The Death of Dr. Foth

 Allan Fotheringham (August 31, 1932 - August 19, 2020)

  "The wicked wit of the West", "the greatest cobweb blower and guff remover in Canadian journalism" has moved on. But, the "non-partisan eviscerator of political hypocrisy and pomposity" can still make us laugh. Here are a few funny items from the many pieces and obits.

He referred to Joe Clark as "Jurassic Clark" who booked a hall "that sleeps 300." Another Prime Minister you will be able to identify is "the jaw that walks like a man." 

"The Liberals (or Gliberals) were the Natural Governing Party, triumphing over the Regressive Convertibles and the Few Democrats. The Prime Minister’s official residence became “24 Nosex Drive,” which was in Ottawa, also known as Coma City, or “Ennui-on-the-Rideau,” or “Sparta on the Tundra,” or “yesterday’s city tomorrow,” or “bland on the outside, comatose on the inside.” If possible, Fotheringham was less kind about Toronto."

"The used-car salesman wardrobe of white tie, white belt and white shoes became “the full Nanaimo.” The CBC was the Holy Mother Corp, or Canadian Broadcorping Castration, while Alberta premier Ralph Klein was “a former TV reporter who resembles a badly-dressed bowling ball.” The oil barons of Calgary were the “blue-eyed sheiks of Saudi Alberta.”

"At his best, he huffed a great gust of post-’60s irreverence, offering a blast of insouciance aimed at the pompous denizens of Parliament and the ink-stained courtiers of the Press Gallery who delivered ponderous pronouncements in galleys of grey ink."

Sources:

  The quotes above are from: 

"Allan Fotheringham Was Loved, Revered and Loathed but Never Ignored:

The Maclean's Icon Who Shook Canadian Politics and Media With a Blast of Post-'60s Insouciance Has Died. He defined acerbic wit, but couldn't hide how deeply he cared about his country," Tom Hawthorn, Maclean's, Aug. 19, 2020. See also: Paul Wells, "Unlocking the Mystery of Dr. Foth, Maclean's , Aug. 19, 2020.

"A Legendary Columnist With Chilliwack Ties, Allan Fotheringham Passes Away at Age 87: Fotheringham Moved to Chilliwack at 10 years old and Had His First Byline in the Chilliwack Progress, Eric Wells, Chilliwack Progress, Aug. 23, 2020.

"Dr. Foth Was A Force in Canadian Journalism: Loved and Feared Columnist Allan Fotheringham Passes at 87," Lorrie Goldstein, Owen Sound Sun Times, Aug. 20, 2020. 

And you can still read him. Two of his books are pictured above. 

The Bonus:

This all reminded me of another Allan: Allan Lamport - a former Mayor of Toronto. He was funny - unintentionally so. He was known as "Metro's Goldwyn Mayor" because he was like Sam Goldwyn, another manufacturer of malapropisms (see the Wikipedia entry).

Here are some of them:

" I deny the allegations and I defy the alligators". 

" Let's jump off that bridge when we come to it". 

" If somebody's gonna stab me in the back, I wanna be there". 

"Did she have a Shakespearean section?" 

"It's like pushing a car uphill with a rope". 

"It's not only unique, it's different" 

"I sold my house and moved into a pandemonium". 

For more see: "Not Only Mayor of Toronto, He Was Toronto," Toronto Star, Nov.20, 1999.

Pulling The Trigger

 The Australian Solution

   You will all know what it means to be "triggered". Far fewer of you will know that generally I have not been sympathetic and supportive of such a notion.  The removal of authors from curricula, the expurgation of practically anything from our past which is now found to be objectionable and the elimination of names and statues from the land are actions that need to be  more thoroughly debated. That is unlikely to happen. The Australians, however, have come up with a method for accommodation which appears to have been accepted, at least for items from the printed past.

TROVE

  The Australians are far ahead of us when it comes to the digitization of their past. If you go to TROVE you can "explore all things Australian" and you can do so for free. Among the categories of items accessible, one will find, newspapers, magazines, books and diaries. It is more than likely the case that one will encounter, among the publications produced by the convict colonizers, something that will offend. And, it is even more than likely that the original inhabitants of that continent were not referred to early on as the "indigenous people" and that the newspapers of the day were full of terms, ideas, etc. about them that are no longer acceptable.

   The solution provided allows for a disclaimer to be attached to items which are culturally offensive. That is, a warning is provided to those who might be "triggered".  Here it is:

CULTURAL ADVICE

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that Trove contains images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, websites, film, audio recordings or printed material.

Some material contains terms that reflect authors’ views, or those of the period in which the item was written or recorded, but may not be considered appropriate today. These views are not necessarily the views of the National Library of Australia or Trove Partners. While the information may not reflect current understanding, it is provided in an historical context.

By selecting "Show cultural advice", please be advised that you will continue to receive subsequent cultural advice notices before viewing materials on Trove that may be considered culturally sensitive. You can opt out at any time.

  I would think the Torres Strait Islander people are tough and probably do not need this "Cultural Safety Alert". But, if such a disclaimer is all that is needed to allow the rest of us to access the unexpurgated past, it is fine with me.

Sources:

   The basic point of entry for TROVE. You will find it to be fascinating. There are, for example, full text newspapers ranging from Perth to Sydney and including places in between - The Kalgoorlie Miner, The Geelong Advertiser, etc.

   For all the information about the disclaimer see: Cultural Safety For First Australians. 

   Here is some recent information from: "National Library Updates Its Treasure TROVE," Maeve Bannister, Canberra Times, June 27, 2020.

Canberrans will now have access to a new and improved treasure trove of information as the National Library launched its new program on Friday.

More than 3000 Australians contributed to a new and improved Trove system, which was unveiled after four years of work.

The federal government announced a further $8 million for the project to support its ongoing development over the next two years, in addition to the $16 million already provided.

Trove may be just 10 years old, but it houses billions of historical resources, dating back hundreds of years.

The National Library's collaboration with partner institutions allowed Trove to provide its collections of digitised newspapers, books, magazines, oral history, maps and images.

All of this is free to search on Trove from anywhere in the world, and one third of Trove visitors are from outside Australia.

Director-General Dr Marie-Louise Ayres said she was particularly proud of how the team collaborated with a diverse range of communities throughout the project.

"The project has taken thousands of people who've told us how they feel about Trove and how they use it, and it's taken incredibly generous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who engaged with us about how Trove can help them to connect to their families, to their culture, to their land and to their language," she said.

Dr Ayres said it was important for the library to engage with the people who used and loved the old Trove for the past 10 years, and the project team held workshops and webinars with users all over Australia to ensure the final product would meet their needs.

The Bonus:

   You can even find information about London, Ontario. It is reported in The World's News (Sydney, NSW) that a motorist hit two bears just outside the town limits - Saturday Oct. 9, 1926, p.31.

More Contrarian News for Old Timers (OATS2)

The News is Not Good

   
   This is the second post in a series related to Old Age Themes. Contrary to everything you read elsewhere, you will learn here that old age is not great. 

Drabble on Dying

   Additional examples in support of my belief that decrepitude is depressing is found in this book by Margaret Drabble. The main character, Fran Stubbs, is a septuagenarian who inspects old age homes so she has a couple of good reasons to be suspicious of the claims about the good things to be found in "Old Crockdom". 

   The quotations below are all from the Canongate Books 2017 edition of The Dark Flood Rises, if you wish to see if I am being honest. By the way, I enjoyed the book as did the reviewer who wrote this:

"Ageing and dying in style...Margaret Drabble’s sharply drawn characters look back on lives lived and forwards to achieving a good death.” Observer.

Pp. 29-30 

“She cannot help but see a lifespan as a journey, indeed as a pilgrimage. This isn’t fashionable these days, but it’s her way of seeing. A life has a destination, an ending, a last saying. She is perplexed and exercised by the way that now, in the twenty-first century, we seem to be inventing innumerable ways of postponing the sense of arrival, the sense of arriving at a proper ending. Her inspections of evolving models or residential care and care homes for the elderly have made her aware of the infinitely clever and complex and inhumane delays and devices we create to avoid and deny death, to avoid fulfilling our destiny and arriving at our destination. And the result, in so many cases, has been that we arrive there not in good spirits, as we say our last farewells and greet the afterlife, but senseless, incontinent, demented and medicated into amnesia, aphasia, indignity. Old fools who didn’t have the courage to have that last whisky and set their bedding on fire with a last cigarette.”

P.44.

“We can all expect to live longer, but it’s recently been claimed that the majority of us can expect to spend the last six years of our prolonged lives suffering from a serious illness, in some form of pain and ill health.”

   Fran found this statistic, true or false, infuriating. Longevity has fucked up our pensions, our work-life balance, our health services, our housing, our happiness. It’s fucked up old age itself.”

Pp.50-1.

“There just aren’t enough younger people around these days to infuse the energy into the elderly. The feeble, as never before in society, in history, are outweighing the hale. The balance is wrong. The shape of the bell curve is a disaster. It’s a dystopian science fiction scenario, a disaster movie.”

The hunter-gatherers wouldn’t have let themselves get into this kind of predicament. They abandoned the elderly, or drowned them, or clubbed them to death, or exposed them on snowy mountainsides. They kept on the move.”

Bonus Information:

   Drabble is the sister of A..S. Byatt the novelist, and the wife of Michael Holroyd, the biographer of Lytton Strachey and Augustus John, among others. If Drabble and Holroyd were interviewed via ZOOM during this pandemic, you would find the following author well represented on their extensive bookshelves.

"We are in the first-floor drawing room of Sir Michael Holroyd's enormous house in north Kensington. Drabble used to have a home in Hampstead and continued to live in it for several years after they married, but when Holroyd was very ill with cancer, in 2013, she finally moved in with him and sold her home, which she says she still misses. They also have a house in Somerset, near Porlock, where she goes to write. The north Kensington house is shabby chic (perhaps more shabby than chic), with some very good paintings — Augustus John, Gwen John and a portrait of Lytton Strachey by Dora Carrington — but hung seemingly at random....

But what really surprised me were the bookshelves — proper built-in, wall-to-wall bookshelves, as you'd expect from two famous authors, but containing not the complete works of Holroyd and Drabble, but the complete works of Lee Child. Lee Child ? I squawked. "Oh yes, haven't you read them? They're totally gripping," Drabble says equably.

"I think I was recommended them by Antonia Fraser, who herself is a detective writer, and I just read my way through the entire lot. I read them on the Kindle and persuaded Michael into them when he was ill, but of course he can't read a Kindle so we had to buy them twice over."

Source: 

"I Absolutely Love the Premier Inn: I Just Felt Completely Free and Happy There," Lynn Barber, The Sunday Times, Dec. 11, 2016.

   For the first post in this series see: Contrarian News For Old Codgers (OATS1)

Post Script:

   Those of you who are depressed by all this, will feel better when you consider that Drabble was born in 1939 and Holroyd in 1935. 

Lonely in London c.1920

To take us away from current events and covid, here is an item from 100 years ago. In keeping with the times, however, it does contain Black content. The following letter is found in the Richmond Planet (VA) on, suitably enough, Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 1920. I do not know if the gentleman got what he wanted.

The Bonus Stuff

  This lonely heart letter reminded me of the advertisements one sees at the end of various literary periodicals. Mind you, I have often read them, but never placed one. I have also often wondered if the person appearing in many of them could be really that "strikingly beautiful" and "fantastically successful" and enjoy, that much, walking in the spring rain, while having to keep the copy of Proust dry for later bed time reading. 

   Lucky for you, I recalled having a few notes about personal ads and can offer them as your bonus for today. If you are sociologically inclined, perhaps you can use them to compare the approach of Mr. Cromell, one hundred years ago,  to those who are eagerly seeking companionship today.

   I first checked to see if the ads still appear. They do. Perhaps literary types are more likely to prefer the print versions rather than Internet dating sites, since it is easier to type "very handsome" than it is to appear so.  I just plucked these three from a recent issue of The New York Review of Books. I have left out the contact information, lest you be tempted to get in touch.

WIDOWED MARGRAVINE seeks respite from coterie of sycophants. Enclose your most prurient poem.

CURLY-HAIRED LATE-20S FEMALE writer seeks attractive, witty intellectual for Covid-safe gourmet dinner parties, champagne, hot baths, too-long runs. Must have finished Infinite Jest.

ARE YOU UP FOR A 19TH-CENTURY COURTSHIP? Miami widow in Covid lockdown yearns for male, email, and anything that can be done six feet apart.

   I had to look up "margravine" and it is an interesting word. She is also likely interesting, but I am not sure the younger, curly-haired one is worth the labour required to read Infinite Jest. As for the Miami widow, one wonders if the distance will be reduced once Covid is gone.

   Apart from comparing historical and modern approaches to romance seeking one also needs to consider geographical differences. Are the ads in The London Review of Books different from those in The New York Review of Books? You be the judge. 

   Here are some samples from The London Review of Books.  We will begin with a few simple ones and again, the contact information is censored for your benefit.

I am not an accountant.

Had an accident that wasn’t your fault. My god I love you. Junior lawyer (M62) seeks winnable case/easy sex.

“Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53 seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.”

Gynotikolobomassophile (M43) seeks neanimorphic F to 60 to share euneirophrenia. Must enjoy pissing off librarians (and be able to provide the correct term for same.)

You’re a brunette, 6’, long legs, 25-30, intelligent, articulate and drop-dead gorgeous. I, on the other hand, am 4’10”, have the looks of Herve Villechaize and carry an odour of wheat. No returns and no refunds. 

You are going to be alone this Christmas. That’s because nobody likes you. I, however, will provide you with a basic meal and some pleasant company on the understanding that you do not criticize my collection of antique medical implements. Tidy man, 51, size 9 slipper. 

67-year old disaffiliated flaneur picking my toothless way through the urban sprawl, self-destructive, sliding toward pathos, jacked up on Viagra and on the lookout for a contortionist who plays the trumpet.

146 is not only my IQ, but also my waist size in centimetres. Lecturer in advanced maths, and Mensa bore, 51. Bit of a porker but willing to low-carb for at least a fortnight for the right woman (pastry chef and trigonometry fetishist to 50). 

   I had to look up those multisyllabic words in the one entry, but did not get around to finding the word for those who enjoy pissing off librarians. It is unfortunate that I cannot use the word "neanimorphic"  but hope you can.

Some Sources:

   I confess that I did not take the LRB examples directly from the journal, but from a book about them: They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads From the London Review of Books, David Rose. Here are some of the chapter headings: 

Love is Strange - Wait Till You See My Feet.

I’ve Divorced Better Men Than You.

Last Time I Had This Much Fun, I Was On Forty Tablets a Day

Vodka, Canasta, Evenings In and Cold, Cold Revenge

My Mind is a Globe of Excitement

Failure! Pah! I Invented the Word.

Apparently the ads are also covered in: London Review of Books: An Incomplete History which is published by the LRB.

   Serious researchers will appreciate the work of a serious academic who studied political relationships before turning to personal ones. 

   "The proliferation of dating websites, printed personals, and self-help relationship books reflects the new ways Americans seek close, personal relationships. Exposed to changing and often conflicting values, trends, and fashions---disseminated by popular culture, advertising, and assorted "experts"---Americans face uncertainties about the best ways to meet important emotional and social needs. How do we establish lasting and intimate personal relationships, including marriage? --

In Extravagant Expectations Paul Hollander investigates how Americans today pursue romantic relationships, with special reference to the advantages and drawbacks of Internet dating compared to connections made in school, college, and the workplace. By analyzing printed personals, dating websites, and advice offered by pop psychology books, he examines the qualities that people seek in a partner and also assesses the influence of the remaining conventional ideas of romantic love. Hollander suggests that notions of romantic love have changed due to conflicting values and expectations and the impact of pragmatic considerations. Individualism, high expectations, social and geographic mobility, changing sex roles, and the American national character all play a part in this fascinating and finally sobering exploration of the efforts of men and women to find love and meaning in life. --Book Jacket.

  And finally: 

 

What do women look for in a man? And what do men look for in a woman? And how and why has this changed over the centuries? Every week thousands of people advertise for love either in newspapers, magazines or online. But if you think this is a modern phenomenon, think again - the ads have been running for over three hundred years. From the first ad in 1695 from a young gentleman who 'would willingly Match himself to some Good Young Gentlewoman, that has a Fortune of GBP3000 or thereabouts' to the GSOH, WLTM and online dating of more recent years, each ad is a snapshot of its age. The result is a startling history of sex, marriage and society over three centuries - hilarious and heartbreaking by turn.

Post Script:

   

   If you are now thinking about entering the romance market, you will likely be mystified by all of the initialisms. You can probably figure out M and F and I suppose there are now many other initials for all the others who are not M of F. To find out what WLTM means here is a family-friendly list - Online Personal Ads & Dating Chat Abbreviations. 

  I was out in British Columbia a while back and was glad to see that The Georgia Straight survives.  The abbreviations in personal ads in such publications can now be rather puzzling. For samples, see Craiglist which puts out an Acronym List For All You Newbies. 

For The Birds

       I have a new e-bike which allows me to roam farther with less effort. Apart from the bike paths along the Thames, the campuses of Western and the Affiliated University Colleges provide good places to ride, particularly during the pandemic.

   Although I essentially resided on the Western campus for years, I can't say that I ever explored the areas on the west side of Western Road over where the Saugeen-Maitland and Bayfield Halls are located. Near them, down behind the Support-Services Building is where I found the building pictured above. It is the home of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR). 

 Sparrows in a Coal Mine

   

   
   The campus is quiet and there are not many people around. Still, there is some activity and research continues to be done. Earlier this month there was an interesting article in Western News about a sparrow study conducted at the AFAR. The facility is a unique one where various climate conditions can be simulated. In this case, the sparrows were subjected to 'storms' in an attempt to determine how they may adjust to the changing climate. (For you bird lovers: Perhaps 'subjected to' sounds a little too severe; it is pointed out that the sparrows were not subjected to a great deal of suffering.)

   After discovering the AFAR and reading about the sparrow study, I did a bit more research. It is clear that Western is lucky to have such a facility and the very talented researchers working within it. Although there are not many students on campus, one hopes they read the article from afar or learn more about it upon returning. 

Sources:

   The article about the study is done by Debora Van Brenk, "Sparrows' Storm Stress a Harbinger of Climate-Change Impact," Western News, August 7, 2020.

   The study was conducted by Andrea Boyer and Scott A. Macdougall-Shackleton. See:

"High Rates of Exposure to Simulated Winter Storm Cues Negatively Affect White-Throated Sparrow Energy Reserves," Front. Ecol. Evol., July 14, 2020.

FROM AFAR - see these very useful links:

Home Page - https://birds.uwo.ca/index.html

Check out the Facilities - https://birds.uwo.ca/facilities/index.html (be sure to look at the FLIER - Field Laboratory for Integrative Ecological Research).

AFAR is a world-class facility at the University of Western Ontario for interdisciplinary studies of bird physiology, neurobiology and behaviour.

Researchers at AFAR come together from a variety of disciplines to explore how birds work, and how they respond to their environment. 

AFAR is home to the world’s first hypobaric climatic wind tunnel for bird flight - allowing research into the physiology and fluid dynamics of bird flight in high altitude conditions.  In combination with specialized indoor and outdoor holding rooms and cutting edge experimental and analytical facilities, AFAR is a leading centre for the study of avian neurobiology, physiology and behaviour.

There have been some articles in the LFP. See, for example, this earlier study about sparrows and fear: John Miner, "Being a Sparrow is No Cakewalk," LFP, Dec. 9, 2011. 

For an early article about the funding of the AFAR see: "McGuinty Government Supports Cutting-Edge Research," Canada Newswire, April 24, 2007.

Information about the various activities at the AFAR is readily found in academic journals.

Bonus Information:

   The expression "For the Birds" is generally a negative one and the origin of it is found in this book. My use of it is more positive, in that I am suggesting that this research is done for the benefit of the birds (and the rest of us). 

"According to Robert Claiborne in Loose Cannons and Red Herrings, it refers to city streets as they were before cars. "When I was a youngster on the streets of New York, one could both see and smell the emissions of horse-drawn wagons. Since there was no way of controlling these emissions, they, or the undigested oats in them, served to nourish a large population of English sparrows. If you say something's for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."

Chimney Swift Factoids

  I just received an email (Aug.15) from the folks at Nature London. Here is what they had to say about the Swift situation here in London: 

Chimney Swifts Take Flight

 For Chimney Swifts, fall migration is now in full swing and Nature London volunteers are tracking their numbers. We encourage club members to visit a swift chimney and enjoy the spectacle of large numbers of twittering, swirling swifts descending into a chimney.  Most swift entries occur between 10 mins before sunset and 20 mins after. Find a safe public place where you can view the swifts from your car or lawn chair.  Enjoy!  On August 4, 402 swifts entered 13 chimneys for the night; on August 11, the total was 542.  On August 11, three London chimneys held more than 100 swifts each.

         Smith Fruit: 22 Maitland Street (south end of street near the river)

         Huron College, O’Neil/Ridley Hall: 1349 Western Rd (big octagonal chimney, best seen from west/rear of building)

         Old Hunt’s flour mill behind Nova Craft Canoe: 471 Nightingale Ave(east London near old Kellogg’s plant)

Since swifts sometimes switch roost chimneys, visit soon while these chimneys are still their favourites.  For more information about Swifts and Nature London’s program click the link:  http://www.naturelondon.com/chimney-swifts-resources/

Contrarian News For Old Codgers (OATS1)

The News Is Not Good

   

   I hate to be the bearer of bad news, since there is enough of it, but being contrarian I must counter all the good news about old age that is now being published. "Fake News" must be combatted even when we would like to believe it. That positive propaganda about the elderly would be produced in great quantities was predicted by the prescient Russell Baker over 30 years ago in an article in the New York Times which began like this:

“We will soon be inundated with nonsense about how wonderful it is to be old. The baby-boom generation now becoming long in the tooth, thick in the middle and sparse on the top will demand it.”

  He refers to the land we inhabit as "Old Crockdom".  The article prompted this letter:

Russell Baker suggests that ''we will soon be inundated with nonsense'' as more and more of my fellow boomers get gray and ''long in the tooth'' and endure other calamities of aging too painful for me to repeat. Yet this graying, long-haired, reading-glassed boomer ''kid'' wonders if some benevolent astigmatism isn't keeping Mr. Baker from seeing the bit of dismal nonsense that is already in his hands: our age demanded -- and got -- large-print $20 bills. With laser surgery available to restore eyesight and erase expression lines, does Mr. Baker really expect ''this vast army of demanders'' to go kindly without as it slouches toward Old Crockdom?

   The trend continues into this century and was commented upon in a review of Michael Kinsley's book, Old Age: A Beginner's Guide. The reviewer notes that “Kinsley is intent on being wryly realistic about coping with illness and the terminal prospects ahead.” [He suffers from Parkinson's]. He continues:

“Longevity breeds literature. As people (including writers) live longer thanks to medical advances, we can expect many more books contemplating the vicissitudes of aging, illness and dying. These topics, previously thought uncommercial, not to mention unsexy, have been eloquently explored recently by Diana Athill (“Somewhere Towards the End”), Roger Angell (“This Old Man”) and Christopher Hitchens (“Mortality”), among others. Now that the baby boom generation, defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, “enter life’s last chapter,” Michael Kinsley writes, “there is going to be a tsunami of books about health issues by every boomer journalist who has any, which ultimately will be all of them.” Hoping to scoop the others, he has written “Old Age,” a short, witty “beginner’s guide,” with an appropriate blend of sincerity and opportunism...."

He is equally sardonic on the prospect of losing one’s marbles. “Of the 79 million boomers, 28 million are expected to develop Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. . . . That adds up to about 35 percent, or one out of three.” Lest the vain ones think they can better their odds by living right, he adds: “They are jogging every day but will get Alzheimer’s anyway.” 

   Perhaps that is enough bad news for now. 

Sources: 

   The review of the Kinsley book is from "Michael Kinsley’s ‘Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide’, Phillip Lopate NYT, April 18, 2016.

   I did not write down the complete information for the Russell Baker article, but you will find it in the New York Times on Nov. 20, 1988.

   Back when Mr. Baker turned 91, I wrote about it and within that piece you will find an eloquent description of his visit to see his mother in a nursing home. See Russell Baker's Birthday.   He died last year. See: "Russell Baker (Aug.14, 1925 - Jan. 21, 2019).

About OATS1

OATS is my acronym for "Old Age Themes" and I intend for this to be a series about the realities of the aging process. If you really wish to believe that old age is fantastic you might want to avoid any posts containing OATS.

Bonus Information:

   You happy codgers who read this far by mistake, need not read further. If you are going to live well into the three digits you will need all the money you have. If you have a more realistic view and are wondering what to do with all the money you have and the additional bit you just received from the Canadian government, and probably don't deserve, then follow Michael Kinsley's suggestion and give it back. The reviewer obviously does not think that is such a good idea:

   

“He [Kinsley] almost ruins it all with a conclusion recommending that the boomers redeem themselves with a final sacrifice — wiping out the nation’s debt. By having the money they leave behind sufficiently taxed when they die, he argues, they could leave a legacy that parallels the Greatest Generation’s achievement in World War II. “Boomers, those lazy, self-indulgent bums, those drugged-out draft dodgers, those mincing flower-power hippies who morphed into Wall Street greedheads with nothing left of their culture of peace and love except a paisley tie: We may not have the opportunity to save the world like our predecessors did, but we can save the American economy from the mess our predecessors are leaving.” Backtracking a bit from this cockamamie scheme, he nevertheless takes it seriously enough to devote the whole last chapter to it. The real mistake, economic realities aside, is to have abandoned the more charmingly intimate, skeptical persona he had so meticulously built up beforehand, trading it in for a pundit’s robes.”

Periodical Ramblings (9)

Arizona Highways

   I post occasionally about magazines and journals and the last one was about a genre of periodicals devoted to individuals (see Single Author Journals). That I would now choose to write about what would seem to be such a pedestrian publication may seem odd, but I am sure you are familiar with Arizona Highways. Although I grew up on the East Coast, I recall seeing a copy in the last century, probably in the office of my dentist or some other waiting room. It circulated widely and still does in this century. 

   There is no need for me to write much about it since so many others have. Plus, the publication is perhaps best known for the paintings, photographs and other illustrations contained within it and it will be more useful to simply direct you to them. The one above is of Monument Valley, which you probably remember well from the many Westerns filmed there. Who knew that it snowed there? When John Wayne first visited he supposedly said, "So this is where God put the West!"

(Although John Wayne is now persona non grata, I chose not to erase his quote).

   To see more photographs go to the Arizona Highways website. You will find a blog there as well and you can do some shopping. The Grand Canyon calendars look beautiful and you can get some postcards and pretend you have been there. 

 The Bonus Information:

   Although it is not obvious from the Arizona Highways website, you can access most of the beautiful issues through the Arizona Memory Project which contains  the Collections pictured above. Among them you will find digitized issues of Arizona Highways. I will give no further directions since you really should subscribe to the magazine.

   The Arizona Memory Project (AMP)

provides access to the wealth of primary sources in Arizona archives, museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions. Visitors to the site will find some of the best examples of government documents, photographs, maps, and multimedia that chronicle Arizona's past and present.

   I wish Ontario had such an archival project in place.

Sources:

  There have been anniversary issues in the publication which provide the information you need. I picked up the "Special 90th Anniversary Issue: A Look Back at Our First Nine Decades" while in Arizona.  It is the April 2015 issue and you can find the digitized version on the AMP. 

For the 95th anniversary see this ADOT article: "Arizona Highways Magazine Celebrates 95 Years With Special Issue" which looks at the landscape photography over the years. 

There is even an article in the Globe and Mail. See: "Arizona Magazine Published 60 Years," Edwin McDowell, Sept. 28, 1985. 

A more recent piece is found here: "Praising Arizona," by Kyle Paoletta, Columbia Journalism Review, June 20, 2020.

Today, Highways is the most beloved publication in Arizona. It has become an institution in a state too young to have many, as likely to be cited by historians and policymakers as any newspaper. For residents, the magazine is a talisman of their state’s particular allure. I’ve seen bundles of meticulously maintained back issues at a library sale in Flagstaff and vintage covers framed on the walls of an Airbnb in Phoenix. The reverence Arizonans have for the magazine is rooted in its upward trajectory over the course of the twentieth century, one that matches the rise in stature of the state itself from an obscure wasteland to a place of universally acknowledged natural splendor and cultural vibrancy. Robert Stieve, the current editor of Highways, calls it an “anomaly.” No other state-operated tourism magazine has reached the same heights of national influence, nor spawned as many imitators.

 

   

The Cannonball Run

During COVID

  The rain continues so I will continue posting. Some people do far more adventurous things. Like get a highly modified vehicle and hop in it in New York and see how fast they can get to California. Realizing that traffic is down considerably during this time of Covid, a few fellows decided to go for the record recently and did break it. The former record holders can surely argue that an asterisk needs to be placed next to the new one since the holders of the current one had an unfair advantage. 

   The new record is contained in the image above. It took the racers less than 26 hours to travel across the continent since their average speed was 108(MPH)/ 174(KPH).

   I recently posted about the earlier, pre-covid record which is noted above and was taken from the GPS device on the dashboard of the car. It took those fellows over 27 hours, even though they only stopped for 22 minutes.

Sources:

   See my earlier post which also provides information about the cross-continental record by bicycle - Racing Across America. 

   There are many articles about the very illegal race, but start with the Wikipedia entry for 

Cannonball Run Challenge. 

P.S.

   Clearly this is one of those "Don't Try This At Home" events. For the answer to the question you likely want to ask me, see: "Why Are We Glorifying Cannonball Runs, the Illegal Pastime of Thrill-Seeking Drivers?", Petrina Gentile, The Globe and Mail, July 21, 2020.

Slavery

  It is still raining and I will move from the safe subject of cycling to the much more controversial one of slavery. This post, should not be controversial, however, since I will state clearly that, I am against it. 

   There have been many articles about slavery recently, generally in relation to statues. I will not talk about statue removal, yet again, but I will point you to two articles which suggest that the number of problematic statues is likely much larger than you would think and not all of them are carved in white marble. The point is, that not all slavers were white Americans or Englishmen. 

   The first article is a syndicated one by Gwynne Dyer which appeared in many papers on July 30, 2020. Here is how it begins and in it he is attempting to make the point that slavery was not restricted to the American south:

“Assessing the people of America’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains.”

That might seem to be the line taken by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas last week in his opinion piece for the New York Times. It caused great outrage, the opinion editor had to resign, and Cotton was roundly abused for “defending slavery.....”

The point is that I [Dyer] changed one word in that quote, and it wasn’t Cotton who said it. It was Nigerian journalist and novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, and what she actually said, in an opinion piece for the BBC, was this: “Assessing the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains.”

"She was talking specifically about her great-grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, who was a widely respected trader in tobacco, palm oil, and slaves in southeastern Nigeria in the early 20th century. The Atlantic slave trade had been banned by the European empires a century before, but slavery was still a flourishing domestic business in Nigeria and many other African countries.

Her great-grandfather became famous by defying the British colonial authorities, who were trying to stamp out slavery in Nigeria. They had confiscated some of his slaves, and he marched right up and demanded them back, waving a trading licence that dated back to the previous century.

The British were taken aback, apologized and returned his slaves. Indeed, they were so impressed by his boldness and self-confidence that they subsequently appointed him paramount chief of his region. So he became a local hero in his own day, and is still a hero to the Nwaubani family.

Slavery was normal in most pre-modern societies, including almost all the kingdoms and ethnic groups of sub-Saharan Africa. Africans had sold slaves north to various Islamic empires in the Middle East for centuries before Europeans showed up on the coast in ships. They were just another set of customers buying in the same market.

Most enslaved Africans didn’t travel more than a few hundred kilometres from home. It is estimated that in the 18th century one-third of the people in what is now Senegal were slaves who belonged to other Senegalese. But the ones who were sold to foreigners probably suffered more.

Historians believe around one-fifth of the 10 million Africans transported to the Americas over more than three centuries died on board ship. The fatalities among the estimated 17 million African slaves sold to Arab traders and forced to walk across the Sahara or carried around the India Ocean in ships during 10 centuries were probably just as high. What awaited the survivors when they arrived was pretty appalling, too."

   The second article was reprinted recently in The New York Review of Books. It had originally appeared in TNYRB in 1994 and was written as a letter rebutting the notion that large numbers of Jews were involved in the slave trade. The point again, is that many different peoples and religions participated in slavery, even some ex-slaves.

   The participants in the Atlantic slave system included Arabs, Berbers, scores of African ethnic groups, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, Jews, Germans, Swedes, French, English, Danes, white Americans, Native Americans, and even thousands of New World blacks who had been emancipated or were descended from freed slaves but who then became slaveholding farmers or planters themselves. Responsibility, in short, radiated outward to peoples of every sort who had access to the immense profits generated from the world’s first system of multinational production for a mass market.

“In the American South, in 1830, there were only 120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves.” David Brion Davis noted in 1994, on the question of Jewish involvement in the slave trade. “No one should defend the small number of Jews who bought and sold slaves,” he writes. “No one should defend the infinitely larger number of Catholics and Protestants who built the Atlantic slave system, or defend the Muslims who initiated the process of shipping black African slaves to distant markets, or defend the Africans who captured and enslaved perhaps twenty million other Africans in order to sell them to European traders for valuable and empowering goods. But while posterity has the right and even duty to judge the past, we must emphatically renounce the dangerous though often seductive belief in a collective guilt that descends through time to every present and future generation.”

(David Brion Davis, "The Slave Trade and the Jews," NYRB, Dec. 22, 1994)

The Bonus:

Peonage on the PGA Tour

   It is still raining and I will likely watch some golf.  Whenever I do, I am often irritated when I see the golfer holding his club out behind him, without looking behind him, fully expecting the caddy to be there to grab and clean it. When I went looking for a picture to illustrate all of this, I didn't find one, but I did find the one above that leads us back to the subject of slavery.

   The kind of behaviour that irritates me also upset the caddy of a famous golfer.  The caddy, who is white, said that the famous golfer, who is black, treated him like a "slave." Given that the caddy was white and had been made very wealthy by his black  'master', he was subjected to considerable criticism.

  Here is how the word was used by Steve Williams (the caddy) in his biography -Out of the Rough. 

"One thing that really pissed me off," he writes, "was how he would flippantly toss a club in the general direction of the bag, expecting me to go over and pick it up. I felt uneasy about bending down to pick up his discarded club - it was like I was his slave."

If you don't believe me see, for example: "Caddie Steve Williams Defends Using 'Slave' to Describe Working for Tiger," The Hamilton Spectator, Nov. 11, 2015. Also: "Caddie's Slave Comment Provokes Widespread Ridicule," Dominion Post, Nov. 5, 2015.

P.S. I suppose this last part could provoke some ridicule and controversy given that discussing slavery in relation to the PGA, which is the whitest sport on the planet, does not seem appropriate.

Cycling

The Dirty Kanza

   It is still raining. Before I did the last post on Inbreeding, which is also about cycling, I was reading a major U.S. newspaper when the image above popped up. I realize that the sudden appearance of such things is usually related to searches one has done when shopping. But, not having requested a tourist brochure from Kansas, I was curious about events in Emporia and had a look. I suppose now I will be getting more ads from that state.  One does have to acknowledge the Jayhawks for their marketing creativity.

   The adventure has to do with cycling and I guess I should have thought of that since I recently did do some online shopping for a bike. I really can't travel there at this time and you probably can't either, but if you can, here is what is going on in the Gravel City. 

Cycling

Emporia, Kansas is home to an avid cycling community, and the surrounding Flint Hills offer some of the best and most challenging gravel cycling opportunities in the nation. We’re nicknamed Gravel City for a reason! Emporia also hosts the Dirty Kanza, known as the “World’s Premier Gravel Grinder” each year on the Saturday after Memorial Day. More than 2,000 riders come from all over the United States and many foreign countries to race through 200 miles in the beautiful Flint Hills.

Ride the Flint Hills

Whether you’re training for a gravel cycling competition like the Dirty Kanza 200, or you want to take a leisure ride and just enjoy the outdoors, the beautiful Flint Hills of Kansas is the place to be. While traveling through the Flint Hills you can enjoy 40 grass species, native stone fences, hundreds of wildflowers, 150 species of birds, barns, bridges, historic towns, breathtaking views, and quiet serenity.

Inbreeding

   It is a rainy day and I just read these sentences: 

"With a bicycle, the world would have expanded dramatically for fin-de-siecle Victorians, particularly as bikes became increasingly affordable, bringing new experiences and opportunities, and perhaps even new romantic liaisons. Sociologists now credit the bicycle with a decrease in genetic faults associated with inbreeding in the U.K. , and as early as 1900, the U.S. Census Office identified the invention as a game-changer: 'Few articles ever used by man have created so great a revolution in social conditions as the bicycle."

   I thought the comment about inbreeding an interesting one and had never associated cycling with consanguinity, so I went looking for some of the 'sociologists' who have found a relationship between the rise in cycling and the decline in sexual activities among those who are related. The search turned out to be more difficult than I thought and the subject of inbreeding, like just about any subject these days, is not without its controversial aspects. 

   I did find some support, however, and have no reason to doubt that cycling, like the back seats of cars, may have affected sexual relationships. William Manners writes in The Guardian about how cycling changed society: 

One unexpected way it did this was in the field of genetics. For the majority of those living in rural areas, owning a bicycle dramatically increased the number of potential marriage partners, as for the first time they possessed their own means of travelling beyond their local communities. The widening of gene pools which resulted from this process means that the biologist Steve Jones ranks the invention of the bicycle as the most important event in recent human evolution.

     I did track down Professor Jones, a well-respected geneticist, and, indeed, he does write  in The Language of Genes that, There is little doubt that the most important event in recent human evolution was the invention of the bicycle.

    Although it is still raining, I decided to stop searching and write this. If you need more proof, have a look yourself.

Sources:

   The sentences which led to the search are found in: Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Wheels, by Hannah Ross.

    The article by Mr. Manners: "The Secret History of 19th Century Cyclists: The Early Days of the Modern Bicycle Brought Not Just Joyful Escape for the Masses, But Proved a Catalyst for Wider Social Change, The Guardian, June 9, 2015.

The Bonus: 

  In The Guardian article one also finds these quotes:

Hobsbawm wrote:

If physical mobility is an essential condition of freedom, the bicycle has probably been the greatest single device for achieving what Marx has called the full realisation of being human invented since Gutenberg, and the only one without obvious drawbacks.

And H.G. Wells said:

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.