William Morris Unbound

The incredible Morris scholar Tony Pinkney, author of the blog William Morris Unbound, has recently released a book William Morris: The Blog which brings together many of his essays written over the last few years.  Unfailingly, Tony has shown us how William Morris remains relevant today, especially within the realms of politics and society.  Tony, if we were in an English pub (no doubt quaint) I would raise a pint to your success, then ask what you thought Morris would say about the Occupy Movement spreading around the globe.  I can't help but think he would be on the front lines.

Those notorious Harvard druggies

Prof. Timothy Leary

If you are anywhere between the ages of 40 and 70 and possibly smoked pot in your youth (but of course did not inhale), I'm sure you'd find The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin, a rip-roaring read.  Did you know that Timothy Leary,  Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass), and Andrew Weil were all Harvard professors together?  These three almost single-handedly ushered in the Age of Aquarius with their research on the spiritual, religious, and mind-altering effects of LSD.  As human experimentation on undergraduates was off-limits, the work, starting with the Harvard Psilocybin Project, was carried out with the assistance of graduate students (a specialized form of indentured adult).  The anticipated revolution in the field of psychology was to begin in Leary's home at 64 Homer Street in Newton in the winter of 1960-61.  Here is a picture of the house not a mile from mine.  Does the local historical society know about this?  Why no plaque?

 trip the light fantastic....

All these grad students tripping together under the supervision of Leary and Alpert eventually started living together as a "spiritual" family in a house Alpert/Ram Dass purchased at 23 Kenwood Avenue, around the corner (they went up against the neighbors and Newton's single-family zoning laws and won).   Everybody living and loving together---dig that Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood!

 Be here now....

The story goes on from there with much collateral damage, unorthodoxy, and ultimately, that social movement we call "the Sixties".  Weil, Leary, and Ram Dass all left, or were fired by, Harvard, moving west to Haight-Ashbury, India, Mexico, or jail and some still carry grudges for each other to this day--really, this book is a trip, pardon the pun. 

remember?

Here is one of most interesting passages in Lattin's book, relevant to ideals of Utopias, as per Morris and others before him:

"Leary and Alpert's transcendental community in the Boston suburbs was a harbinger of the hippie communes that would pop up across the country in the late 1960s. But it also harked back to an earlier social experiment conducted not far from Newton, in the Roxbury section of Boston.  One hundred and twenty years before Leary and Alpert established their three homes in Newton, a transcendentalist former Unitarian minister named George Ripley founded Brook Farm, a utopian community organized in the 1840s---the same decade in which Henry David Thoreau set up camp at Walden Pond.  Leary would soon come to see his life as a continuation of the work of Thoreau, Emerson, and Margaret Filler, the American writer and protofeminist who participated in the Brook Farm experiment.

"Leary and Alpert liked to compare their ouster from Harvard with the earlier banishment of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wore out his welcome with a famous 1838 address to the graduating class at the Harvard Divinity School.  In that speech, Emerson condemned the odious errors of historical Christianity, calling its depiction of the Son of God a "noxious exaggeration".  True religion, Emerson proclaimed, would allow "every man to expand to the full circle of the universe."  Twenty years after he was kicked out of Harvard, Leary would cite the transcendentalists as the inspiration behind his call that every man "turn on, tune in, drop out."

"They, too, were saying turn on, tune in, go within.  Become self-reliant.  Before Emerson came back to Harvard in 1838, he was in Europe hanging out with notorious druggies like Coleridge and Wordsworth," Leary said at a 1983 Harvard reunion. "They were expanding their minds with hashish and opium and reading the Bhagavad Gita.  Then he came back here and gave that famous speech where he said, "Don't look for God in the temples.  Look within."  Find God within yourself.  Drop out.  Become self-reliant.  Do your own thing."

 Now the mushrooms go in Weil's $50 an ounce youth-assuring face-creams....that's what I call moving with the times.  Or maybe he's just still moving the times himself?

 

The Art in the Machine

I was recently given an extraordinary book, The Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell, by a relative who said the pictures (watercolor paintings) reminded him of my William Morris wallpaper.  The paintings are of the cells and molecules in the human body, all rendered in stunning detail by a scientist with a keen artistic vision.  I can see it, although I think we lean more toward turn of the century Art Nouveau style than Morris Arts and Crafts.  It's nice to imagine the inside of our bodies looking like this. 

 Marigold and Pea?  (Cytoplasm and Cell Wall)

 Vine and Morning Glory? (Cellular compartments)

 Lupin?  (Actin and Myosin filaments in our muscles)

 Sprout? (Blood clotting)

Sweet Pea and Lichen? (Programmed Cell Death)

If you want to learn about how our bodies work, reading this popular book is a brilliant place to start.

How can I have enough of life and love?

The Earthly Paradise....Live.  Tomorrow (Tuesday) the BBC Symphony Orchestra will broadcast a new piece by Ian McQueen based on William Morris's great work The Earthly Paradise.  This was the collection of poetry that brought Morris widespread fame and popularity and resulted, upon the death of Tennyson, in an invitation to be England's Poet Laureate.  (He declined, I wish I knew why.)  From the BBC: "The search for the land where 'none grow old' guides the twists and turns of William Morris's The Earthly Paradise. Ian McQueen's work for chorus and large orchestra evokes the poem's extraordinary world, surges with erotic charge, and conjures up Morris's magical vision of Iceland's landscape and sagas."

From my reading of the BBC website, the performance will be broadcast live at 19:00 GMT which according to my detailed calculations will be 2PM on the East Coast (adjust to your time zone).  Going to the BBCRadio3 website and clicking on the LISTEN icon in upper right should work (hopefully).

The Earthly Paradise follows the story of a band of (erotically charged?) medieval wanderers searching for a land of everlasting life, but instead they discover a lost  colony of Greeks with whom they exchange tales.  While Morris illustrated the published edition of his stories in his typical style (see excerpt above), his friend Edward Burne-Jones painted scenes from the many stories.

Here is Perseus and the Graiae painted by Burne-Jones in 1892.  His Perseus looks a whole lot sweeter than Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans (below) although they do appear to be wearing the same outfit.

Burne-Jones also seems to have envisioned the three witches quite differently.  I'd much rather be a Burne-Jones witch.

An earlier Earthly Paradise post about the love story of Cupid and Psyche. In case you need a refresher on your myths....another earlier post. I think I'll go see the movie.

Get to know your birds...

 
....whenever you see one you don't know, look it up in the guidebook you keep on your kitchen shelf. 

On Sunday I stopped at the Traveler Restaurant (and bookstore, Exit 74 off I-84) in Union, Connecticut.  This place is about 2/3rd of the way between NYC and Boston and I've been stopping here for decades to eat, rest, then browse the used bookstore in the basement where nearly always some treasure is to be found (along with the free book you can select upstairs).  I found these nature guidebooks from 1917 for $8 each.  Neltje (Nellie) Blanchan was the Roger Peterson of her day with her writing known for its "synthesis of scientific interest with poetic phrasing".  Here are the illustrations of some of my favorite locals with excerpts from her descriptions.....

The robin:  "No bird that we have has so varied a repertoire as Robin Goodfellow.....Indignation, suspicion, fright, interrogation, peace of mind, hate, warning to take flight----these and a host of other thoughts are expressed through his flexible voice."

The mourning dove:  "No sympathy need be wasted on this incessant love-maker that slowly sings coo-o-o, ah-coo-o-o-ooo-o-o-ooo-o-o, in a sweetly sad voice.  Really he is no more melancholy than the plaintive pewee but, on the contrary, is so happy in his love that his devotion has passed into a proverb."

Find one and you will surely see his/her love nearby.....

The tufted titmouse:  "A famous musician became insane because he heard one note ringing constantly in his overwrought brain.  If you ever hear a troop of titmice whistling peto over and over again for hours at a time, you will pity poor Schumann and fear a similar fate for the birds."

The loon:  "A mirror-like lake in the Adirondacks or White Mountains is ever a loon's idea of paradise."

You can hear their "long-drawn, melancholy, uncanny scream (that) seems to rend the very clouds" here. 

The mockingbird:  "His love song is entrancing.  "Oft in the stilly night," when the moonlight sheds s silvery radiance everywhere, the mockingbird sings to his mate such delicious music as only the European nightingale can rival."

The passenger pigeon (so sad, a long excerpt...):  "The wild pigeon no longer survives to refute the adage, "In union there is strength."  No birds have shown greater gregariousness, the flocks once numbering not hundreds nor thousands, but millions of birds; Wilson in 1808 mentioning a flock seen by him near Frankfort, Kentucky, which he conservatively estimated at more than two billion, and Audubon told of flights so dense that they darkened the sky, and streamed across it like mighty rivers.  The modern mind, accustomed to deal only with the pitiful remnants of feathered races, can scarcely grasp the vast numbers that once made our land the sportsman's paradise.  Unlimited netting, even during the entire nesting season, has resulted in sending more than one million pigeons to market from a single roost in one year, leaving perhaps as many more wounded birds and starving, helpless, naked squabs behind, until the poultry stalls became so glutted with pigeons that the low price per barrel scarcely paid for their transportation, and they were fed to the hogs...........The passenger pigeon is today as extinct as the great auk."

Art? Or data? V&A Pattern, Part 4

Here's the last installment on the recently published four volume V&A Pattern book.  The final volume is entitled Digital Pioneers and invites you to look at the work done by the visionary artists who joined together with scientists and programmers to explore the artistic potential of computer technology.  I've made this one fun by putting in two pictures from my own scientific work.  Can you guess which ones they are?  They all click to enlarge.

  

1.

  

2.

  

3.

 

  

4.

  

5. 

  

6.

  

7.

  

8.

  9.

 

10.

1.  Manfred Mohr, P-122, 1972
2.  Aaron Marcus, Evolving Gravity, 1972
3.  Paul Brown, Untitled, 1975
4.  Jim Galasyn, LR04 Time Series, 2009
5.  Roman Verostko, Pathway Series, 1987
6.  Roman Verostko, Manchester Illuminated Universal Turing Machine, 1998
7.  AARON, a computer program written by Harold Cohen, 2003
8.  AARON, a computer program written by Harold Cohen, 2003
9.  Mark Wilson, PSC31, 2003
10.  Jim Galasyn, Poincare Section Solar Insolation, 2009

Did you guess?  Jim Galasyn analyzed and plotted my data on his blog here.  Here are the links to the previous V&A Pattern posts:

Mughal Empire Florals, part 1
The Fifties, part 2
William Morris, part 3

Let us honor Phillis Wheatley, 1753-1784

 

On the last day of Black History Month I want to share the story of Phillis Wheatley who I learned about from my niece yesterday.  Wheatley was kidnapped in Gambia at age 8 and by age 9 had been sold on the slavery block in Boston to a man named John Wheatley.  He named her Phillis after the ship that brought her to the Americas.  Phillis became the servant of his wife and she and his daughter taught Phillis to read and write, such that she was fully literate within a few years.  At fourteen she published her first poem and by the age of twenty had published a volume of poetry--she was the first African-American and second woman in the colonies to author a book.  It was published in England as the Boston publishers refused to have anything to do with her.  Even worse, she had to go to trial in Massachusetts and prove that she really was the author of the poems being read and lauded by the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire and others.

By the end of her twenties she was emancipated upon the death of her master, Wheatley, and she married a free black grocer who was eventually sent to debtor's prison.  She died in poverty and ill-health working as a scullery maid at age 31.  Her infant daughter died a few hours later. 

You can download a volume of her poetry at the Gutenburg Project.  Here is a poem inspired by her story:

Phillis Wheatley

Held back by iron
Bars of white
'Twas with a pen
That she did fight

She stuck her fingers
Through the cracks
The words shone bright
Though skin be black

O such tales of gore and grace
Bubbled out from deep within
Where people can't be judged
By the color of their skin

Holding on to the dreams
Of courage and laughter
She was remembered
For eons after

Boldly
She built elegant wings
Brick
By brick
By brick

by Kate W. (age 10)

 

Statue of  Phillis Wheatley on Commonwealth Ave., Boston

Struwwelpeter and other sweet bedtime stories....

 

the cats cried!!!

the hare's revenge

the horror, the horror....

into the drink...

 

Shock-headed Peter...

stop your fidgeting!

I wonder if William Morris ever read Struwwelpeter to his two girls?  This German book, a family favorite during my childhood, was first published in English translation in 1848.  Did Jenny and May Morris pore over the pictures of poor Pauline who burnt herself into a tiny pile of ashes after playing with matches?  Or those of Little-Suck-a-Thumb who had his thumbs lopped of by the great-long-legged scissors man?  I can imagine Morris reading these stories with his booming dramatic voice (which I know he must have had!).

Whose woods these are....

I'm back home!  Seoul was amazing---the city, the culture, the energy.  Sometimes I wonder what Morris's life would have been like if he lived in the era of plane travel.  He was such a sponge for knowledge of traditional arts and craft.  Would the sheer task of mastering the world's art history have overwhelmed him?  Probably not.

If you've been reading this blog regularly for the last few months, you are by now familiar with many of Morris's lesser-known-amazing-accomplishments---but wait!  there's more!  Did you know that Morris essentially invented the modern genre of fictional fantasy writing?  Yes, it's true, and that giant of twentieth century fiction, J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) lay his inspiration directly on Morris's doorstep.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across Tyrion Frost's Fantasy Blog.  Tyrion (his nom de plume), 25 years old, reviews books in this genre and had just posted a review of William Morris's novel "The Wood Beyond the World".   It is an engaging testament to Morris's continuing influence in the 21st century and Tyrion agreed to let me post a few excerpts.  The red "editorial" comments are my own!   From Tyrion:

“The Wood Beyond the World” by William Morris begins with our hero, Golden Walter – a young man who happens to be in a very unhappy relationship. A man whom, upon coming to the conclusion that his new bride essentially hates him, decides to flee his home and set sail upon one of his father’s ships.  [hmmmm....sounds suspiciously auto-biographical]

 Kelmscott edition, 1894

"To begin, The Wood Beyond the world isn’t your typical sword and sorcery, slash em’ up type of fantasy — not at all. If anything, I’d say this novel is more of a medieval romance – one singed with fantasy elements..such as subtle magic, a queen of a strange world, an ugly dwarf, and of course..a lovely maiden slave whom’ longs to leave the Wood Beyond the World! A maiden whose fate soon intertwines with Walter – as they both fall deeply and madly in love.   [I (as Tolkien and Peter Jackson?) am picturing Walter as Viggo Mortensen aka Aragorn....]

"Written in a very archaic, Middle-English tone, I was a bit nervous when getting into “The Wood Beyond the World” – and a bit weary that I would spend more time deciphering the language than actually enjoying the story (lots of thees..and thous, and betwixt, etc). Luckily, I soon discovered that the language didn’t hinder my enjoyment at all, but actually enhanced it. After just a few chapters I was completely in love with the beautiful language, and felt as though I were reading something truly magical....

....."So, with that said, The World Beyond the World (sic) is an epic tale of romance, adventure, and love – all set in a very dream-like medieval world – a world that sucked me in and had me absolutely glued to each page. From the ethereal prose, to the beautifully crafted artwork, to the sympathetic and likeable characters, I can easily say that this is one novel that will truly stay with me."

You can read Tyrion's complete review here.  Thanks Tyrion!  You can read the novel on-line for free here (and you can also link to the original Kelmscott Edition, in Morris's original font, from that page as well).

Getting down to brass tacks...

 

Between this and last week's post I'm getting a serious case of door envy.  These doors are from two houses built by the architects McKim, Mead, and White (the pictures are from the wonderful book by Samuel White "The Houses of McKim, Mead, and White").  The first door is in the Ross Revillon Winans House in Baltimore (1882-83) and the second is the front door of Ochre Point, in Newport, Rhode Island (1882-84).  This is the same house that inspired my porch shingling here.  The architects used upholstery tacks --- if I was going to do this I'd start by enlarging the pictures and making a template.