The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Darkest Character

in Music | July 5th, 2018

Good thing social media wasn’t around in 1976 when David Bowie went through one of his dark­est transformations–his career might not have sur­vived it. A few months ago Kanye West start­ed palling around with Trump­ism, MAGA hats, and folks like Can­dace Owens, and Twit­ter went bal­lis­tic and West kind of retreat­ed. But for a moment in 1976, as Polyphonic’s video essay reminds us, David Bowie toyed with actu­al fas­cism, say­ing in one inter­view:

“You’ve got to have an extreme right-wing front come up and sweep every­thing off its feet and tidy every­thing up,” he said in a con­tentious, weird, and most-prob­a­bly coke-addled inter­view in the NME. (You can read the full inter­view here at The Qui­etus, which will pro­vide some need­ed con­text.)

The inter­view came on the heels of Young Amer­i­cans, both his trib­ute to the Philly soul sound and a cri­tique of the “relent­less plas­tic soul” of Amer­i­can cul­ture. At the same time, Bowie was indulging in his inter­est in the occult and the teach­ings of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, a thread that winds its way through many of his songs, from the Space Odd­i­ty album onward. In a Play­boy inter­view he com­pared Hitler to rock stars long before side four of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And in one ill advised moment, he seemed to be giv­ing the Nazi salute when he arrived at London’s Vic­to­ria Sta­tion. (Though Bowie lat­er called this peri­od of his life “ghast­ly,” he always insist­ed it was just the cam­era catch­ing him mid-wave.)

(For an in depth look at Bowie’s fas­cist fascination–with a side look at Eric Clapton’s much worse Enoch Pow­ell-sup­port­ing speech–check out this arti­cle.)

But for the chameleon rock star who seemed con­vinced rock music at the time was mori­bund, this might have all been at the ser­vice of a new Bowie char­ac­ter, the Thin White Duke, the man who dressed in black and white and struck a gaunt fig­ure. The man who once sung about “rock and roll sui­cide” and who broke up the band at the height of their fame, was now div­ing into him­self, run­ning for the shad­ows, as he exist­ed on a diet of milk, pep­pers, and cocaine. This could have been what Jung called the “shad­ow self.”

The whole peri­od would have been sad and pathet­ic if Bowie had deliv­ered up a crap album. But he didn’t. Sta­tion to Sta­tion–an allu­sion to the Kab­bal­ah Tree of Life–is a stone cold clas­sic, and is the pre­am­ble to the Berlin tril­o­gy. Polyphonic’s video essay spends most of its time dis­sect­ing the lyrics to the epic open­ing track, teas­ing out its occult ref­er­ences along with a psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait of Bowie’s mind at the time.

“Sta­tion to Sta­tion” had no equal in Bowie’s cat­a­log for its breadth and obscurity…that is until Black­star, the sim­i­lar­ly long, mul­ti-part open­ing track to Bowie’s final album. He even wears the same blue and sil­ver striped leo­tard in the video for “Lazarus” that he wore in 1976; Bowie had returned to what Sta­tion to Sta­tion start­ed, before depart­ing for des­ti­na­tions beyond.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

How David Bowie Turned His “Ade­quate” Voice into a Pow­er­ful Instru­ment: Hear Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks from “Life on Mars,” “Star­man,” “Mod­ern Love” “Under Pres­sure” & More

When David Bowie Became Niko­la Tes­la: Watch His Elec­tric Per­for­mance in The Pres­tige (2006)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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When Jean-Paul Sartre Had a Bad Mescaline Trip and Then Hallucinated That He Was Being Followed by Crabs

in Philosophy | July 4th, 2018

Image by Thier­ry Ehrmann via Flickr Com­mons

Some­times when con­front­ed with strange new ideas, peo­ple will exclaim, “you must be on drugs!”—a charge often levied at philoso­phers by those who would rather dis­miss their ideas as hal­lu­ci­na­tions than take them seri­ous­ly. But, then, to be fair, some­times philoso­phers are on drugs. Take Jean-Paul Sartre. “Before Hunter S. Thomp­son was dri­ving around in con­vert­ibles stocked full of acid, cocaine, mesca­line and tequi­la,” notes Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, Sartre almost approached the gonzo journalist’s habit­u­al intake.

Accord­ing to Annie Cohen-Solal, who wrote a biog­ra­phy of Sartre, his dai­ly drug con­sump­tion was thus: two packs of cig­a­rettes, sev­er­al tobac­co pipes, over a quart of alco­hol (wine, beer, vod­ka, whisky etc.), two hun­dred mil­ligrams of amphet­a­mines, fif­teen grams of aspirin, a boat load of bar­bi­tu­rates, some cof­fee, tea, and a few “heavy” meals (what­ev­er those might have been). 

These details should not undu­ly influ­ence our read­ing of Sartre’s work. Like Thomp­son, no mat­ter how phys­i­cal­ly debil­i­tat­ing the booze and drugs might have been for him, they didn’t seem to cramp his pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or intel­lec­tu­al vig­or. But his one and only expe­ri­ence with mesca­line almost sent him careen­ing over the edge, and cer­tain­ly con­tributed to an impor­tant motif in his work after­ward.

While work­ing on a book about the imag­i­na­tion, Sartre sought to have an hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry expe­ri­ence. He got the chance in 1935 when an old friend, Dr. Daniel Lagache, invit­ed him into an exper­i­ment at Sainte-Anne’s hos­pi­tal in Paris, where he was inject­ed with mesca­line and observed under con­trolled con­di­tions. “Sartre does not appear to have had a bad trip in the clas­sic sense of suf­fer­ing a major and pro­longed pan­ic attack,” Gary Cox writes in his Sartre biog­ra­phy. “But it was not a good trip and he did not enjoy it.”

The most ill effects came after­ward: “His visu­al fac­ul­ties remained dis­tort­ed for weeks.” Sartre saw hous­es with “leer­ing faces, all eyes and jaws.” Clock faces took on the fea­tures of owls. He con­fid­ed in his part­ner Simone de Beau­voir that “he feared that one day he would no longer know” whether or not these were hal­lu­ci­na­tions. They were, how­ev­er, not the worst after­ef­fects. As Sartre told polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor John Geras­si in a 1971 inter­view, crabs began to fol­low him around. He described the expe­ri­ence as “a ner­vous break­down.” The crabs fol­lowed him “all the time,” he said, “I mean they fol­lowed me in the streets, into class.”

I got used to them. I would wake up in the morn­ing and say, “Good morn­ing, my lit­tle ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time, or I would say, “OK guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and qui­et,” and they would be there, around my desk, absolute­ly still, until the bell rang.

This went on for a year before Sartre went to see his friend Jacques Lacan for psy­cho­analy­sis. “We con­clud­ed, “ he says, “that it was a fear of becom­ing alone.” While he had pre­vi­ous­ly con­fessed a fear of sea crea­tures, espe­cial­ly crabs, that went back to his child­hood, after the mesca­line trip, crabs fea­tured promi­nent­ly in his work, as Peter Royle shows at Phi­los­o­phy Now.

We find sev­er­al ref­er­ences to crabs in his short sto­ry col­lec­tion The Wall and in his famous essay “Exis­ten­tial­ism is a Human­ism.” Samir Chopra quotes crab pas­sages in Sartre’s first nov­el Nau­sea. (“At first I avoid­ed them by writ­ing about them,” he told Geras­si, “in effect, by defin­ing life as nau­sea.”) “In one of his short sto­ries, ‘Ero­s­tra­tus,’” notes Royle, “Sartre cre­ates a char­ac­ter, Paul Hilbert, who looks down on human beings from a height and sees them as crabs.” The most strik­ing use of the “crab motif” comes from his 1959 play The Con­demned of Altona, in which the pro­tag­o­nist Frantz imag­ines that by the Thir­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, humans have become crabs sit­ting in judg­ment of the peo­ple of the Twen­ti­eth.

Crab images, Royle argues, “point to impor­tant philo­soph­i­cal ideas,” includ­ing “the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ignominy inher­ent in the con­cept of free­dom itself” and the “rep­re­hen­si­ble ‘crabs’ who decline to assume their free­dom” and thus scut­tle around mind­less­ly in groups. Crus­taceans con­tin­ued to haunt the philoso­pher. While the effects of the mesca­line even­tu­al­ly dis­si­pat­ed, “when he was feel­ing down,” writes Cox, Sartre would get the “recur­rent feel­ing, the delu­sion, that he was being pur­sued by a giant lob­ster, always just out of sight… per­pet­u­al­ly about to arrive.”

One of the “great, dark­ly com­ic fea­tures of Sartre folk­lore,” the huge, invis­i­ble lob­ster invites much spec­u­la­tion about Sartre’s men­tal health. But per­haps it was only the mon­strous embod­i­ment of his own feel­ings of mau­vaise foi, giv­en vivid form by a lin­ger­ing psy­chotrop­ic hang­over and a dai­ly diet of uppers and downers—a reminder of the “anx­i­ety, anguish, dread, appre­hen­sion, fear of pain, fear of death… [and] fun­da­men­tal absur­di­ty of exis­tence.” As Royle writes, Sartre, always fond of puns, “could only have been intrigued” by the French word for lob­ster, homard, which sounds like “homme-ard,” a coinage that might sug­gest some­thing like “a bad man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Con­cepts of Free­dom & “Exis­ten­tial Choice” Explained in an Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

The Draw­ings of Jean-Paul Sartre

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Big Digital Archive of Independent & Alternative Publications: Browse/Download Radical Periodicals Printed from 1951 to 2016

in Archives, History, Literature, Magazines, Politics | July 4th, 2018

The con­sol­i­da­tion of big media in print, TV, and inter­net has had some seri­ous­ly dele­te­ri­ous effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture, not least of which has been the major depen­dence on social media as a means of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion. While these plat­forms give space to voic­es we may not oth­er­wise hear, they also flat­ten and mon­e­tize com­mu­ni­ca­tion, spread abuse and dis­in­for­ma­tion, force the use of one-size-fits-all tools, and cre­ate the illu­sion of an open, demo­c­ra­t­ic forum that obscures the gross inequities of real life.

Today’s media land­scape stands in stark con­trast to that of the mid-to-late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when inde­pen­dent and alter­na­tive press­es flour­ished, dis­sem­i­nat­ing art, poet­ry, and rad­i­cal pol­i­tics, and offer­ing cus­tom plat­forms for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties and dis­senters. While the future of inde­pen­dent media seems, today, unclear at best, a look back at the indie press­es of decades past may show a way for­ward.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the same tech­nol­o­gy that threat­ens to impose a glob­al mono­cul­ture also enables us to archive and share thou­sands of unique arti­facts from more het­ero­dox ages of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. One stel­lar exam­ple of such an archive, Inde­pen­dent Voic­es—“an open access col­lec­tion of an alter­na­tive press”—stores sev­er­al hun­dred dig­i­tized copies of peri­od­i­cals “pro­duced by fem­i­nists, dis­si­dent GIs, cam­pus rad­i­cals, Native Amer­i­cans, anti-war activists, Black Pow­er advo­cates, His­pan­ics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alter­na­tive lit­er­ary mag­a­zines dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

These pub­li­ca­tions come from the spe­cial col­lec­tions of sev­er­al dozen libraries and indi­vid­u­als and span the years 1951 to 2016. While exam­ples from recent years show that alter­na­tive print pub­li­ca­tions haven’t dis­ap­peared, the rich­est, most his­tor­i­cal­ly res­o­nant exam­ples tend to come from the 60s and 70s, when the var­i­ous strains of the coun­ter­cul­ture formed col­lec­tive move­ments and aes­thet­ics, often pow­ered by easy-to-use mimeo­graph machines.

As Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an John McMil­lian says, the “hun­dreds of rad­i­cal under­ground news­pa­pers” that pro­lif­er­at­ed dur­ing the Viet­nam war “edu­cat­ed and politi­cized young peo­ple, helped to shore up activist com­mu­ni­ties, and were the movement’s pri­ma­ry means of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” These pub­li­ca­tions, notes The New York­er’s Louis Menand, rep­re­sent “one of the most spon­ta­neous and aggres­sive growths in pub­lish­ing his­to­ry.”

With pub­li­ca­tions from the era like And Ain’t I a Woman, Bread & Ros­es, Black Dia­logue, Gay Lib­er­a­tor, Grunt Free Press, Native Move­ment, and The Yip­ster Times, Inde­pen­dent Voic­es show­cas­es the height of coun­ter­cul­tur­al activist pub­lish­ing. These are only a smat­ter­ing of titles on offer. Each issue is archived in a high-res­o­lu­tion, down­load­able PDF, per­fect for brush­ing up on your gen­er­al knowl­edge of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism or 60s Black Pow­er; sourc­ing schol­ar­ship on the devel­op­ment of rad­i­cal, alter­na­tive press over the past six­ty years; or find­ing mate­r­i­al to inspire the future of indie media, what­ev­er form it hap­pens to take. Enter the Inde­pen­dent Voic­es archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Enter the Pulp Mag­a­zine Archive, Fea­tur­ing Over 11,000 Dig­i­tized Issues of Clas­sic Sci-Fi, Fan­ta­sy & Detec­tive Fic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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An Animated Introduction to Anna Freud: The Psychoanalyst (and Daughter of Sigmund) Who Theorized Denial, Projection & Other Defense Mechanisms for Our Egos

in Psychology | July 4th, 2018

Being in denial, engag­ing in pro­jec­tion, ratio­nal­iz­ing or intel­lec­tu­al­iz­ing events, regress­ing into child­hood, dis­plac­ing your anger, retreat­ing into fan­ta­sy: who among us has­n’t been sub­ject to accu­sa­tions of doing these things at one time or anoth­er? And even if you haven’t, all of those terms sure­ly sound famil­iar. They owe their place in the cul­ture in large part to the psy­cho­an­a­lyst Anna Freud, who cat­a­logued these and oth­er “defense mech­a­nisms” in her 1934 book The Ego and Mech­a­nisms of Defense. In her analy­sis, we engage in these some­times unpleas­ant and even embar­rass­ing behav­iors to pro­tect our ego — anoth­er now-com­mon term that, in Freudi­an usage, refers to our pre­ferred image of our­selves.

As the daugh­ter of Sig­mund Freud, the “father of psy­cho­analy­sis,” Anna Freud’s name car­ried a con­sid­er­able weight in the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal world. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured an ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to the work of Freud père from Alain de Bot­ton’s The School of Life here on Open Cul­ture, and today we have one from the same source on that of Freud fille.

Togeth­er they reveal that, though both Sig­mund and Anna Freud worked in the same field, and indeed each did more than their part to devel­op that field, each of their bod­ies of work on the human mind stands on its own. And though many terms coined by Sig­mund Freud — “Oedi­pus com­plex,” the “sub­con­scious,” and even “id, ego, and super­ego” — remain in our lex­i­con, the names Anna Freud gave the defense mech­a­nisms may well see even more every­day use.

You can hear all those mech­a­nisms explained in the video above or read about them in the accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle at The Book of Life. “Anna Freud start­ed from a posi­tion of deep gen­eros­i­ty towards defense mech­a­nisms,” it says. “We turn to them because we feel immense­ly threat­ened. They are our instinc­tive ways of ward­ing off dan­ger and lim­it­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal pain.” Ulti­mate­ly, her work teach­es “a les­son in mod­esty. For she reveals the extreme prob­a­bil­i­ty that defense mech­a­nisms are play­ing a marked and pow­er­ful role in one’s own life – though with­out it being obvi­ous to one­self that this is so.” In oth­er words, you can’t, for the most part, help it. That expla­na­tion may not get you off the hook the next time some­one tells you to stop pro­ject­ing, intel­lec­tu­al­iz­ing, or dis­plac­ing, but bear in mind that when it comes to defend­ing the ego, no one else can help it either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud, Father of Psy­cho­analy­sis, Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Sig­mund Freud’s Home Movies: A Rare Glimpse of His Pri­vate Life

Watch Lucian Freud’s Very Last Day of Paint­ing (2011)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro to the Ideas of Jacques Lacan, “the Great­est French Psy­cho­an­a­lyst of the 20th Cen­tu­ry”

The Psy­cho­log­i­cal & Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders Expe­ri­enced by Char­ac­ters in Alice in Won­der­land: A Neu­ro­science Read­ing of Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Tale

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Cheap Trick’s Bassist Tom Petersson Helps Kids With Autism Learn Language With Rock ‘n’ Roll: Discover “Rock Your Speech”

in Education, K-12, Music, Neuroscience | July 3rd, 2018

You can’t fault peo­ple for turn­ing away from cur­rent events these days, but there are many pock­ets of light, even if they rarely make head­lines or get curat­ed by gloom and doom algo­rithms. Some opti­mism has come to us by way of musi­cians like David Byrne, whose good-news aggre­ga­tor “Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful” show­cas­es pos­i­tive devel­op­ments around the world. Indie rock drum­mer Thor Har­ris has encour­aged fans with tips on how to stay healthy in try­ing times, and he has announced a run for gov­er­nor of Texas. And last fall, Cheap Trick’s bassist Tom Peters­son start­ed a project called Rock Your Speech, which “lever­ages the pow­er of music to build lan­guage skills in chil­dren who are work­ing to over­come speech delay asso­ci­at­ed with autism.”

As Peters­son and his wife Ali­son explain above, they were inspired by their expe­ri­ence with their son, Liam, who, “until the age of five,” reports David Chiu at Huff­in­g­ton Post, “had dif­fi­cul­ty com­mu­ni­cat­ing,” They dis­cov­ered that music could help when Liam began singing along to one of her favorite Elton John songs. Peters­son want­ed “to help oth­er par­ents,” he told Huff­Po, “and to let peo­ple know they’re not alone.” An L.A. ben­e­fit con­cert har­nessed the col­lec­tive pow­er of celebri­ties and indie artists to jump­start the project, with bands like the Dandy Warhols and Red Kross and actors Ed Asner and Bil­ly Bob Thorn­ton par­tic­i­pat­ing.

Rock Your Speech is not the only such ini­tia­tive, but it is prob­a­bly the most high-pro­file, and could bring atten­tion to sim­i­lar efforts like Audi­to­ry-Motor Map­ping Train­ing, devel­oped by Dr. Got­tfried Schlaug of the Music and Neu­roimag­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry. At the Autism Speaks blog, Schlaug writes, “as many as three in ten chil­dren with autism are non­ver­bal. Yet many chil­dren with autism have supe­ri­or audi­to­ry skills and a par­tic­u­lar attrac­tion to music.” Like Rock Your Speech, his approach uses “forms of music-mak­ing that encour­age vocal­iza­tion as a path­way to devel­op­ing lan­guage.” Musi­cian and psy­chol­o­gist Adam Reece has also writ­ten about his research show­ing the pos­i­tive role music ther­a­py can play in lan­guage acqui­si­tion for kids on the spec­trum.

Petersson’s project puts a rock star face on music ther­a­py and comes “from the point of view of the par­ent,” he says. Rock Your Speech not only rais­es autism aware­ness but also offers orig­i­nal music and videos designed to stim­u­late and inspire kids. Hear “Blue” from the Rock Your Speech, Vol­ume 1 album above, one of sev­er­al songs Peters­son wrote that “employs actu­al rock music,” Chiu writes, “not nec­es­sar­i­ly the gen­tle, kid­die-type of sounds that are gen­er­al­ly preva­lent in children’s music.” Videos on the Rock Your Speech site for “Blue” and oth­er songs “not only show the words but also demon­strate to kids how those words are formed and mouthed.”

The project’s Vimeo chan­nel shows the Peters­son fam­i­ly involved in Liam’s speech devel­op­ment through music, includ­ing his old­er sis­ter Lilah coach­ing her broth­er with a song called “Wash Your Hands.” (See Lilah’s video above for her song “All the Same,” writ­ten for Liam.) Liam, now ten, has come a long way. “He’s in school,” says Peters­son, “He loves music… He’s def­i­nite­ly on the autism spec­trum, but he speaks, he’s social. He’s the sweet­est lit­tle guy.” His musi­cal fam­i­ly has a lot to do with that, but Rock Your Speech offers even non-musi­cian par­ents a wealth of catchy tools to help kids strug­gling with speech to con­nect with lan­guage through rock ‘n’ roll. For many fam­i­lies, that could be very good news indeed.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Research Shows How Music Lessons Dur­ing Child­hood Ben­e­fit the Brain for a Life­time

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Rise and Fall of The Simpsons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

in Animation, Comedy, Television | July 3rd, 2018

As an Amer­i­can man in his thir­ties, I can, if nec­es­sary, com­mu­ni­cate entire­ly in Simp­sons ref­er­ences. But how­ev­er volu­mi­nous and close at hand my knowl­edge of the Simp­son fam­i­ly and their home­town of Spring­field, it does­n’t extend past the 1990s. Most of my demo­graph­ic can sure­ly say the same, as can quite a few out­side it: take the Irish­man behind the Youtube chan­nel Super Eye­patch Wolf, author of the video essay “The Fall of The Simp­sons: How It Hap­pened.” We both remem­ber tun­ing in to the show’s debut on Decem­ber 14, 1989, and how it sub­se­quent­ly “trans­formed tele­vi­sion as we knew it” — and we’ve both lament­ed how, in the near­ly three decades since, “one of the best and most influ­en­tial TV shows of all time became just anoth­er sit­com.”

So how did it hap­pen? To under­stand what made The Simp­sons fall, we have to under­stand what put it at the top of the zeit­geist in the first place. Not only did the coun­ter­cul­ture still exist back in the 1990s, The Simp­sons quick­ly came to con­sti­tute its most pop­u­lar expres­sion. And as with any pow­er­ful coun­ter­cul­tur­al prod­uct, it was just as quick­ly labeled dan­ger­ous, as any­one who grew up describ­ing each week’s episode of the show to friends not allowed to watch it remem­ber. Yet its “rebel­lious satire” and all the con­se­quent vio­la­tions both sub­tle and bla­tant of the staid con­ven­tions of main­stream Amer­i­can cul­ture (espe­cial­ly in its purest man­i­fes­ta­tion, the sit­com) came unfail­ing­ly accom­pa­nied by “com­e­dy ground­ed in char­ac­ter and heart.”

The fact that The Simp­sons’ first gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers might well revise a joke twen­ty or thir­ty times — cre­at­ing the count­less moments of intri­cate­ly struc­tured, mul­ti­lay­ered ver­bal and visu­al com­e­dy we still remem­ber today — did­n’t hurt. But even if cur­rent writ­ers put in the same hours, they do it on a show that has long since lost touch with what made it great. While each of its char­ac­ters once had “a very spe­cif­ic set of con­flict­ing beliefs and moti­va­tions,” they now seem to do or say any­thing, no mat­ter how implau­si­ble or absurd, that serves the gag of the moment. Celebri­ty guest stars stopped play­ing char­ac­ters spe­cial­ly craft­ed for them but car­i­ca­tures of them­selves. Plots became bizarre. “The only thing that The Simp­sons was a par­o­dy of now,” says Super Eye­patch Wolf bring­ing us to the present day, “was The Simp­sons.”

While the show has been self-ref­er­en­tial­ly acknowl­edg­ing its own decline since about the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, that does­n’t make com­par­isons with its 1990s “gold­en age” any less dispir­it­ing. One thinks of the com­ic strip Calvin and Hobbes, anoth­er gen­er­a­tional touch­stone, whose cre­ator Bill Wat­ter­son end­ed it after just ten years: it still finds an audi­ence today in part, he says, “because I chose not to run the wheels off it.” The Simp­sons, by con­trast, now draws its low­est rat­ings ever, and it would pain those of us who grew up with it as much to see it end as it does to see it keep going. But then, “enter­tain­ment isn’t meant to last for­ev­er. Rather, it’s an exten­sion of the peo­ple and places that made it at a par­tic­u­lar moment in time.” The Simp­sons at its coun­ter­cul­tur­al best will always define that moment, no mat­ter how long it insists on run­ning beyond it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

27 Movies Ref­er­ences in The Simp­sons Put Side-by-Side with the Movie Scenes They Paid Trib­ute To

The Simp­sons Take on Ayn Rand: See the Show’s Satire of The Foun­tain­head and Objec­tivist Phi­los­o­phy

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Meet “Founding Mother” Mary Katharine Goddard, First Female Postmaster in the U.S. and Printer of the Declaration of Independence

in Gender, History | July 3rd, 2018

Once again, it’s time for Amer­i­cans to cel­e­brate their country’s “birth­day,” a rather mirac­u­lous event, we might say, since the only peo­ple present at the birth were found­ing fathers. See their names on the print­ed Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence above, from the out­sized John Han­cock, to famous favorites Ben­jamin Franklin, Thomas Jef­fer­son, and sec­ond cousins John and Sam Adams, to a bunch of oth­er guys no one remem­bers. But wait, zoom in (to the scanned copy here), who’s that at the bot­tom? No, the very, very bot­tom, in tiny type…. “Bal­ti­more, in Mary­land: Print­ed by Mary Katharine God­dard.” Who?

“If you’ve nev­er noticed it or heard of her, you aren’t alone,” writes Petu­la Dvo­rak at The Wash­ing­ton Post, but Mary God­dard could be called “a Found­ing Moth­er, of sorts,” as a pub­lish­er of the Mary­land Jour­nal, pro­pri­etor of a print­ing press, book­store own­er, and post­mas­ter gen­er­al of Bal­ti­more.

God­dard was fear­less her entire career as one of America’s first female pub­lish­ers, print­ing scoops from Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War bat­tles from Con­cord to Bunker Hill and con­tin­u­ing to pub­lish after her offices were twice raid­ed and her life was repeat­ed­ly threat­ened by haters.

In “her bold­est move,” she put her full name at the bot­tom of copies of the Dec­la­ra­tion that her press print­ed and dis­trib­uted to all of the colonies. This was the first copy Amer­i­cans would see with all of the sign­ers’ name. God­dard had received the com­mis­sion from Con­gress and more hon­ors besides. In 1775, she was appoint­ed Baltimore’s first post­mas­ter, serv­ing “under the lead­er­ship of Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Ben­jamin Franklin,” notes the Nation­al Postal Muse­um. She “may have been the first woman post­mas­ter in colo­nial Amer­i­ca.”

The print­ing and postal trades were a fam­i­ly busi­ness: her father Giles served as post­mas­ter of New Lon­don, Con­necti­cut, and her younger broth­er William estab­lished the colo­nial postal sys­tem. Just as she has been side­lined by his­to­ry, she was side­lined in her life­time. She “lost her job as pub­lish­er,” writes Dvo­rak, “after her broth­er mar­ried and returned to Bal­ti­more in 1784, tak­ing over the Mary­land Jour­nal and oust­ing his sis­ter.”

And after serv­ing as Bal­ti­more post­mas­ter for 14 years, she was pushed out of the job by Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Samuel Osgood, who “didn’t think a woman could han­dle all the trav­el asso­ci­at­ed with the job.” (Over 200 mer­chants and res­i­dents of Bal­ti­more peti­tioned Osgood, to no avail.) The sto­ry of Goddard’s life and career is both inspir­ing and frustrating—but here’s to hop­ing she makes it into the his­to­ry books where she belongs. See her print­ed copy of the Dec­la­ra­tion in high-res­o­lu­tion detail at the New York Pub­lic Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civil­i­ty”: The Code of Decen­cy That Guid­ed America’s First Pres­i­dent

An Archive of 8,000 Ben­jamin Franklin Papers Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Thomas Jefferson’s Hand­writ­ten Vanil­la Ice Cream Recipe

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility”: The Code of Decency That Guided America’s First President

in History, Politics | July 2nd, 2018

Con­trary to a thor­ough­ly abused polit­i­cal metaphor, Wash­ing­ton, DC was not in fact built on a swamp, though any­one who has vis­it­ed in the sum­mer will find that sto­ry plau­si­ble. Hav­ing just returned to my home­town for a few days, I’ve had ample reminder of its stick­i­ness, and have expe­ri­enced its fig­u­ra­tive­ly over­heat­ed atmos­phere first­hand. I needn’t go over the polit­i­cal and moral crises turn­ing the cap­i­tal into a caul­dron of “inci­vil­i­ty.”

But what exact­ly is “civil­i­ty” and what does it entail? Is it just anoth­er word for polite­ness, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly insid­i­ous code for silenc­ing dis­sent? Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies recent­ly chose the word for its Week­ly Word Watch, cit­ing an Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary entry defin­ing it as “the min­i­mum degree” of deco­rum in social sit­u­a­tions. Deriv­ing from the Latin civis, or “cit­i­zen,” and relat­ed to “civics” and “civ­i­liza­tion,” the word first meant “cit­i­zen­ship,” and con­not­ed the treat­ment sup­pos­ed­ly due a per­son with said sta­tus. As often hap­pens, con­no­ta­tion became deno­ta­tion, and civil­i­ty came to stand for basic respect.

Ner­vous colum­nists now wor­ried about civility’s decline have pinned the prob­lem on cit­i­zen pro­test­ers exer­cis­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and their first amend­ment rights, rather than on the tor­rents of abuse, threats, and lies that pour forth dai­ly from the exec­u­tive, who seems inca­pable of treat­ing any­one with min­i­mal decen­cy. But the very first hold­er of the office—faced with a frac­tious and unciv­il pop­u­lace (some of whom toast­ed to his “speedy death”)—believed it was his duty to set “a stan­dard to which the wise and hon­est can repair.”

What, we might won­der, would George Wash­ing­ton, builder of DC, have thought of the city’s cur­rent state? We can spec­u­late by ref­er­ence to his “Farewell Address,” in which the depart­ing pres­i­dent wrote:

The alter­nate dom­i­na­tion of one fac­tion over anoth­er, sharp­ened by the spir­it of revenge nat­ur­al to par­ty dis­sention, which in dif­fer­ent ages & coun­tries has per­pe­trat­ed the most hor­rid enor­mi­ties, is itself a fright­ful despo­tism. But this leads at length to a more for­mal and per­ma­nent despo­tism. The dis­or­ders & mis­eries, which result, grad­u­al­ly incline the minds of men to seek secu­ri­ty & repose in the absolute pow­er of an Indi­vid­ual: and soon­er or lat­er the chief of some pre­vail­ing fac­tion more able or more for­tu­nate than his com­peti­tors, turns this dis­po­si­tion to the pur­pos­es of his own ele­va­tion, on the ruins of Pub­lic Lib­er­ty.

Wash­ing­ton, argues his­to­ri­an and con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Richard Brookhis­er, gov­erned his own behav­ior with a strict code of con­duct based on “The Rules of Civil­i­ty & Decent Behav­ior in Com­pa­ny and Con­ver­sa­tion,” a list he care­ful­ly copied out by hand as a school­boy in Vir­ginia. “Based on a 16th-cen­tu­ry set of pre­cepts com­piled for young gen­tle­men by Jesuit instruc­tors,” notes NPR, “the Rules of Civil­i­ty were one of the ear­li­est and most pow­er­ful forces to shape America’s first pres­i­dent,” as Brookhis­er claims in his 2003 book Rules of Civil­i­ty: The 110 Pre­cepts That Guid­ed Our First Pres­i­dent in War and Peace.

Many of these “rules” are out­mod­ed eti­quette, many are baroque in their lev­el of detail, some should nev­er go out of style, and many would be mocked and derid­ed today as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” Brookhis­er “warns against dis­miss­ing the max­ims” as mere polite­ness, not­ing that they “address moral issues, but they address them indi­rect­ly. Maybe they can work on us in our cen­tu­ry as the Jesuits intend­ed them to work in theirs—indirectly—by putting us in a more ambi­tious frame of mind.” Or maybe they could induce some humil­i­ty among the already polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious.

See all of the 110 “Rules of Civil­i­ty” below, with mod­ern­ized spelling and punc­tu­a­tion, cour­tesy of NPR:

  1. Every action done in com­pa­ny ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
  2. When in com­pa­ny, put not your hands to any part of the body not usu­al­ly dis­cov­ered.
  3. Show noth­ing to your friend that may affright him.
  4. In the pres­ence of oth­ers, sing not to your­self with a hum­ming voice, or drum with your fin­gers or feet.
  5. If you cough, sneeze, sigh or yawn, do it not loud but pri­vate­ly, and speak not in your yawn­ing, but put your hand­ker­chief or hand before your face and turn aside.
  6. Sleep not when oth­ers speak, sit not when oth­ers stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not on when oth­ers stop.
  7. Put not off your clothes in the pres­ence of oth­ers, nor go out of your cham­ber half dressed.
  8. At play and attire, it’s good man­ners to give place to the last com­er, and affect not to speak loud­er than ordi­nary.
  9. Spit not into the fire, nor stoop low before it; nei­ther put your hands into the flames to warm them, nor set your feet upon the fire, espe­cial­ly if there be meat before it.
  10. When you sit down, keep your feet firm and even, with­out putting one on the oth­er or cross­ing them.
  11. Shift not your­self in the sight of oth­ers, nor gnaw your nails.
  12. Shake not the head, feet, or legs; roll not the eyes; lift not one eye­brow high­er than the oth­er, wry not the mouth, and bedew no man’s face with your spit­tle by approach­ing too near him when you speak.
  13. Kill no ver­min, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc. in the sight of oth­ers; if you see any filth or thick spit­tle put your foot dex­ter­ous­ly upon it; if it be upon the clothes of your com­pan­ions, put it off pri­vate­ly, and if it be upon your own clothes, return thanks to him who puts it off.
  14. Turn not your back to oth­ers, espe­cial­ly in speak­ing; jog not the table or desk on which anoth­er reads or writes; lean not upon any­one.
  15. Keep your nails clean and short, also your hands and teeth clean, yet with­out show­ing any great con­cern for them.
  16. Do not puff up the cheeks, loll not out the tongue with the hands or beard, thrust out the lips or bite them, or keep the lips too open or too close.
  17. Be no flat­ter­er, nei­ther play with any that delight not to be played with­al.
  18. Read no let­ter, books, or papers in com­pa­ny, but when there is a neces­si­ty for the doing of it, you must ask leave; come not near the books or writ­tings of anoth­er so as to read them unless desired, or give your opin­ion of them unasked. Also look not nigh when anoth­er is writ­ing a let­ter.
  19. Let your coun­te­nance be pleas­ant but in seri­ous mat­ters some­what grave.
  20. The ges­tures of the body must be suit­ed to the dis­course you are upon.
  21. Reproach none for the infir­mi­ties of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind of there­of.
  22. Show not your­self glad at the mis­for­tune of anoth­er though he were your ene­my.
  23. When you see a crime pun­ished, you may be inward­ly pleased; but always show pity to the suf­fer­ing offend­er.
  24. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any pub­lic spec­ta­cle.
  25. Super­flu­ous com­pli­ments and all affec­ta­tion of cer­e­monies are to be avoid­ed, yet where due they are not to be neglect­ed.
  26. In putting off your hat to per­sons of dis­tinc­tion, as noble­men, jus­tices, church­men, etc., make a rev­er­ence, bow­ing more or less accord­ing to the cus­tom of the bet­ter bred, and qual­i­ty of the per­sons. Among your equals expect not always that they should begin with you first, but to pull off the hat when there is no need is affec­ta­tion. In the man­ner of salut­ing and resalut­ing in words, keep to the most usu­al cus­tom.
  27. ‘Tis ill man­ners to bid one more emi­nent than your­self be cov­ered, as well as not to do it to whom it is due. Like­wise he that makes too much haste to put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to put it on at the first, or at most the sec­ond time of being asked. Now what is here­in spo­ken, of qual­i­fi­ca­tion in behav­ior in salut­ing, ought also to be observed in tak­ing of place and sit­ting down, for cer­e­monies with­out bounds are trou­ble­some.
  28. If any one come to speak to you while you are are sit­ting stand up, though he be your infe­ri­or, and when you present seats, let it be to every­one accord­ing to his degree.
  29. When you meet with one of greater qual­i­ty than your­self, stop and retire, espe­cial­ly if it be at a door or any straight place, to give way for him to pass.
  30. In walk­ing, the high­est place in most coun­tries seems to be on the right hand; there­fore, place your­self on the left of him whom you desire to hon­or. But if three walk togeth­er the mid­dest place is the most hon­or­able; the wall is usal­ly giv­en to the most wor­thy if two walk togeth­er.
  31. If any­one far sur­pass­es oth­ers, either in age, estate, or mer­it, yet would give place to a mean­er than him­self in his own lodg­ing or else­where, the one ought not to except it. So he on the oth­er part should not use much earnest­ness nor offer it above once or twice.
  32. To one that is your equal, or not much infe­ri­or, you are to give the chief place in your lodg­ing, and he to whom it is offered ought at the first to refuse it, but at the sec­ond to accept though not with­out acknowl­edg­ing his own unwor­thi­ness.
  33. They that are in dig­ni­ty or in office have in all places prece­den­cy, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or oth­er qual­i­ties, though they have no pub­lic charge.
  34. It is good man­ners to pre­fer them to whom we speak before our­selves, espe­cial­ly if they be above us, with whom in no sort we ought to begin.
  35. Let your dis­course with men of busi­ness be short and com­pre­hen­sive.
  36. Arti­fi­cers and per­sons of low degree ought not to use many cer­e­monies to lords or oth­ers of high degree, but respect and high­ly hon­or then, and those of high degree ought to treat them with affa­bil­i­ty and cour­tesy, with­out arro­gance.
  37. In speak­ing to men of qual­i­ty do not lean nor look them full in the face, nor approach too near them at left. Keep a full pace from them.
  38. In vis­it­ing the sick, do not present­ly play the physi­cian if you be not know­ing there­in.
  39. In writ­ing or speak­ing, give to every per­son his due title accord­ing to his degree and the cus­tom of the place.
  40. Strive not with your supe­ri­or in argu­ment, but always sub­mit your judg­ment to oth­ers with mod­esty.
  41. Under­take not to teach your equal in the art him­self pro­fess­es; it savors of arro­gan­cy.
  42. Let your cer­e­monies in cour­tesy be prop­er to the dig­ni­ty of his place with whom you con­verse, for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince.
  43. Do not express joy before one sick in pain, for that con­trary pas­sion will aggra­vate his mis­ery.
  44. When a man does all he can, though it suc­ceed not well, blame not him that did it.
  45. Being to advise or rep­re­hend any one, con­sid­er whether it ought to be in pub­lic or in pri­vate, and present­ly or at some oth­er time; in what terms to do it; and in reprov­ing show no signs of cholor but do it with all sweet­ness and mild­ness.
  46. Take all admo­ni­tions thank­ful­ly in what time or place soev­er giv­en, but after­wards not being cul­pa­ble take a time and place con­ve­nient to let him know it that gave them.
  47. Mock not nor jest at any thing of impor­tance. Break no jests that are sharp, bit­ing, and if you deliv­er any thing wit­ty and pleas­ant, abstain from laugh­ing there­at your­self.
  48. Where­in you reprove anoth­er be unblame­able your­self, for exam­ple is more preva­lent than pre­cepts.
  49. Use no reproach­ful lan­guage against any one; nei­ther curse nor revile.
  50. Be not hasty to believe fly­ing reports to the dis­par­age­ment of any.
  51. Wear not your clothes foul, or ripped, or dusty, but see they be brushed once every day at least and take heed that you approach not to any uncleaness.
  52. In your appar­el be mod­est and endeav­or to accom­mo­date nature, rather than to pro­cure admi­ra­tion; keep to the fash­ion of your equals, such as are civ­il and order­ly with respect to time and places.
  53. Run not in the streets, nei­ther go too slow­ly, nor with mouth open; go not shak­ing of arms, nor upon the toes, kick not the earth with your feet, go not upon the toes, nor in a danc­ing fash­ion.
  54. Play not the pea­cock, look­ing every where about you, to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stock­ings sit neat­ly and clothes hand­some­ly.
  55. Eat not in the streets, nor in the house, out of sea­son.
  56. Asso­ciate your­self with men of good qual­i­ty if you esteem your own rep­u­ta­tion; for ’tis bet­ter to be alone than in bad com­pa­ny.
  57. In walk­ing up and down in a house, only with one in com­pa­ny if he be greater than your­self, at the first give him the right hand and stop not till he does and be not the first that turns, and when you do turn let it be with your face towards him; if he be a man of great qual­i­ty walk not with him cheek by jowl but some­what behind him, but yet in such a man­ner that he may eas­i­ly speak to you.
  58. Let your con­ver­sa­tion be with­out mal­ice or envy, for ’tis a sign of a tractable and com­mend­able nature, and in all caus­es of pas­sion per­mit rea­son to gov­ern.
  59. Nev­er express any­thing unbe­com­ing, nor act against the rules moral before your infe­ri­ors.
  60. Be not immod­est in urg­ing your friends to dis­cov­er a secret.
  61. Utter not base and friv­o­lous things among grave and learned men, nor very dif­fi­cult ques­tions or sub­jects among the igno­rant, or things hard to be believed; stuff not your dis­course with sen­tences among your bet­ters nor equals.
  62. Speak not of dole­ful things in a time of mirth or at the table; speak not of melan­choly things as death and wounds, and if oth­ers men­tion them, change if you can the dis­course. Tell not your dreams, but to your inti­mate friend.
  63. A man ought not to val­ue him­self of his achieve­ments or rare qual­i­ties of wit; much less of his rich­es, virtue or kin­dred.
  64. Break not a jest where none take plea­sure in mirth; laugh not aloud, nor at all with­out occa­sion; deride no man’s mis­for­tune though there seem to be some cause.
  65. Speak not inju­ri­ous words nei­ther in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occa­sion.
  66. Be not froward but friend­ly and cour­te­ous, the first to salute, hear and answer; and be not pen­sive when it’s a time to con­verse.
  67. Detract not from oth­ers, nei­ther be exces­sive in com­mand­ing.
  68. Go not thith­er, where you know not whether you shall be wel­come or not; give not advice with­out being asked, and when desired do it briefly.
  69. If two con­tend togeth­er take not the part of either uncon­strained, and be not obsti­nate in your own opin­ion. In things indif­fer­ent be of the major side.
  70. Rep­re­hend not the imper­fec­tions of oth­ers, for that belongs to par­ents, mas­ters and supe­ri­ors.
  71. Gaze not on the marks or blem­ish­es of oth­ers and ask not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your friend, deliv­er not before oth­ers.
  72. Speak not in an unknown tongue in com­pa­ny but in your own lan­guage and that as those of qual­i­ty do and not as the vul­gar. Sub­lime mat­ters treat seri­ous­ly.
  73. Think before you speak, pro­nounce not imper­fect­ly, nor bring out your words too hasti­ly, but order­ly and dis­tinct­ly.
  74. When anoth­er speaks, be atten­tive your­self and dis­turb not the audi­ence. If any hes­i­tate in his words, help him not nor prompt him with­out desired. Inter­rupt him not, nor answer him till his speech be end­ed.
  75. In the midst of dis­course ask not of what one treats, but if you per­ceive any stop because of your com­ing, you may well entreat him gen­tly to pro­ceed. If a per­son of qual­i­ty comes in while you’re con­vers­ing, it’s hand­some to repeat what was said before.
  76. While you are talk­ing, point not with your fin­ger at him of whom you dis­course, nor approach too near him to whom you talk, espe­cial­ly to his face.
  77. Treat with men at fit times about busi­ness and whis­per not in the com­pa­ny of oth­ers.
  78. Make no com­par­isons and if any of the com­pa­ny be com­mend­ed for any brave act of virtue, com­mend not anoth­er for the same.
  79. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth there­of. In dis­cours­ing of things you have heard, name not your author. Always a secret dis­cov­er not.
  80. Be not tedious in dis­course or in read­ing unless you find the com­pa­ny pleased there­with.
  81. Be not curi­ous to know the affairs of oth­ers, nei­ther approach those that speak in pri­vate.
  82. Under­take not what you can­not per­form but be care­ful to keep your promise.
  83. When you deliv­er a mat­ter do it with­out pas­sion and with dis­cre­tion, how­ev­er mean the per­son be you do it to.
  84. When your supe­ri­ors talk to any­body hear­ken not, nei­ther speak nor laugh.
  85. In com­pa­ny of those of high­er qual­i­ty than your­self, speak not ’til you are asked a ques­tion, then stand upright, put off your hat and answer in few words.
  86. In dis­putes, be not so desirous to over­come as not to give lib­er­ty to each one to deliv­er his opin­ion and sub­mit to the judg­ment of the major part, espe­cial­ly if they are judges of the dis­pute.
  87. Let your car­riage be such as becomes a man grave, set­tled and atten­tive to that which is spo­ken. Con­tra­dict not at every turn what oth­ers say.
  88. Be not tedious in dis­course, make not many digres­sions, nor repeat often the same man­ner of dis­course.
  89. Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.
  90. Being set at meat scratch not, nei­ther spit, cough or blow your nose except there’s a neces­si­ty for it.
  91. Make no show of tak­ing great delight in your vict­uals. Feed not with greed­i­ness. Eat your bread with a knife. Lean not on the table, nei­ther find fault with what you eat.
  92. Take no salt or cut bread with your knife greasy.
  93. Enter­tain­ing any­one at table it is decent to present him with meat. Under­take not to help oth­ers unde­sired by the mas­ter.
  94. If you soak bread in the sauce, let it be no more than what you put in your mouth at a time, and blow not your broth at table but stay ’til it cools of itself.
  95. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand; nei­ther spit forth the stones of any fruit pie upon a dish nor cast any­thing under the table.
  96. It’s unbe­com­ing to heap much to one’s mea. Keep your fin­gers clean and when foul wipe them on a cor­ner of your table nap­kin.
  97. Put not anoth­er bite into your mouth ’til the for­mer be swal­lowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.
  98. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full; nei­ther gaze about you while you are drink­ing.
  99. Drink not too leisure­ly nor yet too hasti­ly. Before and after drink­ing wipe your lips. Breathe not then or ever with too great a noise, for it is unciv­il.
  100. Cleanse not your teeth with the table­cloth, nap­kin, fork or knife, but if oth­ers do it, let it be done with a pick tooth.
  101. Rinse not your mouth in the pres­ence of oth­ers.
  102. It is out of use to call upon the com­pa­ny often to eat. Nor need you drink to oth­ers every time you drink.
  103. In com­pa­ny of your bet­ters be not longer in eat­ing than they are. Lay not your arm but only your hand upon the table.
  104. It belongs to the chiefest in com­pa­ny to unfold his nap­kin and fall to meat first. But he ought then to begin in time and to dis­patch with dex­ter­i­ty that the slow­est may have time allowed him.
  105. Be not angry at table what­ev­er hap­pens and if you have rea­son to be so, show it not but on a cheer­ful coun­te­nance espe­cial­ly if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast.
  106. Set not your­self at the upper of the table but if it be your due, or that the mas­ter of the house will have it so. Con­tend not, lest you should trou­ble the com­pa­ny.
  107. If oth­ers talk at table be atten­tive, but talk not with meat in your mouth.
  108. When you speak of God or His attrib­ut­es, let it be seri­ous­ly and with rev­er­ence. Hon­or and obey your nat­ur­al par­ents although they be poor.
  109. Let your recre­ations be man­ful not sin­ful.
  110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that lit­tle spark of celes­tial fire called con­science.

via Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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