Edwin Beard Budding

The idea of a machine to cut grass was conceived in the Stroud district of Gloucestershire, England around 1830 by freelance engineer Edwin Beard Budding (1795–1846).  Budding’s mower was designed primarily to cut the lawn on sports grounds & expansive gardens as an alternative to sheep & the scythe.  His patent of 25 October, 1830 described “a new combination and application of machinery for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable surfaces of lawns, grass-plats and pleasure grounds…. country gentlemen may find in using my machine themselves an amusing, useful and healthy exercise.” By 1885, U.S. manufacturers were pumping out machines at the rate of fifty thousand a year. In 1893, the first steam-powered mower was patented, and a few decades later the gasoline-powered mower hit the market.

Soon mechanical mowers enabled not only “country gentlemen,” but middle-class home owners to have lawns & cut their own grass, thus democratizing the lawn.  A lawn came to symbolize not class distinction, but a commitment to a communitarian project, or rather competition, among neighbors for the greenest, most weed-free, manicured lawn, albeit, non-productive, unnatural, resource depleting, & chemically induced.  A lawn, Robert Fulford has written,  is  the “surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked.  A dandelion’s appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise.  And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street & to the middle-class world of which the street is a part.  Dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul.  They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighborhood’s right to peace, order, good government”. [The Lawn: North America’s Magnificent Obsession (1998). 

Today, lawns cover 40 million acres, making them the largest agricultural sector in America, consuming 270 billion gallons of water a week, & costing $40 billion a year on seed, sod, and chemicals.  The U.S. spends more on fertilizers for its golf courses than many developing countries spend on fertilizing crops.  No wonder the International Golf Course Equipment Managers Association (IGCEMA) introduced “The Edwin Budding Award” to honor technicians in the golf sector who have made a major contribution to that industry.

Edwin Budding not only invented the reel mower, but also the adjustable crescent wrench (later improved by a Gloucestershire work colleague, Richard Clyburn in 1843).

Babe Ruth

Two years before he left Boston to play for the Yankees, Babe Ruth thought about signing with the Chester Shipyard League

With his win over Philadelphia on the last day of August, Babe Ruth helped the 1918 Red Sox clinch the AL pennant. (Boston will not win another pennant until 1946).  That year as a pitcher, he went 13-7; his ERA was 2.22 & he pitched one shutout. He also started 59 games in left & 13 at first. As a batter that season, Ruth compiled 317 at-bats (his previous high was 136); hit 11 home runs in a year when home runs in the American League had totaled 98, & drove in 66 runs & hit for a .300 average.

In the World Series against the Chicago Cubs, Ruth was used as a pitcher (he had only 5 at-bats). He won the first game 1-0, pitching a complete game.  During the 7th inning stretch of  that game, which was played at Comiskey Park, a military band played “The Star Spangled Banner” although it had not yet been adopted as the national anthem. The custom of playing it before every game won’t begin until WW II. Ruth then pitched in the fourth game (the Red Sox held a 2-1 Series lead) & shutout the Cubs for 7 innings before being relieved in the 9th. The Red Sox won the game 3-2. The seven shutout innings, combined with the 9 he had pitched in the Series opener & the 13 he had pitched in the 1916 Series, gave him 29 consecutive scoreless World Series innings, which broke Christy Mathewson’s previous record of 28 in 1905. It was a record that would stand for 42 years. The Red Sox won the World Series in game six at Fenway Park.  It would be the team’s third title in 4 years & fifth overall (five of the first 15 World Series).

Ruth, who never really got along with manager Ed Barrow, even threatened to leave the Red Sox to play for the Chester Shipyard League, a semiprofessional team in Chester, Pennsylvania.  But Harry Frazee, the Red Sox owner, threatened a lawsuit & put an end to Ruth’s proposed mutiny.

Toponymy

the taxonomic study of place-names, including their origins & meanings; based on various etymological, historical, & geographical aspects,

e.g., hydronyms (water features), like “Oxford,” named after a river segment shallow enough to facilitate bovine transport, & “Schuylkill River,” from the Dutch literally meaning “hidden river” River;

oronyms (relief features), like the Welsh toponym “Bryn Mawr,” meaning “big hill,” which is not to be confused with “Bryn Athyn,” which is a “very tenacious hill”.

And of course, there is the not quite emergent neologistic sub-category of “gastronyms,” which might include Malta or “Island of Honey,” & this example of fried evidence which may help to solve the problematic etymology of the name “Africa” once & for all.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias (1818)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian king, Ramses II (1304-1237 BC), third pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt, perhaps most popularly known by his portrayal by Yul Brynner in Cecil B. de Mille’s 1956 melodramatic (read, kitsch) epic (read, grandiose) film, The Ten Commandments.

In keeping with those biblical proportions, one will find a statue in honor of Ozymandias, located on W. Sundown Lane, off of route 27, in Amarillo, Texas.
It was created around 1997 by Lightnin’ McDuff who was commissioned by eccentric millionaire, Stanley Marsh, 3 (uses the Arabic numeral “3″ ithinking the traditional Roman numeral “III”  pretentious.)  He is also the creator of Cadillac Ranch on Old Route 66.
The statue, which consists of two giant legs (one 34′ tall, the other 24′ tall), however, is a parody on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s much anthologized sonnet of the same name.  There is an official-looking plaque with the sonnet that inspired this “road art” preceded with the inscription:  “In 1819 while their horseback trek over the great plains of New Spain, Percy Bysshe Shelley & his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft (Author of “Frankenstein”), came across these ruins, [actually, Shelley was in Italy at the time] here Shelley penned these immortal lines: “Ozymandias”.  Needless to say, this is risible “fractured history”.  Just as humorous are the athletic socks which were painted on the legs  in 2006  (subsequently sandblasted away).

It (the sonnet & the original statue) still “stands” as a metaphoric reminder of Lord Acton’s (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) anti-Ultramontanist eponym that “Power tends to corrupt, & absolute power corrupts absolutely,” & that humanity’s hubris cannot withstand the shifting sands of time.

Those who follow the comic book genre, are undoubtedly familiar with the character of “Ozymandias,”  who is the alter ego of Adrian Veidt, the costumed vigilante character appearing in the “Watchmen,” a comic book series written by Alan Moore & illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Originally published by DC Comics as a monthly limited series from 1986-87, & recently released in a film version by Warner Bros, where the character is portrayed by Matthew Goode.

Dan Ellis-Killian

The Cadaver Synod (the Synodus Horrenda)

the posthumous ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus, held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome during January of 897.  Before the proceedings the body of Formosus was exhumed &, according to some sources, seated on a throne while his successor, Pope Stephen VI, read the charges against him & conducted the trial. [The council acta do not survive, but the proceedings are described by Hincmar, Annales, entry for 878, ed. in Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores vol. I, p. 507]

In the years surrounding the Cadaver Synod (872-965) there were 24 popes. Often, these brief papal reigns were the result of the political machinations of local Roman factions. One such faction involved Guido, Duke of Spoleto, who had been crowned Emperor of Rome by Formosus’ predecessor, & Formosus had been pressured into crowning Guido’s son Lambert as co-emperor in 892.  But when Guido died in 894, Formosus had Arnulf, the Carolingian king of Carinthia, crowned emperor instead. Soon, however, Arnulf was forced to withdrawal his army to Germany. The Spoleto’s saw their chance for revenge on Formosus.  But before they could act the Pope died of natural causes on April 4 896. (He was succeeded by Boniface, whose papacy lasted only 15 days before he died).

In May 896 Stephen VI was elected pope, due in part to the intercession of the Spoleto family, in particular Lambert. Lambert’s anger at Formosus’ death knew no bounds, for the Pope, by dying, had eluded his revenge.  Nine months after the death of his Corsican predecessor Formosus, Stephen conveyed a synod.  All of Formosus acts as pope & bishop were invalidated, including every clerical appointment & ordination he had made; three fingers of his right hand were cut off, the ones used to give blessings.  Initially, as legend has it, Formosus’ corpse was ignominiously buried, but then dug up again & thrown into the Tiber; seruptiously rescued from the river & reburied.  Eventually support, including that of the Spoletos, for Stephen wained.  He was deposed, stripped of his vestments & thrown into prison where he was strangled to death in August 897.

In November 897, Pope Theodore II, a member of a pro-Formosan faction, held a synod invalidating the Cadaver Synod, announced that all of Formosus’ ordinations were valid & ordered that Formosus be dug up once again (by this time Formosus, who was 76 at the time he was elected, probably wasn’t ‘living’ up to the Latin meaning of his name, “looking good”).  The corpse was then dressed in papal vestments brought to St. Peters & reburied.  In 898 John IX (898-900) also nullified the Cadaver Synod, convening two synods (one in Rome, one in Ravenna) which confirmed the findings of Theodore II’s synod, ordered the acta of the Cadaver Synod destroyed, & prohibited any future trial of a dead person. However, Pope Sergius III (904-911), who as bishop had taken part in the Cadaver Synod, overturned the rulings of Theodore II & John IX, reaffirming Formosus’ conviction. Sergius’ decisions were never reversed — the nullification of Formosus’ ordinations, having never been reversed, raises more questions about the fictive dogma of apostolic succession. Dan Ellis-Killian

zibellino

A zibellino, from the Italian for “sable,” is a pelt from one of the mustelids  (sable, marten, ermine) worn draped at the neck or hanging at the waist, or carried in the hand; a women’s fashion accessory popular in the later 15th & 16th centuries. Some zibellini were fitted with faces & paws of goldsmith’s work with jeweled eyes & pearl earrings, while unadorned furs were also fashionable.  Although it had been suggested that the furs were intended to attract fleas away from the body of the wearer, that appears to be merely urban, or perhaps, feudal legend.

The sartorial taxonomy represented by the codification of sumptuary laws (sumptuariae leges), especially during the Renaissance, preserved the demarcations of class distinction.  We wouldn’t want just anyone to wear a zibellino! And so we find the likes of Mary Queen of Scots & Elizabeth I of England wearing their sable zibellini, while those of lesser standing could wear fur pieces more suited to their station, de facto.

Cremonese court painter to Philip II of Spain, Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1532-1625), includes several zibellini in her works.  The detail from the painting above is from a portrate of Bianca Ponzoni, Anguissola’s step-mother, painted in 1557. Perhaps the most famous is her portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Valois with the pelt of a marten set with a head & feet of jewelled gold.  (It was the most widely copied portrait in Spain; copied by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens).

Although carrying zibellini as a fashion statement died out in the 17th century, fox & mink pelts were worn in similar fashion in the 19th & 20th century.  But be not dismayed.  You too may carry a zibellini (although preferably not to a PETA meeting), as advertized by The Society for Creative Anachronism

‘Your zibellino will be made to order. You get to choose your:

• Type of fur: I always have mink or marten on hand.  Also, I will occasionally I have fox and sable pelts available as well.

• Color of “metal”:  My zibie’s heads and feet are made of a durable polymer clay, which is much lighter weight and economical than real gold or silver.  You have your choice of gold, silver, copper, black, or pearl.  Other colors available upon request.

• Decorations: Gold or silver filigree & your choice of crystal colors for the collar, eyes & overall ornamentation.  (Actual layout of decoration will be up to my discretion.)

Included is a photo of my own personal zibellino.  Actually, it’s a mink’s head from a stole I purchased at a “flea market,” then mounted on a small 3×5″ plaque in order to parody a relative’s trophy room.

Sherrill, Tawny  “Fleas, Furs, & Fashions: Zibellini as Luxury Accessories of the Renaissance,” in Robin Netherton & Gale R. Owen-Crocker, editors, Medieval Clothing & Textiles, Vol 2, p. 121-50

Basic Chart of Tudor Sumptuary Laws for Dress

Bertrand Russell & Albert Barnes

By the beginning of World War I, Russell’s political convictions & social behavior were attracting at least as much attention as his work in mathematics & philosophy.  His pacifist beliefs during the war cost him his position at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He had two failed marriages, with accompanying affairs that hurt his social standing.  And his ideas regarding the institution of marriage – he was an advocate of free love – made it difficult to find work as a teacher or lecturer.

In 1938, with war threatening in Europe, Russell left England for the United States with his third wife, Patricia, who was about 30 years his junior, & their infant son, Conrad,  He eventually found a position teaching at the City University of NY, but was dismissed in 1940 because of his controversial views.  Knowing that Russell desperately needed a job, Harvard pragmatist, John Dewey asked his good friend Albert C. Barnes if he might be able to employ him.  It was while teaching at The Barnes Foundation that Dewey wrote most of his Art as Experience (1934), which he dedicated “To Albert C. Barnes, in gratitude.”  Barnes offered Russell a 5-year contract ($8,000 yearly) with “no restrictions” to give lectures on the history of Western philosophy to his factory workers & other students.

Patriarchal Barnes chose a house for Russell & his wife, arranged its furnishings & offered free advice on the care of their five-year-old son.  Mrs. Russell wrote Barnes a polite note inviting him to mind his own business.  Instead, Russell & his family rented Little Datchet Farm in West Pikeland Township in Chester County. From this location, Russell was able to take the train or be driven by his wife (he did not drive) the 25 miles to Marion Station & the Barnes Foundation.

Barnes & his wife Laura then purchased an 18th century estate in the same township & named it “Ker-Feal,” Breton for “House of Fidèle,” after their favorite dog which Barnes brought home from Brittany during an art-buying trip to France. [Barnes was driving back to the Foundation in Merion from Ker-Feal when he ran a stop sign & was killed almost instantly by a tractor-trailer on July 24, 1951].

Though Russell, a British earl, disliked his title, his wife insisted on being called “Lady Russell,” which infuriated the working-class-born [Kensington, Phila.] Barnes.  It was only a matter of time when Bertrand & Albert, both irascible, dominating, eccentric & curmudgeonly personalities, would have their falling out.

When Russell didn’t show up for his regular lecture one day in 1943, it was the chance for which  Barnes had been waiting.  The trustees of the Barnes Foundation immediately announced that “Mr. Bertrand Russell has discontinued his lectures” & that the contract was broken. After being fired, Russell sued Barnes for the remainder of the money the philosopher was to receive through 1945, and won.  Ironically, the lectures he did deliver were eventually published [as The History of Western Philosophy], once the Russells were reestablished back in Cambridge, & the proceeds essentially supported him financially for the rest of his long life.

Dan Ellis-Killian

Grant “American Gothic” Wood, an Impressionist?

Grant DeVolson Wood (1891–1942) — long before his “American Gothic” became iconic,  Wood’s forays into “formal” art education included occasional night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.  However like other Americans of the era, he studied at the Academie Julien (Reginald Leslie Grooms was a fellow student).  While in Paris he became captivated with Impressionism & Post-Impressionism [Les Nabis] as reflected in some of his works below.
In spite of this lack of formal training, he became an associate professor of fine arts at what is now the University of Iowa.  During his tenure this led to continual confrontations with the guild of “academic” professors.  One of Wood’s detractors was H. W. Janson, then a young professor in Iowa City, whose textbook History of Art has been the default standard in classrooms.  Friction between them prompted Janson’s criticism of Wood & Regionalism in the 1940’s & 1950’s. The latest edition excludes any mention of Wood, Regionalism, or “American Gothic”.  Nevertheless, Wood received a number of prestigious honorary degrees.  In his lithograph, Honorary Degree (1937), Wood, somewhat “short” on formal training, is honored with a “gothic” hood by his taller & more pretentious academic colleagues. Wood is basking in the glory of the Gothic arch, his symbol for Regionalism & American Gothic, his claims to fame.  This is one of the few self-portraits he completed.

As an aside: Although it’s common knowledge that the models for  the oft-parodied “American Gothic” were Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham (1900-90), & his local dentist from Cedar Rapids, Dr. Byron H. McKeeby (1867-1950), interestingly, both sat separately & never in situ in front of the Carpenter Gothic style house (Sears, Roebuck & Co. used to sell them as kits) which still is standing in Eldon, Wapello County, Iowa

Dan Ellis-Killian

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Montaigne’s Blog

“Where I have least knowledge, there do I use my judgment most readily.” Thus Montaigne himself adds credence to the facile observance that the only difference between today’s blogger & his Essays is the medium. Well, let’s not overlook the fact that Montaigne was brilliant & most of us are not. But, that’s okay because, to borrow another commonplace observance: if we were all brilliant, Montaigne wouldn’t have been. Brilliance is brilliance only because of its rare appearances upon the human stage. As Emerson noted of Montaigne’s writing: “Cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive”. (Emerson’s“Montaigne or, the Skeptic”)

Contrary to the assumption that Montaigne ‘invented’ the essay form, according to Terence Cave of St. John’s, Oxford, the essay for Montaigne is not just a literary genre – that came later with the likes of Charles Lamb, et.al. Les Essais, however, represents a mode thinking, of indeterminate thoughts, trials, soundings; which enables one to review thought processes over time – much like the hypomnemata of Stoicism repopularized as the commonplace book by Erasmus. Montaigne thus describes himself as “an unpremeditated & accidental philosopher.”

Another observance of conventional wisdom is that Montaigne was the sceptic’s sceptic, especially given the influence of Pyrrhonist skepticism behind Les Essais, not to mention popping up on the Vatican’s best sellers list of prohibited books. Now, according to a new book by Ann Hartle [Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher CUP, 2007], The Essay transforms skeptical doubt into dialectical reflection, in which “the world is presented as radically contingent but where the divine is present in an incarnational & sacramental way.”

Bunhill Fields: Last call for those who don’t conform

Bunhill Fields (technically a burial grounds, not a ‘consecrated’ Church of England cemetery) – its name perhaps derives from a corruption of ‘bonehill,’ in reference to the bones carted away from St. Paul’s Cathedral to make room for new interments.  Located in the London Borough of Islington, the list of those there buried reads like a virtual ‘Who’s Who’ of 17th century Nonconformity.  It’s the last resting place for an estimated 120,000 bodies marked by 2,333 monuments, mostly simple headstones with the exception of a Victorian addition to Bunyan’s tomb. The cemetery was damaged during WW2 & reconstructed in 1960 to a design by Sir Peter Shepheard (late dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts & emeritus professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania).

• Thomas Wilcox [c.1549 - 1608] – Admonition to the Parliament (1572)
• John Owen (1616-83), Congregationalist minister, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Univ.
• George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) – in the Quaker Gardens, next to the Bunhill Fields Meeting House
• Richard Cromwell (1626–1712) & Henry Cromwell (1628–74) sons of Oliver Cromwell
• John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe
• Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John & Charles Wesley; John Wesley’s (founder of Methodism) City Road Chapel, home, & burial place are located directly across the street
• Isaac Watts (1674-1748), “Father of English hymnody”
• Thomas Bayes (1702–1761)  Presbyterian minister & mathematician, remembered for his theories regarding statistics & probability.
• William Blake (1757-1827), painter & poet, & wife Catherine (1762-1831) whom he married in 1782.

My wife wrote her Master’s thesis on Blake.  Imagine our surprise, as we sat nearby, wondering who would leave freshly cut flowers at his tomb, when the cemetery grounds keeper identified himself as the donor! [Although he had no formal advanced education, he enjoyed reading Blake, & was especially proud of his homeland's (Ireland) literary tradition]