Of the many myths told about American slavery, one of the
biggest is that it was an archaic practice that only enriched a small
number of men.
The argument has often been used to diminish the scale of
slavery, reducing it to a crime committed by a few Southern planters,
one that did not touch the rest of the United States. Slavery, the
argument goes, was an inefficient system, and the labor of the enslaved
was considered less productive than that of a free worker being paid a
wage. The use of enslaved labor has been presented as premodern, a
practice that had no ties to the capitalism that allowed America to
become — and remain — a leading global economy.
But as with so many stories about slavery, this is untrue.
Slavery, particularly the cotton slavery that existed from the end of
the 18th century to the beginning of the Civil War, was a thoroughly
modern business, one that was continuously changing to maximize profits.
To grow the cotton that would clothe the world and fuel
global industrialization, thousands of young enslaved men and women —
the children of stolen ancestors legally treated as property — were
transported from Maryland and Virginia hundreds of miles south, and
forcibly retrained to become America’s most efficient laborers. As they were pushed into the expanding territories of Mississippi and Louisiana,
sold and bid on at auctions, and resettled onto forced labor camps,
they were given a task: to plant and pick thousands of pounds of cotton.
The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset, and they were forced to maintain America’s most exported commodity. In 60 years, from 1801 to 1862, the amount of cotton picked daily by an enslaved person increased 400 percent. The profits from cotton
propelled the US into a position as one of the leading economies in the
world, and made the South its most prosperous region. The ownership of
enslaved people increased wealth for Southern planters so much that by
the dawn of the Civil War, the Mississippi River Valley had more
millionaires per capita than any other region.
In recent years, a growing field of scholarship has
outlined how America — through the country’s geographic growth after the
American Revolution and enslavers’ desire for increased cotton
production — created a complex system aimed at monetizing and maximizing
the labor of the enslaved. In the cotton fields of the Deep South, this
system rested on the continuous threat of violence and a meticulous use
of record-keeping. The labor of each person was tracked daily, and
those who did not meet their assigned picking goals were beaten. The
best workers were beaten as well, the whip and other assaults coercing
them into doing even more work in even less time.
Read that again:
The
best workers were beaten as well,
As overseers and plantation owners managed a forced-labor
system aimed at maximizing efficiency, they interacted with a network
of bankers and accountants, and took out lines of credit and mortgages,
all to manage America’s empire of cotton. An entire industry, America’s
first big business, revolved around slavery.
“The slavery economy of the US South is deeply tied
financially to the North, to Britain, to the point that we can say that
people who were buying financial products in these other places were in
effect owning slaves, and were extracting money from the labor of
enslaved people,” says Edward E. Baptist, a historian at Cornell
University and the author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.
This makes me want to teach Early Modern History again...
I love our river. It is ours not because we live on it (we don’t), or
because we covet ownership of a beauty spot, but because this water
flows through our family life. Our stretch of river lies between London
and Oxford; it is technically the Thames and not quite the Isis; it is a
gentle roar, a rushing calm, a city-country icon that feels deeply
personal.
When I first moved to our south Oxfordshire hamlet, 16 years ago, the
river’s appeal was clear: every yard of it is picture perfect. Cross
the weir, past the mill house and over the lock, past the weeping
willow. Walk on with fields to your right and the river to your left,
fringed by greenery that is mature yet exuberant (like many of the
locals) and tiny beaches where anglers sit, nodding away the dogs who
come sniffing at their bait.
I go in the water whenever the mood takes me: I have dunked myself to
chill out a fraught afternoon and to commune with the dawn. I have been
in with boat-weary friends, my husband, and – ill-advised, of course –
alone (usually an angler is within shouting distance). To have a regular
routine would kill the magic for me. The impulse, like the water, must
be wild and free. When I do go in, it is always in summer – I marvel at
those with hardy, moon-white bodies who smear themselves in goose fat
and launch into wintry seas. I will never be one of their number. Even
in a heatwave I mince in, arms bent and aloft, waiting for the cold
water to stun my broiling core. Waist depth is optimum; I feel freed but
embraced; I think about dipping my head under for a while. No earrings,
no watch, offline. I’m ready.
I emerge each time alive but more so, skin teased and tingling,
braids dripping, my mind washed of dark clutter; I am, if not quite
reborn, then absolved by unseen river gods for as long as the water
drips down my calves. Our river restores, rewarding even the most timid
dip with cool inspiration. And so, in I go.
Today on CBC Radio's comedy show "The Debaters" was in Calgary, and much of the debate was on the desirability of building a new arena. Big issue in that city.
One question thrown out to one of the debaters was to finish a famous quote by Montreal mayor Jean
Drapeau in his promotion of the 1972 Olympics:
"The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby."
Of course the Montreal Olympics lost millions. And just about everyone quoted Drapeau if they had any motivation to oppose a sports boondogle.
I was surprised, then, that the Calgary crowd didn't react at all.
Of course, these were Albertans being indifferent to Quebec; and I think the Debaters appeals to a younger crowd; and by no means do I count as young.
But it is another lesson in the dangers of assuming you know that "everybody" knows what you know, even recent historical events.
I'm just now watching an entertaining Korean mini-series on Netflix, Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung. It is not exactly easy to follow, but not hopelessly obscure, either.
Goo (Lady? or is that her family name?) Hae-Ryung is a young noblewoman sometime in the early modern period (at a guess). She loves literature, Korean, Chinese and European. She may also be Maehwa, the author of the latest fad in Korean romance novels. Or maybe it's the young prince second in line to the throne who is Maewha. The Korean state at this time works like the Chinese system. Applicants for government jobs study classic literature and write exams based on that material. The highly-educated office holders look down on the material written in Korean alphabets, on Korean novels, and on the people who read them. Goo Hae-Ryung is a promoter of popular literature. Lots of teenage girls are crazy for romances and when they hear that Maehwa is going to sign copies of his/her most recent book they practically riot. The royal councillors decide to repress this "movement" by recruiting female historians OR forbidding the recruiting of female historians. The King, who has been the target of bureaucratic criticism, takes the opportunity to open history offices to young women...Of course the male historians resist...
I am liking this series for its cinematography and the humorous depiction of character. The music's good, too, which you might expect at a time when South Korea is strutting on the world music stage.
If you by chance run into me in person, I'll tell you both my Korean bureacrats' story and my De militarized Zone (DMZ) story.
Last month I was talking about fanfic, Byzantium, Byzantine literature and such. I was inspired by an the Tor.com site article related to Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, where the author talked in a very interesting way about the relationship between fan fiction and Byzantine literature.
Well, I got the book from my local library and I am reading it now. Is it good?
Gary
Duncan, a guitarist and singer for Quicksilver Messenger Service, an
electrifying mainstay of the San Francisco psychedelic scene that
rivaled Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead in the late 1960s, died
June 29 at a hospital in Woodland, Calif. He was 72.
His
wife, Dara Love Duncan, said he had fallen 10 days earlier and suffered
a seizure and cardiac arrest before being taken off life support.
Formed
in California in 1965, Quicksilver Messenger Service helped create the
“San Francisco sound,” fusing rock, blues, folk and jazz in a luminous
blend that made them a staple of venues like the Fillmore, Avalon
Ballroom and California Hall, where the air was filled with the smells
of incense, marijuana and patchouli.
“You listen
to these records and they take you back to a simpler time,” Rusty
Goldman, a friend of Mr. Duncan’s and rock archivist known as Professor
Poster, said in a phone interview. “Their music was pure. Everyone
always left their shows feeling high on the music as well as whatever
else they ingested.”
Mr.
Duncan was not yet 20 when he joined Quicksilver Messenger Service and
began making loose, heavily improvised music with drummer Greg Elmore,
bassist David Freiberg and fellow guitarist John Cipollina, with whom he
developed a complex, vibrato- and reverb-heavy interplay
For
a time, the band also featured guitarist Jim Murray and songwriter Chet
Powers (known by his stage name Dino Valenti), a Greenwich Village folk
singer who had written the peace anthem “Get Together” before being busted on drug charges that kept him from performing with Quicksilver Messenger Service in its early years.
Known
for its brilliant, drug-infused live performances, the band initially
resisted following peers like Jefferson Airplane into the recording
studio. “We had no ambition toward making records,” Mr. Duncan once
said, according to the website Best Classic Bands. “We just wanted to have fun, play music and make enough money to be able to afford to smoke pot.”
But
after 1967 performances at the Human Be-In and the Monterey Pop
Festival, where they took the stage alongside acts including Jimi
Hendrix, the Who and Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service
landed a contract with Capitol Records, resulting in their self-titled
debut the next year.
Generally considered their finest studio effort, the record opened with a cover of Hamilton Camp’s “Pride of Man” — “Oh God, pride of man, broken in the dust again!” — and included “Gold and Silver,” a rock reworking of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” co-written by Mr. Duncan.
Their
follow-up, “Happy Trails” (1969), was described by Rolling Stone as
“the definitive live recording of the late-Sixties ballroom experience,”
and ranked No. 189 on the magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums. Featuring extended jams built around the Bo Diddley
songs “Who Do You Love?” and “Mona,” as well as Duncan compositions
including “Cavalry,” it showed “that psychedelia was about more than
just tripping out,” Rolling Stone wrote.
Notable deaths in 2019: Doris Day, Tim Conway, I.M. Pei and others we have lost this year
View Photos
Remembering those who have died in 2019.
Offstage,
band members lived at “a commune in Marin County where all manner of
musicians, old ladies with babies, dope dealers and human driftwood
coalesced into a barely functioning whole,” according to “A Perfect
Haze,” a history of the Monterey Pop Festival by Harvey and Kenneth
Kubernik.
“At
rehearsals we’d sit there and play for seven, eight hours straight, 10
hours,” Mr. Duncan told ethnomusicologist Craig Morrison in 2001.
“We’d play ’til we’d just fall over and the hands were bleeding. I’d go
in the rehearsal place and take a bunch of amphetamine and some LSD and
just play for like a day and a half. And end up in the weirdest . . .
places, not knowing . . . if it was actually any good or not.”
After
the release of “Happy Trails,” Mr. Duncan left the group for about a
year — in part because of drug use, Freiberg said — and then returned to
record “Just for Love” (1970). The album included Quicksilver Messenger
Service’s only single to reach the Top 50, “Fresh Air,”
as well as a fresh-from-prison Valenti, who took over lead vocals after
Mr. Duncan and his bandmates had taken turns at the mic.
Mr.
Duncan played on subsequent albums before the group disbanded after the
release of “Solid Silver” (1975). He revived the Quicksilver name in
the late 1980s and in recent years toured with Freiberg, who also
performed with Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, groups whose
popularity had long ago eclipsed that of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
“Nobody really wanted to be a celebrity,” Mr. Duncan once told the website Classic Bands
. “That’s kind of like the way all of us are. Virgo is the sign of the
hermit in the Tarot cards. We were all hermits and still are.”
By most accounts, Mr. Duncan was born Gary Grubb in San Diego on Sept. 4, 1946, and raised in Ceres, Calif.
He
gave few details on his upbringing but said he was a Native American
orphan who “grew up with rednecks,” built and fixed cars, worked at
canneries, served in the military and spent a year in prison for
marijuana possession before launching his music career in earnest. “I
didn’t think I would live past 25,” he told Classic Bands.
Under the stage name Gary Cole, Mr. Duncan sang with the California garage-rock band the Brogues — their single “I Ain’t No Miracle Worker”
was included on “Nuggets,” an influential compilation of early
psychedelic rock — before linking up with Quicksilver Messenger Service
.
They
chose the name because four of the musicians shared the Virgo
astrological sign, which is said to be “ruled,” in astrological terms,
by the planet Mercury. Mr. Duncan recalled band members saying, “Well,
let’s see — mercury’s the same as quicksilver, right? Mercury’s the
messenger god? Quicksilver Messenger Service.”
In
addition to working as a musician, Mr. Duncan had stints as a
machinist, welder, diver, longshoreman and sailor, once taking a
schooner from Malta across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal,
up to San Francisco and then across the Pacific, according to a 2007
report in Britain’s Observer newspaper.
He
was also a self-avowed smuggler (of what, he did not say) and ran with
the Hells Angels motorcycle group, declaring, “They can be dangerous and
I’ve got a detached retina to prove it, but if they take you in, and
they did, they’ll stay with you until the end.”
His
marriage to Shelley L. Duncan — who wrote a memoir of their
relationship, “My Husband the Rock Star” — ended in divorce, and in 1978
he married Dara Love. In addition to his wife, of Richmond, Calif.,
survivors include two children from his earlier marriage, Heather Duncan
of Tracy, Calif., and Jesse Duncan of Merced, Calif.; three sons with
Love Duncan, Thomas Duncan and Miles Duncan, both of Richmond, and
Michael Duncan of San Francisco; and several grandchildren.
Mr.
Duncan said he began playing the guitar because it was the instrument
of rebels and tough guys. “If you’re going to play an electric guitar,
you had to know how to kick people’s [butt], because they would be
waiting to kick your [butt] when you came off the stage because they
knew their girlfriends thought you was cute,” he told Morrison.
“Every
guitar player I ever met was [nasty], because you had to be,” he added.
“I had a guy walk up to me one time and punch me straight in the face
when I was about 14 years old. I hit him in the back of the head with a
Telecaster; he’s walking with a limp, now. I done him in. You had to
fight to play.”
It was in a
union hall in Kentucky in 2014. She was stumping for Alison Lundergan
Grimes, the Democrat who was trying to unseat Senate majority leader
Mitch McConnell, but Grimes might as well not have been in the room once
Warren — the tiny, intense former Harvard professor — took the stage.
Elizabeth Warren fully intends to change the system, and says so.
When
she said how good it felt to be with working people in a workers' hall,
you knew it wasn't a platitude. When she talked about taking on the
venality of corporate America, you knew she meant it. As she talked,
plainly and without the usual dumbed-down patronizing, the small talk in
the crowd died. People stared. When she finished, they roared.
The
only speaker I have ever seen hold a crowd like that was Lucien
Bouchard, speaking to audiences of Quebecers in 1990 about the betrayal
of the Meech Lake Accord.
Both
politicians burned with intelligence, and radiated principle. Neither
gave a toss for political triangulation. Both left their listeners
convinced they meant what they said and would do it, and that to them,
only the people mattered.
If you are not Canadian, the reference to Lucien Bouchard will pass you by. But if you are and remember 1990...well, look up Bouchard on the net.
The Fast Company site is in the middle of a series on the first moon landing. It contains all sorts of topics related to the Apollo 11 mission, technical, political, and cultural. Here's an example:
Once Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed Eagle on the Moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts and their spaceship were actually lost.
Oh, Mission Control never lost radio contact with them. But NASA was never able to figure out where, exactly, on the Moon they had set down, while they were on the Moon. And NASA sure did try.
The landing area on the Moon that had been picked out for Apollo 11 was about the length of Manhattan and twice as wide. In photo surveys, it looked plain, flat, and bland—not interesting for geologists but a safe place to land a spaceship, the first time human beings ever tried that on a place off of Earth.
But up close, the Sea of Tranquility was anything but
tranquil. As Armstrong and Aldrin flew down toward the Moon in their
lunar module, Armstrong was looking out the window and the spot the
autopilot was flying them toward was, as Armstrong described it, a
crater the size of a football field, littered with boulders, some as
large as cars.
Not a comfortable place to try to land a gangly four-legged spaceship.
So
Armstrong took manual control of where the lunar module was flying
to—the spaceship computer still did all the actual flying, but Armstrong
was instructing it where to go and at what speed.
In
the end, he and Aldrin set down several miles from the original landing
spot—on safe, level Moon ground, but not where they had planned to land.
Armstrong, in particular, had studied photographs of the Sea of
Tranquility in preparation for flying to it and knew the landmarks and
the landscape of much of the area.
Andrew Chaikin, in his account of the Moon landings, A Man On the Moon,
describes Armstrong’s reaction to landing in unfamiliar Moon terrain:
“As he looked out (at Tranquility Base), Armstrong wondered where he and
Aldrin had landed . . . . (He) searched the horizon for some feature he
might be able to identify, but found none.”
“We’re so self-effacing as
Canadians that we sometimes forget the assets we do have that other
people see,” he said, speaking with a rare passion.
“We are one
of the most stable regimes in history. ... We are unique in that
regard,” he added, noting Canada had enjoyed more than 150 years of
untroubled Parliamentary democracy.
Just in case that was not
enough to persuade doubters, Harper threw in some more facts about the
geographically second-largest nation in the world.
“We
also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that
many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that
threaten or bother them,” he said.
So all that land just fell into the laps of British and French colonizers settlers?
Earlier this month I was recalling my visits to the Bay Area in the 80s and my puzzlement, then, about where the waiters lived in such an expensive city, one famous for its restaurants.
Well, I still don't have an answer to that question, but the "gentrification" (millionairization?) of SF (and other places too) is notorious. Essential California just now directed me to a substantial article in SFGATE. An excerpt:
San Francisco has also become less welcoming of altruistic
professions, as teachers and social workers are priced out of housing.
The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, decamped to Oakland
three years ago after its annual rent was projected to increase by
almost $1.5 million. "Nonprofits are fleeing San Francisco. They can no
longer afford it, " says Doug Styles of the Huckleberry Youth Program,
founded during the Summer of Love to assist runaway teens. Retaining
staff is a challenge. "We're missing that middle and lower economic
group."
Everyone has a story about what isn't here anymore. The
inability to find a hardware store, a shoe repair, a lesbian bar, a
drag-queen bar, an independent music club, the commercial casualties of
vertiginous rents.
Retail operations have resorted to quasi-nonprofit
practices to stay afloat. Beatts' Borderlands Books, specializing in
science fiction, mystery, fantasy and horror, remains afloat through
$100 annual sponsorships from more than 500 customers, akin to a public
television station, and $1.9 million in loans from 50 patrons to
purchase a building in the Upper Haight. Restaurant owner Guerra
launched a GoFundMe campaign to help defray rental costs. She also had
to raise prices, which many small businesses have been forced to do.
Residents worry that such businesses will soon disappear,
replaced by twee boutiques of artisanal socks, rain-scented candles and
so many succulents. "All businesses that are part of the memory and
tradition and the lives of San Franciscans are going away so fast,
replaced by little hipster groovy shops that also feel transient,
preserving some fake memory of the city," [Rebecca] Solnit says.
Jamison, Carol Parrish.
Chivalry in Westeros: The Knightly Code ofa Song of Ice and Fire. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2018. Pp. 217. $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-4766-7005-8.
Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger
Nipissing University (retired)
Steve.Muhlberger @gmail.com
This century's most important work of popular medievalism is without a doubt George R.R. Martin's multi-volume
A Song of Ice and Fire and the 8-year-long TV series
A Game of Thrones which is based upon it. (In the following review I will call this work, books and TV series both,
Game of Thrones, in line with common usage). Thousands upon
thousands have read the books or pirated the episodes off the internet,
and "Game of Thrones" has become a catchphrase used to describe vicious,
bloodthirsty politics or Machiavellian
intrigue. It is now a cheap but evocative way of characterizing our
current situation as "medieval," that is, "bad."
Game of Thrones
has transcended normal levels of popularity. Readers and writers and
film producers have swarmed over it, not only demanding more of the
story but
also the opportunity to create their own versions. The desire to engage
with
Game of Thrones springs from the fact that having caught the
imagination, the story and the setting are both familiar to the audience
and capable of being added to, to suit contemporary taste. Earlier
examples are
Ben Hur, the book and the movies, and the Lord of the Rings and other works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Ben Hur made the Holy Land and the passion of Christ, a sacred
setting and story for a 19th century audience, more accessible; Tolkien
made a vast magical world by mining the aesthetics of the Middle Ages.
Martin also builds on a medieval foundation.
The world of Game of Thrones, the fictional continent of Westeros, is medieval enough to be familiar and unique enough to make the story fresh.
Jamison
is one of the many who find Martin's mix of real and invented medieval
history fascinating. She is certainly well qualified to critique and
enjoy
Game of Thrones--her academic expertise includes both medieval
literature and medievalism. The preface and chapter one establish the
parameters for her examination. Medievalism is defined in a number of
ways perhaps most usefully by Tom Shippey
as "the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods since a
sense of the medieval began to develop." [1] Of course this is a very
broad definition, and Jamison narrows it down; of the many possible
medievalisms, her subject is Martin's contribution
to the literature of chivalry.
Chivalry in Westeros
systematically works its way through a variety of issues that arise
in any discussion of chivalry. Jamison is particularly interested in
"the code" of chivalry and how the ideals professed by various
characters in
Chivalry in Westeros and the stories those characters cite in
discussions with each other shape an informal debate on the nature of
chivalry and its relationship to other values supposedly held by the
society at large. The way in which traditions
emerge from such debates, oral and written, is the subject of two whole
chapters. One suspects that this analysis may have been included for
the benefit of students or teachers who have not thought much about the
workings of literary tradition before picking
up this book. The treatment certainly is quite extensive with
discussion of many actual medieval chivalric works.
Interestingly, Jamison gives pride of place to an examination of the chivalric virtue of
franchise. For the purposes of this review, franchisecan be defined very briefly as nobility, though it might be equated with chivalry. Franchise,
like chivalry, is multi-faceted. Here it is examined in detail
because it reflects the idea that real knights are of noble birth and
have such obvious attributes as provable noble descent and physical
beauty. Of course, neither in our Middle Ages nor in
Westeros are all knights actually noble, or in unambiguous possession
of the proofs of superior status. Jamison cites many examples of "social
climber" knights. Franchise is tricky--and the possession or lack of it
is a matter of debate. Many people who in
fact do not possess basic characteristics of knighthood take a rather
cynical view of the old standards; others need to fake it if they are to
be anything more than "hedge [poor] knights" scraping by on the basis
of a modicum of prowess or willingness to engage
in treachery. The result is that chivalry, despite the sins of many who
claim to be practitioners and a recurrent skepticism about its reality,
is clearly central to the culture of Westeros. The bulk of the book
examines such virtues and characteristics of
chivalry as loyalty, prowess, vengeance, and peace-weaving and how they
actually shape behavior in Westeros.
Discussion
of chivalry is a discussion of ideals versus reality. It is in the
nature of such debates that they are unlikely to be resolved. In
Jamison's presentation, the problems
with chivalry spring not from the faults of individuals, but are
inherent in the incoherence of chivalry. It is a matter of broken ideals
rather than broken people. [2] Likewise, it shows that whether one
consults with medieval romancers, the chroniclers of
the Round Table, or George R.R. Martin on the reality of chivalry, the
same themes emerge.
Jamison states at the beginning of
Chivalry in Westeros thather interest in using Martin's
work was as a jumping-off point for teaching medieval literature and
medievalism. In the last chapter, "Conclusions," she returns to this
point--how
Game of Thrones can be used to enhance (or, admittedly, serve to
hinder) a non-specialist's understanding of the Middle Ages. She makes a
rather convincing case for the usefulness of
Game of Thrones in teaching medievalism, namely when it is done
well and the students are receptive. Jamison refers to her experience in
incorporating
Game of Thrones in courses on medieval literature. Some students
wrote papers touching on such sophisticated topics as the creation of
"authenticity" in our accounts of medieval history and culture. Likewise
students used
Game of Thrones to shed light on modern concerns. Her
descriptions of her students' accomplishments were very persuasive. This
student work sounds on a par with work that has been produced by some
of my better students when they get really inspired
by a topic. At this point in history, Martin's vivid pseudo-medieval
world can lead some students and scholars in interesting directions.
--------
Notes:
1. "Medievalisms and Why They Matter,"
Studies in Medievalism(s) XVII: Defining Medievalism(s), ed. Karl Fugelso (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), 45-54.
2. p. 113: "[Le Morte Darthur]
is not simply a tragedy of character; it is a tragedy of
ideas...chivalry is noble but fatally flawed, fatally unstable and so
too must
be its practitioners," quoting Kenneth Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2.
This post is a public service. It was copied to the MEDIEV-L e-mail list by Terri Morgan. Thanks, Terri.
A friend, Ian Steward, who does reconstruction of historical buildings
(mainly in the US but also in Europe & Canada) posted this on his
Facebook account and gave permission to share it. I believe it may be
germane to the discussion. – Terri Morgan
*Pulls up soap box, climbs up*
It's been less than 48 hours, and it's amazing, though it shouldn't be,
how much misinformation and just plain lies are floating around about
Notre Dame. As a professional timber framer/architectural conservator
with a Master's in Historic Preservation, who teaches Preservation
Carpentry and is actively engaged in the preservation trades world, I
felt the need to weigh in.
So, let me take a moment to put some things out there.
1. "The firemen did not do a good job."
-The fire brigade did exactly what they were supposed to. They got the
people, then the artwork and artifacts out, then they fought the fire by
keeping the stones cool so they would not break, and by keeping the
fire from spreading. The only part of the structure which was seriously
compromised was the stone vaulting under the spire, which was a later
addition and was heavier than the vault could handle under stress.
Especially since it turned into a flaming spear.
2. "There aren't the right trees, in France anymore" "The trees are too small"
- The oak is a prevalent tree in France, nay in all of Europe, to say
that the trees don't exist is nonsense. Also, there were replacement
trees planted during the le Duc restoration, so they're now rounding the
170+ year mark, perfect for this restoration.
3. "We don't have the craftspeople capable of doing this work."
- Stop, just stop. That sentence is flat out an insult, to myself, and
to anyone else who plies my trade. In France there is an ancient Guild
which does just this, the Compagnon, in the United States, there is the
Timber Framers Guild. As for the other crafts, they are still alive and
well, how else would buildings be restored? The Preservation Trades
Network, the Engine Shed in Scotland, just to name a few are places
where these trades are kept alive.
4. "It will have to be rebuilt to modern specifications"
- Why? It lasted for 800 years, and as I said earlier, did exactly what
it was supposed to. The wooden part on a cathedral is seen as
expendable, it's designed to burn and not damage the arches underneath.
It's designed to be repaired/restored, like it was in the 19th century
by le Duc.
5. "Lead is poisonous and shouldn't be used as a roof"
-Lead is also perfect for a cathedral roof, it doesn't succumb to
oxidation and in this case, can last for nearly eight centuries. Think
using lead is bad, don't go up and snack on the roof, otherwise you're
good.
That's all for now. And so to end on a lighter note. I hear the
investigation as to what the cause of the fire was is still ongoing. I
think we should ask Quasimodo, I think he has a hunch...
I have mused here before on how the science-fiction subculture that was so important to me in the 1960s and 70s has emerged as a very important element in current "popular" (right word?) culture. I am hardly the only person to notice this. because many scholars -- generally a bit younger than me--study "popular" culture with the same seriousness that they study anything else.
And they often do that because they are producers of "popular" culture as well as part of its audience.
. which appeared recently on the tor.com site, tor.com being a major science-fiction and fantasy publisher. Martine is interested in the phenomenon of fanfiction (fanfic).
Fanfic is a derivative (unoriginal?) art form. If you love Mr. Spock and wish there were more stories about him, and I have a great idea for a Sherlock Holmes novel that Conan Doyle never thought of, and we write up our particular visions and (usually)distribute them in a non-commercial way, that is fanfic, written by and for fans.
Tor.com tells us that Martine is a fan writer whose first commercially published novel A Memory Called Empire has just come out. Martine is also a published scholar on the subject of Byzantine literature.
Byzantine literature of the Middle Byzantine period is often considered unoriginal and not very good at all, because it draws so heavily on other people's work.
Fanfic, or close to it.
But is it inherently inferior? Martine the scholar argues pretty convincingly that Byzantine fanfic has got the virtues of current fanfic. One of the main virtue being community building.
A recent book comes to us from the Medieval Review:
Benes, Carrie E., ed.
A Companion to Medieval Genoa. Brill's Companions to European History, 15. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xxvii, 560. $229.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-36061-7.
And the first paragraph makes it sound so, so attractive:
On page one of chapter
seventeen, entitled "Genoa and the Crusade," author Merav Mack argues
that "Genoese history is a narrative not of one city but of distant but
closely-linked parts of the Mediterranean"
(471). Although this statement appears near the collection's end, it
neatly encapsulates editor Carrie Benes's vision throughout
A Companion to Medieval Genoa, a work that emphasizes connections
between the Genoese local and remote, comprehensively fleshed out in
the book's maps, figures, glossary, and eighteen essay-length chapters.
Now in real life, I could never afford this -- well, maybe if I studied Italy-- but I admire the editor and the article authors for the ambition of their enterprise. In a different lifetime I might have written works that emphasized connections "of distant but closely-linked parts" of the Mediterranean and other regions.
But the real story, as far as I am concerned is the grown-up emphasis in the historical presentation, particularly on the French side, as reported by the BBC.
When the old museum opened on the site in 2001, its exhibition boards said 9,000 English soldiers fought 30,000 French at Agincourt.
The new centre, expected to open in the autumn, will reduce these figures to 8,500 English and 12,500 French.
It's still an upset, but a long way from Shakespeare's underdog story of Englishmen outnumbered five to one.
Before diehard fans of Henry V cry foul, Mr Gilliot [the museuum director]says the numbers were agreed in consultation with historians from England and France.
They are based on research by Professor Anne Curry of the University of Southampton, who studied financial records at the National Archives in London.
Records show that Henry V took 12,000 men with him when he set out from Southampton and left many of them behind to man the garrison after an earlier victory at the port of Harfleur.
Prof Curry says her findings are respected by medieval historians, but unpopular with some English fans of the Agincourt story.
Chain mail to hate mail
"I've had hate mail and trolling and I've been astonished how seriously people take these things," she said.
Prof Curry thinks this can partly be explained by how Agincourt is seen in England in patriotic terms.
When she attended the 600th anniversary of the battle in 2015, people came draped in St George's flags.
There is a sense of "how we have fended off France in the past", she said.
Prof Curry believes Agincourt's myths persist in part because so many people claim to be descended from soldiers who fought there.
Unsurprisingly, her research on the size of the armies has not faced resistance in France.
But regardless of the troop tallies, it still seems surprising that the French national and regional governments are investing so heavily in a lost battle.
'Just history'
But Mr Gilliot says patriotism in France is "different".
"We had the revolution in 1789, and since this period we don't really care whether a battle was lost or won by what we call the 'ancien regime'," he said.
"It is just history."
Mr Gilliot says the level of knowledge of this historical period differs between French and English visitors.
"We are very surprised that a lot of English people know their national history very well and sometimes we have visitors who are descended from a nobleman who participated in the battle," he said.
"English people want to know where the castle was that Shakespeare describes in his play, or to visit the battlefield.
For the French visitors, the questions are very different, they often ask who won the Hundred Years War. We are seeing that the Medieval period is not really covered in schools in France." 'No boasting'
But he has never met English visitors boasting about the result.
"Our English visitors are very respectful, interested and well-educated, and they sometimes help us by pointing out problems in our translations," he said.
I don't know anything about the Turkish film industry, but since I started to follow the movie Resurrection Ertugrul on Netflix I have begun to suspect that the best Turkish films, at least, must be very good indeed.
Turkmen is the name given to ethnic Turks who live a cattle-herding, nomadic style. This movie (actually a long-running serial) is about a tribe of Turkmens, the Kiya, and their trials and tribulations in the early 13th century. The movie is classic good-guy v. bad-guy stuff. The good guys are led by Ertugrul, a strong, silent type who stands for a virtuous life led according to tribal custom. The bad guys are just about everybody else -- Seljuks, Ertugrul's brother (at least some of the time), scheming Kiya women looking for a good marriage, the Knights Templar. Most of these people don't give a hang about antique virtue. They just want a good war that they can profit from, or vengeance.
This lauding of the virtuous, represented by the figure of the nomad reminds me of the movie Mongol which I blogged about maybe ten years ago. In that movie Genghis was the only guy playing by the rules. Everyone else was just waiting for a chance to stab him in the back, enslave his wife, etc.
Resurrection Ertugrul and Mongol have something else in common. They are really good.
Resuurection Ertugrul has it all. Lots of horses. Huge skyscapes. Great fighting sequences. A world-famous Sufi scholar who leads the good nomads in singing prayer-circles (the music is awesome).
A remarkable feature of the series is the rather minimal dialogue. People say something, assume an expression, and the audience is given time to absorb the significance of what has been said. It reminded me of opera, in which the songs make an emotional point, rather than building a narrative. The narrative gets built anyway, and it's not so hard to follow.
I wondered after about 10 episodes, what the directors would do if they decided to do a big series on the Round Table. It might be really cool.
