Culture – Page 42 – Into the Woods

My grudge against Rome

It occurs to me that I have never fully explained my grudge against Rome. It’s because I’m a Celt.

Back in 2006, I signed up for a DNA test. I learned a great deal from it, including the fact that I do indeed have common ancestors with the notorious Dalton Gang, though that’s a story for another time. The thing I learned, though, that affected me even more than that is that my genetic haplogroup is R1b-M222. So what does that mean?

A haplogroup can be thought of as a clan, or an extended tribe. In the old world, members of the same haplogroup occupied the same territories and tended to migrate together. Geneticists use haplogroups to study ancient human migrations. Haplogroups persist across thousands of years.

The haplogroup R1b-M222 is still very much being studied by geneticists. It is a Celtic group identified with the La Tène branch of the Celts. The La Tène Celts flourished around 450 B.C. in a large area of Europe focused around Switzerland. They migrated to the British Isles and were well established in England and Scotland by 200 B.C. They migrated into Ireland and became one of the dominant haplogroups in parts of Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland and the northern counties of the Irish Republic.

In 2006, geneticists at Trinity College, Dublin, publicized research which they said showed that living humans of the R1b-M222 haplotype were descendants of the 4th century Irish king known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall was extremely powerful. In fact, he is the Irish king who is said to have brought Saint Patrick to Ireland, as a captive. He was so powerful, geneticists thought, that he was able to consort with a great many women and thus father a great many children. However, later research discredited that theory, because the R1b-M222 haplotype seemed to mark early migration into Ireland as well as later migration out of Ireland. Niall of the Nine Hostages was certainly an R1b-M222, but he’s not fully responsible for spreading the haplotype. Geneticists now think that the R1b-M222 haplotype is instead the La Tène marker.

What this boils down to is that, because of my genetic markers and because of the research done by today’s geneticists, I can know with high confidence where my ancestors were centuries ago. In 200 B.C., they were almost certainly in northern Britain. In 400 A.D. by the time of Niall, they were probably in the northern parts of Ireland.

There is something very powerful about knowing with high confidence where one’s ancestors were many centuries ago. This is not abstract to me. They are my grandmothers and grandfathers. If they were abused and oppressed, I take that very personally.

Rome committed all sorts of atrocities against my grandmothers and grandfathers. Though it may offend many people for me to say this, I also hold the Roman imperial religion, Christianity, in contempt. Its theologies and texts are weak, and all the nice parts of its theologies and texts were borrowed (don’t take my word for it — ask a theologian). Historically, the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity are worse, if that is possible, than the atrocities of the Romans. To me, it’s scarcely surprising that Rome chose Christianity as the state religion. They were a perfect match. I am unimpressed by what Christianity claims to be. I have tried to cultivate a long memory, so I am only concerned with what the historical record shows it to be. The long research that went into Fugue in Ursa Major, and which continues for the sequel, has only strengthened my views.

The Celts were warlike people. There’s no doubt about that. In that era, if you didn’t wage war you didn’t last long, and the Celts lasted for centuries. And no doubt there were elements of the Celtic religion that today we would find offensive. But they honored nature, and they were some of the nicest, most creative, most knowledge-loving people in the ancient world, as far as I can tell.

If there are vestiges of Celtic culture to found today, of course that would be in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany. Fifteen centuries of Christian domination have certainly changed Ireland, but I believe the spirit of the Celts can still be detected in the Irish love of music, of poetry, of love for the land, of simple and peaceful rural life. The Irish never conquered anyone, never sought empires and great wealth. In many ways, in spite of growing Catholic domination (and some help from Irish Catholic monks who were barely Christianized for centuries), Ireland kept the lights on during the Dark Ages. The Irish have been obliged to fight repeatedly for their way of life, and they never sought to impose it on others. What about Britain, you might ask. Isn’t Britain Celtic? Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland — yes. But the imperial English, I would argue, got their spirit from the Saxons, Germanic conquerers from the north who occupied England. Even today, the enmities between England and provinces such as Wales are remnants of the old Celtic-Saxon hostilities. It is a miracle that the old Celtic languages still have a toehold in those places.

The Celtic peoples who remain today — the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Cornish, not to mention the Bretons — have always wanted, more than anything, to be left alone. I am proud to have them as my grandmothers and grandfathers.

Julius Caesar against the Gauls

Wikimedia Commons: The Dying Gaul, Roman, circa 200 B.C. The sculpture preceded Julius Caesar by about 150 years and is based on earlier wars with the Celts.

Now that Fugue in Ursa Major has been sent out into the world to seek its fortune, I am already well into the research needed for the sequel. In the sequel, we will use some of the tools of science fiction to probe history, the better to understand how we got to this sorry state and to look for lost ideas that we might do well to recover.

A major turning point in Western Civilization, as I see it — if not the turning point in Western Civilization — was Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, a critical first step in bringing essentially all of western Europe (except for Ireland) under the control of Rome. This insured the near-extermination of the Celtic cultures and prepared the soil for the Roman imperial religion, Christianity. If one believes, as I do, that Western Civilization sucks in pretty much the same ways that imperial Rome sucked, then one must try to understand how we got to the state we’re in. Science fiction is a wonderful way to explore these themes. Good science fiction ought to be carefully grounded in its histories and in its science, and then it is free to ask, in plausible ways: What if?

I have dreaded the work, but one of the sources I needed to digest was written by Julius Caesar himself. It is hundreds of pages long, and it is mostly about boring military strategy. The book is The Gallic War. Caesar describes the conquest of Gaul in his own words. All the military stuff (at least to me) gets old really fast, so I speed-read through that to pick out the parts that contain other nuggets of history. One must be careful here, however, because Caesar was a propagandist. Part of his intention is to glorify himself, to glorify Rome, and to paint the conquered peoples as barbarians to help justify Rome’s treatment of them. The conquest of Gaul (the area of modern France, more or less) was almost a genocide. The language of Gaul became extinct within a couple of hundred years after Caesar’s military conquest. Latin morphed into French.

One thing that greatly impressed me was Caesar’s quoting a speech by a leader of the Celts, Critognatus, at great length. Caesar does this because he wants to show the speech’s “remarkable and abominable cruelty” (singularem et nefariam crudelitatem). Strangely enough, to me, the speech doesn’t sound cruel and abominable at all. It sounds pretty heroic, a cry for help and justice poignant enough to be heard and lamented two thousand years later. This is just an excerpt:

For wherein was that war like this? The Cimbri devastated Gaul, they brought great disaster upon us, yet they departed at length from our borders and sought other countries, leaving us our rights, laws, lands, liberty. But the Romans — what else do they seek or desire than to follow where envy leads, to settle in the lands and states of men whose noble report and martial strength they have learnt, and to bind upon them a perpetual slavery? ‘Tis in no other fashion they have waged wars. And if ye know not what is afoot among distance nations, look now on Gaul close at hand, which has been reduced to a province, with utter change of rights and laws, and crushed beneath the axes in everlasting slavery.”

I hear you, Critognatus.

Note: The translation is by H.J. Edwards and is from the 1917 Harvard edition.

Another note: Whenever I use the phrase, “Western Civilization,” I think of what Mohandas Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western Civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”

First tomato sandwich of 2014

One of holiest of white trash sacraments is the first tomato sandwich of the season. Around here, that means that certain nasty foods are temporarily allowed into the house. For this year’s bread, I chose Merita Old-Fashioned, just because it had a better squeeze on the store shelf than Bunny. The chips, as always, are Wise chips. Wise once made a New York Times top-10 list of best regional potato chips. Mayonnaise on both sides of the bread. Milk would be a proper accompaniment, but this year I had Coke from a commemorative bottle, over ice.

The remaining bread will go to the chickens. I hope it doesn’t hurt them. I’ll finish the chips.

Peter Rabbit: As of 2014, he belongs to all of us

Beatrix Potter’s work is now in the public domain

Authors write to make a living. Eventually, authors get old and die, but their work lives on. Books, paintings, even movies — all become part of our historical and cultural heritage. Imagine how we’d all lose if someone still held a copyright on Shakespeare’s plays, or Beethoven’s music, or the paintings in the Louvre.

But how long should an author’s heirs be allowed to profit from an author’s work? On that there is no agreement. In past years, it is profit that has been winning, and copyrights have been extended for longer and longer.

This year, the work of artists and writers who died in 1943 came into the public domain. That included the work of Beatrix Potter. Current copyright law in the U.S. keeps copyrights alive for 70 years after the author’s death. Peter Rabbit was first published in 1902, so that means that Peter Rabbit was private property for about 112 years. That’s a long time.

Copyrights were extended again (by the U.S. Congress) as recently as 1998. Mickey Mouse, Gone With the Wind, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue are still private property. Those who opposed copyright extension complained that the intent of the law was to protect lucrative franchises such as Mickey Mouse that corporate owners want to keep locked down.

This is a major conflict in our culture at present — the conflict between private property and “the commons.” For example, owners of beachfront property are in conflict with those who maintain that beaches are a natural resource that belong to all of us. For years and years, defenders of the commons have been losing. This means that a few people are much richer. But the rest of us are poorer.

Why is this on my mind at present? Partly because I wanted to use an excerpt from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay after the title page of Fugue in Ursa Major. I waited too long to check on the rights to Millay’s work, assuming that her work was now in the public domain. I was wrong. A foundation owns the rights to Millay’s work. To avoid any pesky legal risk, I had to apply to the foundation for permission, and I had to include a special credit line on my book’s ISBN page. This held up the publication of Fugue in Ursa Major. If I’m doing the math right, I believe we have to wait seven more years for Millay’s work to enter the public domain.

However, the publication of Fugue in Ursa Major is getting close, and I will be able to keep to the July 14 release date. The revisions are done, the type is set. Everything is in the pipeline. I’ll have much more to say about Fugue in Ursa Major as July 14 approaches.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the 2006 film “Miss Potter,” about the life of Beatrix Potter, I encourage you to put it on your must-see list.

How to find a dark sky

The dark blue areas are reasonably dark skies. One of the darkest areas on the East Coast is in West Virginia. Note that almost the entire state of North Carolina has ruined skies, with the exception of the Dismal Swamp in the northeast corner of the state.

One of the cruelest, most magic-killing forms of our alienation from nature is our inability to see the stars. Light pollution, of course, is the cause of it. Cities, suburbs, rural areas, fracking areas — all these places are brightly lit, all night. Massive quantities of fossil fuel are expended to drive off the darkness. This is insane, but it is only one of the many forms of insanity that we’re no longer even aware of anymore, because that’s Just the Way Things Are.

Would you like to see how far you’d have to travel to see a dark sky? Here’s a link to instructions on how to get a light-pollution overlay for Google Earth. First you download a light-pollution map (it’s a TIFF image) from a site in Italy. Then follow the instructions in the link to load the overlay into Google Earth and position the overlay correctly.

I am in northwestern North Carolina, north of Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Note that the nearest dark sky, for me, is in southern Virginia, between Hillsville and Floyd. I am quite familiar with that area. It’s isolated, is sparsely settled, and is reachable on tiny, winding roads.

In my novel, Fugue in Ursa Major, the young protagonist is a stargazer. The novel begins with Jake driving southwest from Charlottesville to go stargazing, to the blue area west of Grayson, Virginia.

The new publication date for the novel, by the way, is May 30. I’m still waiting for one of the first readers to finish. He’s an academic and won’t have time to read the draft until the end of the academic year, which is — tomorrow! His feedback on the novel is very important to me, so I’m holding up the release of the book for a few more weeks.

Monticello

Click on images for high-res version

I was on the road for the past week. The first stop was Lynchburg, Virginia. Then I went on to Charlottesville, and from there to Asheville, North Carolina.

Partly I was checking out settings that I used in my novel, Fugue in Ursa Major. The book is still in the revision stage (new publication date May 30, I hope), so there was time to tweak descriptions of some of the settings, if necessary. Luckily, it won’t be necessary, though I may write in a few minor details. Google Earth, along with photos found on the web, are excellent resources for writers. An important scene occurs on the campus of the University of Virginia, so I spent a good bit of time there, seeing things with my own eyes and taking photographs. Also, when Jake, the young protagonist of the novel, goes stargazing, he drives south from Charlottesville on Interstate 81 toward the area of the Appalachians where the borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina come together. I followed that route to Asheville.

Monticello is stunning. Photographs of Monticello usually fail to capture that the house sits on the crest of a small mountain, with amazing views in all directions. I also had never realized how Charlottesville’s hills are part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway extends north of Roanoke almost to Charlottesville, and I-81 shadows the route of the parkway for many miles.

The gardens at Monticello

The dome at the University of Virginia. The dome was visible from Monticello with a telescope, and Jefferson watched its construction from home.

Printin’ Office Eatery

Fried oysters with salad and hushpuppies

One of the nicest new businesses to come on line in Stokes County lately is the Printin’ Office Eatery. It’s in Danbury, facing the main drag.

Part of the brilliance of the Printin’ Office is that the menu appeals to two sets of people — the locals, whose business of course is necessary if a restaurant is to succeed; and visitors, with somewhat more urban tastes, traveling through on their way to Hanging Rock State Park. They also have pizza, which is a good lick, because northern Stokes County is pretty much a pizza desert. The restaurant’s sign is a little hard to see, though, so look carefully to your right as you drive north through Danbury, just before you pass the old courthouse.

One of the beautiful things about a place like Stokes County (and one of the reasons I’m here) is that we don’t have the suburbanization and population density required to support fast food places. There are fast food places in King, far to the south, and a couple in Walnut Cove, but that’s it. Eateries out in the sticks are always small and locally owned.

The place gets its name from its location. The Danbury Reporter, a long-dead newspaper, used to be published in the printin’ office there.

I’m reproducing the menu here to share the local flavor.

P.S. They have free WIFI. Northern Stokes County is very poorly wired, but there is fiber under some of the main roads, including through Danbury, at least as far as the library and the county government center.

Noah: a short review

I commend director Darren Aronofsky (who co-wrote the screenplay) for seeing the cinematic potential of the story of Noah and the ark. I mean, who’d have thunk it, since the Noah story is such a short and minor feature of the book of Genesis. But all the ingredients are there for a blockbuster, in particular apocalypse and evil and the potential for great spectacle. I was eager to see it because it’s a new addition to the apocalyptic genre, so I went on opening weekend and saw it in Imax (recommended).

Normally I would not rush out to see a bible story, but “Noah” is pissing off so many religious fanatics that I figured Aronofsky must have done a pretty good job with the theology. Glenn Beck called the film “pro-animal” and “anti-human.” And apparently Fox News has been buzzing about how “unbiblical” the film is. Excellent.

“Noah,” in addition to being a highly entertaining movie, is an eloquent takedown of the dominionist school of religious weirdos, which includes a lot of evangelicals. These are the people whose political power (with corporate backing) is keeping us in the age of fossil fuel and blocking environmental progress and conservation. These religious types seem to be getting the message that their slash-and-burn religious views make them a lot like the wicked people who had to be destroyed by flood. Save the animals but destroy all the war-loving people in order to save the earth? That spooks them, because they believe that it’s the environmentalists, the tree-huggers, and the save-the-animals people who are of the devil. Recycling and solar energy threaten their rights and their way of life. Cheap gas forever! Down with Noah and the tree-huggers and endangered species! Oops.

The theme is the same, really, as the theme of my novel Fugue in Ursa Major: what if the only way to fix this planet’s problems is to have an apocalypse and start over from scratch with a little more respect for nature?

Culture for lunch: $5.99

If Southerners still ate traditional Southern cuisine cooked at home, the statistics on our health wouldn’t be what they are. You only have to look at what people have in their carts at the grocery store to see that almost nobody cooks from scratch anymore. I have a lot of doubts about whether young people really learn to cook at all anymore. Often on Facebook I see pictures of dishes that I suspect pass for home cooking these days — concoctions of grated cheese, sausage, and biscuit mix, for example.

In this area, one of our cultural resources is the K&W Cafeteria, a regional chain that started in Winston-Salem in the 1930s, I believe. It’s been over 40 years since I first ate at a K&W, and almost nothing has changed. They do Southern cuisine pretty much from scratch, striking a pretty good balance between honesty of the cuisine and the low prices that people expect around here.

Many people look down on the K&W and wouldn’t want to be seen there. I am not among them. As a matter of fact, I’m a reverse snob when it comes to the K&W. When I have visitors from out of town (with the occasional exception of Californians), I almost always take them to the K&W to help acquaint them with traditional Southern cuisine. It was the favorite eating place of a friend from Europe (who made fun of restaurants that are considered fancy in these parts). And even those who look down on places popular with seniors and people of modest means have to grant that, at least, the K&W is not fast food.

Recently they started having lunch specials. One of those specials is four vegetables, plus bread and a drink, for $5.99. Today for lunch I had pinto beans (with onions), mashed potatoes, green beans, broccoli, corn bread and iced tea. How could you go wrong?

John Twelve Hawks is now on Facebook

From time to time, I have written here about John Twelve Hawks, and so I get a fair number of visitors to this blog who have searched the Internet for “John Twelve Hawks.” Some of you fans of John Twelve Hawks may not be aware that he recently created an official, verified Facebook page. He posts photos periodically and offers snippets from his off-the-grid life.

For my previous posts on John Twelve Hawks, use the blog search box to search for his name. To find him on Facebook, type his name in the Facebook search box.

And though John doesn’t know it yet, I plan to send him a copy of Fugue in Ursa Major as soon as it’s released, hoping that he’ll like the book enough to write me a cover blurb.