Historic Manuscript Filled with Beautiful Illustrations of Cuban Flowers & Plants Is Now Online (1826 )

The inter­net has become an essen­tial back up sys­tem for thou­sands of pieces of his­tor­i­cal art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture, and also for a spe­cial­ized kind of text incor­po­rat­ing them all in degrees: the illus­trat­ed nat­ur­al sci­ence book, from the gold­en ages of book illus­tra­tion and philo­soph­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism in Europe and the Amer­i­c­as. We’ve seen some fine dig­i­tal repro­duc­tions of the illus­trat­ed Nomen­cla­ture of Col­ors by Abra­ham Got­t­lob Wern­er, for example—a book that accom­pa­nied Dar­win on his Bea­gle voy­age.

The same source has also brought us a won­der­ful­ly illus­trat­ed, influ­en­tial 1847 edi­tion of Euclid’s Ele­ments, with a sem­a­phore-like design that col­or-codes and delin­eates each axiom. And we’ve seen Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s 1903 Col­or Prob­lems: a Prac­ti­cal Man­u­al for the Lay Stu­dent of Col­or come online (and back in print), a study whose ideas would lat­er show up in the work of mod­ern min­i­mal­ists like Josef Albers.

Above and below, you can see just a frac­tion of the illus­tra­tions from anoth­er exam­ple of a remark­able illus­trat­ed sci­en­tif­ic book, also by a woman on the edge of being for­got­ten: Nan­cy Anne Kings­bury Woll­stonecraft’s 1826 Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba.

This study of Cuban plant life might nev­er have seen the light of day were it not for the new online edi­tion from the HathiTrust dig­i­tal library, “by way of Cor­nell University’s Library Divi­sion of Rare and Man­u­script Col­lec­tions,” notes Atlas Obscu­ra. The book is notable for more than its obscu­ri­ty, how­ev­er. It is, says schol­ar of Cuban his­to­ry and cul­ture Emilio Cue­to, “the most impor­tant cor­pus of plant illus­tra­tions in Cuba’s colo­nial his­to­ry.” Its author first began work when she moved to the island after her hus­band, Charles Woll­stonecraft (broth­er of Mary and uncle of Mary Shel­ley) died in 1817.

She began doc­u­ment­ing the plant life in the region of Matan­zas through the 1820s. That research became Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba, a metic­u­lous study, full of Wollstonecraft’s vibrant, strik­ing water­col­ors. After mak­ing sev­er­al attempts at pub­li­ca­tion, she died in 1828, and the man­u­script nev­er appeared in pub­lic. Now, almost two cen­turies lat­er, all three vol­umes are avail­able to read online and down­load in PDF. They had been dor­mant at the Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Library, and few peo­ple knew very much about them. Cue­to, the schol­ar most famil­iar with the man­u­scrip­t’s place in his­to­ry, had him­self searched for it for 20 years before find­ing it hid­den away at Cor­nell in 2018.

Now it is freely avail­able to any­one and every­one online, part of an expand­ing, shared online archive of fas­ci­nat­ing works by non-pro­fes­sion­al sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians whose work was painstak­ing­ly inter­pret­ed by artists for the ben­e­fit of a lay read­er­ship. In the case of Woll­stonecraft, as with Goethe and many oth­er con­tem­po­rary schol­ar-artists, we have the two in one. View and down­load her 220-page work, with its 121 illus­trat­ed plates at the HathiTrust Dig­i­tal Library.

via Cor­nell/Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

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

George Orwell’s Essay “British Cookery” is Officially Published 70 Years After It Was Rejected by the British Council (1946)

Image by BBC, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Voltaire once joked that Britain had “a hun­dred reli­gions and only one sauce.” In my expe­ri­ence, that sauce is a cur­ry, which was already a British sta­ple in Voltaire’s time. No doubt he had some­thing much bland­er in mind. Of course, it’s all hyper­bol­ic fun until some­one takes offense, as did George Orwell in 1946, when he wrote, against Voltaire­an stereo­types, about the mis­un­der­stood plea­sures of British food. His essay, “British Cook­ery,” was com­mis­sioned by the British Coun­cil, but they sub­se­quent­ly deemed that it would be “’unwise to pub­lish,’” reports the Dai­ly Mail, “so soon after the hun­gry win­ter of 1946 and wartime rationing.”

Not that it mat­ters much now, but the Coun­cil has for­mal­ly apol­o­gized to the deceased Orwell, over 70 years lat­er. Senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst Alas­dair Don­ald­son explains they are “delight­ed to make amends” by pub­lish­ing the essay in full, along­side “the unfor­tu­nate rejec­tion let­ter.” You can read it here at the British Coun­cil site. Orwell grants that the British diet is “sim­ple, rather heavy, per­haps slight­ly bar­barous… with its main empha­sis on sug­ar and ani­mal fats…. Cheap restau­rants in Britain are almost invari­ably bad, while in expen­sive restau­rants the cook­ery is almost always French, or imi­ta­tion French.”

Else­where, he con­cedes, “the British are not great eaters of sal­ads.” Indeed, he says, “the two great short­com­ings of British cook­ery are a fail­ure to treat veg­eta­bles with due seri­ous­ness, and an exces­sive use of sug­ar.” He does go on at length, in fact, about what sounds like a nation­al epi­dem­ic of sug­ar addic­tion. Such laps­es of taste are also what we would now label a nutri­tion­al emer­gency. He may seem to grant too much to crit­ics of British cook­ing. But this is main­ly by con­trast with spici­er, more veg­etable-friend­ly cuisines of the con­ti­nent and colonies. The kind of cook­ing he describes makes cre­ative­ly var­ied uses of stur­dy but lim­it­ed local resources (except for the sug­ar).

Orwell’s bru­tal hon­esty about British food’s defi­cien­cies makes him sound like a trust­wor­thy guide to its true delights. One of the truths he tells is that “British cook­ery dis­plays more vari­ety and more orig­i­nal­i­ty than for­eign vis­i­tors are usu­al­ly ready to allow.” The aver­age vis­i­tor encoun­ters British food prin­ci­pal­ly in restau­rants, pubs, and hotels, which, “whether cheap or expen­sive” are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “the diet of the great mass of the peo­ple.” This may be said of many region­al cuisines. But Orwell is devot­ed to a native British cook­ing which had, at the time, almost dis­ap­peared after six years of war rationing.

This cook­ing is rich in roast and cold meats, cheeses, breads, York­shire and suet pud­dings, pota­toes and turnips. The British diet is, or was, Orwell writes, eat­en by the low­er and upper class­es alike, under dif­fer­ent names and prices. Sea­son­ings are few. “Gar­lic, for instance, is unknown in British cook­ery prop­er.” What stands out is mint, vine­gar, but­ter, dried fruits, jam, and mar­malade.

Orwell him­self includ­ed a mar­malade recipe. (A hand­writ­ten note reads “Bad recipe! Too much sug­ar and water.”), which you can see below. Decide for your­self how much sug­ar to add.

ORANGE MARMALADE 

Ingre­di­ents:

2 seville oranges

2 sweet oranges (no)

2 lemons (no)

8lbs of pre­serv­ing sug­ar

8 pints of water

Method. Wash and dry the fruit. Halve them and squeeze out the juice. Remove some of the pith, then shred the fruit fine­ly. Tie the pips in a muslin bag. Put the strained juice, rind and pips into the water and soak for 48 hours. Place in a large pan and sim­mer for 1/2 hours until the rind is ten­der. Leave to stand overnight, then add the sug­ar and let it dis­solve before bring­ing to the boil. Boil rapid­ly until a lit­tle of the mix­ture will set into a jel­ly when placed on a cold plate. Pour into jars which have been heat­ed before­hand, and cov­er with paper cov­ers.

An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple are cut­ting back or quit­ting near­ly every main ingre­di­ent in what Orwell describes as authen­tic British cook­ing: from meat to dairy to gluten to sug­ar to suet…. But if we are going to give it a fair shake, he argues, we must try the real thing. Or his ver­sion of it any­way. He includes sev­er­al more recipes: Welsh rarebit, York­shire pud­ding, trea­cle tart, plum cake, and Christ­mas pud­ding.

Orwell’s “British Cook­ery” wars with itself and comes to terms. He fills each para­graph with frank acknowl­edge­ments of British cuisine’s short­com­ings, yet he rel­ish­es its sim­ple, sol­id virtues. He writes that “British cook­ery” is “best stud­ied in pri­vate hous­es, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly in the homes of the mid­dle-class and work­ing-class mass­es who have not become Euro­peanized in their tastes.” It’s a kind of cul­tur­al nation­al­ism, but per­haps one sug­gest­ing those who want oth­ers to under­stand and appre­ci­ate a spe­cif­ic kind British cul­ture should invite out­siders in to share a meal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

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

Download Free Coloring Books from 113 Museums

One can only col­or so many flo­ral-trimmed affir­ma­tions before one begins to crave some­thing slight­ly more per­verse. An ema­ci­at­ed, naked, anthro­po­mor­phized man­drake root, say or…

Thy wish is our com­mand, but be pre­pared to hus­tle, because today is the final day of Col­or Our Col­lec­tions, a com­pelling­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic ini­tia­tive on the part of the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine.

Since 2016, the Acad­e­my has made an annu­al prac­tice of invit­ing oth­er libraries, archives, and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions around the world to upload PDF col­or­ing pages based on their col­lec­tions for the pub­lic’s free down­load.

This year 113 insti­tu­tions took the bait.

Our host, the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine kicks things off with the afore­men­tioned man­drakes, and then some.

Med­ical sub­jects are a pop­u­lar theme here. You’ll find plen­ty of organs and oth­er rel­e­vant details to col­or, com­pli­ments of Boston’s Count­way Library’s Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cineLondon’s Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, and the His­tor­i­cal Med­ical Library of The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia (aka the Müt­ter Muse­um).

The col­or­ing book of the Richard­son-Sloane Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Cen­ter at the Dav­en­port Pub­lic Library is a bit more all-ages. They cer­tain­ly remind me of my child­hood. The work of native son, Patrick J. Costel­lo, above, fig­ures heav­i­ly here. Either he deserves a lot of cred­it for devel­op­ing the School House Rock aes­thet­ic, or he was one of a num­ber of hard work­ing illus­tra­tors tap­ping into the cartoon‑y, thick-nibbed zeit­geist

The Andover-Har­vard The­o­log­i­cal Library’s col­or­ing book has some divine options for those who would use their col­or­ing pages as DIY 16th-cen­tu­ry book­plates or alpha­bet primers.

Those who need some­thing more com­plex will appre­ci­ate the intri­cate maps of the Lithuan­ian Art Museum’s col­or­ing book. Col­or­ing Franz Hogenberg’s 1581 map of Vil­nius is the emo­tion­al equiv­a­lent of walk­ing the labyrinth for god knows how many hours.

As befits a con­tent web­site-cum-dig­i­tal-Nation­al-Library, the Memo­ria Chile­na Col­or­ing Book 2019 has some­thing for every taste: flayed anatom­i­cal stud­ies, 1940’s fash­ions, curi­ous kit­ty cats, and a heap­ing help­ing of jesters.

Check out all your options here.

Once you’ve had your way with the Cray­olas, please share your cre­ations with the world, using the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing Insti­tu­tions 2019

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library

Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, Lon­don

OHSU His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tions & Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Mil­wau­kee Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Swarth­more Col­lege Libraries

South Car­oli­na State Library

Shenan­doah Coun­ty Library, Truban Archives

Bib­liote­ca de la Uni­ver­si­dad de Zaragoza

Christ’s Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge

Tow­er Hill Botan­ic Gar­den

Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty & Research

Brunel Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Hawaii State Foun­da­tion on Cul­ture and the Arts

Wash­ing­ton State Library

Saint Fran­cis de Sales Parish Unit­ed by the Most Blessed Sacra­ment Parish His­to­ry Archives

Get­ty Research Insti­tute

Auck­land Muse­um

Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Seton Hall Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

Bib­lio­theque interuni­ver­si­taire de Sante, Paris

Dig­i­tal Library at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty

West Vir­ginia and Region­al His­to­ry Cen­ter

Bass Library, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas Libraries

Med­ical Her­itage Library

The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Health Sci­ences Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Amherst Libraries

Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Uni­ver­si­ty Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia Library

Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine

Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute

Rick­er Library of Archi­tec­ture and Art at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois

Chau­tauqua Insti­tu­tion Archives

Bib­lio­theque et Archives nationales du Que­bec

The LuEs­ther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den

Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Archives

Open Muse­um, Acad­e­mia Sini­ca Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Cul­tures

Les Champs Libres

Lithuan­ian Art Muse­um

Memo­ria Chile­na

Bar­ret Library, Rhodes Col­lege

Wales High­er Edu­ca­tion Libraries Forum (WHELF)

Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute

Delaware Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

James Madi­son Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Stevens Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy / Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

War­ing His­tor­i­cal Library of the Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na

Bernard Beck­er Med­ical Library at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis

Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound

Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine Lega­cy Cen­ter Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Queens’ Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge

Stadt­bib­lio­thek Koeln

Andover-Har­vard The­o­log­i­cal Library

Rare Book and Man­u­script CRAI Library at Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona

New­ber­ry Library

His­tor­i­cal Med­ical Library of The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia

Lam­beth Palace Library

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

John J. Burns Library

Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa Libraries, Iowa Dig­i­tal Library

Ten­nessee State Muse­um

Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, Count­way LIbrary

Russ­ian State Library

South Car­oli­na His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety

Library Com­pa­ny of Philadel­phia

The Burke Library at Union The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary

Pratt Insti­tute Archives

The Chil­dren’s Muse­um of Indi­anapo­lis

Wan­gen­steen His­tor­i­cal Library of Biol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Libraries

Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Julian Edi­son Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Libraries and Cul­tur­al Resources, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary

Leonard H. Axe Library, Pitts­burg State Uni­ver­si­ty

Susque­han­na Uni­ver­si­ty, Blough-Weis Library

Richard­son-Sloane Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Cen­ter, Dav­en­port Pub­lic Library

Den­ver Pub­lic Library, West­ern His­to­ry and Geneal­o­gy

Find­lay-Han­cock Coun­ty Pub­lic Library

North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty

Escuela Supe­ri­or de Artes de Yucatan

Lake Coun­ty Pub­lic Library

Unit­ed Nations Library Gene­va

Jele­niorskie Cen­trum Infor­ma­cji i Edukacji Region­al­nej Ksi­azni­ca Karkonos­ka

Women and Lead­er­ship Archives, Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go

Grand Portage Nation­al Mon­u­ment Archives Col­lec­tion

Jagiel­lon­ian Library

Botan­i­cal Research Insti­tute of Texas

Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas Libraries

Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Rare Book and Man­u­script Library at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign

Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Clark Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, McDer­mott Library, USAFA

Bib­lio­theque nationale de France

Cen­tre for Chi­nese Con­tem­po­rary Art Archive & Library

Shangri La Muse­um of Islam­ic Art, Cul­ture & Design

British Library

West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Euro­peana

Den­ver Botan­ic Gar­dens

Med­Chi, The Mary­land State Med­ical Soci­ety

Grin­nell Col­lege Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more Coun­ty (UMBC)

His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety of Penn­syl­va­nia

Nation­al Library of Rus­sia

East­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Nume­lyo

Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

New York State Library

North Car­oli­na Pot­tery Cen­ter

Roy­al Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Soci­ety Libraries

Library of Vir­ginia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Mon­day as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: A Free Online Atlas That Helps Preserve Writing Systems That May Soon Disappear

The Unit­ed Nations, as you may or may not know, has des­ig­nat­ed 2019 the Year of Indige­nous Lan­guages. By for­tu­nate coin­ci­dence, this year also hap­pens to mark the tenth anniver­sary of the Endan­gered Alpha­bets Project. In 2009, its founder writes, “times were dark for indige­nous and minor­i­ty cul­tures.” Tele­vi­sion and the inter­net had dri­ven “a kind of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism into every cor­ner of the world. Every­one had a screen or want­ed a screen, and the Eng­lish lan­guage and the Latin alpha­bet (or one of the half-dozen oth­er major writ­ing sys­tems) were on every screen and every key­board” — putting at a great dis­ad­van­tage those who could only read and write, say, Man­dombe, Wan­cho, or Han­i­fi Rohingya.

2019, by con­trast, turns out to be “a remark­able time in the his­to­ry of writ­ing sys­tems” when, “in spite of creep­ing glob­al­iza­tion, polit­i­cal oppres­sion, and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ties, minor­i­ty cul­tures are start­ing to revive inter­est in their tra­di­tion­al scripts.”

A vari­ety of these scripts have found new lives as the mate­r­i­al for works of art and design, and they’ve also received new waves of preser­va­tion-mind­ed atten­tion from activist groups and gov­ern­ments alike. But that does­n’t guar­an­tee their sur­vival through the 21st cen­tu­ry, an unfor­tu­nate fact toward which the Endan­gered Alpha­bets Pro­jec­t’s Atlas of Endan­gered Alpha­bets exists to draw atten­tion.

Not all the scripts includ­ed in the Atlas are alpha­bets — “some are abjads, or abugi­das, or syl­labaries. A cou­ple are even pic­to­graph­ic sys­tems” — but all lack “offi­cial sta­tus in their coun­try, state, or province” and “are not taught in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed schools.” All once enjoyed “wide­spread accep­tance and use with­in their cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic com­mu­ni­ty,” but none do any longer, and though none are actu­al­ly extinct, all suf­fer from endan­ger­ment as a con­se­quence of their declin­ing or emerg­ing sta­tus (as well as, often, of “being dom­i­nat­ed, bul­lied, ignored, or active­ly per­se­cut­ed by anoth­er, more pow­er­ful cul­ture”). You can explore the endan­gered lan­guages by scrolling, zoom­ing, and click­ing the world map on the atlas’ front page.

Or you can browse them all, from Adlam to Zo, on an alpha­bet­i­cal­ly ordered list — ordered, of course, by the Roman alpha­bet, but full of exam­ples of writ­ing sys­tems that dif­fer in many and often sur­pris­ing ways from it. Take, for exam­ple, the African Ditema tsa Dinoko script, which allows the writer to express with not just shape but col­or. Devel­oped between 2010 and 2015 to write south­ern Ban­tu lan­guages, it takes its forms from south­ern African murals of the kind paint­ed by Esther Mahlangu, whose BMW art car appears in the Atlas of Endan­gered Alpha­bets’ gallery. BMW might con­sid­er com­mis­sion­ing anoth­er one embla­zoned with offi­cial Ditema tsa Dinoko let­ters. With pro­mo­tion that snazzy, what writ­ing sys­tem could pos­si­bly go extinct?

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet: A Col­or­ful Flow­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

Hear What the Lan­guage Spo­ken by Our Ances­tors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sound­ed Like: A Recon­struc­tion of the Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

In the 1920s America, Jazz Music Was Considered Harmful to Human Health, the Cause of “Neurasthenia,” “Perpetually Jerking Jaws” & More

These are some inter­est­ing sto­ries about the Nazis and jazz, includ­ing one about a very bad jazz pro­pa­gan­da band cre­at­ed by Goebbels him­self. But we need not men­tion these at all, or even leave the shores of jazz’s birth­place to find exam­ples of extreme reac­tions to jazz by author­i­tar­i­an fig­ures who hat­ed and feared it for exact­ly the same rea­sons as the Nazis. Chief among such Amer­i­can ene­mies of jazz was rag­ing anti-Semi­te Hen­ry Ford, who feared that jazz was, you guessed it, a Jew­ish plot to infect the coun­try with racial­ly infe­ri­or “musi­cal slush.”

Ford used white coun­try music and square danc­ing in pub­lic schools as weapons of war­fare against jazz in the 1920s, there­by dis­plac­ing black­face min­strel­sy as the dom­i­nant form of para­noid response to black music in mid­dle Amer­i­ca. Anoth­er cru­sad­er, Har­ry Anslinger, com­mis­sion­er of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics between 1930 and 1962, more or less invent­ed the war on drugs with his reefer mad­ness war on jazz. He said it sound­ed like “the jun­gles in the dead of night” and could “lure white women.” Anslinger relent­less­ly per­se­cut­ed Bil­lie Hol­i­day and went after Thelo­nious Monk, Dizzy Gille­spie, Duke Elling­ton, and Louis Arm­strong.

It was with­in this ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry milieu that oth­er insti­tu­tion­al powers—some of the country’s most powerful—declared a war on jazz for sup­posed rea­sons of pub­lic health. (A move­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, giv­en to an enthu­si­asm for eugen­ics and forced ster­il­iza­tion at the time.) His­to­ri­an Rus­sell L. John­son has doc­u­ment­ed this cam­paign in the jour­nal Health and His­to­ry, and Jessie Wright-Men­doza describes many of his find­ings at JStor Dai­ly.

Milwaukee’s pub­lic health com­mis­sion­er claimed that the music dam­aged the ner­vous sys­tem, and a Ladies’ Home Jour­nal arti­cle report­ed that it caused brain cells to atro­phy. In Cincin­nati, a mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal suc­cess­ful­ly peti­tioned to have a near­by jazz club shut down, argu­ing that expos­ing new­borns to the offend­ing music would have the effect of “imper­il­ing the hap­pi­ness of future gen­er­a­tions.”

Jazz was “unrhyth­mi­cal,” oppo­nents argued, and so was dis­ease. Q.E.D. In 1923, the Illi­nois Supreme Court upheld a rul­ing that shut down a jazz club, cit­ing in their opin­ion a belief the music “wears upon the ner­vous sys­tem and pro­duces that feel­ing which we call ‘tired.’” Doc­tors warned that too much jazz could cause neuras­the­nia, a catch-all for anx­i­ety, depres­sion, headaches, fatigue, etc. But jazz could also cause patients to become “ner­vous and fid­gety” with “per­pet­u­al­ly jerk­ing jaws.” What­ev­er it did, jazz was haz­ardous.

Odd­ly, just as in the Nazi’s fer­vent attempts to con­trol jazz, as Czech writer Josef Skvorecky once described it, and as in Joseph Goebbels attempts to co-opt the music for white suprema­cy, the archi­tects of Amer­i­ca’s jazz pan­ic found the rem­e­dy for jazz in jazz. But seg­re­gat­ed jazz. They turned “hot jazz” into “sweet jazz,” a style “inter­pret­ed by main­ly white musi­cians to appeal to a wider com­mer­cial audi­ence.”

It hard­ly needs to be said that any­one real­ly afflict­ed with a pas­sion for jazz ignored this pre­scrip­tion, as did every jazz musi­cian worth lis­ten­ing to. Read more about Johnson’s his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can fear of jazz at JStor Dai­ly.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

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

The East German Secret Police’s Illustrated Guide for Identifying Youth Subcultures: Punks, Goths, Teds & More (1985)

Ask Ger­mans who lived under the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic what they feared most in those days, and they’ll like­ly say the agents of the Min­istry for State Secu­ri­ty, best known as the Stasi. Ask those same Ger­mans what they laughed at most in those days, and they may well give the same answer. As one of the most thor­ough­ly repres­sive secret police forces in human his­to­ry, the Stasi kept a close eye and a tight grip on East Ger­man soci­ety: as one oft-told joke goes, “Why do Stasi offi­cers make such good taxi dri­vers? You get in the car and they already know your name and where you live.” But this fear­some vig­i­lance went hand-in-hand with tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion as well as plain inep­ti­tude:  “How can you tell that the Stasi has bugged your apart­ment?” anoth­er joke asks. “There’s a new cab­i­net in it and a trail­er with a gen­er­a­tor in the street.”

When the Stasi turned this kind of crude but intense scruti­ny to cer­tain aspects of life, the results almost sat­i­rized them­selves. Take, for instance, this cir­ca-1985 inter­nal guide used to iden­ti­fy the “types of neg­a­tive deca­dent youth cul­tures in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic,” post­ed on Twit­ter by musi­cian and writer S. Alexan­der Reed and lat­er trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by a few of his fol­low­ers.

The chart breaks down the sup­pos­ed­ly deca­dent youth cul­tures of mid-1980s East Ger­many into eight groups, describ­ing their inter­ests, appear­ance, polit­i­cal incli­na­tions, and activ­i­ties in the columns below. The rock-and-roll-ori­ent­ed “Teds,” dressed in a “50s style,” don’t seem to rouse them­selves for any­thing besides “birth and death days of idol­ized rock stars.” The “Tramps,” a “clas­sic man­i­fes­ta­tion of the neg­a­tive-deca­dent youth in the 70s,” adhere to the trends of a some­what more recent era.

The fans of “extreme­ly hard rock” known as “Heav­ies” once held a “dep­reca­tive atti­tude towards state and soci­ety,” but seemed at the time to become “increas­ing­ly soci­ety-con­form­ing.” Oth­er youth cul­tures con­sid­ered deca­dent by the Stasi bore labels that might still sound famil­iar across the world. The “Goths,” a “satan­ic and death cult,” are not­ed for their “glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of creepy effects” and for being “fans of the group The Cure.” Though they may have been “hard­ly noticed oper­a­tional­ly,” the “punks” pre­sent­ed a more clear and present threat, what with their “dep­reca­tive to hos­tile polit­i­cal atti­tude, rejec­tion of all state forms and soci­etal norms,” “anar­chist thoughts,” and belief in “total free­dom.”

You can see the chart in a larg­er size here, and if you’d like to exam­ine the real thing, you have only to vis­it Leipzig’s Muse­um in der Run­den Ecke (or view it online here). The doc­u­ment resides in its col­lec­tion of the tools of the Stasi trade, includ­ing, in the words of Atlas Obscu­ra, “old sur­veil­lance cam­eras, col­lec­tions of con­fis­cat­ed per­son­al let­ters, and crisp uni­forms let­ting vis­i­tors get a glimpse into the world of bru­tal state espi­onage.” Ger­mans who remem­ber all the pow­er the Stasi could poten­tial­ly wield over their lives — a pow­er, for all they knew, about to descend on them any moment — must still feel a chill upon see­ing one of those crisp uni­forms. Now we know that their wear­ers might, upon lay­ing eyes on Birken­stocks (“lit­er­al­ly: ‘Jesus slip­pers‘”), red and black worn togeth­er (“con­trasts as a sym­bol of anar­chy”), or a mohawk (or “Iriquois”) hair­cut, have felt appre­hen­sive them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Nazis’ Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

The Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Nothing Sacred?

In the great gar­den of fork­ing paths and alter­na­tive time­lines there are two oth­er ver­sions of The Great Rock n’ Roll Swin­dle that Julian Tem­ple nev­er direct­ed. One would have been direct­ed by Gra­ham Chap­man of Mon­ty Python fame, but “he behaved glo­ri­ous­ly bad­ly to Mal­colm (McLaren)” accord­ing to John Lydon many years lat­er. The oth­er was to be writ­ten by film crit­ic Roger Ebert and direct­ed by bux­om beau­ty lover Russ Mey­er (who Lydon called “shab­by” and “a senile old git.”) But you do have to won­der what the hell either of those films might have been like.

Would either of them con­tained the above clas­sic scene–probably the only scene worth the price of admission–where Sid Vicious both mur­ders the clas­sic “My Way” and sev­er­al rich peo­ple in the front row.

Killing sacred cows has long been a part of the West’s sense of humor, long before punk. Spike Jones and his City Slick­ers reg­u­lar­ly destroyed clas­sic warhors­es like The Blue Danube and The Nut­crack­er. The Bon­zo Dog Band in the UK took on “The Sound of Music” and left no sur­vivors. And the Res­i­dents lov­ing­ly destroyed pop music of the ‘60s on Third Reich ‘n’ Roll and their cov­er of the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.” When it comes to pop cul­ture, noth­ing is sacred. Not even Frank Sina­tra.

By the time Tem­ple joined the McLaren’s film project, Lydon was not speak­ing to his man­ag­er. And when they got close to shoot­ing the “My Way” sequence in Paris, Sid Vicious didn’t want to take part. Julien Tem­ple remem­bered:

I would go to the stu­dio every night and come back to report to Mal­colm that the guy did­n’t want to do the song. Sid would spend all the time in the stu­dio try­ing to learn the bass. We would have to come back and tell Mal­colm we had wast­ed anoth­er night’s mon­ey. Mal­colm grew tired of it. He picked up the phone and start­ed scream­ing at Sid about what a use­less junkie he was and so on. Mean­while, Sid had giv­en the phone over to Nan­cy and while that was going on, sud­den­ly the door of Mal­colm’s hotel room flew off its hinges. Sid crashed into the room wear­ing his swasti­ka under­pants and motor­bike boots. He dragged Mal­colm out of bed and start­ed hit­ting him. Then Sid chased a naked Mal­colm down the cor­ri­dor intent on beat­ing the shit out of him.

Now, that might have been a more inter­est­ing scene than the the­ater mas­sacre, but who knows? McLaren want­ed every­thing in the film to be big­ger than life and to his cred­it, this pum­mel­ing of a cover–which had a sec­ond life as the end­ing song to Mar­tin Scorsese’s Good­Fel­las–is still a prop­er two-fin­ger salute. But in a twist, it would be Sid Vicious and the flame of British punk that would be quick­ly snuffed out upon its release. Vicious died Feb­ru­ary 2, 1979.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sex Pis­tols Play a Gig on a Thames Riv­er Barge Dur­ing the Queen’s Sil­ver Jubilee, and Get Shut Down by the Cops (1977)

When the Sex Pis­tols Played at the Chelms­ford Top Secu­ri­ty Prison: Hear Vin­tage Tracks from the 1976 Gig

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Christ­mas Par­ty for Children–Which Hap­pened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

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.

A Short History of How Punk Became Punk: From Late 50s Rockabilly and Garage Rock to The Ramones & Sex Pistols

Seems there was a time when the dom­i­nant sto­ry of punk was the sto­ry of British punk. If you knew noth­ing else, you knew the name Sid Vicious, and that seemed to sum it up. Maybe it was only in the mid-nineties, around the time Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain released Please Kill Me: the Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk that more peo­ple began to pop­u­lar­ly under­stand the lin­eage of late six­ties garage rock, the Vel­vet Under­ground, Detroit’s Iggy and the Stooges, and the ear­ly CBGB scene in the mid-sev­en­ties crowned by the sound of The Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Blondie, and Talk­ing Heads.

Now even that sto­ry can seem over­sim­pli­fied, sketched out in brief on the way to dis­cussing the lit­er­ary tri­umph of Pat­ti Smith, cul­tur­al inter­ven­tions of David Byrne, career high­lights of punk pow­er cou­ple Deb­bie Har­ry and Chris Stein, or the many, always fas­ci­nat­ing doings of Iggy Pop.

The Ramones roared back into fash­ion twen­ty years ago, and the demise of CBGB in 2007 brought on waves of mar­ket­ing nos­tal­gia of almost Dis­ney-like pro­por­tions. Most every­one who pays atten­tion to pop cul­ture now knows that late-sev­en­ties punk wasn’t a move­ment that arrived out of nowhere, bent on destroy­ing the past, but a con­ti­nu­ity and evo­lu­tion of ear­li­er forms.

But the Trash The­o­ry video at the top reach­es back even ear­li­er than garage bands like the Monks and the Sonics—typically cit­ed as some of the ear­li­est com­mon ances­tors of punk and rock and roll. Punk was “rock and roll bored down to its bare bones,” says the nar­ra­tor, and begins with a rock­a­bil­ly artist who called him­self The Phan­tom and tried to out­do Elvis in 1958 with the rau­cous sin­gle “Love Me.” The Phan­tom him­self may not have embraced the label at all, but like Link Wray, he was still some­thing of a pro­to-punk. Wray’s raunchy, grit­ty instru­men­tal “Rum­ble,” also released in 1958, inspired huge num­bers of gui­tarists and aspir­ing musi­cians, includ­ing young Iggy Pop, who cities it as a pri­ma­ry rea­son he joined a band.


From there, we’re on to “ele­men­tal” tracks like The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird,” The Sonic’s “Psy­cho,” The Monk’s “I Hate You,” and Love’s “7 and 7,” all clear prog­en­i­tors of the sound. And the Mys­te­ri­ans, of garage clas­sic “96 Tears,” were the first band to be described as punk by the main­stream press. The Kinks and The Who set tem­plates in Britain while the Vel­vets per­fect­ed sleazy, exper­i­men­tal noise back in New York. The MC5 in Detroit helped bring us The Stooges. The Mod­ern Lovers’ 1972 “Road­run­ner” launched hun­dreds of bands.

The video is a con­vinc­ing short his­to­ry show­ing how punk arose nat­u­ral­ly from trends in the late 50s and 60s that clear­ly point­ed the way. Like every such his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly one under­tak­en in the span of fif­teen min­utes, it leaves out some pret­ty heavy­weight fig­ures who should have a cen­tral place in the nar­ra­tive. Irri­tat­ed YouTube com­menters have point­ed out laps­es like The New York Dolls (see them fur­ther up in 1973), with­out whom there would have been no Sex Pis­tols. (Pro­to-punk Detroit band Death does get a men­tion, though their influ­ence is neg­li­gi­ble since they went most­ly unheard until 2009.)

Also need­ing inclu­sion as ear­ly punk pio­neers are Tele­vi­sion (check them out in ’78) and Richard Hell and the Voidoids (above in 1980’s Blank Gen­er­a­tion). And these are just a few miss­ing New York bands. Any devo­tee of this musi­cal his­to­ry will come up with a dozen or so more from both sides of the Atlantic who deserve men­tion in the ear­ly his­to­ry of punk. And that’s why, I guess, that pop­u­lar his­to­ry keeps get­ting told and retold. As soon as it starts to get stale, it seems, there’s always more to add.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Punk­ing Out, a Short 1978 Doc­u­men­tary Records the Begin­ning of the Punk Scene at CBGB’s

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

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