Seeing lives from prehistory versus through written records (history)

 

Maiden Castle hillfort (c.600 BCE); Ft. Geo. Ardersier (1745)

In his 2010 book, The Making of the British Landscape, How we have transformed the land, from prehistory to today (Allen Lane, Penguin Books), archaeologist Francis Pryor looks at the land and by extension the people across the centuries. Being able to read the visible traces of earlier activity and then to posit the probable lives of that time and place is a kind of alchemy that is similar to outdoors experts who can read the traces of human and animal activity that most others do not notice; or if they seize upon a meaningful sign, their bank of experience and knowledge cannot visualize the significance of it by itself and in the larger context of the place and time. But in the case of the cultural landscape, there are major differences in available sources of information to supply hints, corroboration, and comparison.

Being a prehistorian first, Pryor is particularly at home in the lives and lands before written records began to be made. Not all documents persist for people today to study, of course, but there are enough sources to fill in a lot of detail; sometimes personalizing the place or event. In a very few cases, glimpses of the prehistoric societies encountered by the literate outsiders leaves some description, too; for example, Pytheas the Greek, who included an account of people met in Prytannia (Britannia) in c. 325 BCE. In general, though, the archaeological lens for looking at lives ancient or modern depends on physical objects and their surroundings - big picture of the time as well as in the immediate context of other finds of similar vintage and what came before and after in layers of deposition. As such there is an unvarnished honesty when looking at aftermath of activity and the actions of time.

By contrast, the lens of history privileges written records first and only secondarily (if at all) turns to the physical record of excavation and layout of cultural landscape for confirmation (or challenge) to the interpretation woven from the threads pulled from documents and sometimes visual media, too. An innate difference between the world of logic, logos, verbal expression versus the material traces of livelihoods and locations both public and private is that words can easily slip between fantasy and reality, fake and genuine. In other words, the writer can include aspirational along with actual description whereas the artifacts and their settings almost never are deliberately staged for the benefit of latter day excavators to find. That is a qualitative contrast. As well, often there is a quantitative difference for some centuries and parts of the world: written records by locals or outside observers can many times be abundant, compared to the merest traces of long-ago prehistory extracted from soil, layouts, and environmental records fitting that period of investigation. In other words, both lenses can be usefully applied to understanding times gone by, and by extension, to look at the present day, as well.

The above snapshot collage of pages 268ff (Maiden Castle hillfort) and 524ff (Fort George) from Pryor's 2010 book nicely illustrates the different lens quality and quantity when using archaeology or history to understand a place and time visible today in the cultural landscape. When the author is describing what is visible, confidently known, and reconstructed is a mix of reasonable conjecture from similar excavations and time periods then the pages of his book quickly go from one page to the next in a smooth panoramic sweep of big picture that alternates with close attention to detail and individual lives connected to the spot. In the second half of his career, Pryor has ventured into all parts of the British historical landscape, avidly consulting historical experts, their interpretations, and the (primary) source documents they depend upon. In these chapters there is rich detail and wide-angle context, too. But since he can write something like an historian while also being an archaeological thinker who keeps his feet, his trowel-wielding hands, and his sharp eyes accustomed to spotting tiny but sometimes telling fragments on the ground. But from a reader's point of view, how do the chapters differ before history is recorded and after history becomes available?

Perhaps the best analogy is family genealogy writing and knowing the past that goes with it. The people in one's family tree that are part of living memory are real, three-dimensional lives and places and events. There is so much more than birth-marriage-death (BMD) dates and sometimes locations. There are personal habits, preferences, high and low-points in the person's life, aspirations and hurdles run into. In short, the amount of detail is rich and includes many dimensions that leave no record in writing or the material traces of artifacts made, bought, or used, nor the (built) landscape associated with the person or persons. This degree of personal knowledge and personality is analogous to the rich sources sometimes available to historians for their lens on past life. 

On the other hand, going back in time before one's own living memory, there may be stories associated with the generation before that; or maybe in one or two cases the story could predate that generation beyond living memory and come from the one before it. Going back in time even further from the present, though, unless there are published materials and public records (including photos or visual art), the most that a genealogist can know are the BMD dates and locations. From those meagre facts, though, a little of the person's life can be inferred from the dominant employment available in that day and place; from local and more distant events the ancestor would know or at least be affected by; and based on technological innovations (and the forms of accomplishing work and life that were displaced by that innovation). In other words, a certain amount of the BMD can be fleshed out in a reasonable way: did the ancestor die young or old, of natural causes or some other circumstance, was it a large family of siblings and later family of offspring or small, was the person male or female, rural or urban, highly educated or not, low-middle-high wealth, physically imposing or slight (when body details can be known), affiliated with formal religion or not, and so on. This sort of educated guessing does exercise the imagination, but like a good detective story it can sometimes be surprisingly accurate in suppositions; other times with erroneous elements, though. Whereas the genealogy for ancestors of living memory is analogous to the historian's lens. This more distant genealogy sleuthing corresponds to the archaeologist's lens, relying on context and inferences by induction (surrounding conditions that guide the guessing) and deduction (firmly established facts that can extrapolate to one implication after another).

In the case of The Making of the British Landscape (2010), Francis Pryor necessarily writes of the oldest places and events, technologies and economies, rituals and cycles without knowing names or genealogical relationship of the players in the picture. But for the Roman occupation (43 to 410 CE) there are sometimes names and personality traits recorded, including occasional genealogy to include in the version of events being recounted or lists recorded (e.g. ancient historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (d. 120 CE) was son-in-law to General Agricola who was active in Britain during the historian's lifetime. In other words, prehistorians normally dig up places, including bodies, anonymously. Historians more commonly scrutinize their subject with named characters. In the case of Historical Archaeology, there is a mix of digging in the ground and digging in the documents, surveying the landscape and surveying the literature. And when proposed excavation sites are not anonymous, sometimes a living descendant will object. That is unlikely for archaeology of ancient kingdoms of Egypt or the less ancient civilizations of Meso-America, but for Korean nobles from 2000 years ago, there are still some families that tie themselves to those ancestors and so excavations have been very few and thus have been approached in this non-anonymous way.

Reading Pryor (2010) straddles the anonymous (prehistorical cultural landscapes and stages of development) and the non-anonymous (historical places, people, events, developments) chronologies. The first chapters are dominated by inference, detective work, and rolling up sleeves to get maps and hands dirty in the physicality of a place and stratum of lives unearthed at a particular depth. As such the writer and the reader freely sweep from imagined individuals or the terrain that is physically measured and the particular settings known through empirical work on site on the one hand and the much bigger picture he refers to in the environment, in the types of habitat used, and in the movements of people over the landscapes on the other hand. When he writes about events brimming with written material, then the nature of the inquiry changes from filling in blanks with probable and reasonable (generic) details to filling in the blanks with names (sometimes faces, too, on statue or other visual media) and events. In other words, the tone and intentionality change from generic to specific; from non-documentable individual lives to people with some kind of paper trail.

Naturally, a different lens produces a different visual impression. Reading The Making of the British Landscape (2010) and its tip of the hat to Hoskins' The Making of the English Landscape (1954), there is a definite sea change when Pryor's interpretations are enriched by a layer of written source material. He does not switch hats from being an archaeologist to being a card-carrying historian, though. Instead, he sees places and people as a prehistorian while also making full uses of available written accounts and primary documents on which those writings are based, too. The interplay of anonymous and non-anonymous social observation and analysis puts the subject into a different light. By using both kinds of light, a particularly valuable portrait is possible to paint for others to see.

Living high and living low near the Grand River

Lighted north-south passage under the bridge protects campers from prevailing west wind

 Fall colors point to the winter nights ahead for the many downtown residents living outside of traditional housing for private or for group residence. Shelters may not always be full, but some prefer their own company no matter what the weather may bring. Day centers allow warming up, as do public places like the bus terminal and library. When the problem is heat of summer, not cold of winter, then the same public places and a few dedicated "cooling centers" also are open in the heat of the day.

This photo is from October 2023 in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The juxtaposition of one of the multi-story condominiums or apartment rental buildings puts the thin fabric of 21st century tents in stark contrast. With many gaping cracks in the USA system of social, medical, mental health, financial and educational support, even relatively secure members of society can go through a series of unfortunate events and have no fixed abode; sometimes sleeping in car or truck and other times losing even that piece of personal property. Perhaps some segments of the city dwellers in ancient Roman also went through loss of means, of property, of dignity, too. But for 2023's "richest" country it seems impossible that cities and also rural areas across the continental USA and indeed in all states and territories count among their residents so many who are visibly unhouses; and many others who "pass" (not visibly unhoused).

Described in the language of computer studies, this problem of no roof over one's head is the result of at least three categories of failure. One is "hardware"; that is, places and physical standards of minimum care, wellness checks, and so on. Another is "software"; that is, policies and organized groups of people, but also social institutions both religious and secular to serve those lacking an address. Finally, there is "heart-ware"; that is the often unwritten rules, expectations, reward and punishments woven into the relationships, attitudes and ideals of the society. In 2023 USA the overpowering celebration of youth, consumerism, and rugged individualism all contribute to "making invisible" people who do not fulfill these models. A person who is no longer youthful, who has no discretionary income to spend, and who does not strive to be some kind of Epic Hero does not attract praise or even validation of their identity and place in life. 

Museum reflections - "a machine for learning"

Elephant ivory carving, probably 1820s Japan

The Japanese-influenced architectural giant in USA of 100 years ago, Frank Lloyd Wright, is credited with the saying that "a house is a machine for living." The meaning is that particulars of interior spaces affect patterns of movement and rest, sight lines and ease (or hindrance) of speaking to each other. Availability of light (from windows or artificial sources) affects where a person dwells for work or leisure, too. The same is true of offices and factories; not just residential settings. Using this same way to describe the functional activity for museum-goers interacting with subjects framed and labels, one can say "a museum is a machine for learning and reflection." In other words, people who work or who visit a museum can efficiently learn about things they seek answers to, but also discover questions they did not expect to have. Some museum designs (architecture) and arrangement of displays (curation) will be better at producing learning results than others: putting things in the right order (from surface to depth) and in the right variety (theme versus variation) and in the right amount (neither too much information, nor too little), for example.

This photo from the Grand Rapids Public Museum in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan shows one of a small number of carved ivory figures on public display from East Asia as part of the permanent exhibition. It is part of the section that presents uses of ivory (elephant, walrus, narwal, and so on). The figurines date to the 1800s and therefore depict artful portraits of that time, or possibly in a slightly nostalgic turn, they imagine the clothing and livelihoods of the maker's grandparents' time. In that sense this is a kind of snapshot, frozen in time; either of the time in which the carver lived, or one imagined from before the carver's own direct experience. As such the museum visitors who decide to stop long enough to glimpse or to scrutinize the craftwork, or who follow the marked "2" nearby to read the corresponding label text, below, may learn something new about the place and the time; or they may think about the larger topic of this section of the museum and see the relationship between hunters, merchants, artists, and art-buyers (and then museums that inherit the pieces from private owners). Reflecting on the artifact in another way, though, this 1800s "snapshot" is a window to its place and time. That brings up the question about a time traveller who visits a future museum display to see the craftwork of 2023 makers. What could possibly be analogous to this ivory handiwork? So many things today are mediated with digital devices that it is hard to see the fingerprints of the creator in the finished item. Leaving aside the virtuoso use of tools, a related question for 2023 artifacts is what the figure would look like: ethnic attributes, choice of formal or informal attire, action depicted? Relatively few people catch fish, and fewer still go onto the water using paddle-power. Maybe the 2023 statuette would be 3-D printed from a snapshot source to capture a person on an eScooter in baggy clothing and one-ear plugged with earbud and dangling wire leading to phone in pocket.

Part of "People of this Place" permanent exhibition of Native Americans around Michigan

Getting back to the "machine for learning and reflection" idea, this next photo from the museum is filled with loaned artifacts from many families around Michigan. There are photos, video kiosks scrolling some images and text, as well as looping movies using subtitles to minimize noise in the gallery, artifacts old and new, home-made and store-bought, direct quotes and curator commentary. In order to help visitors orient themselves to the issues and settings, artifacts and illustrations are grouped into several parts of the floorplan. People who make many short visits can add more and more learning with each time they read and look carefully at the materials. People who make a once-in-a-lifetime visit can add to their store of knowledge and awareness, too, although the amount and kinds of information is so great that a single engagement with the displays is not enough to get a full understanding of "People of the Place." These observations are true of non-Indian museum-goers. Those who have artifacts in the exhibition, or have no materials on display, but know some of the people featured, or who count themselves among Michigan's Native Americans will likely have a different way of seeing what is behind the glass of the display cases. In all visitors, though, the museum is a "machine for learning and reflection," as well as site for researchers, artists, writers, and others to add to their knowledge, experience, and way of seeing things.

Ripping out bushes on October 18 for museum expansion project

This last photo shows the first stages of the museum expansion project. Large outdoor display pieces have been placed out of the way, fencing around the construction site is installed, and now the excavator rips the bushes from the edge of the broad sidewalk to make way for digging the foundations of the new addition. Just as the 1993 museum organizes its architecture into spaces for object-based learning, now the new building will also grow from blueprint to foundations and skeleton, to fully finished interiors for the curators to complete with their displays, signage, and amenities for visitors and staff, too. In this way the principle of "machine for learning and reflection" is reproduced in the current generation to reach into the future for people there to engage with the subjects on display.

Quest for ancestors' lives, places, and legacies

 

West Michigan Genealogical Society guest speaker Oct. 7, 2023

From 1:30 to 3:30 members of the public and of the Genealogical Society got together for the monthly meeting at the auditorium of the Grand Rapids Public Library to listen to advice and anecdotes from a long-time professional ancestor researcher. She spoke this time about the kinds of sources online and in public libraries that one can tap into remotely; not having to be physically present with printed matter. Although she sometimes travels to verify grave details, chase down archives without any digital presence or indexing (or local colleagues to help do the search), the majority of her work is carried out from a computer at home. After several decades helping many clients find their roots, her database of individuals numbers about 70,000 names.

Something like 50 people were in the audience, mostly above the age of 50 or 55. Perhaps it is most natural to take a personal interest in ancestry around that time as one's own parents and grandparents have died or are dying. One's own mortality usually comes next in order, although there are also many examples of a child dying before the parent. Thinking about the wealth of digital sources and ways to find and then engage with them, the present moment is a particularly fine time to pursue family trees. Much like the detective skills of TV dramas, there is also an art to building up a mental picture of the person one is chasing after. The transformation of a living person with a history and with aspirations to become a mere mention in the branching structure of a family tree seems inevitable as stories, images, and preferances are seldom recorded or written down, hence lost to memory. But turning the bare details of name, dates, locations into something more three-dimensional and palpable takes a little imagination.

Looking at the transformation from 3-D person filled with life to flattened, streamlined name and dates can be sobering when considering one's own place in the tree; an ancestor yet to be. And even if somebody in the distant future were to wonder what sort of person was one's own self, there are limits to what that can know. Perhaps there are video clips and photos that describe some of one's moments and decisions. Finding a signature invokes a kind of surrogate presence; a proxy for one's own hand and by extension, one's whole self. Anything you author may partly reflect something of one's voice and worldview, too. Personal writing like journals, diaries, or letters offer a lifelike trace of oneself. But even if a future person had the benefit of all these sorts of clues, along with the generalized context of the historical moment, probate records of one's chattels at time of death, and census records of basic household particulars for a place and a time, the resulting composite image of the person would not be filled with breath, words, and glint of eye. So bringing the names on a family tree back to life is only a dim reflection of what was once a fully formed social calendar and cultural landscape.

Deduction is a powerful way to invent some probable details of the person's life, based on contextual circumstantial particulars. The state of the art for medicine, transportation, (tele)communication, and so on can be pictured for most points in history and possibly fine-tuned according to location (rural vs. urban, semi-tropical vs. temperate) and social patterns for people similar in socioeconomic status (education, employment, wealth). According to the guest speaker, though, until about 1960 many local papers would chronicle individual accomplishments, travels, and other notable experiences of interest to the general readership. These "society pages" gradually disappeared after that, though. But finding one's ancestor's doings there can bring them back to life, if only for a moment; making them flesh and blood, again, something greater than the "born__ - died__" hyphenated lifespan. See the guest speaker's notes and illustrations in blog form at https://genealogyframeofmind.blogspot.com .

Putting one's branching ancestry into visual representation produces a fan of bifurcating lines, something like the branches radiating from a central tree trunk. But the custom of following a single surname on the father's side leads to less effort and therefore knowledge of the surnames collateral to the father's own line, and neglect sometimes of the bloodline of the mother, as well. When asked how many generations to travel back in time before the many lines are too confusing or blurring into a point of relatedness to thousands of others, the guest speaker said her practice is to continue until there are no more records to go back in time.

In an immigrant society, one's own image (presentation of self) and one's own abilities for successfully doing particular products and services is more highly valued than one's status resting in a family name. In other words, you see yourself and others define you by what you DO, not WHO you are. As a result, roots and relatives are overshadowed by the luster of gainful work and peer-praised recognition. But by middle age and into elder years, the urge grows stronger to know one's roots and to know where one fits into the larger family tree. The surprises turned up in the genealogy process may be happy or sad, or something in-between. But thanks to software and personal computers interacting with online databases, there is a pretty good change that one's searches will bear fruit: names and dates will come up. Then it remains to turn the dust-dry data points into real lives, if only long enough to trace into the family tree in fullest form.

It's a deer's life (urban park particulars)

wetland and surrounding park in north Grand Rapids, MI

What once was considered waste land too wet to drain and too thickly filled with plant and animal life for housebuilding is now seen by residents and other visitors as a jewel in the city landscape of streets, parking lots, residential, industrial, and commercial developments. In 30 to 40 minutes of easy walking a person can circle the park on a paved trail and its recently replaced boardwalk. Early in the morning the deer and birds have the place to themselves. On weekends and some evenings during the summer in the adjacent park area, converted into parking lot and multiple baseball fields, there can be a lot of commotion from shouts and cheers and the sound of pinging aluminum bats hitting softball or baseball pitches. But on this weekday around the time of sunrise, all is quiet except for songbirds and their predators.

Seeing this deer nibbling grass and another one elsewhere pulling down low-hanging leafy branches to eat, thoughts about the deer habitat and their Umwelt world of experience in the city comes to mind. Apart from residential lawns, school grounds, and a few golf courses around town, there are not too many woodlots and wetlands within the city limits. So basic needs of small, medium, and large wildlife is very much limited to these ecological islands of food, water, safety and shelter. In the space of one deer lifetime a fawn has to survive the springtime "starvation season" when weather can be cruel and food sources are limited. If the creature reaches adulthood, then the time of mating and reproducing the species is uppermost. Hunters with the appropriate license during fall and early winter may kill some bucks and does in the countryside, but in the city limits there is relatively little chance of death by arrow or bullet. Injury or death by car collision is not uncommon, though. Some animals may survive just one cycle of reproducing young, but others may last two or sometimes three seasons. Eventually, though, by disease or collision each deer will breathe its last breath. The carcass may feed scavengers or be hauled away by the city's parks and recreation workers who collect roadkill. There may be few deer that reach a ripe old age, but this pattern of reproducing and dying before too long does result in a steady population.

Seen from a human perspective, it may feel suffocating to live one's whole life in small islands of green, surrounded by pavement, fast-moving cars, and parking lots. From birth to death is just a matter of 30 or 40 months at most and in that time each deer needs to learn survival skills to find food, water, shelter and safety away from cars. Once an animal's replacement number is born and able to survive, then it is only a matter of time before accident or injury end the deer's life. 

In summary, measured relative to the "three-score and ten years" (70 years) that defines a full human life (at least in Biblical passages), the scope of travel and timeline for deer is much smaller. Of course, it is impossible to talk to deer about their perception of life's risks and rewards, but seeing this photo of a breakfasting deer and remembering the "big picture" for deer-dom of short lives and small circle of places to live in, there comes a twinge of melancholy since just one year from now the life in this (semi)wild creature may be ended one way or another as the next generation fills in the gaps in the herd.

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Coda: The handful of houses bordering the south end of the park is now being bought up by a developer to erode the greenspace of the park habitat that hosts so many forms of life. So this island of green in the city will be just a little more littered with humans. Some online residents are sharing details of the developer's plans and are creating an online petition against any degrading of the parkland. But all through colonization of this Indian land and up to the present #ClimateEmergency money and development tends to trump habitat and natural complexity. With housing development comes noise and disruption of waterflow and deafening the space for birds and other creatures to communicate in. Doubtless more human-deer collisions and interactions will also arise. Things do not look too good for the deer in this case.

Telecommunication by voice first and then all the rest

from about 1999 to 2024 voice calls seem now to be secondary

When cellphones began to reach ordinary people, not just high-powered government and business people who needed to be just a phone call away from their office or clients, it was imagined as a cordless phone of unlimited mobility, no longer limited to the device's cradle transmission distance. Physical shape ('candybar' and later 'flip' or slide-open design) and presence of dedicated keypad had some likeness to landline phones and cordless ones, too.

With the addition of a crude camera,  people were puzzled: why add a camera when film and even the start of point-and-shoot digital cameras give better results as a dedicated device. But as cellphone cameras became better and even offered short video with synchronized sound, more and more people started to see the device as equally important for visual recording as it was for making and receiving phone calls. One result was the rise of photo sharing sites, increasing use of pictures in online communication, news gathering, publication and other professional purposes, as well as hobby uses.

The processing power and improving screen display (size and resolution, too) ramped up and makers of dedicated specialty apps attracted more and more interest, too. So what started as a new form of telephoning on the go, now became a (video) camera with the secondary use to make voice calls. As more and more people experienced the convenience of SMS text messaging, they substituted short messages for what used to be open-ended, sometimes meandering voice calls. That way the interaction was brief and the timing of the question or comment was less intrusive and less all-demanding of the person's attention. Sometimes even people on a date could be seen texting across the table instead of looking eye to eye in spoken dialog. State governments began to acknowledge the attention stolen by texting while driving and the deaths caused as a result of driver and sometimes also the victim struck who were staring at the screen of their portable device - whether it was cellphone (or smartphone) or tablet.

Now in summer 2023, there are people from all walks of life and in all sorts of locations intently gazing into their screens. Sometimes they are swiping, scrolling, using navigation gestures. Other times they are putting in text by thumb-typing or by using the dictation feature that often works. A few people may plug their ears with bluetooth earbuds as they playback a podcast, or listen to streamed radio stations for music or talk shows. And very occasionally they seem to be talking to themselves, but in fact are engaged in an old-fashioned voice call. In summary, what began as new-fangled way to carry a phone far beyond the range of cordless phones, now has made telephoning almost incidental or insignificant on a daily basis or cumulatively in the life-time of a cellphone. 

People pay a heftier price every couple of years, sometimes spending more money than they do for a full-size laptop or desktop computer of much larger capacity. But when more and more of your business and pleasure is mediated by the battery-powered device in your pocket or purse, then such prices can be rationalized in various ways. It is worth considering what may come next in this shift away from landlines at fixed locations and the diminution of voice communication even as other forms gain more and more use and attention (and expectation).

Making meaning in mind or heart or in the world, indoors or outdoors

 

Boardwalk to wetlands of Meijer Gardens - berries on leaf

Many walking paths and forest hiking routes seem to pass by a cairn, usually less than 1-foot in height. Sometimes it is near a camp site, other times at a river crossing, or by a log where people sit to rest. How this began (from ancient times in mountains of Scotland, Korea, maybe also in Himalaya routes, too) and why it should spread far and wide lately is a puzzle to figure out another day. But when it comes to marking a place (Biblical description of 'ebenezer' stone pile to mark an important event) physically or with a name, people seem predisposed to do so. Attaching language with land makes it convenient to refer to in conversation when others know that name and that location, too. It is a way to make meaning: give it a name, leave a mark. These days with digital devices a person can mark a location with a map pin or by taking a photo. So the many forms of making meaning now expands with each new way of interacting with the surroundings and with each other electronically.

This photo just an arm's length from the boardwalk fencing near the wetland area of Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park shows one person's mark: it could be a bit of artistic expression (all-natural elements; contrasting colors of red+green on a brown background), an act of well-intended kindness to an unknown wild creature to feast upon (or bait for a hunting animal to seize whatever ventures there to dine, or it could be altogether a mystery --somehow the person felt like doing this. Singly or in some combination these and other meanings could be part of the actions leading to this result. Of course, even without imposing human intentions onto the environment, there is preexisting meaning in the cycle of the day and night, the annual pattern of seasons, and the circle of life. A careful observer can see these meanings play out or interpret them indirectly when signs are there, something like reading a book or decoding a riddle.

Whether it is inserting human meanings and purposes into a scene or working to read the preexisting logic and tensions of the natural world on its own terms, people are hungry to make meaning or find it already there for them to discern. The lack of meaning or having no point seems worse than meaning that is misguided or interpretations that are incomplete or simply wrong; at least there is some form of meaning, out of tune though it may be.

Iron planet at surface, mantle, core and sewers

Cast iron replaced by newer pieces 5/2023 zip code 49505

 Normally these sturdy pieces of cast iron sit quietly out of sight in the ground and under the road surface. But for this fundamental rebuilding of the sewer line a few miles north of downtown Grand Rapids, one section at a time, the old pieces come out and the new ones go in. Thinking about the foundry products in the widest possible frame, it is worth seeing this collection from its source to its final destination. The service life between installation a few generations ago and just now being removed from service is only a small part of this iron's long life.

Going back to the formation of planet Earth and the circumstances that led to this iron ending up in iron ore that was close enough to the surface for humans with their mining gear to extract it, this life story can begin from those mines perhaps 50 or 100 years ago; very possible from the Mesabi (Missabi) Iron Range around Duluth, Minnesota or the iron ore sources in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Trucks moved the ore to crush it to sizes suitable for rail travel to the lakeshore loading ports where waiting ore carriers hundreds of feet long took on the ore and delivered it to mills where iron could be separated from the rock; maybe Gary, Indiana or Cleveland, Ohio, for example. Depending on market prices and customer requirements the newly pooled iron could go to one of several processes to end up for use in cast-iron, steel sheets, rods, beams, or thinly rolled form. The pieces in this photo all are cast-iron products of specialty foundries like the ones at Neenah, Wisconsin and East Jordan Iron Works (EJIW) in northwest Lower Michigan.

Local governments will order cast-iron pieces for sewer lines and water supply to create and maintain their infrastructure and basic services. Accidents, upgrades and newer technology, and wear and tear of age all lead to the retirement of the old pieces with new replacements, as shown in this example. Thanks to a profitable market for certain scrap metals, it is probable that one or two years from now these old pieces will be reborn as another type of cast-iron fixture. The energy to mine, crush, transport, smelt, do business, and arrange delivery to final user is many times more expensive than to bypass the first steps and begin from smelting, foundry, and delivery. Of course, each municipality is different: some may take this heap directly to the scrap buyer or foundry operations. Others may wait to fill a railcar or two before transacting the sale. For small towns, it could be that heaps are built up for many years before they look for a rising market price to sell their scrap. So without knowing the details in this city, it is hard to predict where these pieces go next, where they end up in a few years, and how long this cycle of use and recycling for recasting (reuse) goes on into the future. But as long as this kind of civilization with sanitary treatment of wastewater and door to door supply of clean water continues, there is no reason to think that iron will not be in demand over and over again, century after century.

In the case of ghost towns, evacuated disaster sites, and other catastrophic situations, though, the pieces of cast-iron in the ground may well remain untouched and unused indefinitely. Fast forwarding thousands of years, if there is moisture and oxygen in the surrounding soil then the process of rusting eventually will turn the solid forms into flaking particles, not bound into ore but still distributed in the soil structure as an orange or reddish coloration in the ground. Thus, there are many story arcs for iron present at the Earth's origins and once mined then fashioned into useful products to be used, scrapped and remade anew again and again, except in a few cases when the structures are abandoned. The ones in this picture, though, seem likely to go to a fiery future to be remade by the foundry into somebody else's infrastructure taken for granted in daily use.

Roadwork today versus Roman Empire times

 

Sewer line replacement: road surface cut, 8-inch cast-iron pipe, fire-plug replacements [zip 49505]

Even 2000 years later much of the built landscape from Roman times can be seen in its original location, sometimes still functioning as road, bridge, aqueduct, retaining wall, or other engineering purpose. Other times the original structure is disassembled and pieces of stone end up in buildings of other centuries. Basic infrastructure like clean water supply and sewer removal of waste, efficient stormwater redirection, sturdy bridge and port facilities, and long-distance, durable road surfaces have stood the test of time. So for a person of that era to visit 2023 would be endlessly fascinating, no doubt, both for our tools and processes, but also to see how much has NOT changed in human needs and infrastructure functions.

Obviously, the petroleum powered machines, the vast amount of specialized steel found in many parts of the pipes, the equipment, and the non-power tools, as well, would amaze them. Image - a self-propelled vehicle. And the laying of hard road surfaces (and removing them) atop a roadbed that is more or less the same design as Roman Times would capture their attention, too. Maybe most amazing of all is the relatively small crew performing these tasks with the aid of massive machinery and fossil fuel engines (and plastics and other products coming out of petroleum). For ancient Romans to excavate sewer (or water) lines, replace pipes, then rebuild the roadbed and cover it with a hard surface would take hundreds of workers (slave or paid or corvee labor commandeered) and many more weeks than it does for the team of workers in 2023.

People speeding past in their modern, high-powered cars with windows up and air-conditioning or heating adding comfort to the trip, maybe entertained by radio or another medium, hardly think twice about road construction projects during the work season of March to November. But what goes unnoticed or taken for granted perhaps is equally important as the other things taken for granted, too: air, water, food, shelter, and so on.

Airports and "life is a journey"

Morning coffee line at Detroit Metro Airport, Saturday 2/18/2023

Liminal spaces and times connect a situation that was before and another one that is after the event or ritual. It is this in-between status that can be unsettling since it is neither here nor there. This 7:30 a.m. photo shows the terminal concourse traffic Saturday looking in the direction of the morning coffee drinkers lined up as others pass by in various states of leisure or haste. After 30 minutes the number doubled. People present at the airport gate area fit into many different types: foreign or domestic, seasoned travelers and first-timers, business and leisure, fulfilling a dream or fulfilling an obligation, variation in age-gender-generation-region-income/SES, group trip versus lone traveler, and so on. Then there are aircrew both new and old-hands who may know this "workplace" like the back of their hand. Similarly, the concessions workers know the concourse area very well, hardly paying attention to the ebb and flow of passengers and crew. Some workers are there daily, others are project or limited-time contractors. Still others are responsible for the infrastructure, rather than retail business with travelers: cleaners, security, maintenance, or the person in a high-visibility vest marked in all capital letters, "contract auditor" (employed from 3rd party lowest bid agency? or full-time airport worker whose job is checking on contract business performance?). 

Depending on the person's status (long-term home base in the terminal building versus just passing through to some distant destination), they will notice the surroundings of the place and the people there is different ways. Someone who knows the place like a "local resident" will see small changes or positive and negative details that people just passing through probably do not see or do not consider significant. A solitary traveler may be aware of the building, the weather, and go one to reflect on the subject or about any other topic that is triggered by airport impressions. But a couple, family, or group tour may confine their attention to the social bubble they occupy at the moment. Probably only an architecture or engineering fan will pause to scrutinize the concourse features and decisions going into the building. With travelers' and workers' minds in so many places, few will consider the long scale of weather changes, although momentary attention on a sunrise or sunset, stormy changes, and so on may draw the eye of many who are in the building.

This portrait from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) on Saturday morning gives hints of the familiar metaphor about a lifetime or a daily frame of lived experience parallels the nature of leaving one's familiar home area to visit a place for the first time or one seen many times. For example, just like the diversity of people whose paths cross this morning, in life there is a similar intersection of strangers, occasionally punctuated by a spark of recognition when seeing someone known elsewhere. And the mild sense of anxiety when moving through an unfamiliar place like an airport concourse is also like the times of life when there is a lack of familiarity. Furthermore, the "tunnel vision" of travelers in search of their assigned gate fits with the kinds of people in life who focus on a goal to the exclusion of the surrounding situation and its ambience or possible meaning. As well, some people in the world are very much "passing through" rather than dwelling on the here and now of a locale: their body is present, but their mind is engaged with future plans and opportunities and threats. For people who see the world from the perspective of having arrived at the destination (not looking for someplace far away) like the concourse retail workers or the airport authority, there comes a sense of settled ease or non-striving. They are in their workplace, on duty, fulfilling employer expectations. Finally, the number of people who stop to reflect on all of this are relatively few and far between, too. If the airport represents a complex habitat with layers and layer of design and engineering know-how, most of those working or traveling take it all for granted, just like life itself that so often goes unexamined and unappreciated. So, watching the streams or food traffic of the airport terminal concourse offers a kind of mirror to the human experience: mortality, traveling alone or in the company of others, sometimes settled but other times on the way to other destinations. All these layers and facets intersect moment by moment, putting together fellow travels - of the airport, or of life's roads.

In conclusion, pause to look around at the many lives co-present and moving at different speeds. You may well see yourself in the picture, too.

Cultural landscapes - local knowledge versus outsiders' fresh eyes

Downtown Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin 1/2023

Thinking about cultural landscapes as I walked to my nearby grocery store, I imagined myself in a month or two immersed in my Japan project - biking and walking, on the lookout for features that attract my eye. The photos of traces from the past will serve as writing prompts so that I can explore the past (1875-1925) when infrastructure and modernization of mass-everything got going; and to appreciate what the society is now by contrast to then. Being able to "read" the landscape implies many things, things which set apart the people with local knowledge (deep or shallow) from those who have little or no way to fasten onto/tune into the surroundings.

This photo shows the old commercial district of the town, a place attracting buyers before the big box era of shopping centers at the outskirts of a town. For a first-time visitor one impression is the scale: this is comfortable to walk, possibly able to fit under the roof and footprint of a very large big-box store of today. A long-time local resident might know some of the shopkeepers and staff and may have purchased things over the years from some of the merchants. The cycle of annual events such as parades, debates and speeches, contests, seasonal decorations and entertainment will provide some memories of growing up in the area or the times as a parent with children of one's own. And even if not ready to spend money, being able to talk informally with a store owner about how to solve a problem is another way of making meaning here. Doubtless, a person of modest means will have a different set of relationships and memories in this scene than a person never wanting for money. And there could be patterns of difference in experiences by gender, age, ethnicity, religion, and so on, too.

What is called "local knowledge" has at least two dimensions. One is the ancient Greek distinction of Nomos/Physis (glossed as culture/nature, or perhaps subjective/objective). In the same way that Berlin and Kay did their famous color-chip sorting piles to discover where people of various language/cultures would make distinctions in the rainbow of the color palette (one calls it 'green' but another classifies it as 'blue'), so too of cultural vision of a place --one's own, or a place visited far from one's frame of reference, assumptions, meanings. That is to say, people local to a place are accustomed to labeling the cultural elements with familiar terms and distinctions. But outsiders may project their own understanding of what a thing is and how it could have value or else lack meaning. Or consider the metaphor of "Head Up Display" (HUD) used on fighter planes and now airlines, too: pilots looking through the front glass can also see useful and consequential information layered on top of what is outside in view. This is something like the way that terrain of infinite shades of gradation can be neatly labeled and divided into types or categories drawn from language or culture.

The other dimension of seeing the cultural landscape is based on meaning; not the labeling/projection phenomenon, above, but meaning in the sense of memories and personal involvement (not a spectator to a terrain, but an active agent with intention, purpose, meaning, expectation, precedents). A person who "knows" the place [important semantic play of Conocer (know personally) vs. Saber (know facts, analytics)  --Spanish example of separate "know" words that English lumps together] is able to see cultural capital (status level, past and present value, aesthetic degree of depth), and social capital (knowing names and relationships past and current of various residences, services, businesses; and knowing who to ask when solving any given problem), financial capital (past and potential/future sources of gain or risks of loss), and maybe linguistic capital (powers of verbal expression by voice or by writing). By contrast, a foreigner or even a citizen of the country who is unfamiliar with the locale, will lack almost all of the foregoing meanings that blanket the land, turning it from meaningless space to meaningful place.

Since I am an outsider to my Japan destinations planned for April and May 2023, but with some language and cultural experience and professional anthropology expertise of a general kind along with lived experiences gained by age, these many kinds of meaning will mostly be invisible to me. So, perhaps, I will have to imagine: granting the meanings to be all around and filling the terrain, even though I am practically blind and deaf to this local knowledge at the start.

In conclusion, locals with insider knowledge and layers of memory probably know their way around the physical plane and also the invisible terrain of events, personalities, and situations that are good or bad for one's own condition. Outsiders will faintly perceive only a fraction of all of those things. But a person who is looking out for the many meanings and sources of significance in a place is perhaps best positioned to see and to appreciate the worth of the many elements distributed around the terrain. For in-between the familiar and the taken-for-granted viewpoint of locals on the one hand, and the distant spectator stance of outsiders on the other, there is a flickering middle ground where some of the local meaning is hinted at and can be scrutinized to understand it more. In this middle perspective some of the meanings and lives, as well as possible futures and pasts of the place, come to mind. The beautiful complexity of cultural significance, social connections, linguistic play, and financial patterns all comes alive, together with the awareness that human meaning (nomos) neatly imposes itself on the much larger and more basic reality (physis), a system of meanings that is preoccupied with certain distinctions but oblivious of other ones.

Cultural landscapes accommodate all these viewpoints: locals, outsiders, and those with an inquiring mind who occupy the in-between space in order to see a bit of the outsider standpoint and the perspective of the local residents, too.

Retail power to source, promote, sell, respond to customers, and profit

 

Pre-Christmas gift-giving in late December 2022, busy shoppers

Even with 4 cashiers cheerfully accepting returns and taking payments for new purchases or goods ordered online for in-store pickup, there was a line with 6 or 8 people during the first hour of morning business on Thursday, three days before Christmas day. Much of the store inventory is displayed all through the year, but other things change with the seasons since this store specializes in outdoor sports and recreation. Winter clothing and equipment is featured from fall into winter before attaching "clearance sale" signs to attract buyers at the end of the season so that the upcoming goods can be arranged for sale when shoppers' thoughts turn to the months soon arriving. Elsewhere in the store one or two display racks are flagged "clearance" whenever the store (or corporate central offices) decide to reduce inventory on particular products, colors, sizes or styles. In addition to end-of-season sales, members-only pricing on selected products, and the clearance rack, returned merchandise (used, damaged, or simply undesired) is documented and refunded to the purchaser to be reduced in price and displayed at the "re/supply" (also known as 'in-store garage sale') section. For normally priced items seen online or in the store, here and there prominent signs exclaim "20% off," for example. Some shoppers are trained with tunnel vision to look for items somehow cheaper than original MRSP (manufacturer's recommended sale pricing) due to the above discounting, or the signs affixed to otherwise normal list prices. The buyer logic sometimes bypasses the reasoning for visiting the store in the first place; e.g., in search of replacement running shoes. As a result of the siren call of the mark-down flags, shoppers sometimes rationalize purchases surplus to the original reason for visiting the store. For example, instead of buying replacement shoes, now the person also has a deeply discounted rainproof hat that did not suit its initial buyer.

While waiting in line and looking around the sections of the store for backpacking, biking, jogging, and so on, the myriad invisible threads connecting manufacturing source to retailer to end user suggested themselves to my mind's eye. Some goods have frequent turnover, no sooner put on display than they sell and end up in somebody's garage or stomach (edibles and impulse purchases exhibited near the checkout counter). Others are the reverse, sitting on the showroom floor for months or possibly years before the buyer lays claim to the thing. In-between the extremes of frequent turnover and seldom sold items, there are many articles that arrive, go on display, and a few weeks or months later are sold. Viewed in this telescoping (longitudinal) timescale, the retail shop can be understood as a kind of bus stop where traveling goods arrive and have a lay-over before their connecting travel takes them to the end user's location. There is a constant inventory flow into the store and then out again, sometimes being quickly restocked, but other times being displaced by a new model or different product altogether.

The complex choreography of this modern, Internet-connected, and corporate office-linked business operation is a marvel to behold. There are the multiple time scales for inventory washing in and washing out, like a tidal flow. But there is also a geographical dimension of complexity, since design to maker to wholesale hub to retail outlet comprises so many routes and the accompanying invoicing of money changing hands from one account to another. This photo in the foreground from the queue near the cashier counter shows the small, low-cost, and cute items meant to tickle one's emotional response and bypass the thinking mind to trigger an impulse purchase. In the distance there are a few shoppers handling things of interest, looking at cost, features, and construction quality. The photo serves as a prompt to think about the inventory dance with different items flowing in and out at different rhythms, and also geographically, to appreciate the wonderment of the many suppliers whose goods intersect within the walls of the retail establishment for a limited period of time before ending up in one household or another.

How to bury a monarch in 2022 Great Britain & Northern Ireland

 

screenshots 19 September 2022 online streaming of Queen Elizabeth II state funeral by bbc.co.uk

This day is filled with many anthropological facets to reflect on. In list form by row and column:

--------ROW-1

1: Cast in metal, the Queen with father over her shoulder >amazing technology and art to mark a public figure in metal when the long sweep of civilization went from stone to copper to bronze to iron (to plastic and silicon). The family line of succession seems such an old-fashioned way of determining the paramount person.

2: Decoding the many uniforms >military services, public safety (police, fire, medical emergencies), palace staff. Each organized body with its own policies, traditions, tasks, payroll, conflict resolution, and so on.

3: So many Union Flags >encoding the blue of Scotland, the red cross of England and Wales, the diagonals of Northern Ireland, but also presupposing the nation-state idea of administrative bureaucracies to subsume much of what resided in the person and office of the monarch for many generations and dynasties.

4: Symbols of royal ruling authority rest on coffin >globe with Christian crucifix on top, sword of justice, crown of jewels ornamenting the royal person's head.

--------ROW-2

1: So many members of the public look on >to an outsider the spectacle, waiting, and procession seem odd, but to those who knew the royals via news media and popular culture, the event is slightly personal; a sort of borrowed hallow by one's physical association to the proceedings on this day.

2: White-plumed horsemen who have guarded the Queen year after year >the association of horse and authority is ancient but still modern (mounted rider is faster, taller and far-seeing, more deadly than an adversary on foot in many situations).

3: So many countries in their various uniforms process >after the many countries once governed from London gained full independence, the formation of the Commonwealth assured continuing relationships with the former colonial master in matters of science, art, higher education, commerce, military, sport, and so on.

4: The funeral marches provide a soundtrack to the day's proceedings >the band's tempo sets the steady but unhurried walking pace, andante, for the entire body of people on foot, seemingly in perfect synchronicity from left foot to right food.

See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Elizabeth_II#Service_and_processions

--------ROW-3

1: Royal family members trail the body >each uniform regulated by its own rules and symbols. As for safety considerations, uniformed and plain-clothed unarmed and armed services are carefully placed, in addition to contingency plans for the many personnel included in the procession for the protection of the royals and other high-status persons.

2: Near Buckingham Palace with modern London skyline on the horizon >air traffic diverted or suspended to keep the overhead clear of potential threats and disturbing noise of the world.

3: Royal navy sailors holding rope to pull the casket carriage >all of British colonial history, before and after, is shaped by the sea as resource and medium, hence the centrality of sailors - merchant and military. Pikes or spears in the distance >considering the weapons and tools of stone that have been found, this old technology is still formidable and present ceremonially in 2022, even if superseded by other ways to kill each other.

4: Bearskin helmets >each pelt represents one animal's life; seen all together that is a lot of death.

--------ROW-4

1: Hyde Park transfer from carriage to hearse at Duke of Wellington Arch topped by Bodica >statue to remember Brigante leader's widow routing the Roman occupiers at Colchester in 60 CE.

See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

2: Big view windows of the royal hearse >for 200 or more years coffins have been carried in glass enclosures for public view.

3: So many cellphone cameras reach out to record >capturing a piece of history or acknowledging the occasion seems to make members of the public instinctively reach for their pocket phones. Being alive means making and sharing visual records of being there.

4: Motorcycle trio heads the motorcade to Windsor, west of London >crowds line the route to snap photos and bear witness, some bowing their heads at the procession like the officials do.

--------ROW-5

1: Motorcade crowds several rows deep >so many people attend the drive by.

2: At Windsor Castle in the St. George Chapel and vault for the committal service >bereaved kin at lower left and altar at right with royal symbols of authority temporarily moved from casket to altar for later bestowal to the king.

3: Closing words from Bible Psalms 103 about life so quickly passing >floor elevator ever so slowly draws the body under the flooring to the vault.

4: Lone bagpiper in kilt solemnly paces along left side of chapel to open door >music led the procession and also symbolizes the distant sweetness fading into eternity of memories and memory places.

Numbers to plan, make, maintain - illustrated on desktop

From Yinka Shonibare March-October 2022 exhibition - Enlightenment

This exhibition embodies in visual form so many themes, such as the Batik origins of Indonesia for the fabric dyed with patterns using wax, later industrialized and commodified for international sales by the Dutch and most beloved among buyers of West Africa. The mannequin has one arm of wood to represent the historical figure of this woman polymath who was known to have an artificial limb. The quill and ink are reminders of literacy and distant or local communication across space but also across time. And the figures on the page show the purpose and power of calculation using numbers and measurement. But for the purpose of this article, it is not the many sides of the artwork to focus on, but instead to think about the functions and powers of math and its applied form in engineering.

A person with training and who has wide and deep experience of designing structures of the built landscape, or to make objects of beauty, including tools, weapons, vehicles, containers, machinery, and so on is able to translate an idea into specific lines, angles, and curves that takes visual form on paper (or digitally these days, thanks to automatic measurement and calculation from CAD, computer-aided design) to communicate instructions to others who will make use of the measurements, but also to communicate this visible record to others implicated in the creation (suppliers, financers, future maintenance and repair experts) and those not yet born who may research the matter in years to come.

Looking at the function and use of such drawings that make possible large and small projects shows its power. But by considering the absence of these drawings, it is also possible to appreciate the value of this visual and numerical technology. Large public works from the ancient world were successfully erected using limited mathematics and record-keeping, and some of them exist still today in full or as trace ruins. Obviously, no CAD was involved, but some form of recording measurements, supplies ordered and materials received was necessary, since the scale and degree of detail was too much for any one person to hold reliably in his or her head alone. In the complete absence of design plans, measurements, and calculations the biggest project would surely be limited: earthen pyramids, stone barrows for burials and other rituals, river weirs to direct migrating fish into traps are examples of biggest limits for design solutions to problems posed when the precision and mathematics illustrated in this photo do not exist.

The words 'accounting' (tracking of numbers) and 'accountability' (responsible for one's actions or inactions) clearly are related. And while one is more literal (records of income and out-go) and the other is more figurative (of one's title, authority, expectation, liability) there is clearly a shared forensic element of measuring results against a standard, an existing record, or a point of reference. Looking, again, at the above photo, it is easy to imagine the use of plans to accomplish a project that meets the stated measurements.  But in a larger sense, too, there is a kind of gestalt or way of seeing the world for a person who is accustomed to measuring resources and accounting for them. Colonial governors, military officers, and corporate managers all rely on record-keeping and numbers more generally, not just to accomplish the stated plan, but then also to maintain that finished plan in good working condition so it is fully operational; or if less than fully working, then studying the plans to discover what changes to make in order to resume the full functionality as envisioned and designed.

Although this picture is part of an exhibition piece from the Nigerian-British artist, Yinka Shonibare, it also illustrates this peculiar development in social life of using numbers and mathematical manipulation to engage with countrymen and foreigners. It is a kind of language that expands and amplifies the verbal kind of language that comprises social life.

Being seen, heard, and able to talk publicly

 

Flying a colorful 'non-binary' flag of sexuality, gender, and sex

Over and over a similar pattern can be seen in expanding civil rights customs, laws, and attitudes. This was true in the 1960s experience of African-Americans, parallel with women's rights, and a few decades later for disability rights, and most recently for refugees and asylum-seekers, as well as with regard to same-sex marriage laws and protections against discrimination and violent hate speech or actions of (domestic) terrorism. 

Advocates for a previously suppressed, persecuted, outlawed, or maligned group of people begin by raising up the visibility: celebrities, symbols, public protests and marches and teach-ins, for example. With more frequent visibility, it is natural to react and respond to the subjects that come with the subject. In other words, after increasing the visibility comes increasing the listening and speaking by prominent people as well as ordinary residents. Once a topic is visible and part of public discourse among authority figures and in popular culture (entertainment, education, consumer thinking) and non-governmental organizations (civil society), then it becomes an established and ever-present social fact, no longer mute or invisible. It becomes part of normal life; it is non-threatening, non-marginal, non-exotic or strange.

The reverse is also true. In the example of six months of invasion and war crimes by #PutinWarCriminal, making invisible and silent the awful disaster is a big part of the foundation for social control within the Russian Federation and in metropolitan Moscow in particular. Without outlawing independent journalism and blocking foreign sources of documenting and discussing the military invasion of #SlavaUkraina, it would be impossible to perpetuate the lies of Putin's insanity.

What begins in small acts and visual expressions, like the flag flying in front of this downtown Grand Rapids house, leads to normalizing the cultural landscape filling one's eyes. From there it is public discussion that engages individuals and allows personal reckoning with the subject matter. Back and forth the reactionary forces push back against the advocate forces in all sorts of lifestyle of culture wars. In 10 or 20 years, perhaps, there will be no need for this front-porch flag and instead the matter at hand will be Carbon Footprint excesses, habitat destruction, #ClimateChange reparations owed to the world contributing least and for the shortest number of years can be compensated for harm to livelihood and life itself. Until that day comes, though, it will continue to be important for advocates to inject visual reminders of the subject and not to be afraid, shy, or hesitant about talking up their subject, too.

Playing LP vinyl record after decades of digital listening

In the beginning it was the console radio and turntable with the 3 dozen or more albums my parents had collected since marrying in the 1960s: choral, church, Broadway musicals, classical ensembles, and probably a few Christmas song compilations. Then as a teenager in the 1970s somehow I got my own stereo equipment and headphones for listening times when others were sleeping or did want to be disturbed by my pop music and Monty Python recordings on vinyl. By high school graduation and during college in the 1980s, the vast collections held at libraries and my own thrill at copying tracks from vinyl to cassette tape was a great source of pleasure, often playing the same songs over and over to form the soundtrack of my younger years. Sometime in the early 1980s the high-fidelity magazines and enthusiasts were discovering the magic of compact disks and digital recording for convenient size, high technical fidelity, and novelty. 

At first the listeners accustomed to vinyl and the analog capture of all ambient space and time with the instruments and mic'd voiced found fault with the surgical precision and "dry" clarity of the all-digital process DDD or ADD (Analog recording, Digital mastering, Digital playback). But as record stores slowly converted from bins of vinyl to drawers of jewel cases with CD sets, more and more turntables fell into disuse or were given away or put in storage. So the listener corner at the city library downtown in Grand Rapids in the spring of 2022 was a nice surprise; like seeing an old friend. The available disks to hear on site, or to take home (together with portable record player) number maybe 100, mostly pop music. But putting Side 1 or Side 2 onto the platter triggers muscle memories of countless times before when dropping the needle onto the surface, or gently raising it to move to a new groove on the album.

source, https://flickr.com/photos/anthroview/52177065248/

How did it sound to hear Elton John's well-known and his not often heard songs from Honky Chateau, or the ABC album from the Jackson 5 after perhaps 30 years bereft of trusty home turntable? Leaving aside the limitations of studios and tape-based mastering tracks in bygone years, the aural sensation of vinyl was like black velvet with jewels lit by gallery spotlighting: pure beauty in a sea of space. Whether it is modern mic technique, present-day gear and software intervention, or the essential nature of 1's and 0's to represent continuous waves of sound, it is hard to say, but so often the CD or streamed digital recordings put the clarity and stereophonic complexity into an up-front, total sound wall for the listener. Each mic and sound source is present, but overall the combined effect is that everything is pressed against a wall, like butterflies pinned to collecting cases. By contrast the vinyl experience (or is this just wishful imagining, trying too hard to feel for precious old-time differences) also faithfully captures each mic and source, but these occupy a bigger room-space or volume of air; not flattened into crystal clarity.

As well of vinyl, the physicality is part of the music interaction: of handling the album, admiring the art or liner notes, removing the disk and its anti-static sleeve, perhaps lovingly brushing any dust off the surface, then playing the album from start to finish (or jumping around the tracks by manually lifting and again lowering the needle). Around 2013 or 2014 people in their 20's took an interest in some of the older gear of their parents: film cameras, analog wrist watches, VHS recordings, and also collections of vinyl. Some indie musicians responded by setting themselves apart and issuing limited editions of vinyl versions of their online tracks and the CDs they sold at concerts. As a consequence, the few surviving pressing plants soon were overwhelmed by orders; new businesses arose to take some of the work. Searching out the old machinery and pensioners who still remembered how to run and repair and coax the very best results from the equipment was part of the complication. But now in 2022 there is a small but steady market for vinyl buyers of music. It is hard to know if this period from the 1920s to the 2020s for vinyl recording will persist so that future listeners can know the experience. For the moment, though, spinning a disk is a pleasant trip down memory lane.

source, https://flickr.com/photos/anthroview/52009307059/