I read an article in The National Interest about Germany. It struck me a a bit odd and so I forwarded it to my German daughter-in-law for her take.  To put a kind face on it, we agreed that it was all about point of view. Then a few days later she sent me this map. Oh yes, this is exactly the situation.

To say that The National Interest is a conservative news source is a bit of an understatement. It was founded by Irving Kristol after all. The writer of this particular article, Jacob Heilbrunn, has a blog at The Huffington Post, that favourite of Pharyngula.

Here’s a quote from Heilbrunn’s article.

In other words, Vauban, for the most part, epitomizes how Germany would like to be seen abroad—enlightened, progressive, reflective, pleasant and virtuous. And, in many ways, it reflects the tamed and docile West Germany that England, France and America hoped would emerge after World War II.

Rather a nice example of textual inversion (perhaps textual subversion? textural inversion?). What is not said here is far more important that what is. The two sentences at once remind us of Germany’s ferocious past and its danger to us and at the same time suggest its emasculation. They “would like to be seen” next to “tamed and docile.” Nice. It generates a nest of common (but not very mature or reasonable) feelings, an emotional texture, which like the map, says south is the new north.

Here’s another gem:

Gregor Gysi, who has just stepped down as one of the chairmen of The Left, managed the party’s reinvention by grabbing hold of economic and foreign-policy issues. A clever and sinuous rhetorician, as an attorney he represented clients requesting an exit visa from the national prison known as East Germany.

A “clever and sinuous rhetorician?” Lovely. Bring in the snake and every right-thinking American knows exactly who Gysi claims as “Father” for the Fatherland. And the “national prison known as East Germany” – well, not as subtle as the snake reference but I don’t think subtle was the point.

Here’s a quote about Germany from a US government site (Department of State).

Despite persistence of some structural rigidities in the labor market and extensive government regulation, the economy remains strong and internationally competitive. Although production costs are very high, Germany is still an export powerhouse, and unit labor costs have decreased in the last decade. Additionally, Germany is strategically placed to take advantage of the rapidly growing central European countries. The current government has addressed some of the country’s structural problems, with important tax, social security, and financial sector reforms.

“Despite”? Perhaps it is an “export powerhouse” because of the social security net provided the citizens? Perhaps the economic debacle in the US might be partly blamed upon the social unrest within its borders? Could we call the US an “import powerhouse?”

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the CIA files. German unemployment is said to be at 8.20% for 2009. The United States is said to be at 9.4%. Hmmmmm.

And the percentage of the population below the poverty line? Germany 11% the US 12%.

(If you’re interested in German economic stats try here.)

So, I’m losing my cool. Let me just backstep for a moment and say this is about point of view. We need to be careful reading things, thinking things through. We all have a history which guides us in our interpretations. Germany 11% – US 12%. What this really seems to say is that despite rather large ideological differences between Merkel and Heilbrunn, and the represented National policies, the outcome is pretty much the same. The big difference is how the people feel about it and what happens to those human beings when they lose their jobs. In Germany the government steps up to help. In the US this is not something one can take for granted – there really are people who get told “sorry, you’re on your own”.

I am going to close with another quote from Heilbrunn.

Instead of resembling the martial country of yore, then, Germany has begun to reach even further back into its history, mirroring the provincial and musty duchies of the eighteenth century that vexed the German romantics who preached unification and national greatness. It has achieved the first, but it’s no longer interested in the latter for itself or, indeed, for Europe.

So if we are going to back in history for a national snapshot of contemporary intent, what is Heilbrunn advocating? A return to the policies (human and economic) that led to the American civil war? In that case “unification and greatness” came because the powerhouse of the conservative was beaten in war. I suspect this wasn’t what Heilbrunn was thinking of when he brought up the return to history spiel.

Some Americans have a oddly romantic attachment to the slave-states (and their economic and social policies) and with that romanticism, a rather inverted perspective. I mean, there are still people who think slavery a good worker procurement program, but Heilbrunn? Surely not.

Those beaten southern states wanted to control the destiny of the Nation and it seems to me a good thing that they didn’t get the chance to take plantation economics to the world stage. Surely Heilbrunn doesn’t intend Dixie to win this time? Can you imagine the results?

I was browsing videos at wimp.com and came across the one about Mayor McCallion. As videos go it’s funny and fun to watch, but given the size of the woman’s achievement, it seems ever so slightly patronizing.  Sort of like palling around with Stephen Hawking and casually mentioning (while patting him on the back) that he’s said some interesting things about the skies.

I don’t know if it’s the Mayor’s age and gender, her general demeanor or what but anyone who has gotten herself elected to such a normally contentious position repeatedly and without break since 1978 probably deserves a bit more of an in depth look and a little less of the cutsey hockey photo ops. For example, they could have mentioned the whole “transparency” issue with respect to city finances along with the city’s debt free position and how this might be a model for other government bodies. It might also have mentioned that Mississauga tends to have a strong immigrant population (11.4%) compared to the City of Brampton in the same region (9.93%) and interestingly Mississauga sits at 5.78% versus the City of Brampton at 8.73% when comparing the members of the population 25 and more years of age with less than a grade 9 education. It’s interesting that the city and region are more or less comparable with the unemployment rate at 6.5% for Mississauga and Brampton at 6.6% and the entire region (Peel) at 6.4%. (Stats here.) The national unemployment rate, for comparison purposes, is at 8.3%. In Vancouver, whose mayoral history is not so stable or so uncontested, the unemployment rate is predicted to be 8.0% for the period between February 7 and March 13 2010.

Mayor McCallion has not incurred  debt, has kept her city on par with others in her region and has demonstrated a concern for future growth and development consistent with the needs of a energy troubled planet and urban areas with increasing population numbers and needs. It seems to me that this level of achievement requires a bit more sober attention. To be fair, I suppose since the Mercer video has reached 2 million hits perhaps some political writer out there will have been caught by its unaddressed implications and look into it. I would really like to know what kind of power she exerts to have been able to achieve such tremendous victories, and that is what they are.

But really, the pat-on-the-head tone, do you think that was deliberate or just possible because of her age and gender? Am I the only one annoyed by the vid?

(Thanks Shannon for the pic.)

This seems to have come from engrish and if you have a peek over there you will find some howlers. Many of them have a sexual component almost certainly not intended by the product’s or service’s advertiser.  It makes me wonder what those fortune cookies really say. But really, isn’t that the real power of language and its relationship to meaning construction. All of a sudden what is visible are some of the deep webs which bind words together with the fine thread of categorical relationships and it makes you look around for other previously invisible things. If you think about the words “poisonous” and “rubbish” you can see how they really do fit together and if you work at it even a little you can stagger backwards into meaning-folds of the original language and take a guess at how “poisonous” is used more generally.  In other words, it gives us a glimpse of the connotations of “poisonous” in another’s context and by doing that, it makes temporarily visible our own contexts. It’s the difference, the dissonance, between the two that makes this funny.

Now that I find interesting.

I like what’s known as ledger art. It represents a period of American Indian history, specifically on the plains and primarily between the years of 1860 and 1930. What they mostly document is the large scale arrival of Europeans, their soldiers, the life ways of those tribes who produced the artists, and the contact between the two. Probably the most famous ledger books come from the Indian prisoners that were held at Fort Marion in St Augustine, Florida. Captain Pratt, their supervisor, gave them the paper, colored pencils and paints and presumably, retained at least some of the completed books. The Indians, having time on their hands, used their own experience with art (tanned hide, mineral and fat based paints, representational topics of note in Indian Country) and translated them into the new medium made available by Pratt.

There’s a contemporary collectors market for ledger books and some of them are available to the public through places like the Smithsonian and the Nebraska State Historical Society. I came across this picture on the net, which had an attached provenance.

The provenance reads:

Keeling Ledger Book, Nebraska State Historical Society (11310-55), is from the collection of William Henry Keeling of Falls City, NE. Major Keeling served with the Army in Montana in the 1860s. It is likely that the ledger book was collected at Camp Cooke, Montana in 1866-67. The William H. Keeling was received by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission staff at Arbor Lodge in 1925. The inventory entry appears as “Book of Indian Drawings, history of the Nez Perces Indians”.

“collected at Camp Cooke, Montana in 1866-67…”

“collected…”

Sort of like Lord Elgin “collected” the loose stones at the Parthenon?

Camp Cooke was the first permanent military base in Montana.  It was deemed necessary because in 1862 gold was discovered at Bannack in what was then Idaho territory but is now Montana. By 1863 President Lincoln had appointed Sidney Edgerton as the Chief Justice of the Territory. He arrived with his wife and kids. She and her husband’s niece set up a school.  He tried to deal with the increasing violence that sudden wealth so often seems to inspire.

And of course there was the Indian problem. Prior to the discovery of gold there weren’t so many whites as far out as the Idaho Territory. In the two years following the announcement at Bannack there were some 16,000 of the suckers and because of that things began moving along. Montana Territory was created in 1864 out of the eastern part of Idaho Territory. Edgerton was its first governor. By 1866 there were numerous Indian raids against the influx of white settlers. Indians burned white-owned buildings, ran off stock, and occasionally killed people. Edgerton, and then later Thomas Meagher, were tasked with getting up a local response. It didn’t work that well, and to a large degree, the policies, historical accidents, and attitudes generated during those years ended up being the genesis of the militia mindset that still pervades the region.

As winter burned itself out during those years between 1862 and 1866, the rumors of Indian attacks would predictably surface sort of like the black-boogey men stories white parents told their kids in South Africa before the end of apartheid. There’s a particularly funny Indian War of 1867 in which an attack (as it turned out by four or so Indian men) was anticipated and met with a million dollar military response. The thing is that the rumor mill of the time, the conspiracy theorists who predicted an uber-Indian alliance against the whites, had, in their late-winter by-the-fire-stories, 11,000 warriors pounding at white doors come one dark spring night. One of the things that makes this so funny is that the fact that it turned out to be four dudes didn’t stop the rumor mills any more than continual human and societal survival stops apocalyptic religions.

But I get ahead of the story here. The year before this happened this ledger book was “collected” by Major Keeling at Camp Cooke. So now what do you think “collected” means given the tenor of the times?

I don’t know much about Major Keeling. There is a newspaper mention of him in The Washington Critic dated December 3 1885. It describes him as the “post-trader” at Fort Leavenworth. So he survived the 1860s and ended up running the trading post? I wonder, all those years later, if he sold stuff to the Indian from whom he’d collected the ledger?

There’s another mention of Keeling in a text that recounts the history of the churches and schools in Fort Leavenworth. In recounting the somewhat meager situation of Father Kinsella as he tried to minister to a rather large area, the report has him taking up a room (when not otherwise occupied) in the hotel/military residence managed by Major Keeling. This is sometime around or after 1884. Keeling provided the Father board at $15 a month. The room, though, turned out to be a brief reprise from Kinsella’s homelessness because pretty soon there were so many young military trainees on the frontier that there just weren’t empty rooms in which the Father could kip.

Anyway, all these years later, the Keeling Ledger is taken care of by the Nebraska State Historical Society. It looks like Keeling’s family presented it to the Nebraska Parks and Game Commission in 1925, although I could be wrong about that.

You can buy a limited reproduction of ledger pages for between $250 and $5000 a pop.

Please allow me to introduce Stupid Fish. Personally, I think of him as Jeremy because he has ‘tude and he looks a bit like the eponymous man I once knew. You may not agree but I don’t much care.

Jeremy lives alone in his fish bowl with two humans as companions. His fishy isolation occurred because he ate the others (fish, not people, although could he breathe out of water, I would not wager on the humans). His current companions (the humans) are useful to him because they provide a clean habitat, they feed him, they even provide entertainment.
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I think I came across notice of this documentary on Pharyngula but I’m not sure. I found a copy and watched it, although, I have to say I was a bit nervous.

Have you ever seen a Chick tract?  I tend to be pretty careful about exposing myself to hate literature of any persuasion. Nevertheless, I did watch the documentary and was glad I did. It is a rather gentle exposure to the mad bad world of christians who hate and fear that which is not themselves.

If you want to get a better grip on this particular world, this is a good way in without having to swim in the pit of the particulars.

Tabitha Vevers is an artist. She has a number of series of paintings, and this one where she depicts dreams that she has collected from people. She painted them over a period of 4 years. The ways she depicts the dreams is rather literal.  That is she presents the dream world experienced by the dreamers as a real world with empirical validity and narrative coherence.  In her words: “I have tried to depict the scenes as actual events in keeping with the spirit of the dreams rather than trying to interpret them or fabricate a dream-like pastiche.”

This, it seems to me, is an important component of her “vision,” that is, of her assumptions about the nature of the world. It assumes that the world of  subjective feeling is as coherent and as real as the world of shared objectivity that we call being awake. It does not assume that the two worlds are the same but that that we live in both simultaneously. Vevers work doesn’t seem to suggest that she has a problem with that. I really like that about her work. In a way these paintings are like Tarot cards; they suggest a direct correspondence between the phenomenal and shared worlds that can be read and understood as a kind of narrative.

Anyway, these are my favourite three:

I took the day off work today so I could do a few errands and have some time to myself to just be in the world. I got up late, which in itself is a luxury I rarely manage, dressed in a quiet house (well, as quiet as it gets with three cats and a dog), then got in my car to drive across town for the first errand.

It’s been raining for several days, and was bucketing during the night and early this morning (could hear it through my open bedroom window as I was lying, listening, in the dark), but by the time I left the house the rain had stopped, the wind had picked up and the clouds were starting to be blown apart. As I got in my car there was a blue patch to the north.

The drive is pleasant in the middle of the morning. The traffic is as light as it gets for this region and the wind had cleared the roads of standing water so I could zip right along. I don’t always listen to music as I drive. Most of the time I prefer the relative silence that the car’s space offers. Today, however, I punched the button, and out poured Stravinsky. Normally Stravinsky is not really accessible to me. I like Rite of Spring but mostly I just don’t have enough in common with the music to be able to see through it to the world Stravinsky was creating with the sounds and rhythms. This piece that was playing is from Petrushka and I have to say I was about 20 seconds away from either changing the channel or turning off the radio when I came out of the curve and onto the bridge approach.
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I’ve been struggling to understand the arguments that surround representation in the philosophy of mind. I have several good references but it doesn’t seem to have helped much.  I keep running across words that seem to make absolutely no sense in the context of their use. Of course I realize that this is because the philosopher in question has taken a perfectly good English word and made it do some other work entirely. At best the word is tangentially related to its original use, and in fact that seems to make it worse for me. I read a passage and go — “WTF” does that mean? Then I reread it and realize that I must not really understand what he/she meant by that particular word. Words like “content,” I mean we all know what that means right? Nope.

Irritating.

So yesterday I went to the central public library where I figured they would have introductory texts on a variety of philosophical topics. Yes!

I found a “Representation 101.”  So today I am reading that and making little flash cards with vocabulary. Just like I did when I learned to read French.

Hopefully by the time I finish that I will be able to forgo the WTF experience when reading the other bits and bobs.

I have never been able to like Faulkner. I admire much about the books I have been able to struggle through, but I always finish them feeling raw and dirty.

This time it is The Sound and the Fury. In part I reread him because he is a very important American writer, in part because because not knowing Faulkner is to miss something vital about the growth of the American psyche and intellect, but really I decided to reread The Sound and the Fury because I still can’t figure out what it is about his books that causes me such distress.
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