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Every year we close out the year with obituaries. I feel like the main-stream media does a pretty good job of memorializing the entertainers and showbiz folks who have passed away, so, although I loved Tom Petty, John Hillerman, Roger Moore, and John Hurt (and too many others), I will leave it to someone else to eulogize them. Additionally, I have had less time to blog this year than I would like, so please don’t be upset if I miss a great and important scientist, algebraist, or artist. That is what the comments are for! I also tried to include some eminent scholars and artists from East Asia (since it feels like our counterweight cultures are divided by a gulf of misunderstanding and we overlook the cultural work being done there). I was saddened to see how many astronauts from the golden first age of space exploration passed away. Humankind becomes ever more insular and parochial: we squander our resources on useless giveaways to monopolistic companies and crooked oligarchs (who blow their money on status objects or remove it from circulation). These days we barely even explore the heavens (much less travel there). I wonder if there will ever be another generation of heroes to walk the moon or orbit the Earth once these figures from fade away. At any rate, here is a brief list of 2017 obituaries to make us think about the brevity of life and the true nature of accomplishment:
Zhou Youguang (January 13, 1906 – January 14, 2017) was a scholar who invented Pinyin, a system for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese (a language which does not fit easily into the Roman alphabet). So excellent was his work that Pinyin was officially adopted by the government of the People’s Republic of China in 1958. Pinyin has now largely supplanted the Wade-Giles system and is the method by which Chinese is known to Western scholars or input on Roman keyboards. Zhou Youguang lived through the dramatically changing China of the Qing Dynasty, The Republic of China, The Second World War Invasion by Japan, and The People’s Republic. He was “sent down” during the Cultural Revolution and was critical of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
George A. Romero (February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was the masterful director of terrifying zombie movies which were thinly veiled allegories for the problems of contemporary society.
Kim Jong-nam (May 10 1971 – 13 February 2017): this unremarkable man was the eldest son of the genocidal sociopath Kim Jong-il,the late dictator of North Korea. Kim Jong-nam was murdered in Singapore at the command of his brother (by means of poison, in a plot worthy of dark fantasy literature). While Kim Jong-nam’s death is of no consequence in itself, it speaks to the criminal nature of the North Korean regime and foreshadows countless deaths to come at the mercurial will of their fat cruel tyrant. There are two stories of why Kim Jong-nam was disinherited: in one story he was cut out of the family business for trying to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland (but insiders whisper he was exiled and ultimately murdered for favoring reform).
David Rockefeller (June 12, 1915 – March 20, 2017) was the last surviving grandson of John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (a 19th century tycoon who built the Standard Oil Trust and thus became by far the richest individual of America’s gilded age). There was a point in the 1970s when David’s brother Nelson was Governor of New York and then Vice President of the United States, and yet David was reputed to be more powerful and connected.
Sir Nicholas Winton (May 19, 1909 – July 1, 2015) was a swordsman, banker and stockbroker who rescued of 669 Jewish children, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia by means of paperwork wizardry, networking, and money-raising.
Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was a playwright and actor who applied the Beckett’s absurd style to themes of family, violence, and substance abuse and thus carved out a uniquely American theater style.
Hugh Heffner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was a controversial publisher whose magazine “Playboy” was famous for cultural articles, progressive editorials, and reproductive advice which challenged America’s puritanical mores. The magazine was however more famous for lubricious pictures of naked women and espousing a hedonistic (sexist?) lifestyle. This legacy, and the distasteful…extravagance…of Hugh Heffner’s private life made him a polarizing figure, but he must be mentioned (and honored) because of the debt which generation after generation of pre-internet era adolescent boys owe him.
Richard Francis Gordon Jr. (October 5, 1929 – November 6, 2017) was an American naval officer, chemist, and astronaut. He is only one of 24 people to have flown to the moon (although he didn’t get to walk on it). Later he helped design the space shuttle and served as Executive Vice President of the New Orleans Saints.
Bruce McCandless II, (June 8, 1937 – December 21, 2017) was a U.S. Navy officer, pilot, and NASA astronaut who made the first untethered free flight in space.
Wang Panyuan (c. 1908 – December 22nd, 2017) was a famous Chinese/Taiwanese painter who brought together classical Chinese painting with expressionism.
Merry Christmas! I decorated the house up all beautifully with my tree of life and with all sorts of seasonal lights…but then I couldn’t find my digital camera. I’m afraid you will have to get through Saturnalia/Yule/Christmas with these somewhat blurry images. I hope Santa brings you what you want (or Hanukkah Harry…or Saturn…or Mithras). We’ll do some year-end wrap-up next week, but for right now I am going to drink some egg-nog and draw some festive flatfish! Happy Holidays from Ferrebeekeeper!
My office has moved to Midtown (across from Grand Central…more about that later), but I think I like the concrete canyons of Downtown better. The streets down by Wall Street feel like I always imagined New York felt like when I was little (although so do the brownstone streets of Brooklyn). Downtown also has unique holiday decorations–those jagged star/explosions. Whenever I see them, I imagine Batman has just punched the lamppost and an audible “Bap” or “Kapow” is forthcoming. I guess they are supposed to betoken universal peace or some such thing, but it sure looks like Batman went on a rampage. Indeed, the whole downtown area sort of has the brooding gritty melancholy of Gotham…especially on foggy or wintry days.
What with the holiday crush and the end of the year, I have had less time than I would like for blogging, but I will put up some Christmas posts and year-end thoughts here in the coming days. For now, here is an illuminated page of William Blake’s 1794 volume “Europe a Prophecy,” a dense symbolic poem about the benighted state of Europe (and humankind) at the end of the 18th century. I won’t get into the text but suffice it to say the magnificent crowned serpent seems to hold unusual sway over the affairs of men.
The news is actually sort of encouraging today, so I am going to include a post with more somewhat encouraging news (albeit news with a slower timeframe than human politics). International news about forests is usually bad news concerning the forests of Africa, Southeast Asia, and tropical South America. These forests are shrinking due to human activities and such deforestation really is exceedingly BAD. Not only is the planet losing biodiversity, but the resulting desertification, soil loss, and the carbon freed from burned trees causes even more grotesque feedback in the chaotic Anthropocene climate. Yet, although forests in the tropics are in desperate need of greater esteem and protection, forests in the western world (particularly northern Europe) have actually been growing. Apparently as farming becomes less urgent, difficult-to-farm places like mountains, scrublands, and arid places just naturally become forests again. Additionally, the shrinking populations of France, Italy, Spain, Ireland etc. means less forest lost to development. I wonder if this is a peak at the world of the future where a more coherent economic model (and less dunderheaded religion) means there is not as much reason for overpopulation…or alternately does this just mean the Spanish are outsourcing their deforestation to the Congo? I guess only time will tell, but it is good to see parts of the world become more green even as everything seems so fragile and broken.
Oumuamua is an asteroid which came from beyond the solar system. Perhaps it was ejected from a star system in the Carina–Columba association (which is not an Italian fraternal organization but rather a vast nebula by Eta Carinae about 100 parsecs) around 50 to 100 million years ago, but its age and point of origin are unknown. It is whipping past the sun and then back into the vast darkness between the stars at a prodigious velocity (apparently it was traveling through interstellar space at something like 26 kilometers per second (58,000 miles per hour). The object, which measures between 100 and 800 meters (300 to 2500 feet), was initially classified as a comet, but its speed, its orbital eccentricity, and its bizarre shape–which is like an icicle or a shard–caused astronomers to realize it was deeply strange interloper from beyond.
The object has been closely observed by many of the Earth’s great observatories and it is apparently a dark red—which is caused by cosmic radiation striking it for 100s of millions of years (Kuiper belt objects have similar coloration). It is traveling far too fast for any existing human craft too reach (although we may be able to build such crafts in the near future), however scientists are assessing it for traces of life or civilization by means of radio telescopy. It will be out by Jupiter next year and far beyond are kin soon after that, but scientists have learned a great deal from the visit. Additionally they speculate that other such objects come through the solar system at the rate of one or two per year (which does not seem like a lot considering how large the solar system is). We are lucky to have spotted this shard, but its catastrophic shape makes one speculate that there is a lot about planetary formation (and destruction) which we don’t know yet.
Hold everything! Today is the day when Pantone announces their trademarked “Color of the Year” for 2018. To quickly recap, Pantone is a private color-consulting company which helps consumer-facing firms select yearly color palates which work together at the store. When you go to a mall (kids, this was a large building containing many individual different retail stores) and see that all of the clothes and gadgets are the same colors, Pantone is behind the convergence. They chose a real winner last year—a magnificent mid-tone green that looked like it came straight from the idealized cabbage patches of some fantasy “old country” (but also simultaneously seemed to reference money and environmentalism). Can this year continue the trend or will we face another perplexing chicken-liver year (or the wishy-washy dichotomy of election year 2016 when we were presented with two opposite gendered tones)? Without further ado, the Pantone Color of 2018 is…“Ultra violet” a bold rich purple! (maybe you already guessed based on the bar of pure purple above).
I love this color. Purple is one of my favorite colors (it might be my favorite) and this tone evokes the best things about purple! It reminds me of a medieval king’s tunic or a spooky Queen Anne house in a Halloween poster. Kudos to Pantone for the solid choice. We will say nothing of Grimace and the shadow his amorphous purple form has cast over a generation of culture mavens and style moguls.
For its part, Pantone seems to be making a quiet and uncontroversial political statement with its selection. The executive director of the Pantone color institute spells this out in her pronouncement: “It’s also the most complex of all colors, because it takes two shades that are seemingly diametrically opposed — blue and red — and brings them together to create something new.” The company’s literature further emphasizes purple’s mystical and cosmic connotations…and how dear it was to beloved yet lost entertainment icons like David Bowie and Prince.
Pantone also claims that “ultraviolet” evokes an idealized future (which makes me wonder if they have read “A Clockwork Orange”). Maybe they are subconsciously projecting the preferences of a highly networked consulting company of global influence since Ultraviolet is a purple which definitely leans towards blue. It’s fun to reminisce about all of the beloved icons and styles from the past and to make metaphors out of color, yet the colors of the year really do reflect larger patterns and trends. When the economy is doing well, Pantone executives and art-directors feel free to choose more bold and colorful choices. These become increasingly extravagant until a recession comes along—when they all get reset to monotones, dust-colors, and similarly basic palate choices. Ultraviolet is clearly leaning towards the more flamboyant side (I seem to recall a similar dot-com purlple back in the nineties just before the bubble burst. This bold purple reminds us to look towards a brighter future and to enjoy the sugar rush, but it makes me wonder if there aren’t some grays and beiges in the immediate future.
Colorful Garden Cookies!
Today (December 4th) is national cookie day! Cookies are tiny sweet cakes which are eaten as dessert or a general treat…or with tea if you are English or Irish. The English and Irish, coincidentally, know them as biscuits (although it is unclear if it is ‘National Biscuit Day” over there). To celebrate, I thought about making my favorite cookies (oatmeal? snickerdoodles? chocolate crinkles?), but it is late in the day and anyway, at the end, I would just have tons of hot delicious cookies distracting me from flounder art. Plus, due to the sad limitations of the internet I cannot share baked goods with you—even though I like my readers and would love to bake a treat for you. So instead I have decided to celebrate cookie day by featuring pictures of cookies found (stolen?) from around the internet. I have a little gallery dedicated to several different Ferrebeekeeper topics.
Catfish Cookies!
Mollusc Cookies!
Serpent Cookies
Gothic Cookies!
Space Cookies
Crown Cookies: there were SO many of these. Why do people love kings and queens and princesses so much?
Mammal Cookies (barely) from Nanny’s Sugar Cookies LLC
Underworld Goddess Cookies
Turkey Cookies
Nightmarish Mascot Cookies
One of the delightful/disturbing things about this exercise is seeing how talented and creative everyone is. Look at the beauty of these cookies! Based on the esoteric subject matter (and the places I found the images) most of these are hand crafted, yet they look finer and more original than anything from a baker’s window. It is great to know how gifted everyone is too, but it is sad on several levels. If we can bring the earnestness, attention to detail, raw creativity, and hard work people put into baked goods into politics, we could get out of the political decline and societal stagnation we are in. Um, we are going to have to actually do that.
Barf
But we can worry about that later in the week (when I will shake off my torpor and write a meaningful essay on our political deadlock (and our moral problems in general). In the meantime, enjoy the cookies! After seeing what people have done with this medium I am thinking about making some cutters of my own so I can bring up my own cookie game. Also I still have that big project I am working on! I can’t wait to show you what it is in the New Year!
Oracular Chinese cookies
ferrebeekeeper 