It’s time to talk about galactic law


Hubble space telescope: the Sombrero Galaxy. Source: Wikimedia Commons

“… the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” — Elon Musk, Starlink terms of service

Elon Musk’s long game

Before the likes of Elon Musk started swaggering around the solar system, the question of galactic law was a matter of interest mainly to writers and readers of science fiction, or to those who speculate on whether a galactic federation may already exist, if there are civilizations out there. Elon Musk has forced the issue.

If you sign up for Musk’s Starlink internet service (which involves hundreds of trashy little satellites swarming around earth just above the atmosphere), you will have to agree to these terms of service. I’ve put the diabolical part in bold:

10. Governing Law. For Services provided to, on, or in orbit around the planet Earth or the Moon, this Agreement and any disputes between us arising out of or related to this Agreement, including disputes regarding arbitrability (“Disputes”) will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California in the United States. For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.

Here we see a big part of Musk’s game, which is about power as well as money. He is declaring that Mars is a free planet not bound by any earthly laws. However, if there are disputes about your bill, California law will apply.

Never mind that Musk’s businesses have already sucked up, in subsidies, $4.9 billion in taxpayer dollars. Musk’s intent is to make earth-based governments (and chumps like us who actually pay taxes) finance a libertarian utopia on Mars. Musk will claim big chunks of Mars as his property, his to rule and to exploit, if he gets there first. This is terrifying far beyond the question of who gets to pocket the dollar value of whatever might be found on Mars. Musk not only intends to privatize space, he intends to make space, from the start, into a Wild West beyond the reach of earthly law.

Colonies

My objections are philosophical. Yes, there are obvious parallels with earth’s colonial era and the establishment of European colonies in North America. But, if human civilization on earth has made any progress since 1600, we mustn’t repeat old mistakes. Fortunately for the American colonies, the Enlightenment was well under way as the colonies were developing a constitution and a new body of laws. (Also fortunately, libertarianism at the time was just an embryo.) Today, there are powerful forces that are seeking to roll back the Enlightenment, cripple democracies, empower oligarchies, and maintain order with authoritarian methods including religion.

I am no philosopher, and I am not a historian of law. But I think it’s reasonably accurate to say that, as the American colonies were forming themselves into the United States of America 250 years ago, there were three or so competing philosophies of law and government to draw on. First, there was the concept of natural law, the idea that rights are inherent in being born human, and that rights are not created by government. Second, there was utilitarianism, a theory of ethics which was being developed during the Enlightenment and which boils down to the greatest good for the greatest number. And third, there was religion.

Rawls or Nozick?

Today, the philosophical landscape has changed. There are two new political philosophies to take into consideration. The first is libertarianism. Though libertarianism has some old roots, it wasn’t really codified until the 1970s. Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was a libertarian answer in opposition to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971). Rawls’ theory is referred to as justice as fairness.

We almost never hear the names Robert Nozick or John Rawls mentioned in the high-stakes and sometimes violent political struggle now playing out in the United States and elsewhere. But that’s what it boils down to — Nozick’s theory of government versus Rawls’.

Nozick, and libertarians, want minimal government, “limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on.” To quote from Wikipedia, “When a state takes on more responsibilities than these, Nozick argues, rights will be violated.”

Rawls’ theory, unfortunately, is not something that can be summed up in a sentence or two. A good deal of reasoning is required, working from some basic principles. Not by any means does the complexity of Rawls’ theory make it weaker. Rawls’ theory of justice acknowledges a social contract. William Edmundson argues (and I agree), in John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, that the only form of just government under Rawls’ principles is democratic socialism.

In a libertarian utopia, there is no limit to inequality, and human misery is of no concern to the government. Government won’t lift a finger to help anyone, except through the police. In a society based on Rawls, we’re all in it together, and no one can abandon others to a state that they wouldn’t want for themselves.

We’re already close enough to a libertarian utopia to see where it leads. It leads to a tiny elite of super-rich oligarchs, hostile to democracy, lording it over a work force of disinformed, barely educated, and heavily policed ignorati who are expected to work their asses off for a little bit of pie. Of course that’s the kind of society that people like Elon Musk want. They’ll take anything they can get if they can make taking it legal. They even have the power, already, to take money from the weak, through subsidies — reverse taxation. That’s what oligarchy is all about, and that’s what the Trump era is all about — a crude grab to entrench oligarchy in the United States and put it beyond the reach of law and democracy.

A thought experiment

What if Elon Musk’s attempt to lay the foundations of the laws of space has already failed? What if there actually already is a federation of civilizations in our galaxy? What would their law look like? On what kind of principles would that law be based? Though that would have been good to know 250 years ago during earth’s age of Enlightenment, it’s much more relevant now, as earth’s oligarchs compete to extend their power into space, to privatize it, and to set it beyond the reach of earthly law or any human value other than liberty and profit.

Not least because I’m convinced that we are in fact being visited by extraterrestrials, I can’t help but speculate that we already have some hints about what galactic law might look like, if it exists. If earth really is being visited by extraterrestrials, and especially if those visitors are coming from more than one planet, then it seems likely that they already are bound by, and are acting in accord with, galactic law. We seem to have some rights as earthlings, including the right not to be robbed or conquered by those with superior power. It’s possible that they’re even here to help, since they have done no harm. Whatever the principles of galactic civilizations’ law might be, my reasoning tells me that it’s much more likely to be in harmony with Rawls’ civilizing philosophy than with Nozick’s dog-eat-dog Wild West.

However, until such time as the galactic federation makes itself known, we’re on our own to deal with dangerous figures such as Elon Musk. If we’re going to fight this war — and in many ways it is a war — then we need to be clear on the principles at stake. There are those who would tolerate any degree of injustice and misery in the name of liberty. I am not one of them.

Further thoughts

Musk’s self-promotion: It’s possible that the lines about Mars in the Starlink terms of service are really just self-promotion on Musk’s part, intended to direct attention to his other projects and to delight the clueless techno-utopian libertarian fanboys who circulate around him on YouTube and elsewhere.

Rawls the obscure: I often wonder why Rawls is so little known, given that many would agree that he wrote the most important work in moral philosophy for two or more centuries. Partly, my guess would be, that’s because Rawls’ ideas are complex, and the book is a very hard read. His opponents with elite educations and goods of their own to promote certainly noticed quick enough that they had quietly been shamed and diminished. Nozick’s book appeared only three years after Rawls’ book. And some of the most erudite arguments against Rawls have been made by Jesuits, horrified that their theologies are not (even if they ever were) the state of the art in moral philosophy. To my lights, even utilitarianism now seems savage.

Roastnears

When I was a young’un growing up in North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley, corn of the type one wants for corn on the cob was called roastnears. I learned in school, around the fifth grade, that roastnears means roasting ears. Back then, I thought of that as just the way people talked. Now I would see it as a bit of the Southern Appalachian dialect.

I don’t try to grow corn here. It takes up too much room in the garden, and the raccoons pull it down and steal it. This summer, neighbors have given me corn. But there is no shortage of it. All through late summer, grocery stores sell it in large quantities, very fresh, for 20 cents to 50 cents an ear.

I would never boil it, not least because who wants all that heat in the kitchen in high summer. Roasting it in foil on an outdoor grill is easiest. But it’s more fun to roast it in the shucks. Peel the shucks back on the raw ear of corn, remove the silks, apply some olive oil, and fold the shucks back over the corn. About 22 minutes in a hot covered grill should do it. Apply as much butter and salt as your conscience will permit.

It’s an ill wind that …


Mabry Mill, running on water from former Hurricane Ida

The last week of August felt like the hottest, most humid, and most miserable week of the summer. Late Sunday, Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans. The levees held, and the storm moved north. On Wednesday, what remained of the storm passed over central Tennessee, bringing rain (and much cooler weather) to western North Carolina.

Having felt housebound by the heat, I made a little road trip to Meadows of Dan, Virginia, to enjoy the highlands weather. The high temperature up there was 67F on Wednesday. Though I had a rain jacket with me, I walked some in the rain without the jacket and intentionally got wet.

I don’t know when the mill races at Mabry Mill were repaired, but they have been repaired, were full of water, and the water wheel was turning. I had been afraid that the impoverished U.S. Park Service would never have the money available for the repairs.

In the video below, note that the wheel is turning very slowly. If the mill actually was in operation, the volume of water sent onto the wheel would be much greater, and the wheel would spin much faster. The mill and restaurant were closed when I was there, and there was nobody around but me.

The low temperature tonight will be 55F. It seems possible that September actually has arrived on schedule this year, after several years in which everyone was saying that September is the new August.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian ★★★★


“The Porteous Mob,” James Drummond, 1855. The painting is on display in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article in The Herald of Scotland in which a scholar of literature urged filmmakers to make “blockbuster” movies from Walter Scott novels. The article is “Call for Walter Scott’s novels to be given film treatment,” Aug. 10.

I found the article charming, but I also was skeptical. At that point, I had read only one Walter Scott novel, The Antiquary, 1816, the third of Scott’s Waverley novels. That novel was a good enough read, but it’s not blockbuster material. Had I continued to judge Scott’s novels based only on the The Antiquary, I would not have rated him all that high, and I would have continued to wonder whether the high esteem in which the Scottish hold Scott has more to do with nationalism than with literature.

But any scholar, in this age, who makes a specialty of 19th Century literature automatically has my respect. So, I thought it likely than Alison Lumsden, who is quoted in the article, must know things that I don’t know. I ordered a used copy of The Heart of Mid-Lothian from Amazon. It’s a 1947 edition, poorly printed and with small type, but I didn’t want to read this book on a Kindle. Almost always, when old books are made into Kindle editions, they are full of typos because the text was scanned and was poorly edited, or not edited at all, for scanner errors.

The novel was first published in 1818. That makes it more than 200 years old. I had just finished reading Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit (1842) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). To read these novels back to back seemed like a good idea, not least because my neural circuits for parsing long 19th Century sentences were fully warmed up, and also because I was curious how the Dickens would compare with the Scott.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian is a seriously good novel, and I now agree with Alison Lumsden: It deserves to be made into a blockbuster.

One of the reasons Lumsden gives for bringing Scott to the screen is “because I think that’s a really good way of getting people to engage with writers again — they see the film and then they read the book.”

No doubt Professor Lumsden has students who would be able to read The Heart of Mid-Lothian. But my guess is that this novel would be insurmountable by most young readers today. The novel is long. The sentences are very long. For the first 120 pages, hardly anything happens. Most daunting, though, is that the dialogue (of which there is a great deal) is in dialect, written phonetically. (Some people would see this speech not as a dialect of English, but as a separate Scots language.) Thus there is a great deal of reader friction. Other readers may have other methods, but my method is to sound the dialogue in my mind. Usually it can be understood from the sound of it. If a character uses the word “waur” in a sentence, it’s not too difficult to recognize that “waur” means “worse.” The word “maun,” meaning “must,” will already be understood by readers of English literature. But some words simply have to be looked up, such as “gleg,” meaning sharp or wary. I learned the meaning of “Gardyloo!” from a walking tour in Edinburgh, in which I also learned about the Grassmarket and Half-Hanged Maggie, and where the gallows used to be. (If you love Edinburgh or are planning a trip there, that alone is a reason to read this novel.)

Even the people of Edinburgh speak in dialect. But characters from the Highlands are more challenging:

Hout, tout, ne’er fash your thumb, Mrs. Putler. The law is put twa-three years auld yet, and is ower young to hae come our length ; and pesides, how is the lads to climb the praes wi’ thae tamn’d breekens on them? It makes me sick to see them. Put ony how, I thought I kend Donacha’s haunts gey and weel, and I was at the place where he had rested yestreen ; for I saw the laves the limmers had lain on, and the ashes of them ; by the same token there was a pit greeshoch purning yet. I am thinking they got some word out o’ the island what was intended — I sought every glen and cleuch, as if I had been deer-stalking, but teil and wauff of his coat-tail could I see — Cot tam!

Note the beautiful rhythm of this little speech. Rhythm has a great deal to do with why we find Scottish accents so charming.

There is another factor that Chuzzlewit, Rudge, and Mid-Lothian have in common that may be offputting to contemporary readers. That is that the dramatic trajectories are very different. Contemporary readers will expect a story to begin with some dramatic action. Then the author will be forgiven for a bit of exposition. Then the action will resume and build step by step until the climax. The climax will be followed by a very short denouement. Readers of 200 years ago, no doubt, would have been entirely content with a different sort of trajectory. For many pages — maybe even 20 percent of the novel’s length — nothing much will happen. Some scenes will be set and characters will be introduced. But nothing happens, and how the characters and settings are related is not disclosed. There will be clues and a bit of foreshadowing, but there is hardly any dramatic tension. Finally the threads of the plot (and the subplots) will start to emerge. By the halfway point, the reader will finally see where the story is going. The climax will occur very early, around the three-quarters mark, followed by a very long denouement. Readers who anticipate this might be more motivated to stick with an antique novel if they have low expections that anything important will happen until well after 100 pages.

For that reason, books such as The Heart of Mid-Lothian would present some big problems for filmmakers. A filmmaker might, for example, have to start the movie with a high-drama event that doesn’t occur until much later in the story, and then depend on a flashback to introduce the characters and settings and to do the necessary exposition. Or screenwriters might cut the first quarter of the novel completely, and dribble in the background some other way. Exposition is another challenge. Contemporary writers avoid relying on exposition, in which the author explains what is happening. Instead, the action is expected to tell the story. In Mid-Lothian, the readers will encounter many pages of exposition, and only the key dramatic parts will be handled with scenes and dialogue. The art of storytelling and the expectations of readers have changed. But old stories are good stories all the same.

As the drama in Mid-Lothian picked up and peaked, I found myself staying up late to read. Was it a good read, worth the effort? Yes!

There are other rewards, though, for reading a novel like this. I understand much better now why the Scottish hold Scott in such high esteem. I have a much better feel for some Scottish history — particularly the events that followed “the Glorious revolution,” though that history is complicated and remains vague to me. Scott was a lawyer. He works in some very interesting facts about Scottish law, for which he clearly had great respect. And though I don’t think that Scott was particularly religious, a major theme in Mid-Lothian is the religious conflict in Scotland that was closely connected with conflict around the union of Scotland and England. One of the characters in Mid-Lothian, David Deans, goes into long and rather tedious disquisitions on doctrine. Scott refers to Deans as a “proser,” and it’s fairly clear that Scott was making fun of doctrinal hair-splitting, as well as of old men who talk too much.

As for the Porteous riots, the riots are not central to the plot of Mid-Lothian, but the riots have a great deal to do with the characters. The Porteous riots — of which Scott’s account is surely historically accurate — also ruffled feathers in London, and those ruffled feathers in London also connect with the plot.

Jeanie Deans, Mid-Lothian‘s heroine, will seem like a prude, I think, to young people today. But Jeanie’s sister, Effie, is very different. The difference between these two sisters will give modern young readers plenty to think about. And for students looking for a topic for a paper, I suggest this: Compare the hangman characters in Barnaby Rudge and The Heart of Mid-Lothian. Was Scott as much a social reformer as Dickens? How did the Scottish of the time justify capital punishment? Was the public attitude toward capital punishment starting to change? Why or why not? How does a duke’s attitude compare with that of a peasant, or with that of a religious character such as David Deans?

I should say a few words about the moral tone of The Heart of Mid-Lothian. It is an extended meditation on suffering and justice. Here is a quotation from Jeanie Deans:

O madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca’d fit to live or die, have some compassion on our misery! — Save an honest house from dishonour, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an early and dreadful death! Alas! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily ourselves that we think on other people’s sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain battles. But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body — and seldom may it visit your Leddyship — and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low — lang and late may it be yours! — Oh, my Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye hae intervened to spare the puir thing’s life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a word of your mouth could hang the haill Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow.

In short, though I read this novel in two weeks, I feel as though I just finished an entire semester in a tough course on Scottish literature and history that I found very rewarding. Thank you, Professor Alison Lumsden of the University of Aberdeen.


The Scott Monument in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens. The monument stands on prime real estate just west of Waverley Station, below, and northeast of, the castle. I’ve never been inside this tower and have only admired it from the park, from which I took this photo, but I’ll climb the steps on my next trip. The tower is over 200 feet high.

On a lighter note: It’s entirely possible that the difficulty of understanding the many Scottish accents has been a running joke among speakers of English for centuries. I’d have to say that, as a native speaker of Southern Appalachian English, I am pretty good at parsing Scottish. I easily understand all of the video below. Twice in my life I have encountered English accents that I have not been able to understand, and it’s possible that one of them was speaking Gaelic rather than English. One was a Cockney taxi driver in London. I knew he was speaking Cockney only because of “My Fair Lady” (though I also read “Pygmalion” in high school and thought that it was one of the funniest things I’d ever read). The other was an old man, a beggar, I think, who approached me on the street in Edinburgh. Sometimes locals will take the time to school you, as with a clerk in the ferry office in the east of England who wouldn’t give me my ticket to the Hook of Holland until I correctly pronounced “Harwich” (which sounds like “Harridge” to me). There are very funny videos about this on YouTube with James McAvoy.

Watchmen

I’m two years behind on this. It took a while for Watchmen (2019) to show up on my radar screen. I’ve watched only the first episode so far, but rarely have I seen a first episode as original, as surprising, and as good as this.

A friend recommended Watchmen (in a texting conversation) while we were talking about Trumpists and Trumpist militias. Watchmen is based on a comic book series from the 1980s. HBO, I understand, made significant changes in updating the storylines. Comics purists, I understand, were enraged at the changes. But Watchmen — or at least the first episode — speaks directly, and maybe even presciently, to what we’re living through. It was extremely satisfying to see rightwing defectives who would take the law into their own hands taken down and taken out in the picturesque ways that Hollywood can deal with villains.

But it also worried me. I texted my friend: “Has there been any concern that it might encourage the militia crazies?” He replied, “No, those folks didn’t have it on their radar.” Whew.

As we wait for justice to catch up with the tyrants, traitors, racists, insurrectionists and criminals who are trying to destroy American democracy and install their little Hitler, Watchmen is good therapy. There are nine episodes, and they can be streamed from HBO.

Late summer


Abelia

Those of us who live in southern climates are usually glad to see cooler weather return after a hot summer. But there’s also something melancholy about the idea of summer’s end. As Shakespeare wrote (sonnet 18), “… summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

The abelia bush is in full bloom. The bush is huge. I could hide my Fiat 500 inside it. And though the bees don’t seem to be all that interested in the thousands of little trumpet flowers, there often are a dozen butterflies at a time working the bush. Meanwhile, the fig trees in the orchard are looking good. But the true bumper crop of fall tree fruit here comes from the persimmon trees, wild trees that volunteered in the yard 12 years ago and that now are producing lots of fruit. There will be many persimmon puddings this fall, and, I hope, enough persimmon pulp to freeze.

Abelia is a relative of honeysuckle. It’s an old-fashioned shrub that one doesn’t see as often anymore. I wish I had entire hedges of it. Unlike honeysuckle, it doesn’t climb and choke things. It grows quickly, and though I have never pruned my abelia bush, I think abelia doesn’t mind being shaped a bit.

September is the season of yellow flowers. Soon — and almost overnight — the rural roadsides will be lined with yellow flowers. We’re starting to have nighttime temperatures in the 60s (F), a sure sign that September is on the way.


Green persimmons, four to six weeks away from ripening

A profile in courage


Rep. Barbara Lee at an anti-war powers protest in 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Twice in my life I have had the experience of living through a period of great collective danger, periods in which many of the American people completely lost their minds. One of those times was November 2016, when, though he lost the popular vote by 2.87 million votes, the criminally depraved Donald Trump was installed as president of the United States. The other time was the period after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when a mass madness of war fever swept over the United States.

Three days after 9/11 — three days! — a bill was rushed through the U.S. Congress giving President George Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, and their war-hungry cabinet a blank check to use the U.S. military pretty much anywhere they saw fit, if the two Republicans in the White House claimed that it had to do with terrorism. That bill passed 98-0 in the U.S. Senate and 420-1 in the U.S. House of Representatives. The only person to vote against it was Rep. Barbara Lee, who still represents California’s 13th congressional district (Oakland and northern Alameda county). The Washington Post reminds us of this in an article today about Barbara Lee: “She was the only member of Congress to vote against war in Afghanistan. Some called her a traitor.”

Sometimes people are right for the wrong reasons. But Barbara Lee was right for the right reasons. She said, on the House floor: “However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, ‘Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.’”

Many Americans subsequently come to their senses after an epidemic of madness, though many never do. I was proud of Barbara Lee then, and I am even more proud of her now. As for the Trump madness, it rages on.

I listened to President Biden’s address to the nation on Afghanistan yesterday. Insofar as I know anything about the situation and remember some history, I did not detect any attempt by Biden to mislead us or any attempt to rewrite history. Republicans, on the other hand, went as far as erasing from their web sites any references to the deal that Trump made with the Taliban last year. And, today, Republican mouths are running fast and loud to rewrite history and blame Biden for Afghanistan.

Tom Nichols gets it right in an article yesterday in The Atlantic, “Afghanistan Is Your Fault.” On the whole, that is true, because the beginning of the disaster in Afghanistan had almost total support from the American people. What have we learned?

Country-style seitan


Country-style steak made from seitan

I have bought seitan in the past (it’s very expensive), and I didn’t really like it. Homemade seitan is a whole ′nother thing. The key ingredient is gluten flour. Gluten alone would be impossibly rubbery, so a certain amount of ground legumes (I used garbanzo beans in the seitan in the photo) is needed to optimize the “bite” of the seitan. And because gluten and legumes alone wouldn’t have much flavor, sauce and seasoning are very important.

I feel sorry for those who can’t tolerate gluten (most people can) or who avoid gluten for some reason. My suspicion is that gluten takes the rap for the downsides of white flour. And, in my view, even white flour has its essential uses, in moderation. Personally, I love gluten, and I have no reason to suspect that gluten has done me or my digestive system any harm. Quite the opposite, I would testify. Gluten is a good source of vegetarian protein.

Anyway, here is a good basic recipe for seitan. That recipe uses 3 parts gluten to 2 parts legume. That’s too much gluten, in my opinion. Even 1 to 1 seems a little high on gluten, so you should experiment with the proportions. The recipe in the link uses lentils. I usually use cooked chickpeas. But any legume would work. Varying the type of legume would vary the spin of the seitan. If you want something more chickeny, use chickpeas. For something more beefy, use blackbeans. Recipes differ on how to cook the seitan. I shape the dough and simmer the seitan in stock. That seems simplest, plus the seitan absorbs flavor from the stock.

I welcome the trend toward fake meats. However, after my initial enthusiasm, I find that I’m not all that interested in fake meats. For one, they’re just too meaty. I prefer vegetarian alternatives that are high in protein but that don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. Though, according to Wikipedia, the word “seitan” is new, wheat gluten has been eaten in Asia for hundreds of years. The Chinese word translates to “dough tendon,” which is a fine description of the texture of gluten unless you cut the gluten with something that isn’t so rubbery.

Is gluten a processed food? I would argue that it is not. Even old water-powered mills could produce flour from the germ of the wheat. They called it “shorts” flour and sold it as food for pigs. Separating the germ from the bran from the white endosperm after milling was just a matter of sifting, as far as I know.

Seitan is very absorbent, so it loves sauces and gravies. For Asian dishes, I’d suggest cutting it into thin strips (and giving the seitan a quick stir-fry) as though you were making beef and broccoli. Seitan steaks, with dark gravy, naturally, lie at the Western end of the seitan spectrum. I rolled the seitan steak in seasoned flour and lightly fried it, the better to simulate country-style steak.

Seitan is high in protein and low in carbs. It’s also low in fiber, so I think it’s a good idea to serve it with high-fiber foods. I kneaded grated carrots and chopped onions into the seitan in the photo, not only to increase the fiber but also to improve the bite.

Church culture


A tent revival

I drove out during the cool of the evening yesterday to pick up the mail and look for more canning jars. At Sandy Ridge up near the Virginia line, people were gathering under a big tent for a tent revival. I stopped to take pictures, but I kept well back from the tent, assuming that I would quickly be identified as an outsider up to no good. I watched for a few minutes, though, and it was easy to see that this was a social occasion. Most of the people clearly knew each other. To them, I think, it was an occasion for dressing up just a little and spending a pleasant summer evening fanning themselves and exchanging gossip.

I envy them for the social part. Country churches, had they not aligned themselves with such an ugly politics, could serve as social glue in places where social glue is badly needed. Nor am I just guessing at the politics being offered at this particular tent revival. The preacher behind this tent revival ran for county commissioner a few years ago but lost in the Republican primary. After losing, he set up a little church in a vacant building across the road from this tent. I think the vacant building formerly was a garage. When he was running for commissioner, he ran his campaign from Facebook, where his theology and his politics were on full display. If you’ve read about some of the preachers who recently tried to take over the Southern Baptist church, then you know the type.

If there is an opposite of church culture, I think it would be pub culture. I would argue that one of the reasons rural American culture is falling apart is that church culture has become such a poison. Church culture is highly antagonistic to pub culture. Churches have done everything possible to prevent and kill pub culture. The real reason, I would argue, is competition. Even now, in the state of North Carolina, alcohol cannot be sold on Sunday mornings. Given a choice between a healthy pub culture and church culture, most people would choose pub culture, as they still do all over the British Isles and Ireland.

We do have places here that serve alcohol. But a healthy pub culture does not exist. On the way to Walnut Cove there is a motorcycle bar. I believe it is loosely aligned with one or more militias. On the other side of Danbury, in a nice spot overlooking the Dan River, there is a place that might have succeeded if people in these parts understood pub culture. I am among those who will never go back again, though, because the atmosphere is so ugly and the music is so loud. Those who won’t go back tell similar versions of the same story: friends of the musicians tell people to shut up so they can hear the music, and people who want to talk ask the musicians to keep it down. The owner of the place is so undiplomatic that he makes things worse. And so the vibe is terrible. A pub can’t be a concert hall and a place for friends to drink at the same time. Certainly, in Ireland, the music and noise in a popular pub might go on until late at night. But the locals also know when they can go for a quiet drink and when the place will be a party.

Mental health people tell us that drinking is healthiest when it’s social. In places like this, social drinking is pretty much totally unsupported. Instead, people stop at Dollar Generals and gas stations for beer. Recently, on my way to buy groceries, I passed the ABC store in Walnut Cove a few minutes before opening time. There were a dozen people lined up to buy liquor at 9:30 a.m. Alcoholism is a major rural problem, but social drinking in a form that could serve as healthy social glue is unsupported and almost unknown.

There is little charm anymore in rural American culture, as far as I can tell. Most rural people these days crave a suburban lifestyle, not a rural lifestyle — that is, a lifestyle that revolves around cars, without the slightest effort toward self-sufficiency or any kind of interaction with the outdoors. Even deer hunters rarely stalk deer on foot in the woods anymore. Instead, they set up deer feeders (containing corn) and then put up blinds or stands that they can drive to and in which they can sit and shoot deer. (Walmart sells blinds and deer stands.) I have met one local “coon hunter” whom a neighbor invites to hunt in our woods. I’m not sure that I’m on board with killing raccoons for sport (in spite of the damage that one has done to my tomatoes), but at least the coon hunter does it in the traditional way — on foot, in the woods, at night. I liked this coon hunter, actually. He said he didn’t know why, but that there was something spooky and exciting about being in the woods at night. “It’s primal,” I offered. “That’s it,” he said, “primal.” So he is one unsuburbanized person, at least, who is still in touch with traditional rural culture. He’d probably go to pubs, if there were any. The woods are his church, my guess would be.

I would argue that, decades ago, we passed the point at which rural white churches served any healthy purpose. Instead, the purpose they chiefly serve is to reinforce the grievances and identity that the Republican Party requires to retain its hold on rural America. Churches now operate as social wedges, not social glue. If we liberals were half as anti-freedom as authoritarians think we are, we’d close the churches and open some pubs to save some rural souls.

By the way, not one single mask was in sight at that tent revival.

On sliding from note to note

Listen link #1. Please read the first two paragraphs before you listen.

Want to start a barroom brawl in a place where the musical cognoscenti hang out to drink? Easy. Just say the explosive Italian word portamento and run for your life.

The Italian word is about carrying something. But portamento singing, in English, better translates to sliding, or gliding, from one note to the next note. Gliding from note to note is one of the markers of country music singing — so much so that there is even a country music instrument designed to slide from note to note, the steel guitar. Patsy Cline’s wonderful version of “The Wayward Wind” sounds almost as though she is imitating the steel guitar, sliding both up and down to reach her notes. Go ahead and listen to Listen link #1 now.

Patsy Cline was a fantastic singer, from the days when country music singers actually could sing. But, as far as I know, she never had formal musical training. Her portamento sliding from note to note works (for most ears, anyway), because she does eventually end up on pitch, and the timing of her sliding serves her musical and emotional intent. One of the reasons I grit my teeth at, and run screaming from, most country music is that the sliding from note to note is done with little musical skill and in poor taste. As for skill, the singer seems to lack the ability to land on pitch and must hunt for the note (often without ever finding it). As for taste, the singer is attempting to convey emotion but doesn’t have the skill or taste to do it.

It would be easy to write off all portamento singing as provincial. But the Italians, after all, do have a word for it. And then there is Maria Callas (and many other opera singers). Go ahead and listen to Listen link #2 now and take note of her portamento. You may need to listen carefully, because Callas’ portamento is more discreet than Patsy Cline’s.

Listen link #2

Though the musical cognoscenti and Callas fans (of which there are millions) may argue about her portamento, there is no disagreement on her technique. She knew what the destination pitch was and was perfectly capable of landing on that pitch.

If you’re not quite clear what it means to slide from note to note, consider the piano, where no sliding is possible. Strike a key and you’re on pitch. But consider the violin, which has no frets. Violinists can slide from note to note by sliding a finger, but they don’t (except occasionally and intentionally for musical effect).

For an extreme example of a portamento instrument, consider the theramin. The musician has pretty much no choice but to slide from note to note, and the quality of the musician’s ear will determine the accuracy of the destination pitch and the musical quality of the sliding. And a skillful player such as Clara Rockmore can make surprisingly quick transitions from note to note:

Listen link #3.

 

Extra credit: In the Maria Callas video above, note the difference between portamento and the glissando. At 6:09, Callas sings a descending glissando. Note that she doesn’t slide from note to note in the glissando. She hits each individual note, stunningly and on pitch, on the way down.

In the theramin video, note the wavering of the musician’s left hand, which produces vibrato, a kind of trembling of the pitch.

Joan Baez was known for her rapid vibrato. Clearly it wasn’t easy, because as she aged (she is now 80) she lost this vibrato and wisely sings many of her old songs differently.

Bottom line: singers and musicians play with pitch. But it helps if they know what they’re doing.