October 2024
The October Country. October in the northern hemisphere is, let's face it, a
melancholy month.
Walking the dog through the quiet streets of our bosky suburb one chilly morning, a mild wind came up, filling the air with downwards-drifting dead leaves in slow showers. The pop-music standard Autumn Leaves of course surfaced in my head and got stuck there for the rest of the day.
It has been recorded about 1400 times by mainstream and modern jazz musicians alone and is the eighth most recorded tune by jazzmen, just before All the Things You Are. (Philippe Baudoin, "History and Analysis of Autumn Leaves.")
So I guess there's a good market for melancholy, at any rate in jazz.
Back home at my computer I summoned Keats' poem to cheer me up. Out on the street I'd only been able to recall the first couplet, but I knew the thing was autumn-positive. Sure enough, the poet reminded me of one thing I like about this month, martyr as I am to small biting insects: October kills off the summertime bugs.
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft …
Well, boo hoo hoo. Mourn away, damn you, then die!
Sorry. I guess October really does get to me.
It doesn't help that it's also a macabre month. If, when walking, I took my eyes off the down-drifting dead leaves, they met ghouls, skeletons, monsters, evil-grinning jack-o'-lanterns, fearsome giant black spiders on purple webs, and other memento moris (or whatever the correct plural is) on suburban lawns. One of my neighbors actually has a hearse on his lawn, drawn by a skeleton horse, along with — good grief! — a skeleton baby in a stroller pushed by a skeleton Mom.
If you were born and raised in the U.S.A. it's probably hard to imagine how peculiar all this seems to those of us who weren't, the more so to those of us from superstitious cultures. My wife, when she first settled here from China, was horrified by Halloween decor. The Chinese don't take death lightly, not even just for one day a year.
Halloween wasn't observed in the English East Midlands of my childhood, but I got some of the transatlantic flavor of it around age twelve when I read Ray Bradbury's short-story collection The October Country. To this day, if there are people gathered around a traffic accident, I expect to see the red-haired, red-cheeked woman from "The Crowd"; and the expression "Grim Reaper" carries an extra load of meaning for Bradbury fans.
So yeah, a melancholy month. Right in the middle of it, though, there comes a clear bright day when gloom is temporarily banished; when life is celebrated and death not thought of. Happy birthday, sweetheart!
Baroque sports. Until this month all I knew about Augustus the Strong was what I
had gathered from Prof. Steinberg's
Great Courses lecture
on him.
Then came my October delivery of the London Literary Review. One of the books reviewed is a new biography of that Baroque monarch: Augustus The Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco.
The reviewer has this to tell us about Augustus' sporting enthusiasms.
While paying due attention to all this magnificence, Blanning also gives unsparing descriptions of the hunting of animals, which was one of Augustus's favourite pursuits. At the "wedding of the century," four hundred deer were driven into the River Elbe so that the wedding guests could shoot them; the bride apparently joined in with particular enthusiasm. Then there was pig-sticking and a Parforcejagd, in which a stag was chased across open country until it collapsed from exhaustion. Another "sport" Augustus favoured was fox-tossing. To entertain the visiting king of Prussia, two hundred foxes were tossed in blankets in the palace courtyard until they died. There was also the Treibjagd, in which deer, bears and boars were driven over a cliff and fell to their deaths, watched delightedly by courtiers and peasants. Most of these activities involved no skill whatsoever.
Fox-tossing as a spectator sport? Fox-tossing? That almost left me feeling positive about women's soccer.
No sooner had we made our bow to Mr. Cambridge, in his library, than Johnson ran eagerly to one side of the room, intent on poring over the backs of the books. Sir Joshua observed, (aside,) "He runs to the books, as I do to the pictures: but I have the advantage. I can see much more of the pictures than he can of the books." Mr. Cambridge, upon this, politely said, "Dr. Johnson, I am going, with your pardon, to accuse myself, for I have the same custom which I perceive you have. But it seems odd that one should have such a desire to look at the backs of books." Johnson, ever ready for contest, instantly started from his reverie, wheeled about, and answered, "Sir, the reason is very plain. Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and the backs of books in libraries." Sir Joshua observed to me the extraordinary promptitude with which Johnson flew upon an argument. "Yes, (said I,) he has no formal preparation, no flourishing with his sword; he is through your body in an instant." (Boswell's Life of Johnson; April 18th, 1775)
Johnson had plenty of data in his bewigged head, but he was plainly also a fan of metadata — data about data. Not only did he know a lot of stuff; he knew where to go to find out what he didn't know.
Indeed, "knowledge is of two kinds": there is data, and there is metadata. If I send you an email, the contents of the email — the information I want to impart to you, or the question I want to ask you — is the data. The date and time stamped on the email, the names and e-addresses of sender(s) and recipient(s), the subject line, the number of words or bytes in the body of the email — that is metadata. Indexes, concordances and directories, "catalogues, and the backs of books in libraries," … all metadata, of a kind Dr. Johnson would have been familiar with. For as long as humanity has been producing anything that resembles books we have been working the metadata.
My friend and podcast host the Z-man recently wondered aloud whether we are headed for a society dominated by metadata: a society in which nobody will know anything much any more, but where every one of us will, with as-yet-inconceivably-powerful search engines at our fingertips (or wired into our implanted neuralinks) be a whiz at finding stuff out. He came to a pessimistic conclusion.
We are becoming an increasingly fragile species due to our dependence on technology. A prolonged GPS outage, for example, would mean deliveries grind to a halt. No one owns a map, much less has the ability to use one to navigate. If the power goes out, our advanced skills at finding information on the internet quickly becomes a liability. Suddenly we are in a world of simpletons who do not know how anything works. (The Rise Of Metadata Man by the Z-man, Oct. 7th 2024.)
Paging Mr. Forster, paging Mr. E.M. Forster …
Visions of Empire. White ethnomasochism — the readiness of white
Westerners to profess shame at their whiteness, to insult their ancestors and abjure their civilizational achievements — is a curious
thing. Are there any historical precedents?
Possibly. The Ottoman Empire was of course founded by Turks, yet:
By the sixteenth century "Turk" was more a term of abuse than one of approbation … To be a "Turk" or "Turkish" was, to the educated inhabitants of the empire, to be "ignorant," "witless," "senseless," "stupid," or "dishonest." (Page 94.)
That's from page 94 of Krishan Kumar's 2017 book Visions of Empire which, triggered by something in one of Ed West's "Wrong Side of History" newsletters, I have been reading. The Table of Contents shows the subject matter sufficiently.
- The idea of Empire
- The Roman Empire: Parent of Empire
- The Ottoman Empire
- The Habsburg Empire
- The Russian and Soviet Empires
- The British Empire
- The French Empire: "Imperial Nation-State"
- Epilogue: Nations after Empires
So yes: it's a comparative study of six different empires, trying for some general conclusions about the characteristics and fates of empires.
Every empire has a founding nationality. The six empires covered in detail by Kumar had founding nationalities Roman, Turkish, Austrian, Russian, British, and French. Each one of them of course included many other nationalities under its imperial control.
The theme I found interesting was the tension between the founding nationality and the subordinate ones, and the knots that founding nationalities tied themselves into in order to, for the sake of imperial harmony, downplay their dominant role.
The Ottoman Empire is rich in examples. The thumbnail sketch of modern Turkish history I had been carrying round in my head was that as the Ottoman Empire became increasingly decrepit in the 19th century, Turkish ethnonationalism began to assert itself in the persons of the Young Turks, leading eventually to Atatürk and the secular republic. Well, sort of, but:
Among the four medical students whose meeting in May 1889 … is traditionally seen as the founding moment of the Young Turk movement, not one was an ethnic Turk. (Page 136.)
(They were an Albanian, a Circassian, and two Kurds.)
Similarly with the Habsburgs.
For much of the nineteenth century Germans were the least nationalistic of all the groups within the empire. Most Austrian Germans rejected the aspirations of German nationalists to break up the empire and unite all Germans in a pan-German nation-state. (Page 181.)
So also with imperial Russia.
To have adopted nationalism, to have tried to make the state a nation-state, conforming to the Russian nation, would have risked dissolving the empire. To the end the Tsarist state resisted that temptation, and was rewarded by the loyalty of most of its subjects, Russian and non-Russian alike. (Page 267.)
This mentality carried forward into the Soviet period. Under Stalin, at any rate until WW2, "Great-Russian chauvinism" was a hanging offense, or at least a next-train-to-Siberia offense.
The Bolshevik theoretician Nikolai Bukharin stated the official position clearly: "As the former Great Power nation, we [Russians] should indulge the nationalist aspirations [of the non-Russians] and place ourselves in an unequal position … Only by such a policy, when we place ourselves artificially in a position lower in comparison with others … can we purchase for ourselves the trust of the formerly oppressed nations." Quoting this, Terry Martin comments: "Soviet policy did indeed call for Russian sacrifice in the realm of nationalities policy … Russians had to accept ambitious Affirmative Action programs for non-Russians …" (Page 303.)
Reading these things about empires of the past, you can almost hear, whispering down the centuries in Latin, Turkish, German, Russian, English, and French: "Diversity is our strength!"
Might it be the case that the imperial model is a default for human society? And that ethnomasochism — the belief that loyalty to one's own nationality, ethny, or race is forbidden to the empire's founding stock — is normal?
The Imperial Order. Where empires in the generality are concerned, I
am not well-read. I know my
Gibbon, of course, and
enjoyed Jan Morris' Pax Britannica, and have read plenty of
empire-related historical fiction, including even
a novel set in Wilhelmine Germany's
small, brief African empire. Academic Political Science usually sends me to sleep, though.
So Visions of Empire was only the second scholarly book on the subject of empires in general that I have ever read all through. The first, forty years ago, was Robert G. Wesson's 1967 work The Imperial Order.
It would be hard to imagine two books on the same theme that took two such different approaches. If I were a professor of Political Science, in fact, I would set my class the challenge of reading both Kumar and Wesson, then writing an essay comparing and contrasting their takes on empire. (To be perfectly fair here, Krishan Kumar's professorship is in Sociology, not Political Science.)
Here is Wesson's Table of Contents: 54 sub-headings gathered under ten headings.
- VICTORIOUS EMPIRES: Conquest from the Fringes / Decadence of the Free / Need for Union / Universal
Empires / Pattern of Empire
- UNIVERSALISM: Reaching for the World / The Sword Sheathed / The Self-Centered State
- CAESARISM: From City Republic to World Despotism / Vitality of Rome
- ORDERING OF POWER: Exalted Majesty / Monopoly of Authority / Unfree Enterprise / Rule without
Law / Bureaucracy / Inner Court / Who Rules?
- STRENGTH: Great Achievements / Equality in Inferiority / Political Controls / Guidance of Minds / Use of
Faith / Higher Discipline / Grip of Empire
- INTELLECTUAL FAILURE: Gleam of Grandeur / Poverty of Rome / Sterility / The Noncompetitive World / Weight of
the State / The Dispirited Society
- IMPOVERISHMENT: Burdens of Empire / Landlordism / Overpopulation / The Bankrupt Society
- POLITICAL FAILURE: Succession / The Ineffective Apparatus / Parasitic Hordes / The Dilapidated State /
Crumbling Defenses / The Amoral Society / Failure of Reform / Decline of Empires
- THE IMPERIAL MOLD: Imprint of Unity / Image of Authority / Celestial Empire / Chinese Buddhism / New
Faiths at Rome / The Roman Church / Ethical Communism
- PRINCIPLES OF EMPIRE: Effects of Domination / Isolation: Hawaiian Despotism / Size: Primitive Empires / Ways of Power / The Imperial Order
It's clear that Wesson and Kumar come at their subject from entirely different directions: Wesson more analytic, Kumar more descriptive.
Their choice of empires for discussion is also considerably different. Wesson's index has an entire half-column for the Inca Empire with more than forty page references ("…; pretensions, 41; prohibitions, 158; religion, 183-184, 397; secret police, 162; …") Kumar's has just two glancing references ("Inca Empire, 7, 158.")
Contrariwise, Kumar has an entire 68-page section on the Habsburg Empire, with an entire column of index entries, while "Habsburg" doesn't show up at all in Wesson's index. (And no, neither does "Hapsburg," although it should: it's mentioned, spelt thus, on page 444 of The Imperial Order: "Such middling empires, often with inflated pretensions, have been very numerous indeed: Hapsburg Spain, Arab califates of the Middle Ages, several partial empires of India, and the Aztec rule of Mexico …")
Scanning Prof. Wesson's book today, after many years, it has a Cold War flavor to it. That's understandable: it was published in the depths of that conflict, and the author was a Sovietologist. The book has a sub-theme — he doesn't bang you over the head with it, but it's there — that the U.S.S.R. was, or was developing into, a despotic, bureaucratic empire of the classical type.
A lot of scholars in 1967 would have protested that; but when, fifty years later, Krishan Kumar published his book, the idea of the U.S.S.R. as an empire was so taken for granted, Kumar could deal with Tsarist Russia and Soviet Russia under a single heading.
(I myself read Robert Wesson's book after returning from a year in communist China, 1982-83, in hopes of understanding some of what I had seen there. It helped.)
Landscaper wars? October in the suburbs brings the landscaping contractors out in
force. One last-of-season mowing for the lawns, trim for the bushes, surgery for the trees, all accompanied by the music of the leaf-blowers. On my
forty-five-minute morning dog walk I pass six or seven landscapers at work.
Plainly landscaping is a really competitive business in the Long Island suburbs. I find myself wondering whether sabotage is a thing.
Capitalism, after all, isn't just about building a better mousetrap; it can also, if not well-supervised, be about frustrating your competitors' efforts to build a better mousetrap than yours, or one just as good as yours but cheaper.
Landscaping is a low-security operation, with easily-identifiable vehicles parked overnight in easily-accessible yards, and equipment stored in sheds that some amateur lock-picking might easily penetrate. You can't tell me that thoughts of sabotaging the competition have never crossed a landscape contractor's mind
I can't recall ever seeing news stories about landscaper wars, but they must have happened. Does anyone know of an instance?
Secondary employment. In among all the election trivia this month was the issue of
whether Kamala Harris' claims to have worked at McDonald's when a student are true or false.
On that particular true-false issue, I can't summon enough interest to form an opinion. It did, though, get me thinking of my own secondary employments.
My primary employments after graduating from college were (a) two years as a schoolmaster, followed by (b) thirty-two years as a computer programmer — or "software developer," we're supposed to say nowadays. Before, and sometimes alongside, those jobs I had secondary employments. I thought it would be amusing, and a good workout for my memory, to try to list them.
- 1959(?) (A toy factory, or perhaps distributor, in
Northampton.) Through to my late childhood I
was a keen consumer of plastic model kits, mostly of planes. I glued them together and painted them — rather well, I fancy.
Somehow — I forget the precise connection — a family acquaintance arranged for me to assemble and paint some demonstration
models for the toy firm at five shillings (then 72 cents) per. I did four or five.
- 1960:
(Lankester & Wells wine-bottling
firm, Northampton.) In my school Easter vacation I worked full-time at a gadget that put corks into wine bottles. I forget the remuneration; probably
about two shillings (29 cents) an hour.
- 1960-1961: (Phipps Brewery, adjoining Lankester
& Wells.) General laborer. High-school vacations again. What I mainly remember is standing in the brewery yard waiting for a truck to bring
returned empty barrels from the town pubs. (These were old-style wooden barrels, none of your newfangled aluminum trash. Phipps actually had
coopers on staff.) We'd roll the barrels off the trucks and across the yard to a shed where we lifted them on to a conveyor belt. The belt
was fitted at intervals with upward-pointing nozzles. You positioned the bung-hole of the barrel over a nozzle and let it ride along the conveyer,
where it got blasts of steam up from the nozzle to clean out and disinfect the barrel.
This job, I remember, paid four pounds, ten shillings a week — $13. - 1961-62:
(George Orme
haberdashers of Gold Street, Northampton.) Store assistant, weekends and vacations.
My Uncle Fred was manager of this
store, and so my boss. (There were no other employees.) I don't remember how much he paid me.
I wasn't a very attentive employee and Uncle Fred eventually fired me. I can still help you pick out a tie to match your suit, though … - 1963: (Giesen and Wolff, a
greetings-card company, Northampton.) Warehouse work, moving boxes of cards on and off shelves. The firm's Export Manager got me the job; I was dating
his daughter.
The job paid fifteen pounds a week ($43). When, a couple of weeks into the school summer vacation, I heard a classmate boast about getting twenty-five pounds a week working construction, I quit the greeting-cards warehouse and went to join my classmate on the construction site. My girlfriend's father was furious. He wouldn't speak to me for weeks. - 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966: (Bernard Sunley &
Sons, a construction company busy in and around Northampton.) For the rest of my high-school and college years I worked as a construction laborer.
The sites I most clearly remember working on were: (1) New vehicle sheds for
Blackwood Hodge, a heavy-equipment firm, at Rothersthorpe, outside
Northampton. (2) An office building for (I think) a savings & loan firm at the southwest corner of Northampton Market Square. (3) A new factory
for Avon Cosmetics on the south shore of the River Nene, roughly where the University of Northampton now sits.
- 1967-69: Bartending in Liverpool. After graduating college I took a one-year teacher-training course in Liverpool, then was a
schoolmaster in that city and its environs for two years. For all three of those Liverpool years I did casual evening and vacation work as a bartender
in the city's pubs.
I can't remember the locations of the earlier bartending jobs but I soon settled in at the Nook in Liverpool's Chinatown. I described the Nook in some detail here.
There were a few brief post-1969 instances where I got paid for something other than teaching or cutting code — as a movie extra, for example; and then, at the other end of the glamor spectrum, dishwashing. Those earlier employments I've listed above, though, were probably formative, giving me a clear image of what much of the world's work is like.
Math Corner. (Borrowed with thanks from Southall & Pantaloni's
Geometry Snacks.) Find the
area of this triangle using a minimum of arithmetic and no trigonometry (sines, cosines, tangents, …) at all.
If you've spotted the key and want to win an A++ grade, work it out entirely in your head, no pen or paper.
