Category: Culture

Foundation teaser

Today Apple released a teaser for their Apple TV production of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, which we will get to see in 2021.

I have read Foundation three times, I believe. It’s bound to present a challenge for filmmaking, and they’re bound to have to improvise. As beautiful a piece of fiction as Foundation is, I often have laughed about how nothing really happens. The story mostly consists of smart people sitting in boring rooms and talking. I’m hoping they’ve figured out how to make a film of it.

Do we really need so much stuff?

It took almost a month to build the new shed up above the garden. For ten years, a shed has been much needed here, because I did not have a place to store the lawn mower, or the tiller, out of the weather. Plus my beloved Jeep needs to be sheltered. But when I stand back and admire how nicely the project all turned out, I can’t help but think: Do we really need so much stuff? Not only does stuff cost money. Storing stuff costs money, too.

At any given time, most of the stuff we all own is in storage, unused. The abbey’s attic and basement are stuffed with stuff that is being stored. In this part of the U.S. (and probably everywhere in the country), “self storage” units are a growth industry. A great many people are renting a place to store all the stuff that they don’t have room for at home.

Many of us aspire to simple living and an uncluttered life. But why so much stuff? When I moved from San Francisco back to North Carolina eleven years ago, the cost of moving my stuff was just over a dollar a pound. I had to ask myself, for everything I owned and wanted to keep, whether it was worth a dollar a pound. My moving cost was about $3,400, which means that, even after I sold, gave away, and threw away a lot of stuff, I still had 3,400 pounds of stuff that I decided was worth a dollar a pound.

I’m going to guess that even our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors had to carry a lot of stuff on their backs when they moved around. For three million years, anthropologists say, humans have been using tools. Those tools probably made the difference between survival and death. Humans started cooking, anthropologists say, about two million years ago. Cooking, as we all know, requires stuff, the kind of stuff that fills up the cabinets in every human kitchen. When early humans started farming, that required infrastructure. That infrastructure was more or less permanently fixed in place, yet people needed wagons. Wagons have been used to carry stuff for about 4,000 years.

I think I have come to the conclusion that living without stuff would be impossible, and that we should not feel guilty about acquiring and storing a reasonable amount of stuff. All sorts of specialized stuff — in the form of tools — was required just to build the new shed: saws, drills, impact drivers, measuring devices, levels, post-hole diggers, shovel, wheel barrow, and lots of ladders.

Even a simplified and sustainable life requires not just tools, but also infrastructure. You can’t grow food without a lot of stuff: fields (or at least a garden plot); some form of plough and something to pull it (a tiller will do for a small operation); tools (such as hoes); fences; a way of handling mulches, manures, and composts; and, if your life depends on what you grow, some form of irrigation.

Infrastructure, really, is the biggy. Once human beings migrated out of the tropics, a lot of infrastructure was required for a settled subsistence: A house secure against the weather, a source of heating, a source of water, a system for cooking, places to sleep, systems for sanitation, sources of fiber (such as flax or wool) and systems for turning fiber into clothing, and so on. But we human beings don’t want to settle for mere subsistence. We also want comfort and a reasonable level of convenience.

I’ve resolved to not feel too guilty about acquiring (and consequently storing) stuff — particuarly when that stuff supports sustainability. I do try to ask myself, though, before I buy something: Where will I store it, and how will I maintain it? Maintenance of stuff can be expensive, especially things that have engines, such as vehicles, mowers, and tillers. Maintenance (of the house, of the house’s systems and appliances, and of vehicles) is one of the bigger categories in my budget.

Two optional forms of infrastructure were relatively easy to add to the new shed. A gutter catches the water off the roof and directs it to the 250-gallon tank that feeds the garden’s irrigation system. There’s also a small solar system. At present the solar system provides only lighting and a way of keeping the Jeep’s battery charged (the Jeep often is unneeded and unused for weeks at a time). But even a small solar system can provide some options during a long power failure.

Most people prefer to live, and build, on flat terrain. I, however, love hills, mountains, valleys, and slopes. Flat terrain makes me feel bored and uneasy. There is virtually no flat place in the abbey’s land here in the Appalachian foothills. Thus the shed had to be built on a slope. The shed is 16 feet long, and the ground at one end is almost three feet lower than at the other end. That made the job more complicated, with one end of the shed almost 16 feet high. But slopes have their advantages: gravity. The shed is higher than the water tank, and the water tank is higher than the garden. So the irrigation system can be fed by gravity. Just turn a valve, and the garden gets watered with last week’s rain. That’s infrastructure!

The shed was a pandemic project. Ken did most of the work, but a neighbor also volunteered many hours of his time, tools, and know-how. Lucky for me, I got the new shed for the cost of the materials.

Two Years Before the Mast


“A Clipper at Sunset,” Edward Moran, 1829-1901.

Whenever I have one of my fits of despair that writers can’t write anymore, I look for a classic to read. This led me to Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast.

My main interest in this book was Dana’s account of sailing around the Horn from Boston to California and back. I had been looking at my globe and marveling at what a long and treacherous trip that had to be. That made me think of Dana’s book, so I got a copy for my Kindle. I confess that I skipped most of the parts about coastal California, having been there and done that. But Dana’s time at sea is thrilling. I’d suggest keeping a schematic of a sailing ship handy when reading this book, because Dana uses a sailor’s language in discussing the parts of the ship and how it was sailed.

Many have noted that Dana was, at heart, a poet. His California travelogues are descriptive and more journalistic. But sometimes he sings:

Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed. The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with every one of us, she could not have borne another stitch of canvas.

Finding that she would bear the sail, the hands were sent below, and our watch remained on deck. Two men at the wheel had as much as they could do to keep her within three points of her course, for she steered as wild as a young colt. The mate walked the deck, looking at the sails, and then over the side to see the foam fly by her,— slapping his hands upon his thighs and talking to the ship,— “Hurrah, you jade, you’ve got the scent!— you know where you’re going!” And when she leaped over the seas, and almost out of the water, and trembled to her very keel, the spars and masts snapping and creaking,— “There she goes!— There she goes,— handsomely?— As long as she cracks she holds!”— while we stood with the rigging laid down fair for letting go, and ready to take in sail and clear away, if anything went. At four bells we hove the log, and she was going eleven knots fairly; and had it not been for the sea from aft which sent the chip home, and threw her continually off her course, the log would have shown her to have been going somewhat faster. I went to the wheel with a young fellow from the Kennebec, Jack Stewart, who was a good helmsman, and for two hours we had our hands full. A few minutes showed us that our monkey-jackets must come off; and, cold as it was, we stood in our shirt-sleeves in a perspiration, and were glad enough to have it eight bells, and the wheel relieved. We turned-in and slept as well as we could, though the sea made a constant roar under her bows, and washed over the forecastle like a small cataract.

Dana’s ship, the Pilgrim, sank off the North Carolina coast after a fire at sea in 1856. A replica of the Pilgrim, built in 1925, was berthed in California for many years and was maintained by the Ocean Institute. I was saddened to learn that this replica of the Pilgrim keeled over and sank in its berth just a few months ago — March 2020. The ship could not be salvaged.

How the South Won the Civil War

How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Heather Cox Richardson, Oxford University Press, April 1, 2020. 240 pages.

This book was published only 60 days ago. Every day since then, its premise has gotten more and more true. In the U.S., we’re now seeing the most serious riots since 1968. One can’t help but wonder whether this ongoing civil war is now moving into the streets.

This book’s message will come as no surprise to those of us who know some history, who have lived through several decades of that history, and who have seen the escalating American slide toward oligarchy. It surprises me a bit, actually, that the Oxford press saw the need for a book that tells us what we already know. Still, it’s nice to — in a virtual sense — sit together around a tribal fire and hear the story told again by a very good storyteller.

It’s exciting how quickly Heather Cox Richardson has risen to prominence as a public intellectual. For some months now, she has been writing, on Facebook, a concise and incisive daily summary of the first draft of history. This is important, because it seems pretty certain that what we are living through right now will become one of the hot spots in history, and maybe one of the turning points, for better or worse. If you’re not already following Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook, just search for her name.

Richardson recounts the many times in American history when battles broke out between oligarchy and democracy. But she believes that the current situation is the most dangerous since the Civil War. And she wrote this book even before a pandemic, a depression, and street riots started. I’m afraid that the next few months of this unfolding history are not going to be easy to live through.

Jonathan Haidt


White House photo

A couple of days ago, The Atlantic published a flattering portrait of Jonathan Haidt: Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America’s Divisions. “Over the past decade,” wrote Peter Wehner, “no one has added more to my understanding of how we think about, discuss, and debate politics and religion than Jonathan Haidt.”

Haidt is an oracle to centrists, for whom it is axiomatic that wisdom always lies in the middle, between two extremes. To centrists, we’d all get along if only we’d just listen to each other, respect each other’s points of view, and meet somewhere in the middle.

Centrist thinking is very pretty. But it’s also very wrong.

Centrists like to say that Haidt is just doing objective social psychology, and that he stops short of saying that the moral values of conservatives and the moral values of liberals are equally valid. But I don’t see it that way at all. Haidt bends over backwards to accord respect to conservative values, and he always works in a slam against liberal values (identity politics, usually), as though there is a moral symmetry between left and right, with equal foible on each side and sound ground in the middle.

In the Atlantic piece, Haidt says that, while in India, he “really tried to understand a culture very different from my own, and in the process, for the first time, I was able to look at evangelical and conservative Christianity not as a force hostile to me as an atheist, a cosmopolitan, and a Jew, but as a moral community striving for certain virtues — and I could understand those virtues and I could respect those virtues. It was that combination that really drained me of my anger and hostility and, I think, helped me to just listen to people and try to map out what [they are] aiming for. What are the virtues they’re trying to instill? What is the vision of the good that they are pursuing?”

I find Haidt’s wrongness very frustrating, because I lack the credentials to shoot him down the way he deserves to be shot down. Mere bloggers like me are not supposed to dabble in moral and political philosophy. But there are other ways of answering Haidt’s centrism.

I’m halfway through Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War. I’ll have a review soon. Her account of American history is extremely ugly. Clearly, in the final chapters, she is going to make the case that the politics that is tearing America apart today is the same politics that has been tearing American apart since its founding and over which we once fought a civil war. It’s the struggle between those who want equality and democracy versus those who actively oppose equality and democracy. It’s oligarchy that they want, and there is always racism, cruelty, gross injustice, self-serving religion, and attempts to rewrite history. “Prosperity gospel” and dominionism are the new Manifest Destiny. Richardson makes clear that Trumpism and Trumper-types have a long and continuous history in America. Richardson traces that history starting in the 18th Century, through the Civil War, through the near extermination of native Americans, to the present.

The Atlantic piece does say that Haidt votes for Democrats “because he thinks the Republican Party has been in a state of moral and philosophical decline for many years.” In other words, Haidt gets it. But he nevertheless wants us to listen to and respect as virtuous the ideas and “moral striving” of people who have been in a state of moral and philosophical decline for many years (centuries, according to Richardson).

I decline. Ugly religions, ugly philosophies, and ugly politics are not to be coddled, compromised with, and allowed to rule. They are to be called out, condemned, and pushed into the powerless margins where they belong.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — the soundtrack


Fred and Joanne Rogers, circa 1974. PBS photo.

Last night I watched “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the Tom Hanks film about Mr. Rogers. There’s no need for a review here, and you’ve probably already seen the film. But I did want to comment on the soundtrack, which I thought was extraordinary. It was a lush and varied soundtrack, carefully designed to encourage an emotional response to the film. There is a beautiful — but too short — scene in which Mr. Rogers and his wife, Joanne, are playing a piano duet on separate pianos, in their living room. The scene ended much too quickly, because I wanted to hear the whole piece.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video. The piece is “Bilder aus Osten,” by Robert Schumann.

Maybe it’s because older ears have more difficulty separating signal from noise. But the soundtracks for many movies make movie-watching an unpleasant experience for me (and for Lily, the cat). There is too much noise, everything but the dialogue is too loud, and the dialogue is often hard to follow, because the dialogue gets drowned out in all the noise. It’s such a pleasure to watch a film like “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” with its crystal-clear, well-designed, and ever-so-listenable soundtrack.

Ken writes about Doomsday at the abbey

Ken, who has been a featured author at the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland for several years, has written a piece for the festival’s web site about being stuck here at the abbey during the Pandemic. Regular readers of this blog will recognize the characters. Please think of it as an interpretation of the American heartland for European readers.

Letter from the Heartland — Ken Ilgunas

Brochs again


The Mousa broch in the Shetland Islands. Wikipedia photo.

An article in Smithsonian Magazine says that archeologists are planning to build a replica of a broch. Brochs, found only in Scotland, are a kind of prehistoric castle. They are towers with very thick double walls. What a place to live!

I wrote about brochs in a post here back in 2015. I used a broch as a setting in Oratorio in Ursa Major.

In retrospect, it seems odd that I didn’t make an effort to visit a broch (or at least the ruins of a broch) in my visits to Scotland in 2018 and 2019. The best-preserved broch is the Mousa broch in the Shetland Islands — a very long haul north from the Scottish mainland, opposite Norway, but a trip that I’d like to make nevertheless. The Mousa broch, according to Wikipedia, dates to about 100 B.C.

We know pretty much nothing about the brochs other than what archeologists can tell us. To me, one of the most intriguing factoids is that the people who lived in the brochs imported wine and olives from the Mediterranean. It is fascinating to imagine what kind of lives they must have lived. They clearly were rich, or at least had something to trade. They had excellent ships and seafaring skills. They were sophisticated in that they knew, and desired, what the Mediterranean had to offer. Yet they preferred to live up against the sea on their rocky, northern islands. I think I would have liked them.

Elbow patches

I caught a virus on the Isle of Harris last summer. This virus causes an obsession with collecting tweed. It starts with one’s first Harris tweed jacket. But it doesn’t end there. Oh, no. Before you know it you’re scouring eBay for more, discovering in disappointment that there are only so many colors of Harris tweed. (If you ever see a burgundy Harris tweed jacket in men’s size 40, or a deep forest green, or a deep midnight blue, please let me know. But I don’t think you’re likely to see one.)

And though it starts with Harris tweed, soon all tweeds become interesting. There are many fine tweeds. My last acquisition — a cream colored tweed made in the U.S.A. — has elbow patches. This is my first jacket with elbow patches. Now I’m afraid I’ll start collecting jackets just for the elbow patches.

I learned from Googling that elbow patches have an interesting history. The elbows of jackets wore out first, so worn-out elbows were often patched with leather. Then the patched-elbow look became popular — even a status symbol — and new jackets came with patches. Elbow patches are sometimes called “professor patches.” Gardening, you see, or shooting, didn’t wear out the elbows. But sitting at a desk did. Hence: professor patches.

It would take some hardcore desk-sitting to wear out tweed elbows, because tweed is very hard to wear out. I feel sure, though, that J.R.R. Tolkien wore out many tweed jackets against the desks and armchairs of Oxford. But the most common type of damage to vintage tweed jackets, from what I’ve seen, are rips and tears in the lining where the sleeve attaches to the shoulder of the jacket. That’s from putting on jackets carelessly and straining the seams. That’s one reason, of course, that the linings of jackets are always smooth and silky: the jacket slips on easily over whatever else you’re wearing. The method that I like to use for putting on a jacket is to reach straight up with both arms after my arms are in the sleeves. Then the jacket falls down onto the shoulders nice and neat.

In Googling for the history of elbow patches, I saw that some guys are worried about whether elbow patches are out of style. Good grief. Who cares whether elbow patches are out of style? How could anything that is good and practical ever go out of style? This is why I collect 7-ounce cups and saucers in heavy porcelain, and that’s why guests are always befuddled when they ask me for a large mug, and I say that, oh dear, I just don’t seem to have any. After making a show of thinking for a second, I heroically reach into a top shelf and just happen to discover one large mug. They are grateful. But those guests who are here at least for a weekend soon abandon the big mug and instead start using 7-ounce cups and saucers in heavy porcelain. It doesn’t take long for them to come around.

These days, for outdoor recreation, “tech” clothing is the thing — quilted coats, and synthetic fabrics that stretch a little and dry quickly. Tweed, which is always wool, is said to smell like wet dog when it gets wet. But I don’t care.

These days, we are encouraged to buy “thrifted” clothing rather than new things, for environmental reasons. Most clothing, though, is not the sort of thing that will last for decades and that retains value. But apparently people can’t bring themselves to throw away old tweed, because after twenty years it may still look new. Much of it ends up on eBay.

One of these days I’m going to find one in burgundy, forest green, or midnight blue.