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Sultan Abu Bakar Museum, Pekan (till the end of March 2017)
Muzium Negeri Kedah, Alor Setar, Kedah (ended Feburary 2016)
Bastion House, Melaka (ended July 2015)
Terengganu Trade Centre, Kuala Terengganu (ended Jan 2015)
Pusat Sains Negara, Kuala Lumpur (ended June 2014)
For more information please visit www.1001inventions.com.my
Sultan Abu Bakar Museum, Pekan
www.1001inventions.com/pekan
Muzium Negeri Kedah, Alor Setar, Kedah
1001 Inventions at Alor Setar, Kedah
1001 Inventions at Bastion House, Melaka.
Melaka, February 17, 2015: Award-winning, blockbuster educational exhibition, 1001 Inventions: Kegemilangan Tamadun Muslim, has opened for four months, starting February 17, 2015 at Muzium Dunia Melayu Dunia Islam, Bastion House, Bandar Hilir, Melaka. The state-of-the-art exhibition was welcomed by hundreds of fans, guests and visitors during the opening. Get your tickets now. Visit our 1001inventions.com.my website, facebook or twitter for more information.
1001 Inventions at Pusat Dagangan Terengganu.
The Tour has begun! Come and meet us, the 1001 Inventions: Kegemilangan Tamadun Muslim, the award winning educational exhibition that has captivated the world, coming soon 23 August 2014 at Terengganu Trade Centre, Kuala Terengganu
Official Launch of 1001 Inventions by Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister launched the internationally renowned 1001 Inventions show at the National Science Centre. The award-winning exhibition, which was declared the world’s best by the European museums Industry in 2011, welcomed visitors at Kuala Lumpur’s Pusat Sains Negara until end of June 2014.
The exhibition was officially opened by the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Tan Sri Dato’ Haji Muhyiddin bin Mohd Yassin, who is also the patron of 1001 Inventions in Malaysia, at a lavish ceremony held at the host venue.
Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, was guest of honour and patron at the official launch event
1001 Inventions has already received more than three million visitors at blockbusters residencies in London,New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dhahran and recently began a new European tour in Sweden. The exhibition highlights a thousand year period of history when Muslim Civilisation led the world in scientific, technological and cultural achievement – known as the “Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation.”
~ Click here for Media/Press Coverage ~
Ahmed Salim, Producer and Managing Director of the brand, said: ”1001 Inventions features a diverse range of exhibits, hi-tech games, interactive displays and dramatisation that bring to life historic role models from Muslim Civilsation who will serve as an inspiration for modern Malaysia’s young people to pursue careers in science and technology.”
From the seventh century onwards, men and women of many different faiths and ethnic backgrounds worked together, building on knowledge from ancient civilisations, to make groundbreaking advances in the fields of medicine, engineering, astronomy, agriculture, geology, mathematics, music and architecture. Their achievements still have an impact of the way we live our lives today, and also paved the way for the European Renaissance a millennium later.
Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, taking a closer look at the Al-Jazari's Elephant Clock, which is the main attraction during the exhibition (source)
Mr David Oh Seong Keat, Operations Director of Science Discoveries Sdn Bhd, said: “Malaysia is chosen as the exhibition’s premiere in this region and this will surely help boost our nation’s tourism industry as it is a unique, world class exhibition.
“1001 Inventions will also introduce Malaysians to a world of science and technology that will inspire the younger generations to become the pioneering minds of tomorrow,” said Oh.
Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin at the “1001 Inventions: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilisation” exhibition in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. With him are (from left) Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Ewon Ebin, Axiata chief executive officer Datuk Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim, National Science Centre director Associate Professor Dr Irmawati Ramli and Deputy Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah. Pic by Sairien Nafis (source)
The exhibition has been immensely popular in Europe, America and the Middle East, where a dual language Arabic-English version enjoyed blockbuster residencies across the Arabian peninsula. The Malaysian version of the exhibition features more than 60 exhibits targeting all age groups. This hands-on, interactive and state-of-the-art family-friendly show introduces visitors to the wonders of scientific advancement we have inherited from Muslim Civilisation.
1001 Inventions was voted the world’s best touring exhibition by the Museum and Heritage Excellence Awards in London in 2011, and currently has more than three million online fans on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, watching the students playing educational games in 1001 Inventions Exhibition (source)
Visitors have the opportunity to enjoy five interactive ‘Zones’ that reproduce some of the most astounding inventions of the Golden Ages and demonstrates the broad influence that Muslim Civilisation has had on the way we live our lives today.
Visitors will be introduced to the wonders of Muslim Civilisation through an internationally award-winning educational film The Library of Secrets that is projected onto a five-metre-high screen.
Told as a short story, the 10-minute movie follows the journey of young children exploring the era of the historically mislabeled ‘Dark Ages’ and this will give them a better understanding and appreciation when they start exploring the main exhibition.
Rapt attention: Students from SMK Bukit Bandaraya looking at an interactive exhibit at the 1001 Inventions exhibition at the National Science Centre (Source)
Oscar-winning actor, Sir Ben Kingsley, plays renowned 12th century engineer, Al-Jazari, who introduces the wealth of innovation and advancement that occurred throughout the Muslim World from 7th and 17th centuries.
Ahmed Salim, from 1001 Inventions, stated: “The exhibition is a powerful educational tool that brings the history of Muslim Civilisation to life in high-tech, exciting and engaging ways that will appeal to school children and adults alike.
“The positive messages of public support we have already received have been overwhelming, and we are confident that 1001 Inventions will be as popular in Malaysia as it has been in Europe, America and the Middle East. I’m also confident that the example of inter-racial, inter-religious harmony provided by Muslim Civilisation will also be a powerful message that resonates with the young people who visit our show.”
Deputy prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin at 1001 Inventions Exhibition in Malaysia National Science Centre (source)
Ahmed Salim, Producer and Director of 1001 Inventions
The launch event was also attended by Datuk Dr. Ewon Ebin, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, and Dr Irmawati Ramli, Director of National Science Centre. 1001 Inventions Malaysia is organised by Science Discoveries Sdn Bhd in partnership with the National Science Centre. Science Discoveries had previously brought several science exhibitions to Malaysia from the London Science Museum. The exhibition is open daily from 9am to 5pm.
1001 Inventions exhibition in Malaysia is sponsored by Axiata Group Berhad and supported by the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Malaysia and supported by the Ministry of Education.
1001 Inventions is a leading and award-winning international science and cultural heritage brand reaching over 100 million people around the world.
1001 Inventions uncovers a thousand years of scientific and cultural achievements from Muslim Civilisation from the 7th century onwards, and how those contributions helped create the foundations of our modern world.
Through its award-winning educational programmes, books, blockbuster exhibitions, live shows, films and learning products, 1001 Inventions showcases the contributions of inspirational men and women of different faiths and cultures in a civilisation that spread from Spain to China.
1001 Inventions, in partnership with Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives, have produced a world-class range of exciting and engaging educational experiences, productions, products and resources that are all extensively researched by academics and experts from the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation.
Brand reaches over 100 million people worldwide
Award-winning films seen by over 33 million viewers
Blockbuster exhibitions visited by over 3.3 million people
Over 200,000 worldwide book sales
Over 16.5 million website visitors.
Over 2,5 million registered member fan base
Media Coverage in 78 countries
27 International Awards
Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (FSTC)
The Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (FSTC) is the global academic and knowledge partner for 1001 Inventions. FSTC is an international network of historians, scientists, engineers, educationalists and museum professionals working to popularise awareness of the historic roots of science. By highlighting role models from the past and how their achievements and inventions live on in the modern world, FSTC aims to inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Further information is available on FSTC's popular website: FSTC.org.uk
Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives
Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives (ALJCI) is the global strategic partner for the 1001 Inventions brand. ALJCI is the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of the ALJ Group, which is a Toyota automobiles distributor in 13 different countries. ALJCI plans and operates numerous global programs, such as poverty-alleviation initiatives, artistic and educational projects and technology innovation grants, including a long history of scholarships for students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more information please visit ALJCI website: www.aljci.org
Pusat Sains Negara (National Science Centre)
Pusat Sains Negara Persiaran Bukit Kiara, 50662
Kuala Lumpur, Bukit Kiara, Malaysia
1001 Inventions Announces Three-Year Tour of Malaysia
1001 Inventions Asian Premiere in Kuala Lumpur
US media welcomes 1001 Inventions to NYC
Google presents Sci-Tech Award to 1001 Inventions
Muslim Heritage Initiative recognised at Prince’s Charity’s Talent Awards
1001 Inventions film wins at Cannes
Gold Award for Best Education Film
Visitors soar above Sultanahmet
Istanbul hands over 1001 Inventions exhibition to New York city
Seven more awards for 1001 Inventions Film
5 Golds and Best Education film in Los Angeles and Hamburg Film Festivals.
1001 Inventions wins Best Film in New York
1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets wins eight New York film awards.
1001 Inventions wins Best Education Film
1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets wins four major industry IVCA awards
Prince’s Charity and 1001 Inventions
Prince’s charity announces partnership with Muslim Heritage pioneer
Thousands flock to “Blockbuster” Muslim Heritage Exhibition
In its opening week, over 15,000 visit new 1001 Inventions exhibition
1001 Inventions Exhibition in Science Museum, London
The Science Museum today announced that it will host a new exhibition called 1001 Inventions
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Writing: exploring the world of creative professionals
Library > Articles > Writing > 008
Freelance Copywriting Clients - Are yours Peppermint, Bitter Lemon or Pure Humbug?
Contributor: Mike Beeson
Clients can get in the way of a perfectly good career; or at least that's the impression given by some freelance copywriters who work in the advertising and Internet marketing sector. Like it or not, learning to love clients - warts and all - is essential if you want to succeed in what is an incredibly competitive business. This article gives some useful tips for those on the threshold of what could be a truly great future.
Copywriters Need Clients
So you set yourself up as a freelance copywriter. You've always fancied yourself as an advertising copywriting sort of person. So what's stopping you scaling the heights of fame and fortune as a true copywriting professional?
The stark lesson is - and it's a lesson that comes as a shock to so many who are new to freelance copywriting: copywriters need clients. Convincing clients to use the services of an unknown copywriter is hard enough in itself. If you don't have a thick skin, an adaptable personality and a physical presence that confirms you can at least spin a sentence together, you're likely to have a hard time of it.
Like copywriters, clients come in all shapes and sizes. As they're paying the bill, they're likely to come in some surprising flavours too. There's 'bitter lemon', the type that that will always be hard to please. There's 'humbug' who will always downgrade your offering, the more to minimise your fee. And you may come across 'peppermint'-flavoured clients whose sharpness and critical faculties are so highly tuned, you'll wonder why they bothered to hire a freelance copywriter in the first place!
But - despair not! With a little more experience you can at least purport to be an expert - although, it has to be said, any copywriter who cannot back up his or her claims to be able to walk on water will soon be found out.
Depending on which copywriting sector you enter and what type of expertise you are offering, there's a wide spectrum of responses that could greet you. In the early days, you're probably best avoiding copywriting projects requiring an understanding of the marketing context of what you're expected to write about. This requires commercial insight and experience that doesn't come with a degree in English, useful though that is.
Clients who are used to hiring creative copywriting talent will find you out in seconds. Obviously, they won't expect you to know as much about their business as they do, but naivety is the kiss-of-death for freelance copywriters, especially in the world of owner-managers of small and medium-size companies.
Off-line or online copywriting?
Before 'the ubiquitous Internet' entered the marketing fray, an aspiring copywriter could sometimes get away with selling his or her 'creativity' - as opposed to good, solid commercial awareness. The good news is that off-line copywriting techniques still make up a big part of the total marketing mix. That isn't to say that online copywriting isn't creatively demanding. It is. But in a different way!
The BIG change is that Internet marketing is the message itself. It's an informational medium that sets out to inform. In this respect, it's more like PR. The type of copywriting this calls for is therefore more akin to a journalistic style that 'tells before it sells'.
There is a subtle difference here and one which demands even greater subtlety on the part of copywriters who need to develop an informal yet authoritative style. Many clients themselves will not be aware of the changes the web has brought to copywriting techniques. Unaware, that is, until their website, online articles or blogs simply bomb out.
Despite all this, for aspiring copywriters, the web has to be good news. It's not ALL about fiddling with on-page search engine optimisation (SEO). In many cases, a half-way decent freelance copywriter with a lively style could satisfy the needs of many companies.
The web is a massive consumer of words in the quest for developing keyword-rich content to generate website links. The need for informative press releases and newsletters (on and off-line), for example, has never been greater. Website content, articles, e-mails, blogs... the world of opportunity for aspiring freelance copywriters is exciting and full of potential if you're looking to make your mark - and a dollar or two!
Already, there are website copywriting 'gurus', especially in the USA, who could claim to match the legendary status of direct marketing copywriters of the past. And although nothing stays the same - even in the world of freelance copywriting - clients of the 'bitter lemon', humbug' or peppermint' persuasion will always be around to get under the skin of new and experienced copywriters alike.
Mike Beeson is a UK freelance copywriter, PR consultant and journalist specialising in advertising copywriting, media relations, website copywriting and direct marketing. Mike's company, Buzzwords Limited was established over 20 years ago and is located in Knutsford, Cheshire (south Manchester). For more information, visit:
Mike Beeson and Buzzwords Limited:
www.buzzwords.ltd.uk or e-mail Mike at open@buzzwords.ltd.uk.
If you observe inaccuracies in our articles or wish to contribute an article or review to be included at AbleStable® visit Feedback.
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Real and complex analysis
Special Functions and Orthogonal Polynomials
Part of Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics
Richard Beals, Yale University, Connecticut
Roderick Wong, City University of Hong Kong
Date Published: May 2016
The subject of special functions is often presented as a collection of disparate results, rarely organized in a coherent way. This book emphasizes general principles that unify and demarcate the subjects of study. The authors' main goals are to provide clear motivation, efficient proofs, and original references for all of the principal results. The book covers standard material, but also much more. It shows how much of the subject can be traced back to two equations - the hypergeometric equation and confluent hypergeometric equation - and it details the ways in which these equations are canonical and special. There is extended coverage of orthogonal polynomials, including connections to approximation theory, continued fractions, and the moment problem, as well as an introduction to new asymptotic methods. There are also chapters on Meijer G-functions and elliptic functions. The final chapter introduces Painlevé transcendents, which have been termed the 'special functions of the twenty-first century'.
Covers standard topics from a unified point of view to show how different topics are part of a general scheme
Comprehensive but self-contained, covering newer asymptotic methods to give an up-to-date view of an important research area
Includes topics such as Painlevé functions and Meijer G-functions, which are not usually treated at this level, to give an understandable and well-motivated introduction to some subjects of great current interest
'… an excellent graduate textbook, one of the two best available on this subject…' Warren Johnson, MAA Reviews (www.maa.org)
contains: 7 b/w illus. 430 exercises
2. Gamma, beta, zeta
3. Second-order differential equations
4. Orthogonal polynomials on an interval
5. The classical orthogonal polynomials
6. Semiclassical orthogonal polynomials
7. Asymptotics of orthogonal polynomials: two methods
8. Confluent hypergeometric functions
9. Cylinder functions
10. Hypergeometric functions
11. Spherical functions
12. Generalized hypergeometric functions
G-functions
13. Asymptotics
14. Elliptic functions
15. Painlevé transcendents
Appendix A. Complex analysis
Appendix B. Fourier analysis
Copyright Information Page (153 KB)
Richard Beals is a former Professor of Mathematics at the University of Chicago and Yale University. He is the author or co-author of books on mathematical analysis, linear operators and inverse scattering theory, and has authored more than 100 research papers in areas including partial differential equations, mathematical economics and mathematical psychology.
Roderick Wong is Chair Professor of Mathematics at the City University of Hong Kong. He is the author of books on asymptotic approximations of integrals and applied analysis. He has published over 140 research papers in areas such as asymptotic analysis, singular perturbation theory and special functions.
Asymptotics and Mellin-Barnes Integrals
A Graduate Text
Orthogonal Polynomials and Painlevé Equations
Maximum and Minimum Principles
A Unified Approach with Applications
Affine Hecke Algebras and Orthogonal Polynomials
Journal of the Institute of Mathematics of Jussieu
Journal of the Institute of Mathematics of Jussieu covers all domains in pure mathematics.
Compositio Mathematica
Compositio Mathematica is a prestigious, well-established journal publishing first-class research papers that traditionally…
Journal of K-Theory
It is with regret that Cambridge University Press announces that it will no longer publish the Journal of K-Theory…
Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the…
Forum of Mathematics, Sigma is the open access alternative to the leading specialist mathematics journals. Editorial…
Mathematika
Mathematika publishes both pure and applied mathematical articles and has done so continuously since its founding…
Abstract analysis
Differential and integral equations, dynamical systems and control
Discrete mathematics, information theory and coding
Fluid dynamics and solid mechanics
Historical mathematical texts
Logic, categories and sets
Mathematical modelling and methods
Mathematical tables and handbooks
Numerical recipes
Mathematics (general)
Optimization, OR and risk analysis
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The Vermont Governor’s Highway Safety Program partnered with numerous sports venues throughout the state.
Vermont Lake Monsters
Vermont Lake Monsters, the single-a minor league baseball affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. This partnership allowed the "Drive Sober" message to be displayed in the ballpark through an outfield wall billboard, as well as nightly public address announcements during each home game, as well as an advertisement for the souvenir program.
A useful opportunity to reiterate the "Drive Sober" message through college sports such as men and women's basketball and hockey was provided by the University of Vermont Catamounts.
Regional Motorsports Venues
In-venue signs and nightly public address announcements were performed at three motorsports venues, i.e. Thunder Road International Speed Bowl, Devil's Bowl Speedway and Bear Ridge Speedway.
Designated Drivers are Legendary
The "Designated Drivers are Legendary" program was also enacted throughout the whole season, and fans were given the chance to register for the opportunity to meet NASCAR legend Bobby Allison and NHL Hall of Famer Gerry Cheevers by signing a pledge always to drive sober or have a sober driver.
Bobby Allison
NASCAR Legend and Hall of Famer Bobby Allison made appearances at Thunder Road Speedway. One fan who signed the pledge to always have a sober driver was selected to participate in a special opportunity to meet the legend prior to his appearance. Bobby signed autographs and participated in radio and television interviews discussing the importance of having a sober driver.
Gerry Cheevers
NHL Hall of Famer Gerry Cheevers made an appearance at a University of Vermont hockey game as part of the Designated Drivers are Legendary promotion. One fan had an opportunity for a special meet & greet session with Gerry, before he signed autographs for fans at the game.
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Environmental Tackiness
On display this week at the ELCA Temple of Tackiness in my neighborhood:
CELEBRATE GOD'S GREEN EARTH: REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, REJOICE
Let's unpack those instructions a bit. (1) REDUCE Christ's church to a mouthpiece for a socio-political agenda. (2) REUSE artifacts of pagan spirituality, with or without sticking Christian symbols on them. (3) RECYCLE slogans and programs everybody else has seen through and moved on from, as Lutherans always do. (4) REJOICE in the opportunity to become just another part of the "Go Green!" background noise that has surrounded us on all sides throughout this year's month-long celebration of Earth Day. Hallelujah!
Posted by RobbieFish at 3:44 PM 1 comment:
Labels: tackiness
Legs On Ya
Last night I made my own lasagna, or as my brother used to call it when he was a wee tot, legs on ya. And God saw that it was good.
I've probably blogged on the beauty of homemade lasagna before, and to be quite honest, I don't do much that the package of noodles doesn't tell me to do. I must say though, that no storebought or restaurant lasagna can ever hold a candle to the stuff that comes out of your own oven. Perhaps this is because it takes an hour to bake it, so in order to serve it in a restaurant you have to cook up a bunch of it ahead of time and serve it warmed-over (and often, as a result, dried-out).
At risk of repeating myself, however, I want to plug the Barilla brand lasagne noodles, which don't have to be boiled, cooled, and painstakingly peeled off a piece of aluminum foil before you bake it. This makes the process of building a handmade lasagna that much simpler. The flat, rectangular slips of pasta are crisp and ready-to-bake when they come out of the box. The box also helpfully tells you the order in which to layer your five essential building blocks of lasagna: the noodles, the shredded mozzarella, the browned meat, the red sauce, and the ricota cheese mixture.
I enjoy making this kind of recipe, which essentially boils down to adding separate groups of ingredients together in a certain order. It's one of the reasons apple-upsidedown-gingerbread cake appeals to me. Plus, there is room for a bit of experimentation and customization within the basic structure. For example, the only herb I add to the cheese mixture is mint. There's really no need for parsley, basil, oregano, pepper, etc. Besides, your pasta sauce (which probably comes out of a storebought jar because, hey, it saves time) probably has those spices in it anyway.
Also, my browned meat mixture consists of equal parts ground beef and pork sausage, plus one onion coarsely chopped and mass quantities of minced garlic. Given a dish in which garlic works, one can hardly ever use too much of it. I have found, however, that it is just plain flavor overkill to use "Italian sausage" or, worse, "spicy Italian sausage."
My most important browning pointers? Besides, obviously, making sure the meat is fully cooked: (1) You can brown the pork and beef separately, then combine what you need for the dish and save the rest. Using too much meat can result in the top layer of cheese welding itself permanently to the aluminum foil, a major fault in any lasagna operation. (2) Feel free to add garlic to both the pork and the beef as it browns, but for reasons of timing add all the onion to the beef. You can wait until the meat is halfway browned before adding the onion. Contrary to what you learned from making Hamburger Helper, there is no need to brown the onion until it turns to complete mush. Thus, after baking the main dish, you'll still have onion chunks with a little body to them, the kind that bursts in the mouth when you bite into it.
Another trick is spreading the ingredients around so that each layer covers the full area of the pan without using up more than its share. I find that it takes a bit more than one 24-ounce jar of tomato sauce. So I tend to throw in the leftovers from a previously opened, partly used jar, regardless of differences in the flavoring between the two jars. The mozzarella can be tricky to divvy up, too. I rely (again, for reasons of speed and laziness) on storebought, pre-shredded packages of the cheese, typically starting with two one-pound bags of it and using half of one bag in the ricota mixture, then dividing the remaining three halves among the layers of lasagna as directed by the label on the pasta package.
One last caveat: Really, really do let this sucker cool down before you eat it. Having to scrape a layer of burnt skin off the roof of your mouth is not a cool way to end a meal.
Posted by RobbieFish at 1:16 PM No comments:
To Coin a Word
I like the phrase "to coin a word." It suggests so many cool things. It suggests that language can be treasured like money. It suggests that the right word at the right time may be rare and valuable. It suggests that the ability to invent new words is like the engraver's art, and that the process of bringing such a word into common usage is like the minting of money.
In the spirit of "sniglets," a kind of "funny money" as it were, I would like to present the following coinage for you to collect and display.
So, a male cat is a tom, all right? What if we call a neutered male a tim?
Thank you. No, please, you're too kind. I'm here all week!
Posted by RobbieFish at 7:34 AM No comments:
Labels: cats, language, whimsy
Which Is Longer?
Yesterday, while driving from the Twin Cities to Saint Louis, I put a burning question to the test. Namely: Which is longer, the state of Iowa or Wagner's Götterdämmerung? I studied this vital issue by listening to the latter while driving across the former. The opera, which concludes Wagner's "Ring of the Niebelung" cycle of four interminable operas, came on the air as the last Metropolitan Opera broadcast of the season.
It started while I was still well within the borders of Minnesota. It played on one Iowa Public Radio station or another as I drove by Mason City, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and Keokuk. When I finally lost contact with the Met broadcast, 10 miles from the Missouri state line, there was still a good bit of Act 3 to go. Siegfried had just perished, and I know (thanks to Margaret Juntwait) that at least three principal characters had yet to die tragic deaths, interspersed with a great deal of Wagner's passionate and yet ponderously dignified orchestral music.
The opera wins. Although the results may be a bit skewed by the fact that I broke the speed limit most of the way, I think it's a fair result when you take into account my stops to refill fuel, empty my bladder, and refresh myself with food and drink. To be sure, Iowa from east to west might be another story. But then, I've never had an opportunity to compare that drive to a Wagner opera, and I'm unlikely to do so.
This drive home struck me as strangely unfamiliar. I have, after all, made several trips from St. Louis to the Twin Cities. But then I realized that, oddly enough, I had never driven straight back until yesterday. I had either made the trip by air, or (on at least two occasions) had gone home by way of my mother's home in Nebraska. So it was actually weird to see the southbound side of my regular route. And it's weird that it was weird.
Posted by RobbieFish at 11:32 AM No comments:
Labels: music, travel, whimsy
Heavy-Metal Books
The exterminator came today to lay down some bait for the ants, who (as they do every spring) had moved into the neighborhood on a truckload of mulch and set up housekeeping inside the walls. While he was here, we somehow got to talking about books. He doesn't read much nowadays, but he fondly remembers enjoying some rip-snorting sci-fi adventures by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke. I happily gave him my well-thumbed copy of L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth, assuring him that the book is pure fun and way better than the movie. (He claimed to have liked the movie. It takes all kinds.)
When I told him that I review kids' books for a Harry Potter fan site, he started asking me what I would recommend for his kid. I asked him what his kid was into, and he said "skateboarding and heavy metal music." For a moment I was stumped. Then the ideas started flowing. Some of these are books I have reviewed, some I have only seen in bookstores and thought about reading. But I hazarded to suggest them as something a member of the tattoos-and-piercings crowd might enjoy reading. And now, for those of you whose kids also belong to that set, I share the same list of recommendations with you (plus a few titles I might have mentioned had I thought of them):
Tithe by Holly Black: The first book in a series of dark, gritty, urban, modern fairy tales.
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr: Likewise an edgy, tough fairy tale, complete with a playlist of hard rock songs to read by.
The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld: The start of the spooky, hip, slightly goth teen series called "The Midnighters."
I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak: A moving story narrated by one of today's wild young people.
Black Tattoo by Sam Enthoven.
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, also the first book in a series. I'm getting ready to read these last two.
This is just a place to start. I'm not about to judge anyone for liking heavy metal music. It's not a cultural stream in which I prefer to swim, but they have just as much right to enjoy a good book as anyone. If these books can lead them to develop a habit of reading, more power to them!
Overdrawn Tackiness
Featured this week on the neighborhood ELCA church sign:
ATM INSIDE: ATONEMENT, TRUTH AND MERCY
Make fast withdrawals from your savings account in the storehouse of heavenly treasures! Check your balance in God's books quickly, securely, and confidentially! A nominal transaction fee may be charged! Do you wish to continue?
Coming soon: INTEL INSIDE: I NEED TO EJECT LUNCH
Four Book Reviews
Arabel and Mortimer
by Joan Aiken
Recommended Ages: 8+
Fans of Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren will love this book, part of a series about little Arabel Jones of "Rumbury Town, London N.W. 3½" and her pet raven Mortimer. Illustrated by the same Quentin Blake who so memorably decorated such books as The BFG and Danny the Champion of the World, and written by the same author who gave us The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and The Cockatrice Boys, it combines laugh-aloud scenes of mischief and mayhem with touches of whimsical irony and rib-tickling silliness.
Arabel and the family raven get up to some far-flung adventures, considering that she is the daughter of an easy-going cab driver and a slightly daffy housewife. Mr. Jones likes his football (that's soccer to you) and Mrs. Jones has an endearing way of muddling up her words. They both seem heroically tolerant of Arabel's feathered friend, who will swallow anything not bolted down and whose antics would be mortifying to most real-life parents. Part of what makes this fantasy so adorable is the way the Jones family takes Mortimer in stride.
In the three short stories (novellas?) included in this book, Arabel and Mortimer rescue a lost gem, run amuck on a cruise ship, save a zooful of zebras and camels from animal thieves, and put their special stamp on the unearthing of King Arthur's round table and the sword Excalibur. Mortimer samples the flavor of a table-tennis set, a bowler hat, and a sewing machine. He tests whether a riding lawnmower can fly, whether a grand piano can float, and whether a giraffe can climb a spiral staircase. And in spite of all his mischief, he and Arabel make lots of friends. Won't you be one of them?
I haven't yet read Arabel's Raven, the first book in this series. Evidently it is a series you can join at any point. I'm not sure how many different stories are in it, since they seem to have been published separately and collected in various ways. But I do recommend this charming series of humorous child-and-animal adventures to anyone who senses the comic potential of doughnuts, nose organs, lavender paint, and a bird that often mutters, "Nevermore!"
The Tale of Despereaux
This Newbery-Medal-winning book by the author of Because of Winn-Dixie weaves together the story of a servant girl who wants to be a princess, a rat who wants to live in the light, and a mouse who wants to be a knight.
Those of you who, like me, read the book after seeing the delightful movie based on it may be surprised to discover how many memorable bits in the movie aren't in the book. The original story is much simpler and more direct. Yet for all its spareness, it packs a big message. It bears witness that, even in the world of "once upon a time," the route to "happily ever after" is fraught with pain, trouble, and disappointment. It shows the cost of not conforming, the harm that can result when a broken heart heals wrong, the rewards of courage and love, the importance of honor, and the power of forgiveness. Best of all, it has a character who says: "Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark."
Despereaux is an unusual mouse in many ways. Smaller than normal, born with his eyes open, interested in things other than scurrying and nibbling, he soon falls in love with a pretty princess and comes to fancy himself her champion. She needs a champion, too, when a vengeful rat and an envious serving wench target the Princess Pea in a plot involving the darkest dungeon in the kingdom. To save her, one very tiny mouse will have to accomplish some amazingly big things.
It's a gentle, lovely story in which each short chapter ends with the narrator turning toward the reader and looking him or her straight in the eye. DiCamillo has a way of explaining words and concepts that might remind one of Lemony Snicket, only without the latter's pedantic mannerisms. The book leaves more to the imagination than the film does, but it also rewards the imagination with a word-painting full of darkness and light, achieving the effect of great detail through an economy of means. It's the verbal equivalent of the painting technique after which one of the characters is named. It draws on all the senses. It speaks in the tones of a kindly adult telling a story out loud to a child. And it begs to be read over a bowl of savory soup.
Gods of Manhattan
by Scott Mebus
Thirteen-year-old Rory Hennessy is a level-headed boy. He has an eye for the plain, unvarnished truth. This is why he hates watching stage magic; he can always spot how a trick was done. Always, that is, until his sister Bridget's ninth birthday party, when a conjurer named Hex pulls off the impossible. Suddenly Rory's entire world is shaken. Soon he begins to spot other impossible things, like a cockroach rider waving hello from a rat's back. Within days, the familiar and mundane streets of New York are transformed into a wonderland in which ghostly pirate ships patrol the river, animals engage in kung fu fighting, and members of the extinct Munsee tribe stalk the paths of Central Park.
Rory soon discovers that he is a rare type of person known as a Light. He sees what really is, and he can enable other people to see it too. But this talent puts him in great danger. Someone has seen to it that most Lights disappear by age four. Only the fact that, somehow or other, Rory has managed to block out his talent has kept him alive until now. But the feral, childlike Strangers are after him now. And one of the immortal gods of Manhattan -- spirits from its past like Alexander Hamilton and Walt Whitman -- is after Rory's head, aided by an assassin wielding a unique knife that can even kill gods.
That doesn't even begin to describe the danger Rory is in. All he has to defend himself are a handful of the immortal children of the gods, known as the Rattle Watch; a clan of rat-riding warrior roaches; and a mysterious magician with questionable motives, served by a papier-mâché boy. I'm not sure whether to count one little girl who fancies herself "Malibu Death Barbie" as an asset in Rory's favor. For, all too soon, his adventure becomes all about saving Bridget.
Meanwhile, we readers are treated to a rapid, free course in the history of New York City. We meet many characters from its variegated history. We tag along on wild, and often scary, excursions into the past, where Rory and friends are threatened by gangsters, British troops, an albino alligator, and everything in between. A quest to right a 150-year-old wrong and restore the balance of Manhattan's spirit world veers to a supernatural bank heist, a spiritual journey, a surprise plot twist, the unveiling of a traitor, and a deadly trap. And the door remains open for more adventures in the world of Mannahatta, where gods like Peter Stuyvesant and Zelda Fitzgerald preside over such areas as nostalgia, guilt, trends, excess, wit, shoplifting, and street construction. The chronicles of Mannahatta continue in at least a second book, titled Spirits in the Park.
by Delia Sherman
This tale was written to disprove a theory, voiced by another fantasy author, that fairies never live in big cities. Delia Sherman grew up in New York City, and she knows as well as anyone who has ever visited the Big Apple that it is a magical place. If anything, it has more fairy folk per square mile than the average, in proportion to its higher population density. And since the mortals who dwell in the "New York Outside" (that's our world) come from all over the world, the fairy realm known as "New York Between" is similarly cosmopolitan. Beautiful or ugly, naughty or nice, there are so many varieties of Folk in the city that you'll really need the glossary at the end of the book.
Sherman developed this idea through several short stories before bringing it to bear on the novel. It's really a powerful idea, too: more convincing than the Mannahatta of Scott Mebus's Gods of Manhattan, more family-friendly (and less tongue-in-cheek) than Shanna Swendson's Enchanted, Inc., it forms the basis of a unique, urban fairy tale that will please folklore fans of all ages. Although the idea of magic existing in New York City isn't unique in and of itself, I know of no other author who has transplanted such a melting pot of "old country" magic onto New World soil, keeping its original character while adapting it successfully to its new home.
In the New York Between, Manhattan has been divided up between "Geniuses": powerful fairies who control particular areas. For example, our heroine, a mortal changeling named Neef, has grown up under the protection of the Genius of Central Park, also known as the Green Lady. In her quest, she meets other Geniuses, including the Mermaid Queen of New York Harbor, the Producer of Broadway, and the Dragon of Wall Street. She also meets her double, a fairy changeling who was swapped with Neef as a small child and raised by Neef's mortal parents.
Together, Neef and Changeling undertake three seemingly impossible tasks in order to get back into the Green Lady's good books and restore everything to the way it should be. It starts when Neef breaks a magical rule she didn't know about. Faced with a choice between being banished from the Park and being eaten by the Wild Hunt, she chooses a third option and goes on a quest. She mingles with selkie harbor cops, vampire actors, stockbroker dwarves and kobolds, the odd fictional character, and a whole roomful of bogeymen. She crosses paths with spirits from Asian, European, and uniquely American folklore, surviving by sheer chutzpah and the surprising usefulness of her fairy double. And she provides an entertainment full of laughs, changes of scenery, and familiar fairy-tale beings and plot devices transformed in surprising ways. New York is transformed, too. You may never look at it the same way again.
For more information on this talented and award-winning author, visit her website. Several of her stories have been published in anthologies, including The Faery Reel, The Green Man, and The Coyote Road. Some of her other novels are Through a Brazen Mirror and The Porcelain Dove. And I have been assured that she is writing a sequel to Changeling. I'll be questing for it!
Berlioz Week
Saint Louis had an opportunity to experience a rare cultural treat this past weekend, when our own Symphony Orchestra & Chorus performed Hector Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust -- which only comes around once every fifteen years or so. We had the advantage of having just put on the same composer's earlier (and more rarely performed) work 8 Scenes from Faust two years ago. So we've been fully inoculated with one of the great masterpieces of the romantic era.
What is The Damnation of Faust? It's a bit of this and a bit of that. It's partly an opera: it has been successfully staged, most recently a few weeks ago by the Met, though Berlioz never lived to see a staged production and, indeed, never seemed to feel one was necessary. It's partly a cantata or oratorio, making huge demands on the chorus (especially the men) and only four principal soloists: it works well, as we performed it, without costumes or scenery or stage business, simply as a concert work. It's partly a symphony, the culmination of Berlioz's development as a symphonist toward larger-scaled works in which dramatic narrative meets pure music: for in Berlioz's mind the music seems to have existed prior to the text.
What, once again, is The Damnation of Faust? It's partly a setting of the verse portions Gérard de Nerval's translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's seminal masterpiece -- seminal, that is, not just for Goethe but for 19th-century Western culture as a whole -- Faust: The Tragedy. That's already a pretty hefty pedigree, considering that Goethe rivals Shakespeare as a literary figure of worldwide importance; while he himself claimed to prefer Nerval's French translation to his own German original. Partly, it is also an independent literary creation by Berlioz himself, whose gift for melody, harmony, and orchestral color is matched by his literary skill in a proportion comparable to the gifts of Wagner.
As international Berlioz experts Hugh MacDonald and Kern Holoman argued in their pre-concert chat (which I heard both nights), The Damnation of Faust may reveal Berlioz at his best. It certainly benefited from its 20-year gestation period. And in last week's performance, it sizzled and glowed and bubbled and burned, it plunged and soared and danced and laughed, it staggered drunkenly and sighed mournfully, under the baton of David Zinman. This maestro conducted with a huge energy that belied the serious pain he was in, as evidenced by his gingerly way of stepping off the podium.
It was an infectious energy, too -- and fortunately so, for it helped the performers overcome several setbacks as well. Mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer performed beautifully as Marguerite, in spite of coming in as a last-minute replacement for another singer who bowed out due to illness. Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen projected an enormous vocal and physical presence as Mephistopheles, in spite of also being ill at the time of the concerts. Matthew Polenzani delivered a nuanced and powerful interpretation of Faust, both as an actor and as a singer required to hit several "high C's." Eric Owens rounded out the cast in the brief role of a drunk named Brander. The orchestra played an interestingly textured and highly accurate rendition of a very difficult score, all under Zinman's firm leadership -- which also saved the chorus from a few near train-wrecks. And the St. Louis Children's Choirs' Concert Choir added an angelic touch to the final number in which Marguerite is translated into heaven.
A lot of people put a lot of talent and preparation into these excellent performances, but the lion's share of the credit goes to Zinman. It is even possible that his physical infirmity contributed to the phenomenal cleanness of his conducting gesture, the unheard-of efficiency with which he ran the rehearsals, and the sense of heroism that infused the high points of the musical sparkline. He spent less time getting more results, with hardly any unnecessary movement, compared to other conductors we have worked with. Facing him on the stage while he pulled the Turkish March (for example) to its triumphant close was so exciting that I almost laughed aloud. And yet the range and expressiveness of his gesture, in conducting a score packed with a variety of moods and textures, was such that one might dismiss rumors that the maestro was hurting.
We of the chorus did flub a bit here and there. On Friday night, we barely kept the choral recitative passages together, due to an unfortunate lack of eye contact with the baton; and in Mephisto's serenade (always a dangerous spot, also when we did the 8 Scenes in 2006-07) a missed cue might have brought the music to a halt but for Zinman's adroitness. Saturday, a slightly smaller audience witnessed a much better performance, when I for once did not feel at all oppressed by the size of the task, and rather enjoyed myself.
What was not to enjoy? The chorus played a huge cast of characters, including cavorting peasants, carousing drinkers, chanting worshipers, randy soldiers, rowdy students, nosy neighbors, sylphs, will-o'-the-wisps, dancing demons, worshiping angels, and (in the one passage for women's chorus without the men) a group of toothless old women praying to the saints at a wayside chapel. Their literal scream (as Faust and Mephisto ride down upon them en route to the abyss) elicited the first occasion in which I have ever heard a conductor tell a chorus, "That was truly bloodcurdling," and mean it as a compliment.
We sang a drunken "Amen" fugue that Berlioz intended as a wry joke on bad church music. We participated in a truly great operatic scene (the finale to Part III of four). We pulled off a number aptly titled "Pandemonium," complete with a made-up language interspersed with a list of demons. We sang one piece in which my section of the chorus sang thirteen lines of French verse to an unbroken string of sixteenth-note triplets. And we eavesdropped on a gorgeous love duet, a gripping evocation of nature, a thrilling setting of the Hungarian national anthem, and two pieces of fairy ballet music that would turn Mendelssohn green with envy.
My personal highlights were mainly small moments that revealed Berlioz's mastery of instrumentation. One piece of fairy music ends with a unique duet between harp and tympani, both playing very softly. Every appearance of Mephistopheles was heralded by startling trombone chords; his Air is also accompanied mainly by trombones, which often volunteered a wry note or so to underscore the sinister intentions behind that charming devil. Rich, unexpected harmonies and rhythms filled the evening, including a remarkable three-measure woodwind riff that filled a rest in the students' chorus, an ahead-of-its-time passage of tonal ambiguity during the Ride to the Abyss, a terrifying instrumental depiction of the tumultuous flames of hell, and a series of hunting calls played by a clutch of offstage horns.
Everyone notices the viola and cor anglais solos in Marguerite's ballad and romance, respectively; and that is understandable. But having sat quite close to the orchestra, I was privileged to notice other instances of Berlioz's genius. Who else has done what he did with three piccolos in the Ballet of Sylphs? Who else has achieved such an effect of tortured spareness as in Faust's solo in Part III? Who else could turn the entire string division into a giant guitar as in Mephisto's serenade? Berlioz used the orchestra to create audible images of a beating heart, a roaring kraken, galloping horses, flitting fairies, attacking birds of prey, and a distant artillery barrage. He creates a sonic depiction of hell that could rival a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, and a spun-sugar vision of heaven to shame Gustave Doré. He does it in music that is unmistakably Berlioz; no other composer would or could have written it. But it is also unmistakably the work of a powerful imagination married to wit, orchestral fluency, and a flair for balance and proportion. Put together, this adds up to a uniquely compelling musical tribute to one of the great texts in Western literature. How lucky am I to have been there when it happened, David Zinman style!
IMAGES: Zinman, Ketelsen (playing Mephisto in a different production), Owens, Polenzani, Rohrer, Bosch's hell, Doré's heaven.
Labels: art, music
Souped-Up Sub
I had lunch at Subway today. I often do, since there's a Subway restaurant in the building where I work. It can get a bit boring after a while. But today I tried a different combination of sandwich toppings, and came up with something rather special.
My order was a chicken breast sandwich on Italian bread. (I didn't realize until today that Subway actually had whole grilled chicken breasts, rather than the ones cut into strips and soaked in a sauce.) I had the sandwich toasted with mozzarella cheese, until it came out all crisp and melty. Then, choosing from the other toppings on offer, I added spinach, chopped onion, sliced cucumber and tomato, shredded carrot, a sprinkling of oregano, and a goodly squirt of olive oil. That was it!
This was an unusual combination for me. Most times, by reflex, I top "whatever" with shredded lettuce, tomato, black olive, and mayo and/or mustard. I tend to avoid onions and peppers because I know people are going to smell it on my breath later; and I pass on the pickles because the type served by fast-food restaurants tastes rancid to me.
No matter how virtuous I try to feel, however, I must admit to myself that my usual recipe does not really contain any good, veggie nutrients, except maybe a few vitamins from the tomato. And the taste is a boring same-old, same-old. It's actually gross when this standard combo is served at meetings, when the bread has had time to get tough/soggy and the vegetables have begun to wilt. Today my taste buds were surprised by exceptional flavor, while my body got vitamins it has probably been missing for a while.
Three Book Reviews
Faerie Lord
by Herbie Brennan
Book Four of the Faerie Wars Chronicles begins when a fairy princess named Blue asks a mortal boy named Henry to marry her. And it totally freaks him out.
Life is complicated enough for Henry Atherton. His childhood best friend has a crush on him. His weak but nice father has a new girlfriend and doesn't have much time for him. His will and ambition are continually squashed by his snotty sister, his bossy mother, and her lesbian girlfriend. Three girls against one guy: Henry doesn't have a chance. Trapped by guilt and self-doubt, he has a vague, unfulfilling future ahead of him. But he's afraid to let go of it. And on some level, perhaps, he realizes that he doesn't have what it takes to reign beside the queen of the Faerie Realm, who also happens to be the queen of Hael (hell). No matter how much he loves her, Henry just isn't ready.
Two years later, however, a lot has changed. Queen Blue has grown into the power and majesty of her office. The demons of Hael have been liberated from enslavement, as Blue continues to pull together a new order in which Light and Dark Faeries, as well as her new demon subjects, form an integrated society. Her nemesis, Lord Hairstreak, has fallen on hard times. Henry is about to go off to University, and isn't sure he can take care of Mr. Fogarty's house and cat while the old ex-bank robber serves as Gatekeeper to the Faerie Realm. And now a plague has struck.
The temporal fever is a weird plague. It doesn't spread like a normal disease. It strikes young and old alike, making them age faster, eating up their future as their bodies pass through time on fast-forward. Henry's best friend, Blue's brother Pyrgus, has it. Mr. Fogarty is dying of it. And a strange prophecy suggests that Henry may find the cure for it... but only after going through an ordeal that could claim his life.
Henry, his friends, and their enemies are all caught up in yet another complex web of plots, adventures, death traps, and struggles against mythical figures, ghastly monsters, and powers of heaven and hell. Henry journeys through strange countries, befriends weird and whimsical creatures, talks to a voice from beyond, and undertakes not one but two quests. His courage, strength, and love for Blue are all put to the test as they both rush toward the climax in which, by saving each other, they may save the world.
This is a fitting conclusion to a series full of dark horror, sparkling magic, thrills, romance, and surprises galore. Both Henry and Blue have grown up a lot since they first met in Faerie Wars. Their growth as characters, and the development of their relationship, finally fulfills its promise here. In fact, until partway through this book, one may find it hard to see what Blue sees in Henry. As the narrative jumps from one character's point of view to another, you will constantly be on the hook of suspense. And the ultimate riddle will keep you puzzling till the very end.
Herbie Brennan, also known as J. H. Brennan, is the author of dozens of books, including children's picture books, horror novels, the eight-book Grail Quest series, and many non-fiction volumes on the occult.
by Catherine Jinks
Recommended Age: 14+
Even at the age of seven, Cadel Piggott has the makings of an evil genius. His psychologist, Thaddeus Roth, spots it right away. Cadel's adoptive parents think he is getting counseling to cope with social adjustment problems; after all, the boy is hurtling through grade after grade, advancing ahead of students his age. But actually, Dr. Roth is encouraging Cadel to use his gifts to study systems, exploit their weaknesses, and bring them down.
Cadel's path of destruction begins with the Sydney rail system, then the roads. Soon he is sabotaging the social structure of his high school class. But it's all child's play until, at age 14, he has to choose a college. He chooses the Axis Institute, a program designed specially for Cadel by Dr. Roth and Cadel's biological father, the evil Phineas Darkkon, who has been pulling strings for the boy from a prison cell. The Axis Institute is so small that it offers only one degree program: World Domination.
Surrounded by people studying assassination, biological warfare, forgery, embezzlement, misinformation, and the philosophy of pure evil, Cadel focuses his studies on computer science (a.k.a. infiltration). Worming his way into the computer files of the faculty and staff, Cadel finds out a lot about the motives of the bizarre and creepy people around him. By the time he realizes that he's just not evil enough to belong there, there seems to be no way out. No way, that is, except to bring the whole place down.
Cadel is a fascinating subject. Misguided from an early age, trained to accept crime on a massive scale as normal behavior, even brainwashed to believe that the survival of mankind depends on people like him seizing power, he nevertheless remains human, vulnerable, and basically decent. The spark of conscience in him, the capacity to love and a desire to be loved in return, grow and grow until he sees no choice but to escape from the clutches of his father, Dr. Roth, and the sinister staff of the Institute.
But he doesn't know his own strength, or his potential to do great harm without meaning to. When Cadel decides to blow a hole in the Axis Institue big enough to escape through, he sets off a conflagration even he did not foresee. The resulting carnage is both shocking and, at the same time, obscenely funny. It's the kind of dark comedy that may appeal to fans of Edward Bloor's Story Time, served up with an ironic, upside-down view of right and wrong reminiscent of Artemis Fowl. The only magic in it, however, is the magic of technology, the power of love, the strength of desperation, and the explosive effect of long-kept secrets revealed at just the right time. For more of the same, you may be interested in the sequel, Genius Squad. Jinks is the author of many other novels, including most recently The Reformed Vampire Support Group.
Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague
by Brandon Mull
In Fablehaven, siblings Kendra and Seth found out that their grandparents' country estate is actually a secret preserve for magical creatures. Some of them are nice, some are nasty; in fact, Kendra barely saved her family, and the whole preserve, from being destroyed when some of the nasty creatures took control. In the sequel, Rise of the Evening Star, the kids averted a plot by the evil Society of the Evening Star to bring Fablehaven down. In so doing, Kendra found out that she has become "fairykind," with a special bond to the magical folk that gives her unique powers.
In this third book in the series, Kendra's status as fairykind gets her invited to join the Knights of the Dawn, whose mission is to combat the Society of the Evening Star. She is immediately sent to a secret preserve in Arizona to help recover a magical talisman that must not fall into the wrong hands.
Besides the danger involved in seeking an artifact surrounded by deadly traps and guarded by a fierce dragon, Kendra has other worries. For one, she suspects that the Captain of the Knights may be a traitor serving the Society. Giving him the artifact could bring the Society one step closer to their goal of opening the demon prison of Zzyzx. Meanwhile, back at Fablehaven, a plague of darkness has begun to spread, threatening to turn all the creatures of light to evil. When that happens, Fablehaven will fall.
With her fairykind powers, Kendra leads the battle of light against darkness. But she does not fight alone. She is aided by a visitor from the past, a friend she had thought lost forever, and her brother who has special powers of his own. An impressive army of satyrs, centaurs, nymphs, and fairies fight by her side; to say nothing of a huge golem and other strange and wonderful friends.
But even if she can overcome this greatest-ever threat to Fablehaven's survival, she will still have to face the ongoing puzzle of what the Sphinx is up to and how he can be stopped. And that, readers will be delighted to learn, is a matter for future books to take up. I would not want this to be the end of the exciting, magical, and fascinatingly original Fablehaven series. But I needn't worry. The fourth book, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, released late last month, promises even more suspense and supernatural adventure, and perhaps a bit of romance for Kendra.
Posted by RobbieFish at 12:02 PM No comments:
A Night to Sniff
It's a gorgeous night in St. Louis. Not too warm, not too cool; just a bit of a breeze; and the air is filled with a beautiful scent. Some widespread tree or shrub must be in bloom, its floral perfume approaching peak production. It's a perfect moment. Do have a sniff while it lasts, and rejoice! Spring is here, God is good, and tax day is drawing to a close!
Tie-In Stupidity
Film tie-ins are stupid, but they're an unalterable fixture in our commercial world. At least since Star Wars, no blockbuster family movie has been complete without a collectible toy, soft drink container, breakfast cereal, line of clothes or jewelry, video game, etc., etc., etc.
Sometimes I pity the suckers who are taken in by this stuff, like the kids who just had to have all the crappy trinkets tied in with the Twilight movie. At other times, I have to check my own desire to grab a piece of the memorabilia. I'm proud to say I have (mostly) resisted the temptation, even refusing the free poster I was entitled to after waiting in line at Borders for my release-day copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
My greatest vulnerability, however, is the book tied in with a movie. If a movie is based on a book, and I know I'm going to watch it, I will often buy the book and read it first. Sometimes, if the book is based on the movie - a novelization of the screenplay - I'll read that too. Diane Duane's novelizations of the 1980s Star Trek films beguiled many of my teenaged hours, thrilling me with daring concepts that weren't even in the films. I was probably not even a teen when I read William Kotzwinkle's novelization of E.T., yet I still relish the memory of the alien's-point-of-view passages in that book and how they admiringly described Dee Wallace's character as having "a nose like a based-in Brussels sprout."
I have even bothered to review some film-tie-in novels, such as Millions (though whether it is a novelization of the film is debatable) and The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium (though it is only loosely connected to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium). I have also discovered some wonderful books after enjoying the movies based on them, though admittedly my reviews of those books may have been colored by memories of the films.
For example, a sharp-eyed reader had to correct me when I incorrectly gave "Luke" as the name of the main character in The Witches, a name revealed in the film but not in the book. Likewise, I had to step carefully in reviewing The Neverending Story because the movie had made a strong impression on my when I was a child, but I only discovered the book as an adult. Judging by how awfully some book-to-film adaptations turn out, it's probably a good policy that I read the book first. Otherwise, I might never have bothered after seeing the movie version of, say, Five Children and It; or, I might have felt let down by the spareness of the book compared to the souped-up glitz and glamor of the film, as in the ongoing Chronicles of Narnia movies.
But the full extent of the stupidity of movie/book tie-ins cannot be appreciated until you behold a book adapted from a movie that was, in turn, adapted from a book. The first time I noticed this phenomenon it had to do with Planet of the Apes. The original book by Pierre Boullé inspired a series of movies and TV programs a generation ago; Tim Burton filmed a 2001 remake; and a novelization of that screenplay was then published and sold alongside Boullé's original novel, to the confusion of would-be readers.
This is commercial stupidity at its most staggering. But the same kind of monkey-business is still going on. Recently I spotted a DVD of the movie based on Kate diCamillo's book The Tale of Despereaux, bundled with an audio-book recording of the "junior novelization" based on the screenplay. In other words, a children's book based on a movie based on an award-winning children's book. And the original book hasn't even been out that long; the first edition came out in 2003.
Now, I have yet to read the original book. I plan to do so soon. I'm torn as to whether I want to touch the "junior novelization." I can't think of a more effective way to screw up my personal visualization of the book. And I can't help but wonder why an author would consent to such a thing being done to her work. Perhaps she had no choice. Perhaps, in signing over the film rights, she also gave the studio the right to establish all kinds of movie tie-ins, all the way to replacing her novel with a film tie-in book that they own outright and can exploit as they see fit.
I suppose this is no more cynical than Disney ransacking the Grimm Fairy Tales and, after turning many of them into animated films, disseminating storybooks based on their own version. Now, thanks to Disney, if you recite the names of the Seven Dwarfs (Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, and Doc), members of every generation now living can pick up on the cultural reference. They would probably be shocked and discomfited by the unfamiliarity of the tale as told by the Brothers Grimm. This bit of folklore has been irreversibly changed by passing through the filter of Walt Disney's 1936 film and his company's subsequent tie-ins.
Is this wrong? Perhaps not. Perhaps it only seems sinister when you see it happening to an author who is still trying to live off her work.
Posted by RobbieFish at 11:34 AM 2 comments:
Labels: books, movies, stupidity
Ordering the Middle Book
I hate it when I have the first and last book of a trilogy, but can't find the middle book. Sometimes I don't realize this until I am already in the middle of reading it. Sometimes it means I don't dare start reading the trilogy until I can remedy the matter. And sometimes it takes years to complete the set.
Today I placed a used book order online. Two out of five of the books I ordered are the second book in a trilogy of which I already own the first and third book.
First there's Olivia Kidney Stops for No One, originally titled Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy, by Ellen Potter. It goes between Olivia Kidney, which I have already read, and Olivia Kidney and the Secret Beneath the City, which I recently picked up for peanuts. I had tried to get both sequels, but unfortunately my order for the second one was canceled when the supplier realized it wasn't in their inventory. So I'll have to wait a bit longer to find out what happens next! [EDIT: There is apparently also a book titled Olivia Kidney Hot on the Trail, but I don't know where it fits into this series. As far as I know, it might be an alternate title for one of the other books. This series is so confusing!]
Then there's Johnny and the Dead, book 2 of the "Johnny Maxwell Trilogy" by Terry Pratchett. I have owned book 1, Only You Can Save Mankind, and book 3, Johnny and the Bomb, for ages; only I haven't wanted to read them without book 2 in hand. Now I can finally crack this series open!
But that's not all. I also bought Arabel's Raven by Joan Aiken. It's not part of a trilogy as such. It's simply the first book in a long series of stories about a little British girl and her pet bird. I found out about it while reading one of the later books in the series, Arabel and Mortimer. Though I may not hunt down every title in this series - some of which seem to recycle previously published material - I felt that catching the beginning of the series might be worthwhile.
Plus, I finally purchased the last book in Michael Lawrence's Withern Rise trilogy, titled The Underwood See. I had long since read the first two books, but while I waited for Book 3 to come out in paperback, all sign of it (hardcover included) disappeared from the local bookstores. It occurred to me that I could get it used or not at all. And really, I can still feel the "hook" at the end of book 2, Small Eternities.
The fifth book on my order was another Joan Aiken title, The Shoemaker's Boy. I just found out about it while going through Fantastic Fiction's list of titles by that author. There are plenty of other promising titles on that list, but one has to start somewhere, and this looked like a good starting place to me.
Labels: books, stupidity
Faust vs. Faust
A couple years ago, we of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus sang the marvelous 8 Scenes from Faust by Hector Berlioz. This year - this week, in fact - we are performing his "dramatic legend" The Damnation of Faust. Later on I'll post a general review of the latter. For now, I only want to write about the difference between these two closely related pieces.
The 8 Scenes is a youthful work, composed in the heat of inspiration when the 25-year-old Berlioz had just discovered a French translation of Goethe's masterpiece. It was published at the composer's own expense as his Opus 1, and eventually reworked into the larger, more mature work some 20 years later.
We are very fortunate that Berlioz's attempts to suppress his first opus did not succeed. Not only in comparison with The Damnation of Faust but also on its own terms, it is a piece worth knowing. 8 Scenes is a flawed masterpiece, marked to be sure by its composer's immaturity and impetuosity (perhaps even coarseness), but also stamped with genius. Indeed, in its brash energy and immediate inspiration, one may prefer certain points in the 8 Scenes to their counterparts in the more mature and dramatically integrated Damnation. Berlioz gave with one hand, but often took away with the other.
Some of the pieces from 8 Scenes were imported directly into Damnation with hardly any alteration. For example, No. 4, Brander's song about the rat, shows up in the Auerbachskeller scene where Mephisto introduces Faust to the pleasures of drunken revelry. Berlioz keeps the same quirky melody and the same refrain for the men's chorus. He only adds a mock-solemn "Requiescat in pace" as a final touch, and integrates it into the surrounding scene.
Likewise, he faithfully transmits No. 5, Faust's song about the flea, only changing Faust from a tenor to a baritone. This is actually a very significant change, and I'm not talking merely about the tone-color of the solo voice. Among the most striking touches in the 8 Scenes was the casting of Mephistopheles as a tenor rather than a bass/baritone. In Damnation he reverts to the conventional casting of this role. One might say this change was necessary to make the larger work hold together dramatically. But one might also see in it the touch of a maturer and thus also more conservative hand. Is this an instance of the older Berlioz correcting an error of his younger self? Perhaps. But in correcting many such "errors," he may also have bled the work of some of its originality and vibrancy. Plus, in my recording of The Damnation of Faust, baritone José van Dam opts to sing a lower melody on the fifth line of each stanza ("Cruelle politique!" in the last verse), rather than the more difficult but also more memorable high road. Making Mephisto a baritone came at a cost.
Another case in point: No. 2 of the 8 Scenes, the peasants' song and dance. Originally scored for a mezzo-soprano soloist, joined by the choir at the end of each verse for an explosion of mirth ("Ha! Ha! Ha! Landerira"), it reaches its final form in Scene 2 of The Damnation of Faust as a purely choral piece interspersed with comments by Faust. In working this number into his dramatic scheme, Berlioz really trashed it. First, he pulled the stanzas apart and stuffed the spaces between them with an unrelated, and in my opinion uninspired, peasant dance idea ("Tra, la, la! Ho, ho!"). Then he actually changed what had been an exquisite melody, lowering its effectiveness.
In the 8 Scenes version of this tune, the third line of each stanza is sung to a musical phrase that effortlessly combines asymmetry with a sense of careless rightness, and the melody of the fourth line highlights the rhythmic drive of the tune. In Damnation, the third line of the text is set, instead, to a longer and more balanced phrase that seems more mannered and less organically connected to the tune; while the fourth phrase exchanges its headlong directness and its punchy rhythm for a calmer phrase, repeated twice, in which the peasants seem to flourish their skirts. To my ear this is definitely a case of an older and more conservative composer rounding off the corners of a youthful piece, a piece that had been better left alone.
The Easter Hymn (No. 1 in 8 Scenes, Scene 4 in Damnation) also suffers, arguably, from the composer's second thoughts. In most details the two versions are identical. However, when the women's chorus joins the men for the second iteration of their hymn, the difference becomes clear. The mixed chorus writing in The Damnation of Faust is delicate and lovely, but tame when compared to the scrapped, earlier version. The women's voices merely form a part of the steadily moving choral texture in the later work, whereas in the 8 Scenes they contributed glowing cascades of notes, like strewn flower petals floating to the ground before the feet of an ecstatic religious procession. To know that sound is to love it, is to miss it when the elder Berlioz replaces it with a more modest (albeit exquisite) evocation of Gothic architecture.
Marguerite's two numbers from the 8 Scenes - No. 6's ballad of the King of Thule and No. 7's desperate romance - seem to have crossed over to Damnation without much change. It is hard to imagine how Berlioz could have improved pieces of which one of my friends in the Symphony Chorus said something like, "I'm often torn as to whether Berlioz was a genius or a charlatan, but after hearing these pieces I would forgive him anything."
No. 7, however, ends with the remarkable chorus of soldiers, accompanied by brass and drum signals and scored to sound like they marched up from the distance and faded out of earshot again. In the Damnation, this soldiers' chorus is split into two pieces. In the first instance, the soldiers sing their entire chorus without any hint of fading in or out, and without the brass-and-drum signals that made such an impressive accompaniment in the 8 Scenes. Then, in a tour-de-force of Berlioz's specialty of combining two melodies contrapuntally, the soldiers are joined by a crowd of university students singing a bawdy alma mater ("Iam nox stellata"). After introducing both songs separately, Berlioz combines them and brings them to a glorious finish.
Much later, both the soldiers' and the students' songs come in for a reprise at the end of Marguerite's romance. This time we do hear the brass and drums, and the marching singers do seem to fade away in the distance, while the heroine breathes a sigh of despair on realizing that Faust will not come to her. Here Berlioz achieves the fade-out effect more quickly and economically than in his first essay. But the price, for those of us who know and love the 8 Scenes, is the loss of the original setting of the soldiers' song with brass-and-drum accompaniment throughout.
No. 8 of 8 Scenes is perhaps an artifact of Berlioz's youthful vigor at its most awkward. Mephisto's serenade is a gorgeous melody showcasing the full range of the tenor's voice, and it really sounds nice when accompanied by nothing but a solo guitar. But as a conclusion to the 8 Scenes it is undeniably anticlimactic; so much so that, when the SLSO performed it under Pinchas Steinberg a few years ago, we moved it up ahead of No. 7. Though one hearing the guitar version might wish in one's heart to hear an orchestral setting of the serenade, the fulfillment of that wish in The Damnation of Faust comes, again, at a cost. Having changed Mephisto from a tenor to a baritone, Berlioz replaces the guitar with pizzicato strings and woodwind flourishes; he even adds parts for the men's chorus. All these touches are nice in their way, but in transposing the piece downward Berlioz also sacrifices some of the yearning intensity of the tenor version.
Finally, there is the sextet of sylphs, No. 3 in 8 Scenes from Faust and part of Scene 7 in The Damnation of Faust. Which version is better? This case is a split decision if there ever was one. The 8 Scenes version is scored for six soloists taken from the chorus; the chorus itself, or at least a semichorus, is to sing the final version. By using the full chorus, the elder Berlioz risked sacrificing some of the clarity of articulation demanded by this fiendishly tricky piece; but it was arguably a worthwhile risk, since the chorus is better able to invest the whispery iterations of "De sites ravissants," etc., with a soothing murmur and a suggestion of insect-like buzzing. Plus, in rewriting the sextet, the more mature composer brought greater economy to bear. The piece becomes more tightly constructed, clocking in a good 25% shorter than the first version.
On the other hand, some of the alterations are no improvement. Though recognizable as a version of the same piece, the later version needlessly alters and/or dispenses with perfectly serviceable passages from the original sextet. Listen to both pieces side-by-side, and you will very likely spot bits from each that you prefer over their counterparts in the other. I particularly liked the chromatically descending lines toward the end of the sextet in 8 Scenes, which suggested to my mind the dripping of a drugged nectar onto Faust's slumbering lips. I also find it fascinating to compare the different settings of the faster section ("Là, de chants d'allégresse," etc.), in a major key in the 1826 version and in a minor key in the 1846 version. Both pieces are wonderful to witness, and I grieve for some of the 8 Scenes touches that didn't make it into the Damnation version, but overall I think this is one piece that did benefit from the attentions of the hoary head.
Which is better: 8 Scenes from Faust or The Damnation of Faust? It's a complex question. Without the one, we would not have the other. In many ways, I feel the original pieces from 8 Scenes surpass their later incarnation in Damnation. But in revisiting his youthful pieces, Berlioz did tighten them up and intelligently integrated them into an larger dramatic structure. And all that goes without even mentioning the numerous additional numbers, many of them for the chorus, with which he rounded out the later work.
I have made it through few waking hours during the past weeks without thinking of the drinkers' chorus from the top of Scene 6. I can't help but snicker impiously at the wry "Amen" fugue improvised by the same drinkers after Brander's song. And near the end of the "dramatic legend," we visit hell and heaven in that order, experiencing Pandemonium (complete with incomprehensible lyrics sung to a devilish anthem and a demonic waltz) as well as the apotheosis of Marguerite (with the choir of angels ending the whole work by singing, "Come! Come!"). But I'm getting ahead of myself. You'll hear more about all that in a few days.
Stewardship: A Unified Theory
Last night I was gossiping with a couple of Lutheran friends, and I caught myself grousing about the way today's church sticks its fingers into people's pockets. It's as if everything the church does reduces down to an appeal for money. One can certainly come away from the average "stewardship message" with the idea that "stewardship" equates with "contributing money to the church."
Now, good Christian stewardship will most often involve contributing money to the church. But the equation "stewardship equals putting dollars in the collection plate" is false. The word "stewardship," in the biblical sense, covers a great deal more. It means that everything we have, we have received. Every ability we possess, every right we enjoy, every freedom we exercise, every relationship we partake in, all our possessions, powers, and privileges, are gifts from God and properly belong to Him. He gives them to us in trust; He can take them away from us at any time.
"Stewardship" means the freedom we have, as trusted servants, to use the Lord's things as if they belonged to us - knowing that we must one day give an account. "Stewardship" is a daily exercise of our faith in the One who provides us with all that we need: an exercise that both demonstrates our faith and strengthens it. God-pleasing, accountable, Christian stewardship is that use of our Lord's gifts which best glorifies Him and serves our neighbor. It is, in short, an act of faithful love.
Clearly, there's a lot more going on in Christian stewardship than "putting money in the collection plate." Maybe for many Christians that's a good place to start practicing the spiritual discipline of stewardship. We care so much about our money: how to earn it, how to stretch it to cover our present and future needs, how to enjoy its abundance, how to cope with its scarcity. We have bills; we have debts; we have taxes and, hopefully, tax returns. To turn over a significant proportion of our earnings to the church may seem a big enough challenge to our faith. But make no mistake: it is an act of faith. It is a confession that God has provided, and a gesture of trust that He will continue to provide.
But that is not where the dollars in the offering basket most nearly touch the heart of the matter. For those same dollars are also an investment in preserving the ministry of Word and Sacrament, in spreading the Gospel, and in instructing the young in faith (whether they be old or young in years). The same gift, returned in part to Him who first gave it, is an exercise in locating our most cherished treasure not in our bank account, or in our investment portfolio, or in any earthly property, but in the Kingdom of God.
The dollars, time, and energy we deliver to the church are acts of stewardship mainly because they tear our devotion away from earthly things, and develop in us an appetite for heavenly things. For the true, lasting treasures are not earthly but heavenly, not visible but spiritual, not perishable but eternal. The best gifts of God, and therefore also the best stewardship, are concerned with these heavenly, spiritual, eternal treasures: namely, the grace of God in Christ, His forgiveness, His presence, His dwelling in us here and our dwelling with Him forever.
God has poured all these treasures into His Word and Sacrament. Through this ministry we catch men and haul them into God's kingdom, making disciples by baptizing and teaching them according to His Word. From this ministry we continually receive the forgiveness we need to cover our sinful lapses and to give us courage in the hour of spiritual trial and, ultimately, death. To this ministry we therefore supply all that we can afford, not only in monetary gifts but also in our arts and industry, our prayer and submission, our time and energy, even in some cases devoting a lifelong career to it.
We make these sacrifices because, of all acts of worship we could render to Him, nothing pleases God more than our receiving His gifts. We make these offerings because we trust Him to supply us in every earthly need, and because we value our heavenly treasures more highly. We give these gifts because, as stewards, we recognize that He has already given us so much, and because in respect to His Kingdom we want Him to enrich us with all His fullness.
Having made a big noise about biblical hermeneutics in this blog, I had better be able to back all this up with Scripture, soundly interpreted. Fortunately, I can. First, let's study the word "stewardship" as the New Testament uses it. Then, let's look at the concept of "stewardship" as Jesus and the apostles described it.
New Testament forms of the word "steward" occur only 12 times in the old King James Version, 15 in the New KJV, 15 in the old RSV, 12 in the New RSV, 14 in the NASB translation, 8 times in the ESV, and never in the NIV.
Luke 8:3 describes Chuza, the husband of Joanna (a female disciple of Jesus) as Herod's steward: which is to say, a high-ranking servant with responsibility over his master's property and business affairs; a manager, an administrator. John 2:8-9, in some translations, uses the word "steward" to describe the servant in charge of the wine at a wedding feast. We can take these literal uses of the word as a reference point for understanding the figurative sense in which the New Testament speaks of "stewardship."
In Luke 12:42-48, Jesus uses the words "steward" and "slave" interchangeably in a parable about the administration of the church. The steward is that slave whom the master makes responsible for the other slaves. His proper task is to feed them their rations in due time, not to beat them or to live the high life on their food and drink. When the master returns, he will reward the steward who does the former, and will punish him who does the latter - all the more so if he has knowingly disobeyed.
This parable seems to speak of the holy ministry and its brief to "feed" the church until Christ returns. Blessed is the minister who uses his stewardship of God's gifts in Christ to nourish us spiritually. Woe to the minister who uses ditto to lord it over us or to enrich himself; woe to him especially if he knows better.
In 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, St. Paul speaks of himself and other ministers of the Gospel (see chapter 3 for context) as "servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God"; stewards who, moreover, must be found faithful. Again in 1 Corinthians 9:16 ff., Paul describes the preaching of the Gospel as a stewardship. He does not boast about it because it is laid on him as a necessity. If one serves the Word willingly, the work is its own reward; if unwillingly, it is as one "entrusted with a stewardship," neither enriching oneself nor abusing one's power.
In Ephesians 3:2, Paul speaks of "the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you." In Colossians 1:24-29, Paul says he became a minister of the church "according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God...striving according to His working which works in me mightily." Once more, in Titus 1:7 ff., Paul requires that a bishop (pastor) be, among other things, "a steward of God."
St. Peter urges Christians to minister to one another, each according to his gifts, as "stewards of the manifold grace of God" (1 Peter 4:10). In verse 11 he makes it clear that he is speaking in the context of a church service, as in preaching the Word ("speaking the oracles of God") and conducting the liturgy. This seems to be complementary to Paul's exhortation in 2 Timothy 2:24 that "the Lord's bondservant" be "able to teach."
A word translated as "steward" appears in Galatians 4:2 in the sense of a regent or guardian who holds an inheritance in trust until the rightful heir comes of age. Paul likens the Law to such a steward, before the coming of Christ. Except for this instance and the cases of Chuza (Luke 8) and the wedding butler (John 2), the word "steward" in the New Testament always seems to have some connection with the eternal, spiritual, heavenly gifts of God's Kingdom in Christ; it could even be argued that the New Testament uses "steward" as a title for the pastoral office. But the crucial case remains to be examined.
In Luke 16:1-13 we find another parable about a steward: the dishonest or unrighteous manager who, having been denounced for squandering his master's property, was about to have his stewardship taken away. What did this man do to protect his future? He went around to his master's debtors and forgave some of their debts, using his authority as steward to make binding deals on his master's behalf. His master then praised him for his shrewdness!
This parable of the "unrighteous steward" is often the text (or pretext) for a "stewardship message." But when interpreted as "Christ's principles on how Christians should manage their money," it is a very perplexing text. Verses 9-13 come off as a string of loosely related proverbs rather than an application of the parable, which is how they seem to have been intended; while, if they are application, they seem to make the parable signify monstrous and bizarre things.
For several years, I have held that this parable is not Jesus' treatise on the ethics of fiscal stewardship. In an essay that I really thought I had blogged (but I can't find it now), I wrote that in Luke 16, Jesus is talking about the ministry again. When the dishonest steward gave his master's word to those debtors, he bound the master with his own word. Likewise, when the minister of God's gifts forgives your sins in Jesus' name and on the authority of God's Word, you can be certain that God will not go back on it - even though that minister is imperfect and sinful himself.
Partly I was guided by the context of the surrounding verses. The parables of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4-7), the lost coin (15:8-10), and the lost son (15:11-32) are all about God's readiness to forgive every sinner who repents. Indeed, Jesus claims that God is pleased with sinners who seek His grace rather than with righteous people who live by observing the Law. In the previous two chapters, Jesus had used a variety of examples to illustrate how the Jews of His time, due to their literalistic and legalistic application of God's Law, would miss out on His Kingdom while the heathens, who had no righteous works to their credit, would inherit instead. And in the verses following the parable of the dishonest steward, Luke 16:15 ff., Jesus warns against justifying oneself by works, urging all people rather to receive His gifts in humble faith. In 17:1-4 He instructs us to forgive each other tirelessly rather than causing one another to stumble (by withholding forgiveness) and thus incurring God's wrath on ourselves. In 17:6-10 He puts obedience to God's Law in its proper relationship to faith: a believer seeks no favor or reward for his obedience, but renders it freely as what is due to a just and loving God.
So the parable of the dishonest servant stands in the center of an extended discourse that contrasts faith (the receiving of Christ's holy gifts, which alone pleases God) with works (seeking to be justified by obedience to Law, which turns the best deeds into deadly sin). Why, then, would Jesus suddenly, and for this one parable only, choose to instruct us in the correct use of our finances? It isn't merely that the standard interpretation of this parable makes no sense. It actually militates against the clear sense of the surrounding passages. And it turns verses 16:9-13 into a litany of non sequitur epigrams, connected only by a general topic of stewardship and their position in the text.
An interpretation of this passage more in keeping with its context and the analogy of faith (i.e., all that Scripture teaches about stewardship) also happens to make verses 16:1-13 work as a unit. Jesus is not, in fact, teaching us about money. When has he ever said anything about money that wasn't, after all, an analogy to the Kingdom of God? When has Jesus ever put a value on money, except in contrast to the imperishable, spiritual, heavenly treasures? This case is no different. In the parable of the dishonest steward, Jesus is instructing us to forgive one another as we would be forgiven by God. See also Matthew 5:21-26; 6:14-15; 18:15-20.
In Luke 16:8, Jesus begins his application of the parable by explaining why the master praised his steward's shrewdness: "For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light." This is a statement that causes endless difficulty in interpretation. I propose that all this difficulty can be cleared up by understanding the unspoken words that logically belong at the end of the sentence: "in their generation." It is a completely balanced thought: the children of this world are wiser in applying the things that pertain to this age than the children of God's kingdom are in regard to its gifts. The sons of this age make better use of their "unrighteous mammon" (16:9) than do the sons of light with regard to their eternal, spiritual, heavenly treasures in Christ.
If a crooked little weasel like the steward in Luke 16 knows how to apply his master's good name and authority to forgive debts to his own advantage, how much more could Christians achieve by means of the authority to forgive sins? If a dishonest manager can thus make a place for himself in the homes of his ex-master's debtors, why can't we believing sinners make peace with each other by handing around little morsels of the boundless forgiveness God has granted to us? To our everlasting shame, we "children of light" are not so clever in using our treasures as the "children of this world" are in using of theirs.
Jesus says in Luke 16:10, "He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much." Our chief gift, our highest treasure, is God's forgiveness. Our debts toward each other are "the least" compared to our debt toward God ("much"). Can we expect to be forgiven in much if we do not forgive each other in the least? We are stewards of all God's gifts in Christ, the greatest gift being His forgiveness. Will this stewardship not be taken from us unless we share it with each other? Such lack of forgiveness would be unfaithful stewardship indeed. It would mean failing to properly use what God has given us, or to return even a small part of it to Him. It would mean failing to confess and exercise that faith which holds His forgiveness to be a good and abundant gift. It would be living not in accord with the Gospel, but in ruthless adherence to the spirit of the Law. It would be inviting the fate of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35 (another parable richly complementary to this one).
In Luke 16:9, Jesus issues the at first perplexing advice, "Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations." One may be immediately tempted to interpret it thus: "If you throw enough money around, you might attract more people to your church, people who will be happy to see you when you arrive in heaven." But the context is crucial here. There is nothing in this parable to suggest that Jesus could be talking about "spreading money around." Rather, he has been talking about forgiving debts. Within the church, among the "sons of light," that translates to holding no debts against each other, considering everything you own to be the common possession of all, willingly parting with anything your Christian brother or sister needs so that you may be built up together as living stones in an eternal, spiritual house. See also Matthew 10:8; Acts 2:44-45; 20:35; 2 Peter 2:5. The fact that this has never worked out in practice bears witness that the sons of this world are indeed shrewder, etc.
In Luke 16:11-12, Jesus continues his application of the above parable with two parallel questions. "If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?" In both, notice what is being asked: not whether one has earned much, or given much, but whether one has been faithful. Notice, too, that the first question contrasts "unrighteous mammon" (filthy lucre) with "the true riches," i.e. the grace of God in Christ. And notice how the second question changes the contrast from terms of "earthly treasure vs. heavenly treasure" to "stewardship vs. ownership."
What Jesus is asking, then, is first: "How can you handle God's gift of forgiveness when you can't even use His material blessings as a faithful steward? What use can God's grace be to you, when your conduct regarding food, clothing, money, etc., shows neither awareness that He has provided them nor trust that he will continue to do so?" And secondly, Jesus is asking: "If you live this life without faith or trust toward God, how can you expect to receive an eternal inheritance?"
Here the concepts of faith as "receiving" and trust as "relying" get mixed up with the concepts of faith as "reliability" and trust as "holding on behalf of the rightful owner." In this life we can be but stewards, by faith, of the gifts and treasures of the Kingdom to Come. But when it comes, when the dead are raised and when heaven and earth are renewed, we will inherit that Kingdom and take full ownership. The latter cannot come without the former. By trusting in God's promises (forgiveness etc.), we now hold their present fulfillment in trust, like guardians of an heir who has yet to come of age; but we also confidently hope to own it outright when we ourselves inherit it in the rebirth of all things. With that faith which believes and receives God's gifts, comes the Spirit to deal "in good faith" with them; that is, to be good stewards of them.
We need the gift of faith from God. In good faith, we constantly use the gifts He faithfully pours out through Word and Sacrament, especially His forgiveness, so that we may be built up in faith. As disciples of Jesus, we are ready to devote every earthly blessing, every shred of "unrighteous mammon," of which we are stewards in this life, to preserving and spreading the eternal treasures in which we trust and which we now hold in trust. As Paul says in Philippians 3:7, we are ready to spend and/or lose all things (pertaining to this world) in order to gain Christ and the inheritance of the sons of light. (See also Acts 26:18; Colossians 1:12). That is why "stewardship" can so easily be confused with "giving money to the church." As true Christian stewards, we must realize that the church's ministry and witness is our most precious treasure; we can afford to lose anything but that, and will give up whatever is necessary to keep that one thing needful (Luke 10:42).
There are other passages that, without using the word "steward," provide additional insight to the concept of stewardship. Those familiar with "stewardship messages" may especially recall the parables of the Minas (Luke 19:12-17) and Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). In fact, I reckon that today's common understanding of the word "talent" to mean "a special ability" arises from the use of the coins in the latter parable as a metaphor for the work each of us can do for the Kingdom of God, according to his or her ability. The ability to forgive one's neighbors, however, is inherent in being a sinner who lives by God's forgiveness. I have already cited Matthew 5, where Jesus admonishes Christians not even to come to God for forgiveness unless we have already made peace with each other. To do so would come perilously close to tempting God (Matthew 4:7). And as the Minas & Talents show, to bury this gift from God and try to live without it is to invite a terrible judgment.
Jesus gives us Luke 16:13 as a final conclusion to his unjust-steward parable in order to remove any possibility that we might mistake his intentions in verses 9 and 11. "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Jesus does not want us to be disciples of money. Nor does he want us to go and make disciples of money. We should not even try to split our loyalty between Christ and money. So He is certainly not advising us to run the church like the Temple of Mammon it so frequently resembles these days.
The church's job is not to grow or succeed. The church's job is to be faithful and to make disciples. We, as members of the church, do this not by spending or making money, but by receiving God's perfect gifts through the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and by sacrificing all that we can afford (!) to preserve and spread that ministry. As we live in faithful stewardship of God's boundless gift of forgiveness, we forgive one another daily and hourly. And whatever we give to the church, we give to no one's glory but God's, expecting no reward, but offering only what is due to our Lord and Provider, and trusting Him to supply all that we lack.
Labels: hermeneutics, theology
Sekisui Pacific Rim
Praying to be Published
Rein in the Tackiness
Meeting of the Blogs
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Voters to decide fate of water bond this November
Issue Date: August 20, 2014
Finding agreement on the $7.5 billion water bond measure headed to the November ballot wasn't easy—it involved years of hard work by many stakeholders, including the California Farm Bureau Federation—but participants in the discussion said it's a key step in addressing the critical need to upgrade the state's broken water system.
"The severe water shortages we're currently experiencing result from 30 years of neglecting our water-storage system," CFBF President Paul Wenger said. "That neglect is magnified by the drought, and it's time to reverse that pattern of neglect. Placing this water bond on the November ballot gives Californians a chance to provide more water for our cities, for food production and for the environment."
CFBF Administrator Rich Matteis said passage of the water bond bill last week marked the end of more than five years of sustained effort.
"Farm Bureau has been involved in this issue since the beginning, working for a bond that would maximize the investment in new water storage for California," Matteis said. "But as much as the passage of the bond bill marked the end of that process, it also signaled the beginning of a campaign to show Californians the essential need to invest in our state's water system."
Matteis noted that the water bond will come before voters in less than 11 weeks, meaning that supporters of new water investment will need to move quickly to solidify support for the measure.
"Farm Bureau members are uniquely positioned to work at the grassroots level to educate and build public awareness for much-needed water improvements," Matteis said. "Every Californian has a stake in the voter outcome in November, but none more than farmers and ranchers who depend on adequate, reliable water supplies."
The revised bond measure includes $2.7 billion for water storage projects and that money will be continuously appropriated, Matteis noted, meaning that future Legislatures will not be able to redirect it to other uses.
"This bond represents the state's largest investment in water storage in more than 30 years," Wenger said, "and it couldn't come at a more critical time."
The current drought has shown that California has lived too long with an outdated water-storage system, he said.
"We need to update that system to match changing weather patterns, in which more precipitation will fall as rain rather than as snow," Wenger said. "Additional surface storage can capture those strong storm surges when they come, reduce flooding and bank that water for later dry times."
In addition to new surface and groundwater storage projects, proceeds from the sale of bonds—if approved by voters—would be used for regional water reliability, sustainable groundwater management and cleanup, water recycling, water conservation, watershed protection and safe drinking water, particularly for disadvantaged communities.
Association of California Water Agencies Executive Director Tim Quinn called the revised water bond the "right size at the right time for California."
Noting the bond includes $100 million that can be used by local agencies for groundwater plans and projects, the Kern County Water Agency commended those who negotiated the final version of the measure. The water bond also includes new funding for a variety of local water programs through integrated regional water management plans, or IRWMPs. Specifically, the bond measure would allocate $34 million to IRWMPs in the Tulare/Kern watershed.
The California Water Alliance, whose members include Central Valley farmers and agricultural businesses, applauded the bond's placement on the November ballot.
"Most importantly, it recognizes that Californians statewide, from all walks of life, cannot afford to carry the burden of a dysfunctional water system that has been exacerbated by the worst drought in California history," said Aubrey Bettencourt, executive director of the alliance.
The drought, she said, has resulted in dramatic levels of unemployment, higher food prices, increased utility costs, water rationing and severe losses for California farms, many of which have had to fallow thousands of acres.
"This bond provides the means to begin upgrading California's water system for the 21st century, including new storage facilities and clean water projects for underprivileged communities," Bettencourt said.
(Kate Campbell is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)
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Disgraced Fmr Hollywood Star Pleads For Trump's Help
By Eliza George Matter (Eliza George Matter) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Former Hollywood star Randy Quaid is pleading for Trump's help to get their passports re-issued. His excuse is that the system is rigged.
According to The Daily Caller:
Randy Quaid on Thursday posted a letter he sent to President Donald Trump pleading for his help against a “rigged system” that he claimed had denied his and his wife’s passports.
In the letter, Quaid refers to himself and his wife Evi as “avid, take-no-prisoners, supporters” of Trump’s candidacy and said they celebrated his victory on November 8. In light of his winning the presidency, the “National Lampoons” star said the pair applied for their passports in hopes that “change was on the way,” before claiming that “leftover bureaucrats” from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Department of State once again denied the “re-issuance” of their passports.
@realDonaldTrump I couldn’t stop myself from stamping! Sorry . . . But on a serious note, I got no reply to my letter to you so I’m posting it here hoping it will catch your eye. pic.twitter.com/GUbY6yf06D
— Randy Quaid (@RandyRRQuaid) August 23, 2018
Quaid and his wife had their passports revoked over what he called “warrants for trespassing” on a property in Santa Barbara that he said at one time belonged to him but was “stolen” by a Hollywood studio executive using “forged documents.”
At one point, the “Independence Day” star said he needs the passport in order to get back to work, because “production companies and studios” required it. Quaid then said he supports President Trump because he recognizes that it’s “the people that are going to Make America Great Again.”
Quaid has had his share of issues from being charged with multiple property crimes to fleeing to Canada because he feared from his life from a group called the 'Star Whackers.' It is unclear if President Trump will help, but regardless, it seems like he needs it.
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Chief Surveyor & Head of Public Lands, Buildings
August 27, 2018 | 8 Comments
As Chief Surveyor and Head of Public Lands and Buildings, Chris Farrow has responsibility for managing the Government estate of over 2,000 acres and some 751 buildings, and this task incorporates a number of related genres including building surveying, facilities management, geomatics, project management, valuation, quantity surveying and more.
Mr Farrow’s occupations in one of the many in public service, which encompass a wide range of varied fields and some of these posts are deemed hard to fill, meaning there’s a known limited talent pool with expertise in the specific area available on-Island and in some cases there could exist a global shortage of trained resources.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office with responsibility for Government Reform, Lovitta Foggo, has stressed the importance of showcasing the Bermuda Government as an employer of choice for Bermudians.
Minister Foggo said, “One of the goals of this Government is to change the perception of careers in the Public Service. We want to attract, develop, motivate, and retain a quality talent pool that is committed to the highest standards of excellence.”
Keen to share his public service career journey in the hopes of inspiring our young people, is Mr. Chris Farrow, who is the Chief Surveyor and Director of Public Lands and Buildings for the Ministry of Public Works.
Mr. Farrow, entered Government through the Public Service Bursary Awards Scheme, a programme that has supported many young Bermudians’ educational pursuits with a view of preparing them to fill essential technical and professional posts within the public service.
“People often associate surveying with land surveying, but that’s only one of the many disciplines of surveying,” Mr. Farrow notes. “Surveying covers all aspects of real estate and individuals can specialize in a number of fields including building surveying, commercial property, facilities management, geomatics, project management, residential property, valuation, quantity surveying and construction to name a few.
“As Chief Surveyor and head of Public Lands and Buildings, I have responsibility for managing the Government estate of over 2,000 acres and some 751 buildings. I work with a team of 155 staff and an annual operational budget of $20 million. The Government real estate uses are diverse and range from arable lands to a zoo with all manner of land and building uses in between.
“We provide a critical support role to Ministries and Departments to ensure that their real estate needs are met in order for them to provide services to the public. Without the real estate there are no public services.”
Mr. Farrow casts his mind back more than three decades to chronicle his public service career, noting that he began his studies to become a Chartered Surveyor in Sheffield, England.
“It was over 35-years ago when I received my Bursary Award,” Mr. Farrow recalls. “The support went well beyond financial, it also provided the guarantee of employment over the holidays and upon graduation. In addition, I had an employer that was fully vested in my career development.
“I started as a student within the Ministry of Public Works, interning in the Estates Section, working under the then Chief Surveyor, Mr. Frank Lund. Over the course of my career, I was provided with mentorship and given very broad work experience including secondments to the Bermuda Housing Corporation and the Land Valuation Department.
“After graduation, the Public Service Commission supported my pursuit of employment with the UK Civil Service in London to gain professional experience. I was fortunate to be accepted into their graduate programme, and spent four years in London working for the Inland Revenue Service in their valuation office.
“I worked for a few years in the Greenwich office before receiving a promotion and being moved up to the City of London Office. It was a very rewarding experience and I achieved my professional designation of Chartered Surveyor whilst working there.”
Mr. Farrow returned to Bermuda in 1991 and joined the Land Valuation Department. By 1995 he had been promoted to Director, and in 2013 he was promoted to the Ministry of Public Works as Chief Surveyor.
During that time he’s had opportunities in other Government Departments, including serving as the Acting Director of Planning, the Acting Director of the Information Technology Office and a number of Acting Permanent Secretary posts.
Mr. Farrow said he believes in the importance of life-long learning and career development. He notes that job training opportunities and guidance should be a cornerstone of any organisation, saying, “The learning never stops. Not only does my professional qualification require continuing professional development, but the public service provides many opportunities for further study and development.
“Even at this stage of my career I am still learning. The Government of Bermuda has and continues to provide excellent training and career opportunities for Bermudians.”
Mr. Farrow considers it his responsibility to support those young people who are currently navigating their career path. And he’s encouraging individuals who are looking for a unique and rewarding career opportunity to consider the public service.
He concluded, “The Government has stated its intention to attract, develop, motivate, and retain a quality talent pool that is committed to the highest standards of excellence. Every year the public service advertises for bursary applications and within the Department of Public Lands and Buildings are particularly keen to bring on board students who are interested in Estate Management and Building Surveying.
“I look forward to offering my support to the next generation of public servants who I believe will be our future leaders in the Service. They are critical to our succession planning, because we’re not just providing an opportunity for employment, but one of professional development and a very challenging and rewarding career in the Public Service.”
Diane Elliott: Working To Help Value Bermuda
Montserrat Customs & Revenue Visit Bermuda
Realtors Brokers Licensing Act Now In Effect
Land Title Registration Office Closed From 12-3
100 New Homes To Be Built In West End
Govt Issue RFP For Co-Working Space Design
#BermudaBusiness #BermudaGovernment #BermudaRealEstate
Category: All, Business, News
shrew says:
the Minister should be telling young people to go into the PRIVATE sector as the employers of choice for Bermudians. WTH is wrong with her? adding more to the taxpayers’ expense is par for the course for the PLP. Bermuda, we are doomed. VOTE THEM OUT.
Obviously she means when a position is available. Not come a we will create a position. Her statement was to also highlight that there a many Bermudians employed by Government.
Irritates me when people purposely and/or maliciously misrepresent someone else’s statements.(for any political view)
Black Soil says:
So does govt own Devonshire Dock (on North Shore Road) or don’t it???
inna says:
Finally someone not in the friends and family circle!!!
Truth is killin’ me... says:
You got in at the right time then. A bit like the housing market.
Skeptical says:
Is this the department responsible for the Railway Trail bridge over Barker’s Hill? The planks of wood are steadily rotting and, as a frequent user, I would like someone to take a look to ensure it is still safe to use. I am not sure which Department to contact, if anyone will even answer the phone too.
IS this the Department responsible for the old Railway Trail bridge over Barker’s Hill? The planks of wood are steadily rotting and being worn away. As a frequent user as I am sure a lot of people are, I would like to know if it is still safe to use.
Candidate Interested says:
I was an individual who wanted to become a surveyor. I was accepted into the program by the college of Estate Management. I started to attend the land valuation department in hoping I could shadow to learn more about the role of a surveyor. I did shadow someone a few times. I was told that I was only allowed to shadow an estate surveyor (He was lovely by the way) but only for a short time. As a stipulation for me doing the course, I had to be guaranteed an internship position with an public administration before I could continue the course. I was told my a Woman ( I will not share her name because she has a lot loose if I do), that there won’t be any internship available for me.By the way, this same woman spoke about how she has had speeches about being a surveyor in Bermuda. She also express to me that the government needed Bermudians to filled this role because many foreigners are the ones who are running this department. I was glad to be offered this idea until it came down to actually honoring their word of offering to train me.
So with that being said, please save the bull for someone who doesn’t know how this system operates.
****And By the way, I was someone who was willing to volunteer my time to shadow and be and intern all before it was offered this summer to summer students.
« Column: Cayman Conference, Population, Budget
Photos: Coppertone Volleyball Tournament »
Team Involved Wins 2019 BFF Men’s League
Health Council Launch ‘Fresh Food Fridays’
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CACSS Meeting 6-24-2018
Meeting Location: DBG – Dorrance Hall
Meeting Time: 2:00 p.m.
The monthly meetings will include:
Announcements of upcoming meetings and events
a Silent Plant Auction
a monthly presentation
Members frequently bring in cuttings to share on the free plant table.
We meet at 2:00 pm the last Sunday of most months at the Desert Botanical Garden, 1201 North Galvin Parkway, Phoenix, Arizona. The general meeting begins at 2 pm but you can come early to socialize and peruse the Silent Auction plants. Here is a map of the Garden.
Our Board meets monthly to discuss CACSS business; all members are welcome to attend Board meetings.
Presenter: Greg Starr
Greg was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, and has grown to love the desert and its flora and fauna. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture, and after working in the landscape industry he went back to the University to study Botany and further his education in horticulture. Greg worked for Warren Jones (co-author of Plants for Dry Climates and Landscape Plants for Dry Regions) and Dr. Charles Mason at the University of Arizona herbarium. Greg made his first foray into the world of collecting in 1979 when he traveled with Warren and Bill Kinneson to Texas where he saw firsthand, in habitat, the many plants he had only experienced in the nursery or landscapes. He emerged from the University in 1985 with a Master of Science in Horticulture with a special emphasis on botany.
He opened Starr Nursery in the summer of 1985, and has specialized in low water use plants for landscaping in southern Arizona. Greg has traveled extensively in Mexico and the southwestern United States to study the plants for their potential landscape use in desert regions of the world. He has also traveled to South Africa and recently to Madagascar in search of juicy succulents.
Greg has written several horticultural articles for the journal Desert Plants. Topics have covered various groups of plants as well as botanizing in South Africa. He has also described two new species and a subspecies of Agave, three new species of Hesperaloe, and revised the genus Hesperaloe in a monograph published in the journal Madroño. The first Agave species Greg described was Agave ovatifolia. He worked with Dr. Jose Angel Villarreal in describing this amazing plant which has been dubbed Whale’s Tongue Agave, a reflection of the incredibly wide leaves that sometimes double as water harvesting vessels. He and Dr. Tom Van Devender described Agave parviflora subsp. densiflora a new find from the Sierra Madre Occidental in eastern Sonora. Greg’s first book, Cool Plants for Hot Gardens, was released at the end of April 2009 and is currently out of print. His second book, titled Agaves: Living Sculptures for Landscapes and Containers, was released in early May of 2012. He was a co-author for the recently released Field Guide to the Cacti and Other Succulents of Arizona. He has taught Plant Biology and Plant Materials classes at The Art Center Design College in Tucson for their program of Landscape Architecture. Since 2010, Greg has focused intensively on the Agaves of Baja California and he and Bob Webb described Agave azurea, a new species from the Picachos de Santa Clara, and submitted a revision for the genus on the Baja California peninsula to the journal Haseltonia which came out in January 2015. He recently described Agave cremnophila from southern Oaxaca and is busy researching the rest of the agaves found down there.
Agaves 101 – Let’s Start from the Beginning
Greg has been asked to speak at Succulenticon 2018 in Perth, Australia and he has put together a brand-new program that he would like to preview before the September convention. This presentation provides the audience with the basics of agaves beginning with the history of names and finishing with a flourish of cultural notes. He promises that it is not as boring as it sounds. There will be a lot of pretty pictures; myths will be busted, and even good information about these amazing plants. If you have an interest in succulent plants, and Greg suspects that you do since you are a member of a cactus and succulent club, then come on out and learn just one thing about this fascinating genus of plants.
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Fundamentals of Immersion
Nick Alexander Independent Study 2019
Contextual AnalysisArchive
Theme Parks 2/2
Posted in Contextual Analysis No Comments »
I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (WWHP) at Universal Studios Orlando in 2012, several years after opening but before the Hogsmeade expansion. I was familiar with the Harry Potter storyworld and accompanied by an avowed super-fan I found the place captivating. Since the two of us were familiar with the Harry Potter world we found no impediment to understanding or enjoyment of the park – it was designed for us.
There is no meaningful onboarding for non-fans, and unlike some of the other rides at Universal Studios that remediate the plot of the source material, there is no retreading of known plot lines. WWHP stands alone as a transmediality, existing as a distinct artefact separate from any of the films or books (although it is explicitly based on the films, as it uses actors from the films and is designed after the look of the films). Interestingly, it seems to exist at a specific point in the Harry Potter timeline, being set before the events of the last few books, as evidenced by the presence and age of the young stars of the films.
The sense, then, is of inhabiting the Harry Potter franchise at a pivotal time in the plot – before the climax and denouement of the final books but after most of the world is established by the first few books. This is a distinction that would not be noticed or appreciated by those who are not familiar with the story world.
Embodiment in the space translates to embodiment within the narrative. It is those for whom the cult geography resonates that are the core audience of WWHP. These people become embodied within the plot by their presence at the park, and their presence at the park generates the sense of communitas that brings the park to life.
Escape Games 2/2
Contextual Analysis
Where Dark Things Dwell at Black Creek Pioneer Village is a unique escape game experience at Toronto’s Black Creek Pioneer Village. It is intended a showcase of the historic buildings at Black Creek, using the escape game format as a means of bringing players who might not otherwise have come to the village on a tour of the site.
The game uses environmental storytelling to explore the true history of the site as well as the fictionalized story of a curse trapping the players in the village. Each building has a set of puzzles themed to the building, which can have Nicholson’s “Ask Why” paradigm applied to them to explore their placement in the village. The mill has a puzzle involving sacks of flour, for example, while the building containing drying racks of herbs contains puzzles involving potions.
It is interesting to note that the puzzles forms are often unrelated to their content – the flour sack puzzle, for example, could be easily replicated with paper or wooden tiles. The potion puzzle is simply a series of riddles. While thematically linked to their sites (or by content – for example, the potion riddle puzzles are themed after spells) there is rarely a physical necessity or affordance that causes a puzzle to be situated in a physical form or space.
Each space’s puzzles are contextualized by the space they occupy, bringing narrative synchronicity to what would otherwise be unrelated puzzles. By couching puzzles in the trappings of their space narrative coherence is strengthened, even when there is no deeper relationship.
Video Games + VR 2/2
Analyzing Destiny 2 with the Player Involvement Model
While reading Calleja’s In-Game I was struck by how successfully Bungie’s Destiny 2 incorporates the six methods of involvement. No matter the player’s taste or play style Destiny 2 has sharp, well-realized elements that are have the potential to fully involve a player.
Kinesthetic Involvement
Gameplay in Destiny 2 is primarily traversal and gunplay. Both elements are finely tuned and responsive. Traversal often involves massive leaps through otherworldly terrain; players are given unusual modes of movement such as mid-air hops, jetpack-like hovering, and a glide. Effective traversal involves mastering the movements, each of which have their own distinct feel and quirks.
Gunplay is one of Destiny 2‘s selling points. Guns, the primary means of interaction and reward, all feel and sound distinct. Guns possess statistics – while no gun is better or worse than others, their statistics dictate how quickly they can be aimed, reloaded, track enemies etc. Gathering guns and experimenting to find a gun that feels good to the player is a large component of the gameplay. In short, kinesthetic involvement is central to the Destiny 2 experience.
Spatial Involvement
Destiny 2 rewards exploration of game spaces. Like the multiplayer games Calleja discusses (like Counter-Strike) Destiny 2 has a competitive multiplayer mode in which knowledge of map layouts and details grants a competitive edge. Furthermore, exploration of the various planets uncovers secrets, unique areas. Each area is designed to feel lived-in with a strong history.
Shared Involvement
Destiny 2 takes place in shared space with other players and non-player agents. Enemies have patterns, and return to the map periodically on drop-ships (standing out from other games where defeated enemies simply return after a period of time). Enemies have distinct tactics and utilize game spaces in attempts to outflank the player. Seperate from NPC shared involvement, Destiny 2 is largely a social game. Other players are always visible in game spaces pursuing their own objectives (which sometimes align with yours; some of the most thrilling moments come when strangers gather for impromptu battles with powerful enemies). No matter how the game is played Destiny 2 feels lived-in and dynamic.
Narrative Involvement
While the dialogue in the Destiny franchise is famously bad, the narrative is deep and well-seeded. Much of the storytelling in Destiny 2 is done through implication, with sharp-eyed players able to discovery secret locations and hidden details in the levels that hint at the larger narrative. Furthermore Destiny and Destiny 2 feature “the Grimoire”, short prose segments that can be found through gameplay or attached to rare gear, that are in-universe story elements. Each Grimoire entry is part of a short story that reveals plot elements which provide context for the action of the game. The lore of Destiny is deep and comprehensive, and the main plot of each game barely scratches the surface. Involvement in the Destiny lore is a large component of macro-involvement, as the community is constantly analyzing and discussing the content of the Grimoire.
Affective Involvement
Every element of Destiny 2 is designed to elicit emotional engagement. Every interaction is a positive feedback loop, keeping players involved regardless of the activity they are taking part in. The most basic loop, the engagement and defeat of enemies, is made rewarding by the satisfying sound of the gun, informing the player of the damage they are inflicting, and the beautiful animation and sound design of the animations when an enemy is defeated (personally, the tremendously satisfying pop of enemy heads is one of the things that sold me on the game initially). Enemies occasionally drop loot, which is a microcosm of the thrill of gambling – wondering what goodies you’ll unlock when you pick up the glowing loot orb. Even destroying junk loot is made pleasurable by the sound effects and climbing currency numbers. At a wider view, the reward loop of missions is clear, with structured adventures granting powerful rewards. Even the player’s gameplay schedule is structured as a reward loop, with “weekly” rewards of powerful goods available for completing extended tasks over long periods of time.
Ludic Involvement
While character ability customization is minimal, gear loadouts are potentially endless. Finding the most effective and efficient weapon and ability combinations is a constant task in Destiny. And, of course, the physical mastery of the gameplay mechanics is a core part of the game.
Destiny 2, intentionally or not, engages with every element of Calleja’s involvement theory and provides multiple angles for players to become immersed. As they get comfortable with the game and need not mindfully engage with any one involvement, they move to the centre of the proposed Player Involvement Model where Calleja’s incorporation can take place.
Role Playing Games 2/2
Role Playing Games: Contextual Analysis
Curse of Strahd is a self-contained adventure for Dungeons & Dragons. It contains all the information required for players (including a referee or Dungeon Master (DM)) to play out the scenario inside, covering approximately 100-200 hours of gameplay time. It describes the country of Barovia, its ecology, the terrible curse it exists under, and the characters who live within it.
While it contains detailed game statistics for many monsters, characters, and dungeons, it is light on details beyond those features of the game that it expects players to encounter. Instead, it focuses on establishing mood and setting, detailing the plots at work in the world, and giving examples of the kind of strange magic encounters players are likely to have. Unlike some fantasy gaming modules, whose features are all painstakingly rendered by the in-game mechanics, Curse of Strahd provides only a light framework and trusts players to fill in any gaps.
Thus Curse of Strahd is a Wunderkammer itself – a book full of possibilities, laid out not as a straight narrative, but a mixed bag of interrelated occurrences that can be arranged by player choice into a narrative that is recontextualized every time it is played.
Sub-Creation
Curse of Strahd lays out the details of its world, Barovia, early. It is a relatively small plot of land in which dark forces are at work. The book lays out the facts of the world, such as its choking fogs and constantly overcast skies, that remain constant. The Sub-Creation of the fictional world informs the narrative, performance, and the ludus, of Curse of Strahd.
Curse of Strahd has a series of loose narrative thread running through it, with one – the liberation of Barovia from the titular Strahd – serving as arguably the main plot. None of these plots need be followed, however, to have meaningful narrative play. Indeed some of the plots may resolve without player input, lending Curse of Strahd a lived-in verisimilitude, as many RPG narratives expect players to serve as lead characters. Curse of Strahd presents many opportunities for dynamic narrative while never constraining players by forcing them to follow one “true” narrative.
Performance is the aspect least contained within Curse of Strahd. The non-player characters (NPCs) are often colourful with clear desires, and the book does well in suggesting tics and voices to play the characters with without outright telling a reader what to do. Mostly the performance aspect is assumed to be covered by non-DM players who, reacting to the horrible situations within Barovia, give role-playing performances that challenge their characters in unexpected ways. Curse of Strahd is explicitly a horror module (a rare genre in D&D) and players are unlikely to have encountered similar situations – indeed, CoS intentionally misleads players who assume that it will keep to popular D&D tropes – and their performances are likely to reflect that experience.
As discussed above, Curse of Strahd contains enough game mechanic materials to establish a mechanical Wunderkammer. It has enough new and unusual content so players will always be discovering and incorporating new materials into their play, but it is not bogged down in game mechanics. It walks the line between providing new game material and trusting that player ingenuity will serve to merge any situations that do not have associated game mechanics into the experience.
Immersive Theatre 2/2
Contextual Analysis – DR. SILVER: A Celebration of Life
DR. SILVER: A Celebration of Life
DR SILVER: A Celebration of Life is a joint production of Outside the March and The Musical Stage Co. Billed as an “immersive musical”, it is the brainchild of librettist siblings Anika and Britta Johnson who, partnered with director Mitchell Cushman, developed an ambitious musical presented in a unique way, with many feints toward total immersion. However, due perhaps to the creators’ comfort with traditional musical theatre conventions, the production falls short of achieving the kind of immersion striven for by Machon and her contributing artists.
Held at Heliconian Hall in Toronto, a small gothic building that looks and feels uncannily like the kind of hall in a small town that a small cult might rent for a gathering, DR SILVER is a musical about a family who is at the centre of a cult whose messianic patriarch figure, the titular Dr Silver, has recently passed away. It explores the grief of each of the family members and their desires for the future. Much of the drama comes from each of the family’s feelings about the absent Gordon, who forsake the cult some time ago and may or may not be dead in the present. Aside from the family, who represent the entirety of the speaking cast, a chorus of young cult members fill out the space and serve as ushers, dancers, and singers.
The space is decorated and lit in a clever fashion, allowing the production to pivot from the feel of a mundane meeting hall to the rapturous wonder of a church congregation. A projection of the late Dr Silver rendered as stained class changes subtly as the production goes on. Audience-participants, who are treated as welcomed visitors and (it is presumed) are cultists as well, are seated on pews along four walls of the space and invited to paw through a gorgeously printed chapbook that serves as the holy book of the cult.
The chapbook, like a bible, also contains hymns, and early in the production audience-participants are invited to sing along with a number.
The first fifteen minutes or so of the production are deeply immersive. From the moment the audience-participant arrives on the site (which, as mentioned, is an imposing but out-of-the-way building) are are greeted by signs advertising the funeral of the late Doctor, they are treated as guests of the cult. Ushers/chorus members are dressed in identical unsettling blue scrubs and welcome participants with euphoric words and wide smiles while led to places on the pews. The performance takes place in full light, so every audience-participant is equally present as the performers. After they are invited to sing, the audience-participants are offered a drink of what looks like blue Kool-Aid that, it is suggested, contains a hallucinogen. This is perhaps meant as an explanation for why the remainder of the play is staged as it is, but sadly it is the last feint toward immersion that the play makes.
Shortly after the Kool-Aid sequence the show pivots from immersivity into traditional musical theatre-in-the-round. The remainder of the show is rendered as a series of flashbacks featuring the family, catching us up to how and why they find themselves relating to one another as they do in the present. These flashbacks are staged under spotlights, removing them from the present/presence of the immersive space, and the audience-participants are darkened, endistancing/alienating (as Brecht would say) them from the moment being staged. All pretenses of immersivity are gone – from this point on, the audience-participants are participants no more.
It is particularly disappointing because DR SILVER had, until this point, been an exemplar of Machon’s total immersion. The greeting and setting, as well as the opportunity to chat with other audience-participants, establish a firm external form through which to experience immersion as absorption, and the book of hymns, performers, and especially the drink of Kool-Aid engage all five senses, succeeding at immersion as transportation. Not totally realized is the social communitas discussed by Machon, though it is arguably attempted through the invitation to sing with the rest of the group.
The first act of DR SILVER delivers an embodied praesence (defined by Machon as being “at hand”) for audience-participants. The remainder is a familiar piece of musical theatre. Immersive elements remain as the chorus of cult members stalk the pews and the projections on the walls metamorphize as the plot continues, but there are no further invitations to engage – in other words, to realize one’s own praesence – and no further sense that the event possesses live(d)ness – that is, a uniqueness, and the knowledge that it will never be repeated as experienced.
Pre-Cinema Immersion 2/2
Pre-Cinema Immersion Contextual Analysis: The Pseudoscope
As a contextual analysis for a series of artefacts that are no longer being produced and experienced at scale, I thought it would be interesting to build one from scratch. I have encountered most of the artefacts discussed at some point in some form or another, but never a pseudoscope. I thought it would be interesting to build and experiment with one.
A pseudoscope is a device that uses a series of mirrors to swap the inputs of each eye.
Image from pseudoscope.blogspot.com
Looking through the pseudoscope makes the viewer confront and consider the minute differences between what is glimpsed through each eye. It is said to cause fascinating optical illusions. For example, looking through a pseudoscope at a spinning sphere with a stick in it is said to appear as if if the stick and sphere are spinning in opposite direction.
I found several sources online for building a pseudoscope quickly and for cheap. After gathering materials and overcoming some logistical problems with the maker lab, I was able to assemble a working pseudoscope in about half an hour.
The experience of looking through a pseudoscope without an illusion ready is lackluster. It takes some time to adjust it for the spacing of your eyes, and it takes time for your eyes to adjust. The minute imperfections of my pseudoscope are pronounced – the base is not perfectly flat so it must be held a certain way, or else the images do not line up and result in double vision. It also does not “auto-focus” for distance in the way our eyes do, requiring manual adjustment of the reflectors if you move from viewing something close up to something far away.
Once these issues are settled, though, the pseudoscope proves fascinating. It feels like it requires focus and alertness to view images through it, and although the images are familiar it feels like it is more work, physically, to view them.
The next steps would be to research and create a series of illusions for the pseudoscope, as well as tweak the current design for user-friendliness.
Works Consulted:
Make: “Weekend Project: $10 Pseudoscope.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 May 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=107&v=_Y9rmizlrg8.
Make a Pseudoscope, pseudoscope.blogspot.com/.
Speculative and Design Fiction 2/2
Speculative Design in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
The 2018 TV show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (created by Noelle Stevenson and produced by DreamWorks Animation, a re-imagining of and not to be confused with 1985’s She-Ra: Princess of Power) demonstrates strong understanding of the speculative design tradition. Originating from a series of tight constraints – that is, being required to keep the same core characters, setting, naming conventions and basic plot from a quarter-century old show that famously was not very concerned with logic or narrative consistency – She-Ra and the Princesses of Power proves itself a work of speculative futurism masquerading as space fantasy.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is about Adora, a soldier from the army of the fascist Horde that has invaded and has been terrorizing the planet Etherea, who defects when she is chosen by the Sword of Protection. Using the sword she can transform into She-Ra, a powerful being dedicated to protecting Etherea. She makes friends with Glimmer, one of several Princesses of Power who are granted supernatural powers by ancient Runestones, and Bow, a talented archer. Together they travel Etherera with the goal of to reuniting the Princesses and defeating the Horde.
While the show has the trappings of a fantasy (and indeed the various powers of the Princesses are referred to as “magic”) the show contains details that suggest the show may be a science fiction instead.
Presumably the show’s creators were mandated to keep details from the original show – for example, the lead character and her iconic transformation into the titular She-Ra. These details would serve as entry points into the world.
The Sword of Protection, arguably the defining artifact carried over from the 1985 show, is described at one point in the 2018 version as a “portable Runestone”. The Runestone, then, is the source of She-Ra’s power. When Adora is removed from the sword she is unable to transform and access the various powers of the sword. Another clear requirement is the presence of the various Princesses of Power, who are holdovers in name and power from the original show. It is explained that each of the Princesses gain their powers from a Runestone as well, and that if their Runestones are destroyed or tampered with their powers can suffer.
So now we have the Runestones as artefacts of the world, and requisites for the existence of the princesses. This is further extrapolated by the existence of the First Ones, a highly advanced but mysteriously vanished progenitor species that left their technology (usually referred to in short hand as “First Ones’ Tech”) scattered around the planet. It is eventually revealed that the First Ones created the Runestones and that they are all connected through First Ones Tech that runs throughout the planet. The Runestones are technology, not magic, and dictate the nature of the communities that they belong to (the Runestone that affects nature is surrounded by a great forest and is tended by a community of survivalists, while the Runestone that affects cold is suspended inside a mountain of ice and is tended by Inuk-inspired arctic-dwelling people). They can even be hacked by computer, which happens several times in the show, at one point causing She-Ra’s behavior to change (suggesting that She-Ra’s transformation is technological in nature).
This further lends context to the question of why only Princesses can access the power of the Runestones (perhaps they are descended from First Ones?) and the question of why the world of Eternia is in such a bizarre state — why it seems to be divided by ecological biomes (the elemental influence of the Runestones, which aside from Adora’s are immobile) and lacks stars in its sky. None of these questions are the focus of the show, which tends to focus its plots on brief adventures and the interpersonal relationships of the protagonists and antagonists.
They serve as worldmaking details that belie the absurdity of the show’s presentation. Stevenson and the team behind She-Ra and the Princesses of Power used details from a defunct and little-cared for story world as entry points (or “core samples” if considering McDowell’s Mandala framework) to extrapolate an internally consistent story world that holds up against scrutiny – that is, stand up to suspension of disbelief – and ask the question “how would the world be if an ancient progenitor race distributed supernatural runestones on the planet?” with a straight face.
Immersion as Non-Product 1/2
Process Journal 8
Process Journal
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Whither P2?
USAC has released the Demand Estimate for 2014-2015, which gives me another opportunity to speculate on the denial threshold for Priority Two funding. The important demand figures, in billions:
Denial rate
Demand 10% 20%
P1 total $2.60 $2.34 $2.08
P1 plus 90% P2 $4.30 $3.87 $3.44
P1 plus 80-90% P2 $4.75 $4.28 $3.80
The funding cap is set at $2.41 billion. So P1 is covered. However, even if USAC denies 20% of applications, which would be an unusually high percentage of denials, we'd need over $1 billion to cover P2 for 90% applicants, and $1.4 billion to reach 80%.
Chairman Wheeler promised an extra $2 billion in funding over the next two years, probably by trimming reserves to give a bigger rollover. So there's our billion. Except I have to think that the Chairman wants to save most of that $2 billion for 2015-2016, when the new rules will mean none of that money gets spent on old voice systems.
On the other hand, I have speculated that the FCC may stretch the ADA exemption to allow them to oversubscribe the fund. Because approvals are always significantly higher than disbursements, the FCC could direct USAC to approve more funding than it expects to have, knowing that actual disbursements will be lower. That would probably let the FCC cover all P2 requests (once you've paid for 80% it takes almost no funding to run the table). But doing so would be pulling money from future years to pay for P2 in 2014-2015, and I just don't see the FCC doing that.
So in my analysis, it basically comes down to what kind of mood the FCC is in. Since they denied all P2 funding in 2013-2014, I'm betting they'll do the same in 2014-2015. But I'm not putting much money on it.
Posted by On-Tech at 6:28 PM No comments:
2-in-5 is 0-10
Another year, another failure of the 2-in-5 Rule. Or should I call it the Two-in-Fail Rule? This year, I'm going to have to go a little further into the data to show it's failure, so strap in. I've been on an anti-2-in-5-Rule campaign since 2007.
The main purpose of the 2-in-5 Rule is to reign in Internal Connections funding requests among applicants with a 90% discount. Anyone below 80% is subject to the 0-in-5 Rule, and those between 80-89% get the ?-in-? Rule, since they can't tell when they'll get funded. (Well, they can be pretty assured they won't ever be funded again unless the rules change, but that's a recent development.)
According to USAC's Demand Estimate for FY 2014-2015, Internal Connections funding requests are down 2%. But Basic Maintenance requests from 90%ers plummeted by 24%, which is only the second time since 2008 that the number's been negative. So the part of Priority Two demand not covered by 2-in-5 plummets, while the part affected by 2-in-5 basically holds steady.
A drop in the P2 demand from 90%ers is not surprising. Going into the 2014-2015 filing season, the conventional wisdom was that Priority Two was not likely to be funded even for 90% applicants, so some applicants decided it wasn't worth applying, since the Form 470 process increases costs. The 0-in-5 Rule is now suppressing P2 demand from 90% applicants.
I had high hopes when the big NPRM came out last July: the FCC sought "comment on whether we should revise or rescind the two-in-five rule...." (paragraph 144) (Of course, then they went on to suggest the 2-in-5 Rule might be replaced by the Dinner Table Rule, so it wasn't all rosy.) And the latest Request for Comment acknowledges that "Commenters generally agree that the rule that the Commission adopted limiting any school or library to two years of priority two support in every five year period (the two-in-five rule) does not appear to have achieved its intended goal of substantially spreading the available funds."(paragraph 9). But a mere 5 paragraphs later, the Commission suggests doubling down and instituting a 1-in-5 Rule. All the reasons I gave for not liking the 2-in-5 rule apply to 1-in-5, only more so. But the 1-in-5 Rule is better than the Dinner Table Rule, which is the next idea in the RFQ.
Practical considerations aside, why is Internal Connections in the E-Rate program? The idea is to provide an incentive for schools and libraries to purchase the equipment necessary to use the Priority One services they purchased, right? The thinking is that left to their own devices, applicants would underfund their network, leading to insufficient and aging equipment. So by subsidizing the equipment, the E-Rate provides an incentive to keep the network well-equipped and up-to-date. That's good. However, the Commission seems to feel that some 90% schools were taking it too far, constantly replacing perfectly serviceable equipment with the latest and greatest. So think about it: if you provide an incentive to encourage a certain behavior, and you find that you have been too effective, what do you do? Reduce your incentive, right? In this case, cut the top discount level. It makes no sense to give applicants such a huge discount that equipment is essentially free, then dream up all kinds of rules (2-in-5, Cost Effectiveness Review, equipment transfers, etc.) to keep applicants from over-buying. The problem is the 90% discount, so the solution should be to change the 90% discount.
And really, I don't think the excessive spending by 90% applicants was mostly the result of them buying equipment too frequently. Replacing equipment is a major disruption for the applicants and a lot of extra work for district staff, so I doubt there are many cases of applicants replacing equipment more quickly than every 3 years. The problem is that when those applicants do upgrade, they overpurchase. The 2-in-5 Rule does nothing to prevent overpurchasing. In fact, it contributes to that overpurchasing by forcing applicants to buy everything they might need for the next 3 years. The 1-in-5 Rule will increase overpurchasing even more.
90% is too close to free. Cut the discount. The 2-in-5 Rule will be unnecessary.
Posted by On-Tech at 2:40 PM 1 comment:
Big Wheeler keeps on turnin'
Chairman Wheeler spoke yesterday at the Institute for Museum and Library Studies "Broadband in Libraries" public hearing. Most of it was a restatement of ideas he has given before, but here is something new: I heard him suggest "establishing a system of reference pricing, so people know what is a fair price." It sounds like a baby-step towards Lowest Corresponding Price, or towards freeing up the information currently buried in the Item 21 Attachments. Good news for the program.
Libraries-to-libraries not apples-to-apples
What's the participation rate among libraries? I estimated 40% of libraries get funding. Now comes the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) and says: More than 90% of U.S. Public Libraries Have Used E-rate.
OK, you know what my first complaint is going to be: the small "r" in "E-Rate." I have found librarians to be generally very precise, especially when it comes to words, so it's especially disheartening to have them in the opposing camp in my campaign for the Big R.
How did we arrive at such different numbers? At least part of it can be explained by semantics.
First, we used different definitions of "library." When I calculated 40% of libraries, I used the ALA's number of administrative units, while the IMLS used the number of library buildings. It's analogous to the mess we're in because "entity" has more than one meaning. In Form 471 terms, I based my calculations on Block 1 data, while the IMLS used Block 4 data. So I based my calculations on 9,000 library administrative units, while the IMLS based their calculations on 16,000 library buildings.
Second, I looked at how many libraries are using the E-Rate, while the IMLS looked at how many have used the E-Rate. The IMLS is saying that 90% of buildings appeared in Block 4 on at least one application from Funding Year 2002 to FY 2012. I said 40% of library organizations appeared in Block 1 in FY 2009.
Fortunately, we can remove the effect of the second semantic difference, because the precise folks at IMLS supplied a graph showing participation each year. So looking at just FY2009, I said that 3,672 of 9,225 library administrative units were in Block 1 of a Form 471, while the IMLS says 11,181 of 16,392 library buildings were in Block 4 of a Form 471.
If we assume that all the libraries that didn't apply were libraries with only one location, we're almost in agreement: I say 5,553 "libraries" (meaning administrative units) weren't on an application, while the IMLS says 5,211 "libraries" (meaning buildings) weren't on an application. Of course, that assumption is overstated. While I would think that libraries with multiple branches are much more likely to apply than one-building libraries (because multi-site libraries probably have higher phone and Internet costs, so it's worth the hassle of filling out the forms or the expense of hiring a consultant), I am certain that there are multi-location libraries that do not apply for E-Rate.
Our numbers also differ because of likely miscounting:
I didn't count libraries in consortium applications, so I probably missed some libraries. Those applications would have only the consortium lead in Block 1, but could theoretically have hundreds of libraries in Block 4. There were 439 consortium applications, but a consortium made up of only libraries files as a library, so I missed only libraries which were in a consortium with non-libraries.
IMLS is probably counting locations that are not libraries. I used one definition of "library," the IMLS used a different one, but USAC has a slightly different definition. In Block 4, a bookmobile is a "library." So is a location that is strictly administrative. The IMLS blog was just an "initial investigation," I doubt they dug into the 11,181 locations on those forms to ensure they were included in their list of 16,392 libraries. So they might be overcounting a little.
So while our numbers seem wildly disparate at first glance, we really aren't that far apart. So choose whichever number suits your purposes. If you want to show that libraries are underserved by the E-Rate, use my 40% number. If you are more interested in showing how great a benefit the E-Rate has been to libraries, use the IMLS 90% number.
Advice from Committee to Commission
The FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee has issued some recommendations on E-Rate reform. I'd never heard of them, so I looked them up: "The purpose of the Committee is to make recommendations to the Commission regarding consumer issues within the jurisdiction of the Commission and to facilitate the participation of all consumers in proceedings before the Commission." Who's on the committee? I count 27 consumer (or at least consumerish) groups, 3 carriers and 2 carrier lobby groups.
The recommendations are not earth-shattering, and in many cases, it's hard to figure out what they're really saying. I guess that's what you get when you try to get 32 people to agree on the wording.
Item 2 in the first list states: "E-rate funding should be distributed in a way that promotes fair and equitable service and adequate speeds to schools and libraries of various sizes and in various locations." Well, I haven't heard anyone support unfair or inequitable service, or inadequate speeds, but I have no idea what the committee actually thinks the FCC should do.
My favorite juxtaposition:
3. The E-rate program must ensure that schools and libraries are not only connected to the internet, but also assist in the purchase of essential equipment to spread that connectivity throughout the schools and libraries and beyond.
4. The FCC should consider whether Priority 2 funding adequately addresses the unique needs of rural communities and smaller schools, as well as the changing educational environment, where learning does not stop at the end of the school day or when the student leaves the campus.
#3 seems to be saying that the Commission should be providing Internal Connections funding to all applicants, but #4 calls into question whether Priority Two funding addresses the learning needs of students after they leave campus at the end of the school day. Do they want more funding for P2 or no P2 funding?
Do they support increasing the size of the fund? "...the FCC should closely monitor and determine the appropriate level of funding to the E-rate program necessary to bring schools and libraries into the 21st century...." It sounds like they want to increase the size of the fund, but didn't want to appear to take sides.
Their process suggestions were much more concrete, and I agree with all of them.
A keyhole view of Item 21
EducationSuperHighway released an analysis based on the data from Item 21 Attachments. I thought it was a quick turnaround of data from their Item 21 Portal, but no, it's from 2013-2014 Item 21 Attachments. Apparently, they got Item 21 Attachments from 1,044 school districts, representing over $350 million in funding requests. That's about 3% of applicants, and about 7% of funding requested.
That's more Item 21 data than anyone else has. (Well, the New York City Board of Ed requested $605 million in funding, so technically they have access to a higher dollar amount of Item 21 attachments.) But it's a pretty small sample, and I have no idea how representative it is, so I can't say whether the data is any good.
The data is being used to support a point of view. Let's take a look at the "insights" and supporting data in the executive summary:
We face an urgent challenge to ensure that our students do not fall further behind.
The wealthiest districts are more likely to have met ConnectED goals, the poorest less likely.
Rural districts are less likely to have high-speed fiber.
It will take 7 years to reach today's goals.
In 7 years, our schools will need 10 times the bandwidth.
Schools are not meeting the ConnectED goals because high-speed broadband is not affordable.
Schools that are meeting the goals pay on average 1/3 the price for broadband vs. those that are not meeting the goals.
Schools that are meeting the current ConnectED goals also have Internet access budgets that are on average 450% larger than those that do not.
Schools that are able to afford high-speed broadband provide an actionable roadmap to enable every school to meet the ConnectED goals.
Districts with fiber connections have approximately nine times more bandwidth and 75% lower cost per Mbps compared to districts without fiber.
At higher speeds, which might be accomplished by aggregating purchases across multiple schools and districts, schools can reduce their costs to as little as $2/Mbps.
Schools with access to competitive options pay 2 - 3 times less for their WAN connections compared to schools that are only served by incumbent telephone and cable companies.
schools that have the option to take the initiative to lease fiber, self-provision a fiber network, or access an existing city network, pay the lowest prices for high-speed broadband.
96% of schools could meet today’s Internet access and WAN standards , if the FCC focused the E-rate program on broadband, but meeting the five-year ConnectED goals will likely require a combination of lower prices and more resources.
Re-investing the $1.1 billion per year of E-rate funds that are spent on non-broadband services (telephony, mobile, web hosting, and email) would provide enough funding to enable 96% of schools to have a gigabit WAN connection and 100 kbps/student of Internet access.
without improving the affordability of broadband, the $1.1 billion per year increase in support for broadband will still leave 80% of schools with too little bandwidth in five years
My thoughts on their insights:
So vague, it's indisputable. "Further behind" whom? Behind in what? The evidence presented indicates a disparity in access based on location and income level, and that we won't reach artificial goals quickly. There is no evidence on how the disparity or failure to meet targets will cause our students to fall further behind. Also, that "7 years to reach today's goal" figure is extrapolated from the fact that 28% of schools had 100 Kbps/student in the spring of 2013, and 37% did by the fall of 2013. That increase of 9% (over six months) was assumed to be the annual increase for the next 7 years.
Probably true in a lot of cases, but I know schools with 90% discounts, for whom money is no object, that don't meet the ConnectED goals because the network admin is competent enough to know that the schools don't need that much bandwidth. The factoids don't support the hypothesis very well. The first factoid results from the fact that cost/Mbps always drops drastically as the Mbps increase. (If a 100 Mbps link cost a school $1,000/month, a Gbps link is probably going to cost less than $3,000/month.) And the second factoid just says that schools that spend more on Internet have higher speeds.
Of course schools that have fiber have more bandwidth and cheaper prices. Factoids 1, 3 and 4 basically just say, "Applicants that have more options generally pay less." Factoid 2 claims that aggregating purchases can reduce costs. I agree that if 10 districts share a 1 Gbps Internet port, that will be cheaper than each of them having a 100 Mbps port. But only the Internet port costs would go down; circuit costs would probably go up, as all the districts would have to connect to a single hub site, rather than connecting to the nearest POP. The full report has a very interesting graph showing that applicants with over 100 WAN nodes have a per-Mbps cost that's a third of what other applicants pay. But there are only 2 applicants in that category, which is such a small sample that it seems irresponsible to make that a category. Hmm, interesting, the graph shows only 180 applicants with WANs. Only 17% of applicants in their sample have WANs?
I think their small sample skewed these results. Here is what those services cost for FY2011, according to USAC: Telephony=$428 million ($452 million if you include VoIP). Mobile=$176 million. Web hosting=$27 million. Email=$10 million. The total saved would be $669 million. ESH's estimate, based on their sample of 3% of 2013 FRNs, is 65% higher. The biggest discrepancy: their web hosting cost is 4 times greater than USAC's. The fact that only 17% of their applicants had WANs would also drive down the proportion of spending on broadband.
The report is certainly worth a read, and there is some good information in there, and they do make an effort to provide clear and objective information, but some of the information is spun pretty hard. The Executive Summary in particular is almost misleading.
E-Economics 101
I'm a bit behind on E-Rate news, so here's a little catch-up on supply and demand. The FCC set the cap on the fund at $2,413,817,693, an increase of 1.4%. USAC released a preliminary demand estimate: $2.643 billion in Priority One requests, $2.225 billion for Priority Two. The demand estimate will go up a little once paper 471s, and forms filed-late-but-not-too-late are added in, but then actual commitments will be lower as PIA pares some of the requests.
On the supply side, a 1.4% increase is just a rounding error. Chairman Wheeler has promised an extra billion, so let's assume it's not just accounting sleight of hand and tack that on. So we're up to $3.4 billion. I'll bet the Chairman included potential rollover funds in his $1 billion, so I won't add that in.
On the demand side, it looks like it might not be higher this year. Last year P1 demand was $2.7 billion, and P2 was $2.3 billion, so unless NYC filed on paper, I don't expect to see the double-digit increases of recent years. Let's assume that, like last year, about 45% of P2 demand is from 90% applicants. That means that P1 demand for all applicants plus P2 demand for 90% applicants will be $3.7 billion.
Supply = $3.4 billion. Demand = $3.7 billion. So we're close to P2 for 90% applicants. But will the FCC want to scrape together an extra $300 million to cover requests that will include services the Chairman doesn't want to fund, or just let P2 go down again to ensure a nice fat rollover to grease the transition to E-Rate 2.0 next year? The wheel is spinning, no more bets.
Posted by On-Tech at 12:49 PM No comments:
On-Tech
Involved with the E-Rate program since 1997, On-Tech's president, Dan Riordan, has continuously assisted schools and libraries in obtaining E-Rate funding, first as a trainer, then as a district employee, and now as an E-Rate consultant.
On-Tech E-Rate Consulting
Contact On-Tech
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Easy Money Monday in St. Louis?
When the line opened up for tonight's MNF game with the visiting 49ers laying 3.5, you'd figure everyone would be all over the Niners, swinging the line closer to a touchdown by kickoff. Well, as of this morning, the 49ers are favored by just 3 points. Does Vegas know something we don't? The Niners have allayed fears that they're on the decline with recent victories over the Eagles and Chiefs. The Rams, at 1-3, have provided stiff resistance to Dallas and Philly in their last two games, but are still running out their backup QB. Although we've fallen into the “road favorites on Monday night” trap already this season, the Niners look good at -3.
We'll likely see a raucous crowd in St. Louis at the Edward Jones Dome. Unfortunately, that's where the advantages end for the Rams. If you'll recall, in a Week 8 Monday night home game against the Seahawks last season, St. Louis gave the eventual champs all they could handle in 14-9 defeat. Handicappers may look to that as evidence the Rams can hang with the 49ers in their own building. Yet, just three weeks earlier in the 2013 season, the Rams were embarrassed by this San Francisco team in a Thursday primetime game. So, that theory can be tossed out.
Digging deeper, look no further than the impeccable record Jim Harbaugh and his Niners have in their last six Monday night outings. They've won all six by a combined score of 164-49, holding five of those opponents to fewer than 8 points. Staying on that side of the ball, the 49er defense is starting to look reminiscent of the group that has been near the top of the league for the past three seasons. Without two of the league's top linebackers for the first half of the season, NaVorro Bowman and Aldon Smith, the defense was expected to struggle, which they did to start the season. But, in their recent wins over the Eagles and Chiefs, the defense has allowed just 17 points. The pass rush, which was non-existent to start the season, has started to find its teeth. If they slow Zac Stacy and the St. Louis ground game early on, it may be another field day for the defense.
Moving to the other side of the ball, Colin Kaepernick has been erratic this season as a passer, but Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman have returned to the power running attack, behind the ageless wonder, Frank Gore. After receiving 35 total carries over the first three games, the Niners greased their squeaky wheel, handing the ball to Gore 42 times in their two recent wins. He went over 100 yards in each of those matchups, and he's facing the 31st run defense in the league tonight. Another 100-yard game should be in the offing for the 31-year-old back.
The only thing preventing the Niners from running away with this victory is their red zone execution. Penalties, poor clock management, and ill-advised plays from Kaepernick have hampered the 49ers after they've found their way into the red zone. This gives hope to the Rams that they may be able to hang around by forcing some stops at the right time. However, the 49er defense and running game will prove overwhelming for Jeff Fisher and the Rams.
It's the last football game for a whole three days, so download SnapCall and jump in the prediction seat for this crucial NFC West battle tonight. Kickoff is at 8:25pm.
Posted by SnapCall at 2:40 PM
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Afghan President Declares Temporary Cease-Fire With Taliban
Updated 06.07.18 8:36AM ET / Published 06.07.18 8:15AM ET
Omar Sobhani / Reuters
The president of Afghanistan has announced a weeklong cease-fire with the Taliban, and the U.S. has confirmed it will honor the arrangement. Speaking in a televised address, Ashraf Ghani said local forces would halt operations against the insurgent group beginning June 12—it is the first time an Afghan leader has declared a cease-fire with the Taliban since the war began in 2001. “This cease-fire is an opportunity for Taliban to reflect on the fact that their violent campaign is not winning them hearts and minds but further alienating the Afghan people from their cause,” said Ghani. Gen. John Nicholson, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support commander, said: “We will adhere to the wishes of Afghanistan for the country to enjoy a peaceful end to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and support the search for an end to the conflict.” The cease-fire will not include U.S. counterterrorism efforts against ISIS, al Qaeda, and other regional and international terrorist groups.
Read it at Washington Post
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Did CIA Director Allen Dulles Order the Hit on JFK?
In a blistering but painstaking profile of the Cold War CIA chief, David Talbot’s damning accusations include the allegation that Dulles was behind the Kennedy assassination.
James A. Warren
An affable scion of the Northeastern establishment, a committed interventionist in foreign affairs, and fervent disciple of American exceptionalism, Allen Welsh Dulles served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1953 to 1961. International affairs were the Dulles family business. Allen’s maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, was secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison. His uncle, Robert Lansing, held the same office under Woodrow Wilson. John Foster Dulles, his elder brother, served as secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration, and Allen reputedly wanted the job for himself. Yet, when Allen ran the CIA and his brother was ensconced as head of State, there was little of the usual friction between the two agencies of government. The brothers worked together like a well-oiled team. Critics have argued ever since that the country and the world would have been better off had this not been the case.
After graduating from Princeton Phi Beta Kappa, Dulles joined the Foreign Service, where he served with distinction from 1916 to 1926, and developed a taste for intelligence work that lasted all his life. He then went on to join his brother’s Wall Street law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, with a view to making real money. The firm represented some of the most powerful corporations in the world, and Dulles succeeded in his objective, but he sorely missed the excitement of cloak-and-dagger work.
Then came World War II. Recruited by Wild Bill Donovan to run the OSS office in Bern, Switzerland, he developed invaluable connections with the German resistance movement against Hitler, and established a reputation as a superb spy with a flair for running networks of agents and planning covert operations. By the time of his ascent to the directorship of the CIA, the Cold War had blossomed from a conflict centered on Europe into a truly global contest waged by proxy armies and secret agents in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It was above all else a complex, multifaceted conflict with diplomatic, military, and propaganda components. The West had already suffered a number of serious reverses—the compromise of most of its agents behind the Iron Curtain as a result of Kim Philby’s defection, the “loss” of China, and the shocking invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea, widely (and incorrectly) believed to have been ordered by Stalin, to name but a few.
Like his more dour and grumpy older brother, Allen Dulles had a deep aversion to Communism, and viewed the Cold War as struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, between liberty and “enslavement.” Dulles threw himself into his work, writes intelligence historian Thomas Powers, “with a patriot’s devotion, an appetite for combat, and an elastic sense of the permissible … The fears and alarms of the Cold War seem melodramatic and overdrawn now, but the Dulles who ran the CIA during the Eisenhower years was fired by a steely resolve to carry the fight to the enemy, and prevail.”
Together, the Dulles brothers impressed upon Ike the need to check the expansion of Soviet influence wherever it appeared—and in some cases, it must be said, where the faint shadows of a Communist presence on the margins of political life in a foreign locale could provide cover for paramilitary intervention on behalf of American corporate interests that the Dulles brothers conflated with the national interest. Allen Dulles was a staunch advocate and leading orchestrator of the successful CIA-led coups in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, where the agency proclaimed local Communist provocateurs were laying the foundations for direct Soviet intervention, thereby threatening Western oil supplies, the Suez and Panama canals … and, of course, the financial interests of a host of British and American oil companies (in Iran) and the United Fruit Company (in Guatemala), an important Sullivan & Cromwell client.
Many other interventions and anti-communist campaigns of varying levels of success and subtlety were carried out by Dulles and his recruits from the “old boy” network of Ivy League-OSS-Wall Street establishment types, including the agency’s almost single-handed creation of the Republic of South Vietnam to challenge the ascendancy of the visionary Communist-Nationalist Ho Chi Minh.
Neutrality was a dirty word in the Dulles lexicon. When President Sukarno declared Indonesia neutral in the East-West conflict, Eisenhower authorized “all feasible covert means” to force the Indonesian strong man in a Westerly direction. The CIA went to considerable expense to spark a coup, but it had poor intelligence on the ground and the operation was badly botched.
You couldn’t win them all, but the Dulles brothers could be counted on to keep trying.
On Dulles’s watch, the CIA did a very good job of keeping track of what the Soviets did to forward their agenda around the globe. It formed a reasonably accurate picture of Soviet military and nuclear capababilities and its fundamental foreign policy objectives. This painstaking, laborious work was hardly the stuff of James Bond novels, but it laid the foundation for American defense and foreign policy during the height of the Cold War, and thus must be given a fair amount of credit for the prevention of nuclear holocaust. We do not and cannot know the full extent of either Allen Dulles’s or the CIA’s contribution to the West’s victory in the Cold War, but an educated guess is that it was considerable on both counts.
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, David Talbot’s sprawling and ambitious new book, is at one and the same time a damning biography of the CIA’s longest standing director, and an exposé of American politics, foreign and domestic, from the earliest rumblings of the Cold War up through the assassination of JFK. The overarching argument put forward in this disturbing, compulsively readable book is that an ominous “counterreformation” in American politics took place during this time, and that our civil liberties, our politics, and our moral standing in the world has suffered grievously as a result to this very day.
As Talbot sees it, New Deal liberalism, which stands as the apotheosis of 20th century American democracy, was gradually eclipsed by men highly placed in government who saw democracy “as an impediment to the smooth functioning of the corporate state”:
Washington was gradually taken over by business executives, Wall Street Lawyers, and investment bankers … During the Eisenhower administration, the Dulles brothers would finally be given full license to exercise their power in the global arena. In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality … The Dulles brothers would prove masters at exploiting the anxious state of permanent vigilance that accompanied the Cold War.
The rise of Dulles’s CIA, “the most potent agency of the Eisenhower era,” further undermined an American democracy “already seriously compromised by growing corporate power.”
This is by no means a new thesis. In fact, it has been around since the mid-’60s and recapitulated, with varying degrees of subtlety and sophistication, by many journalists and historians. In The Devil’s Chessboard, Talbot, the founder and first editor-in-chief of the online magazine Salon, builds on the work of others, deepening and complicating the basic storyline with the help of newly released classified documents, fresh interviews with participants, and recent additions to the secondary literature.
Talbot brings an encyclopedic knowledge of the sources, passionate curiosity, and the literary tool kit of a superb espionage novelist to his retelling of the tale. And what a tale it is! No doubt about it, The Devil’s Chessboard contains a bucketful of sensational allegations. What follows is a small, but representative sampling:
• Allen Dulles “undermined or betrayed every president he served.” In the waning days of World War II, the future CIA director tried to strike “a realpolitik deal … between Germany and the United States that would take Hitler out of the equation but leave the Reich largely intact.”
• Claims of Soviet/Communist subversion that served to justify the CIA-led coups d’état in Iran and Guatemala were for all intents and purposes fabricated. Threats to U.S. corporate interests were what really spurred these “successful” covert operations by the CIA.
• Allen Dulles oversaw a CIA program that conducted extremely dangerous experiments on the human brain. He was interested in finding out whether “LSD could be used to program zombielike saboteurs or assassins.”
• “Extraordinary rendition,” the CIA’s notorious War on Terror practice of kidnapping suspected enemies and turning them over to “the merciless security machinery” of U.S. allies in undisclosed locations, actually began in 1956, when a Columbia University academic hostile to Dominican strongman Raphael Trujillo was flown to the Dominican Republic, tortured, boiled to death, and fed to the sharks.
• “Over the final months of the JFK presidency, a clear consensus” emerged within Dulles’s sinister network of financial, intelligence, and military associates: “Kennedy was a national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed. And Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen.” And so he did. (Gulp!)
Does Talbot make a convincing case for such allegations, and for the argument that unites them?
That Allen Dulles exercised enormous power and abused that power in myriad ways; that he ordered assassinations of undesirables abroad; that his CIA destabilized foreign governments in the Third World based on grossly exaggerated assessments of Soviet subversion; that he integrated high-level Nazi intelligence agents into CIA and West German intelligence networks—all these allegations are clearly borne out by the facts presented here, and confirmed by the work of many other investigators.
The evidence that Dulles was the ringleader of a network of hardline, Cold War national security types that constituted a secret government, and that that “government” assassinated a president, is brilliantly and alluringly presented—so well presented, in fact, that one could almost believe it. But not quite.
For one thing, Talbot’s defense of these allegations rests far too heavily on hypothetical scenarios and intricately stitched together reconstructions of clandestine schemes, most of which are too heavily larded with innuendo, gossip, and hearsay to be credible. Too often, we are asked to accept that person X was engaged in some nefarious undertaking because person Y said they were, and person Z weighs in with some vague confirmation, along the lines of, “Oh, yes, that probably happened. It would have been just like X to do that …”
Then, too, one has the distinct sense time and again in the narrative that we are simply not being told the whole story, that evidence that conflicts with Talbot’s reconstruction of a given series of events has been left out, which engenders a certain skepticism about the author’s version of history. Much of the real political context in which Dulles and the CIA operated has been left out of the story. It’s troubling in a book so tightly focused on American Cold War strategy and initiatives that Soviet machinations are either buried deep in the background or absent altogether.
Indeed, in the cloak-and-dagger world of intrigue so deftly conjured up in The Devil’s Chessboard, the Soviet threat to both American interests and democratic values around the world seems to be a chimera, not the very real and formidable challenge it appeared to be to American policymakers at the time. Without a reasonably detailed picture of what the Soviets were up to, it’s rather difficult to place the shenanigans of Dulles and his merry band of Wall Street and national security acolytes in proper perspective.
In reflecting back on this long and discursive account, it strikes me that a great deal of what passes for “secret government” in Talbot’s imagination would probably be described by a judicious national security historian as the day-to-day practice of the politics of espionage by an aggressive, but deeply flawed, master of the game.
Talbot’s reconstruction of the plot engineered by Dulles to assassinate JFK contains so many key and bit players, and is so packed with qualifications concerning their actions, whereabouts, and intentions, that it’s close to impossible to keep one’s bearings. Tantalizing coincidences, clues, and statements from investigators and participants accumulate, casting doubt on the lone gunman theory accepted by the Warren Commission, but no truly credible alternative explanation seems to emerge.
In the end, and with all due respect for Talbot’s dogged detective work, the case he makes for Dulles’s masterminding the assassination strikes me as far-fetched and highly speculative. Even if one grants the existence of a Dulles-led, malign, and anti-democratic network of “deep power” conspirators—a tall order in and of itself—it’s hard to see why they would see the need to liquidate Kennedy. Contrary to Talbot’s claims, JFK’s policies, foreign or domestic, simply did not pose a dire threat to “deep power” interests. As Columbia historian Alan Brinkley points out, the consensus among historians today is that JFK’s “differences with the hardliners … were mostly tactical not strategic.”
Finally, from a practical standpoint, is it at all plausible that John McCone, the Kennedy-appointed CIA director at the time of the assassination, stood by passively as the retired Dulles waltzed back into CIA headquarters two years after having been fired to spearhead the greatest conspiracy in U.S. history? And if Dulles was behind it all, one wonders why Robert Kennedy pleaded with President Johnson to ask the gentleman spy to serve on the commission to investigate the murder of his beloved brother. Was Bobby in on it, too?
Still, one would be hard pressed to find a book that is better at evoking the strange and apocalyptic atmospherics of the early Cold War years in America, and the cast of characters that made the era what it was. One of the singular pleasures of reading The Devil’s Chessboard are the wry, closely observed character sketches that punctuate the narrative. John Foster Dulles “brought the gloom of a doomsday obsessed vicar to his job, with frequent sermons on Communist perfidy and his constant threats of nuclear annihilation.” Richard Nixon “may have suffered from a tortured psyche, but it made him acutely sensitive to the nuances of power. He had a Machiavellian brilliance for reading the chessboard and calculating the next series of moves to his advantage.”
Neither le Carre nor Graham Greene could do any better at conjuring up Dulles’s counterintelligence chief, the chain-smoking aesthete James Jesus Angleton:
He was known as the “Gray Ghost” in intelligence circles—a tall, stooped, ashen faced figure, with a bony, clothes-rack frame, draped in elegant, European-tailored suits, and wreathed in rings of smoke … Angleton’s activities ranged from purloining documents at foreign embassies to opening the mail of American citizens (he once jocularly referred to himself as “the postmaster”) to wiretapping the bedrooms of CIA officials. It was his job to be suspicious of everybody, and he was, keeping a treasure trove of sensitive files and photos in the locked vault in his office. Each morning … Angleton would report to Dulles on the results of his “fishing expeditions,” as they called his electronic eavesdropping missions, which picked up everything from gossip on the Georgetown party circuit to Washington pillow talk … As Dulles was well aware, Angleton even tucked away explosive secrets about the CIA director himself. That is why Dulles had rewarded him with the most sensitive job in the agency, Angleton confided [to a journalist] near the end of his life. “You know how I got to be chief of counterintelligence? I agreed not to polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends. They were afraid their own business dealings with Hitler’s pals would come out.”
Talbot’s main contribution with The Devil’s Chessboard has been to pull together a welter of sensational and controversial story lines in the history of American politics and espionage into one gripping but speculative narrative of betrayal, arrogance, and duplicity. As such, the book is bound to become an instant classic of political conspiracy literature, and to spur further debate about a number of important questions we are unlikely to answer definitively any time soon.
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Egypt Sends 3 Al Jazeera Journos to Jail
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty
An Egyptian court has convicted three Al Jazeera journalists of terrorism-related charges and sentenced each to seven years in prison. The purported democracy arrested the three journalists in December, accusing them of helping the Muslim Brotherhood by reporting the news from Cairo. Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohammed Fahmy, and Egyptian Baher Mohammed were seized in a raid on the Cairo hotel room they were using as an office. Fahmy shouted “I swear they will pay for this” from the defendant’s cage. His brother, Adel, said they would appeal the verdict. “Everything is corrupt,” he said. Ten-year sentences were also given to British and Dutch journalists, who were tried in absentia. The previous day, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He said “There are issues of concern... but we know how to work at these.” Show us what you got, Kerry.
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