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A fortnight ago, Ferrebeekeeper put up a review of “Requiem for a Good Machine” a science-fiction novel by friend and collaborator, Daniel Claymore. The book describes a future police officer’s attempts to solve a chain of murders (and related crimes) in Mirabilis, an ideal city built by robots to serve as a habitat for the faltering biological humans of the post-singularity age.
As of today, Claymore’s work is now on sale and you can get an e-copy (or better yet, a real copy!) of his book by going to any purveyor of fine literature. Different parts of stories stick with different people, and ever since reading Claymore’s novel, I have been thinking about the gleaming city at the heart of his work. Paradoxically, thinking about this future city is causing us to go backwards in time for the subject of this post.
Back in 2015, I built/drew the Apollo and Marsyas miniature theater, a theater for 1:18 figures (mainly the Kenner Star Wars figures…but it turns out there are lots of other little actors at this scale jockeying for position on stage too). Anyway, the fun of that project was drawing some strange background scenes (like a medieval castle, a pleasure garden, Timbuktu, a spooky cemetery, Hell, etc.). One of the backdrops I drew was a glowing city of the future filled with robots, meta-humans, droids, and transgenic chimera animals. Here it is:
My recollection of this work is that I enjoyed drawing all of the future beings (look at that quantum computer clock guy (or thing?) at the left side beneath the pink organ wall…or the purple owl woman standing above the metal dog-robot at right!) but then I got lost coloring in the asphalt and threw the whole thing aside in disgust. Looking at it afresh, however, it is better than I remember. You are getting an impossible peek into the world of the far future thanks to the one power capable of opening such a window–the imagination!
Yet, although the imagination is capable of peering through deep time, it is also fallible (just look at all of that confusing, hard-to-color future asphalt!). I was hoping to portray a city made of cities–where super-arcologies stand next to each other, rank upon rank, stretching to the horizon. I wanted an effect which was akin to the troubling urban art of George Grosz–with all of the maddened machine-people and transgenic organisms spilling out of the architecture like confetti and tainted candy pouring out of a psychedelic piñata.
The fun of painting like Grosz is creating a river of chaotic heterogeneous lunatics! But the peril of creating such an artwork is getting lost in a world of visual clutter (which is a less-flattering way of describing a river of chaotic heterogeneous lunatics). With this work I certainly experienced the fun…but I also fell prey to the peril. Even so, this glowing drawing captures some of the effect of looking into a bewilderingly complicated social ecosystem.
The dancing, crawling, and flying robots running from dome to dome in a world of strange machines may not be exactly what the future holds…but they inspire us to think about where we are going (and we need to think about that a lot harder). Maybe I need to get my fluorescent ink back out and paint some more fantastical cities glowing in the purple twilight of ages we will never get to see.
It is Easter week. To celebrate, Ferrebeekeeper always features some of the astonishingly beautiful artworks of Jesus Christ from Western art. Look for that tomorrow! Before we get there, however, let’s take a moment to enjoy spring with some dove-themed kites. I love kite-flying and I have been thinking about building a hand-made kite which reflects one of Ferrebeekeeper’s themes (you can see them all over there in the menu in the left). As I have looked up other people’s kite-making ideas I have found some really beautiful art for the sky—like these dove kites.
Here are the lovely white dove-themed kites which I thought were especially fine. There is even a simple design, if you want to make your own with a sheet of paper and a straw…yet sadly I did not find any pigeon kites. I wonder why these omnipresent birds are so poorly represented.
The spur-winged goose (Plectropterus gambensis) is a large waterfowl which is quite common in wetlands throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Adults are 75–115 cm (30–45 in) long and weigh up to 7 kg (15 pounds). The bird is a close relative of both true geese and shelducks (although they aren’t really geese or ducks but have their own genus). They are intelligent gregarious birds which live in flocks of around 50. They look somewhat plain—their feathers are dun, sable, and white, and their faces and beaks are red–like geese badly made up to look like vultures. Yet spur-winged geese are amazing animals in several respects (I mean beyond just being geese–which live for decades, have complicated social lives, and can fly across whole continents).
Spur-winged geese have a habit of eating blister beetles and storing the poisonous cantharidin from the insects within their bodies. Cantharidin has a long strange history in human society which you can look up on your own (it was known as “Spanish Fly”), however it is principally notable for being poisonous: 10 mg of cantharidin is enough to kill an adult human! Spur-winged geese–particularly those which live in and around the Gambiaare often poisonous–or at least they have flesh which is toxic to humans.
Additionally, males have dinosaur-like spurs on their wings which they use, dinosaur-like, to fight each other for females. These wing-spurs are not trivial. Poultry keepers who have tried to keep the spur-winged goose with other birds have suffered losses to the fearsome sharpened wrist-spurs (and the aggressive territoriality of the spur-winged males).
Probably the most remarkable thing about the spur-winged goose though is its speed. These birds are blazing fast. They appear on shortlists with crazy birds like peregrine falcons, gyrfalcons, swifts, and frigatebirds. Although they cannot dive at speeds approaching the raptors or maneuver like the swifts, spur-winged geese can really move quickly. When the goose gets up to speed, it can travel 142 kilometers per hour (88 miles per hour). It is as fast as the Delorean in Back to the Future (though it apparently lacks time-traveling abilities).
So, to sum up the spur-winged goose: it is an omnivore which lives throughout the most competitive ecosystems of Africa. It has fighting spurs on its wings, can fly as fast as a World War I warplane, and is toxic. I guess I am saying that you need to respect the spur-winged goose!
As a city dweller, I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of pigeons (Columbidae) solely as the rock doves (Columba livia) which are the familiar gray and iridescent birds. Rock Doves originated in North Africa, Central Asia, and Europe. Humans domesticated these birds in antiquity and carried them everywhere during the age of exploration and colonization. Like the hero of a dystopian novel, the rock dove then cast off its oppressors (manipulative giant primates who were selectively breeding it to kill it and eat it!) and escaped to freedom and worldwide success. However the rock dove is not the only pigeon—not at all—there are over 310 species in this family. They are found everywhere on land except for the polar regions. Some pigeons are analogous to clever tropical parrots, whereas others live like songbirds, or jungle fowl, or like grouse. They live in deserts, jungles, forests, sand dunes, scrubland, cropland, caves…pretty much everywhere except for oceans and tundra. Humankind has destroyed a few species of pigeons like the passenger pigeon, the giant pigeon (A.K.A. the Dodo), and the Socorro dove–an oddity which is extinct in the wild but lives cradled in the arms of pigeon fanciers like former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, however most doves are tough and resilient. They thrive in our concrete cities. They make livings as performers in Vegas! They fly into empty niches and expand to fill them out.
In the Biblical myth of the flood, the first living thing to find habitable land after the flood subsided was a dove—which actually seems right. Pigeons’ doughty wings have carried them to places where other varieties of bird never reached or colonized. This omnipresence–combined with a placid temperament and serene beauty–has made the pigeon into a holy bird in both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian myth. Indeed, the Holy Spirit, the most abstruse god in the Christian trinity (which already has some really weird divinities in it) is generally represented as a dove.
Depiction of the Christian Holy Spirit as a dove, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in the apse of Saint Peter’s Basilica
The secret to the widespread success of the Columbidae however does not merely involve their strong flying ability. They steal a trick from the mammals’ book: pigeons of both genders nurse their developing nestlings with “crop milk” a nutritious (albeit disgusting) foodstuff made of fluid filled cells sloughed off from the lining of the birds’ crops (a crop, by the way, is a digestive apparatus in birds—a sort of muscular pouch at the top of the gullet). This strategy means that pigeon parents can feed their offspring even if they can’t immediately find food. While other baby birds can be wiped out by a temporary food disruption, pigeon families have a safety net.
Pigeons are not technically fowl—which constitutes the galliformes and anseriformes (and most domesticated birds). It has been a while since I added a new category of animal to Ferrebeekeeper—perhaps I will add pigeons on the side over there. They are more interesting than I imagined.
Strange Ocean World (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, colored pencil on paper)
Well…it was another day that got away. What with work and dinner and the grind, I failed to write about beaked whales. Don’t worry: those magnificent diving experts cannot escape our pen forever, but, in the interim, we must fall back on my daily doodle book (which Ferrebeekeeper cognoscenti know is a little moleskine sketch book that I carry around and draw in during my spare time). I have a big sarcophagus-shaped pencil tin too—which is full of colored pencils and markers to bring my drawings to life. The first sketch however (above) only required one “Blue Denim” colored pencil. It’s a little unclear, but I think it is a picture of the future oceans filled with bathyspheres, synthetic ocean life (to replace the fish we are recklessly killing off), and ships driven by fanciful propulsion. Synthetic beings and post-humans fly through the weird clouds of this strange ocean world. In fact, maybe it’s not Earth at all, but somewhere else entirely—an ocean world of oddly familiar alien marvels.
City with Glowing Crystal (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, ink on paper)
Next is another troubling pastiche of nature and technology. A happy monster ambles by a shambling city while a gambling demon tosses dice at a magic crystal. Reptiles and weeds fill up the foreground as strange elongated opossums creep in from the sides. It’s just like now! This might as well be a CNN photo about the 2016 election. This image may need to be colored in. What do you think?
Succulent Fruit (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, Colored Pencil and Ink on paper)
Finally, thanks to enthusiastic comments from my favorite readers, I included more fruit. One of my tasks at my new day job is overseeing the fruit supplies for a big office full of desk jockeys who spend all day looking at important documents. Because of ancient precedent, almost all of the fruit is bananas, and my colleagues beg piteously for different fruit. I have provided their wants…in this fantasy drawing which shows a succulent world of juices, seeds, and glowing tutti-fruit color. It could also be that there is a statement here about our world of agriculture, selective breeding, transgenic alteration, and over-consumption…or possibly it is just a fun doodle I made at lunchtime. As always, thanks for looking at my little artworks. I treasure everybody’s comments (though I realize I have been slower than usual to respond). Let’s keep enjoying the rest of summer. I’ll keep drawing (and the post about beaked whales will appear soon). Cheers!
My parents’ geese
My parents have a lovely flock of pilgrim geese: I think these geese are mostly a hobby, but I suppose if society ever falls down, Mom & Dad could probably ramp up production and live on them. The geese spend most of their time in a big pond in a field next to a pretty meadow (which in turn is next to an oak forest). The birds play and frolic and pursue their goose romances all the while conniving against one another like Roman patricians. They practice a very intense form of goose politics (goosetics?) which involves lots of self-aggrandizing honking, aggressive jostling, and occasional political murders. The ganders even look a bit like Roman senators with haughty hungry expressions and cloud-white plumage in place of togas (although the females are gray and slightly gentler).
Pilgrim Gander
Today’s flock has reached a parity point where new hatchlings replace unfortunate geese lost to the hardships of nature, society, and misadventure, but it was not always so. The first generation of geese arrived as gormless puffballs in the mail. With no elders to teach them of coyotes, foxes, weasels, hawks, owls, and bobcats, they had to learn some hard lessons on their own. But even once they learned to survive against the wild animals which live in the forest, they still had a lot to learn about the world (like how to fly).
LG the Canada Goose
This is where a very strange character enters the story. One day a wild Canada goose landed on the pond with a female mallard duck. It became obvious that this unhappy duck was the unwilling paramour of the goose, but whenever she tried to fly away from him (I am calling this goose a he, but who really knows?), he would leap into the sky and coral her back down to the pond with his mighty wings and expert flight skills. This weird pair kept to themselves and my parents watched their dysfunctional relationship with bemusement, christening the big strange goose as “LG” (which is short for Lonely Goose). One day a vast flock of migrating ducks landed on the pond, as they made their way to some rich wetland. When they flew off, the mallard female joined them, and LG could not find her among the throng so she escaped and rejoined her kind and her further adventures are unknown.
My mother feeding LG
LG however stuck around and began to insinuate himself into my parents’ flock of ignorant catalog-bought adolescent domestic geese. At first they were standoffish and he was sadly alone at the bottom of the gooseatics hierarchy, but soon he was whispering in ears, teaching useful life lessons, and plotting against less-popular geese. When he moved into the middle of their society he was able to teach them to fly. I have a distinct memory of LG flying from the farmyard down to the pond with the pilgrims flying after him. He landed gracefully on the pond and bobbed scerenely on the water as the pilgrims crash landed pathetically into the mud and the fields like the aftermath of some WWI aerial battle. Indeed, flying lessons were not without casualties and my mother’s favorite pet goose swerved into a barn in order not to fly into her (which illustrates a degree of self-sacrificing care).
Once the flock knew how to fly, LG ascended to the top of the hierarchy and he has been a top goose ever since. At first my parents were afraid that he would fly off with the whole flock and the domestic geese would all turn feral, but the opposite seems to have happened. Who knows what LG’s real back story is? He has a hole in his foot and he looks somewhat old. I speculate that he spent his life flying back and forth between the Arctic Ocean and Alabama until one day he saw a farm pond where he could retire and work his wiles on perfectly naïve geese. Geese live loooong lives (they can get to be more than 30 years old) so this may be true. Or maybe he is some sort of bird-sanctuary renegade or just a big human-loving freak.
Whatever the case, these days LG has a special pilgrim goose girlfriend whom he looks after when she is nesting. He doesn’t seem to be fertile with pilgrim geese and they raise broods of pure pilgrim goslings… but maybe it’s best not to pry too closely into other people’s domestic arrangements.
LG leading the pilgrims!
LG is mean as a serpent to the other geese (aside from his mate, with whom he is exceedingly tender) however he is very adroit at managing the humans in his circle. He enjoys eating corn out of people’s hands (which most of the domestic geese will not do) and he tolerates being petted. He is a very weird, weird wild animal. I kind of love LG, and I always get angry when people badmouth Canada geese for defecating on golf courses or aggressively chasing dumpy middle managers into mud holes. He makes his own way in life. If he ever got tired of his girlfriend and his minions and being hand-fed corn he still has mighty wings and he could fly back to the enduring freedom of the sky above, but I really think he has retired and settled down. I still wish he could narrate his biography, but I guess his friendship will have to suffice.
The Paradise Tree Snake (Chrysopelea ornata)
The paradise tree snake (Chrysopelea paradise) is a very beautiful tree snake which lives in Southeast Asia. It ranges from the Philippines and Indonesia, up through Malaysia, Myanmar and into India. The snake particularly enjoys climbing into the crowns of coconut palms where it feeds on arborial lizards (which it immobilizes with extremely weak venom). The snake lives in a variety of habitats including mangrove swamps, rainforests, tree plantations, gardens, and parks. It stands out because of its attractive pattern of yellow on black (sometimes tinted with red).
Paradise Tree Snake Flying!
What really sets the paradise tree snake apart from other pretty tropical snakes however is its impressive ability to fly—or at least to glide. The snake holds onto its launching platform with the end of its tail and dangles the majority of its body into a j-shape. The daring reptile then swings back and forth and launches itself through the air! The snake sucks in its stomach and flares out its ribs so as to take the shape of a flying wing and then it slithers through the air making lateral motions with its body in order to cause air pressure underneath it to push its body up. Smaller snakes (which are better gliders) can glide up to 100 meters (over 300 feet) and are reckoned by biomechanical locomotion specialists to be finer gliders than colugos and gliding squirrels.
A very lovely photograph of an octopus kite by Nigel Bence
Ferrebeekeeper has written about actual flying squids which dart above the water waving their lateral fins to extend their gliding ability. But real squid are not the only cephalopods that one sees in the skies–especially around springtime. Two of the classical shapes for kites are squid & octopus shape. The squid’s finned oblong shape, and the octopus’ round shape are perfect for balance and for catching the wind. The dangling tentacles act perfectly as multiple tails. This spring has taken a cold gray turn—at least in New York, but while you are inside planning what to do during May, perhaps you should build some octopus and squid kites. Here is a little gallery of images from different kite festivals and kite makers around the world.
A Commercially available Octopus kite/kit
Like squids and octopuses, none of the kites I had when growing up ever lasted long (well none of the ones I actually flew). The beautiful range of mollusks suspended on the wind in the sky makes me wonder if I have any time to get out some dowels and crepe paper and build some more kites [sadly you do not have any such time—ed.]. As the soon as the weather clears up again, I hope you enjoy some kite flying!
The ancient Greeks reserved their most ardent and heartfelt prayers for the gods of the mystery cults. Among these mysterious deities of the underworld–great gods like Hecate, Cronus, and Persephone–one entity stood out: Triptolemus was not a god at all but a mortal. Unlike the other heroes and demigods the Greeks worshipped, Triptolemus was neither a warrior nor a doer of great deeds. He never seduced a goddess or slew a monster. The goddess who favored Triptolemus was not all-conquering Athena, or the dark sorceress Hecate. Yet a trip to an art museum with a good Greek collection will reveal that he was much on the minds of the Greeks: Triptolemus appears more often in actual Greek sacred art than do many figures much more familiar to us today.
Demeter Mourning Persephone (Evelyn De Morgan, 1906)
Triptolemus owed all of his fame and respect to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, seasons, and growing things (known as Ceres to the Romans). When Demeter’s daughter Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, Demeter aged from a beautiful woman into a horrible crone. The world lost its fertility as Demeter’s attention wavered away from keeping the world fecund. She stumbled through a desolate world of famine, death, and cold looking for her lost daughter. Most people turned away the desperate crone but Triptolemus’ father Ceulis, the King of Eleusis in Attica, was kind to her and asked her to raise his sons Demophon and Triptolemus. In the midst of the dark season which befell the world, Ceulis remained a charitable and generous host, and Demeter noted his kindness. To reward Ceulis’ family she decided to make his firstborn son Demophon into an immortal god. Nightly she smeared Demophon with ambrosia, the food of heaven & the balm of the gods, and then she placed him in the fire to burn his mortality away. One night as she was blowing her divine breath on the glowing child, Demophon’s mother Metanira entered the room. Horrified by the spectacle before her, the Queen flew into a frenzy and began screaming. Demeter grew angry at the Queen’s histrionics and decided to withdraw her boon from Demophon–who burst into flames without her divine protection. She went back out into the ravaged land and resumed her search for Persephone.
Demeter Holding Cereal and Serpents
When Demeter finally found Persephone and orchestrated her annual return from the underworld she still did not forget the kindness of Ceulis’ family. She saw that the transition from summer’s abundance to winter’s scarcity was difficult for humans and was killing many of them. Demeter taught Ceulis’ younger (still living) son Triptolemus the art of agriculture. She gave him a flying chariot drawn by magical serpents (who, like Demeter, knew the secrets of the land) and sent him forth to teach the crafts of planting and harvesting grain to the rest of humankind. These lessons made Triptolemus sacred to the Greeks. Growing grains allowed them to cease their eternal foraging and pursue the fruits of civilization. Since Triptolemus was so dear to Demeter and Persephone, he became a focus of the Eleusinian Mystery cult, which sought to provide its initiates with an eternal place in the most pleasant fields and gardens of the underworld (which were of course the bailiwick of Persephone).
Triptolemus riding a winged chariot (Athenian red-figure skyphos 5th B.C.)
Triptolemus was portrayed as a beautiful youth with a diadem on his brow. He rode a winged snake-drawn carriage and in his hands were a plate of grain, ears of barley & wheat, and a scepter. Since Triptolemus’ agricultural outlook was entirely based around sowing and reaping grains, he recommended a pro-animal point of view somewhat at odds with the herdsmen and hunters of ancient Greece. According to Porphyry, Triptolemus’ three principles for living a simple godly life were 1) honor one’s parents; 2) honor the gods with grains and malted beverage, and 3) spare the animals.
Mixing Vessel with Triptolemos (Athenian, ca. 470 BC)
By its very nature building involves limits. The great cathedrals of Medieval Europe were the apogee of technology during their time—the peak accomplishment of the architects, masons, and artisans of the day. As the centuries passed, the mighty churches became larger and more ambitious—the buildings soared ever higher on increasingly lofty flying buttresses until finally the builders reached the limits of stone and iron and mortar.
Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais
This happened at the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais (hereafter Beauvais Cathedral) an incomplete cathedral which many people regard as the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture. Work was commenced on the cathedral in 1225. From the very beginning the building was designed to be the tallest and most splendid church in the world. This magnificence was probably partially intended as an act of defiance by France’s northern barons, who were allied with the episcopacy in a struggle with the French throne–a struggle for power which culminated when the northern lords revolted against Louis VIII and attempted to kidnap his son Louis IX (who escaped the plot to ascend first to the throne and later to sainthood, and after whom Saint Louis, Missouri is named). Unfortunately the grandiose architectural plans were hampered by funding problems and by structural flaws.
Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais from the west
Although Beauvais Cathedral was intended to be taller than other cathedrals, the original planners also designed the flying buttresses to be thinner. This was both to allow them to soar higher (since they weighed less!) and to allow maximum light into the stained glass windows of the building. Unfortunately the design did not work out. The cathedral collapsed in 1284 (well, actually only part of the choir vault collapsed, along with multiple flying buttresses). Contemporary structural engineers believe that the failure was the result of resonant vibrations—an unhappy mixture of spindly buttresses which were just the wrong length to cope with the region’s high winds. The cathedral was built and rebuilt off and on throughout the following centuries, with mixed results. In 1573 the structure suffered another major setback when the 153 meter tall central tower collapsed.
The Plan of Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais (the black is extant, the gray is missing)
Today only the transept and choir remain, but they are indeed magnificent. Unfortunately, the structure is still in peril. In the sixties, the cathedral’s caretakers removed iron bars which were laterally connecting the buttresses in hopes of making the cathedral look even more graceful. Unsurprisingly, this action caused the transept to separate from the choir. Steel rods were quickly added, but, being more rigid than iron, they seem to have increased the rate of fissure. A wide number of sundry modern braces were added throughout the eighties and nineties, and in 2001 a team of architects from Columbia University scanned the entire edifice. They hope to use their comprehensive imaging resources to design less unwieldy solutions to the cathedral’s many problems, but, at present, the world’s most ambitious gothic edifice remains a masterpiece of beauty but a failure of function.
Inside Beauvais Cathedral
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