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.
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.
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.
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.
Fountain, found by R. Mutt = Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) photograph by Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946) at the 291 (Art Gallery) following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit, with entry tag visible. The backdrop is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley (1877 – 1943).
Industrial art began as the use of mechanical devices to create artworks. As such it is also known as mechanical art. I use it in a slightly different context to refer to industrially made objects that have an attractive appearance. Some people may enjoy watching this history of industrial design, to provide a conventional story of how it evolved.
For me, the most enlightening book about industrialism has been written by Terje Tvedt (1951 -) a professor of geography at the University of Bergen, Historiens Hjul og Vannets Makt: Da England og Europa Vant og Kina og Asia Tapte (2023). This could be translated as: The Wheel of History and the Power of Water: When England and Europe Won and China and Asia Lost. Tvedt has also written a book in Norwegian prior to that, Verdens historie: med fortiden som speil (2020), that I translate as World History: with the past as a mirror, which could have been published in English as Water and Society: Changing Perceptions of Societal and Historical Development (2021). I have not seen this English book, so there is some uncertainty.
In the 2023 book, the most important source of power was water, using a water wheel. England was able to develop this because it had stable rainfall, along with a relatively flat geography. These contributed to the use of canals to distribute industrially produced products. Later, steam became an increasingly important source of power. Now, it is electricity.
One starting point for industrial art is the Dada movement. Dada was an early 20th century art movement, arguably first at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 in Zürich, Switzerland, founded by Hugo Ball (1886 – 1927) and Emmy Hennings (1885 – 1948). Dada also emerged at about the same time in Berlin and New York, but later in Paris. It flourished until the mid 1920s.
Dada was primarily a reaction to the first World War, involving artists rejecting the aesthetics of modern capitalism. Instead they incorporated nonsense, irrationality and protest into their works. Performance art, was especially important, but gradually it incorporated visual, literary and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing and sculpture. There was a strong dislike of violence, war, nationalism and party politics.
There is a lot of speculation, but no consensus, on the origin of the name Dada. An unlikely story is that Richard Huelsenbeck (1892 – 1974) slid a paper knife randomly into a dictionary, where it landed on dada (French) = hobby horse.
Other unconventional art schools emerged at about the same time: Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) around 1913 has been described as dada, avant-garde and post-impressionist. I attribute his work, Fountain (1917), photographed by Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946), as one of the first pieces of industrial production, to be labelled a work of art.
Dada is important for its rejection of the correlation between words and their meaning. In much the same way, industrial art rejected the correlation of a work’s origin (as a utilitarian object) and its resurrection as a work of art.
Not all Dada movement members worked with industrial art, those who approached in other ways include: Jean Arp (1886 – 1966) known as a sculptor, painter and poet; Johannes Baader (1875 – 1955), an architect and metalworker, known as the Dada crowbar; Max Ernst (1891 – 1976), especially for frottage = pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images; Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven née Else Hildegard Plötz (1874 – 1927), especially for her anti-patriarchal activism; George Grosz, his de-Germanized name, born Georg Ehrenfried Groß (1893 – 1959), especially for his painting Eclipse of the Sun (1926), depicting headless government ministers who cannot think for themselves, but obey the commands of the capitalists and the military; Raoul Hausmann (1886 – 1971), who regarded destruction as an act of creation; John Heartfield born Helmut Herzfelt (1891 – 1968) who pioneered the use of photomontages, especially for making anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements; Hannah Höch (1889 – 1978), especially known for co-inventing photo-montages, and for her dismantling of the fable of the New Woman: energetic, professional, androgynous, ready to take her place as man’s equal; Francis Picabia (1879–1953) avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet and typographist; Man Ray = Emmanuel Radnitzky (1890 – 1976) an American in Paris, known for his photographs, especially photograms that he called rayograms = photographic images made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light; Hans Richter (1888 – 1976) painter, graphic artist, film producer and author of the book Dadaism (1965) about its history; Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948) especially noted for working as a draftsperson that influenced his later work, inspiring him to depict machines as metaphors of human activity; Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889 – 1943) painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer;Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) essayist, performance artist, journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director; and Beatrice Wood (1893 – 1998) ceramicist an sculptor.
The key to industrial art is the process of creating new forms by working with industrial materials, those that are produced at mass scale for everyday use. Many are made of metal, such as bolts and pipes. Wood is more problematic, because it is closer to nature. Cardboard, however, is one or two steps further away. Many claim that crap materials are even better, because they have completed their use as an industrial material and are freed to become an art form.
Charles Harrison Townsend (1851 – 1928) described industrial art as the use of materials and objects combined together in a way that creates new meaning. Not everyone appreciates this approach. Nikolaus Pevsner (1902 – 1983) in Pioneers of Modern Design (1949) referred to Townsend as reckless. Alastair Service (1933 – ) in Edwardian Architecture (1977) called Townsend a rogue architect.
Although it is difficult to define, many people have tried to categorize and define industrial art. In 1947, Larry Lankton created the first definition of industrial art when he referred to it as “an expression of the machine age.” While there are many different ways to interpret the term industrial art, it is generally agreed upon that it tends to incorporate aspects of modernism, specifically cubism and constructivism. According to wikipedia, in cubism, subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form. Instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Similarly, constructivism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin (1885 – 1953) and Alexander Rodchenko (1891 – 1956) that is abstract and austere. Constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space by rejecting decorative stylization, in favour of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes. They were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.
For some time after its beginning, industrial art remained mostly an underground movement which encompassed various forms and styles from all over the world. In 1952, the Museum of Modern Art featured many works from this movement in a show called “Machine Art.” This exhibition moved from New York City to Los Angeles and San Francisco before finally closing in 1953.
Artists began using industrial materials for their work as early as the late 1800s with artists such as Marcel Duchamp who used glass as part of his ready-mades.
Today, industrial art can refer to two separate things. First, it can refer to any form of visual art that is made with found objects rather than manufactured ones. This umbrella term was coined by William Morris (1834 – 1896), for a wide variety of forms of modern art. It is closely associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement because both movements were heavily influenced by medieval craft guilds.
Some people site the major difference between industrial art and traditional fine art is the former’s focus on utilitarian products. Industrial artists work in a wide variety of media including ceramics, glass, leather, metals and textiles. Their works can be large sometimes even monumental in scale.
Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 – 1933) is often cited as an inspiration for the movement, especially his use of stained glass in lamps, vases and windows. His designs were typically functional, yet beautiful.
Industrial art was a result of industrialization and the changes it brought. Many people, especially factory workers were profoundly unhappy with their situation. This forced artists to think about new ways to represent the world.
Industrial art was created by both amateur and professional artists. One of the first industrial art objects was designed was the door handle. These often used human, animal and plant elements in their design.
Found (or repurposed) objects were those that had been transformed from their original function into something else, preferably with an artistic element. Here, the artwork differed more in terms of its use of materials, rather than by its structure. Discarded materials were especially useful. Some cited examples include arranging tin cans in geometric patterns and repainting old tools/ machines with bright colors.
At some point, people interested in industrial art will be encouraged to reflect on the relationship between 1) the arts and crafts movement, 2) art nouveau/ jugendstil and 3) art that is created to be used in industrial settings. The focus is on objects that are to be seen by the public, usually inside a factory or store. It also includes graphics created for use as advertising and packaging. This type of art grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century, which was an effort to bring beauty into manufacturing. Industrial design, as an attempt to create beautiful things for use in industry, took off after World War I when many people were seeking a substitute for the ornate designs of Art Nouveau. The style became especially popular in America during the 1920s due to two trends: the rise in popularity of machines, and an emphasis on modernism.
A second perspective on industrial art = factory art = machine art, is a form of modern art that utilizes industrial materials and processes. Here, the term industrial art was coined in 1912 by the critic and artist Elie Nadelman (1882 – 1946), a sculptor and collector of folk art, used the term to describe some works by Alexander Archipenko (1887 – 1964).
Anno 2025, Industrial art is not a term that is used. Instead, the focus is on industrial design creating products that people want and, sometimes even need. It’s not just about making an object look good. It has to be easy to use, safe for the environment, affordable and durable.
Treat this post as a manuscript for a play, with a Prologue and an Epilogue. At one time it was divided into three acts, but the divisions were messy, so it has reverted to a play with an indeterminate number of acts.
Characters (in alphabetical order). Yes, some of the characters are more important than others, and one has mostly been eliminated from the play. The characters are referred to by their first names, to introduce some intimacy to them. I am not certain this is how people in the 19th century treated each other. My 20th century mother said that her mother, Jane Andison née Briggs (1880 – 1972), referred to some of her women friends by Mrs, followed by a married surname. In Norway, everybody is on a first name basis with everybody. Even the Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (1960 – ) is referred to as Jonas. Before him we had Erna (Solberg, 1961 – ). Her personal, but political website is erna.no .
Anne = Julia Sarah Anne Cobden-Sanderson née Cobden (1853 – 1926), a socialist, suffragette and vegetarian. She provided the money (£ 1 600) to start Doves Press.
Bill = William Morris (1834 – 1896), a textile designer, poet, artist, writer and socialist activist, married Jane in 1859.
Ed = Edward Philip Prince (1846 – 1923) an engraver and punchcutter. Wikipedia tells us: Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould shape to cast type. Cutting punches and casting type was the first step of traditional typesetting. The cutting of letter punches was a highly skilled craft requiring much patience and practice.
Ed2 = Edward Burne-Jones (1833 – 1898), a frequent illustrator of Kelmscott books, based many of his drawings for the wood engravings on his own previous paintings. He valued these works for their decorative value over their illustrative properties, and reviewed them by looking at them upside-down.
Emery = Emery Walker (1851 – 1933), an engraver, photographer and printer, active in many Arts & Crafts organizations including the Art Workers Guild, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. He was also the most experienced person in this story, when it comes to printing.
Jane = Jane Morris née Burden (1839 – 1914) an embroiderer and artists’ model/ muse. She allegedly embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty, and in addition to her husband, was a model/ muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882). She suggested that Tom take up the art of book binding.
John =John Carruthers (1836 – 1914), a railway/ railroad engineer and economic theorist from a Scottish literary family in Inverness, Scotland. He learned how to construct railways in Canada, then applied that art in USA, Russia, Mauritius and Egypt before being recruited by Julius Vogel, Premier of New Zealand, for the great Public Works policy of the 1870s which emphasized railway construction and immigration. John was made Engineer-in-Chief of the new Public Works Department, responsible for railway construction throughout New Zealand.
Tom = Thomas James Sanderson (1840 – 1922), an unemployed barrister, married Anne in 1882. They both took the surname Cobden-Sanderson.
Prologue
Where to begin writing about life as a play? Perhaps with a set/ stage, knowing when people will make their entrances and exits. The details can be filled in later. Sometimes, on a stage there is something visible, larger than life, a distraction that the actors focus upon. They hope future audiences will focus upon it too, when the dialogue gets boring, as each life unfolds. The actors hope this focus will not just change, but improve, with every act.
It is reckless when two people enter into a relationship with each other. Yet, it is done every day. Often it is called marriage where the participants are so consumed with love – a euphemism for sex – that they forget to scrutinize the contract papers, until it is too late. The participation of a third person often results in folly. In business matters this might be a better course of action, because the result of a disagreement, will not be painful head-bashing, but a 2-1 decision resulting in a majority and a minority. In the emotional life of people in the 21st century, this involves separation – divorce – remarriage, or perhaps even a life free of marital constraints.
Kelmscott
Kelmscott Manor is a Cotswold stone house, built about 1570, with a distinctive architecture and craftsmanship, integrated with its setting. In 1871, Bill bought it as a rural retreat, then used the same name for his London town house when he bought it in 1879. He then gave the same name to his printing venture when it was started in 1891.
Kelmscott Manor Photo: Boerkevitz, 2006-08-01Kelmscott House, previously known as The Retreat, originally owned by Francis Ronalds (1788 – 1873) then by George MacDonald (1824 –1905) who wrote At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1873), while living there. Bill and Anne lived there from 1878 to 1896. Photo: Bernard Burns, 2013-09-30.
In the late 1870s, Emery and Bill became friends. Both were socialists and lived near each other. Emery’s printing expertise and collection of 16th-century typefaces inspired Bill and Emery to become business partners, creating a printing business in 1891. It published 53 books in 66 volumes between its founding and 1898.
Most of the books published were unillustrated octavos, referring to the page size, from 5 by 8 inches to 6 by 9.5 inches (about 12.5 to 15 cm by 20 to 25 cm), of a book composed of printer’s sheets folded into 8 leaves, making 16 pages. Old-style types were used, with the type printed closer to the spine than the outside edge. This followed the custom of 15th-century printing. A hand press allowed the company to use wood-engraved initials and borders, and to produce a blacker type. The use of dampened handmade paper, creating indentations in the page. These indentations were an important part of the book’s design. Initially, books were sold untrimmed and unbound, assuming that buyers would rebind them. The press only started trimming pages after publishing Biblia innocentium in 1896.
For collectors, several copies of books were printed on vellum = animal skins/ membranes. Compared to paper, this is difficult to print on. Vellum is not parchment. Both use animal skins that have been de-greased and treated for use either in writing or printing or in binding. Neither parchment nor vellum is tanned, so they are not leather. Vellum is an inferior product, manufactured from the entire skin of the animal. It is not split. For this, Bill started using a thick, dark ink. The pressmen had difficulty working with it, so Bill went back to the ink he had used previously. Because of staining he then used a softer ink, that did not dry very quickly. Bill used red ink for titles and shoulder-notes. He experimented with other colors, but did not adopt them.
Emery influenced Bill’s opinions on book design: supporting a return to 15th-century aesthetics, decreasing spaces between words and after punctuation, reducing spaces between words and between lines. While the fifteenth-century books probably reduced spacing to conserve paper, Bill based his preference on the way the printed page looked. Bill said the margins closest to the binding must be the smallest, followed by the head, fore (outer) and tail margins. Medieval printing experts say the difference between the margins was usually less than 20%. Bill’s fore margins were large to accommodate the shoulder-notes recommended by Emery. The inner margins were so little that rebinding was difficult.
Fonts
After deciding to found the press, Bill collected many books printed in 15th century Europe, as well as books on printing and typography. To research typefaces, he bought examples of every fine type he could find.
Many want to attribute Golden Type to Bill. However, it was probably a joint effort between Bill and Emery, but with Bill taking the leading role. They probably started designing Golden Type in 1889. It was a Roman type inspired by a font used by Nicolas Jenson (c. 1420 – 1480) to publish Pliny’s Historicae naturalis, and a similar font that Jacobus Rubeus = Jacques le Rouge (1470 – 1550) used to publish Leonardus Brunus Aretinus’ Historiae Florentini populi. Emery’s company photographed the type at a large scale to help Bill see the shape of the letters. Bill said that designing Golden Type was the most troublesome task he had ever tried. Bill repeatedly traced the enlarged type, until he felt comfortable with his understanding of the design. After Bill drew the the type design freehand, Emery would photograph the drawings and reproduced them at the correct scale. Bill made modifications at every stage. Bill and Emery were at the leading edge of Victorian technology, pioneering photography and enlarged typefaces.
Punches
Ed cut the punches for the type in 1890. These are used to stamp the matrices used to cast metal type. Charles Reed (1819–81) and Sons = especially, Andrew Holmes Reed (1848–1892) and Talbot Baines Reed (1852 – 1893) carried out the casting. The font, in 14-point size, was completed in the winter of 1890–1891.
With Golden Type, Bill did not bother making an italic or bold version and did not include brackets or dashes. The thickness of the font went well with the wood-engravings it often accompanied. Some critics commented that its large size and width discouraged commercial application. For example, Stanley Morison (1889 – 1967) strongly disliked it and criticized its large capital letters. Bill designed three related typefaces: Golden Type, Troy and Chaucer. Troy was described as a semi-Gothic type designed […] with special regard to legibility made for the publication of the Historyes Of Troye in 1892. It was cut at 18 points by Ed. It was also used for The Tale of Beowulf in 1895. The Chaucer typeface was re-cut at 12 points for use in The Order of Chivalry (1893) and The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400). It was edited by Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830–1901), ornamented with pictures designed by Ed2, engraved on wood by William Harcourt Hooper (1834-1912). It was published in 1896.
Bill was influenced by books published by Shoeffer and Zainer. Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer (c. 1425 – c. 1503) was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist starting in 1451, before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg. Zainer was active 1468 – 1478. he produced about 80 books including two German editions of the Bible and the first printed calendar. He came to Augsburg from Strassburg.
It should be noted that with the founding of the Kelmscott Press, Bill was increasingly ill and living largely as an invalid. He suffered from gout, and showed signs of epilepsy. In 1891-08, he took his daughter Jane Alice = Jenny on a tour of Northern France to visit the medieval churches and cathedrals. When they returned to England, Bill spent an increasing amount of time at Kelmscott Manor. He sought treatment from William Broadbent (1835 – 1907), a prominent doctor, who prescribed a holiday in Folkestone, a coastal town in Kent, on the English Channel.
Because of the use of wide fonts, the books themselves had to be wide too. Bill bought handmade paper from Joseph Batchelor (1831? – ?) and Son. He was obsessed with the aesthetics of early handmade paper. He used paper from the Ford Mill in Little Chart, Kent, England. The mill had been started in 1776, but was taken over by Batchelor in 1876. It was powered by a waterwheel until the end of the 1920s, when electrical power was used.
Bill had strict requirements for his paper. It had to be made of linen, made with a two piece frame consisting of a mould – essentially a screen that allowed water to leak through, and a more solid deckle. Large quantities of paper were needed for printing each book. Each piece of handmade paper had its own subtle character, that made Bill’s quest for consistency and perfection difficult to achieve. The mill used watermarks designed by Bill. In addition, the paper had to be produced in unusual sizes. Other publishers admired the paper, which lead to imitation. At Bill’s suggestion, Batchelor adopted the name Kelmscott Handmade, for the paper.
In the 1890s, photoengraving made it easy for entrepreneurs to copy Bill’s typefaces and sell pirated typefaces. When an American foundry offered to sell Bill’s typefaces in the United States, Bill refused. Joseph W. Phinney of the Dickinson Type Foundry in Boston sold a Jenson Old Style that was very similar to Golden Type. Satanick, an imitation Troy type, was available for purchase in 1896. Bill’s own typefounders, Charles Reed and Sons , started selling a Kelmscott Old Style type. Subsequently, Sydney Cockerell (1867 – 1962), the Kelmscott Press’s administrator, threatened legal action against these companies.
Decorations
Some of the Kelmscott books are heavily decorated, with motifs similar to Morris’s other designs for upholstery and wallpaper. In 1913, George Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948), journalist, publisher and Fabian socialist wrote: “The Kelmscott books look not only as if letter and decoration had grown one out of the other; they look as if they could go on growing.”
The title pages of Kelmscott books were usually decorated in a Victorian style. Bill initially designed woodblock initials that were too dark or too large for the pages they appeared on, but later became more proficient in proofing his capitals. The Kelmscott books varied greatly in ornaments. For example, The History of Godefrey of Boloyne is commonly regarded as over-decorated. However, the first few books published by Kelmscott were in the opposite direction, politely called sparsely decorated. Bill’s border and capital designs were similar to his wallpaper designs. Many regard them as inappropriate, not illustrative of their associated texts. Medieval texts had delicate illuminations covering their margins. However, the wood engravings Bill made were heavy. They created production problems. The use of the Chaucer typeface, required the hand press to be reinforced with steel because of the weight of the large ornaments. Bill preferred his wood engravers to replicate his designs exactly, even though this was at odds with John Ruskin’s (1819 – 1900) theory that craftsmen should have influence in the final aesthetic product they help produce. Kelmscott books did not have printing on the reverse side of woodblock pages until the Chaucer, despite this separation of text from illustration being precisely what Bill wanted to avoid in his book designs.
Printer’s marks
Bill designed three different printer’s marks for Kelmscott Press. One was a simple text mark in a rectangle used with octavos and small quartos. The Kelmscott mark with a large rectangle and leafy background was first published in The History of Godefrey of Bolyne and was used mostly for quartos. The last printer’s mark was only used in the Works of Geoffery Chaucer.
In July 1896, Morris went on a cruise to Norway with John, during which he visited Vadsø, one of the most northerly and easterly town in Norway, and Trondheim, 120 km south of Cliff Cottage. During the trip Bill’s physical condition deteriorated and he began experiencing hallucinations. Returning to Kelmscott House, he became a complete invalid, being visited by friends and family, before dying of tuberculosis on 1896-10-03.
Legacy
After the closing of the Kelmscott Press, leftover paper and the type fonts were given to the Chiswick Press. The Kelmscott types were sold to Cambridge University Press in 1940. Woodblocks were given to/ deposited in the British Museum. Presses and related equipment were sold to Essex House Press.
Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), an American economist and sociologist, was a well-known critic of capitalism. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen developed the concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. He called Kelmscott’s books a conspicuous waste arguing that they were less convenient and more expensive than regular books, showing that the purchaser had time and money to waste.
Charles Robert Ashbee (1863 – 1942) was involved in book production and literary work, setting up Essex House Press as a Kelmscott Press imitation, and taking on many of the displaced printers and craftsmen. Between 1898 and 1910 the Essex House Press produced more than 70 titles (some sources state a total of 83). He used the same ink, paper, vellum and presses that Kelmscott used. He designed two type faces for Essex House, Endevour (1901) and Prayer Book (1903), both of which are based on Golden Type. William S. Peterson (1939 – ) called Ashbee’s typefaces “ugly and eccentric” but that the books “have a certain period charm”.
Tom worked as a binder in the Doves Bindery, which carried out the pigskin bindings for the Kelmscott Chaucer. Together with Emery, they founded Doves Press and used similar paper and vellum to Kelmscott. Tom disliked the decorative style of the Kelmscott books. Books from the Doves Press had only an occasional calligraphic initials. They created a font that copied those in Nicolas Jenson’s renaissance publications. Their 5-volume folio Bible remains an important landmark in the history of fine press, and their editions of Goethe inspired the formation of several fine presses in Germany. The most prominent of these were Bremer Press, Janus Presse, Kleukens Presse, Ernst Ludwig Presse, and Serpentis Presse.
It is difficult to assess the roles and interactions of the human participants who were responsible for that press. When I attempt to understand the past, I almost always have to refer to Leslie Poles Hartley (1895 – 1972) and a quotation from his most famous book, The Go-Between (1953): “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”Dove Press refers to The Dove, a riverside pub, located in Hammersmith, London. Having avoided alcohol for half a century, I find it difficult to believe that anyone would name something after a pub. Then, I think back to the situation in London in the mid 19th century, and the belief that miasma = bad air, caused disease. John Snow (1813–1858) is important because of his work in tracing the source of the 1854 Broad Street (Soho, London) cholera outbreak, in which he identified the source as a specific public water pump. Yes, one must remember that water can be unhealthy, and beer can be a more appropriate choice, especially in times past.
The Vale Press, founded by Charles Ricketts (1866 – 1931) with Charles Shannon (1863 – 1937), based their types on 15th-century calligraphy. They published literary classics, which allowed them to focus on the design and layout of the works. Together, they also worked with theatrical costume design and production.
Esther Levi Pissarro nèe Bensusan (1870 – 1951) Pissarro née Bensusan founded the Eragny Press with her husband Lucien Pissarro (1863–1944). Thye produced books illustrated with colour wood-engravings. Esther created the wood engravings from Lucien’s designs. Eragny Press shared type with Vale for a time.
The Ashendene Press was a small private press founded by Charles Harald St John Hornby (1867–1946). It operated from 1895 to 1915 in Chelsea, London and was revived after World War I in 1920, but closed in 1935. It specialized in publishing poetry books and folio versions of classic literature.
In 1902, Elizabeth (1868 – 1940) and her sister Lily Yeats (1866 – 1949) joined Evelyn Gleeson (1855 – 1944) in establishing a craft studio at Dundrum, near Dublin, called Dun Emer. This specialized in printing and other crafts, with Elizabeth in charge of the printing press. Activities took place in Gleeson’s large house, in which a crafts group provided training and work for young women in: bookbinding, printing, weaving and embroidery. They could also live in the house. Bookbinding workshops were a later addition to the studio. Dun Emer was named after the Irish mythical Emer, a figure famous for her artistic skills and beauty. The title-page device of the Dun Emer Press was designed by Elinor Mary Darwin (née Monsell; 1879–1954) and shows Emer standing underneath a tree. The focus of the Press was on publishing literary work by Irish authors. Jack Butler Yeats (1871 – 1957) did much of the illustration work.
Epilogue
Today, using typefaces is easy. Everyone can set up their own press, especially if the product is digital. Even the McLellans did it. In the mid 1990s, we formed Fjellheim Institutt, named after the official name of our house, to produce Åndelig Dyder: En familiehåndbok = Spiritual virtues: a family handbook (literal translation), = The Virtues Guide, by Linda Kavelin Popov, Dan Popov and John Kavelin, in 1996 – a century after Kelmscott Press closed. The book was printed on paper, typically in small quantities, in Steinkjer. Its purpose was never to made a profit, but to ensure that Norwegian families could introduce ethical concepts to their children. We still have a few copies, that we give away when opportunities arise.
Even in the mid 1980s it was possible to obtain professional typesetting quality from a computer, as long as that computer was an Apple Macintosh, an Atari 1040ST or a Commodore Amiga. We owned an Amiga.
Today, it is not the computer that sets the limits, but the software. The first desktop publishing software we used was Aldus PageMaker 5.0, which was introduced in 1993. Aldus was founded by Paul Brainerd (1947 – ) and others in Seattle in 1984. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 1994. The company was named after 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. The program was replaced by InDesign in 2001.
Today Adobe does not sell stand alone copies of its software products, but forces people to work with its cloud environment, making it inherently unsafe. Perhaps the most accessible desktop publishing program is Scribus, a free and open source program, supported on at least 13 operating systems. It offers a vector drawing tool, supports multiple file types, and supports over 200 colors in its palette. It was also one of the world’s first software to support the PDF/X-3 format conversion.
Today, our publication efforts focus on our blogs.
We were staying at the Nice Byakko Hotel. It had Japanese ownership. I was told by my personal tour guide that breakfast was not included, because it was too expensive, at this particular hotel. When we checked in, we learned that circumstances had changed and breakfast was now included with the price of the room.
My contention, without any facts to back this up, is that breakfasts are the most difficult meals, because every culture has its own idea of what constitutes an appropriate first meal. The cultural distance from Scandinavia impacts my opinion of these meals. Relative poverty forced me to eat like a Norwegian, starting in 1980. I learned to appreciate cultured milk = buttermilk, with my first job in Norway working in a slaughterhouse, when it was provided at our first meal break. Yes, necessity brought about a dietary change when I was thirty. Since then, I have tried not to stray far from this diet.
Of course there is no equivalent to a Scandinavian diet in France. French food is far too sweet and delicate, at least for my tastes. In terms of bread, my choice is to eat coarse buns or bread crusts, preferably with cheese. For many years I did not eat crusts, because I did not want to prevent others from the joy of consuming them. Then I discovered they were being discarded. Now, I don’t ask anyone for permission to eat the crusts, but grab them at every opportunity! Sometimes, I eat legumes with them, in the form of peanut butter. At a first meal, I either drink a cider vinegar and honey drink, or green tea, if it is available. After that, but before 14:00, I drink black coffee; then water or infusions = herbal teas, after this self-imposed time limit.
Byakko refers to the white Asian tiger, as shown below.
Train to Digne
I had wanted to take the same train journey into the mountains of Provence, that Trish and I had taken in 2006. Except, once on board the train, I realized that this trip was inferior to the ones we had taken through Corsica. By then, it was too late.
Presented with this situation again, my choice would have been to rent a car for the day, to visit the Verdon Gorge, a nearby river canyon. It is about 25 km long and up to 700 metres deep. Americans call it the Grand Canyon of France. At the end of the canyon, the Verdon flows into the artificial Lake of Sainte-Croix. This didn’t happen, so we were on La Train des Pignes = The Pinecone Train, complete with a rail replacement bus, in both directions, to and from Digne, world famous in France for its hot springs.
We were only able to take the train part way to Digne. The train stopped, and everyone was transferred onto a bus, which then drove to the final destination.
In Digne, we experienced a market monopolizing the main street of the town. Almost anything could be bought, as long as one was prepared to pay in cash at excessive prices. We resisted temptation.
After an hour or so wandering through the town, we returned to our bus. When the train conductor came, everyone was required to exit the bus to have their tickets examined. Then, the conductor and everyone else boarded the bus again. No, I do not understand why the conductor did not just inspect tickets on the bus, starting at the back and walking forward.
We returned to the train station and boarded the train once more. While it made its way down the mountain some problem with the train required an extensive stop at La Tinee. At some point we were able to continue onwards, but the problem undoubtedly arose again, and we were expelled from the train, and told to take the next one, which arrived about half an hour later.
I found this woman’s jacket fascinating. I attempted to tell her so, in my best French, then took this photo when she wasn’t looking. Please note the elephants. Yes, they are all part of her glamour. This (and another) photo were taken after our train had officially broken down, and we were waiting for the next train to rescue us.
Monaco
Monaco does not have a visa policy of its own. The Schengen Visa policy applies, despite Monaco not being part of the European Union, or the Schengen Agreement. Its territory is part of Schengen because of its customs union with France. At the train station in Monaco, there appeared to be two (2) police officers on duty. They were observing, but not confronting anyone.
Somewhere here is the international border between Monaco and France. Yes, the bricks could be in Monaco, while the asphalt could be in France. Photo: Alasdair McLellan.A submarine, outside of the Oceanographic museum and aquarium in Monaco. It was the highlight of our visit.Alasdair took this photo of me documenting the many sculptures found in Monaco. Monaco seems to be competing with Straumen in Inderøy in terms of having the largest number of sculptures per square kilometer. It was delightful to have flowers in bloom. One of the many sculptures in Monaco. This one needs some TLC = tender, loving care.Some of Monaco’s residents.
The next day it was time for us to return to Norway, flying from NCE to AMS, and then from AMS to OSL. With a six hour wait at AMS, Alasdair and I decided that we could explore Amsterdam, taking a train from the airport to the Amsterdam station. In Amsterdam we encountered the most polluted air of the entire trip. In addition, there was no public seating! This short experience, was enough to eliminate Amsterdam from any future travel plans.
Amsterdam Train Station.
An aside: For most of my life, I have faced topographical disorientation challenges, especially in areas that are unfamiliar. Nice Byakko Hotel occupies two adjacent buildings, with two separate stairways for the upper floors that somehow unite, for movement between the ground level (entrance & reception) and first floor, where breakfast is consumed. For me, this became an obstacle, when someone shut the door to the stairway I needed to ascend to my room, and I became disoriented. The staff closest to this location, were less inclined to help resolve this challenge, than they were to exclude people from their work area. Later, I took this matter up with the receptionist, saying that it would be appreciated if they put something on the door, indicating that it led to a stairway, possibly with the affected room numbers.
We arrived at the port of Livorno on the Corsica ferry, Mega Express Two. We were walk-on passengers for the five hour trip from Bastia, on Corsica. Even before we landed, I could see the first photo that I wanted to take of Livorno. It was a somewhat outdated announcement of the centennial of the death of Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920), who was born in Livorno, but moved to Paris in 1906. His characteristic style in paintings and sculptures typically elongated faces, necks, and other anatomical features. These exaggerations were received poorly during his lifetime, but were appreciated later. Modigliani’s early life featured considerable sickness. He was educated at home by his mother. His ancestors were Jewish refugees, who over some few generations had become bourgeois, owning and managing mines and forest resources in Sardinia.
At an unremembered point in time, possibly a couple of years ago, I bought a Taschen book about Modern Art, as a first stop to begin appreciating specific modern artists. Amedeo Modigliani is found on page 186-7, along with a single representative artwork, Nude Sitting on a Divan (1917). While I do not regret buying this book to gain an overview of some artists, I find it most often easier to use Wikipedia for a more comprehensive introduction. Indeed, I was able to find appropriate information about Modigliani from that source. It was also interesting to read about the history of the Jewish community in Livorno.
Artwork announcing the centennary of Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884 – 1920) death. Of course Modigliani would have approved of this setting. As an adult, he continually fought against his bourgeois origins, and was inspired by a vagabond existence.
In addition to its port and ethnic minorities, Livorno is world-famous in Italy for its canal network. This is not Venice, with antiquated gondolas, and uniformed gondoliers. Canal boats are typically made of fibreglass, powered by outboard motors, carry goods, rather than tourists to and from factories and warehouses, rather than palaces and churches. I am attracted to industrial canals, like those in Livorno, in much the same way that I am attracted to industrial history, rather than the more refined history of royalty or nobles.
Livorno canal as seen by Alasdair. Note the vessels, typically made of fibreglass and powered by outboard motors.A canal in Livorno as seen by Brock.
We walked through Livorno, ending up at the train station. Here we took a train for about ten minutes, ending up at Pisa. In Pisa, it struck me that every tourist visiting the fabled tower, was required to take a selfie or some other photo, showing their skill at preventing the tower from crashing down. Below is my effort to capture Alasdair engaged in this activity.
Alasdair preventing the tower of Pisa from crashing into the landscape.
After an hour, we were on our way by train again, heading north to Geno(v)a. It was an interesting landscape with much of it flat and flooded, but with mountains in the background.
After our arrival in Genoa, we found our Best Western hotel, and spent the evening relaxing then sleeping. Am I a keen observer? Alasdair asked me if my room was red, like his? I said, I had not noticed any red colour, but thought it was beige. When I returned to my room, I took this photo to remind myself that the walls were not beige, but red.
This is what our hotel rooms looked like. This was my room. Alasdair asked me if my room was red, like his? I said, I had not noticed any red colour. When I returned to my room, I took this photo to remind myself that the walls were not beige, but red.
Our discovery of the city began the next day. Perhaps the best known person from Genoa is Christopher Columbus who, working for Spain, made some important geographical discoveries towards the end of the fifteenth century. Genoa has preserved the house where Columbus was born, and where his father worked as a weaver.
Alasdair, preparing to enter the house in Genoa where Christopher Columbus was born.
Not far from our hotel there was a parked galleon. In its day, it was undoubtedly attempting to intimidate people not just with its canons, but with its extensive use of gold. We had learned on Corsica, that Genoese imperialism was not always appreciated. While they had ships and coastal fortifications, the Genoese were not always capable of conquering inland territories.
The Galata Museum in Genoa is the largest maritime museum on the Mediterranean. It opened in 2004, and allows visitors to appreciate five centuries of maritime history, from the 16th century. One of the earliest reconstructions is a 17th century galley. There is also a major exhibit showing life onboard a steamer bound for the Americas in the early 20th century.
The vessel that impressed me the most, was one of the smallest, a dinghy, showing the use of veneer in its construction. I have admired this construction technique for the past 65 years, because of its high strength to weight ratio!
One of the last things we did in Genoa was to visit the Zecca–Righi funicular railway. Like many of the trains we have taken on Corsica, it is narrow gauge = 1 000 mm. It has a length of 1428 m, with a rise of 279m. There are two trains, each with two cars, carrying 156 people. There are seven stations, two terminal and five intermediate. It opened in 1895.
Zecca – Righi funicolar at Carbonara station (second from the bottom). Photograph: Piro, 2008-12-18.
We then walked to the main train station, where we took a departing train for Nice.
A Concluding aside: Genetics is one of those difficult arts. When I first had my DNA analysed by 23&me about ten years ago, segments of my DNA were placed in relatively broad categories, including: northwestern Europe, southern Europe, indigenous America. As time progressed, segments moved around, generally becoming more detailed in the process. Thus, after returning from southern Europe, and with 23&me facing bankruptcy, I was surprised to find that my DNA had more detailed information about my southern European origins: Spanish and Portuguese = 6.7%; Sardinian = 2.7% and Italian = 1.4%. Yes, my next trip to southern Europe already included a plan to visit Sardinia!
On the first of our 2025 trips, Alasdair and I headed off to Corsica. Because of a closed railway line, and a world skiing championship, I took an unusual routing between Trondheim airport (TRD) and Sandefjord airport, Torp (TRF) on friday, 2025-02-28, followed by a train journey to Drammen, where I was picked up by Alasdair and driven to his house in Åros, in Asker municipality, Norway. On saturday evening 2025-03-01, we travelled by train up to Oslo airport (OSL) where we stayed at the Radisson Red hotel, so that we could take an early flight sunday morning to Amsterdam (AMS), followed by a flight to Nice (NCE).
The TGV = train à grande vitesse = high-speed train, at Nice-Ville station. Photo: Alasdair McLellan 2025-03-02.
At this point I would like to comment on the YouTube channel, The Man in Seat 64, who said that there were always seats on regional trains in the Nice area. This was incorrect information. We could not find seats on any trains from Nice to Toulon, that would give us an opportunity to visit the French naval museum. However, we did find train seats later in the day. After arriving in Toulon, we then wandered its streets.
The Mega Express Four, in Toulon, preparing for its journey to Corsica. Note the city of registry is Genova, Italy. Photo: Alasdair McLellan 2025-03-02.
We travelled overnight to Ajaccio on the Mega Express Four. It was built in Germany in 1995 as the Superfast II for Superfast Ferries, used in Greece. In 2003, it was purchased by the Tasmanian government and renamed the Spirit of Tasmania 3. However, demand was less than estimated, so it was sold to Corsica Sardinia Ferries in 2006 and renamed Mega Express Four. It can carry 1965 passengers, with 909 berths. It can also carry 550 standard vehicles. Its service speed is 26 knots.
Artwork on the Mega Express Four ferry.
The above artwork is also found on the flags of Corsica (one head on a white background) and Sardinia (four heads separated by a red cross on a white background). It was adopted by General of the Nation Pasquale Paoli (1725 – 1809) in 1755 and portrays a Moor’s head in black wearing a white bandana above his eyes on a white background. Previously, the bandana covered his eyes. Paoli wanted the bandana moved to above the eyes to symbolize the liberation of the Corsican people from the Genoese.
My personal interest in this symbol is related to clan MacLellan = Mac-a-ghille-dhiolan (Gaelic) = son of the bastard (literal translation). It also has a Moor’s head on its coat of arms. Previously, references to the clan gave its name as Mac Giolla Fhaoláin, with a more polite meaning = servant of St Fillan, with Fhaoláin referring to a diminuative form of wolf, used to signify the saint. On Uist, in the outer Hebrides, where my family lived after Morar, on the mainland of Scotland near Oban, there is an alternative spelling of the last part of the name, Fhialáin, which refers to seagulls, often Na Faolanaich = The Seagulls.
We arrived at about 9:00 in the morning at Ajaccio, spending much of the day wandering its streets. French dictator Napoleon was born in this city, and we even walked by the house where he was born.
One of the reasons for visiting Corsica, was to take its narrow gauge railways up into the mountains. The railway uses modernish trains. The combination of narrow gauge with diesel meant that they were not particularly comfortable. Noisy and wobbly, were the two terms that best describe them.
Some of the trains on Corsica looked like this. Photo: Alasdair McLellanThe mountains of inland Corsica, from the train between Ajaccio and Corte. Photo: Alasdair McLellan
Our first stop was at Corte. If I had known then, what I knew now, I would have stayed longer in this mountain town. We stayed at Hotel du Nord. I am uncertain about the origins of the name, for Corte is more centrally located, than in the north. The owner of the hotel appears to be Loïc Colonna, who provides each room with a photo book about Corsica. There is also a display of old cameras in the hotel.
Cameras on display at the Hotel du Nord.The University of Corsica, in Corte.
Calvi
If Corte had the most interesting town, Calvi had the most interesting railway station. I especially appreciated its sculptures
Our hotel had some modernist art, that attempted to be as inoffensive as possible.
The third town we stayed in was Bastia. It will be remembered for its pizza provider that would not accept bank cards. The only reason I can see for not accepting card payment is tax evasion. We went next door to a restaurant that did accept them.
Bastia.
We left Bastia on the ferry early in the morning. This travelogue will continue next week, with a visit to northern Italy, especially the canal city of Livorno, Pisa and Genoa.
Yes, Milou/ Snowy, Professor Calculus, Tintin and Captain Haddock, welcome Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) to the Moon in 1969. !
Explaining Comics = The 9th Art using Metalanguage
The comic stip is a cultural product and a means of expression. In the past century it has developed its conceptual and formal elements to the point of being considered art. One only has to take a look at Chris Ware’s (1967 – ) graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest kid in the world (2000). It has exhibited in museums such as the Whitney Museum of America Art (2002) or the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2006). It demonstrates that not all comics are aimed at children. Interestingly, some people complain that comics are abandoning children, in favour of adult enthusiasts. This is regarded as a problem in Europe and North America, but not in Japan, since manga have genres for all ages and each of them evolves independently.
At this point, it is undeniable that the aesthetics of comics have influenced other cultural fields such as design, fashion or cinema. The work of the fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (1949 – ), who was passionate about this genre, is an example of this. In the field of graphics, what are called stencils come from comics, according to some specialists in this medium. It goes without saying that a multitude of films today have comics as a reference, especially in the superhero genre. Superheroes who, as archetypes, play a role similar to that of mythological gods. They are popular myths.
We can therefore say that the aesthetics and content of comics has become a symbol of post-modern/ twenty-first century times. While there are more conservative positions determined to make distinctions between what they refer to as high culture and other cultural manifestations. In the case of comics, there are people of all ages and all perspectives who enjoy comics.
Some of the more interesting set of books in my library collection use 9th art metalanguage = comic strip books, to explain comics. Two were written by Will Eisner (1917 – 2005) who had popularized the term graphic novel. His first interesting, theoretical work was Comics and Sequential Art (1985/ revised 1990). It is based on a series of essays that appeared in The Spirit magazine, themselves based on Eisner’s experience teaching at the School of Visual Arts. The content is a series of demonstrations of principles and methods. The revised edition includes short sections on the print process and the use of computers. This was followed by Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative (1996).
Three other ones were written by Scott McCloud (1960 – ). These are: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993), that explores formal aspects of comics, the historical development of the medium, its fundamental vocabulary, and various ways in which these elements have been used. It also discusses more theoretical ideas about comics as an art form and medium of communication. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form (2000), which explains twelve revolutions that McCloud predicts are necessary for the comic book to survive as a medium: becoming literature, becoming art, enhancing creators’ rights, industry innovation, public perception, institutional scrutiny, gender balance, minority representation, diversity of genre, digital production, digital delivery and fully digital content. and Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels (2006) details the processes behind storytelling, with an emphasis on character design with examples provided from the 9th arts history. Topics are reduced to a few principles. These include classifying cartoonists into four types, and identifying six basic emotions.
Tintin, an example of the 9th Art
With these five books in place, there is a need to examine a worthy example to follow, in a learning phase. The example shown below is Tintin by Herge = Georges Prosper Remi (1907 – 1983). In our household, considerable attention was paid to Tintin We have the complete works, admittedly in English, rather than French. Our family was not alone. Tintin comics have sold more than 240 million copies worldwide and has been translated to over 70 languages.
While Tintin has explored many countries in his comics, Herge hasn’t visited a single country in his lifetime. In Explorers on the Moon, Tintin explored the moon in 1954. This is 15 years before Neil Armstrong first landed on Moon.
Tintin’s dog Snowy has stolen many hearts and even made cameo appearances in ‘The Simpsons’ in the episode ‘Husbands and Knives’ and in ‘South Park’ in the episode ‘Imagination land Episode III’.
Tintin’s adventures were transformed into a movie titled ‘The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn’ in 2011, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, who bought the international movie rights to the character in the early 1980s.
The series ‘Tintin in Tibet’ was the most cerebral and emotional story of Herge, and the series was heavily influenced by his nervous breakdown.
Palle Huld (1912 – 2010) was a Danish film actor and writer. He won a journey around the world at the age of 15 in 1928 from a Danish newspaper. This reportedly inspired Hergé to create Tintin.
Milou = Snowy, Tintin’s pet dog, is modeled in part on a Fox Terrier at a café that Hergé used to frequent. It was also the nickname of Hergé’s first muse/ girlfriend, Marie-Louise Van Cutsem (1905 – 1974).
Haddock’s name was suggested by Germaine Kieckens (1906 – 1995; married 1932; divorced 1977) Hergé’s wife, who noted that haddock was a “sad English fish” over a fish dinner. Hergé then utilised the name for the English captain he’d just introduced. Haddock remained without a first name until the last completed story, Tintin and the Picaros (1976), when the name Archibald was used. There were several Haddocks who had served in the Royal Navy. Haddock uses strange/ difficult but innoffensive words that he hurls out as if they were very strong cusswords. This is due to the works initial publication in Catholic magazines.
Professeur Tryphon Tournesol = Professor Tryphon Sunflower (literal translation) = Professor Cuthbert Calculus was inspired by Auguste Piccard (1884 – 1962), a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth’s upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere. My own person interest in Piccard relates to his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2. The French Navy took over this vessel, and relaunched it as FNRS III in the 1950s. Today, it is located at the Naval Museum in Toulon, France.
The Bathyscaph FRNS-3 at the Tour Royal, Toulon, France. Photo: Esby 2008-06-11.
The Thompson twins were inspired by Herge’s father and uncle, who were twins.
Opera singer Bianca Castafiore was inspired by Herge’s paternal grandmother. Her favourite aria is from Faust (1859) composed by Charles Gounod (1818 – 1893).
One of the reasons Tintin appealed to our son, is that it gave him an opportunity to explore the world at an early age, from the safety of our house. Here are the details of the all of the works, in chronological order.
The following are the twenty-four canonical Tintin comic albums, with their English titles. Publication dates are for the original French-language versions. Note: In the original French versions, Tintin lives in Brussels. In the English translations, he lives in London. This created difficulties with the Black Island.
#01 Tintin au pays des Soviets = Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, set in Russia, serialized 1929-30, B&W album 1930, Colour album 2017. Hergé prevented this book from being republished until 1973.
After this, Hergé re-published in colour and in a fixed 62-page format.
#02 Tintin au Congo = Tintin in the Congo, set in Belgian Congo now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serialized 1930-31, B&W album 1931, Colour album 1946.
#03 Tintin en Amérique = Tintin in America, set in Chicago, serialized 1931-32, B&W album 1932, Colour album 1945.
#04 Les Cigares du Pharaon = Cigars of the Pharaoh, set in Egypt, serialized 1932-34, B&W album 1934, Colour album 1955
#05 Le Lotus bleu = The Blue Lotus, set in China, serialized 1934-35, B&W album 1936, Colour album 1946
#06 L’Oreille cassée = The Broken Ear, set in fictional south American countries, serialized 1935-37, B&W album 1937, Colour album 1943
#07 L’Île noire = The Black Island, set in England, serialized 1937-38, B&W album 1938, Colour album 1943, 1966. Note: Before the reprint, multiple aircraft featured throughout the story were redrawn by Roger Leloup (1933 – ), who replaced the depiction of planes that were operational in the 1930s with those active in the 1960s, including: a Percival Prentice, a De Havilland Canada Chipmunk, a Cessna 150, a Tiger Moth, and a Hawker Siddeley Trident.
#08 Le Sceptre d’Ottokar = King Ottokar’s Sceptre, set in Syldavia, a fictional Eastern European country, serialized 1938-39, B&W album 1939, Colour album 1947
#09 Le Crabe aux pinces d’or = The Crab with the Golden Claws, set in the Sahara, serialized 1940-41, B&W album 1941, Colour album 1943
#10 L’Étoile mystérieuse =The Shooting Star, with plot similarities with La Chasse au météore = The Chase of the Golden Meteor (1908) written by Jules Verne (1928 – 1905), serialized 1941-42, Colour album 1942. Note: This was the first album to be originally published in colour. Often regarded as antisemitic.
#11 Le Secret de La Licorne = The Secret of the Unicorn, involves a riddle left by 17th century Francis Haddock, which leads them to the hidden treasure of the pirate Red Rackham. Serialized 1942-43, Colour album 1943. Books 11 to 15 formed a middle period for Hergé marked by war and changing collaborators.
#12 Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge = Red Rackham’s Treasure, set in the West Indies, much of it aboard the Serius, a fishing trawler, serialized 1943, Colour album 1944
#13 Les 7 Boules de cristal = The Seven Crystal Balls, set in Peru, involving an archaeological expedition, serialized 1943-46, Colour album 1948. Note: often regarded as one of the best works in the series.
#14 Le Temple du Soleil = Prisoners of the Sun, serialized 1946-48, Colour album 1949
#15 Tintin au pays de l’or noir = Land of Black Gold, serialized 1939-40 (discontinued by Nazi occupational forces), 1948-50, Colour album 1951, 1971
#17 On a marché sur la Lune = Walking on the Moon (literal) = Explorers on the Moon, serialized 1952-53, Colour album 1954
#18 L’Affaire Tournesol = The Calculus Affair, serialized 1954-56, Colour album 1956
#19 Coke en stock = The Red Sea Sharks, serialized 1956-58, Colour album 1958
#20 Tintin au Tibet = Tintin in Tibet, serialized 1958-59, Colour album 1960
#21 Les Bijoux de la Castafiore = The Castafiore Emerald, serialized 1961-62, Colour album 1963
#22 Vol 714 pour Sydney = Flight 714 to Sydney, serialized 1966-67, Colour album 1968
#23 Tintin et les Picaros = Tintin and the Picaros serialized 1975-76, Colour album 1976
#24 Tintin et l’Alph-Art = Tintin and the Alph-Art serialized 1986, Colour album 2004. Hergé’s unfinished book, published posthumously.
The following are double albums with a continuing story: Cigars of the Pharaoh (no. 4) & The Blue Lotus (no. 5); The Secret of the Unicorn (no. 11) & Red Rackham’s Treasure (no. 12); The Seven Crystal Balls (no. 13) & Prisoners of the Sun (no. 14); Destination Moon (no. 16) & Explorers on the Moon (no. 17).
Other characteristics
The English-language Adventures of Tintin books were originally published with handwritten lettering created by cartographer Neil Hyslop (1924 – 2015). Given versions of Hergé’s artwork with blank panels, he would write his English script on a clear cellophane-like material, to fit within the original speech bubble. In the early 2000s, Tintin’s English publishers Egmont discontinued this, because Casterman and Moulinsart decided to replace localised hand-lettering with a single computerised font.
In September 2017, French philosopher Vincent Cespede (1973 – ) suggested that Tintin was a girl. However, he accepted that it was his perspective and was fake news. However, this post will end by naming everyone’s favourite Swedish environmental activist, paying close attention to the second of her many names: Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (2003 – ). So perhaps Cespede was closer to the truth than he imagined.
