Saturday 17 December 2016

The Important Subject of Bed-Pushing

 Frivolity from 55 Years Ago

      One has to go back quite a ways to find evidence of any type of fun on a university campus which is not at the same time extremely controversial. Things appear to have been different back in the early 1960s and it is only by the late 1960s that such things become grimmer and darker and frivolity no longer countenanced. I am pleased the Canadian universities were in the forefront of such frivolousness back then, even if now they are in the vanguard of those places which seek to have their students be, shall we say, rather seminarian. As an example (of the current severity not the earlier frivolity) the university up-the-road recently curtailed and shifted homecoming activities which typically involve a few-hundred people at the football game and perhaps a few more at a block party (a short block, I might add) who threaten to drink beer and fall off roofs. I guess these days that does seem pretty serious. Some perspective is added, however, if one notes that somehow over 100,000 fans arrive at the  stadium in near-by Ann Arbor on most fall weekends and apparently many of them survive.

Canadian College Craze

    Although one can find earlier accounts of bed-pushing, the fad took off in the early part of 1961 and most of the reports relate to Canadian universities where it was thought to have originated. In a full account in The New York Times the reporter indicates that contests involving such things as stuffing phone booths and swallowing gold fish typically originate in the United States and are denounced when imported to Canada “as dilutions of Canadian culture”.

“This latest one, however, is indigenous. It seems to have originated on the Pacific Coast at the University of British Columbia , where students claimed to have established a world record. Since no one had thought of establishing one before, they had the record for a little while. Their claim set off a chain reaction that swept across Western Canada and the East like prairie fire.”

    The beds were either pushed or carried in a relay event with many students taking turns. In most cases the races took place on public roads. In the photo provided below the Western students started in Windsor and raced back to campus. Some sources and accounts are provided below.


(These Ontario Western (sic) university students claim a world record in bed-pushing, latest college craze. Students pushed bed 111 miles to their home university city, London, Ontario. The feat erased previous “record” of 102 miles established by New Brunswick students.” Source: (UPI Telephoto).)

Panty Raids

    There is a phrase you will not have seen for a while and I am rather nervous typing it although the nearest campus is about 6 kilometres away. It is mentioned in a column by a female syndicated correspondent who notes that while the Canadians pushed beds the more traditional male students at the University of Arizona used a telephone pole to break down a sorority door during one such raid and got into a little trouble. She concludes, “If the boys had tried to batter the door down when I was a coed, I would have been too busy putting on my make-up and the coffee pot…” Another American reporter noted that “Canadian coeds are thrilled by the generation of furniture movers available for them to marry”. Such sentiments indicate that things were much different back then. (The use of the word 'indigenous' in the account above would surely be questioned).

Provided here is a good video that shows the Western undergrads in a bed-pushing race. In the preamble it is dark and the students are carrying torches. By the late 1960s such an introduction would presage less innocent events particularly on American campuses. CFPL TELEVISION.
[ Update: This link originally worked and led one to a TV episode from CFPL in London. That program and others are found at the Archives of Ontario. This content is migrating to YouTube. If you go to this website and search for CFPL you may be able to access it and other programs from the period: Good luck.]
Here is a description: "When television station CFPL in London first went on the air on November 28, 1953, it was just the second private broadcaster in Canada. It has now been in operation for over 50 years and has become an integral part of the cultural fabric of the London area, and a vital communications link throughout southwestern Ontario. In June of 2002, CFPL generously donated, to the Archives of Ontario, the entire news output for their first 15 years of operation. This material represents a time capsule that vividly illustrates life in the province half a century ago. Contained in the more than 2700 rolls of film is a rich tapestry of stories ranging from charming public interest events to devastating tragedies: from stories about Mother Nature flexing her muscles to the fortunes of the political figures of the times. It is a significant historical record documenting social and economic changes that profoundly shaped Ontario in the post-World War II era. And, it is a unique portrait of who we were."]


Postscript
     The craze ceases to exist after the early 1960s. One does find the odd mention of bed-pushing which is usually done for a charitable purpose.  There was recently such an account from the University of New Brunswick.   Off-campus one does find two annual events which often feature bed races.

The Kentucky Derby Festival ‘Great Bed Races’ event brings out five-member teams to push hand-built “racing beds” in a contest the week before the ‘real’ one.


In Galveston about this time of year there is a  Victorian holiday festival known as “Dickens on the Strand” and it usually features “Victorian Bed Races." (This looks like a pretty good event and those who market such things for cities should take note. Apparently a visit by the author is not required. Think of just the alliterative possibilities: "Proust and Portland", Kafka in Kansas City"....)

Some sources:


“Bed-Pushing Is Latest Fad Among University Students,”The Globe and Mail, 02 Feb 1961: 3. This article reports that UWO students are about to set out at 3 a.m. to push a bed from Windsor to London - a distance given as 113 miles and they hope to be done by 4 p.m. It also reports that students at UNB had just pushed one from Coldbrook near Saint John to Fredericton a distance of 102 miles. Apparently this is in reaction to undergrads from the University of Waterloo who had just pushed a bed from London to Waterloo (70 miles) in 8 ½ hrs claiming the world record.


“And If They Get Sleepy…” Chicago Daily Tribune, 05 Feb 1961: a3.

This is one of the first U.S. references - just the photo provided above.

“Oh...Bed Pushing,” The Christian Science Monitor, 10 Feb 1961: 14.
This story is recounting the one from the G&M with this additional description “The bed, fitted with red lanterns, front and rear, was propelled by about 50 students in relays.”

On the 19th of February The New York Times picked up the story with this headline: .”If You're a Canadian Student, Bed Pushing Is Newest Craze; Object of Outdoor Winter Sport Now Sweeping Campuses Is to See How Far Team Can Push Hospital Bed”. This was filed out of Ottawa on the 18th and is one of the fullest accounts. Pride and chauvinism show up and there is some chest beating since unlike events involving phone booths or gold fish, this one is healthy and more productive than rioting.

Although most accounts claim that the craze originates in Canada, this report traces the origin to South Africa: “The Hemisphere: The Bed-Pushing Craze,” Time, Feb. 24, 1961. It is clear that such events were universal; one can find  Pathe news film  from Adelaide.
“The latest caper in Canadian colleges is bed pushing. Born at the University of Rhodesia, and perfected—as was last year's college craze, phone-booth stacking —at South Africa's University of Natal, it spread over some sort of Commonwealth bush telegraph. Last week Canadian college students from Nova Scotia to British Columbia were indefatigably mounting beds on wheels and pushing them over highways, prairies and frozen lakes. The current world's record of 1,000 continuous miles is claimed by a team from Ontario's Queen’s University, which kept its Simmons rolling day and night for a week.”
“British Youths Are One Up As Bed-Pushers,” The Globe and Mail , 24 June 1961: 20. "British youth push and carry one up Thorpe Cloud in Derbyshire and the young woman between the sheets only fell out once."

Tuesday 13 December 2016

MIGRATING SNOWBIRDS

As the snow rises and the temperature falls you are probably re-thinking the hasty decision you made not to go to the U.S. given certain recent events there. Still, you want to get warm and travel to other sunny places typically involves planes and usually Pearson Airport and a lot of people in a very small space singing “Yellow Bird”. And the song is usually worse on the flight back and you know you will feel embarrassed about showing up at work with those corn rows you felt obliged to get.  Now you are thinking that perhaps things are not so bad south of the border and there have been no reports of it being clogged by people fleeing north.

     There is the problem, however, of the Hudson Bay Peso and the fact that you will almost need a toonie, rather than a loonie, to purchase just one U.S.$ This means you will have to find a cheap destination, stay in Motel 6’s on the way and dine only in Caucasian Barrels (that is a joke which involves a petition that went viral  and Cracker Barrels being containers for backward white people).  My purpose below is to steer you in the right direction to the low-cost options. If you are a member of CARP, you probably know all this. (For U.S. readers that acronym stands for the “Canadian Association of Retired People” which represents the basket of delusionals who read the publication Zoomer and think 80 is the new 40. It is like the AARP. For you Canadians, AARP stands for “Armed Angry Retired People” or “Angry Armed Retired People”, I can’t remember which.)

   Now you probably know that Manhattan, Kansas is likely to be a cheaper place to visit than the other one. But beyond that, your knowledge of American geography may be a little shaky and you may not know much about regional variations in prices. To use a Canadian example that will clarify things: if you are traveling to Inuvik factor in the price of limes for your G&T since they will cost more than even the ones in a Whole Foods in Vancouver.

   Last summer, the U.S. government introduced “Regional Price Parities” which show how prices vary in different areas. I will provide a recent chart that indicates where the weak loonie will be its strongest. Your top destination should be the one at the bottom of the chart. Oddly enough, Washington, D.C is the most expensive, place, but you probably weren’t heading there anyway.  


Sources:
“What $100 Can Buy, State by State,” Niraj Chokshi, New York Times, Aug. 8, 2016.
For the real data see the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is where I found the chart.

Friday 9 December 2016

The University Library

A Last Stroll For A Lost Cause


     Most of the news emanating from university campuses these days is negative if not foolish, particularly if it issues from the administrative wing rather than the purely academic one. That is why I was pleased to see a recent positive (to me) headline that was poised over text that proved to be (to me) thoroughly depressing. The headline is “82% of Academic Libraries say Reclaiming Space is a Priority”.

    I will try to keep this short since the battle has been lost. I will not repeat all the arguments endlessly made about the aesthetic beauty of books, the wonderful musty smell of the stacks as one browsed through them, etc., etc. The microfilming and microfiching of books and journals meant that less space was required and one can make the argument that with the complete digitization of print material no library space will be needed at all. That is actually an easy argument to make; I prefer to defend the more difficult case, but will not do so here. Over the years the various departmental libraries on large campuses closed and then the branch subject libraries were shuttered and then the large ones that remained moved books to storage facilities and then offered up space for purposes likely to please the ‘customers’ and a university administration always glad for adjunct spaces and instructors. Apparently the only people interested in keeping the books are accountants. I said I would keep this short.

A Herd of Independent Minds
   Given the shrinking importance of libraries and the space needed for them I was pleased by the headline noted above and assumed that finally some librarians had offered the difficult defence of libraries that is required. That is not the case. The 82% are not arguing that the books need to be brought back from storage and that space occupied for various administrative operations be reclaimed for ‘traditional’ library purposes. In fact they are arguing that the space that needs to be reclaimed is the space now reserved for books! Remove the stacks and books and make room for “Makerspaces” and “Hackerspaces”.

    I admit that, to me, the notion that librarians are supporting such a reclamation project is surprising. The fact that the project is being promoted by ProQuest is not. It is a company that morphed from one that originally was involved in the microfilming and microfiching of print material. They are now a major digitizer of books and journals. The company is clearly better at promotion and more adept than librarians.

  I mentioned that the battle has been lost. The university libraries with which I was associated have either disappeared or been diminished in some way or another and the process continues. Recently those leading in the Sciences Library took over space (from the stack area) and marketed it as “THE BIG REVEAL” which,  as you might imagine, had nothing to do with books or journals. For that matter, it had nothing to do with information resources in any form. They created what will soon be called a “Makerspace” and can be congratulated for their prescience or for the fact that they are up-to-date on what passes for wisdom in the journals for librarians. Here is what they were requesting donations for:   We have created a new spatial design with a variety of learning and seating options to create an inviting, inspiring and collaborative learning and research space that will meet the expressed needs of undergraduate and graduate students and faculty.  There are various seating options with new tables and chairs, improved lighting, power to all seating areas and new flooring.
  As a potential donor, I responded: “I understand the request, but why couldn’t the space be in a dorm?”

    I guess I have always wondered why such spaces need to be provided by libraries or located in libraries. In fact, the Social Science Faculty here just created such a “Signature Space for Social Science Students” in their building.  It occupies what was originally a distinctive and attractive “Map Library” which, you guessed it, now utilizes space in the main campus library.

This week it was announced that the main library would house a “Wellness Centre” for stressed-out students although there are other places very close by where such services could be offered. That library has already given away space for activities that could have been located just across the quad, but clearly real estate over there is more valuable. This summer it was suggested that the main library, which is struggling financially, might consider "Nap Pods", like the library at BCIT. Such necessities seem to be universal since it was just reported that, even at such an august institution as the University of Edinburgh, the students have opted for “Library Nap Pods” to comfort those with mental issues. The space is relinquished, I suppose, so librarians can feel wanted and relevant. I just wish they would not be so actively complicit and realize that it is the space that is wanted, not the librarians or the library.

  Over recent years the construct and concept of  the “Library as Place” has become a cottage industry and attracted the attention of most librarians and you can still attend conferences and write papers about what is a rather amorphous proposition. While they were otherwise occupied, the places mostly disappeared and it is likely that by the time they finish writing and conferencing  about “Makerspaces” the libraries will be totally gone.      

    I would rather think about the “Library as Park”, as a ‘greenspace’ where students could still wander and study among growing bushes (journals) and new trees and old ones (books). They might spot something of which they were unaware. Envision an area somewhat different from others with less formica and no fast-food chains. Otherwise all one really needs is space for a few subject specialists to act as purchasing agents to deal with companies like ProQuest, and a few IT people to make sure that what is purchased is always available wherever it may be.

   I learned recently that a well-known remark  by Marshal Foch could be found over a library on the campus of Indiana University, a fact that seemed odd to me. I checked and a librarian there let me know that the autographed comment by Foch was now framed and located in the Indiana Memorial Union. Librarians can still be useful. Various translations of the remark are interesting to consider in this context even if the battle has been lost:

“My left is giving way, my right is falling back; consequently I am ordering a general offensive’ a decisive attack by the center”.

“My center is giving way, my right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!

“My center is yielding, my right is retreating. Excellent situation, I am attacking.”

Some sources:
The  ProQuest case for “Makerspaces”:
A similar “Signature Space” (not in a library):
NAP PODS @ Edinburgh:

Monday 5 December 2016

Property in British Columbia


With This Magazine Subscription You Get a Lot

You are probably aware that British Columbia is a wonderful place and you are certain to have read about the astonishingly high prices for property in the Vancouver area. Therefore you should recognize that the deal offered below is a good one, although if you take it you will have a rather long commute if you wish to go to the Lower Mainland for a night out. 

Before you pack your bags you should know that I lifted this advertisement from The Canadian Magazine, May, 1914 (Vol.43, No.1). Apparently the magazine business was as rough back then as it is now. 

Sunday 30 October 2016

IVORY TOWER LAWS


Image result for ivory tower historical
(For a history of the term "Ivory Tower" see below)
You should know right away that this post has nothing to do with the many, current college crises and you will not find in it information about speech codes, administrative diktats and the other rules and regulations found on our increasingly censorious campuses. You will find instead some archaic and obscure laws that I found in my old promptuary; the kind of arcane stuff I promised, but have not yet delivered. The only reference that I found which relates to these laws says that they are “atrabilious” which means, ill-mannered, peevish, melancholy - there that should entice you to read on.

CRITICAL THEORY

I will not pretend to know much about literary theory, particularly critical theory, nor do I even know why I copied these laws down over 35 years ago. It certainly could not have been the title of the article that attracted me as you will see. I must have at least recognized them as satirical and some below (like #1 & #5 and, of course #35 - Berra’s Law) are accessible even to me. Apart from acknowledging the author’s sense of humour, one has to admire his prescience. Or perhaps her; I have not been able to identify Thersites Minor. Nor have I been able to find out much about the laws which seem not to have been widely shared. In any case, the humanities seem even more political and polemical these days and for that reason I present them here.

“How to Be a Newer Critic: Metonymic Mumblings or a Generative Lexicon of Apposite Apothegms”, Thersites Minor, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 94, No.5, Comparative Literature, 1979, pp..1188-1198.

The first paragraph sets the tone:
“CRITICAL GAMESMANSHIP: To write the NEWER or HIGHER
CRITICISM it is not so much a matter of pursuing an argument or
exploring a text as invoking the right WORDS. One's critical posture is
almost immediately revealed by the choice of sanctified words and familiar
constellations of phrases. Schools and charters of critical privilege are,
however, frequently dissolved or reorganized, so it is crucial that the as-
piring critic not be caught on the ledge of yesterday's discarded lexicon.
The following basic Do-It-Yourself Kit should suffice to get any newly
licensed critic into the game.

This one shows you that the tone is consistent and it even has Canadian content:
Franchising or the Critical Crock of Gold
Aspiring Newer Critics who do not have the time or energy to develop
their own systems should consider buying into the industry through a
franchising or licensee option. Menus tend to be limited in variety, but the
key to success lies in a careful analysis of the territory, recognition adver-
tising, and volume turn-over. Toronto marketers are still pushing Colonel
Northrop's Fryed Products….”


THE LAWS:



Laws without Order or the Methods of Our Madness
(Tractatus Heautontimoroumenos)  
Although Laws are obviously made to be evaded, the following minimal  collection of principles governing the critical jungle may be of some help to  the aspiring Newer Critic about to set off on the first safari:
1. FIRST  LAW OF RELATIVITY:  Earlier schools of criticism are trivial  (i.e., ridiculous); later schools are deliberately opaque  (i.e., infuriating).
2.  THE  AXIOM  OF  BEGINNINGS:  The  title of a critical essay must  never reveal the subject under discussion.
3.  PASCAL'S PRINCIPLE  OF EXPANSION:  Long essays are written by  critics who do not have time to write short ones.
4.  LAW OF CONSERVATION  OF ENNUI:  The  amount of boredom in  a system increases proportionately to the input of semicolons.
5.  THE  LINGUISTIC  LEMMA: Any critic with a foreign accent (spoken or written) has a  head  start; this lead  increases geometrically with multiple accents.
6.  THE  SECOND  LAW OF  HIGHER  CRITICISM:  Abstraction drives out application; examples are the stigmata of a trivial mind.
7.  MACKSEY'S  MORDANT  MAXIM:  Scientists aspire to write like critics; critics strive to write like scientists.
8.  THE  MAXIMAL  COROLLARY:  Formalization is the opium of the insecure.
9.  THE  PISGAH  PRINCIPLE:  Promise more in your footnotes than you can deliver in your text.
10. LACAN'S  DOUBLE  LEMMA:  Cover your traces; retrodict your references. The  less the reader sees, the more passionately he believes.
11.  MURPHY'S  QUASI-MAXIM:  The  critic might learn from the mathematician the value of the holes in the cheese, the substance of the line of thought to be painfully reconstructed from the relicts of what the critic deigns to print.
12. THE  OCCULT  RAZOR:  In the interpretation of literary texts the  most complex and cumbersome assumption is to be preferred; entities may be multiplied outrageously. (Cf. MESSERKLINGE'S  SECTION)
13. PNIN'S  PARADOX:  Teachers make the best critics, since they have long since stopped listening to themselves.
14.  HUMBERT'S  PARADIGM:  All autogenic criticism seeks either a point of departure (point de d~part) or a point of arrival (point d'arrivee); the trouble is usually in the middle (Mittelpunkt).
15. THE  CRUX  FIDELIS  GAMBIT:  If the textual crux does not exist, it is necessary for the critic to invent it.
16. THE  IRON  LAW OF META-COMMUNICATION:  Respect by fellow critics is in inverse ratio to comprehension.
17. THE  COMMUNICATION  COROLLARY:  Professional success is achieved when fellow critics are afraid to admit this.
18. THE  EXHAUSTION  THEOREM:  When a critical system can produce certifiable disciples, its day is over.
19. THE  EXHAUSTION  COROLLARY:  As soon as -ism is appended to the system, the game is out of the Big Leagues.
20.  THE  IMMUTABLE  LAW OF THE  MARKET  PLACE:  The last critical audience to decline is the export market.
21.  THE  CONGESTION  THEOREM:  Critical production rises in direct proportion to the formation of tenure committees.
22.  THE  TAXONOMIC  AXIOM:  The only safe prefix for a meta-critic  is post-.
23.  THE  PATTER  PRINCIPLE:  In a closed critical system, every critic tends to rise to the level of incomprehensibility.
24.  THE  MORTAL  MAXIM:  Nothing is more deadly to a critical career than too many ideas.
25. THE PLATO PRECEPT: Poets are an embarrassment to critics and
should be banished from the Republic.
26. THE BLOOM/HARTMAN COROLLARY: Failing this exclusion,
critics should pretend to be poets.
27. THE TRISTRAM SHANDY PRINCIPLE: Critics of genius contrive
to have the reader do the work of the author.
28. THE PIERRE MENARD SYNDROME: Careers have been made by
scrupulous repetition in implausible times and contexts.
29. THE MAFIOSO MAXIM: It is better to be attacked by an Insider
than to be praised by an Outsider.
30. THE LOUIS NAPOLEON PRINCIPLE: All great events in critical
history occur twice-first as outrage and second as textbooks. (Hegel
somewhere failed to describe this as the inevitable vector from seces-
sion to parody.)
31. THE EXCESSIVE THEOREM: Every major literary text is semper
ubique at least 85% smarter than its current critic; major critical
theories and methodological resources exist to protect the critic from
this reality.
32. THE OSCAR AMENDMENT: Are Hamlet's critics all made, or only
pretending to be so?
33. THE EPIMENIDES PARADOX: This text does not communicate.
34. THE CRITICAL INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM: All consistent
axiomatic formulations of critical theory (recursive interpretation
systems) include undecidable propositions; therefore, critical readings
are more often true than proved-and no fixed system of interpreta-
tion can adequately represent the complexity of the text interpreted.
35. BERRA'S LAW: You can observe a lot by just watching.
36. THE PRECEPT OF CRITICAL EXTREMITY: When all else fails,
read the text.

[In the next number of MLN there is a brief note indicating that Thersites was not pleased with the editorial abridgement of his article and two more laws are added].

SAYRE’S LAW

All of the above laws can be subsumed under this one. I am sure you will recognize it, although you may not have known the formal name.  The original version: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." That is why academic politics are so bitter."
Or:
"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

Source: For a history of the term "Ivory Tower" see: "The Ivory Tower: The History of a Figure of
Speech and its Cultural Uses," Steven Shapin, British Journal of the History of Science, Vol. 45, No.1, March 2012.