Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility”: The Code of Decency That Guided America’s First President

in History, Politics | July 2nd, 2018

Con­trary to a thor­ough­ly abused polit­i­cal metaphor, Wash­ing­ton, DC was not in fact built on a swamp, though any­one who has vis­it­ed in the sum­mer will find that sto­ry plau­si­ble. Hav­ing just returned to my home­town for a few days, I’ve had ample reminder of its stick­i­ness, and have expe­ri­enced its fig­u­ra­tive­ly over­heat­ed atmos­phere first­hand. I needn’t go over the polit­i­cal and moral crises turn­ing the cap­i­tal into a caul­dron of “inci­vil­i­ty.”

But what exact­ly is “civil­i­ty” and what does it entail? Is it just anoth­er word for polite­ness, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly insid­i­ous code for silenc­ing dis­sent? Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies recent­ly chose the word for its Week­ly Word Watch, cit­ing an Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary entry defin­ing it as “the min­i­mum degree” of deco­rum in social sit­u­a­tions. Deriv­ing from the Latin civis, or “cit­i­zen,” and relat­ed to “civics” and “civ­i­liza­tion,” the word first meant “cit­i­zen­ship,” and con­not­ed the treat­ment sup­pos­ed­ly due a per­son with said sta­tus. As often hap­pens, con­no­ta­tion became deno­ta­tion, and civil­i­ty came to stand for basic respect.

Ner­vous colum­nists now wor­ried about civility’s decline have pinned the prob­lem on cit­i­zen pro­test­ers exer­cis­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and their first amend­ment rights, rather than on the tor­rents of abuse, threats, and lies that pour forth dai­ly from the exec­u­tive, who seems inca­pable of treat­ing any­one with min­i­mal decen­cy. But the very first hold­er of the office—faced with a frac­tious and unciv­il pop­u­lace (some of whom toast­ed to his “speedy death”)—believed it was his duty to set “a stan­dard to which the wise and hon­est can repair.”

What, we might won­der, would George Wash­ing­ton, builder of DC, have thought of the city’s cur­rent state? We can spec­u­late by ref­er­ence to his “Farewell Address,” in which the depart­ing pres­i­dent wrote:

The alter­nate dom­i­na­tion of one fac­tion over anoth­er, sharp­ened by the spir­it of revenge nat­ur­al to par­ty dis­sention, which in dif­fer­ent ages & coun­tries has per­pe­trat­ed the most hor­rid enor­mi­ties, is itself a fright­ful despo­tism. But this leads at length to a more for­mal and per­ma­nent despo­tism. The dis­or­ders & mis­eries, which result, grad­u­al­ly incline the minds of men to seek secu­ri­ty & repose in the absolute pow­er of an Indi­vid­ual: and soon­er or lat­er the chief of some pre­vail­ing fac­tion more able or more for­tu­nate than his com­peti­tors, turns this dis­po­si­tion to the pur­pos­es of his own ele­va­tion, on the ruins of Pub­lic Lib­er­ty.

Wash­ing­ton, argues his­to­ri­an and con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Richard Brookhis­er, gov­erned his own behav­ior with a strict code of con­duct based on “The Rules of Civil­i­ty & Decent Behav­ior in Com­pa­ny and Con­ver­sa­tion,” a list he care­ful­ly copied out by hand as a school­boy in Vir­ginia. “Based on a 16th-cen­tu­ry set of pre­cepts com­piled for young gen­tle­men by Jesuit instruc­tors,” notes NPR, “the Rules of Civil­i­ty were one of the ear­li­est and most pow­er­ful forces to shape America’s first pres­i­dent,” as Brookhis­er claims in his 2003 book Rules of Civil­i­ty: The 110 Pre­cepts That Guid­ed Our First Pres­i­dent in War and Peace.

Many of these “rules” are out­mod­ed eti­quette, many are baroque in their lev­el of detail, some should nev­er go out of style, and many would be mocked and derid­ed today as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” Brookhis­er “warns against dis­miss­ing the max­ims” as mere polite­ness, not­ing that they “address moral issues, but they address them indi­rect­ly. Maybe they can work on us in our cen­tu­ry as the Jesuits intend­ed them to work in theirs—indirectly—by putting us in a more ambi­tious frame of mind.” Or maybe they could induce some humil­i­ty among the already polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious.

See all of the 110 “Rules of Civil­i­ty” below, with mod­ern­ized spelling and punc­tu­a­tion, cour­tesy of NPR:

1. Every action done in com­pa­ny ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
2. When in com­pa­ny, put not your hands to any part of the body not usu­al­ly dis­cov­ered.
3. Show noth­ing to your friend that may affright him.
4. In the pres­ence of oth­ers, sing not to your­self with a hum­ming voice, or drum with your fin­gers or feet.
5. If you cough, sneeze, sigh or yawn, do it not loud but pri­vate­ly, and speak not in your yawn­ing, but put your hand­ker­chief or hand before your face and turn aside.
6. Sleep not when oth­ers speak, sit not when oth­ers stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not on when oth­ers stop.
7. Put not off your clothes in the pres­ence of oth­ers, nor go out of your cham­ber half dressed.
8. At play and attire, it’s good man­ners to give place to the last com­er, and affect not to speak loud­er than ordi­nary.
9. Spit not into the fire, nor stoop low before it; nei­ther put your hands into the flames to warm them, nor set your feet upon the fire, espe­cial­ly if there be meat before it.
10. When you sit down, keep your feet firm and even, with­out putting one on the oth­er or cross­ing them.
11. Shift not your­self in the sight of oth­ers, nor gnaw your nails.
12. Shake not the head, feet, or legs; roll not the eyes; lift not one eye­brow high­er than the oth­er, wry not the mouth, and bedew no man’s face with your spit­tle by approach­ing too near him when you speak.
13. Kill no ver­min, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc. in the sight of oth­ers; if you see any filth or thick spit­tle put your foot dex­ter­ous­ly upon it; if it be upon the clothes of your com­pan­ions, put it off pri­vate­ly, and if it be upon your own clothes, return thanks to him who puts it off.
14. Turn not your back to oth­ers, espe­cial­ly in speak­ing; jog not the table or desk on which anoth­er reads or writes; lean not upon any­one.
15. Keep your nails clean and short, also your hands and teeth clean, yet with­out show­ing any great con­cern for them.
16. Do not puff up the cheeks, loll not out the tongue with the hands or beard, thrust out the lips or bite them, or keep the lips too open or too close.
17. Be no flat­ter­er, nei­ther play with any that delight not to be played with­al.
18. Read no let­ter, books, or papers in com­pa­ny, but when there is a neces­si­ty for the doing of it, you must ask leave; come not near the books or writ­tings of anoth­er so as to read them unless desired, or give your opin­ion of them unasked. Also look not nigh when anoth­er is writ­ing a let­ter.
19. Let your coun­te­nance be pleas­ant but in seri­ous mat­ters some­what grave.
20. The ges­tures of the body must be suit­ed to the dis­course you are upon.
21. Reproach none for the infir­mi­ties of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind of there­of.
22. Show not your­self glad at the mis­for­tune of anoth­er though he were your ene­my.
23. When you see a crime pun­ished, you may be inward­ly pleased; but always show pity to the suf­fer­ing offend­er.
24. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any pub­lic spec­ta­cle.
25. Super­flu­ous com­pli­ments and all affec­ta­tion of cer­e­monies are to be avoid­ed, yet where due they are not to be neglect­ed.
26. In putting off your hat to per­sons of dis­tinc­tion, as noble­men, jus­tices, church­men, etc., make a rev­er­ence, bow­ing more or less accord­ing to the cus­tom of the bet­ter bred, and qual­i­ty of the per­sons. Among your equals expect not always that they should begin with you first, but to pull off the hat when there is no need is affec­ta­tion. In the man­ner of salut­ing and resalut­ing in words, keep to the most usu­al cus­tom.
27. ‘Tis ill man­ners to bid one more emi­nent than your­self be cov­ered, as well as not to do it to whom it is due. Like­wise he that makes too much haste to put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to put it on at the first, or at most the sec­ond time of being asked. Now what is here­in spo­ken, of qual­i­fi­ca­tion in behav­ior in salut­ing, ought also to be observed in tak­ing of place and sit­ting down, for cer­e­monies with­out bounds are trou­ble­some.
28. If any one come to speak to you while you are are sit­ting stand up, though he be your infe­ri­or, and when you present seats, let it be to every­one accord­ing to his degree.
29. When you meet with one of greater qual­i­ty than your­self, stop and retire, espe­cial­ly if it be at a door or any straight place, to give way for him to pass.
30. In walk­ing, the high­est place in most coun­tries seems to be on the right hand; there­fore, place your­self on the left of him whom you desire to hon­or. But if three walk togeth­er the mid­dest place is the most hon­or­able; the wall is usal­ly giv­en to the most wor­thy if two walk togeth­er.
31. If any­one far sur­pass­es oth­ers, either in age, estate, or mer­it, yet would give place to a mean­er than him­self in his own lodg­ing or else­where, the one ought not to except it. So he on the oth­er part should not use much earnest­ness nor offer it above once or twice.
32. To one that is your equal, or not much infe­ri­or, you are to give the chief place in your lodg­ing, and he to whom it is offered ought at the first to refuse it, but at the sec­ond to accept though not with­out acknowl­edg­ing his own unwor­thi­ness.
33. They that are in dig­ni­ty or in office have in all places prece­den­cy, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or oth­er qual­i­ties, though they have no pub­lic charge.
34. It is good man­ners to pre­fer them to whom we speak before our­selves, espe­cial­ly if they be above us, with whom in no sort we ought to begin.
35. Let your dis­course with men of busi­ness be short and com­pre­hen­sive.
36. Arti­fi­cers and per­sons of low degree ought not to use many cer­e­monies to lords or oth­ers of high degree, but respect and high­ly hon­or then, and those of high degree ought to treat them with affa­bil­i­ty and cour­tesy, with­out arro­gance.
37. In speak­ing to men of qual­i­ty do not lean nor look them full in the face, nor approach too near them at left. Keep a full pace from them.
38. In vis­it­ing the sick, do not present­ly play the physi­cian if you be not know­ing there­in.
39. In writ­ing or speak­ing, give to every per­son his due title accord­ing to his degree and the cus­tom of the place.
40. Strive not with your supe­ri­or in argu­ment, but always sub­mit your judg­ment to oth­ers with mod­esty.
41. Under­take not to teach your equal in the art him­self pro­fess­es; it savors of arro­gan­cy.
42. Let your cer­e­monies in cour­tesy be prop­er to the dig­ni­ty of his place with whom you con­verse, for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince.
43. Do not express joy before one sick in pain, for that con­trary pas­sion will aggra­vate his mis­ery.
44. When a man does all he can, though it suc­ceed not well, blame not him that did it.
45. Being to advise or rep­re­hend any one, con­sid­er whether it ought to be in pub­lic or in pri­vate, and present­ly or at some oth­er time; in what terms to do it; and in reprov­ing show no signs of cholor but do it with all sweet­ness and mild­ness.
46. Take all admo­ni­tions thank­ful­ly in what time or place soev­er giv­en, but after­wards not being cul­pa­ble take a time and place con­ve­nient to let him know it that gave them.
47. Mock not nor jest at any thing of impor­tance. Break no jests that are sharp, bit­ing, and if you deliv­er any thing wit­ty and pleas­ant, abstain from laugh­ing there­at your­self.
48. Where­in you reprove anoth­er be unblame­able your­self, for exam­ple is more preva­lent than pre­cepts.
49. Use no reproach­ful lan­guage against any one; nei­ther curse nor revile.
50. Be not hasty to believe fly­ing reports to the dis­par­age­ment of any.
51. Wear not your clothes foul, or ripped, or dusty, but see they be brushed once every day at least and take heed that you approach not to any uncleaness.
52. In your appar­el be mod­est and endeav­or to accom­mo­date nature, rather than to pro­cure admi­ra­tion; keep to the fash­ion of your equals, such as are civ­il and order­ly with respect to time and places.
53. Run not in the streets, nei­ther go too slow­ly, nor with mouth open; go not shak­ing of arms, nor upon the toes, kick not the earth with your feet, go not upon the toes, nor in a danc­ing fash­ion.
54. Play not the pea­cock, look­ing every where about you, to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stock­ings sit neat­ly and clothes hand­some­ly.
55. Eat not in the streets, nor in the house, out of sea­son.
56. Asso­ciate your­self with men of good qual­i­ty if you esteem your own rep­u­ta­tion; for ’tis bet­ter to be alone than in bad com­pa­ny.
57. In walk­ing up and down in a house, only with one in com­pa­ny if he be greater than your­self, at the first give him the right hand and stop not till he does and be not the first that turns, and when you do turn let it be with your face towards him; if he be a man of great qual­i­ty walk not with him cheek by jowl but some­what behind him, but yet in such a man­ner that he may eas­i­ly speak to you.
58. Let your con­ver­sa­tion be with­out mal­ice or envy, for ’tis a sign of a tractable and com­mend­able nature, and in all caus­es of pas­sion per­mit rea­son to gov­ern.
59. Nev­er express any­thing unbe­com­ing, nor act against the rules moral before your infe­ri­ors.
60. Be not immod­est in urg­ing your friends to dis­cov­er a secret.
61. Utter not base and friv­o­lous things among grave and learned men, nor very dif­fi­cult ques­tions or sub­jects among the igno­rant, or things hard to be believed; stuff not your dis­course with sen­tences among your bet­ters nor equals.
62. Speak not of dole­ful things in a time of mirth or at the table; speak not of melan­choly things as death and wounds, and if oth­ers men­tion them, change if you can the dis­course. Tell not your dreams, but to your inti­mate friend.
63. A man ought not to val­ue him­self of his achieve­ments or rare qual­i­ties of wit; much less of his rich­es, virtue or kin­dred.
64. Break not a jest where none take plea­sure in mirth; laugh not aloud, nor at all with­out occa­sion; deride no man’s mis­for­tune though there seem to be some cause.
65. Speak not inju­ri­ous words nei­ther in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occa­sion.
66. Be not froward but friend­ly and cour­te­ous, the first to salute, hear and answer; and be not pen­sive when it’s a time to con­verse.
67. Detract not from oth­ers, nei­ther be exces­sive in com­mand­ing.
68. Go not thith­er, where you know not whether you shall be wel­come or not; give not advice with­out being asked, and when desired do it briefly.
69. If two con­tend togeth­er take not the part of either uncon­strained, and be not obsti­nate in your own opin­ion. In things indif­fer­ent be of the major side.
70. Rep­re­hend not the imper­fec­tions of oth­ers, for that belongs to par­ents, mas­ters and supe­ri­ors.
71. Gaze not on the marks or blem­ish­es of oth­ers and ask not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your friend, deliv­er not before oth­ers.
72. Speak not in an unknown tongue in com­pa­ny but in your own lan­guage and that as those of qual­i­ty do and not as the vul­gar. Sub­lime mat­ters treat seri­ous­ly.
73. Think before you speak, pro­nounce not imper­fect­ly, nor bring out your words too hasti­ly, but order­ly and dis­tinct­ly.
74. When anoth­er speaks, be atten­tive your­self and dis­turb not the audi­ence. If any hes­i­tate in his words, help him not nor prompt him with­out desired. Inter­rupt him not, nor answer him till his speech be end­ed.
75. In the midst of dis­course ask not of what one treats, but if you per­ceive any stop because of your com­ing, you may well entreat him gen­tly to pro­ceed. If a per­son of qual­i­ty comes in while you’re con­vers­ing, it’s hand­some to repeat what was said before.
76. While you are talk­ing, point not with your fin­ger at him of whom you dis­course, nor approach too near him to whom you talk, espe­cial­ly to his face.
77. Treat with men at fit times about busi­ness and whis­per not in the com­pa­ny of oth­ers.
78. Make no com­par­isons and if any of the com­pa­ny be com­mend­ed for any brave act of virtue, com­mend not anoth­er for the same.
79. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth there­of. In dis­cours­ing of things you have heard, name not your author. Always a secret dis­cov­er not.
80. Be not tedious in dis­course or in read­ing unless you find the com­pa­ny pleased there­with.
81. Be not curi­ous to know the affairs of oth­ers, nei­ther approach those that speak in pri­vate.
82. Under­take not what you can­not per­form but be care­ful to keep your promise.
83. When you deliv­er a mat­ter do it with­out pas­sion and with dis­cre­tion, how­ev­er mean the per­son be you do it to.
84. When your supe­ri­ors talk to any­body hear­ken not, nei­ther speak nor laugh.
85. In com­pa­ny of those of high­er qual­i­ty than your­self, speak not ’til you are asked a ques­tion, then stand upright, put off your hat and answer in few words.
86. In dis­putes, be not so desirous to over­come as not to give lib­er­ty to each one to deliv­er his opin­ion and sub­mit to the judg­ment of the major part, espe­cial­ly if they are judges of the dis­pute.
87. Let your car­riage be such as becomes a man grave, set­tled and atten­tive to that which is spo­ken. Con­tra­dict not at every turn what oth­ers say.
88. Be not tedious in dis­course, make not many digres­sions, nor repeat often the same man­ner of dis­course.
89. Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.
90. Being set at meat scratch not, nei­ther spit, cough or blow your nose except there’s a neces­si­ty for it.
91. Make no show of tak­ing great delight in your vict­uals. Feed not with greed­i­ness. Eat your bread with a knife. Lean not on the table, nei­ther find fault with what you eat.
92. Take no salt or cut bread with your knife greasy.
93. Enter­tain­ing any­one at table it is decent to present him with meat. Under­take not to help oth­ers unde­sired by the mas­ter.
94. If you soak bread in the sauce, let it be no more than what you put in your mouth at a time, and blow not your broth at table but stay ’til it cools of itself.
95. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand; nei­ther spit forth the stones of any fruit pie upon a dish nor cast any­thing under the table.
96. It’s unbe­com­ing to heap much to one’s mea. Keep your fin­gers clean and when foul wipe them on a cor­ner of your table nap­kin.
97. Put not anoth­er bite into your mouth ’til the for­mer be swal­lowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.
98. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full; nei­ther gaze about you while you are drink­ing.
99. Drink not too leisure­ly nor yet too hasti­ly. Before and after drink­ing wipe your lips. Breathe not then or ever with too great a noise, for it is unciv­il.
100. Cleanse not your teeth with the table­cloth, nap­kin, fork or knife, but if oth­ers do it, let it be done with a pick tooth.
101. Rinse not your mouth in the pres­ence of oth­ers.
102. It is out of use to call upon the com­pa­ny often to eat. Nor need you drink to oth­ers every time you drink.
103. In com­pa­ny of your bet­ters be not longer in eat­ing than they are. Lay not your arm but only your hand upon the table.
104. It belongs to the chiefest in com­pa­ny to unfold his nap­kin and fall to meat first. But he ought then to begin in time and to dis­patch with dex­ter­i­ty that the slow­est may have time allowed him.
105. Be not angry at table what­ev­er hap­pens and if you have rea­son to be so, show it not but on a cheer­ful coun­te­nance espe­cial­ly if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast.
106. Set not your­self at the upper of the table but if it be your due, or that the mas­ter of the house will have it so. Con­tend not, lest you should trou­ble the com­pa­ny.
107. If oth­ers talk at table be atten­tive, but talk not with meat in your mouth.
108. When you speak of God or His attrib­ut­es, let it be seri­ous­ly and with rev­er­ence. Hon­or and obey your nat­ur­al par­ents although they be poor.
109. Let your recre­ations be man­ful not sin­ful.
110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that lit­tle spark of celes­tial fire called con­science.

via Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Color Film Was Designed to Take Pictures of White People, Not People of Color: The Unfortunate History of Racial Bias in Photography (1940–1990)

in Life, Photography, Science | July 2nd, 2018

In the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy and film, get­ting the right image meant get­ting the one which con­formed to preva­lent ideas of human­i­ty. This includ­ed ideas of white­ness, of what colour — what range of hue — white peo­ple want­ed white peo­ple to be. 

- Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Cul­ture

As the bride in the 2014 Inter­ra­cial Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er skit (see below) on her tit­u­lar sketch com­e­dy TV show, come­di­an Amy Schumer cast her­self in a small but essen­tial back­ground role. She is for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es a liv­ing Shirley card, an image of a young white woman that was for years the stan­dard pho­tog­ra­phy techs used to deter­mine “nor­mal” skin-col­or bal­ance when devel­op­ing film in the lab.

The Shirley card—named for its orig­i­nal mod­el, Kodak employ­ee Shirley Page–featured a suc­ces­sion of young women over the years, but skin tone-wise, the resem­blance was strik­ing.

As described by Syree­ta McFad­den in a Buz­zfeed essay that also touch­es on Car­rie Mae Weems’ 1988 four-pan­el por­trait, Peach­es, Liz, Tami­ka, Elaine, a col­or wheel meme fea­tur­ing actress Lupi­ta Nyong’o, and artists Adam Broomberg and Oliv­er Cha­narin’s 2013 project that trained an apartheid-era Polaroid ID2 cam­era and near­ly 40-year-old film stock on dark-skinned South African sub­jects as a lens for exam­in­ing racism:

She is wear­ing a white dress with long black gloves. A pearl bracelet adorns one of her wrists. She has auburn hair that drapes her exposed shoul­ders. Her eyes are blue. The back­ground is gray­ish, and she is sur­round­ed by three pil­lows, each in one of the pri­ma­ry col­ors we’re taught in school. She wears a white dress because it reads high con­trast against the gray back­ground with her black gloves. “Col­or girl” is the tech­ni­cians’ term for her. The image is used as a met­ric for skin-col­or bal­ance, which tech­ni­cians use to ren­der an image as close as pos­si­ble to what the human eye rec­og­nizes as nor­mal. But there’s the rub: With a white body as a light meter, all oth­er skin tones become devi­a­tions from the norm.

This explains why the por­trait ses­sion McFadden’s mom set up in a shop­ping mall stu­dio chain yield­ed results so dis­as­trous that McFad­den instinc­tive­ly grav­i­tat­ed toward black-and-white when she start­ed tak­ing pic­tures. Grayscale did a much bet­ter job of sug­gest­ing the wide vari­ety of mul­ti­cul­tur­al skin tones than exist­ing col­or film.

In her 2009 paper “Look­ing at Shirley, the Ulti­mate Norm: Colour Bal­ance, Image Tech­nolo­gies and Cog­ni­tive Equi­ty,” Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies pro­fes­sor Lor­na Roth went into the chem­istry of inher­ent, if uncon­scious, racial bias. The poten­tial to rec­og­nize a spec­trum of yel­low, brown and red­dish skin tones was there, but the film com­pa­nies went with emul­sions that catered to the per­ceived needs of their tar­get con­sumers, whose hides were notice­ably lighter than those of black shut­ter­bugs also seek­ing to doc­u­ment their fam­i­ly vaca­tions, mile­stones, and cel­e­bra­tions.

Indus­try progress can be chalked up to pres­sure from ven­dors of wood fur­ni­ture and choco­late, who felt their dark prod­ucts could look bet­ter on film.

Oprah Win­frey and Black Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion were ear­ly adopters of cam­eras equipped with two com­put­er chips, thus enabling them to accu­rate­ly por­tray a vari­ety of indi­vid­ual tones simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Who knew that Amy Schumer sketch, below, would turn out to have such his­toric sig­nif­i­cance? Once you know about the Shirley card, the com­e­dy becomes even dark­er. Gen­er­a­tions of real brides and grooms, whose skin tones fell to either side of Schumer’s TV groom, DJ Ali Sha­heed Muham­mad of A Tribe Called Quest fame, failed to show up in their own wed­ding pho­tos, through no fault of their own.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­tographs of Snowflakes: Dis­cov­er the Ground­break­ing Micropho­tog­ra­phy of Wil­son “Snowflake” Bent­ley (1885)

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Take a 360° Virtual Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architectural Masterpieces, Taliesin & Taliesin West

in Architecture, Technology | July 2nd, 2018

In addi­tion to his build­ings, Frank Lloyd Wright left behind more than 23,000 draw­ings, 40 large-scale mod­els, 44,000 pho­tographs, 600 man­u­scripts and 300,000 pieces of cor­re­spon­dence. Any archives of that size, in this case a size com­men­su­rate with Wright’s pres­ence in archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry, demand a daunt­ing (and expen­sive) amount of main­te­nance work. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion did the best it could with them after the archi­tec­t’s death in 1959, hous­ing most of their mate­ri­als at Wright’s two far-flung stu­dio-home-school com­plex­es: Tal­iesin in Spring Green, Wis­con­sin and Tal­iesin West in Scotts­dale, Ari­zona.

In 2012, the Foun­da­tion part­nered with the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and the Avery Archi­tec­tur­al and Fine Arts Library to move the archives to New York and dig­i­tize them. Tal­iesin and Tal­iesin West, how­ev­er, still stand in the same places that they always have.

With a quar­ter of the 400 struc­tures Wright designed in his life­time now demol­ished or oth­er­wise lost, one has to won­der: could the build­ings them­selves be dig­i­tal­ly archived as well? Leica Geosys­tems has tak­en a step in that direc­tion by using “the world’s small­est and light­est imag­ing laser scan­ner, the BLK360″ to pro­duce “a dimen­sion­al­ly accu­rate laser cap­tured rep­re­sen­ta­tion” of Tal­iesin West.

The result­ing “point cloud” ver­sion of Tal­iesin West appears in the video above, which shows how the data cap­tured by the sys­tem rep­re­sents the exte­ri­or and the inte­ri­or of the build­ing. Like most impor­tant works of archi­tec­ture, its aes­thet­ics some­how both rep­re­sent the pro­jec­t’s time (in this case, con­struc­tion and addi­tions span­ning from 1911–1959) and tran­scend it. The scan also includes the sur­round­ing nat­ur­al land­scape, from which one can nev­er sep­a­rate Wright’s mas­ter­works, as well as the spe­cial­ly designed fur­ni­ture inside. This tech­nol­o­gy also makes pos­si­ble a vir­tu­al tour, which you can take here. You might fol­low it up with the vir­tu­al tour of the orig­i­nal Tal­iesin pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, there­by mak­ing an archi­tec­tur­al pil­grim­age of 1600 miles in an instant.

Wright, accord­ing to the New York Review of Books’ archi­tec­tur­al crit­ic Mar­tin Filler, believed in “the suprema­cy of the Gesamtkunst­werk, the com­plete work of art that was the dream of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry vision­ar­ies who fore­saw the dis­in­te­gra­tion of cul­ture in the wake of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion.” It makes sense that the archi­tect, equal­ly a man of the nine­teenth and the twen­ti­eth cen­turies, would ded­i­cate him­self to the notion that “only by chang­ing the world — or, fail­ing that, cre­at­ing an alter­na­tive to it — could art be saved.” With his build­ings, Wright did indeed cre­ate an alter­na­tive to the world as it was. How they’ll hold up in the cen­turies to come nobody can say, but with more and more advanced meth­ods of inte­gra­tion between the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal worlds, per­haps his art can be saved.

Take a vir­tu­al tour of Tal­iesin West here, and the orig­i­nal Tal­iesin here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tour of Tal­iesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Per­son­al Home & Stu­dio

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The History of Rock Musically Told in 100 Guitar Riffs and 100 Bass Riffs

in Music | June 29th, 2018

Rare excep­tions may only under­line the rule: a good rock riff should be sim­ple, primal—two, three, maybe four notes. What makes a riff so dis­tinc­tive you can’t stop hum­ming it in the show­er? Per­son­al­i­ty. Bends, slides, dou­ble-stops, etc, put in exact­ly the right places. How do you write such a riff? Giv­en how most famous gui­tar play­ers talk about it: entire­ly by acci­dent, a frus­trat­ing answer for would-be hit­mak­ers, though it shouldn’t stop any­one from try­ing. The best riff-writ­ers wrote hun­dreds of riffs before they stum­bled upon that just-right col­lec­tion of notes. Or they just ripped off a less­er-known riff and made it their own. All’s fair in love and riffs.

Artic­u­lat­ing what we already intu­itive­ly know, Chica­go Tri­bune crit­ic Greg Kot writes at BBC.com, “a riff, when done right, can shape a song and often rule it. It’s a brief statement—sometimes only a hand­ful of notes or chords—that recurs through­out the arrange­ment and can become the song’s cen­tral hook. Many of the great­est songs of the rock era begin with a riff—the Rolling Stones ‘(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion,’ Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water,’ Aerosmith’s ‘Walk this Way,’ The Smith’s ‘How Soon is Now,’ Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ The Isley Brother’s ‘Who’s that Lady?’ And when done that spec­tac­u­lar­ly, the riff becomes the core of the tune, its most mem­o­rable fea­ture when lis­ten­ers play it back in their head.”

Indeed, so cen­tral is the riff to the catch­i­ness of a song that one could write an entire his­to­ry of rock ‘n’ roll in riffs, which is exact­ly what Alex Chad­wick has done in the video above, open­ing with the groovy jazz lick of 1953’s “Mr. Sand­man” and wrap­ping up with St. Vincent’s “Cru­el.” Though the more recent riffs might elude many people—having not yet become clas­sic rock hits played at hock­ey games—nearly all of these 100 riffs from 100 rock ‘n’ roll songs will be instant­ly famil­iar. The video comes from music store Chica­go Music Exchange, where employ­ees like­ly hear many of these tunes played all day long, but nev­er in chrono­log­i­cal suc­ces­sion with such per­fect into­na­tion.

And lest we think gui­tarists deserve all the riffage glo­ry, the folks at Chica­go Music Exchange put togeth­er a fol­low-up video of 100 bass (and drum) riffs, “A Brief His­to­ry of Groove.” Here, bassist Marc Naj­jar and drum­mer Nate Bau­man cov­er 60 years of music his­to­ry in under 20 min­utes. As not­ed a few years back, these impres­sive med­leys were per­formed “in one con­tin­u­ous take.” See the full gui­tar riff track­list here and bass riff track­list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son (1928) to Joe Bona­mas­sa (2009)

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Behold an Incredibly Detailed, Handmade Map Of Medieval Trade Routes

in History | June 29th, 2018

Some­times I won­der if there are any true Renais­sance folks left, peo­ple who have a pas­sion for knowl­edge and don’t let the experts get in the way. But then along comes Mar­tin Jan Måns­son, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in Spa­tial Plan­ning at the Blekinge Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Swe­den. Nei­ther a car­tog­ra­ph­er nor a his­to­ri­an, Måns­son has lov­ing­ly pro­duced this very detailed map of trad­ing routes dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages. (You can down­load the map in high res­o­lu­tion here.)

(I assume he should have been work­ing on his dis­ser­ta­tion instead, but this is much more fas­ci­nat­ing.)

“I think trade routes and topog­ra­phy explains world his­to­ry in the most con­cise way,” Måns­son explains in the very small print at the map’s low­er right cor­ner. “By sim­ply study­ing the map, one can under­stand why some areas were espe­cial­ly important–and remained suc­cess­ful even up to mod­ern times.”

The map cov­ers 200 years, span­ning both the 11th and 12th cen­turies, and “depicts the main trad­ing arter­ies of the high Mid­dle Ages, just after the decline of the Vikings and before the rise of the Mon­gols, the Hansa and well before the Por­tuguese round­ed the Cape of Good Hope.”

It also shows the com­plex routes already avail­able to Africa and Asia, and the areas where Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian traders would meet. The open-to-trade Song Dynasty ruled Chi­na, and the com­pet­i­tive king­doms in the Indone­sia region pro­vid­ed both Mus­lims and Euro­peans with spice.

Look­ing like a rail­way map, Månsson’s work shows how inter­con­nect­ed we real­ly were back in the Mid­dle Ages, from Green­land in the west to Kikai and Kagoshi­ma in the East, from Arkhangel­sk in the frozen north to Sofala in mod­ern-day Mozam­bique.

Måns­son cred­its Wikipedia for a major­i­ty of the basic work, but also lists 20 oth­er sources for this detailed work, includ­ing The Silk Road by Valerie Han­son, Across Africa and Ara­bia by Irene M. Franck and David M. Brown­stone.

There’s much to take away from the map–a print­able ver­sion would be great–but one thing that stands out to me is how many once-impor­tant trade cities have fad­ed from mem­o­ry, or impor­tance, or just lost to time, plun­der, and change. In anoth­er 1,000 what cities of our own will have come and gone?

Relat­ed Con­tent:
A Free Yale Course on Medieval His­to­ry: 700 Years in 22 Lec­tures

Why Babies in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Men: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Do Our Dreams Predict the Future? Vladimir Nabokov Spent Three Months Testing That Theory in 1964

in Books, Literature, Psychology | June 29th, 2018

Pho­to by NC Mal­lo­ry via Flickr Com­mons 

Why keep a dream jour­nal? There’s prob­a­bly amus­ing befud­dle­ment and even a kind of round­about enlight­en­ment to be had in look­ing back over one’s sub­con­scious visions, so vivid dur­ing the night, that van­ish so soon after wak­ing. But now we have anoth­er, more com­pelling rea­son to write down our dreams: Vladimir Nabokov did it. This we know from the recent­ly pub­lished Insom­ni­ac Dreams, a col­lec­tion of the entries from the Loli­ta and Pale Fire author’s dream jour­nal — writ­ten, true to his com­po­si­tion­al method, on index cards— edit­ed and con­tex­tu­al­ized by Nabokov schol­ar Gen­nady Barab­tar­lo.

“On Octo­ber 14, 1964, in a grand Swiss hotel in Mon­treux where he had been liv­ing for three years, Vladimir Nabokov start­ed a pri­vate exper­i­ment that last­ed till Jan­u­ary 3 of the fol­low­ing year, just before his wife’s birth­day (he had engaged her to join him in the exper­i­ment and they com­pared notes),” writes Barab­tar­lo in the book’s first chap­ter, which you can read online. “Every morn­ing, imme­di­ate­ly upon awak­en­ing, he would write down what he could res­cue of his dreams. Dur­ing the fol­low­ing day or two he was on the look­out for any­thing that seemed to do with the record­ed dream.”

He want­ed to “test a the­o­ry accord­ing to which dreams can be pre­cog­ni­tive as well as relat­ed to the past. That the­o­ry is based on the premise that images and sit­u­a­tions in our dreams are not mere­ly kalei­do­scop­ing shards, jum­bled, and mis­la­beled frag­ments of past impres­sions, but may also be a pro­lep­tic view of an event to come.”  That notion, writes Dan Piepen­bring at the New York­er, “came from J. W. Dunne, a British engi­neer and arm­chair philoso­pher who, in 1927, pub­lished An Exper­i­ment with Time, argu­ing, in part, that our dreams afford­ed us rare access to a high­er order of time.” The book’s fan base includ­ed such oth­er lit­er­ary nota­bles as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Aldous Hux­ley.

Nabokov had his own take on Dun­ne’s the­o­ry: “The wak­ing event resem­bling or coin­cid­ing with the dream event does so not because the lat­ter is a prophe­cy,” he writes on the first note­card in the stack pro­duced by his own three-month exper­i­ment with time, “but because this would be the kind of dream that one might expect to have after the event.” But Nabokov’s dream data seem to have pro­vid­ed lit­tle in the way in absolute proof of what he called “reverse mem­o­ry.” In the strongest exam­ple, a dream about eat­ing soil sam­ples at a muse­um pre­cedes his real-life view­ing of a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary about the soil of Sene­gal. And as Barab­tar­lo points out, the dream “dis­tinct­ly and close­ly fol­lowed two scenes” of a short sto­ry Nabokov had writ­ten 25 years before.

And so we come to the real appeal of Insom­ni­ac Dreams: Nabokov’s skill at ren­der­ing evoca­tive and mem­o­rable images in lan­guage — or rather, in his poly­glot case, lan­guages – as well as deal­ing with themes of time and mem­o­ry. You can read a few sam­ples at Lithub involv­ing not just soil but sex­u­al jeal­ousy, a lec­ture hasti­ly scrawled min­utes before class time, the Red Army, and “a death-sign con­sist­ing of two roundish gold­en-yel­low blobs with blurred edges.” They may bring to mind the words of the nar­ra­tor of Ada, the nov­el Nabokov pub­lished the fol­low­ing year, who in his own con­sid­er­a­tion of Dunne guess­es that in dreams, “some law of log­ic should fix the num­ber of coin­ci­dences, in a giv­en domain, after which they cease to be coin­ci­dences, and form, instead, the liv­ing organ­ism of a new truth.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Note­cards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Loli­ta: A Look Inside the Author’s Cre­ative Process

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Stu­dents

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Alfred Hitch­cock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Let­ters and Ideas for a Film Col­lab­o­ra­tion (1964)

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Famous Break Up of Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung Explained in a New Animated Video

in History, Psychology | June 28th, 2018

Mak­ing friends with sim­i­lar inter­ests can be a chal­lenge for any­one. But imag­ine you are the founder of an entire­ly new dis­ci­pline, with its own pecu­liar jar­gon, set of prac­tices, and con­cep­tu­al cat­e­gories. Imag­ine, for exam­ple, that you are Sig­mund Freud, who in 1896 made his break with med­i­cine to pur­sue the work of psy­cho­analy­sis. Draw­ing on clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence with patients, his own self-analy­sis, cocaine-induced rever­ies, and an idio­syn­crat­ic read­ing of Greek mythol­o­gy, Freud invent­ed his strange psy­cho­sex­u­al the­o­ries with­in the con­fi­dence of a very small cir­cle of acquain­tances and admir­ers.

One of his close rela­tion­ships dur­ing those pro­duc­tive and tur­bu­lent years, with eccen­tric ear, nose, and throat doc­tor Wil­helm Fliess—a col­lab­o­ra­tor, influ­ence, “con­fes­sor and moral sup­port­er”—end­ed bad­ly in 1906. It was in that same year that Freud met the much-younger Carl Jung. At their first meet­ing, the two “talked non­stop for 13 hours,” the Aeon video above, ani­mat­ed by Andrew Khos­ra­vani, tells us. Thus began the intense and now-leg­endary six-year friend­ship between the psy­chi­a­trists, a “pas­sion­ate and sur­pass­ing­ly weird rela­tion­ship, which, giv­en the peo­ple involved, per­haps shouldn’t come as a sur­prise.” Freud set­tled upon Jung as his pro­tege and suc­ces­sor, the “Joshua to my Moses,” over­joyed to have found a friend who seemed to under­stand his ideas inti­mate­ly.

They trav­eled to the US to give joint lec­tures and ana­lyzed each other’s dreams. Freud wrote to pro­pose that Jung should think of their rela­tion­ship as between “father and son,” an odd pro­pos­al in any friend­ship, but espe­cial­ly when the “father” invent­ed the Oedi­pal com­plex; “this did not go unno­ticed by Freud, and he freaked out a lit­tle.” The unset­tling dynam­ic already pre­sent­ed a shaky basis for a long term bond, but it was their wild­ly diver­gent ideas that ulti­mate­ly drove them apart. Jung took issue with Freud’s obses­sion with libido as the pri­ma­ry dri­ver of human behav­ior. Freud cast a with­er­ing eye on Jung’s keen inter­est in reli­gion, mys­ti­cism, and the para­nor­mal as expres­sions of a col­lec­tive uncon­scious.

As he had divorced him­self from Wil­helm Fleiss in 1906, Freud sim­i­lar­ly, abrupt­ly, broke off his friend­ship with Jung in 1913, send­ing a rather nasty break-up let­ter to sev­er their “emo­tion­al tie.” Jung, he wrote, “while behav­ing abnor­mal­ly keeps shout­ing that he is nor­mal,” giv­ing rise to “the sus­pi­cion that he lacks insight into his ill­ness. Accord­ing­ly, I pro­pose that we aban­don our per­son­al rela­tions entire­ly.” The video ends by declar­ing Freud the win­ner of this “feud,” such as it was, though the per­son­al con­flict seems rather one-sided. As Jung would lat­er relate, he “soon dis­cov­ered that when [Freud] had thought some­thing, then it was set­tled.” After Freud broke it off, Jung wrote in his diary, “the rest is silence.”

As for the lega­cies of both men, these seem set­tled as well. They both had sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on writ­ers and artists of all kinds, on lit­er­ary the­o­rists, new age mys­tics, and philoso­phers. But Jung is hard­ly tak­en seri­ous­ly in the main­stream of psy­chi­a­try, and Freud’s ideas have large­ly been aban­doned, save for one: as mil­lions who still reveal them­selves week­ly on ther­a­pists’ couch­es can attest, the talk­ing cure of psy­cho­analy­sis is alive and well.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Video Tells the Sto­ry of Jean-Paul Sartre & Albert Camus’ Famous Falling Out (1952)

The Famous Let­ter Where Freud Breaks His Rela­tion­ship with Jung (1913)

Carl Jung Explains Why His Famous Friend­ship with Sig­mund Freud Fell Apart in Rare 1959 Audio

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bernstein Explains What Makes His Playing So Great (1960)

in Music, Television | June 28th, 2018

Why, 35 years after his death, do so many music lovers still respect Glenn Gould above all oth­er pianists? One might assume that, since he played the work of such well-known com­posers as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Brahms, he would have accept­able sub­sti­tutes among the most high­ly skilled pianists of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. But none have ever tak­en Gould’s place, and quite pos­si­bly none ever will. His dis­tinc­tive­ness owes both to sheer apti­tude, and to some­thing else besides: Leonard Bern­stein attempts an expla­na­tion of that some­thing in the clip above, from the CBS Ford Presents broad­cast of Jan­u­ary 31, 1960.

“Gould and Bach have become a kind of leg­endary com­bi­na­tion, in spite of Gould’s extreme youth and Bach’s extreme age,” says Bern­stein just before a 28-year-old Gould makes his Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion debut play­ing Bach’s Key­board Con­cer­to No. 1 in D minor. He goes on to explain the spe­cial chal­lenge of play­ing Bach, who “belonged to a time when com­posers weren’t being very gen­er­ous with infor­ma­tion about how to play their notes.”

Sim­ply play­ing the notes on the page would result in an “unut­ter­ably dull” per­for­mance, but “to what extent can the pianist sup­ply dynam­ic vari­ety?” Gould imbued the pieces he played with vari­ety, dynam­ic and oth­er­wise, all of it reflect­ing his own “judg­ments, instincts, and high­ly indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty.”

In the years after this broad­cast (which you can see in full here), Gould’s per­son­al­i­ty would grow even more high­ly indi­vid­ual. Just two years lat­er, Gould and the New York Phil­har­mon­ic’s per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to came pre­ced­ed by Bern­stein’s infa­mous dis­claimer: he found him­self not in “total agree­ment” Gould’s per­for­mance, one “dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from any I’ve ever heard, or even dreamt of for that mat­ter, in its remark­ably broad tem­pi and its fre­quent depar­tures from Brahms’ dynam­ic indi­ca­tions.” Two years after that, Gould would retire from live per­for­mance entire­ly, keep­ing a safe dis­tance from his audi­ence in the stu­dio instead. We now remem­ber him as the first clas­si­cal pianist to tru­ly inhab­it the age of record­ing and broad­cast­ing; did that habi­ta­tion begin, in some sense, in the tele­vi­sion stu­dio with Bern­stein?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Famous­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Con­cert Where Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces Glenn Gould & His Idio­syn­crat­ic Per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to (1962)

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

Watch Glenn Gould Per­form His Last Great Stu­dio Record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions (1981)

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC

in Food & Drink, History, Nature | June 28th, 2018

Atten­tion culi­nary his­to­ri­ans, sur­vival­ists, wild­crafters, and gonzo eaters!

Net­tle pud­ding, Britain’s—and quite pos­si­bly the world’s—old­est recipe, looks like a good bet in the event of a zom­bie inva­sion, or some oth­er cat­a­stro­phe.

The ingredients—sorrel, water­cress, dan­de­lions, nettles—are the sort of thing you can find in a ditch or pub­lic park.

If you’re wor­ried about pulling an Into the Wild, book a pro­phy­lac­tic tour with nat­u­ral­ist Wild­man Steve Brill.

Should bar­ley flour prove in short sup­ply, don’t wor­ry about it! Grind some acorns, like that kid in My Side of the Moun­tain. 

You think ear­ly man sweat­ed sub­sti­tu­tions?

No way! Impro­vi­sa­tion was the name of the game.

Rigid adher­ence to pub­lished ingre­di­ents will have no place in the zom­bie inva­sion! As Cardiff Met­ro­pol­i­tan University’s home econ­o­mist Dr. Ruth Fairchild told The Dai­ly Mail:

You have to think how much more is wast­ed now than then.

Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week with­out being eat­en.

But they would­n’t have wast­ed any­thing, even hooves would have been used for some­thing.

They had to eat what was grown with­in a few miles, because it would have tak­en so long to col­lect every­thing, and even col­lect­ing water would have been a bit of a tri­al.

Yet today, so many peo­ple don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.

Stop think­ing of net­tle pud­ding as a chore! Start prac­tic­ing for the zom­bie inva­sion with Antiq­ui­ty Now’s step-by-step recipe and let us know how it tastes.

NETTLE PUDDING (an 8000 year old recipe!)

Ingre­di­ents

1 bunch of sor­rel

1 bunch of water­cress

1 bunch of dan­de­lion leaves

2 bunch­es of young net­tle leaves

Some chives

1 cup of bar­ley flour

1 tea­spoon of salt

Instruc­tions

Chop the herbs fine­ly and mix in the bar­ley flour and salt.

Add enough water to bind it togeth­er and place in the cen­ter of a linen or muslin cloth.

Tie the cloth secure­ly and add to a pot of sim­mer­ing veni­son or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pud­ding from the pot.

Cook the pud­ding until the meat is done (at least two hours).

Leave the pud­ding to cool slight­ly, remove the muslin, then cut the pud­ding into thick slices with a knife.

Serve the pud­ding with chunks of bar­ley bread.

(Be mind­ful that fire may attract zom­bies. Keep a shov­el beside you at all times. Good luck!)

You can read more about the dis­cov­ery of Net­tle Pud­ding at the BBC and The Tele­graph.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Joseph Heller’s Handwritten Outline for Catch-22, One of the Great Novels of the 20th Century

in Books, Literature | June 27th, 2018

We remem­ber Catch-22, more than half a cen­tu­ry after its pub­li­ca­tion, as a rol­lick­ing satire of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary cul­ture in wartime. But those of us who return to Joseph Heller’s debut nov­el, a cult favorite turned best­seller turned pil­lar of the mod­ern canon, find a much more com­plex piece of work. Heller began writ­ing the man­u­script in 1953, while still employed as a copy­writer at a small adver­tis­ing agency. The project grew in ambi­tion over the next eight years he spent work­ing on it, even­tu­al­ly in col­lab­o­ra­tion with edi­tor Robert Got­tlieb and its oth­er advo­cates at Simon & Schus­ter, the pub­lish­er that had bought it.

When Catch-22 final­ly went into print, one of those advo­cates, an adver­tis­ing man­ag­er named Nina Bourne, launched an aggres­sive one-woman cam­paign to get copies into the hands of all the influ­en­tial read­ers of the day. “You are mis­tak­en in call­ing it a nov­el,” replied Eve­lyn Waugh. “It is a col­lec­tion of sketch­es — often rep­e­ti­tious — total­ly with­out struc­ture.” But the book’s appar­ent­ly free-form nar­ra­tive, full of and often turn­ing on puns and seem­ing­ly far-fetched asso­ci­a­tions, had actu­al­ly come as the prod­uct of a decep­tive com­po­si­tion­al rig­or. As one piece of evi­dence we have Heller’s hand­writ­ten out­line above. (You can also find a more eas­i­ly leg­i­ble ver­sion here.)

The out­line’s grid presents the events of the sto­ry in chrono­log­i­cal order, as the nov­el itself cer­tain­ly does­n’t. The rows of its ver­ti­cal axis run from ear­ly 1944 at the top to Decem­ber 1944 at the bot­tom, and the columns of its hor­i­zon­tal axis lists the book’s major char­ac­ters. They include the pro­tag­o­nist John Yos­sar­i­an, Air Force bom­bardier; the “poor and rus­tic” Orr; Colonel Cath­cart, a “Har­vard grad­u­ate with a cig­a­rette hold­er,” and Major Major, who “looks like Hen­ry Fon­da.” With­in this matrix Heller kept track of what should hap­pen to which char­ac­ters when, at the time of which events of the real war.

The descrip­tions of events sketched on the out­line range from the broad­ly com­ic (“Chap­lain spies Yos­sar­i­an naked in a tree and thinks it is a mys­ti­cal vision”) to the cyn­i­cal (“Milo jus­ti­fies bomb­ing the squadron in terms of free enter­prise and the large prof­it he has made”) to the straight­for­ward­ly bru­tal (“Snow­den is shot through the mid­dle and dies”). Their place­ment togeth­er in the same neu­tral space reflects the sin­gle qual­i­ty that, per­haps more than any oth­er, brought upon the nov­el such a wide range of reac­tions and earned it a last­ing place in not just Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture but Amer­i­can cul­ture. Look at all the aspects of war straight on, it reminds us still today, and the total pic­ture — bloody and sense­less for the indi­vid­ual par­tic­i­pant, though not with­out its minor tri­umphs and laughs — looks some­thing like absur­dist art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

William Faulkn­er Out­lines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Win­ning Nov­el, A Fable (1954)

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

How Famous Writ­ers — From J.K. Rowl­ing to William Faulkn­er — Visu­al­ly Out­lined Their Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.