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#600

Every 100 posts I produce a milestone post. Forget the past, I have now decided to use it to publish information that does not warrant a separate post of its own. This will combine up to several hopeless, unfinished drafts (current count 157) that have not come far enough to be scheduled (current count 49), then published (600 when this one gets published). Then there are all of the other things, that are never considered topics for a weblog post, such as …

A passport photo

Recently, Trish found an old passport photo from the early 1980s, that showed what I looked like in what she described as my prime.

When I retired from teaching at the very end of 2016, I estimated that I would spend five years working in construction, refitting our house so that it would be more energy efficient and more suitable for elderly residents. Most of the time, I am unsure who these old people are, but receive a rude awakening in the mornings when I look at myself in the mirror, as shown below.

At the bottom of the above photo, one can see a portion of my hand-held device (HHD) = phone, protected by a pink case. While Trish chooses blue as in dark blue, light blue or turquoise, I typically choose pink (sometimes purple, even red). These are colours we each feel comfortable with. Our original protective cases were ordered on 2022-09-11, when we also ordered our Asus Zenfone 9 HHDs. While Trish’s blue case was still in good condition, by 2024-08-07 my case was showing signs of wear, so I decided to order two additional cases, in the same delightful pink colour. I finally transitioned to the second case on 2025-06-04. My time estimates are not realistic. I thought I had received the cases a couple of months, not ten months, before. My revised estimate is that the cases will last about 2 years and 9 months each, or a little over 8 years in total. By that time (at the end of 2030), it might even be time to update our HHDs.

Undecided: Should I call this section school or sculpting?

Not everyone excels at school, and I remember when I was in my early twenties, I met a similarly aged man, who had decided to engage in sculpting. His grades were insufficient to allow him to attend art school, and he was relatively broke, so he bought himself tools and various types of rock, with the aim of teaching himself. I soon lost contact with him. However, I understand his predicament. Society has become far too competitive, and much of that relates to academic grades, not the ability to use tools. There are few places for people to learn basic or unusual skills. Admission to an art school is based on academic qualifications, not artistic ability, or interest. The world needs more working-person educational institutes!

I was in a similar position. As a young teenager, I had built a small boat, and as an older teenager tried to find an apprenticeship where I could continue to learn these skills to become a journeyman and possibly a master boatbuilder. Yet, there seemed to be no pathway forward. After failing at university, I had to settle with working for a firm of stockbrokers, because that is where my family connections lay. Similarly, after moving to Norway, I improved my basic wood- and metalworking skills while learning the Norwegian language, but could not become an apprentice furniture maker. Instead I had to take degrees in business management, and computer science. I ended up as a teacher.

Some people never face these types of decisions because they are at the apex of power. There is the billionaire class that many comment on, but I think especially of the monarchies of Europe, currently seven in number, in: Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This is not a system of government that I support. I am a republican, yet hold citizenship in two of these monarchies, Canada and Norway. I see no good reason why a presidency in these countries should not be given by appointment, possibly election, to a citizen, who has made an outstanding contribution to these societies, earlier in life. They should be old – possibly sixty-five to seventy when assuming office, yet wise. Normally, they should hold office for a single term, possibly four years, without any possibility of renewal. Both genders should be represented, all ethnicities should be considered, both native born and immigrant citizens should be eligible.

In the case of Canada, I observe that Charles III (1948 – ) has many conflicts of interest. In Britain he is to be consulted in advance, about any laws that can affect him personally, such as with respect to his vast property holdings. I imagine that there are also conflicts between the needs of Canada (and other commonwealth countries) and those of England. In Norway, a monarch is specified as head of state in the constitution, possibly because of the time when it was originally written, 1814. This makes it the second oldest constitution in the world. This does not make it appropriate.

DNA

23&Me was engaged in bankruptcy proceedings that ended on 2025-05-19, when Regeneron agreed to buy 23andMe out of bankruptcy for $256 million. Because of concern that this could result in us loosing control over our genetic information. I have now downloaded the available information for both Trish and I, stored it in four separate places, and asked 23&Me to destroy the saliva and their analysis of it.

Genetic information by itself has limited value. Although 23&me has detected markers that indicate geographical origins in my DNA, initially it was not very specific in terms of location, when it was first analysed in 2015. I was able to combine genetic information with genealogical events to piece together my heritage, first with the Salters/ Pentlands, then with the Bradds.

At the time of submitting saliva for a test, my intention was to find some general information about my paternity. This came, but mostly through my paternal half-brother, Brad, who contacted me 2018-10-01. From there I gained information, especially related to my ancestry in: Fredrikstad, Norway; Haarlem, Netherlands; Grenoble, France; and Mohawk territories in North America. My paternal haplogroup, I-M253, is associated with Doggerland, currently underwater in the North Sea.

In terms of my maternal DNA (through the Salters and Pentlands), I was already aware of a British connection, particularly from Orkney in Scotland, and Cornwall in England. Gradually, more geographic detail emerged, including 11.3% originating in southern Europe, especially 6.7% from Spain and Portugal; 2.7% from Sardinia; 1.4% from Italy. I asked Brad, with whom I share paternal genes, but he said he had no southern European genes. Presumably, then, these come from my maternal = Salter/ Pentland side of the family. It delights me to have some Sardinian DNA.

For me, the greatest benefit of being gene tested has been to trace my genetic origins. As an adopted person, without significant background information, it was always something vague. It was especially satisfying to find a Norwegian connection, and even a date: Fredrikstad, in south-east Norway, in about 1630.

A 23&me genetic analysis gives a north-American bias. So I have not found any living relatives in southern Europe. My most exotic relative is probably Catalina, a fourth cousin, twice removed, currently living in San José, Costa Rica, but with DNA originating in Medellin, Colombia.

Cooking for Beginners, Jerks and Clowns

The title of this section is taken from an article that appeared in Pensjonisten – a major magazine for Norwegian pensioners. It is about Per Borglund (1961 – ), who was once the editor of Mat fra Norge = Food from Norway. Now, he is best known for his Guinness record for having the largest collection/ library of cookbooks in the world, almost 13 000. The title is taken from what he describes as his most unusual cookbook, written by Norwegian pianist Kåre Siem (1914 – 1986) = Kåres-nam-nam-bok: Primitiv minikokbok for de absolutte nybegynere, duster and kløner. In English, nam-nam would be written yum-yum. I have simplified the subtitle to: Cooking for Beginners, Jerks and Clowns, without mentioning it being a cookbook. The rest of the title should be understandable, as long as one realizes ny = new.

I decided I needed to find out more about Kåre Siem, and searched his name on YouTube. The most promising video was titled, Accordion Captain’s song composer Kåre Siem. Statistics showed 2 153 plays since its release 2008-11-26. There were 20 key words association with the work in various languages: accordion and harmonica along with various geographical locations: balkan, bulgarian, paris, norvegian, romani = gypsy, arabian. No capitalization. I listened politely for the first 33s of 4m03s. Another videos demanded my attention, How the Black Death Saved the English Language.

Books in Norwegian

Most of my books are printed on paper. Other people in our family have different tastes. Most of Trish’s books are digital, downloaded onto her two Kobos: white for non-fiction, black for fiction. Almost all of her content is in English. I think Shelagh is also a consumer of digital books, but she uses an iPhone to read them. Alasdair seems to prefer audio books.

I try to divide my reading between English and Norwegian. For some reason, my Norwegian language books are more problematic, than those in English. Sometimes I buy a book and its content is so depressing that I refuse to read it, beyond the first few pages. The latest, most serious incident involved Odd Karsten Tveit (1945 – ), Palestina : Israels ran, vårt svik (2023) = Palestine: Israel’s robbery, our betrayal. On the other hand, I found Geir Pollen’s (1953 – ) Volga : En russisk reise (2021) = Volga: A Russian trip, insightful. The book was so good that I bought a second book by the author, Armfeldts armé : historien om en katastrofe (2014) = Armfeldt’s Army: The history of a catastrophe. It was about a failed Swedish attempt to re-capture Trøndelag, the county were we live. Sweden had occupied Trøndelag and parts of Møre og Romsdal (where we initially lived) from 1658 to 1660. In 1718, after several defeats in the Great Northern War, Sweden had lost its eastern territories to Russia. Too weakened to retake these, Charles XII of Sweden instead planned an attack on Norway to force the Dano-Norwegian King Frederick IV into concessions in subsequent peace treaty negotiations. It is called the Carolean Death March, because of the resulting loss of life.

Recently, the Norwegian book I enjoyed the most was Terje Tvedt (1951 – ), Historiens Hjul og Vannets Makt: Da England og Europa vant, og Kina og Asia tapte (2023) = The Wheel of History and the Power of Water: When England and Europe Won, and China and Asia Lost, I then read his previous book, Verdens Historie med fortiden som speil (2022) = World History with the past as a mirror. Visiting a bookstore on 2025-05-19, I found another of his books on sale, Nilen: historiens elv (2014) = The Nile: history’s river.

… and English

There are times when I feel too comfortable, having lived my life in middle-class Canada and Norway. Thus, I have recently thought I should expose myself more to African influences. Thus, at the moment, I am attempting to read Africa related literature. In terms of novels, I decided I should begin by re-reading The Alexandria Quartet = Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958) and Clea (1960), written by Lawrence Durrell (1912 – 1990).

My plan then is to explore the works of Tayeb Salil (1929 – 2009). Wikipedia tells us: Salih’s writing draws important inspiration from his youth in a Sudanese village; life that is centered on rural people and their complex relationships. “At various levels and with varying degrees of psychoanalytic emphasis, he deals with themes of reality and illusion, the cultural dissonance between the West and the exotic Orient, the harmony and conflict of brotherhood, and the individual’s responsibility to find a fusion between his or her contradictions.” Furthermore, the motifs of his books are derived from his religious experience as a Muslim in 20th-century Sudan, both pre- and post-colonial. Another, more general subject of Salih’s writing is the confrontation of the Arab Muslim and the Western European world. The books I have to read are:

The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories (1968). Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. It includes: The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid, A Handful of Dates and The Wedding of Zein.

Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies (1969).

For non-fiction, I am reading John McWhorter (1965 – ) an American linguist, who describes himself as part of the Black middle class, who plays the piano and has an interest in music history. In the following short list of his books, I am awaiting those marked with an * from a Norwegian bookseller:

Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (2003)*

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English (2008)

The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language (2014)*

Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths about America’s Lingua Franca (2017)

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever (2021)

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021)*

Inspiration for this change did not come from reading an article in the Guardian that appeared Wednesday 2026-06-11 at 06.55 BST: A moment that changed me: I went to a death cafe – and learned how to live a much happier life, by Elizabeth McCafferty, but it confirmed that I was on the right path.

Mathematics

I have a fascination with mathematics, despite not being particularly good at it. Recently I have attempted to understand the proofs of Maryna Sergiivna Viazovska (1984 – ) with respect to sphere packing. The usual starting point is the Kepler conjecture, named after mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630). It states that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling a 3-dimensional space has a greater average density than around 74.05%.

Viazovska solved the problem for dimension 8, which led to a collaboration with others, and a solution in dimension 24. It is frequently commented that these proofs are stunningly simple. For her work, she was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022-07. She is both the second woman, and the second Ukrainian to be awarded the prize. In 1990, Vladimir Drinfeld (1954 – ), a Ukrainian, was awarded the prize. In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first Iranian as well as the first woman to win the Fields Medal. It is awarded to two, three or four mathematicians under 40 years of age. The first awards were made in 1936, and since then every four years starting in 1950.

A simpler, but related, problem involves the placement of ten coins in a square. Its non-mathematical solution can be appreciated by watching this video.

Back on 2022-10-26, Duolingo offered an update in terms of courses, expanding into mathematics and music. They refer to it as multi-subject Duolingo. I intend to try this out after I have visited the maritime provinces of Canada, in the middle of July.

Yet, I am uncertain if I should trust Duo with basic math skills, such as adding. Back in 2017, when I started my current streak, it would add an extra day every time I used a different device. This problem did not last long, but there is an offset. Today, I should be on day 3020, but Duolingo claims this is day 3059, so I have been credited with 39 days too many. Many years ago, I contacted Duolingo requesting them to correct this, but nothing happened.

Currently, I am using Duolingo to learn Scot’s Gaelic. In recent years, I have also spent time on: Ukrainian, Finnish and Swedish. Originally, back in 2014, I began with French, then Portuguese, then German. I also used other sources to learn some Icelandic. I am thinking of returning to French when I return from my trip to maritime Canada. This is because my next trip to Canada should be to visit Quebec, in 2026. In addition, Duolingo fails to offer courses in Norn, formerly used in Shetland and the Orkneys. Essentially, it is a Norwegian dialect. The other language I was thinking of learning was Sardinian. Shetland and Sardinia are also on my travel list for 2026, in addition to a possible trip to California.

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Estonia

I visited Estonia for the first time in August 1990. After almost 35 years, I visited it again, this time with my son Alasdair, for 9 nights and 10 days at the end of May and beginning of June, 2025. We stayed 3 x 3 nights in: Tallinn, on the island of Hiiumaa, and the island of Saaremaa. This is a pictoral account of what we saw.

Tallinn

Old town vs skyscraper city. Photo: Alasdair McLellan.

Accommodation. We stayed at the CityBox. For me, this is ideal. Rooms are adequate, clean and modern: a bed, a desk, a chair, a place to hang some clothes. There are also en-suite facilities. No luxury. I especially liked the textures of the walls, including the ceramics, and the floors. The artwork is less impressive. In terms of service, robots and computers do what they can, while people do what is beyond today’s computerized assistants. With a booking code it takes seconds to check in and to receive a key-card. Checking out is even faster, the key-card is inserted and in less than two seconds, it says one is checked out, and keeps the card.

After settling in, we visited a local shopping centre, which was more upscale than this old man is used to, with restaurant prices exceeding those in Norway. In the end, we ate at the local Hesburger fast-food joint. This is a Finnish chain we encountered last year in Vaasa, where we also stayed in something resembling a city box. It offered adequate food. However, I did notice that I was the oldest person in the establishment. Alasdair was the second oldest. The two next days we ate dinner at the Tallinn Kebob and Pizza establishment, eating kebab one night, and pizza the next.

Caffeine is a place for people, as well as dogs.

The first morning was spend visiting Tallinn’s oldest tourist trap, the old town. It was much as I remember it, but the market stalls seem to have disappeared. In 1990, these offered quaint merchandise for sale. The street artists still exist, but the cost of a portrait has increased at least twenty times.

We stopped for coffee at Caffeine, with its orange decor. Outside, it offered drinking water for passing dogs, and waste bins for passing humans. Later, I discovered it was owned by Reitan Convenience Estonia AS, which is part of the Reitan group, located in Trondheim, just 120 km down the road from Cliff Cottage. This is the second time I have been impressed by a Reitan group company. The first time was many years ago in Bergen when some incident occurred with details disremembered, when I was at the Northland cafe, and the staff looked after everything professionally. I vowed to go back, and I have.

Protest posters against the Ukrainian invasion, outside the Russian embassy.
Street art at Rottermann City shopping mall. Numerous other animal sculptures can be found there.

Street art. As a ruralist, I avoid spending time in cities. However, they are a good place to find street art, including buildings that pretend to be works of art.

The Seaplane Harbour Museum. Some think the museum is misnamed, it is actually a maritime museum. there is only one seaplane housed in the museum, but many more boats of various sizes, including a Detroit News (DN) class ice boat. At Vangshylla, I have blue prints for it, but have never built one. The largest vessel on display is the 59.5 m long submarine EML Lembit, which was moored just off the Hotel Sport, when I first visited Tallinn in 1990.

DN class ice boat.

Due to Moscow’s lack of large body of water, the sailing events for the 1980 Summer Olympics were held in Tallinn. A huge complex was built for the task at Pirita. This state of the art complex was where I stayed in 1990. Today it has seen better days, with most of the complex abandoned.

Here I am standing just outside the entrance to the Sport Museum in 2025. It was a much more elegant hotel in 1990.

Hiiumaa

The Estonian ferry Leiger, was docked, available for photoshoots with passing tourists. Photo: Alasdair McLellan.

In Estonia, the domestic ferry fleet is unusual. Ship hulls are painted in distinctive colours. We crossed to Hiuumaa on the red-hulled Tiiu. From Muhu, connected by causeway to Saaremaa, we returned to the mainland on the orange-hulled Piret. Both ships are 114 m long, carrying up to 150 cars and 700 passengers. Altogether there are four such ferries. The ferry between Hiuumaa and Saaremaa is smaller. The SoeIa is 45 m long, carrying 32 cars and 200 passengers. All the ferries mentioned here are iceclass 1A, allowing them to navigate through ice up to 1 meter thick. This is important because the Baltic Sea is the world’s largest brackish water basin = lots of ice, in the winter.

Soviet authorities were concerned about foreign spies. So, I never had a chance to visit the islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa in 1990. That situation has changed now, and we visited both. Hiiumaa is the more restful of the two. Few would describe Saaremaa as bustling, but there is more action, comparatively.

Our accommodation on Hiiumaa.
A village swing.

One of my interests involves village swings, found in Finland and Estonia. At one time these were built more like ferris wheels, with four seats providing vertical motion. A photo of one of these will appear in a post about Harry Palmer, to be published on 2025-11-11. One of these can be seen in the film, The IPCRESS file (1965). These older village swings seem to have been replaced with less dangerous models, as shown above.

Kõpu Lighthouse is one of the oldest lighthouses in the world. It has been in continuous operation since 1531. It is also at the highest point on Hiiumaa, at Tornimägi = 68 m. The building is 37.7 m high, with the light at 103.6 m.

There are older lighthouses than Kõpu, including: one at Alexandria built c. 280 – 247 BCE, that no longer exists; the Tower of Hercules in Spain c. 2nd century CE, that still exists; the Lighthouse at Genoa, originally built in 1128 (or 1161) with its tower rebuilt in 1543; the Hook lighthouse in Ireland, built c. 1201 – 1240. After this comes Kõpu. Rather than fighting with others about, which is the oldest in terms of continuous operation, younger lighthouse enthusiasts may want to visit at least three: Genoa in 2028 to celebrate 900 years of operation; Kõpu in 2031 to celebrate 500 years of operation; Hook in 2040 to celebrate 800 years of operation. For information about old lighthouses see this website.

Soela is the ferry between Hiiumaa and Saaremaa.

Saaremaa

For me, Saaremaa was a totally different place, contrasting with Hiiumaa. The accommodation featured a windmill, where we slept. In addition there was a table sheltered from the rain with a roof, but no walls. Beyond that there was a building that housed the kitchen, shower and sauna. Further away, there was an outhouse and a woodshed. So now, staying in a windmill has been checked off on my bucket list.

Windmill on Saaremaa, where we stayed for three nights.
Alasdair climbed the Border post tower, from the Soviet period,

In my old age, I distinguish countries on the basis of one essential quality = trust. Estonia impressed me positively in this regard. At the border post museum, featuring artifacts from the Soviet period, there were several ways to pay for admission, including cash. There were a couple of hundred kroner of Euros sitting on a table, at the un-personed museum entrance, to provide change for people wanting to pay in cash. Coffee or tea was included in this entrance fee. When we took our coffee break, there was a pair of swallows enjoying the area.

Living swallows sitting on antlers at the Border Post museum.

In terms of national symbols, the cornflower = rukkilill (Centaurea cyanus) is the national flower of Estonia. It has been grown there for over 10 000 years. The barn swallow = Suitsupääsuke (Hirundo rustica) is its national bird. The wolf = hunt (Canus lupus) is its national animal. The Baltic Herring = läänemere heeringas (Clupea harengus membras) is its national fish, and a staple of the Estonian diet. The Swedish fermented delicacy, Surströmming, is made from the same species.

Near our windmill, there is the impact site of a meteorite that crashed some 8600 to 2400 years ago. The lake/ pond was created by the main impact, the meteorite had split while falling, creating several small craters.

Leaving Saaremaa, we travelled across a causeway to the island of Muhu. Here we visited yet another Soviet military site. Yet, once again, it included some natural history. Here we could learn about the size of bird boxes preferred by different species.

Note: Thank you, Alasdair, for taking me on this trip. I flew down to Oslo from Trondheim on 2025-05-23, where I met Alasdair at the airport. He had flown in from Stavanger. We then overnighted at his house, then returned to the airport early. We flew to Copenhagen and then on to Tallinn. On our return on 2025-06-02, we took the same flight from Tallinn to Arlanda airport in Sweden. From there, Alasdair took a flight back to Oslo, while I took a later flight to Trondheim. Trish met me at the airport, and drove me back to Vangshylla.

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Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania

As this weblog post is being published, my son, Alasdair, and I are in Estonia, visiting Tallinn, as well as the islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa. We have plans to visit Latvia and Lithuania, possibly in 2026. This weblog post is to provide context to the political situation these countries face.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are small Baltic states with an area of 45 335, 64 589 and 65 300 km2 and populations of 1 331 824 (2021 census), 1 842 226 (2022 census) and 2 897 430 (2025 estimate) people, respectively. They been inhabited since at least 9 000 BC, 3 000 BC and 8 000 BC, respectively. These countries became part of the Soviet Union in 1944, but regained their independence 1991-08-20, 1991-08-21 and 1990-03-11, respectively. They do not want to be affiliated politically with Russia again.

The three countries have armed themselves and became members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the same day, 2004-03-29, along with Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia. Currently, continued participation or the dependability of USA in the alliance has been questioned. NATO has changed since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Finland and Sweden have joined, and Poland has increased its influence. Russian President Vladimir Putin (1952 – ) is unhappy with the participation of the Baltic states in NATO, referring to it as a serious provocation for Russia. His feelings for these three countries are similar to those he has for other former Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine. They should submit to the will of Russia.

Because of Donald Trump’s vacillations about NATO, Europeans are starting to understand that nobody outside of Europe is prepared to resolve Europe’s challenges with Russia. The Baltic States, in particular, have to defend themselves, being adjacent to Russia and/ or Belarus.

Between 2001-09-12 and 2001-10-02 in response to 9/11 attacks in the United States, NATO’s collective self-defense provisions were undertaken at NATO’s own initiative, without a request by the United States, and occurred despite the hesitation of Germany, Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands. The United States accepted contributions on a bilateral, non-NATO basis from 14 of NATO’s then 19 member states as well as non-NATO members Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia. These ranged in size from Estonia’s contribution of a five-man explosives detection team, to the UK’s commitment of an infantry brigade and naval task force. It is the only time in NATO’s history its collective defense provisions have been invoked.

The Baltic States have legitimate concerns, particularly about the state-directed destruction of other places, supervised by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. Historian Robert Conquest (1917 – 2015) wrote an account of this in The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s (1968). It was revised as The Great Terror: A Reassessment (1990) and The Great Terror: 40th Anniversary Edition (2008). A more appropriate book for people living in the 21st century, written with Jon Manchip White (1924 – 2013), is the fictional book What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor’s Guide (1984) which was intended to be a real survival manual in case of Soviet invasion.

These Baltic republics have supported Ukraine vigorously since the 2022 Russian invasion, they have supported citizen preparedness, encouraging citizens to stock enough food in their home to weather an emergency, and to have plans for family rendezvous outside the capitals. There is also a need for a mental preparation for a Russian invasion.

Many military analysts have assured European nations that the era of war in Europe had passed, and that their concerns no longer applied. Thus many Europeans assumed that a full-scale brutal war, like what occurred during the Second World War, was not possible. With the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, followed by the invasion and annexing of Crimea in 2014, and then other parts of Ukraine in 2022, Europeans are slowly realizing their error. This has resulted in increased military spending, and in the stationing of NATO forces in other Baltic countries.

Europeans seem to be understanding the Russian threat, almost as fast as the American administration is repeating Kremlin propaganda. Because of the current American attitudes, NATO may devolve into a European defense alliance. There may be a need for something larger, a democratic alliance with other members such as: Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. It should be noted that American troops have been in all three Baltic countries since the annexation of Crimea. There used to be about 120 000 Russian troops along the Estonian-Russian border. These are not there now, possibly because they were sent to Ukraine. On the other hand Putin declared that Narva, Estonia’s third-largest city, is historically part of Russia. It is closer to St. Petersburg than to Tallinn. Of its roughly 56 000 inhabitants, 96 percent speak Russian and a third hold a Russian passports. Indeed, about a quarter of Estonia’s population is ethnic Russian.

While the Russian military was able to seize territory in Georgia and Crimea, it has not had much success in this second invasion of Ukraine. One person suggested that Russia has gone from being the second-strongest army in the world, to being the second strongest in Ukraine. In the Baltic states, there have always been nebulous plans to mobilize their populations. These were never activated until the second Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine was supposed to accept defeat in a couple of days/ weeks/ possibly months. However, the Ukrainian people rose up. This influenced Baltic strategy. Every adult citizen knows what to do in time of war. Often they bring their civilian capabilities for a potential war effort.

Here is a list of countries bordering Russia, from longest to shortest, with their border length in km: Kazakhstan = 7 512.8; China = 4 209.3; Mongolia = 3 485; Ukraine = 1 925.8; Finland = 1 272.8; Belarus = 1 239; Georgia = 875.5; Azerbaijan = 372.6; Estonia = 294; Latvia = 270.5; Lithuania = 266; Abkhazia = 255.4; Poland = 204.1; Norway = 195.7.

Today, troops and personnel from NATO Allies serve, train and exercise together in the east of the Alliance, representing a strong expression of unity and solidarity. Forces from contributing nations rotate in and out of the battle groups; at any given time, they may be deployed to the battle groups or stationed in their home countries with the ability to deploy rapidly, if needed.NATO is also integrating Finland and Sweden, in part by developing a presence in Finland, which has the longest border with Russia.

The Russian/ Belarus border with Europe is with NATO members, from north to south: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. This means that Russian plans to reincorporate the Baltic states into Russia has become increasingly complicated. An attack on any of these Baltic states, will be met with a response from Poland, Finland and others.

At the 2016 NATO Summit in Warsaw, there was agreement to establish eight Forward Land Forces (FLF) multinational battle groups, provided by framework nations and other contributing Allies on a voluntary, fully sustainable and rotational basis. The battle groups operate in concert with national home defense forces and are present at all times in the host countries. All eight battle groups are fully combat-capable formations. While NATO forward presence in both the northeast and southeast of the Alliance, the emphasis here is on the northeast.

This forward presence was first deployed in 2017, with the creation of four multinational battalion-size battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States, respectively. In the southeast, there was increased NATO activity. However, it was only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022-02, that NATA reinforced its existing battle groups and established four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. At the 2022 Madrid Summit, NATO agreed to scale up beyond the battalion-size multinational battle groups to brigade-size units, if needed. In 2024-07, Latvia scaled up to forming NATO Multinational Brigade Latvia. In 2024-10, the existing multinational battle group was transferred to this brigade. The battle groups are not identical; their sizes and compositions are tailored to specific geographic factors and threats. Overall, military requirements guide each battle group’s composition.

As of February 2025, there were eight battle groups on the eastern front. Those in the three Baltic states had the following participants: Host nation: Estonia; Framework nation: United Kingdom; Contributing nation: France. Host nation: Latvia; Framework nation: Canada; Contributing nations: Albania, Czechia, Iceland, Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Host nation: Lithuania; Framework nation: Germany; Contributing nations: Belgium, Czechia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway.

Donald Trump (1946 – ) seems to focus on making America great again, or at least reconstructing America so that it looks as if it had not left the 1950s, possibly due to his age. I keep wondering when GM will resurrect 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Aires? The building of alliances is the antithesis of Trumpism, so the world is isolating USA. Russia may have had large-scale plans for the future of the world after subduing Ukraine, but its military campaign has proved so underwhelming, that it is resorting to hybrid warfare, including: sabotage, espionage and information operations. People have to be prepared for this.

To end on a more positive note. I am an eager reader of the annual Happiness reports. Lithuania ranked highest for people under the age of 30 in 2024. Latvia and Estonia are ranked 31st and 44th for their under-30 populations. More generally, Lithuania was ranked 19 for all age groups, ahead of Estonia in 34th place and Latvia in 46th. Unlike its neighbours, Lithuania has been steadily climbing up the happiness rankings since 2017, when it placed 52nd.

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World Goth Day #17

A Saab JAS 39 Gripen over Gotland

For decades, there have been two unsinkable aircraft carriers in the Baltic. Kaliningrad has served Russia, while Gotland served Sweden. That changed on 2024-03-07, when Sweden officially joined NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization = Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique nord = OTAN. Strategically, Gotland is one of the most important military locations in the world. This island is the alleged original location of the Goths. This post is probably less about the history of the Goths, and more about how Fårö became a film mecca for about forty years!

Jordanes was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, widely believed to be of Gothic descent, who became a historian later in life. He wrote two works, Romana (551 or 552) about Roman history and Getica (551) about the Goths. The only other contemporary work about the Goths was written by Isidore of Seville’s (c. 560 – 636), Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum (624) = History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi. These are three distinct works, with only the first one about the Goths.

The accuracy of Jordanes account is disputed, but he states that the Goths originated in southern Scandinavia, on the island of Gotland. In the 1st century, the Gutones – possibly early Goths, with their Wielbark culture – live near the lower Vistula River in current Poland. From the 2nd century, this culture expands southwards towards the Black Sea. By the late 3rd century it morphs into the Chernyakhov culture. By the 4th century, there are several distinct Gothic groups including: Thervingi, Greuthungi and Wulfila. were the most powerful. During this time, Wulfila began the conversion of Goths to Christianity.

In the late 4th century, the lands of the Goths were invaded from the east by the Huns. In the aftermath of this event, several groups of Goths came under Hunnic domination, while others migrated further west or sought refuge inside the Roman Empire. Goths who entered the Empire by crossing the Danube inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. These Goths would form the Visigoths, and under their king Alaric I, they began a long migration, eventually establishing a Visigothic Kingdom in Spain at Toledo.[3] Meanwhile, Goths under Hunnic rule gained their independence in the 5th century, most importantly the Ostrogoths. Under their king Theodoric the Great, these Goths established an Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy at Ravenna.

When my children were younger, I took them both on a trip to Gotland, taking the ferry from and to Oskarshamn. For me, one of the highlights of the trip was to take another ferry to the Fårö Island. Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007) lived (from about 1960) and died on Fårö. Several of his films were made there: Through a Glass Darkly (1961) = Såsom i en spegel = As in a Mirror (literal translation), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968) = Vargtimmen , Shame (1968) = Skammen, The Passion of Anna (1969) = En passion = A passion (literal translation), and Scenes from a Marriage (1973) = Scener ur ett äktenskap, a television miniseries in 6 episodes. Liv Ullmann’s Faithless (2000) = Trolösa, based on a Bergman screenplay, was also filmed there. Fårö is the subject of Bergman’s documentary films Fårö Document (1970) and Fårö Document 1979.

The first Bergman film I experienced was The Virgin Spring = Jungfrukällan (1960, Swedish) set in medieval Sweden, filmed at Styggforsen = Ugly Falls (literal translation), Dalarna, a county on mainland Sweden bordering Norway, south of Trøndelag. It is close to the Swedish town of Mora, which is about 500 – 560 km south east of Cliff Cottage, depending on the route taken. The story was adapted by historical novelist/ screenwriter Ulla Isaksson (1916 – 2000), yes, a woman, from a 13th-century Swedish ballad. For me, this fact remained in the foreground when I viewed the film. Isaksson was interested in the conflict between paganism and Christianity. This conflict is ongoing, but reduced as more of the Scandinavian population becomes atheistic, or at least agnostic.

The film’s violence is unpleasant to watch, yet the father’s merciless response to the rape and murder of his young daughter, is understandable. The film has left a lasting impression. Yet, the reason for Bergman selecting Isaksson as the screenwriter, probably has to do with the criticism of a his previous film, the Seventh Seal = Det sjunde inseglet (1957). It was called metaphorical and allegorical, but historically inaccurate.

The second Bergman film I saw was The Magic Flute = Trollflöjten (1975) a film version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756 – 1791) opera Die Zauberflöte. The work is widely viewed as one of the most successful films of an opera ever made, and once again left a lasting impression on me. Again, this work was not made on Gotland, Originally, Bergman had wanted to film the production at Drottningholm Palace Theatre, but because of concerns about its fragility, the stage, including wings, curtains, and wind machines, was copied and erected in the studios of the Swedish Film Institute, in Stockholm.

Of the Bergman films made on Fårö, Persona has left the most lasting impression. It has been called many things including: controversial and experimental. It is a reflection of Carl Jung’s (1875 – 1961) theory of persona, including references to abortion, filmmaking, homosexuality, motherhood, vampirism and other subjects. The plot involves a young nurse named Alma = Bibi Andersson (1935 – 2019) and her patient, well-known stage actress Elisabet Vogler = Liv Ullmann (1938 -), who has suddenly stopped speaking. They move to a cottage, where Alma cares for Elisabet. The film then examines the situation where the care giver has difficulty distinguishing herself from her patient.

World Goth Day #18 will look at Gothic writing and fonts. It will be published on Thursday, 2026-05-22.

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Mount Saint Helens revisited

I remember 1980-05-18 clearly. I was living with Trish at her parents’ house in Vancouver, contemplating a move to Norway, or perhaps New Zealand. That day, however, was focused on Mount Saint Helens.

Mount St. Helens’ eruption sent a 2.5 billion cubic meters of debris into the upper Toutle Valley, millions of tons of sediment still pour into the Cowlitz River each year. 45 years after blast, Mount St. Helens’ sediment still causing costly problems. Mount St. Helens’ sediment still causing costly problems. Cities grapple to maintain drinking water and deep ports. In 2024, the Port of Longview spent more than half a million dollars dredging about 5 600 cubic meters of Mount St. Helens’ sediment from the mouth of the Cowlitz River and nearby port berths.

A sediment retention dam has been in place since 1989, but it needs updating. That work has been delayed, leaving nearby cities to find their own solutions to drinking water needs and maintain deep draft levels at ports.

Kelso is looking to update its water system due to impeding sediment, while Castle Rock and Longview have changed their systems in light of the blast. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to monitor sediment levels.

The problem

Mountain runoff carries ashen remains of what was the volcano’s peak into the North Fork Toutle River and down to the Toutle. From there, the lower Cowlitz River ferries an average of nearly 3 millions tons of sediment through Castle Rock, Kelso and Longview, where it dumps into the Columbia River

On this post’s publication, 45 years after the destruction, there are suggestions that Mount Saint Helens may explode again.

Some Geography

I am learning that providing a mountain’s height is sometimes not enough. So I am now including prominence where it is relevant. Prominence measures the height of a mountain or hill’s summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it. It is a measure of the independence of a summit. The key col = saddle around the peak is a unique point on this contour line. A parent peak is some higher mountain, selected according to various criteria.

This illustration shows the concepts of topographic isolation and prominence. Artwork: Andrew pmk.

As the forty-fifth anniversary of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens approaches there are two other volcanoes attracting my attention.

Mount Spurr

However, there are suggestions that Mount Spurr, in Alaska, will be the American volcano that erupts first. It has a height of 3 370 m, with a prominence of 585 m. It has been active: swelling, quaking and venting noxious gases. Fortunately, communities do not live on its slopes that would be destroyed by lava. Unfortunately, lots of ash could be produced, which could affect Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage about 130 km away.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory raised Mount Spurr’s Level of Concern Color Code from Green to Yellow, on 2024-10-23. The mountain is known aboriginally by the Dena’ina Athabascan name K’idazq’eni = that which is burning inside.

Axial Seamount Volcano

One of the most active volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest is the Axial Seamount. It sits on the Juan de Fuca Ridge about 480 km off the coast of Astoria, Oregon. In the recent past, Axial has erupted three times, in 1998, 2011 and 2015. After the 2015 eruption, the volcano saw a period of decreased earthquake activity and seafloor rise, which has since ramped up around late 2024. Earthquakes are an important proxy for volcanic activity. Axial saw hundreds, then thousands of earthquakes every day in the months leading up to its eruption in 2015. On the day of its last eruption 9 000 earthquakes occurred.

Cascadia Day

Some people are wanting to call 05-18 Cascadia Day, because of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. People realized that the earth is (figuratively) alive! Alfred Wegener (1880 – 1930) proposed the idea of continental drift in 1912. This led to Arthur Holmes (1890 – 1965) to gain an understanding of the mechanical and thermal implications of mantle convection, which led eventually to an understanding of plate tectonics. This led to an understanding of the Cascadia Subduction Zone by the mid 1980s. Gradually, there was an awareness that massive forces including volcanic eruptions, mountain building, mega-earthquakes, tsunamis and more can be regarded as an interacting system working beneath the surface of the earth.

Below is the Doug = Douglas fir = Pseudotsuga menziesii Flag. Its designer, Alexander Baretich, describes it as a tricolor consisting of three horizontal stripes of blue, white and green, with a single Douglas fir tree in the center. The blue stripe represents the sky, Pacific Ocean and Salish Sea, as well as the myriad of rivers in the bioregion including the Columbia, the Snake and Fraser Rivers. The white represents clouds and snow and the green represents the region’s countless fields and evergreen forests. The tree symbolizes endurance, defiance and resilience against fire, flood, catastrophic change, and ever increasingly against the anthropocentric man.

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International Telecommunications Union

Today, 2025-05-17, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is 160 years old. When it started out in 1865, the T stood for telegraph. Since then other technologies have become important for communication, so it appropriate that a more generic term has replaced telegraph.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin (1966 -), born in Monmouth, New Jersey, USA is the current Secretary-General of the ITU, elected at the 2022 Plenipotentiary Conference in Bucharest. She is the first woman to become ITU’s Secretary-General. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

So one area where the ITU works is in assigning radio frequencies for different purposes and call signs for various categories of radio frequency communication, including commercial stations and radio amateurs.

Call Signs

American call signs begin with K or W. For commercial radio and television stations K is in the west, while W is in the east. Currently, the Mississippi River is the dividing line. Thus, in my childhood, I watched KVOS television, on channel 12, broadcast from Bellingham, in Washington state. In New York state, WMHT is a Public Broadcasting System affiliate, on channel 17, broadcasting from Schenectady. Closer to, but west of the Mississippi River, KSDB-FM is a frequency modulated (FM) radio station broadcasting on 91.9 MHz. It is located in Manhattan = the Little Apple, Kansas. It is operated by Kansas State University, providing modern rock, urban, & local content. East of the Mississippi River, WAPL is another FM station, operated by Woodward Communications, Inc., in Appleton, Wisconsin. It broadcasts at 105.7 MHz and provides classic rock music.

Not all radio decisions are made by the ITU. Many decisions are national. For example, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is a digital radio standard for broadcasting digital audio radio services in many countries around the world. Currently, 55 countries are actively running DAB broadcasts as an alternative platform to analogue FM. Norway is in the process of transitioning all radio stations away from FM broadcasting to Digital Audio Broadcasting only. The country’s national radio outlets transitioned to DAB on 2017-12-13. Local radio stations remain available in FM, but will have to transfer to DAB on or before the end of 2031. Only six years to go.

ITU secretary-general Doreen is an active amateur radio operator holding call sign KD2JTX. For amateur radio, the above geographical rules do not apply. K indicates USA, the second letter in the prefix used to indicate competence levels, now it seems that every new operator is place at the lowest level = D. The 2 indicates a location in the states of New York or New Jersey. Other locations include 6 = California, and 7 = north-western states. The suffix, here JTX, identifies the particular person holding the license.

In Norway, all amateur radio call signs used to begin with LA. When that sequence was used up, they started with LB, such as my LB2XJ, and Alasdair’s LB6HI. However, for people who insist on having a LA call sign there are some workarounds. In Canada, amateur radio call signs vary with the province/ territory. In British Columbia they start with VA7 or VE7. Details are shown in the map below.

Map showing prefixes for amateur radio call signs in Canada

CBUT-DT, a digital television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has served as the West Coast flagship of CBC Television since 1953-12-16. In my childhood, it was known as channel 2, and ended in TV, to distinguish it from the amplitude modulation (AM) radio station, CBUT. It is part of a twinstick = duopoly with Ici Radio-Canada Télé station CBUFT-DT on channel 26. The two stations share studios at the CBC Regional Broadcast Centre in downtown Vancouver. Their transmitters are located on top of Mount Seymour in the district municipality of North Vancouver. CBUT is the first and oldest television station in Western Canada. Call sign rules are not followed by everyone. Most CBC stations use call signs assigned to Chile!

Time

In this post, I would like to emphasize ITU’s role as gatekeeper of timing on planet Earth. It is not the only organization concerned with time. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) = Union astronomique internationale, (UAI, in French) is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach, education, and development through global cooperation. It was founded on 1919-07-28 in Brussels, Belgium and is based in Paris, France.

Universal Time (UT) = mean solar time of the Greenwich meridian (0° longitude), replaced Greenwich Mean Time in 1928; it is now used to denote the solar time when an accuracy of about one second suffices. In 1955 the International Astronomical Union defined several categories of Universal Time of successively increasing accuracy. UT0 represents the initial values of Universal Time obtained by optical observations of star transits at various astronomical observatories. These values differ slightly from each other because of the effects of polar motion.

Universal Time (UT or UT1) is a time standard based on Earth’s rotation. Originally, it referred to mean solar time at 0° longitude. Because precise measurements of the Sun are difficult, UT1 is computed from a measure of the Earth’s angle with respect to the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF), called the Earth Rotation Angle (ERA, which serves as the replacement for Greenwich Mean Sidereal Time). UT1 is the same everywhere on Earth. UT1 is obtained by correcting UT0 for the effects of polar motion. Finally, an empirical correction to take account of annual changes in the Earth’s speed of rotation is added to UT1 to convert it into UT2. Coordinated Universal Time, the international basis of civil and scientific time, is obtained from an atomic clock that is adjusted so as to remain close to UT1; in this way, the solar time that is indicated by Universal Time is kept in close coordination with atomic time.

One would think that time would not be problematic in a relatively skinny country running north to south. That was generally not the case. Before universal time Norway was comparably late to introduce an official standard time, mainly due to the lack of a railway network connecting the country in an east–west direction. With the existence of a telegraph between Kristiania (Oslo) and Drammen, starting in 1855, the local time of Copenhagen, Denmark was used to measure time. That lasted until 1866 when it was replaced by Oslo local time, which was 7 minutes later.

In 1885 and then again in 1893 there were proposals to adopt a standard Norwegian time. Denmark, Germany and Sweden had adopted standard time = Central European time. Since the western and eastern Norwegian railways were planning to be interconnected ( it happened in 1909), Norway adopted Central European time on 1895-01-01. Since then, it has remained Greenwich + 1. Most church clocks were either moved backward (east of 15°E), or forward (west of 15°E) to use this time. Yes, previously, church clocks were the go-to time telling instrument.

Summer time

Summer time In Europe = Daylight Savings Time , in north America. From now on, DST will be used as an abbreviation for both of these terms.

The Journal de Paris, existed from 1777 to 1840. In 1784, it famously published an anonymous satirical letter written by Benjamin Franklin (1706 N.S. – 1790) encouraging Parisians to rise earlier to reduce candle usage. Through overreach, this has been credited with introducing the concept of DST.

One of the challenges with the current time system, is that many people have to change clocks twice a year. Even if computing devices = 9 units at Cliff Cottage, do that without intervention, I find no joy in having to change manual clocks = 12 units, twice a year. On a population level, that one hour transition results in unnecessary stress, including medical emergencies.

In Norway, DST was observed in 1916, 1943–45, and 1959–65. The last arrangement was controversial and it was discontinued. Sweden did not use DST during this period. When we first visited Scandinavia in 1979, DST was not in use. However, when we moved to Norway in 1980, DST had been reintroduced there and in Denmark and Sweden. Since 1996 Norway has followed the European Union regarding transition dates. Finland observed DST in 1942 and since 1981. Iceland has only observed summer time DST in 1917–1918 and in 1939–1968.

In North America, Yukon, most of Saskatchewan, and parts of British Columbia, Nunavut, Ontario and Quebec do not observe DST. Yukon and most of Saskatchewan use time zones equivalent to permanent DST. In USA, Hawaii does not observe DST. Neither does Arizona, but the Navajo Nation, which is mostly in Arizona but also partly in Utah and New Mexico, does. Inside the Navajo Nation is the Hopi Reservation, which does not observe DST.

Year-round DST was observed in 1942–1945 and 1974–1975.

Time changes fallow the old adage: spring forward = add an hour; fall back = subtract an hour. In north America the start of DST is the second sunday in March at 02:00. It ends on the first sunday in November at 02:00. In Europe, summer time starts last sunday in March at 01:00 UTC, and ends on the last sunday in October at 01:00 UTC.

In polls, most Europeans are opposed to DST. The European Commission tabled the draft directive on seasonal clock changes on 2018-09-12. This proposes: a) an end to biannual clock changes in all EU countries; b) a notification system to be used by an EU country if it wishes to change its standard time. DST was supposed to stop in 2021, but the Council of the European Union asked the European Commission for a detailed impact assessment before countries would decide on how to proceed. This has created meaningless delays.

Here is the latest consensus: support for permanent winter time in Denmark, the Netherlands (UTC+01:00) and Finland (UTC+02:00) while permanent summer time was supported in France, Germany and Poland (UTC+02:00) and Cyprus (UTC+03:00) excluding Northern Cyprus. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are in favour of keeping the current DST regime. In other words, there is no consensus.

Meanwhile in Norway, on Sommerøy = summer island, islanders in 2019 petitioned the Norwegian parliament to become a time-free zone. Yes, there are a few practical and legal challenges to be worked out. The island is part of Tromsø municipality, the largest city in Northern Norway. It is almost at 70° N, which experiences continuous daylight from 05-20 to 07-25, its midnight sun period. Conversely its midwinter dark period, lasts from 11-27 to 01-15.

The folly of DST and irregular time zones remains with the world today. Thus, on 2025-03-09 at precisely 02:00:00, Saint Pierre et Miquelon (population < 6 000) switched to DST, which is UTC -2 / Saint Pierre and Miquelon Daylight Time (PMDT), lost an hour in the process. Newfoundland and Labrador, followed half an hour later, changing to UTC -2:30 / Newfoundland DST (NDST). On 2025-11-02 at 02:00:00, in the respective time zones, time will revert back to standard or winter time, UTC -3/ in Saint Pierre and Miquelon Standard Time (PMST), duplicating an hour in the process. Latecomer, Newfoundland and Labrador, followed half an hour later to UTC -3:30. My hope – if only for health and safety reasons – is to avoid changing time twice a year.

Even worse that Newfoundland/ Labrador is Eucla/Australian Central Western Time. It’s UTC+8:45. It is the easternmost locality in Western Australia, located in the Goldfields-Esperance region, along the Eyre Highway, approximately 11 kilometres west of the South Australian border. According to the 2016 Australian census, Eucla had a population of 53.

Perhaps the best place to end is to enjoy the situation in Kiribati (pronounced kiribass), with its 21 inhabited islands, an area of 811.19 km2, and an estimated population of 121 388 in 2021. It occupies time zones UTC+13 and UTC+14. This puts it on the same days as Australia and New Zealand, but increases the nominal duration of a day to 26 hours. This is because before they switched time zones, they were in UTC-11 and UTC-10 respectively.

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Letters and Papers from Prison

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The Ordeal (2004), a Sculpture by Edith Breckwoldt (1937 – 2013) in Hamburg, Germany. “The ordeal. No man in the whole world can change the truth. One can only look for the truth, find it and serve it. The truth is in all places.” Text by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Photo: Emma7stern, 2011-04-29.

Often, I am just a little too late. I began writing this post on 2025-04-12, eighty years and three days after the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I accept that I am imperfect, and missed the opportunity to publish this post on the anniversary of his death. So I will attempt to make this reflection more relevant to the current age, and publish it on the 80th anniversary of the official end of World War two, 2025-04-08.

In case anyone believes that only the Axis side of the war acted with evil intent, let me remind people that early in 1945-04, the first Allied-governed Rheinwiesenlager camps = Rhine meadow camps, a group of 19 concentration camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force reclassified all prisoners as disarmed enemy forces, not prisoners of war. The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants. By 1945-10 thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease.

A reflection about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945).

Bonhoeffer lived a short and anonymous life. He was arrested in 1943-04 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison in Berlin for 1½ years. His letters (and other papers) originate from here, but were smuggled out of prison. This correspondence contained provocative concepts about the world and the church. He was then transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, where he met his death by hanging.

Much of Bonhoeffer’s appeal relates to his radical thoughts about the future of Christianity in the postwar world. It is a world of religionless Christianity, a world without God. These thoughts appealed to the many for whom the old ideas and institutions of the church no longer seemed adequate. My interpretation is that God had died, or at the very least, failed people, by not suppressing the second world war. God was unwilling to intervene on the side of truth or fairness. God was willing to let might rule, and to sacrifice the innocent. This is the situation in every war since then.

Many theologians see a breach in Bonhoeffer’s thought, a demarcation that separates his later life, where he abandons almost everything that he had previously affirmed and confessed as a Christian. Others see a continuity between these later, radical concepts and what he had believed and written before.

Much of Bonhoeffer’s appeal related to Christology, the branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Such as whether Jesus was human or divine or both; Christ’s role as a messiah, including a role in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers. There are also questions about salvation, and the consequences of sin.

Much of Letters and Papers from Prison, involves a correspondence with Eberhard Bethge (1909 – 2000). Bethge carefully preserved most of what he received, collected additional materials from others after the war, then published the first edition in German in 1951, followed by an English language translation in 1952. Since then, new editions with additional content and improved translations have been published.

It appears that Bethge took years to conclude that these scattered and seemingly random scraps should be published. In postwar Germany there were many who considered Bonhoeffer a traitor because he conspired against Hitler. Bon­hoeffer was not regarded as a proper academic, so his opinions were easy to dismiss. The book was regarded as dangerous, because it discusses the end of religion and living in a godless world. In addition, the book was esoteric and fragmentary. Upon its publication, it overcame all these obstacles and now stands as a landmark of theology.

The most relevant part of Bonhoeffer’s writing today deals with stupidity. He writes:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

The other writing of Bonhoeffer, that I would like to include here, has to do with cheap and costly grace. He writes:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. […] Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son …. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (2003), pp. 47-9. 

One of the world’s challenges in 2025 and beyond, is related to hybrid warfare. Frank Hoffman (? – ) defined hybrid warfare in 2007 as: the emerging simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare by flexible and sophisticated adversaries who understand that successful conflict requires a variety of forms designed to fit the goals at the time. Much of it is related to creating then enhancing divisions within a population. A popular way of doing this is through getting people with different religious affiliations to enter into conflicts with each other.

It is particularly easy for enemy agents to recruit different groups to oppose other groups. Imagine enemy agents pretending to be Protestants, attempting to recruit real Protestants to oppose people of other religions, which might include Jews, Catholics, Muslims and others, including non-believers. These same agents could then pretend to be members of these other religions, once again to recruit others. In this way, a country becomes increasingly split along religious lines.

It is important for everyone to know how hybrid warfare works. Its purpose is simple: to divide a nation into factions opposed to other factions.

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Ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot is an electronic music instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. Photo: 30rKs56MaE from Japan, taken in 2006-05-23 at The Atelier Jean-Louis Martenot in Neuilly (near Paris).

Ondes Martenot = Martenot waves = ondes musicales = musical waves is an early electronic musical instrument played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating wavering sounds similar to a theremin.

The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot (1898 – 1980) who, working as a radio operator in World War I, and was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between radio oscillators. He wanted to replicate these and hoped to bring the musical expressivity of the cello to this new instrument.

Units were manufactured to order. Over the following years, Martenot produced several variants/ versions/ models, introducing the ability to produce vibrato by moving the keys. Martenot was interested in mass-producion, which may have contributed to the instrument’s declining popularity following initial interest.

The ondes Martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control. It can be played with a metal ring worn on the right index finger. Sliding the ring along a wire produces theremin-like tones, generated by oscillator circuits using vacuum tubes, or transistors in the seventh model.

Martenot first demonstrated the ondes Martenot 1928-04-20, performing the Greek-French composer Dimitrios Levidis’ (1885/ 6 – 1951) Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera.

The third model, unveiled in 1929, had a non-functioning simulacrum of a keyboard below the wire to indicate pitch. This model also had a “black fingerguard” on a wire which could be used instead of the ring. It was held between the right thumb and index finger, which was played standing at a distance from the instrument. When played in this way, the drawer is removed from the instrument and placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot’s Pedagogical Manual for the ondes Martenot (1931), offers instruction on both methods of playing.

Later versions added a functioning keyboard; the keys produce vibrato when moved from side to side. This was introduced in the 1930s with the 84-key fourth version of the instrument. Subsequent versions had 72 keys. Combined with a switch that transposes the pitch by one octave, these instruments have a range from C1 to C8. A drawer allows manipulation of volume and timbre by the left hand. Volume is controlled with a touch sensitive glass lozenge.

Early models can produce only a few waveforms. Later models could simultaneously generate sine, peak-limited triangle, square, pulse, and full-wave rectified sine waves, in addition to pink noise, all controlled by switches in the drawer. The square wave and full-wave rectified sine wave can be further adjusted by sliders in the drawer. On the Seventh model, a dial at the top of the drawer adjusts the balance between white noise and the other waveforms. A second dial adjusts the balance between the three speakers. A switch allows a performer to select between the keyboard and the wire.

Further adjustments can be made using controls in the body of the instrument. These include several dials for tuning the pitch, a dial for adjusting the overall volume, a switch to transpose the pitch by one octave, and a switch to activate a filter. The drawer of the seventh version also includes six transposition buttons, which change the pitch by different intervals. These can be combined to immediately raise the pitch by up to a minor ninth.

Martenot produced four speakers, called diffuseurs, for the instrument. The Métallique features a gong instead of a speaker cone, producing a metallic timbre. It was used by the first ondes Martenot quartets in 1932. Another, the Palme speaker, has a resonance chamber laced with strings tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave; when a note is played in tune, it resonates a particular string, producing chiming tones. It was first presented alongside the sixth version in 1950.

The ondes Martenot was promoted by performance tours in Europe, North America and elsewhere in the world. In 1937, the ondes Martenot was displayed at the Exposition Internationale de Paris with concerts and demonstrations in an ensemble setting with up to twelve ondists performing together. Beginning in 1947, the ondes Martenot was taught at the Paris Conservatory, with Martenot as the first teacher.

This post began, not by examining the ondes Martenot, but by reading about ondist Jeanne Loriod (1928 – 2001), a French musician, regarded as the world’s leading exponent of the ondes Martenot. Yes, a player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist. Her most notable performances included the Turangalîla-Symphonie. Her repertoire included 14 concertos, some 300 works with concertante parts for ondes and another 250 chamber works. She also performed in numerous film soundtracks, and published a definitive work on the instrument, Technique de l’onde electronique type Martenot (1987) in three volumes.

Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992) French composer, organist, teacher of composition and musical analysis as well as an ornithologist, was responsible for creating the most interesting music for l’ondes Martenot. A Wikipedia biographical article about Messiaen details his work, including his interest in birdsongs. Much of the fame associated the ondes Martenot is because of Messiaen’s compositions. After his death, his widow, Yvonne Loriod (1924 – 2010), Jeanne Loriod’s sister, arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inédits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001.

Others who used the instrument include: French composer, teacher and musicologist Charles Koechlin (1867 – 1950); French composer and music critic Florent Schmitt (1870 – 1958); French and American composer Edgard Varèse (1883 – 1965) described by Henry Millar (1891 – 1980) as the Stratospheric Colossus of Sound, did not use the ondes Martenot often, but it did appear in the premiere of Amériques in Paris (1918 – 1921, revised 1927); French composes Jacques Ibert (1890 – 1962); French composer, conductor and teacher Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974) enjoyed the unusual nature of the ondes Martenot, used it several times in the 1930s for incidental music; Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955), whose most notable work including the ondes Martenot was his dramatic oratorio, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (1935) in which the ondes Martenot’s unique sonority was used to augment the string section; British-Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber (1905–1960); French composer, biographer and arts administrator Marcel Landowski (1915 – 1999); John Morton (1931-2014), performed works by Messiaen, Milhaud, Honegger and Bartok, amongst others at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere in the 1970s, as well as on television and radio; Québécois (Canadian) composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist Claude Vivier (1948 – 1983); British composer Thomas Adès (1971 – ) made extensive use of the ondes Martenot in his opera, The Exterminating Angel (2016) stating that the ondes Martenot could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel.

Today, people are most likely to encounter l’onde Martenot in the sound tracks of science fiction and horror films. It has also been used by: Musicologist and rare instrument musician Thomas Bloch (1962 – ) who also uses other instruments such as the glass harmonica, and cristal baschet (both to be topics of future weblog posts); Daft Punk, formed in 1993 in Paris by Thomas Bangalter (1975 – ) and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (1974 – ), Damon Albarn (1968 – ) of Blur and Jonny Greenwood (1971 – ) of Radiohead, who described it as “a very accurate theremin that you have far more control of … When it’s played well, you can really emulate the voice.”

Douglas Martin (? – ) in 2001 described its sound as a haunting wail. David McNamee (? – ) in 2009, said the ondes Martenot can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet, but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused.

The English musicologist, composer and inventor of experimental musical instruments Hugh Davies (1943 – 2005). estimated that more than 1 000 works had been composed for the ondes. Jeanne Loriod estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music. The instrument was used in French theatres such as the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre National Populaire and the Folies-Bergère.

Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel makes extensive use of the Ondes Martenot, which Adès says “could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel”.

The Guardian described Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead as a champion of the ondes Martenot. He first used it on Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A, and it appears in Radiohead songs including The National Anthem, How to Disappear Completely and Where I End and You Begin.

The ondist Thomas Bloch toured in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson’s show The Black Rider (2004–06)[36] and in Damon Albarn’s opera “Monkey: Journey to the West” (2007–2013).[37] Bloch performed ondes Martenot on the 2009 Richard Hawley album Truelove’s Gutter and the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories.[13] In 2020, the French composer Christine Ott released Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot), an avant-garde album using only the ondes Martenot.[38]

Film and television

The first uses of electronic music in film was probably in 1934, when Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955) used an ondes Martenot in his soundtrack for the 1932 French animated film L’Idée = The Idea, by Austro-Hungarian filmmaker Berthold Bartosch (1893-1968). In 1936 Adolphe Borchard (1882–1967) used an ondes Martenot in Sacha Guitry’s (1885-1957) Le roman d’un tricheur = Confessions of a Cheat. The instrument was, played by Martenot’s sister, Ginette. It was used by composer Brian Easdale in the ballet music for The Red Shoes.[40][better source needed] French composer Maurice Jarre introduced the ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962).[41] Composer Harry Lubin created cues for The Loretta Young Show, One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits featured the instrument, as did the first-season Lost in Space (1965) theme by John Williams. The English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it for scores for films including Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Secret Ceremony (1968).[42] Elmer Bernstein learned about the ondes Martenot through Bennet, and used it in scores for films including Heavy Metal,[43] Ghostbusters,[44][45] The Black Cauldron,[45] Legal Eagles, The Good Son, and My Left Foot.[45]

Composer Danny Elfman used the instrument in the soundtrack to the comedy science fiction film Mars Attacks!: he had originally intended to use a theremin, but was unable to find a musician who could play one.[46]

Director Lucille Hadžihalilović decided to use the instrument in her film Evolution (2015) as it “brings a certain melancholy, almost a human voice, and it instantly creates a particular atmosphere”.[47] Other film scores that use the ondes Martenot include A Passage to India, Amelie, Bodysong,[2] There Will Be Blood (2007), Hugo (2011)[48] and Manta Ray.[49]

The ondes Martenot is the subject of the 2013 Quebec documentary Wavemakers.[50] It is used in a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time in an episode from the third season of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, where a musician plays the ondes Martenot to inmates on Rikers Island.[51][52]

The British composer, arranger and conductor Barry Gray (1908–1984) studied the instrument with Martenot in Paris, and used it in his soundtracks for 1960s films including Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Doppelgänger (1969) as well as his scores for English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist Gerry Anderson’s (1929 – 2012) TV series. One of Gray’s instruments (a model 6 from 1969) was inherited and restored by film composer François Evans (1965 – ) who used it in Edgar Wright’s (1974 – ) first feature film, A Fistful of Fingers (1995). , and occasionally records with this instrument in his soundtracks. Evans studied ondes Martenot under Pascale Rousse-Lacordaire (? – ), who was a student of Maurice Martenot and Jeanne Loriod.

The ondes Martenot is sometimes claimed to have been used in the original Star Trek theme; the part was in fact performed by a singer.[2]
Legacy

In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes, along with other early electronic instruments such as the theremin, teleharmonium, trautonium, and orgatron, as part of a “futuristic electric music movement that never went remotely as far as its pioneers dreamed … proponents of the new wired music delighted in making previously unimaginable noises”. The French classical musician Thomas Bloch said: “The ondes martenot is probably the most musical of all electric instruments … Martenot was not only interested in sounds. He wanted to use electricity to increase and control the expression, the musicality. Everything is made by the musician in real time, including the control of the vibrato, the intensity, and the attack. It is an important step in our electronic instrument lineage.”

Journalist Alex Ross (1968 – ) estimates that fewer than 100 people have mastered the ondes Martenot. Mark Singer (1950 – ) wrote in 1997 for The Wire that it would likely remain obscure: “The fact is that any instrument with no institutional grounding of second- and third-raters, no spectral army of amateurs, will wither and vanish: how can it not? Specialist virtuosos may arrive to tackle the one-off novelty … but there’s no meaningful level of entry at the ground floor, and, what’s worse, no fallback possibility of rank careerism if things don’t turn out.”

One of the quirks/ features of ondes Martenot’s electronics is its use of a powder to transfers electric currents. Martenot would mix in different quantities according to musicians’ specifications; the precise proportions are unknown. Attempts to construct new ondes Martenot models using Martenot’s original specifications have had variable results.

Because of the inherent fragility of l’ondes Martenot, there have been attempts to construct more robust functional equivalents.

In 2000, Jonny Greenwood commissioned Analogue Systems, a synthesizer manufacturer, to develop a replica, because he was nervous about damaging his instrument on tour. This replica, called the French Connection, imitates the ondes Martenot’s control mechanism, but does not generate sound directly. Instead, it controls an external oscillator.

David Kean (? – ) is a musician, composer and audio engineer. In 1995 he founded Audities Studios in Seattle. In 1996 he relocated to Los Angeles. In early 2000 he relocated to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He collects electronic instruments and owns the Mellotron Company. In 2000 he created an improved replica version of l’ondes Martenot.

Jean-Loup Dierstein (? – ) maintained an Ondes Martenot at the Conservatoire de Paris from 2006. This sometimes required him to manufacture new parts to replace the defective and obsolete parts. Thus, it was able to restore fully unusable instruments. In 2011 he decided to manufacture his own variant. These reproduction instruments can be bought for about € 12 000. In 2012, the Canadian company Therevox began selling a synthesizer with an interface based on the ondes Martenot pitch ring and intensity key. In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden manufactured 100 Ondomo instruments, a portable version of the ondes Martenot.

Perhaps the best introduction to ondes Martenot is a short (3m51s) video of Thomas Block, playing improvisations at Fisher Lane studios, in 2010-12.

Notes

I have previously mention ondes Martenot, in a weblog post about the Therevox, published 2022-10-08.

Content from several Wikipedia articles, and other sources, have been reproduced here, without any form of acknowledgement! These weblog posts are not intended to be cited in academic articles. Hopefully, most of the content is correct, but that is not guaranteed. At breakfast on 2025-01-26, I was reminded of this by Trish, who handed me an article about the fallibility of Wikipedia. A Norwegian author had corrected some factual mistakes in a Wikipedia biography about him. The next day he received a life-time editing ban from Wikipedia. The perpetrator of the incorrect information had reported him for vandalism. For example, I find it increasingly difficult to find correct birth and even death years. For some reason, people are reluctant to provide this information. I find these dates are important, because circumstances change. Someone born in Europe in, say. 1935, will have a very different experience of life in their early years, than that of someone born in North America in 2005.

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Bridging the hearing gap

I have been an encyclopedia enthusiast since 1958, when our neighbours, the Sathers acquired a set of World Book encyclopedias. We acquired our set soon afterwards. In my childhood, I used to take a volume off to bed to read. Then, twenty years later in 1978, Jane Kupfer and Mychael Gleeson gave us a copy of the single volume Random House Encyclopedia on our wedding day. It still has a prominent place on our bookshelf, but in 2025, it has effectively been replaced by Wikipedia.

This is mentioned because Wikipedia articles vary in quality, especially their clarity and ability to inform. Thus, when I wanted to incorporate some basic insights into signed languages in this weblog post, I read what Wikipedia had to say about languages, then had to simplify much of the content to make it intelligible,

Some language insights

Language is a broad term for a linguistic configuration allowing people to communicate. It employs a system of symbols used uniformly by people to communicate intelligibly with each other. Language is distinct from dialect, jargon and vernacular. It refers to a linguistic configurations of vocabulary = a stock of words, syntax = rules and patterns by which sentences and phrases are formed, phonology = distribution and patterning of speech sounds in a language and of the tacit rules governing pronunciation. Signed languages lack phonology.

Dialect is applied to certain forms or varieties of a language, often those that communities or special groups retain even after a standard has been established. They are often geographic.

I would describe my own dialect as Cascadian, although other British Columbians would describe it as West Coast, essentially identical to the Pacific Northwest dialect found in Washington and Oregon states, and with minimal differences to the California dialect found, well, in California. This is totally unsurprising given the history of the area, and American immigration, especially from California after the California Gold Rush.

Some dialects appeal more to me than others. Take for example, Toni Basil, from Los Vegas. Her dialect, on Mickey (1981) always represents my ideal English language dialect, even better than my own. Yes, I am sure that I am not influenced by her Los Vegas High School cheerleader head uniform.

Note: The California goldrush had both positive and negative effects. On the plus side, the sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to become a state in the Compromise of 1850. The gold rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population’s decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide.

I have noticed, but never commented on, differences between my dialect and that of my relatives in Essex County, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. I would refer to their speech as a Great Lakes dialect. I can understand them perfectly, but there are some differences. I cannot articulate those differences before I hear them, but I notice them as they are being uttered. Undoubtedly, these same relatives will have a similar reaction to my speech.

Jargon is an artificial linguistic configuration often used by a particular occupational group for communication about occupational matters. Chinook jargon is often used as an example. It originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest. It spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then to British Columbia and parts of Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana.

A pidgin = a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. A creole language = a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then from that expanding into a fully developed language with native speakers, all within a short period.

Vernacular refers to ordinary informal speech in a given language. It is simultaneously in accord with and, in relatively small ways, distinguished from the standard language in syntax, vocabulary, usage and pronunciation. It is used by persons indigenous to a certain community, large or small.

Signed languages

Signed languages are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. They use manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers to express thought. Signed languages are fully developed natural languages with their own grammar = language rules, and lexicon = vocabulary.

Note: Signed languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible. There are similarities among different sign languages.

Linguists consider both spoken and signed communication to be types of natural language. Both emerged through an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning. There is substantial overlap between the neural substrates of signed and spoken language processing, despite obvious differences in modality = form of sensation, here visual rather than through sound.

Interpreters

From about 1982 to 2008 (26 years) I worked with interpreters, on an almost daily basis. The interpreters I used were specially designed computer programs that translated code from a programming language into a machine code, that various types of computers could understand. In some respects these are similar to, but in other respects different from, people who interpret between two human languages.

Deaf people often need an interpreter, for basic tasks. A human or computer-based interpreter, can help deaf people communicate, but they are seldom available. So people end up writing messages, or using children that can hear to interpret. Yes, many deaf people have to rely on writing with a pen on pieces of paper, or messaging with smart phones to communicate.

I don’t understand why this should be the case. Apple’s Siri spun out from the Stanford Research Institute’s Artificial Intelligence Center and is an offshoot of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA)-funded CALO project. SRI International used the NABC Framework to define the value proposition for Siri. It was co-founded by Norwegian Dag Kittlaus (1967 – ), Tom Gruber (1959 – ), and Adam Cheyer (1966 – ). Kittlaus named Siri after a co-worker in Norway; the name is a short form of the name Sigrid, from Old Norse Sigríðr, composed of the elements sigr “victory” and fríðr “beautiful”.

Adam Munder (1976 – ), who presented much of the information here in a TED talk, works as a software engineer in his daily life. He uses two highly qualified interpreters to work with others who have the same degrees, educational background, job responsibilities to solve engineering problems in a competitive environment. His daily collaborations, meetings and presentations rely on his interpreters. He is thankful that his employer ensures access to the same information that his hearing enabled colleagues do.

This is not true for many deaf people throughout the world. Interpreters are expensive and scarce. Adam lives in Arizona, a state with a population of about 7.5 million people in 2024. Of these, more than 1.1 million individuals have a hearing loss. That is about 15% of the population. There are only about 400 licensed interpreters. That is a ratio of 2750 / 1. Americans work up to about 2 000 hours a year. It it were equally divided, that would be about 0.75 hours per deaf person per year.

That means there is a scarcity of tools available, and few options. Until now.

There are about 150 different signed languages throughout the world. One of them, originally called Gestuno, now International Sign, is international in its orientation. It intends to bridge the gap between member of communities who don’t hear, but use different signed languages.

American Sign Language.

American Sign Language (ASL) is the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. It is often the basis for creoles used in many countries around the world, is widely learned as a second language, so that it can serve as a common language. ASL is closely related to French Sign Language (LSF).

ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations. User estimates vary from 250 000 to 500 000 persons, including children of deaf adults (CODA) and other hearing individuals.

Adam Munder, with others, is building a platform called OmniBridge. Its purpose is to join the deaf world and the hearing world, so that the details and nuances that make people human can be found in conversations.

He says that the OmniBridge team is using the power of AI to analyze thousands of signs in ASL. At one level, the goal seems to be to allow people to engage in conversations, regardless of their language. It is bringing humanity back into conversations, fusing worlds without forcing people to adapt to one other. While there are thousands of ASL signs (which may seem small) ASL is complex, filled with slight nuance and changes in body language. These can change the meaning of a sign from big to enormous.

The machines used to translate ASL to English, and vice versa are AI PCs, These are able to run ASL models locally, without relying on the internet, which dramatically increases accessibility. It is claimed that AI is changing the world. I am not convinced, although I can understand that people would prefer to have the technology they use in their devices, rather than needing an internet connection to communicate. The value of OmniBridge team is that it is using computing power to humanize, include and to level the playing field. It is an attempt to unite two languages, signed and spoken, into one seamless conversation. Let us hope that it does not become a mechanism to transfer wealth from the relatively oppressed, to those with wealth.

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The Peter Principle

Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull, as they appear on a Vancouver Public Library plaque outside the Metro Theatre in Marpole, Vancouver.

British born playwright Raymond Hull (1919 – 1986) and Vancouver born hierarchiologist Laurence Peter (1919 – 1990) met in a theatre lobby during an intermission, in the early 1960s. They agreed that they were watching an atrocious production.

Discussing the reasons for this theatrical disaster, Peter told Hull that employees rise to their level of incompetence. Workers keep getting promoted until they stop performing well. Later, the two men collaborated on their 1969 best-seller, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, which focused on this key insight. The book was rejected by more than a dozen publishers before being accepted, and becoming a best-seller.

Many TV mockumentaries/ sitcoms throughout the world have been called The Office, including a BBC production 2001-3, followed by an NBC one 2005 – 2013. These series were directly inspired by The Peter Principle, and showed incompetent people in action. The same is true of the comic strip Dilbert, written and illustrated by Scott Adams (1957 – ) since 1989. Adams gained inspiration from his banking career at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco between 1979 and 1986.

The Peter Principle describes organizational dysfunction. Companies frequently have the wrong person in the wrong place. Yet, Peter was uncertain about the incompetent people at the top. In a 1984 television interview on CBC Television with Carole Taylor (1945 – ), he admitted.”I’m never sure whether our world is run by idiots who are sincere or wise guys who are putting us on.”

Taylor was probably an appropriate interviewer. She has had a dubious career. She was Miss Toronto 1964; an independent member of Vancouver City Council from 1986 to 1990; Chair of the Vancouver Board of Trade from 2001 to 2002; Chair of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) from 2001 until 2005; British Columbia’s Minister of Finance from 2005 until 2008; Chancellor of Simon Fraser University (in Burnaby, British Columbia) from 2011 until 2014. From my perspective, her most notable achievement was the introduction of the first carbon tax in North America, introduced in 2008. It was based on Sweden’s carbon tax, that successfully reduced carbon dioxide emissions from transport by 11%.

Most people think The Peter Principle was written as satire. Yet, even satire can contain truths. Researchers have undertaken studies based on Peter and Hull’s treatise, and then written reports about remedial actions that can prevent workers from rising to their level of incompetence.

A 2009 study by Italian researchers offered a radical approach to the Peter Principle problem. It found that companies may be better served by leaving things to chance and promoting people at random.

A 2018 study looked at data from more than 50 000 sales workers at 214 firms and “found evidence consistent with the ‘Peter Principle.'” It found organizations were more likely to promote top sales staff into managerial positions even if the most productive worker wasn’t necessarily the best candidate.

Some organizations counter the Peter Principle through a dual track approach that allows for high performers to advance their careers = get income increases and/or fancy job titles, without necessarily having to climb the corporate ladder.

Some organizations have tried to tackle the Peter Principle problem by focusing less on a worker’s past performance and more on their potential. They use what’s called the nine-box method to evaluate prospective leaders, using a three-by-three grid that weighs an employee’s accomplishments and their future potential. “Women were actually getting slightly higher performance ratings within the nine-box system, but they were getting sharply lower potential ratings. So it seems like potential is something very difficult to forecast, but it’s an area where various biases can sneak in.”

Peter’s career

Peter worked as a teacher in Vancouver between 1941 and 1965, before becoming an education professor at the University of British Columbia. In 1966, Peter moved to California, where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Peter also wrote: The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right (1972), The Peter Plan: A Proposal for Survival (1976), Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Times (1977), and more.

He wrote several books aimed at teachers: Prescriptive Teaching (1965); Competencies for Teaching (1975) in four volumes: 1 = Individual Instruction, 2 = Classroom Instruction, 3 = Theraputic Instruction, 4 = Teacher Education.

His insights into teaching are expressed even on the opening page of The Peter Principle, where he writes that he learned early in his career as an educator that “a fair number of teachers, school principals, and superintendents appeared to be unaware of their professional responsibilities, and incompetent in executing their duties.”

Hull’s Career

Hull was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. He emigrated to Vancouver at the end of World War II, and worked as a waiter, janitor and civil servant. In 1949 he studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia and discovering he had an aptitude for it. After graduation, he eventually began writing television screenplays for the CBC. He later wrote for the stage and, in time, formed The Gastown Players.

His literary output included plays: The Drunkard (1967); Wedded to a Villain (1967); Son of the Drunkard = The Drunkard’s Revenge (1982). Other works were: Profitable Playwriting (1968); How To Get What You Want (1969); Writing for Money in Canada (1969); Effective Public Speaking (1971); Gastown’s Gassy Jack (1971) (co-authored with Olga Ruskin (nee Bruchovsky, 1931 – 2010); How to Write a Play (1983). in addition to co-authoring The Peter Principle (1969), with Laurence Peter.

Hull and Peter’s names lives on

In 2006 Vancouver Public Library installed 26 literary plaques. One of these was outside the Metro Theatre, 1370 S.W. Marine Drive, which was the location where Peter and Hull met. It reads:

“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

From The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

One of the most famous non-fiction books written in British Columbia, The Peter Principle (1969), was co-authored by Raymond Hull and Laurence J. Peter after the pair met as strangers while attending an amateur production at the Metro Theatre. In the lobby, during intermission, Hull mentioned the production was a failure. Laurence J. Peter, an Education professor at UBC, suggested to Hull that people invariably rise to their level of incompetence. In their international bestseller that resulted, The Peter Principle, Peter described his theme as “hierarchiology,” a term now commonly used when analyzing systems in human society. Hull described the content as, “the tragi-comic truth about incompetence, its causes and its cure.” Dr. Laurence J. Peter, who was born in Vancouver and worked for the Vancouver school system from 1941 to 1965, left B.C. and worked in the Education faculty of the University of Southern California. He wrote 11 more books and died in 1990. Raymond Hull was a writer and also an actor and playwright. He died in 1985, bequeathing most of his royalties from six plays and 18 books to the Canadian Authors Association, and most of the rest of his estate, approximately $100,000, was given to the Vancouver Public Library.

[end of inscription on plaque]

Raymond Hull Quotations:

All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.

He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Laurence Peter Quotations:

The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.

A man doesn’t know what he knows until he knows what he doesn’t know.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

The reason crime doesn’t pay is that when it does, it is called a more respectable name.

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

The purpose of my books is not to proclaim that I know all the answers, or plan to save the world; but by writing these stories, the idea is to turn people on to thinking in terms of solutions, rather than in terms of escalating problems.

Peter was fond of quoting the wisdom of American humourist James Boren (1925 – 2010): When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. And when in doubt, mumble. Boren founded the International Association of Professional Bureaucrats and, in 1992, was the official candidate for President of the United States, for the Apathy Party of America, with his campaign slogan: I have what it takes to take what you’ve got. He lost to Bill Clinton.

Homogenized Milk

Sometimes Peter explains basic concepts using analogies: “the cream that rises to the top turns sour.” If this is still too difficult, he paraphrases it: ‘The cream rises until it sours.’ Unfortunately, many of the people he was trying to explain this to, have probably drunk homogenized milk all of their lives, and have no understanding of how milk and cream start off as separate fractions.

Peter probably had no difficulty explaining his concepts to members his own generation, people who had grown up with standard milk who intuitively knew that cream is lighter than milk. In dealing with younger people there are experiential gaps, often called generation gaps. Bridging these gaps can be difficult.

Auguste Gaulin (1857 – 1922) invented an emulsifying machine, he called a homogenizer. Its three piston pump forced milk through a narrow tube under pressure. This action broke fat globules into smaller sizes to prevent separation and rising. The machine was patented in 1899, but homogenization did not become popular with the general public until the 1920s, when large quantities of homogenized milk were purchased and people began to notice the quality difference.

In North America, the use of homogenized milk began at The Torrington Creamery, Torrington, Connecticut in 1919, but did not spread. By 1927, The Laurentian Dairy, in Ottawa Ontario, started to produce homogenized milk. By 1932, milk plants in many Ontario cities and towns offered homogenized milk for sale. In the United States, enthusiasm for the product was generated by William McDonald, Flint, Michigan, in 1932, who introduced homogenized milk there. Through unique experiments and demonstrations involving regurgitation studies, attention of the public was drawn to homogenized milk. Sales by the McDonald Dairy Company, in the midst of the economic depression, stimulated much interest throughout the United States.