The meeting at Talla against the wind turbine depurtation of the hills around us was packed; people from all the affected villages, towns and farms were there, as well as individual firms like restaurants, bed and breakfasts and aziende agricole.
Lenna's was represented by the Avocato, who spoke to the meeting as a technical advisor as well, on legal aspects of the challenge.
The meeting began with a group accusing the organisers of representing landowner and business interest only, and failing in their responsibility to reduce global warming and encourage alternative clean power sources for the sake of their profits. Their view was met very well by the various members of the committee, a specialist on alternative energy sources (particularly bio-mass), and an account of the inappropriate siting of the wind turbines simply on the lack of wind grounds outlined by Fred, originally.
The head of the provincial Green party, who was there, offered to organise an assemblea where the irrelevance of these proposals to any Green agenda could be set out for all the ecologically minded, who are being deliberately misled by the Spanish-based multinational whose sole agenda is to farm tax and other funding sources from the European Union and member states. It is hoped this will be a travelling assemblea that will set up in the large number of population areas damaged by these proposals.
The former sindaco from here whose back garden is to be underneath one of the 90 metre high turbines was there, fit to be tied. The Avocato has a new client.
There were also representatives from comunes, including the provincial capital, who had suceeded in refusing sites for the dangerous refuse and recycling dump that is looking for a corrupt enough administration to give it a home. There were exchanges of contacts and advice taken, even though, currently, the comune here has written twice to the opposition group on the council denying any plans or negotiations of any kind with any group planning such a plant. This is a lie but people working inside the comune are on the quivive and call the opposition at once whenever activity on this front, even phone calls, starts up.
I am not aware of what next steps were decided, but the Region has had to open a formal procedure which permits all kinds of properly organised legal and other challenges, and follows a strict timetable with all deadlines properly notified; that is in good hands.
Comments,suggestions, and further information will be posted by us all as and when we can.
05/05/2007
04/05/2007
Fire and dust
Open fires are beautiful but are they worth it? All that wood carrying, and wood's passengers, who wake up to find themselves in my kitchen having gone to sleep in an oak tree 2 kilometres away. Sometimes they have wings, which are damply unfurled, dried out and then flying and zooming practice takes place - loud, scary and at best distracting. I know as I usher them out of the windows that they're going to die but I don't care. Some of them are big and bitey. Others crawl off quietly and I only guess they are there because of GooGoo's fascinated attention fixed on a crack in the stone, with an occasional claw extended to try for getting something to make a home run.
Olive wood tends to be a winter retreat for whole armies of ants, who emerge in good order from the end not in the flames but then pour like gaderene swine off the end and onto the hot metal. Yuk.
Smoke carries tiny particles of ash which arrange themselves in the graceful patterns of cobwebs that would otherwise be invisible (at least till I got round to them).
And everywhere there is dust; remove it and the fires will have it back in next to no time. So I left it. Till today. Today the camino in the big kitchen has been swept and its copper and brass bits polished; an artistic arrangement of brushed-down, clear of passengers, hibernating or otherwise, wood has been placed between the alari.
If anybody puts a match to it, there will be trouble.
Olive wood tends to be a winter retreat for whole armies of ants, who emerge in good order from the end not in the flames but then pour like gaderene swine off the end and onto the hot metal. Yuk.
Smoke carries tiny particles of ash which arrange themselves in the graceful patterns of cobwebs that would otherwise be invisible (at least till I got round to them).
And everywhere there is dust; remove it and the fires will have it back in next to no time. So I left it. Till today. Today the camino in the big kitchen has been swept and its copper and brass bits polished; an artistic arrangement of brushed-down, clear of passengers, hibernating or otherwise, wood has been placed between the alari.
If anybody puts a match to it, there will be trouble.
03/05/2007
tilting at Talla
A report on how the meeting went this evening would be interesting to everyone. When there is a moment. Then we can all say our bit and turn round.
02/05/2007
Dune
Dune is considered one of the great works of science fiction. Some may query whether any science fiction can be called great but this is great in the category. Worries first; I know I have read this book (or at least the first volume, it's a trilogy) when the library existed in Tavistock Place before the great dumbing down of municipal life struck. I can only remember feeling thirsty and revulsion at the muckiness of life on Arrakis. So it doesn't have memorable characters or story line.
However, in its way it could be thought of as prescient for today in the anti Islam mood of the moment. I do not remember being caught by its setting in desert culture at first reading.
It is said to be inspired by a Jungian approach; I know little of Jung except he was quite the nazi and died surprisingly recently. He preached the importance of dreams, signs and mystical experiences (victim of an Indian experience familiar later to many seekers after 'truth' in the sub continent). Altogether inimcal to what your Librarian might esteem.
It's on the shelves, in case the survival techniques described should come in handy in a desert, but readers might be more amused by saying the rosary.
However, in its way it could be thought of as prescient for today in the anti Islam mood of the moment. I do not remember being caught by its setting in desert culture at first reading.
It is said to be inspired by a Jungian approach; I know little of Jung except he was quite the nazi and died surprisingly recently. He preached the importance of dreams, signs and mystical experiences (victim of an Indian experience familiar later to many seekers after 'truth' in the sub continent). Altogether inimcal to what your Librarian might esteem.
It's on the shelves, in case the survival techniques described should come in handy in a desert, but readers might be more amused by saying the rosary.
cross
as in cross-posting. The maps post has also been published on the other blog, but Library users may prefer to comment here. The Librarian regrets neglecting her undertakings and will now resume service.
stanza di passo
One room has a wall hung with framed maps, some old and beautiful, hand-tinted, others engraved on ivory-paper.
There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.
Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.
L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.
Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d’ Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).
A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.
One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.
There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.
Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.
L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.
Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d’ Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).
A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.
One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.
06/04/2007
tilting at windmills
The comune has in hand a proposal from a Spanish alternative energy consortium to receive large sums of money each year in return for permitting the placing of some 29 wind turbines on the hill crest above Gello Biscardo and (just the last 2) La Castellina. They are not visible from Castellina because of an intervening crest, nor are they visible from the village house because of an intervening village, particularly palazzo Cassi.
They are visible from just about every other viewpoint between Florence and Rome (perhaps Incisa and Chiusi, but still.)
It is becoming plain that the suspicion that negotiations are more advanced and distribution of benefits more personal than the comune has vouchsafed is well founded.
At a meeting attended by Library representatives the ecological folly of all this was demonstrated. It emerged also from a sororal visit by one of the councillors of Foiano, that the comune here has entered as well into negotiation for the siting of a rubbish dump for highly toxic materials from all over Italy and, possibly, all over the European Union.
The extreme reluctance to release information, papers, and high levels of irritation in the comune at their plans being discovered raises fears for the worst possible behaviour by this utterly corrupt and rotten borough. But private and social steps have been taken to protect ourselves. As well, a dangerous rift in attitudes and tactics by the council opposition has been averted and the importance of maintaining a social and cultural opposition to these devastations of our environment, rather than embroiling ourselves in a political fight asserted.
The preset numbers of days for all kinds of legal steps have not run out and all appropriate papers have been lodged (many thanx to the legal and administrative Library team.)
Alliances among the local landowners are being built; the next step might be to make aware local property owners of the devastating drop in their house values if either of these projects goes through. Many people here have mortgages past their ears and nothing but their monthly wages, yet they have little idea what the downgrading of the zone to 'contaminated' will do to them economically.
Any Library user with suggestions, comments etc., should put them forward on this thread, which the Librarian will regularly check; accounts of similar struggles against pseudo-ecological tax harvesting ploys would be welcome particularly.
They are visible from just about every other viewpoint between Florence and Rome (perhaps Incisa and Chiusi, but still.)
It is becoming plain that the suspicion that negotiations are more advanced and distribution of benefits more personal than the comune has vouchsafed is well founded.
At a meeting attended by Library representatives the ecological folly of all this was demonstrated. It emerged also from a sororal visit by one of the councillors of Foiano, that the comune here has entered as well into negotiation for the siting of a rubbish dump for highly toxic materials from all over Italy and, possibly, all over the European Union.
The extreme reluctance to release information, papers, and high levels of irritation in the comune at their plans being discovered raises fears for the worst possible behaviour by this utterly corrupt and rotten borough. But private and social steps have been taken to protect ourselves. As well, a dangerous rift in attitudes and tactics by the council opposition has been averted and the importance of maintaining a social and cultural opposition to these devastations of our environment, rather than embroiling ourselves in a political fight asserted.
The preset numbers of days for all kinds of legal steps have not run out and all appropriate papers have been lodged (many thanx to the legal and administrative Library team.)
Alliances among the local landowners are being built; the next step might be to make aware local property owners of the devastating drop in their house values if either of these projects goes through. Many people here have mortgages past their ears and nothing but their monthly wages, yet they have little idea what the downgrading of the zone to 'contaminated' will do to them economically.
Any Library user with suggestions, comments etc., should put them forward on this thread, which the Librarian will regularly check; accounts of similar struggles against pseudo-ecological tax harvesting ploys would be welcome particularly.
01/04/2007
labels
The ontologically-challenged Librarian had not realised that labels are more than a joke.
Future categories may have a membership of more than one item.
(the IT consultant)
Future categories may have a membership of more than one item.
(the IT consultant)
freedom of speech
The IT consultant has lifted the need to sign in with a google account in order to leave comments. Now there is just word verification to avoid automatic spamming.
Speak.
Speak.
31/03/2007
faking it
The differences between faking, copying and imitating, or building on the work and advances of others, or working 'in the style of'... or being part of a movement, seem very blurred and hard to define. Do we 'stand on the shoulders of giants' because we are pygmies unable to get any where without using others as a ladder? Or want to pretend to be giants too and get the unearned kudos? Or is it the whole basis of advance in understanding and in art?
Written out
Reading Brooklyn Follies I found a list of how young people were who achieved literary feats. Well, how young they were when they died: Poe, 40; Kafka, 40; Marlowe, 29; Keats, 25; Georg Buchner, 23; Byron, 36; Emily Bronte, 30; Charlotte Bronte, 39; Shelley, 29; Wilfred Owen, 25; Leopardi, Garcia Lorca, Apollinaire, 39; both Pascal and Flannery O'Connor at 39; Rimbaud, 37 ; Chatterton 17.
That's just the writers though - think of the musicians , Pergolesi, Mozart....
Still, organists and harpsichordists all seem to have kept going to enormous ages so it must be composing that does it. Philosophers and economists are tough too. No-one is to take up writing novels, plays or poetry , or composing before they are already old. Perhaps it's living in garrets that does it?
That's just the writers though - think of the musicians , Pergolesi, Mozart....
Still, organists and harpsichordists all seem to have kept going to enormous ages so it must be composing that does it. Philosophers and economists are tough too. No-one is to take up writing novels, plays or poetry , or composing before they are already old. Perhaps it's living in garrets that does it?
28/03/2007
word endings
While typing voci bianche I remembered that I had intended to preserve the words on the butcher's sun shade as an example of how trikki endings can be in Italian but I forgot to copy them down and now the sun shade is gone. Can anyone remember?
something like Bottega delle Carni di Mara. might that be right?
something like Bottega delle Carni di Mara. might that be right?
colours
Castellina is to be painted the colour of Monsoglio, with the inside a lighter shade of pale, unless anyone has objections?Floors waxed red, ceilings natural waxed chestnut with pianelle waxed to match floors. No other colours (oh, pietra serena lightly lucido in its natural colours).
They are clearing the Sooty.
They are clearing the Sooty.
chorales
Can any Library user formerly in the voci bianche remember which chorale Bridge over Troubled Water is based on?
27/03/2007
Italianita'
Quite some time ago, when translating some early Italian poems into English I was taken by how much of the imagery derived from the same usages in the two languages. The words are different, (though often evocative of an English word) but the mind sets are twinned.
I checked and discover that Shakespeare translates ever so handily into Italian, although really early Italian poetry like Dante, doesn't change over from one language to the other with any grace at all.
So what was it about late 1500s and 1600s Italian and English writing that set them up so similarly? It's not a common classical heritage or it would be present in Buonarotti and D., and it isn't. Was there a massive export of Italian poetry form and style into English, as there was with music, that even survived translation?
I googled some likely headings and found I was wading into a very beautiful blue ocean of scholarship that shelved so swiftly into being quite out of my depth; when it comes to swimming in waters like that I'm still wearing water wings.
So if any Library user knows: why does English literature of that period (and presumably common language use to some degree) lean so heavily on earlier Italian models? Has the rinascimento struck again?
I checked and discover that Shakespeare translates ever so handily into Italian, although really early Italian poetry like Dante, doesn't change over from one language to the other with any grace at all.
So what was it about late 1500s and 1600s Italian and English writing that set them up so similarly? It's not a common classical heritage or it would be present in Buonarotti and D., and it isn't. Was there a massive export of Italian poetry form and style into English, as there was with music, that even survived translation?
I googled some likely headings and found I was wading into a very beautiful blue ocean of scholarship that shelved so swiftly into being quite out of my depth; when it comes to swimming in waters like that I'm still wearing water wings.
So if any Library user knows: why does English literature of that period (and presumably common language use to some degree) lean so heavily on earlier Italian models? Has the rinascimento struck again?
Definitions
Those Library users familiar with the concepts of communism and socialism are invited to give succinct portrayals of both.
Those whose everyday lives are not passed handling worlds where these ideas are central are also invited; innocence of view is often discouraged as ignorance when it can offer all kinds of insights. I am struggling with an offering while belonging to the second category.
Those whose everyday lives are not passed handling worlds where these ideas are central are also invited; innocence of view is often discouraged as ignorance when it can offer all kinds of insights. I am struggling with an offering while belonging to the second category.
A German library user makes an important observation on the failure of socialism. She remarked that communism (to which I was declaring continued, indeed sole, allegiance) is certainly an ideology free of socialism's unfortunate relations with the state and all the problems that brings, but that as communism is an ideology of angels it's not a lot of use to us in achieving the Good.
It's the delivery system that's failed in the technological and economic circumstances of today, but condemning socialism because it cannot live up to the ideology that has given it it's moral imprimatur and and has been used by some to justify degraded policies and acts, is escapism into angelic spheres that can deliver nothing (other than making me feel good).
Ouch!
So how is a delivery system developed and controlled by all of us? Perhaps first, what could it be made-up of ?
It's the delivery system that's failed in the technological and economic circumstances of today, but condemning socialism because it cannot live up to the ideology that has given it it's moral imprimatur and and has been used by some to justify degraded policies and acts, is escapism into angelic spheres that can deliver nothing (other than making me feel good).
Ouch!
So how is a delivery system developed and controlled by all of us? Perhaps first, what could it be made-up of ?
14/03/2007
Form
The point of view adopted is that of a reasonably educated, peacefully brought up, sane, usually well-disposed to the rest of humanity, European person.
Sources of information are: the reasonable education (perhaps that is a prism through which to look), the Library, the internet, fellow travellers (boom, boom) and any other materials suggested that are useful.
Not a lot of econometric or statistical detail will be offered; certainly it can be obtained but it will hold things up. Those who feel that evidence can be offered that refutes a stance, offer it. Silence is assent.
Argument, not evidence, rules.
Incomprehension should be resolved with queries, which are, in themselves, helpful in gripping what is being talked about.
No laughing.
Sources of information are: the reasonable education (perhaps that is a prism through which to look), the Library, the internet, fellow travellers (boom, boom) and any other materials suggested that are useful.
Not a lot of econometric or statistical detail will be offered; certainly it can be obtained but it will hold things up. Those who feel that evidence can be offered that refutes a stance, offer it. Silence is assent.
Argument, not evidence, rules.
Incomprehension should be resolved with queries, which are, in themselves, helpful in gripping what is being talked about.
No laughing.
12/03/2007
Setting out
The Library bears out that it is a time-honoured tradition to expound a complex argument, or even a novel and, certainly many children's books, in the form of a journey. The form has the advantage of ensuring that everything doesn't happen at once - even when what is under consideration is doing just that; it ensures also that as it requires setting out from one place and arriving in another, the traveller knows that the starting point is not the goal - useful when considering what is to be done now because, by definition, it is accepted that where we are now is not the best that can be done.
The best-equipped travelling companion has declared: ' old, tired, have given', but may be enticed into the journey by puzzles and adventures along the way; others may set off at the start with contributions, or join in if the journey passes through somewhere they know, or have techniques to overcome obstacles to the goal. Marathon running experience could be particularly helpful.
The start is to give an account of where we are now. Where we are physically; and what do we think is good and bad about it; a technical task and a moral task. I am taking who and when we are as given.
The best-equipped travelling companion has declared: ' old, tired, have given', but may be enticed into the journey by puzzles and adventures along the way; others may set off at the start with contributions, or join in if the journey passes through somewhere they know, or have techniques to overcome obstacles to the goal. Marathon running experience could be particularly helpful.
The start is to give an account of where we are now. Where we are physically; and what do we think is good and bad about it; a technical task and a moral task. I am taking who and when we are as given.
11/03/2007
new Buffy targets
Benedict XVI (or XV depending on what view is taken of an earlier ant-pope) is proposing to canonise John Paul II in double-quick time; he's already been declared blessed which is over half way.
On considering the purposes of canonisation the similarities with vampirism are striking or, perhaps, biting.
The maintenance of a personality after death; not just the traits embodied in the life of the dead but their continued growth and projection and change in reaction to continued events, as if there were a living entity independent of corporeal death.
The assertion of physical intervention into life now by way of miraculous activity.
The organisation of life activities and the generation of wealth.
Agreed there isn't the excitement of neck-nipping in the night, but lots of ecstatic activity by ladies chanting litanies -
Tower of Ivory,
House of Gold.....
The Heavenmouth is in Rome; minor outlets are throughout Christendom.
On considering the purposes of canonisation the similarities with vampirism are striking or, perhaps, biting.
The maintenance of a personality after death; not just the traits embodied in the life of the dead but their continued growth and projection and change in reaction to continued events, as if there were a living entity independent of corporeal death.
The assertion of physical intervention into life now by way of miraculous activity.
The organisation of life activities and the generation of wealth.
Agreed there isn't the excitement of neck-nipping in the night, but lots of ecstatic activity by ladies chanting litanies -
Tower of Ivory,
House of Gold.....
The Heavenmouth is in Rome; minor outlets are throughout Christendom.
10/03/2007
the state of Denmark
These are the things that are frightening and disgraceful and being pressed forward in the United Kingdom. Just for a start, this shows that something must be done. Pispolo worked with the Earl of Onslow and was most impressed.
Sunday April 23, 2006
The Observer
Dear Mr Cameron,
You and I are Conservatives. It could even be said that we both had a traditional upbringing. I have always understood that we Conservatives have been at our best when we use conservative and traditional methods for constructive change. From our beginnings in the Restoration parliament as defenders of church and king, we have seen ancient liberties as the key to the advancement of our fellow citizens.
Throughout the centuries, that Conservative-Tory tradition has been used for the immense benefit of our people. Peel's Tamworth Manifesto stated that so clearly in 1834. That is why we have been the most successful and long-lasting political party in history. From the Stuart kings to the modern, mass-political democracy, our great party has defended our constitution and benefited our country.
Something is missing from our rhetoric. We have a government by a party that reinvented itself by being ashamed of its roots and determinedly betrayed the traditions and ideas of its founders. They may well have been right so to do, but they cannot be trusted to hold dear the traditions of others.
In no order of awfulness, this government has emasculated the House of Commons by the permanent use of guillotines. On the whim of the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellorship has been neutered, removing a voice of law from the cabinet.
Those instances are on the parliamentary front, but what the government has done to the liberty of the subject is far worse. Note that I say liberty of the subject, not the rights of the citizen. That is because liberties are boundless unless circumscribed by law and rights are, by their nature, circumscribed.
It has repealed the law on double jeopardy. With Asbos, it has sent to prison some of the young on hearsay evidence for things that are not even criminal. It has created a centralised register held by the government on all citizens and proposes to force them to have ID cards. It has formed a police force with unprecedented powers of arrest - the Serious Organised Crime Agency - over which the Home Secretary has authority no predecessor has previously enjoyed.
Through its control orders, it has introduced a system of deprivation of liberty without trial on the say-so of the executive. It has passed the Civil Contingencies Act that allows a minister to override any statute after the calling of a state of emergency and now there is the Regulatory Reform Bill, which has been described as 'the abolition of parliament bill' and against which our party did not even vote at second reading. This gives gauleiter-like powers to ministers which we are blandly told will not be used.
The government has allowed the retention by the police of DNA details of thousands of innocents and it has given us section 81 (6) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claims) Act 2004 which amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylums Act 2002, creating a single-tier appeals procedure which Lord Steyn, in a recent lecture, described as, in effect, ousting the jurisdiction of ordinary courts. The government has introduced anti-terrorism stop-and-search powers that are constantly being misused, such as when the elderly Walter Wolfgang was ejected from the Labour conference.
This list is by no means comprehensive. What surprises, worries and depresses me is the apparent relative quietude on the part of the Conservative party on these issues. I repeat - it did not vote against the Regulatory Reform Bill on second reading. It has not remembered the great Edward Gibbon's comment on Augustus Caesar's Rome: 'The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.'
It was dozy on the Civil Contingencies Act until the excellent Peta Buscombe in our house took it up; this from the party which, since the restoration of Charles II, has been so jealous of our constitution. Have we a guilty secret? Remember Burke saying: 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' Why are we not shouting from the hustings that we will return to the people their ancient liberties?
Why, Mr Cameron, is the Conservative party passing by on the other side while our old liberties fall among thieves?
Yours sincerely, Onslow
· The Earl of Onslow is one of the 92 hereditary peers and takes the Conservative whip.
Sunday April 23, 2006
The Observer
Dear Mr Cameron,
You and I are Conservatives. It could even be said that we both had a traditional upbringing. I have always understood that we Conservatives have been at our best when we use conservative and traditional methods for constructive change. From our beginnings in the Restoration parliament as defenders of church and king, we have seen ancient liberties as the key to the advancement of our fellow citizens.
Throughout the centuries, that Conservative-Tory tradition has been used for the immense benefit of our people. Peel's Tamworth Manifesto stated that so clearly in 1834. That is why we have been the most successful and long-lasting political party in history. From the Stuart kings to the modern, mass-political democracy, our great party has defended our constitution and benefited our country.
Something is missing from our rhetoric. We have a government by a party that reinvented itself by being ashamed of its roots and determinedly betrayed the traditions and ideas of its founders. They may well have been right so to do, but they cannot be trusted to hold dear the traditions of others.
In no order of awfulness, this government has emasculated the House of Commons by the permanent use of guillotines. On the whim of the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellorship has been neutered, removing a voice of law from the cabinet.
Those instances are on the parliamentary front, but what the government has done to the liberty of the subject is far worse. Note that I say liberty of the subject, not the rights of the citizen. That is because liberties are boundless unless circumscribed by law and rights are, by their nature, circumscribed.
It has repealed the law on double jeopardy. With Asbos, it has sent to prison some of the young on hearsay evidence for things that are not even criminal. It has created a centralised register held by the government on all citizens and proposes to force them to have ID cards. It has formed a police force with unprecedented powers of arrest - the Serious Organised Crime Agency - over which the Home Secretary has authority no predecessor has previously enjoyed.
Through its control orders, it has introduced a system of deprivation of liberty without trial on the say-so of the executive. It has passed the Civil Contingencies Act that allows a minister to override any statute after the calling of a state of emergency and now there is the Regulatory Reform Bill, which has been described as 'the abolition of parliament bill' and against which our party did not even vote at second reading. This gives gauleiter-like powers to ministers which we are blandly told will not be used.
The government has allowed the retention by the police of DNA details of thousands of innocents and it has given us section 81 (6) of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claims) Act 2004 which amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylums Act 2002, creating a single-tier appeals procedure which Lord Steyn, in a recent lecture, described as, in effect, ousting the jurisdiction of ordinary courts. The government has introduced anti-terrorism stop-and-search powers that are constantly being misused, such as when the elderly Walter Wolfgang was ejected from the Labour conference.
This list is by no means comprehensive. What surprises, worries and depresses me is the apparent relative quietude on the part of the Conservative party on these issues. I repeat - it did not vote against the Regulatory Reform Bill on second reading. It has not remembered the great Edward Gibbon's comment on Augustus Caesar's Rome: 'The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.'
It was dozy on the Civil Contingencies Act until the excellent Peta Buscombe in our house took it up; this from the party which, since the restoration of Charles II, has been so jealous of our constitution. Have we a guilty secret? Remember Burke saying: 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' Why are we not shouting from the hustings that we will return to the people their ancient liberties?
Why, Mr Cameron, is the Conservative party passing by on the other side while our old liberties fall among thieves?
Yours sincerely, Onslow
· The Earl of Onslow is one of the 92 hereditary peers and takes the Conservative whip.
Lenin's question
Bitterly has the thought been fought, with imagination, explanation, historical excuse, a lifetime's commitment, it cannot be denied: Socialism is dead.
The striving towards fairness, impartial justice, the commitment to reason not faith, and to the technological, not use-of-force solution to inadequacies of physical provision (with social provision for diversely occurring vulnerability - youth, sickness, age, disbility), is undimmed. But socialism as it is determined in and by all its nineteeth and twentieth century glory, is history. Worse, by failing to bury what is dead we contaminate everything we wish to achieve for our lives. And provide easy targets for the wicked of the world to deny goals and denigrate achievments that are wholly to be endorsed.
Surveying the dreary deathscapes produced by Stalinism, and all its lesser manifestations from Cambodia through the miserable post 1945 years for everyone east of Berlin, to the (so minor in comparison, but nonetheless deeply repugnant) BrownLabour party, we are defenceless in proposing the good if we associate ourseves with socialism. The self-seeking of apparatchiks and their client-state producing tactics when threatened by democratic votes, subverted everything that wasn't killed.
What is to be done?
The striving towards fairness, impartial justice, the commitment to reason not faith, and to the technological, not use-of-force solution to inadequacies of physical provision (with social provision for diversely occurring vulnerability - youth, sickness, age, disbility), is undimmed. But socialism as it is determined in and by all its nineteeth and twentieth century glory, is history. Worse, by failing to bury what is dead we contaminate everything we wish to achieve for our lives. And provide easy targets for the wicked of the world to deny goals and denigrate achievments that are wholly to be endorsed.
Surveying the dreary deathscapes produced by Stalinism, and all its lesser manifestations from Cambodia through the miserable post 1945 years for everyone east of Berlin, to the (so minor in comparison, but nonetheless deeply repugnant) BrownLabour party, we are defenceless in proposing the good if we associate ourseves with socialism. The self-seeking of apparatchiks and their client-state producing tactics when threatened by democratic votes, subverted everything that wasn't killed.
What is to be done?
lost
'There's a delicious pecorino if you would like to try; it's truly exceptional'. Pecorino is one of the least attractive cheeses imaginable;sour, sweating, salty, with a lingering after -taste.
Is its truly exceptionalness an exaggeration of these qualities - or their amelioration?
'It's Sardinian!' Does that make it worse or better? Aren't qualities supposed to act as a guide?
Is its truly exceptionalness an exaggeration of these qualities - or their amelioration?
'It's Sardinian!' Does that make it worse or better? Aren't qualities supposed to act as a guide?
grinding axes
Fried fish for dinner yesterday suggested a thought that lots of sayings are shortly going to become unintelligible - the sort of thing asked about in class by falslely bright and encouraging English teachers. Healthy eating will give them lots of grist to their dead mill. Other fish to fry, fat in the fire, pot callling kettle black (that one's not allowed any more), different kettle of fish. It's surprising too that so many English ones are kitchen or housework metaphors. In Italian metaphor is just as distant but quite another pair of sleeves.
09/03/2007
eeeeeek
There was a giant cockroach under the washing machine liquid so after shrieks and shakes it has been hoovered to extinction. Spending the afternoon finding new hoover bags as the one full of cockroach was instantly discarded into the bins down the hill is not a good use of a sunny afternoon. Unfortunately the preponderance of sunny afternoons, and mornings, and were it possible, nights threatens a scary Spring and Summer. Nothing like hard frosts and deep and crisp and even for killing beasties off. Come prepared to be brave and resourceful.
dead mimosa
A call from a friend suggested some sort of outing for 8 March. That seemed right so we went to see if the house of the dead had any interesting remnants to buy. There was a particularly pretty 50's drinks trolley so it is now in the cantina. Still, some celebration for the wimmin - even the mimosa had finished flowering last week. Sigh.
06/03/2007
Bacheca
Library subscribers with US desideri are requested to get in touch with Pispolo who wil be in NY around the festival of the Liberazione. Any request arriving before 20 April should be in time.
More interestingly, P. will also be debating the Euro with another subscriber (who should comment, I'm beginning to keep count, services unused will be discontinued to non-contributers) in Warsaw, at the end of March. Comments and contributions on the Euro and/or the Poles are eagerly sought. Come along now, we can't leave economists to their own devices - we all know they think counter-intuitively and have to be guided back to reality.
More interestingly, P. will also be debating the Euro with another subscriber (who should comment, I'm beginning to keep count, services unused will be discontinued to non-contributers) in Warsaw, at the end of March. Comments and contributions on the Euro and/or the Poles are eagerly sought. Come along now, we can't leave economists to their own devices - we all know they think counter-intuitively and have to be guided back to reality.
Buffy shrugs off competing claimant
Someone has staked Slobodan Milosevic. The wannabe Slayer then reported himself to the local police who refused to do anything about it all. Not being a girl militated against his claim to be the Chosen One.
Inviting Trouble
Cardiff University geologists have discovered an undersea earth-crustless terrain which they intend to explore. The Earth's mantle is being lapped by the whispering waves. I wonder what is holding the inside in or the outside from pouring inside. Although most have vague notions that the planet is a red hot molten ball covered by a few, worryingly thin, layers discovering there are spots where layers are missing is most unsettling. Jules Verne was always a cause of childhood concern, deliberately poking holes, but this is real. And the Welsh intend to try and get bits out from underneath; there will be tears before bedtime.
Voyage to the Centre of the Earth isn't a patch on The Lost World, no Professor Challenger, for starters.
Voyage to the Centre of the Earth isn't a patch on The Lost World, no Professor Challenger, for starters.
04/03/2007
red moon
Instead of standing on the terrace to watch the eclipse of the moon your Librarian went to bed without a second thought.
It was the hype alla italiana, the cooing female voice spouting rubbish about heavenly bodies, the astrology of it all. How worrying that reality can be rendered repellent by foolish overwrites.
Lovely cartoon in Corriere della Sera: Prodi to Fassino looking at red moon, ' godiamoci questa luna rossa altrimenti bisogna aspettare altri diciannove anni'.
It was the hype alla italiana, the cooing female voice spouting rubbish about heavenly bodies, the astrology of it all. How worrying that reality can be rendered repellent by foolish overwrites.
Lovely cartoon in Corriere della Sera: Prodi to Fassino looking at red moon, ' godiamoci questa luna rossa altrimenti bisogna aspettare altri diciannove anni'.
03/03/2007
update
The man is an Englishman, now widower of a native Ferrarese. His prontezza di spirito in asking for ambulance -calling was only betrayed by crew noticing she had been dead some time; he held out til 4am then confessed that he had killed her before going to work as she nagged him about his drinking. He had had a few before setting off down the stairs with his horrid burden.
It is now leading the 8.30 news, outdoing Prodi's reforms.
It is now leading the 8.30 news, outdoing Prodi's reforms.
whoops
Carrying his freshly-murdered spouse down stairs while the neighbours were occupied watching the main evening news, (key opening bars of the telegiornale), the husband stumbled, dropping his victim, who disturbed the condominio by breaking pots of flowers on two landings as down she went. Quick as a flash he cried for help to be called after her unfortunate fall, but was found out when the paramedics arrived, and arrested by carabinieri who had been summoned as well by one of the quicker- witted vicini di casa.
What is it that is so essentially Italian about this grisly tale?, - the intra-familial murder (they are reported night after night as generations, siblings, affines, off one another in every conceivable way and circumstance from one end of the peninsula to the other), rinascimento memories of heads and baskets of figs, cold rages, cruel stalkings? the casualness of the disposal plans, the non e' colpa mia she fell on the potted plants- hopeless denial of responsibility of it?
What is it that is so essentially Italian about this grisly tale?, - the intra-familial murder (they are reported night after night as generations, siblings, affines, off one another in every conceivable way and circumstance from one end of the peninsula to the other), rinascimento memories of heads and baskets of figs, cold rages, cruel stalkings? the casualness of the disposal plans, the non e' colpa mia she fell on the potted plants- hopeless denial of responsibility of it?
sooty and sweep
Up the hill the wood cleansing for this year is completed. The route for the fencing is cleared. The Sweep and its meadows are released, and so are the terraces of the orto alongside the Sooty.
The Sooty orto is to be fenced separately from the home park fencing immediately, so that it can be planted up for veg. and salads. Leo will plough it next week; the scattering takes place as soon as it is fenced otherwise porcupines will descend from above the fountain and eat all the shoots and leave.
The windows and shutters have been fitted at the house and now the carpenter has to remove all the handles, and all the shutters as he has been impertinent enough to stamp them all with his name as if the house is his advertizing hoarding. I have declined to have any further part in choosing with this particular tradesman as he is a local, puffed up, masculinist creep of a kind all too familiar. The architect has goldenly-smiled and agreed to deal with him on Monday.
The Sooty orto is to be fenced separately from the home park fencing immediately, so that it can be planted up for veg. and salads. Leo will plough it next week; the scattering takes place as soon as it is fenced otherwise porcupines will descend from above the fountain and eat all the shoots and leave.
The windows and shutters have been fitted at the house and now the carpenter has to remove all the handles, and all the shutters as he has been impertinent enough to stamp them all with his name as if the house is his advertizing hoarding. I have declined to have any further part in choosing with this particular tradesman as he is a local, puffed up, masculinist creep of a kind all too familiar. The architect has goldenly-smiled and agreed to deal with him on Monday.
Moon of Alabama
The German government is to contribute to a German research and engineering body that plans to put a space rocket into orbit round the moon and obtain data to map the moon's surface in great detail. This project is to be followed by a landing to obtain physical samples of various areas of the moon's surface so that a geophysical mapping can be carried out.
The Germans have said they are doing this separately from the European Union space research bodies. They remark that they have the economic, technical engineering and organisational skills to be confident of the success of their project.
They were pioneering in all this in 1941 and were hindered only by the intervening losses of the second world war and the removal en masse of their scientists and engineering infrastructure to America and the Soviet Union.
If the speed and efficiency with which eastern Germany has been rehabilitated since the fall of the Wall, the costs so deftly spread across the whole of the EU (only fair, I concede) and the glowing confidence and surefootedness with which they are stepping up to globalizing, and distributing fairly, are to go by, I believe them.
Last year my visit to Berlin was a winter adventure ( I have remarked before on the weirdness of walking through the Austalasia houses of the Botanischergarten fully euipped with parrots, looking out at a snowbound landscape) so my friend and I may go a little later.
Should we be looking to buy a bit of the Moon? Or at least a bit of Berlin.
Library users will know that I have been taken away by German culture and its denial to me by aforementioned contrary circumstances.
The Germans have said they are doing this separately from the European Union space research bodies. They remark that they have the economic, technical engineering and organisational skills to be confident of the success of their project.
They were pioneering in all this in 1941 and were hindered only by the intervening losses of the second world war and the removal en masse of their scientists and engineering infrastructure to America and the Soviet Union.
If the speed and efficiency with which eastern Germany has been rehabilitated since the fall of the Wall, the costs so deftly spread across the whole of the EU (only fair, I concede) and the glowing confidence and surefootedness with which they are stepping up to globalizing, and distributing fairly, are to go by, I believe them.
Last year my visit to Berlin was a winter adventure ( I have remarked before on the weirdness of walking through the Austalasia houses of the Botanischergarten fully euipped with parrots, looking out at a snowbound landscape) so my friend and I may go a little later.
Should we be looking to buy a bit of the Moon? Or at least a bit of Berlin.
Library users will know that I have been taken away by German culture and its denial to me by aforementioned contrary circumstances.
01/03/2007
reviews
The Librarian invites reviews from all Library members who are enthused or repelled by whatever they are reading. This will help keep us all updated with much less effort than doing the reading ourselves (unless here, where reading is obligatory).
no no global
An interesting-looking parcel arrived this morning; inside was Philippe Legrain's Open World:the truth about globalisation.
Library members who heard the Caffe' Lectures will be interested that the arguments presented there which caused such consternation among the standard left-leaning professionals, are put forward here too, with a slightly different emphasis - more refutation of the no-globals and a less broad sweep on positive aspects of planet-wide economic integration and problems of distribution and fairness, than our hero undertook.
To be reviewed.
Library members who heard the Caffe' Lectures will be interested that the arguments presented there which caused such consternation among the standard left-leaning professionals, are put forward here too, with a slightly different emphasis - more refutation of the no-globals and a less broad sweep on positive aspects of planet-wide economic integration and problems of distribution and fairness, than our hero undertook.
To be reviewed.
High table Labour
While looking at 2020, the website set up by Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn to open discussion both within the Labour party and outside on where it is going and should it be going there, I see Professor the Right Honourable Lord Eatwell well up in the endorsing comments on its opening page.
Most discussion in the dead tree press has agreed this is an anti Brown- takeover website so, having a high regard for John's economist's learning and skills, as well as a warm appreciation of his knowing which side the political bread is buttered, I though this boded bad for Brown. John knows more than most about pensions, the big bad bogey of Brown's incompetent micro-managing, and almost everything about the real shape the UK economy is in (fine the globalized sectors run by the Bank of England and the sectors controlled by the EU Growth and Stability Pact parameters) awful the nightmare of control freak high tax/highspend and redistribute to clientalise the Brown/Labour vote bits (which fortunately impinge less on London than the rest of the country).
Just a straw in the wind but I think it indicates it's not over for Tony yet, not any where near.
Most discussion in the dead tree press has agreed this is an anti Brown- takeover website so, having a high regard for John's economist's learning and skills, as well as a warm appreciation of his knowing which side the political bread is buttered, I though this boded bad for Brown. John knows more than most about pensions, the big bad bogey of Brown's incompetent micro-managing, and almost everything about the real shape the UK economy is in (fine the globalized sectors run by the Bank of England and the sectors controlled by the EU Growth and Stability Pact parameters) awful the nightmare of control freak high tax/highspend and redistribute to clientalise the Brown/Labour vote bits (which fortunately impinge less on London than the rest of the country).
Just a straw in the wind but I think it indicates it's not over for Tony yet, not any where near.
28/02/2007
self indulgence
Watching the vote in the Senate has made me realise how much it matters that decent people, right or left, are running the government. I'd rather have any shade of political opinion than a criminal like the one we voted out at the last elections.
The trotskyite who voted us all back into a potential nightmare so he could say his part and turn round is as bad as any criminal; he got punched on the train home. I hope he got punched again tonight, even if we did win - just.
The trotskyite who voted us all back into a potential nightmare so he could say his part and turn round is as bad as any criminal; he got punched on the train home. I hope he got punched again tonight, even if we did win - just.
27/02/2007
the relevance of Trollope
Since the Brownite attempt to oust the prime minister last year which led to that extraordinary farewell to the Party speech by Blair at the last full Labour conference, the government of the UK has become the stuff of novels.
Facing the electorate is the nightmare experience for any sitting MP; so much so that the rules governing the holding of an office of profit under the Crown were altered to preserve those accepting ministerial appointment from having to refight their seat. For most MPs an election is the bottom line to be evaded at all and any cost, but few considerations of post world war 2, the great watershed of the modern political settlement, politics, take this into account.
The steady advance of party grip on elected members has also been a feature of the advance of the Labour party and the decline of the Liberals during the last century; unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, Labour requires its candidates to be members of an affiliated organisation - principally a trade union or the co-op, plus some others, or to have the specific nulla osta of the NEC where such formalized allegiance is lacking. Effectively Labour MPs are mandated in a way that those of other parties are not. The Party discipline of Labour and its constituent organisations and funders does not coincide with the single-member, geographically located, first past the post election system where, once elected, an MP at least notionally answers to and represents the interests of all , electors or no, within his constituency. Labour is much more like the notion of representation used in continental systems of party lists and proportional representation ,although it is forced to use the UK practice.
If the electorate are seen as spoilers and their consultation to be avoided at all costs then we are back to pre-Labour politics - Trollopeland. Blair, consummate politician and empathizer that he is,has got this in one; Brown, crude Party controller and unaware of non-rule bound nuance freak that he is, has not.
For the last six months Blair has been Prime Minister but without the encumbrance of the Labour party, except for the PLP desperate not to be exposed to an unnecessary general election. All Blair has to threaten is to call one if he is not allowed to run his full term; and Brown's levels of voter-put-off combined with his control of the Party delivering the leadership to him, reinforce Labour MPs' determination to support Blair in his anachronistic adventure.
Facing the electorate is the nightmare experience for any sitting MP; so much so that the rules governing the holding of an office of profit under the Crown were altered to preserve those accepting ministerial appointment from having to refight their seat. For most MPs an election is the bottom line to be evaded at all and any cost, but few considerations of post world war 2, the great watershed of the modern political settlement, politics, take this into account.
The steady advance of party grip on elected members has also been a feature of the advance of the Labour party and the decline of the Liberals during the last century; unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, Labour requires its candidates to be members of an affiliated organisation - principally a trade union or the co-op, plus some others, or to have the specific nulla osta of the NEC where such formalized allegiance is lacking. Effectively Labour MPs are mandated in a way that those of other parties are not. The Party discipline of Labour and its constituent organisations and funders does not coincide with the single-member, geographically located, first past the post election system where, once elected, an MP at least notionally answers to and represents the interests of all , electors or no, within his constituency. Labour is much more like the notion of representation used in continental systems of party lists and proportional representation ,although it is forced to use the UK practice.
If the electorate are seen as spoilers and their consultation to be avoided at all costs then we are back to pre-Labour politics - Trollopeland. Blair, consummate politician and empathizer that he is,has got this in one; Brown, crude Party controller and unaware of non-rule bound nuance freak that he is, has not.
For the last six months Blair has been Prime Minister but without the encumbrance of the Labour party, except for the PLP desperate not to be exposed to an unnecessary general election. All Blair has to threaten is to call one if he is not allowed to run his full term; and Brown's levels of voter-put-off combined with his control of the Party delivering the leadership to him, reinforce Labour MPs' determination to support Blair in his anachronistic adventure.
26/02/2007
what are you all reading and do you like it?
So here we are in Letsbeavenue; Desert Island books. I don't accept these nominations at all. Further, from this desert island, I sustain the whole -Library approach.
La Repubblica says:
125 autori del mondo anglosassone hanno scelto i libri più belli di tutti i tempi
Vince la letteratura dell'Ottocento, con Tolstoj. Poche citazioni per quella di oggi
Nella hit parade degli scrittori
Fra i primi venti solo il libro di un vivente: Cent'anni di solitudine
Classici battono contemporanei dieci a zero. O giù di lì. Non si tratta di calcio, bensì di letteratura: un sondaggio tra 125 scrittori americani, inglesi e australiani per scoprire quali sono i romanzi più belli di tutti i tempi, i dieci libri che ognuno dovrebbe portare con sé su un'isola deserta, o al limite anche su un'isola abitata, insomma i libri da non perdere. Ebbene, gli scrittori di oggi hanno scelto, quasi esclusivamente, scrittori di ieri, o anche di ieri l'altro.
La letteratura dell'Ottocento stravince questa speciale graduatoria, con gli scrittori russi che occupano in maggioranza le primissime posizioni e uno su tutti che risulta, per così dire, il campione del mondo: Lev Tolstoj, che con i suoi due capolavori "Anna Karenina" (primo posto) e "Guerra e pace" (terzo), conquista due delle prime tre piazze.
Segno che gli scrittori contemporanei non hanno una grande opinione dei libri che loro stessi scrivono? Il sospetto è legittimo. Martin Amis, Ian Mc Ewan e Salman Rushdie, per citare tre di quelli più stimati dalla critica e più premiati dalle vendite, hanno ricevuto appena un pugno di citazioni dai centoventicinque intervistati, che comprendevano gli stessi Amis, Mc Ewan, Rushdie, e tra gli altri Norman Mailer, Stephen King, Tom Wolfe.
Alle spalle di Tolstoj, in seconda posizione, si è classificato un altro grande classico dell'Ottocento, Flaubert, con "Madame Bovary". La lista dei primi dieci è completata, nell'ordine, da "Lolita" di Vladimir Nabokov, "Le avventure di Huckleberry Finn" di Mark Twain, "Amleto" di Shakespeare, "Il grande Gatsby" di Francis Scott Fitzgerald, "Alla ricerca del tempo perduto" di Marcel Proust, "I racconti" di Anton Checov e "Middlemarch" di George Eliot. Trai primi venti, c'è un solo scrittore vivente: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, con "Cent'anni di solitudine", il romanzo che ha fatto vincere allo scrittore colombiano il premio Nobel per la letteratura e che ha affermato nel mondo la narrativa latinoamericana.
I risultati del sondaggio diventeranno a loro volta un libro, intitolato "Top ten" (I primi dieci). Prima ancora di leggerlo, ognuno di noi può chiedersi se è d'accordo con la classifica compilata dagli scrittori e domandarsi quali sono i nostri personali "top ten", i dieci libri da non perdere, quelli che bisogna assolutamente aver letto. Chissà se anche i non addetti ai lavori preferirebbero i classici ai contemporanei.
La Repubblica says:
125 autori del mondo anglosassone hanno scelto i libri più belli di tutti i tempi
Vince la letteratura dell'Ottocento, con Tolstoj. Poche citazioni per quella di oggi
Nella hit parade degli scrittori
Fra i primi venti solo il libro di un vivente: Cent'anni di solitudine
Classici battono contemporanei dieci a zero. O giù di lì. Non si tratta di calcio, bensì di letteratura: un sondaggio tra 125 scrittori americani, inglesi e australiani per scoprire quali sono i romanzi più belli di tutti i tempi, i dieci libri che ognuno dovrebbe portare con sé su un'isola deserta, o al limite anche su un'isola abitata, insomma i libri da non perdere. Ebbene, gli scrittori di oggi hanno scelto, quasi esclusivamente, scrittori di ieri, o anche di ieri l'altro.
La letteratura dell'Ottocento stravince questa speciale graduatoria, con gli scrittori russi che occupano in maggioranza le primissime posizioni e uno su tutti che risulta, per così dire, il campione del mondo: Lev Tolstoj, che con i suoi due capolavori "Anna Karenina" (primo posto) e "Guerra e pace" (terzo), conquista due delle prime tre piazze.
Segno che gli scrittori contemporanei non hanno una grande opinione dei libri che loro stessi scrivono? Il sospetto è legittimo. Martin Amis, Ian Mc Ewan e Salman Rushdie, per citare tre di quelli più stimati dalla critica e più premiati dalle vendite, hanno ricevuto appena un pugno di citazioni dai centoventicinque intervistati, che comprendevano gli stessi Amis, Mc Ewan, Rushdie, e tra gli altri Norman Mailer, Stephen King, Tom Wolfe.
Alle spalle di Tolstoj, in seconda posizione, si è classificato un altro grande classico dell'Ottocento, Flaubert, con "Madame Bovary". La lista dei primi dieci è completata, nell'ordine, da "Lolita" di Vladimir Nabokov, "Le avventure di Huckleberry Finn" di Mark Twain, "Amleto" di Shakespeare, "Il grande Gatsby" di Francis Scott Fitzgerald, "Alla ricerca del tempo perduto" di Marcel Proust, "I racconti" di Anton Checov e "Middlemarch" di George Eliot. Trai primi venti, c'è un solo scrittore vivente: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, con "Cent'anni di solitudine", il romanzo che ha fatto vincere allo scrittore colombiano il premio Nobel per la letteratura e che ha affermato nel mondo la narrativa latinoamericana.
I risultati del sondaggio diventeranno a loro volta un libro, intitolato "Top ten" (I primi dieci). Prima ancora di leggerlo, ognuno di noi può chiedersi se è d'accordo con la classifica compilata dagli scrittori e domandarsi quali sono i nostri personali "top ten", i dieci libri da non perdere, quelli che bisogna assolutamente aver letto. Chissà se anche i non addetti ai lavori preferirebbero i classici ai contemporanei.
24/02/2007
salutations
A friend of Library subscribers (most welcome to become a subscriber) mentioned rereading favourite works as a goodbye, there being not enough time left to visit them all again and wishing to choose what to enjoy in one last read.
Last read nominations (for later in life, of course)?
Last read nominations (for later in life, of course)?
dementia fears and reality
Sometimes, while flicking quickly through an attractive title, I realise only after settling down to a good read, that I have read the book before. Is my brain shrinking with the passing of time? When did this begin? How can I check it is happening and the rate of advance if I cannot remember in the first place?
Even more worryingly, very fine novels reveal aspects of themselves I had not noticed formerly (or had forgotten?).
Comments on re-reading experiences should be either condemnatory or, preferably, reassuring.
Even more worryingly, very fine novels reveal aspects of themselves I had not noticed formerly (or had forgotten?).
Comments on re-reading experiences should be either condemnatory or, preferably, reassuring.
A-mazing (sorry)
I am going up the hill to consider mazes. It isn't necessary to have high hedges that block the view (though those feel more fun), and there is a large area past the threshing ground that could be used to lay one out. It is also waterlogged and I briefly considered a water maze. Looking in the Library, there is no water maze mentioned in the Maze book, but I cannot see why the dividing lines couldn't be water - like Mars, only still wet.
Suggestions are welcome but I warn Library subscribers that mazes are anorak heaven and conform to patterns and their rules uncontemplated in common life.
Suggestions are welcome but I warn Library subscribers that mazes are anorak heaven and conform to patterns and their rules uncontemplated in common life.
21/02/2007
Shelved
Nominations are opened for the true trash book. I nominate Weapons of Choice World War 2.1, John Birmingham, which has only survived because this is the Trash Library. It is nearly 800 pages long; the writing is acceptable in that there are no errors so bad it is put aside; the form is narrative juxtaposed interludes with different protagonists from among the characters featured in each. It claims to be a thriller/science fiction, and it keeps just creeping along well enough to make the reader decide to give it another five minutes after lunch, and then waste an hour; a book constructed to be picked up in lacunae of the day. The construction, at a secondary level, is not quite skilled enough to not draw attention to itself, but it is interesting to look at construction techniques, so even that is passable. So it meets every criterion for trash I can think of and I've put it on the shelves.
Other criteria for trash? Other nominations?
Other criteria for trash? Other nominations?
20/02/2007
dream river
The Sweep is running with water, it has waterfalls and pools and swirly rapids (on a very small scale); the rocks, and river bed pebbles have been washed clean of mud and undergrowth; there are islands, high banks with footholds, low- banked lengths with grassy borders. It is a childhood dream of a little river, a river from all the children's 'journey adventure' stories that people wish they had played and adventured along when they were small. There are long glades beside it, then ramparts of rock and fern and oak trees and, finally, olive groves before the house.
When I was a child the rivers in the Pennines, at Low Row and on the Fells were like this; there they are called 'burns'; here, in the pre- appennini, they are called ruscelli.
It hasn't snowed except briefly in the Pratomagno, and rained very little, so we must assume that the cleaning of the woodlands has released an acquifer to flow in its original bed; someone somewhere is missing a lot of water, I hope they don't come looking for it here.
When I was a child the rivers in the Pennines, at Low Row and on the Fells were like this; there they are called 'burns'; here, in the pre- appennini, they are called ruscelli.
It hasn't snowed except briefly in the Pratomagno, and rained very little, so we must assume that the cleaning of the woodlands has released an acquifer to flow in its original bed; someone somewhere is missing a lot of water, I hope they don't come looking for it here.
18/02/2007
frontispiece
The honour of choosing the photograph for the festschrift fell to me. Library users will be pleased to hear that apart from a knowing smile, the picture showed: the large kitchen fireplace, fire blazing, pietra serena distinguished, the table with tea things (pale green china with birds on), rather than the standard carpet of bottles, and a particularly fine glass tazza holding an artistic splash of colour in the form of oranges. Home life at its most civilized, even the cotto is highly polished. I am disappointed only in that, on checking, Gu is not in his place on the cammino.
17/02/2007
Beni mobili and their use
It has begun already. I note, on checking the third floor shutters, that the chimera rug is in the stanzina, where it looks very well; the tables made from wood salvaged from the destroyed ponte S. Niccolo' have been restored by Marino and, when seen, will tug at the heartstrings of their former owner, and doubtless try to return to Florence but are destined for up the hill. Brass horse awaits his return to the fields of England (well, the gardens of WC1); though some things are at home - Berlin bronze snail continues to mark the rate of the advance of the revolution between Marx and Lenin in their bronzed, bearded seriousness, Franco's coffee pots and chicken alla diavola instruct the big kitchen, and the Chinese rug graces the salottino (I know few others like it but I chose it rather than the proffered fur coat and enjoy it enormously, as does Gu).
Furniture has always been a battleground in Tuscan inheritance, just look at all those vellum-bound volumes I to IV of XII in the Library, divided up dinner services, ill-matched chair groups, but if beni mobili join the Library then they can be borrowed and returned and a bain of Tuscan family life removed.
Furniture has always been a battleground in Tuscan inheritance, just look at all those vellum-bound volumes I to IV of XII in the Library, divided up dinner services, ill-matched chair groups, but if beni mobili join the Library then they can be borrowed and returned and a bain of Tuscan family life removed.
what is a collection?
What if all the pictures, prints, soprammobiles, rugs, (goodness) chairs... joined the books, films, dvds, (photos?) that can be drawn on, borrowed, enjoyed, returned, replaced with fresh choices? Librarians! Kings of the Universe!
Pimpa
A large box (really large) of Corriere dei Piccoli has held me up; reading again. Most are from the 70s and 80s but, wonderfully, some are from the 40s. The later ones smell of Chadlands attic the earlier of the stanzone vecchio, now so gloriously transformed for pool and snooker playing and watching Buffy from comfy cream sofas.
Rodari's true heir is Altan. The graphics in the later Corrieres are surprisingly quite as good as in the earlier ones, not least because of Pimpa and her creator. Both Altan and Rodari never descend into the saccharine or the fey; what they say has as much interpretive worth as the reader can offer.
Should some of the very best pages be framed and put on the walls (that Rodari exhibition has got to me clearly) or should the copies be preserved entire? A Library subscriber has been collecting Cipputi cartoons form Espresso for years and they could be framed too.
I think Cipputi is probably Pimpa's uncle.
Rodari's true heir is Altan. The graphics in the later Corrieres are surprisingly quite as good as in the earlier ones, not least because of Pimpa and her creator. Both Altan and Rodari never descend into the saccharine or the fey; what they say has as much interpretive worth as the reader can offer.
Should some of the very best pages be framed and put on the walls (that Rodari exhibition has got to me clearly) or should the copies be preserved entire? A Library subscriber has been collecting Cipputi cartoons form Espresso for years and they could be framed too.
I think Cipputi is probably Pimpa's uncle.
16/02/2007
Rodari at the Museo Marino Marini
The undercroft of the Museo Marino Marini is a scary place. To reach the exhibition we walked through the main display on the ground floor, then descended a dark stair to what we wanted to see. Slate floors, low-vaulted ceilings, discreetly dimmed lighting stretched away into the distance as we crossed a bridged archaeological remnant. I am glad I am a grown up, and even so felt like holding Giules' hand - and Giules is a grown up too. Low stone tunnels stretched off into darkness; I wondered if J.K.Rowling had been as inspired by this as Philip Pullman by the chapel of the Medici Ricardi. Conscientiously we turned to the first exhibit - some green groceries on a table top. As they had nothing to tell me I moved on to the next, the framed book covers of Il Romanzo di Cipollino (which put the veg. in context). Next to the covers, from many translations, was an extract from Rodari's account of writing it, which we read and moved to the next set of book covers. Surely there could have been people to read the Libro delle Filastrocche? Or recordings of smalls reading them? No, just the covers displaying a strong influence of socialist realism in art. We stepped up to Il Viaggio della Freccia Azzura, but no train that might be stepped into, not even a train set, just the covers. And a reprint of La Befana,come lei sa, a piazza Navona se ne sta...
Good thing we can read well, and are as tall as grown ups, because these displays are at our eye-level.
Arriving at the various editions of Gelsomino nel Paese dei Bugiardi where 'fatta la riforma del vocabulario, impose la legge che rendeva obbligatoria la bugia.' Blair, we said, turning to one another.
Favole al Telefono passed (I knew those BY HEART' remarked G., then Il Libro degli Errori, 'and made most of those' . I liked Rodari's view "Gli errori sono necessari, utili come pane e spesso anche belli: per esempio, la Torre di Pisa'.
We looked at the covers of Novelle Fatte a Macchina and remembered the word games, verbal tricks, hidden citations, inside out proverbs, recastings of commonplaces; good thing we remembered too, because there was nothing to tell those who had forgotten or never laughed out loud at all that inventiveness. There were no Marionette in Liberta', just the book covers under glass, high on the wall.
Una torta di cioccolato
grande come una citta'
che arrivi dallo spazio
a piccola velocita'
What would you do with such an image if you had curated this exhibition? No - more covers.
I particularly liked 'a Firenze, un professore d'etologia che invece d'osservare gli animali studia le abitudini del campanile di Giotto...', but the images were all in my mind.
I have never read Grammatica della Fantasia, 'Se avessimo anche una Fantastica, come una Logica, sarebbe scoperta l'arte di inventare.'. "Have you this?' we said, after turning into one of Florence's larger bookshops, pointing at the reproduction of the covers in the catalogue of the exhibition. 'No'.
It would be a welcome addition to the Library. And the Librarian can supply pots of poster paints and sheets of torn off computer paper, thus matching the provision for the 'Esercizi per la Fantasia' offered by the (highly funded) servizio educativo.
Imagine if Gianni Rodari had had a blog. What would he have called it? And imagine the comments that would have been posted; out of the mouths of babes...
Good thing we can read well, and are as tall as grown ups, because these displays are at our eye-level.
Arriving at the various editions of Gelsomino nel Paese dei Bugiardi where 'fatta la riforma del vocabulario, impose la legge che rendeva obbligatoria la bugia.' Blair, we said, turning to one another.
Favole al Telefono passed (I knew those BY HEART' remarked G., then Il Libro degli Errori, 'and made most of those' . I liked Rodari's view "Gli errori sono necessari, utili come pane e spesso anche belli: per esempio, la Torre di Pisa'.
We looked at the covers of Novelle Fatte a Macchina and remembered the word games, verbal tricks, hidden citations, inside out proverbs, recastings of commonplaces; good thing we remembered too, because there was nothing to tell those who had forgotten or never laughed out loud at all that inventiveness. There were no Marionette in Liberta', just the book covers under glass, high on the wall.
Una torta di cioccolato
grande come una citta'
che arrivi dallo spazio
a piccola velocita'
What would you do with such an image if you had curated this exhibition? No - more covers.
I particularly liked 'a Firenze, un professore d'etologia che invece d'osservare gli animali studia le abitudini del campanile di Giotto...', but the images were all in my mind.
I have never read Grammatica della Fantasia, 'Se avessimo anche una Fantastica, come una Logica, sarebbe scoperta l'arte di inventare.'. "Have you this?' we said, after turning into one of Florence's larger bookshops, pointing at the reproduction of the covers in the catalogue of the exhibition. 'No'.
It would be a welcome addition to the Library. And the Librarian can supply pots of poster paints and sheets of torn off computer paper, thus matching the provision for the 'Esercizi per la Fantasia' offered by the (highly funded) servizio educativo.
Imagine if Gianni Rodari had had a blog. What would he have called it? And imagine the comments that would have been posted; out of the mouths of babes...
13/02/2007
Time's up
Very shortly the Library will receive a donation of German grammar books. I cannot believe I shall ever be able to tell the time in German. In truth, I cannot tell the time. I never could. I know the time in that I know almost to the 5 minutes what time it is through day and night (when awake) but this must be one of those sensory compensation mechanisms that are described in books. Blind people can hear remarkably well, or deaf people can interpret waving gestures and read mood from minute facial expressions etc.
Well, I don't think in 24 hour clocks, or in five minutes before the half hour time chunks. When I was aked if I had the time in Munich I showed the woman my (12 hour) watch and she read the time of day perfectly nicely in whatever goes on in her head and we got on well. If I need a timetable time I can look at it for long enough to work out that 15 is three and 17 is, treacherously five (for some reason 17 is particularly misleading, as is 20). All this has something to do with right and left too (or at least saying 'right' or 'left' and getting it correct to the outside world), I'm sure it has because the sensation of lostness and panic I experience is identical.
But if the cruelty and time-wasting doesn't stop soon I shall just go it alone, learn lots of words, present continuous, future and perfect tenses (with a few ad hoc imperfects), get up a specialized vocabulary on neue typographie and sail out on the bosom of Berlin urbanity.
Well, I don't think in 24 hour clocks, or in five minutes before the half hour time chunks. When I was aked if I had the time in Munich I showed the woman my (12 hour) watch and she read the time of day perfectly nicely in whatever goes on in her head and we got on well. If I need a timetable time I can look at it for long enough to work out that 15 is three and 17 is, treacherously five (for some reason 17 is particularly misleading, as is 20). All this has something to do with right and left too (or at least saying 'right' or 'left' and getting it correct to the outside world), I'm sure it has because the sensation of lostness and panic I experience is identical.
But if the cruelty and time-wasting doesn't stop soon I shall just go it alone, learn lots of words, present continuous, future and perfect tenses (with a few ad hoc imperfects), get up a specialized vocabulary on neue typographie and sail out on the bosom of Berlin urbanity.
11/02/2007
treatise
Great excitement and hard work going on here. A book is being born in the Library! Final proofs are being read, infuriating editorial changes to complexly-cast sentences of infinite subtlety are being struck down (why do they do it? Library users of various disciplines have been reduced to quivering as months of work are annihilated by uncomprehending editorial intervention?).
And on Wednesday the last word on how to play the accompaniment of Italian music from the late 1500s to the late 18th century will set the presses rolling (well, modern technology given etc .).
And on Wednesday the last word on how to play the accompaniment of Italian music from the late 1500s to the late 18th century will set the presses rolling (well, modern technology given etc .).
pigeonsare vile
The sound of (light) gunfire took me to the windows overlooking the church square recently. There was the owner of the local grocery shop, crouched in the vicolo behind the house opposite, shooting pigeons as they failed to find footholds on ledges fitted with pigeon repelling wires. He remarked later to a household shopper that we needn't worry as he wouldn't hit the house. I thought 'couldn't hit a house' was an insult in shooting circles but clearly 'wouldn't hit a house' is a sign of skill.
The beastly pigeons make it across the our lady grotto and then drop dead in the garden; still, rather dead than alive I suppose.
There's a robust attitude to law observance in this part of the world. Some time ago there was an amnesty for undeclared arms (various) and on searching the building (ever-suspicious of the strain of individualistic behaviour that sleeps, and often wakes, here through the centuries) I found, 1 bayonet (used), 1 curved sword which I would call a scimitar (used, positively viciously-nicked from top to bottom of the blade), 4 duelling swords of various thicknesses (used but possibly only in sport, but who knows what the house inhabitants might define as sport?), a carabina case which, worryingly, had no carabina inside (where is it?), and an air gun (new, unused, thank goodness the grocer is doing the honours across the square).
So I put them all in a safe place except for the duelling swords which are looking decorative in a stanza del terazzo .
Once the arms had been declared to be in the house there was no requirement to hand them in; just so long as it's known they are there. I didn't declare the Landrover, even though its booklet describes it as ' tried, tested and approved by armies throughout the world'.
The beastly pigeons make it across the our lady grotto and then drop dead in the garden; still, rather dead than alive I suppose.
There's a robust attitude to law observance in this part of the world. Some time ago there was an amnesty for undeclared arms (various) and on searching the building (ever-suspicious of the strain of individualistic behaviour that sleeps, and often wakes, here through the centuries) I found, 1 bayonet (used), 1 curved sword which I would call a scimitar (used, positively viciously-nicked from top to bottom of the blade), 4 duelling swords of various thicknesses (used but possibly only in sport, but who knows what the house inhabitants might define as sport?), a carabina case which, worryingly, had no carabina inside (where is it?), and an air gun (new, unused, thank goodness the grocer is doing the honours across the square).
So I put them all in a safe place except for the duelling swords which are looking decorative in a stanza del terazzo .
Once the arms had been declared to be in the house there was no requirement to hand them in; just so long as it's known they are there. I didn't declare the Landrover, even though its booklet describes it as ' tried, tested and approved by armies throughout the world'.
10/02/2007
tortoise patrol
There is no sign of Lenin or Rosa but I have begun to patrol the lower garden just in case they wake in this patch of warm weather. What I shall do if I find them wandering about I'm not sure; force them back to bed? bury them again? It's bound to get cold before it gets to April.
Isn't it?
Isn't it?
mimosa
Library members are arriving today so I went to the first floor to open the shutters and air and heat the rooms there. The profumatissimo calicanthus is beginning to fade now as February presses on, but the scented sea of brilliant yellow that is the mimosa from above is delicious. It has taken over most of the upper garden main bed; nothing else apart from the calicanthus, can grow there now. I wanted to take it out and replant it up the hill, but seeing it,no, experiencing it, in all its glory on a globally-warmed February day, I hesitate. It makes a lot of shade and is messy later in the year. Still, if it's this warm now ( early Jun-ish to give an idea) perhaps a shade-giving anything should be left ?
It does drop bits into the dinner later in the year.
It does drop bits into the dinner later in the year.
09/02/2007
night and fog
I have finished Derek Raymond's A State of Denmark. It is now in theLibrary. I was most surprised to see it was first published in 1970 because, apart from the lack of an internet, it describes some familiar scenarios. The better part of the novel is set in the countryside between Civitella Marittima and Roccastrada, just before the coastal plain in front of the Golfo di Follonica - familiar landscape to regular Library users as there is a branch of the Library on the coast. Life there is unchanged in many ways since always, so there is no anachronistic background.
The elected government of England (Scotland and Wales having unilaterally seceded from the Union) is called New Pace. Beginning with the steady marginalisation of parliament and the politicisation (perhaps partyfication would be a better word) of the civil service, and the out-sourcing of government to arms length party-appointed bodies, England is conceding democracy in return for no immigration, social order, and the retention of social and economic privilege by a fairly extensive middle and upper class; there is a much publicized 'working partnership' with the monarchy.
The hero has left what was then the UK on New Pace's election victory, taking everything he has with him after selling up in London and the country, because he despises and fears New Pace for what it will become.
I have been struck often by the early and mid 20th century echoes of nightmare propaganda and press control in the last ten years; as if there has been a style indulgence in a secretly admired regime, with the arogant assumption that the rest of us would not notice the similarities and derivations. I was shaken by the accuracy of Raymond's portrayal of social attitudes, political cowardice, deliberate eye-closing and his choice of words and phrases that come from today's comment pieces and ministerial announcements.
As he could not have been seeing into the future he must have been looking at the same past as that being drawn upon now for policy, practice, and imagery. The word 'new' has risen again as a marker for authoritarians, their achievements, and their goals.
Would the next visitor to the Library bring Resnais' film, on DVD, with them?
The elected government of England (Scotland and Wales having unilaterally seceded from the Union) is called New Pace. Beginning with the steady marginalisation of parliament and the politicisation (perhaps partyfication would be a better word) of the civil service, and the out-sourcing of government to arms length party-appointed bodies, England is conceding democracy in return for no immigration, social order, and the retention of social and economic privilege by a fairly extensive middle and upper class; there is a much publicized 'working partnership' with the monarchy.
The hero has left what was then the UK on New Pace's election victory, taking everything he has with him after selling up in London and the country, because he despises and fears New Pace for what it will become.
I have been struck often by the early and mid 20th century echoes of nightmare propaganda and press control in the last ten years; as if there has been a style indulgence in a secretly admired regime, with the arogant assumption that the rest of us would not notice the similarities and derivations. I was shaken by the accuracy of Raymond's portrayal of social attitudes, political cowardice, deliberate eye-closing and his choice of words and phrases that come from today's comment pieces and ministerial announcements.
As he could not have been seeing into the future he must have been looking at the same past as that being drawn upon now for policy, practice, and imagery. The word 'new' has risen again as a marker for authoritarians, their achievements, and their goals.
Would the next visitor to the Library bring Resnais' film, on DVD, with them?
Among the greatest and surely the most beloved
Should different translations of the same work be shelved all together or in language sections? At the moment non-English works are on the third floor and, as the bulk of them are in Italian, though there is a respectable showing in French and Polish, shelved alphabetically regardless of language. I'm failing to spot the inconsistency in this but I feel there is one.
The sixth most translated Italian author, after Dante, Machiavelli, Gramsci, Pirandello and Croce is?
Gianni Rodari
"Se andrete a Firenze vedrete certamente...." la gente will want to see the wonderful exhibition Gianni Rodari nel Mondo:Edizioni Straniere di Rodari at the Museo Marino Marini in piazza San Pancrazio.
I will be in Florence next week and will go on Tuesday then report. You have until 31 March, every day 10-5, except Tuesdays and Sundays.
The sixth most translated Italian author, after Dante, Machiavelli, Gramsci, Pirandello and Croce is?
Gianni Rodari
"Se andrete a Firenze vedrete certamente...." la gente will want to see the wonderful exhibition Gianni Rodari nel Mondo:Edizioni Straniere di Rodari at the Museo Marino Marini in piazza San Pancrazio.
I will be in Florence next week and will go on Tuesday then report. You have until 31 March, every day 10-5, except Tuesdays and Sundays.
08/02/2007
commonplace argument
While chatting to the Library's IT consultant I was struck by how commonplace argument has become a forum of falsity; not from the consultant's practice, but her account of an exchange over drinks with a person masquerading as a philosopher.
The object of any discussion, to determine what is being talked about, to clarify terms, and to formulate the stronger argument seems to have been abandoned; together with the common courtesy of assuming the other discussant(s) are able to discern non-declared aspects of the cut and thrust of argument.
Now any speaker in this new practice has an agenda, a narrative, to be driven home roughshod over logic, reason, clarity, honesty, hinterland knowledge, or acceptance of the aims or means of discussion (all this apart from both the openly aggressive and the implied rudeness in presentation).
Religion is like this - belief not enquiry, certainty not hypothesis, and the whole persona committed to victory not enlightenment. When this manner of conducting oneself in the world started up again I am unsure; but it will lead to such horrors, has done so already since it was last repelled over 60 years ago.
The object of any discussion, to determine what is being talked about, to clarify terms, and to formulate the stronger argument seems to have been abandoned; together with the common courtesy of assuming the other discussant(s) are able to discern non-declared aspects of the cut and thrust of argument.
Now any speaker in this new practice has an agenda, a narrative, to be driven home roughshod over logic, reason, clarity, honesty, hinterland knowledge, or acceptance of the aims or means of discussion (all this apart from both the openly aggressive and the implied rudeness in presentation).
Religion is like this - belief not enquiry, certainty not hypothesis, and the whole persona committed to victory not enlightenment. When this manner of conducting oneself in the world started up again I am unsure; but it will lead to such horrors, has done so already since it was last repelled over 60 years ago.
primitive accumulation
There are quite a lot of economic history books mixed into the Library, particularly the sections on the third floor.
I started reading again and find that an initial decision to class non-fiction as not-Trash, and shelve it separately, is doubtful.
Clearly Michael Crichton is trash and goes under 'C'. But where do I put Stanley Jevons? Or parts of Jevons' corpus at least.
What about the coal question? Jevons argued it would rise in price and then run out, plunging the UK economy into a crisis.
The 1980s couldn't have been a bitterer lesson in the role of technology in economic change and the importance of economic resources and primary products.
Just as Jevons was wrong so too might the political interpretations of current wars be horribly mistaken; perhaps it's not the oil specifically but straightforward primitive accumulation, as 19th century a concept as could be asked.
Again, all the scientific work on climate change, I am assured, points to global warming. But I really don't care for the political interpretations being made and the politics of reducing large swathes of populations to serfdom, albeit at quite a high consumption level, in the name of saving the planet.
I started reading again and find that an initial decision to class non-fiction as not-Trash, and shelve it separately, is doubtful.
Clearly Michael Crichton is trash and goes under 'C'. But where do I put Stanley Jevons? Or parts of Jevons' corpus at least.
What about the coal question? Jevons argued it would rise in price and then run out, plunging the UK economy into a crisis.
The 1980s couldn't have been a bitterer lesson in the role of technology in economic change and the importance of economic resources and primary products.
Just as Jevons was wrong so too might the political interpretations of current wars be horribly mistaken; perhaps it's not the oil specifically but straightforward primitive accumulation, as 19th century a concept as could be asked.
Again, all the scientific work on climate change, I am assured, points to global warming. But I really don't care for the political interpretations being made and the politics of reducing large swathes of populations to serfdom, albeit at quite a high consumption level, in the name of saving the planet.
05/02/2007
languages
There are books in many languages to be dealt with (that sounds fiercer than I mean). So it follows there are speakers of many languages who have placed offerings (or confiscations) in the Trash Library.
Any member of the Library who wishes to comment in another language is most welcome to do so. Responses from the Librarian will be limited to comments in English, French, German, or Italian. But I'm sure all of you will pile in with anything else that comes to mind; just talk among yourselves.
Bemba speakers are requested to keep things fairly simple.
Any member of the Library who wishes to comment in another language is most welcome to do so. Responses from the Librarian will be limited to comments in English, French, German, or Italian. But I'm sure all of you will pile in with anything else that comes to mind; just talk among yourselves.
Bemba speakers are requested to keep things fairly simple.
04/02/2007
god
Tonight I shall finish Rankin's The naming of the dead. I find Rebus too much to bear, talk about Brookner's characters being gloomy, at least they don't give me a sympathetic pain in the chest and throat with the cigarettes, or cause me to worry about the drink consumption levels. Why isn't the man dead? Perhaps he will be soon, I'm at p 375. He might get Morse'd. Morgan Forster kills people off quite shockingly and now it's become the mode.
Next Dawkins on God awaits me. Or perhaps gods, but I'm bound to have something to say about that kind of thing. Prepare yourselves.
The priest has been very quiet today but I feel a bell outburst will occur at 7am tomorrow just to teach us all for laughing at rituals.
Next Dawkins on God awaits me. Or perhaps gods, but I'm bound to have something to say about that kind of thing. Prepare yourselves.
The priest has been very quiet today but I feel a bell outburst will occur at 7am tomorrow just to teach us all for laughing at rituals.
gardens and their making
The great cache of gardening books must find a home. If I shelve them separately then I must start a non-fiction section by subject, organized within by specialism; Dewey looms.
But are gardens only earth and plants and soil and water and sky? Can they too be imaginary worlds like novels, filled with familiar characters? Should I shelve Mazes with formal detective stories, or Seasonal Undertakings with sad, autumnal Anita Brookner novels, or slide rose pruning alongside A Summer Birdcage?
Attractive, indeed rational as it seems, I have decided retrieval must be the first criterion ; non-fiction shelves by subject with internal divisions. Those who have recently compiled indexes may have to come to the aid of the Library.
But are gardens only earth and plants and soil and water and sky? Can they too be imaginary worlds like novels, filled with familiar characters? Should I shelve Mazes with formal detective stories, or Seasonal Undertakings with sad, autumnal Anita Brookner novels, or slide rose pruning alongside A Summer Birdcage?
Attractive, indeed rational as it seems, I have decided retrieval must be the first criterion ; non-fiction shelves by subject with internal divisions. Those who have recently compiled indexes may have to come to the aid of the Library.
03/02/2007
football violence
All football matches have been stopped until further notice in the whole of Italy. Last Thursday, a senior police officer was killed in Catania by rioting youths (minorenne) who put a bomb through the open window of his police car. Inside the stadium the usual mayhem (unarmed because of police vigilance) was taking place; the attack outside the ground seems to have been planned because of the efficiency with which 'fans' are processed into matches.
When a political aspirant to office names his political alliance 'Forza Italia' and, after years of some of the most corrupt governance - often openly criminal - Italy has ever known (which is saying quite a lot) on losing an election he had thought had been rigged for him to win threatens to 'descend into the piazza', then the regularly expressed belief that football is the modern version of hunters and forest guards and other armed but barely acceptable civil groupings is confirmed.
Prodi and Amato have reacted with astonishing speed, determination, and political nous to Berlusconi's at arms' length attempt to disrupt the civil order. We must expect more and worse as his March trial (and that of British Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell's estranged husband David Mills) nears.
Political violence comes in many guises; this time it wears football strip.
When a political aspirant to office names his political alliance 'Forza Italia' and, after years of some of the most corrupt governance - often openly criminal - Italy has ever known (which is saying quite a lot) on losing an election he had thought had been rigged for him to win threatens to 'descend into the piazza', then the regularly expressed belief that football is the modern version of hunters and forest guards and other armed but barely acceptable civil groupings is confirmed.
Prodi and Amato have reacted with astonishing speed, determination, and political nous to Berlusconi's at arms' length attempt to disrupt the civil order. We must expect more and worse as his March trial (and that of British Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell's estranged husband David Mills) nears.
Political violence comes in many guises; this time it wears football strip.
02/02/2007
carnival
The whole village is being closed and I've just moved the landrover into the vicolo to look fierce in front of the garden gate.
The Committee turned up yesterday evening with the flags to hang from the windows (not enough, so I'll put them on the first floor). They're banners really, rather than flags I suppose, it's the same word in Italian.
It is really quite an ancient festivity; there are records from the 13th century of men dressing as women, women as men and swaggering about giving orders, free drink and vast pails of pasta being offered by the local landowners, cooked in vessels borrowed from the local madhouse.
Mad house it became after a few days of that; it got out of hand year after year - total licentiousness only supressed by the start of Lent. And sometimes Lent was not enough and soldiers had to be sent from Arezzo.
Eventually it was suppressed - more soldiers for little outbursts of carnivalism for a few years, but down it went around the late 1400s.
The Church was pleased as there was mock religiosity as well; the arrival of the king, inflammatory speeches about enjoyment and choice, then a mock funeral at his death with open coffin carried through the village and the revellers as the mourners.
Its revival has the local priest in a sulk, refusing to ring the bells (for which relief....) but some remarkably fine costumes; over 190 figures walk now, the women are men, and the men are women; there is free wine and pasta again too, though the mad house is no more. I could not say about the other carnival practices. All the figures are masked. And Lewes itself would be jealous of the burning of the king.
The Committee turned up yesterday evening with the flags to hang from the windows (not enough, so I'll put them on the first floor). They're banners really, rather than flags I suppose, it's the same word in Italian.
It is really quite an ancient festivity; there are records from the 13th century of men dressing as women, women as men and swaggering about giving orders, free drink and vast pails of pasta being offered by the local landowners, cooked in vessels borrowed from the local madhouse.
Mad house it became after a few days of that; it got out of hand year after year - total licentiousness only supressed by the start of Lent. And sometimes Lent was not enough and soldiers had to be sent from Arezzo.
Eventually it was suppressed - more soldiers for little outbursts of carnivalism for a few years, but down it went around the late 1400s.
The Church was pleased as there was mock religiosity as well; the arrival of the king, inflammatory speeches about enjoyment and choice, then a mock funeral at his death with open coffin carried through the village and the revellers as the mourners.
Its revival has the local priest in a sulk, refusing to ring the bells (for which relief....) but some remarkably fine costumes; over 190 figures walk now, the women are men, and the men are women; there is free wine and pasta again too, though the mad house is no more. I could not say about the other carnival practices. All the figures are masked. And Lewes itself would be jealous of the burning of the king.
01/02/2007
translation
After spending half the morning re-editing an English-language text that had been altered by a non-native English speaker, I was struck by the gulf that divides those of differing mother tongues; it is unbridgeable and the cause seems to be wholly different mindsets about how to communicate. I say this having no command of any language, but with the feeling that I have been 'at home' in English all my life.
At the most superficial level. German comes out authoritarian, French mysteriously ambivalent, Italian ornate yet often cruelly direct.
Many years ago a Library user was asked in Cambridge by a Nigerian colleague if Italian could cope with scientific terminology or simply imported the terms. That query has a much wider application.
At the most superficial level. German comes out authoritarian, French mysteriously ambivalent, Italian ornate yet often cruelly direct.
Many years ago a Library user was asked in Cambridge by a Nigerian colleague if Italian could cope with scientific terminology or simply imported the terms. That query has a much wider application.
Bump in the night
Veronica Berlusconi has publicly demanded apologies from Silvio for some heavy compliments he was offering to various women at an official dinner that were reported in the media. What an odd thing to do. After all these years she must have noticed he's mannerless; and why should her expectation of an apology be made public? The apology perhaps, as the offence was publicly given, but who would willingly publish the fact that they have been offended?
The photograph on the front of La Repubblica has clearly been taken on the western end of the terrace against the backdrop of the Comune tower; I thought I had heard noises in the night but it's better to stay in bed in this house and let the night denizens go about their business, not investigate.
The photograph on the front of La Repubblica has clearly been taken on the western end of the terrace against the backdrop of the Comune tower; I thought I had heard noises in the night but it's better to stay in bed in this house and let the night denizens go about their business, not investigate.
31/01/2007
Ivy Compton-Burnett and anonymous posting
While dithering over the alphabetization of double surnames I began to read; this keeps happening to me, the reading (though dithering moments occur often too).
Ivy C-B is the very first blogger. She had no internet but her whole mode of communication is by the spoken word alone. Every persona, every place, every emotion, every crisis, dilemma, horridness, kindness, disaster is told by speech.
Take Parents and Children,
"I suppose my thoughts are nothing to be proud of"
"Then they are different from the rest of you my dear".
We know at once we have a woman and her husband, a dissatisfied woman, and a husband fending off (with skill from experience) her dissatisfaction. Within a half dozen lines she has nine children, a very large house which belongs to her husband's parents, a mother in law not yielding position.....
The art of blogging is the creation of persona, and position without any of the tools used in real social exchange.
To post as Anonymous is to empty any post of interest, a random shout from the darkness, a worthless interjection from a non person.
All of Ivy's posters are bursting with life and reality. Must get back to these Parents now - the Children should be along any moment.
Ivy C-B is the very first blogger. She had no internet but her whole mode of communication is by the spoken word alone. Every persona, every place, every emotion, every crisis, dilemma, horridness, kindness, disaster is told by speech.
Take Parents and Children,
"I suppose my thoughts are nothing to be proud of"
"Then they are different from the rest of you my dear".
We know at once we have a woman and her husband, a dissatisfied woman, and a husband fending off (with skill from experience) her dissatisfaction. Within a half dozen lines she has nine children, a very large house which belongs to her husband's parents, a mother in law not yielding position.....
The art of blogging is the creation of persona, and position without any of the tools used in real social exchange.
To post as Anonymous is to empty any post of interest, a random shout from the darkness, a worthless interjection from a non person.
All of Ivy's posters are bursting with life and reality. Must get back to these Parents now - the Children should be along any moment.
27/01/2007
Issue Desk
Everyone who arrives here with books must leave them on departure. Not work tools but books to while away the time.
The Library was founded when, noting that books were leaving with friends and that fervent promises to return them were unmet, it became the practice to warn before arrival that books could not leave, mine or theirs, once they were here.
Over the years there has been good nature and at times great generosity in the leaving of the books. There has been wit, illumination, excitement and surprise in both the books and their leavers (as well as occasional shame-facedness).
No book is turned away, or locked away, though some are shelved separately as too scary or violent for the unwary, reading perhaps alone or in a lonely room of the house.
I am the Trash Librarian, dilatory but aware of my duties to preserve and acquire. A few years ago one of the Girls provided a library stamp which has spaces for donor, date of acquisition, and serves as a bookplate. So all of this millenium's books are a record of friends' visits and times spent with them.
I wish I had thought of this sooner because while the more memorable - or inappropriate titles - can be attached to a giver, many cannot. After all, the house has been in the family since the late fifteen hundreds.
As I have time now to be diligent in my Librarianship, and as blogging invites contributions from virtual visitors, I thought there might be interest in the Library, and in the world in which it is set.
The Library was founded when, noting that books were leaving with friends and that fervent promises to return them were unmet, it became the practice to warn before arrival that books could not leave, mine or theirs, once they were here.
Over the years there has been good nature and at times great generosity in the leaving of the books. There has been wit, illumination, excitement and surprise in both the books and their leavers (as well as occasional shame-facedness).
No book is turned away, or locked away, though some are shelved separately as too scary or violent for the unwary, reading perhaps alone or in a lonely room of the house.
I am the Trash Librarian, dilatory but aware of my duties to preserve and acquire. A few years ago one of the Girls provided a library stamp which has spaces for donor, date of acquisition, and serves as a bookplate. So all of this millenium's books are a record of friends' visits and times spent with them.
I wish I had thought of this sooner because while the more memorable - or inappropriate titles - can be attached to a giver, many cannot. After all, the house has been in the family since the late fifteen hundreds.
As I have time now to be diligent in my Librarianship, and as blogging invites contributions from virtual visitors, I thought there might be interest in the Library, and in the world in which it is set.
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