offers a nomination in the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I recommend The American Home Front: 1941-1942 by Alistair Cooke. It's his last book and it's the tale of a couple of drives around wartime America. It is about as American a book as I know. On the road and dealing with problems we still have. Fear of Mexicans, anti-semitism, religiousity. Really well written. Joel.

Afterthought: BBC replayed some of Alistair Cooke's election night radio coverage earlier this summer, including his own amused astonishment at the triumph of Dewey over Truman, no wait it was the other way around. Might be still available somewhere in the Listenagain archives. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

This Just In

John Edwards to join Obama administration as ambassador to Antarctica.

Thanks, John Not-Edwards.

Afterthought: in the catalog of political apologies, I'd say this one is actually pretty good--not nearly as slimy and evasive as the norm. But may we have a little less talk of "mistake"? Edwards didn't make a "mistake;" a mistake is when you make a wrong choice on insufficient information or without opportunity for reflection. Edwards, fully informed and with ample opportunity for reflection, made a damn fool choice which now regrets. And well he might.

Learning the New Ways

Il Teatro Buce last night featured a showing of The Duchess of Langeais, a sort of a French Mawsterpiece Theatre costume drama drawn from a Balzac novella. It was okay, a bit slow, not nearly as bad as the Observer reviewer thought, nor as good as the New York Times'.

But we're Balzac fans and we decided it might be fun to read the story aloud in the original. A quick check of Palookaville's excellent second-hand bookshop turned up no copies, but then it occurred to us--online?

Sure enough. A momentary search turns up more than one version, including this Adobe file in which you can adjust the type size. So it looks like a Mr. and Mrs. Buce Readaloud first: a book to be read from a computer screen (yes, I know I could print it out, but why bother?). So it's in the queue. Behind some other stuff, but we'll keep you posted.

The Politico-Literary Life

My friend Michael offers a cautionary note on its perils:

In 1922, with Mussolini's power growing, some conservatives were hoping to derail him by encouraging his rival, Gabriele d'Annunzio, to give a speech advocating national unification. However, plans went awry when d'Annunzio was seriously injured falling out of the window of his villa overlooking Lake Garda. He was apparently under the influence of cocaine and fondling the sister of his mistress at the time.

--Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796 (Allen Lane 2007)

Interesting review of Duggan here.

If They Make Me Head of the Transition Team...

...here's what I'm supposed to read, at least on anti-trust. I'd love to see lists like this for a dozen other subjects (Kevin?) (Bob?) (Diane?)

Of course, I am not for a moment suggesting I actually intend to read all this stuff, or any of it. But it's nice to float in the sea of possibility. And I am consoled by Tim Muris' suggestion that if you're reading stuff on anti-trust, you shouldn't be heading the transition team.

I should add that I trust they will not make me head of the transition team anyway. Lucky me. Lucky you. Lucky everybody.

He Drew His Snicker Snee...

Boy, you can see why this culture is so good at the comic book:

And loosing off his twenty-four arrows like lightning-flashes he slew twelve of the Heike soldiers and wounded eleven more. One arrow yet remained in his quiver, but, flinging away his bow, he stripped off his quiver and threw that after it, cast off his foot-gear, and springing barefoot on to the beams of the bridge, he strode across. All were afraid to cross over, but he walked the broken bridge as one who walks along the street Ichijo or Nijo of the Capital. With his maginata he mows down five of the enemy, but with the sixth the halberd snaps asunder in the midst and flinging it away he draws his sword, wielding it in the zigzag style, the interlacing, cross, reversed dragonfly, waterwheel, and eight-sides-at-once-styles of fencing, and cutting down eight men; but as he brought down the ninth with an exceeding mighty blow on the helmet, the blade snapped at the hilt and fell splashing into the water beneath. Then seizing his dirk which was the only weapon he had left, he plied it as one in the death fury.

—Tales of Heikie 54-5 (1928; Charles E. Tuttle Co. ed. 1972
trans. A.L. Sander)

I read somewhere that the Japanese mine this stuff as a source for dramatic plots, the same way 19^th Century opera conductors pillaged Shakespeare.

Book Fair: Giddings on Bryson

I first met Paull Giddings 51 years ago in the city room (!) of the Washington Courthouse (Ohio) Record-Herald. Paull is on hand now to introduce today's item in the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I just finished reading Shakespeare, by the amiable writer Bill Bryson. He says up front, "The Library of Congress... contains about seven thousand works on Shakespeare.... To answer the obvious question, this book was written not so much because the world needs another book on Shakespeare as because this series does." Ah, truth in publishing! Who would have expected it?

Bryson's book is brief and delightful, but he's right: the "Eminent Lives Series" is the reason it exists. I haven't yet read any of the other books in the series, but it contains some promising intersections of writer and subject ...

Observation: The only Bryson I've read is a genial introduction to English culture, which I found lying on the floor of the front seat of a car that a colleague left with me while he was away on leave. . "Amiable" is fair comment; "genial" might do even better. Bryson is one of those lucky people who has found a way to do what he likes to do, and to get paid for it. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Niche Marketing: McCain Campaign

John McCain is mocking Barack Obama for inflating his tires. Obama marvels that some people seem to like being ignorant.

Sadly, Obama is right: some people do like being ignorant, and the current uproar suggests just how large and devoted this contingent may be.

A visual aid may help. At right is a commercial that the McCain folks are circulating. It includes what appears to be a tire gauge (sorry, the "contribute" link won't work).










This is a production error. In fact, what they want is not a tire gauge but a dipstick. A broken dipstick, as at left. Or perhaps simply a limp dipstick.










Meanwhile, whatever the McCain team may know about dipsticks, they certainly have plenty of experience with gasbags. All of which denotes the campaign market niche that cries out for recognition:

Overinflated limp dipsticks for McCain

The hell of it is, they may be a majority.

Leadership Secrets of Mao-tun

Mao-tun was the son of T’ou-man, Shan-yü of the Hsiung-nu, who faced off against the Ch’in dynasty in China some time after 221 BCE. To get his son out of the line of succession (in favor of another son), T’ou-man sent him as hostage to the Yüeh-chih, intending to attack the Yüeh-chih and expecting that his hostage son would be killed in retaliation. But Mao-tun stole a fast horse and escaped, to return home as a hero. His father was obliged to put him in charge of 10,000 horsemen.

Mao-tun soon attracted a band of loyal followers whom he trained to obey his every command without question. Mao’tun’s method included the use of stern tests. On the signal of his whistling arrow each follower was to fire at whatever Mao-tun pointed. After practicing in hunting Mao-tun took aim at one of n his favorite horses. Those who failed to fire were put to death. Next he took aim at olne of his consorts; and again those who had failed to fire were put to death. Finally he took aim at one of his father’s valuable horses and saw hhis command had been obeyed by all. Now satisfied with the loyalty of his men, Mao-ptun seized the next opportunity to aim his whistling arrow at his father, T’ou-man, who met his death in a hail of arrows.

—Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier 33 (1989)

Mao-tun had himself declared Shan-yü. Not surprisingly, his step-mother and step-brother did not long survive the succession.

The Luckiest Horse in the Fifth Millennium BCE

The subject for the day is the domestication of the horse, where and when and how and why, as recounted by David W. Anthony in his fascinating and absorbing new book, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2008)—and also a salute to the luckiest horse.in the Fifth Millennium BCE.

Per Anthony, the date is about 4800 BCE; the place is in what he chooses to call “the Pontic-Caspian steppes,” just above the Caspian Sea. The “why” is interesting: apparently not for riding, but for food—horses were big and meaty and could live over the winter in cold climates (riding came later).

AS to “how,” the flip answer is “it wasn’t easy,” which is not surprising when you stop to think of it: horses—or, more precisely, stallions—are a notoriously tricky lot and they wouldn’t take kindly to being stabled or hobbled or slapped into harness.

But as to precisely how, the DNA evidence provides a remarkable clue. Per Anthony,

the female bloodline of modern domesticated horses shows exgtreme diversity. Traits inherited through the mitochondrial DNA, which passes unchanged from mother to daughter, show that this part of the bloodline is so diverse that at least seventy-seven ancestral mares, grouped into seventeen phlogenetic branches, are required to account for the genetic variety in modern populations around the globe. Wild mares must have been taken into domestic horse herds in many different places at different times. (196)

So much for the ladies. What of the gents? Anthony continues:

Meanwhle the male aspect of modern horse DNA, which is passed unchanged on the Y chromosome from sire to colt, shows remarkable homogeneity. It is possible that just a single wild stallion was domesticated. (Id.)

Got the picture yet? “The standard feral horse band,” explains Anthony, “consists of a stallion with a harem of two to seven mares and their immature offspring.”

Mares are…instinctively disposed to accept the dominance of others, whether dominant mares, stallions—or humans. Stallions are headstrong and violent, and are instinctively disposed to challenge authority by biting and kicking. … [A] relatively docile and controllable stallion was an unusual individual—and one that had little hope of reproducing in the wild. Horse domestication might have depended on a lucky coincidence: the appearance of a relatively manageable and docile male in a place where humans could use him as a breeder of a domesticated bloodline. From the horse’s perspective, humans were the only way he could get a girl. From the human perspective, he was the only sire they wanted. (197)

So here’s to you, Mr. Lucky, the granddaddy of them all.

Afterthought: Anthony’s book is a rewarding read but it’s hard to figure out just who is his target audience. He seems to have written at least three books here—the horse, the wheel, and language—or maybe six—one set each for specialists and non-specialists. The nonspecialist (that would be me) will get a lot out of it, but he’ll find himself skipping a lot of the detail. The specialist—well, my impression is that nothing is ever settled in archaeology, so I suspect there are plenty of specialists ready to prove to me that he’s full of something horsey.

Back from Computer Hell Purgatory

Bleah, that was tiring--I spent most of the day trying to disentangle myself from a particularly unfreindly little piece of malware called, I think, AntiVrius 2008 which seems to have trotted in last night on the heels of a CNN download and spent interminable hours telling me I wanted to pay beaucoup bucks to buy their product. Yes, I do have security but it wiggled its way in anyway somehow. It eluded several protection programs but Sophos finally put it in quarantine from where, it is piously to be hoped, I can boot it into outer space.

Update: Ooow! Looks like i got nailed by a real one. [Q--How could be so stupid? A--Oh, get off your high horse, something will catch you someday, too. Anyway, this one was really good.]

Niche Markets: Prison Services Again

Ignoto, who alerted us on the market for goodie bags for prisoners, now points to this.

What Part of "Nine Sacks of Ears" Don't You Understand?

One of the central issues of information economics is the problem of “signaling”—how and when can you deliver an assurance to your bargaining partner that your message is accurate and reliable? At the Battle of Liegnitz in Silesia on April 9, 1241, the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan seem to have come up with a workable solution:

In this horrific battle the Mongols defeated the Europeans completely—on their own terms—and virtually annihilatd them. Duke Henry [Henry II the Pious of Silesia] was killed trying to escape with a handful of men, and the Mongols sent nine sacks of ears to [their commanders] Batu and Subotai in Hungary to show them the extent of their victory.

So Erik Hildinger in Warriors of the Steppe (1997) at 144. Hildinger adds that “Duke Henry’s head was set on a pike and displayed befor the walls of Liegnitz,” which is a gesture with a certain signaling value all its own.

Note on My First Love (or One of Them)

Hey’ here’s a find: Palookaville’s finest used bookstore just yielded up a copy of Speak Low (When You Speak Love) (1996), the large and lovingly edited collection of letters between Kurt Weill and Lotta Lenya. It’s a twofer: a monument to their affection for (and long attachment to) each other, and a kind of a mini-history of 20^th Century musical theatre.

I can remember being electrified by my first hearing of Weill’s September Song, in a movie about 1952 (and being aware of the irony that the lyrics had just about zero to do with the life of a 16-year-old). And just a few years later Threepenny Opera emerged one of the first pieces of grownup music I ever really enjoyed or understood—I liked it so much that I even acquired a copy of Dreigroschenoper, the German original.

I was tempted to spring for a copy of the letters when UC Press brought it out in 1996 but it seemed like a bit of an indulgence: less of an indulgence today at half of face price, and in depreciated dollars (but quaere, do I still want it as much now as I did then?). I accused Josh at the bookstore counter of assuming that he would never sell it, but Josh was noncommital: he has long since learned the first rule of retail book sales, which is never, ever, comment on the customer’s taste.

Read the jacket notes and you can see that this was the labor of a lifetime for Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke, the editors. The book cries out for excerpting, but I think I’ll wait until I hit on something sufficiently special to be deserving.

Book Fair: David on Liu and Hanauer

At 82, my cousin David still gets his blood up by slugging it out with the bad guys who, in David's case, are usually Republican. He takes time out from his labors to suit up for the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I recommend The True Patriot, by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. It's almost a pamphlet. The authors are progressives who urge a return to traditional values and principles. They are eloquent and persuasive. Idealistic to the max. A secular New Testament. I mailed my copy to Obama with a letter urging him to adopt it as his secular. bible I now await a call from his headquarters.

Afterthought: I think David may be too modest in his claims. Looks to me like True Patriot has created a fair amount of buzz among its enthusiasts, and what must be a gratifying spurt of venom from its critics (see, e.g., here). There's a C-span video presentation available here. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the phone call, though. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

There's Still Time...

I think we could still get this organized by next January 20:

At his investiture ceremony, the kaghan was first wrapped in a felt rug and spun nine times, then mounted on a horse and made to ride, and then nearly strangled with a silk shawl. When he had almost lost consciousness, he would be asked to state how many years he would rule.

So Carter Vaughn Findley in The Turks in World History, discussing the second Türk kaghanate in central Asia (682-745). Findley adds:

The Arab geographer al-Istakhri, describing the survival of the ritual of the Turk successor state of the Khazars, reported that a kaghan would be killed when the number of years he stated had ended.

— Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World History 41-2 (2005)

Book Fair: Dalsimer on Michener

My friend John Dalsimer spent a good deal of his adult life engaged in a particular kind of good work: he taught non-profits how to keep their books. In retirement, with his wife he has taken more Elderhostel trips than any other person I know. Here he tees up for the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

It is not a new book, but James Michener's The Source is still a good read. Carefully researched as all his books were, the setting is a tell in Israel. An archaeological dig is under way and as each level is revealed, an object is found and a story develops. Michener is a great story teller.

His character development is good, the plot is fun and anyone who has been to Israel will recognize events that sound familiar. It may be fiction, but you can learn from Michener's ability to tell a good story, but teach at the same time.

FWIW, Israel is where John and I first met. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

This Just In: Kafka Salutes the Arrival of the Modern Age

Germany has declared war on Russia—swimming in the afternoon.

—Franz Kafka, diary entry, August 2, 1914.

[[Reprinted in Modris Eckstein, Rites of Spring: The Great War
And the Birth of the Modern Age 55 (1989)]

Line of the Day

Sooner or later, Wall Street turns every good idea into bad one.

That's Jason Zweig in the Weekend Wall Street Journal on "What to Do When Your Fancy ETC Goes R.I.P."

Off to the mountians to horse around with some grandkids. Back Monday night.

Making Science Fun

Larry in Underbelly's obit department learns how to make science fun:

A colleague at Yale, James R. Howe, recalled Dr. Ritchie’s knowledge of single-malt whiskies and his bravura demonstrations of the pharmacological effects of alcohol. He would begin an annual lecture by breaking an egg into a tumbler of whiskey. At the lecture’s end, Dr. Ritchie would display how the alcohol had denatured the protein in the egg white and then, with a flourish, would down the contents of the glass.

That's from the NYT obit of J. Murdoch Ritchie, Yale biophysicist.

The Trans-Asian Turkish Bus

Martin Malia (or maybe it was Terrence Emmons) saw revolution as the locomotive of history. In The Turks in World History, Carter Vaughn Findley uses a different transport metaphor:

I once suggested to a Turkish friend that the whole phenomenon of Turkishness (Türklük) resembled a bus traveling across Asia from East to West. The trip took a long time, and there were many stops. At each stop, people got on and off. They loaded and unloaded bags and bundles as they did so. Many of the travelers cared little about the beginning and ending points of the bus route. Many intended to go only short distances. The idea that what they shared with all the other passengers on the bus was more significant than their differences probably never crossed their minds. Occasionally, the bus broke down and had to be repaired with parts found along the way. By the time the bus reached Turkey, it was hard to know which, if any, of the passengers or parcels had been on board for the whole trip. The bus, too, ws no longer the same as when it set out. Yet this was still the "Trans-Asian Turkish Bus."

--Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World History 5 (2005)

Tech Report: Audio Economist

I met a guy a couple of yers back who owns some small banks in Western Kansas. Bob. Nice guy. Had a home in Colorado. He'd drive up there on the weekend and his wife would read aloud to him from The Economist.

Bob's wife may be caught up in the net of technological unemployment. The Economist now offers complete audio downloads, no extra charge for subscribers. I had taken on the task of making hamburgers and lasagne this morning for a family outing so I figured I'd give it as try. The verdict: on the whole, it works, although it's not the greatest thing since canned cheese.

I had a bit of trouble getting configured but that's a detail; I finally downloaded to a grungy old laptop which I positioned safely (I hoped) away from flying fat. Then I started at the beginning: 91 segments, from "Introduction" to "Special Report."

The first conclusion is that if you're thinking this kind of thing will save you time, it won't. I don't know how long it would take to listen to all 91, but by noon, I had listened to less than a third of them. Of course that's not straight through; you have to deduct for the inevitable detritus of living: answering the phone, dropping a skillet, tending to the stove, whatever.

Second conclusion, perhaps more important: I must say I did find myself listening to stuff I probably wouldn't have had the patience to stick with as a reader. Example: there's a longish segment about the new physics research facility in Switzerland; with some remarkable background on the current state of physics research. I have to admit I probably wouldn't have stuck with on paper, but with the audio, I stayed through to the end.

This is not to say I understood it: quite the contrary the mean thing I learned from the listen is that I don't know much about modern physics, and if I really want to understand what is going on here, I'll have to go read it in print. Which I may do, but haven't so far.

More tellingly, a piece on the collapse of the Doha round. Now, there is a topic I think I know a tiny bit about. But once again, I have to admit the presentation somewhat exceeded my comprehension. So if I'm realy goibng to get it, I'll have to give it a second go, either audio or in the magazine.

But for lots of other, more straightfoward stuff, I'd have to say it worked pretty well. Danes in recession--who would have guessed? Oh: housing. India only going to get seven percent growth this year? The poor things.

In short, a pretty goood way to idle away the time while chopping an onion, but really useful only if I disciplin myself to do some followup. I suspect the biggest problem is that oral is slo-o-ow. We've got a lot of this sort of thing around the house these days: Teaching Company tapes, audio books, now dowloads. Back in the days when I was doing regular 90-mile commutes, it was a godsend. Now that I do less of that, I find I don't have the kind of constrained idleness that makes it really appealing. Be interesting to see whether I do it again. I think maybe, but it's not likely to become part of the regular routine.

Book Fair: Swift on Caudill

My old newspaper crony Ivan ( Red) Swift, reminding me again of one of the most eye-opening books I ever read, offers an entry at the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

Compulsive book buyers with loaded shelves know what it's like to look for a book, pull another one off the shelf for a scan, and end up not finding the original search volume. I was looking for Night Comes To the Cumberlands, by Harry Caudill, for a couple of grafs review for Underbelly. The reason i was looking for that particular book was because in the early '60s, when i was political reporter on The Louisville (Kentucky) Times, I wrote a review of it that may be the longest book review ever published in a daily newspaper. It covered, with photos, more than an entire page. newspaper pages were bigger then.

Underbelly was also a reporter on that paper then, and, who knows, he may have remembered the review when he asked me to write this. (Another reporter on the staff then was William Greider, who was notorious for writing long -- really long -- articles. But I'd bet nothing he wrote for the paper exceeded the length of my review of the Harry Caudill book).

To get back to the beginning, the book I pulled off a shelf was The Southern Appalachians by Charlton Ogburn. It's a great book if you like to read about nature and topography and people. (I know a lot about Appalachia. I live at the Alabama end).

But, glancing through it, I saw it mentions Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Ogburn uses the words "almost unbearable poignancy" to describe some of the writing by Caudill, who I knew well. A lot of the book fits that description.

But, the last chapter doesn't. the last chapter covered solutions to Eastern Kentucky's problems. The solutions weren't going to happen, and they read like Harry knew they weren't going to happen. Strip mined mountains, bad roads, poor schools, sicker people -- not much has changed.

Comment: I remember the review, and I certainly remember the book: Caudill created a stir among serious readers in its time, although it is hard to identify anything it did to improve life in the Appalachians. The book was first published in 1962; it was republished in 2001, and is available at online retailers. There’s a Google excerpt available here, and an interesting negative review here. Underbelly Book Fair posts here.