Walking the Berkshires

The Computor Ate My Carnival

Cabinet of Curiosities #6 is experiencing technical delays but will be posted at Bioephemera later this week.  For those who can't wait to get their monthly dose of the unusual, the exotic, the incredible stuff we have hoarded away in our attics or on our hard drives, you could do far worse than to pay a visit Cryptozoology.com for the latest Bigfoot news, and see how your 10 ten list of favorite monsters compares with the one posted at LiveScience.  Personally, I've always been partial to Dryads, Naiads and Oreads, such as the lovely Echo, above, being ignored by Narcissus.  Very Pre-Raphaelite of me, I know.

Coverville Covers Richard Thompson Covers

I could not be happier.  Personal favorites include Bob Mould doing "Turning of the Tide" and Mary Black's version of "I Misunderstood."  And if, like me, you picked up the 5 CD RT on Free Reed Boxed Set, there's an entire disc of Thompson covering other folks and playing with other folks covering him.

Carnivalesque XXXVIII (Early Modern) Tabloid Edition

Welcome, lords and ladies, to April's bimonthly "Early Modern" edition of Carnivalesque.  The Early Modern period, as all good historians know, refers to that glorious span of three centuries (1500 - 1800 CE) during which the English learned to appreciate the many virtues of vegetables:

Before: "Beware of green sallets & rawe fruytes for they wyll make your soverayne seke." - Boke of Kervynge (1500)

After: "Then, says she, I believe there is a piece of cold buttock and carrot which will fit you - Nothing better, answered Jones, but I should be obliged if you would let it be fried.  To which the landlady consented, and said smiling, she was glad to see him so well recovered: for the sweetness of our hero's temper was almost irresistible, besides, she was really no ill-humoured woman at the Bottom..." - Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

There is a profound difference, I am sure you will agree, and no doubt the English and Film majors among you caught Fielding's consummate metaphorical pairing of food and sex.  Those were the days.  The Swiss perfected martial arts for the masses and Henry VIII wore a codpiece.  This is not dry, academic bunk, friends; this is hot and heavy history, with content good for a1,000 hits an hour, or at least another bodice-ripping season of The Tudors.  Why everyone doesn't blog about this stuff is beyond me.  It's all in the delivery.  "Give me my long sword, ho!"

This was also a period of profound climate change, during which the "Little Ice Age" in Europe put an end to medieval wine production in southern Britain, with winter carnivals on the frozen Thames cold comfort in exchange for frequent crop failures and advancing glaciers that swallowed alpine towns.  It was a time of adaptation and expansion, when new world tomatoes forever changed Italian cuisine and London had to burn to save it from devastating plague.  Pop music, then as now, was hardly children's fare, as witness this charming bit of ribaldry by Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605), reintroduced to modern ears by the great (though alas, presently scorpion-stung) Richard Thompson in his 1,000 years of Popular Music:

So ben mi ch' à bon tempo
Al so ma basta mo'
So ben ch' è favorito
Ahimè, no' l posso dir
Saluti e baciamani
son tutti indarno a fè
Passeggia pur chi vuole
che 'l tempo perderà

Take my word for it [those of you who do not read archaic Italian]; for all the cheatin' going on, this could be a Country and Western standard.

Axis of Evil Knieval, chronicler of disasters and folly most foul, commemorates the death of Rene-Robert Cavalier De La Salle in 1687, slain by his own men in a murderous confrontation over bison meat. 

Dear old Isaac Newton was a something of a bloodthirsty rogue, or so inquires The Inverse Square Blog, asking; "did Newton take pleasure in the deaths he triggered?"

Not to be outdone, Executed Today offers up Major Thomas Weir, who "had had a distinguished military career and an exactingly pious public life among Edinburgh’s strictest Presbyterians. So it came as something of a surprise when, after being struck by an illness, he up and copped to a lifelong sexual relationship with his sister Jean … and a lifetime of hitherto unknown black arts, powered by a Satanic walking-staff. He was so far from being suspect that town elders at first thought him daft."  This prior pillar of society was ultimately strangled and burned at the stake in 1670.  Elliot Spitzer, on the other hand, will probably get a book deal out of his double life as "Client 9", or at least his own talk show.

Speaking of witches, Intute: Arts and Humanities Blog calls our attention to the recent discovery of a cauldron, swan feathers, dead birds, human hair and fingernails from the 17th-18th centuries unearthed in a pit in Cornwall. According to The Times Online;

"Human occupation of the site dates to prehistoric times but some of the activity uncovered was more recent. A stone-lined spring that may have been a “holy well” was full of offerings from the 17th century, including 125 strips of cloth from dresses, cherry stones and nail clippings.

There was evidence that the well had been filled and the site destroyed to hide what went on there.

Each of the feather pits, which are“ about 40cm square by 17cm deep (15 by 6in), have been carefully lined with the intact pelt of one swan and contain other bird remains."

In other neo-pagan news, CLEWS: The Historic True Crime Blog reveals that modern descendants of accused Connecticut witch Mary Sanford (who may have been executed in 1662) are looking for a formal apology.  And there is more at Women of History about the quest for absolution for Connecticut witches.

The Jungle Trader, a favorite source for the bizarre, the macabre, and the downright diabolical in man and nature, notes that only the second mass grave ever discovered from the 30 Years War has been unearthed in Bavaria.

Natalie Bennett of Philbilon delights in the harmonic convergence of three of her main interests - women, nature and history - in Sylvia Bowerbanks’ Speaking for Nature: Women and Ecologies of Early Modern England.  Quoth she; "this is an impeccable well though-out, academic book, that examines its characters in the terms of their own time, while applying understanding and research of the following centuries."  High praise indeed.

Serendipities finds another great read and exploration of Vision in Early Modern Culture in Stuart Clark’s Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford University Press, 2007).  "The book argues that contrary to what theories of the rationalization of sight and the invention of perspective suggests, vision came to be characterized by unreliability and uncertainty in the early modern period."

We are not required to limit our inquiry to such impeccably credentialled sources, of course.  You can learn  a great deal about the Wild Geese - the Irish Abroad from 1600 to the French Revolution from the war gamers at War and Game. 

Soobdujour described the 15th and 16th tactic of swarming on the ocean;

"The Portuguese were well aware of the precariousness of their situation. Their technology – fortifications, weaponry, and sailing ships armed with artillery – was of little advantage in African conditions. In confined coastal waters and on rivers, the sailing ships were vulnerable to concentrated attacks by large war canoes and often fell prey to determined African parties. Metal armour was a torment in a tropical climate. The late 15th and early 16th century firearms were often too clumsy to have more than a psychological effect against small or moving targets. While the Portuguese certainly could look after themselves militarily, African weaponry and tactics were still highly effective against them, and poisoned arrows caused horrible damage."

Cardinal Wolsey's Today in History tells us about Henry VIII's dockyards and shares a great source for information about the history of British ports.

Although the early modern period in Japan has a different chronology and influences all its own, this post by Pink Tentacle struck me as worthy of inclusion in an Early Modern Carnivalesque, and not just because I am also the progenitor of the Cabinet of Curiosities blog carnival, where anything that has to do with mythical 16th century disease critters would surely find a home. 

J. L. Bell of Boston 1775 takes advantage of HBO's John Adams miniseries to ask; "What's missing in the John Adams household?"  Hint:  Some of the same stuff that was inexcusably whitewashed in The Patriot.

The Early Modern Whale poses the deliciously rhetorical question; How could a parrot NOT love the Baroness of Grosbeak?  How indeed?  And also shares with us the tale of a 12th night abomination.

Commercial break -

• Follow the Knox Trail - This web site contains a page for each of several dozen locations along his journey through NY and MA where bronze plaques were installed in the 1920's. Parochial plug:  Knox and the boys slogged through the southern Berkshires on their way to Boston.
• This June is the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Carillon.  1,000 reenactors can't be wrong. See you at Fort Ti.

And now for something scatological from Baudrillard's Bastard.  Or rather ureaic.   

Investigations of a Dog delves into the historiography of the English Revolution as seen through the lens of the far Left.  Read the whole thing, especially to get to the coda: "Seventeenth-century England was so far from consensus that even the weather was ideologically contested."

Mercurius Politicus delves into the the Character of a Cavaliere: Roundheads beware!

The next edition of will be of the ancient/ medieval sort at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe.  Be sure to submit your finest for May's edition, and if you like you may use the handy submission form.  Bon Appétit!

Wanderlust at Rest

The trouble with the first unseasonably warm days of Spring is that the mind leapfrogs to Summer and all that it signifies.  Spring is best appreciated gradually, slowly undraped in all its sweetness, rather than disrobed at once all hot and full.  The umbral of May Apple and the bright curl of Fiddleheads are barely out of the duff and already we think of fireflies and hot summer nights and cruising with the top down along an endless highway.

Summer is hardwired in the modern soul as the time for travel, a clarion call as sharp for we deskbound creatures as the equinoctial urge to migrate that rules the natural world.  Yes, those heathen collegiate have their Spring Break rituals, but Summer is when the rest of us get restless and eager to peregrinate to favorite beaches and new horizons.  My spouse would be content to rusticate in place, making short forays from base camp, but I never shook the appeal of the long trek, the road odyssey made impractical by the high price of fuel and the high energy of restless children, good travelers and eager hikers though they be. 

In this season of ephemeral wonders, I resist the pull to go fast forward, seductive though it be.  All this new growth is in such a hurry to get where it is going.  We will get there in time.

"Crawl Back Under My Stone": Scorpions and Guitar Greats Don't Mix

It is bad luck to be stung by a scorpion (it happened to me once when a small one got in my sleeping bag in Namibia).  If you are a world class guitarist and that scorpion stings your right hand, it is more unlucky still.  If you were planning, like Viv and me, to see Richard Thompson tomorrow night at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, or anywhere else on his April tour, RT is recovering but has postponed all of these gigs until October.

Glad it is isn't more serious, Richard. 

"This is Not What I Meant When I Said I Wanted a Red Ryder!"

Winner by length, neck and nose, The Tourmarm ran away with the 15th Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest:

"This is not what I meant when I said I wanted a Red Ryder!"

The sashaying Shetland was my Grandmother Athalia Barker's beloved pony "Max."  This was the nag that I and my cousins first learned to ride, which for all his small size was harder than it might seem.  Max could expand his barrel of a belly to a prodigious girth, thwarting all attempts to cinch a saddle.  He was just as likely to roll over as canter under a low hanging branch to rid himself of an impudent rider. In addition to the western saddle with the red wool blanket, he also pulled a pony cart, in which he was far less rambunctious.

Max was the primary lawnmower at Windrock during the 1970s.  There were shovels and a wheelbarrow instead to follow him about with and gather up excess manure.  In later years he preferred standing with his hind legs crossed, and he lived beyond 30.

Judging from the wide collar of my dress shirt, I'd say I was probably just finished with 3rd or 4th grade in this picture (1977-1978).  I am sure during the summer I only wore my red Keds when my feet were in stirrups.  Max and I are actually reined up rather near the bluff overlooking the bay, but I am certain that there was no risk of him deciding to plunge.  Not when the barn and the barrel of sweet feed lay in the other direction.  My stern expression may betray a suspicion that my rotund steed is poised to bolt.  Today the barn is filled with many things, including hay for my Aunt's horses at her home down at the end of Great Neck, but alas, no resident equine species. 

What Did one Billionaire Say to the Other? "There Goes The Neighborhood."

27,000 square feet, 7 acres, 26 bathrooms.  Just your typical single family residence for your average billionaire, but apparently not in Greenwich on Connecticut's Gold Coast.  The new rich are not like us, not at all, dahling.

Ah, but he's done it before.  Ask the Israelies.

Owambos Adorned

I learned a good many things about photography while living in Africa.  I found it is particularly challenging to photograph dark skinned people in harsh desert light.  A fair number of my slides of indigenous people from this period came out too dark and I set them aside, but now that I am scanning my old slides and have access to editing software there are hidden treasures to reveal.

These two women were off to the left of a wide crowd shot I took on an extraordinary day in late August, 1992 in northern Namibia.  It was August 26th, Ongulumbashe Day in Namibia, the day now called Heroes Day that coincides with the opening engagement of the armed liberation struggle in 1966 against apartheid South Africa.  I was living and teaching at that time about 30 kilometers from Ongulumbashe, but the road to that remote cattle post had not been fully de-mined and it would be another 5 years before I would actually visit the site. 

On this day, though, it seemed as if all of Ovamboland were convening in one central place for a great rally, and modernity gave way to tradition.  Old women who normally dressed in modest print dresses pulled down their cow tail switches and pelts from the rafters of their huts, donned their shell beads and adornments, walked barebreasted out into the sunlight and so rolled back the decades by at least 50 years.  I saw Kwanyama men wearing skirts and what looked like old German Schutztruppe hats with ostrich plumes carried their massive drums, 2 meters long and carved from the trunks of trees.  Young men performed great leaping feats, vaulting over each other in the warrior's ompembe dance. 

The two women above are wearing the traditional headdress of the Ngandjera, one of seven sub-groups within   the Oshiwambo-speaking people of Namibia.  The rally was at their principal settlement Ongandjera, the home of Sam Nujoma, the founding president of Namibia.  It was the only time I ever saw so many Ovambo people wearing their traditional garb.  The distinguishing feature of the Ngandjera headdress are the three, crescent shaped appendages that hang on either side of the head and down the  back.  In 1982, the colonial government of what was then known as Southwest Africa released a series of stamps depicting traditional headdresses from various tribal groups, including the Ngandjera and Kwanyama types, both of which I saw at the rally that day.

The Ovambo outnumber all the other ethnic groups in Namibia and dominate Namibia's ruling SWAPO party.  For that reason, and particularly in those first years of independence, SWAPO promotes a national rather than a tribal identity.  One nation, one Namibia was the path forward for this nation rent by war and the divisions of apartheid that set group against group.  On this day, in the President's hometown, I saw the Ovambo celebrate their tribal identifies, and I heard Sam Nujoma speak not in the labored, thickly accented English of his office but the soaring, animated language of his birth. 

My friend Michael and I were the only two Americans there, and aside from a reporter or two we were the only whites celebrating Ongulumbashe Day with these tens of thousands of Owambos.   This was a day for Namibians, but it was even more a day for the people of the north, and they showed that while they could set aside their tribal identities for the sake of national unity, they still had rich and vibrant traditions of their own, and among their own they would celebrate them. 

A Long Drive off a Short Pier

This is one of my favorite road signs of all time, photographed in Luderitz, Namibia.  One imagines that there was once some ghastly incident involving a myopic motorist and an unexpected plunge into the harbor that prompted South African officialdom to create an official roadsign for this situation. It certainly gives new meaning to the term "offroading."

Although maybe it should be interpreted; "This way for the carwash!"

Solitude

I got a snappy new slide scanner for my birthday, which means I am now immersed in the years I spent as a young man in Africa, nearly half a lifetime ago.  These were formative years, and much the same as when I look at the glaciers of my mountaineering youth, I wonder; "Am I that young man who explored those strange places, who saw such marvels and lived so deeply?"

So much of those experiences abides with me, as vivid in my mind's eye as the ocher dunes of Sossusvlei, the red sand streaming from their bleeding edges.  I had a strong taste for the extremes of nature then, for icy summits and pounding surf and the vastness of deserts.  These places make some people feel their insignificance and isolation more acutely.  For me they gave a center, sharpened my senses, offered humility and confidence in equal measure. 

Such great open spaces are far from empty, and even more than the spectacular scenery and unusual wildlife, relationships with people had the greatest impact.  I cannot look at the Twyfelfontein valley with its eroded stone and thousands of ancient petroglyphs without thinking of Elias Xoagub and his family and the times we shared together.  The 5th grade students I taught when I was 23 are now in their late 20s themselves.  I like to think that 10-year-old Theofelus Indongo and Cornelius Tsauseb went on to lead happy, productive lives, though the odds are far greater that they struggled.  I like to think that the baby baboon we had to turn loose on her own at the foot of Van Bach Dam was taken in by the nearby troop and not killed by them.   

We have the moments we have.  Then we have memories that we carry forward.  It matters how one informs the other - the meaning we give to memory and the choices that memory prescribes for the future - but the moment matters more because in the moment lies possibility, and sometimes inspiration.