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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:39:39 +0000on the temple doorstepmy life as an Eastern Orthodox wannabenoreply@blogger.com (abuian)Blogger233125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-5299372272088689612Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:55:00 +00002012-05-28T04:29:01.286-04:00an invitationI'm back blogging (for now). If anyone notices this and has enough interest, you can find me over at <a href="; target="_blank">ΠΡΩΪ</a>.2008/12/invitation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-1438140843561505731Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:56:00 +00002008-06-25T08:00:55.772-04:00crossing . . .. . . the Jordan? the Bosporus? or just plain crossing? (We do a lot of that.) Anyway, here are some pics of the main event. Did I mention the two things I was most looking forward to? Spitting at the Devil (no pic, unfortunately) and going barefoot in church. OK, maybe there were other things I was looking forward to more, but they're both very cool elements of the service. My understanding is that, like Muslims, Christians used to take off their shoes for worship, harking back to Moses at the burning bush. We have some Ethiopians who still do it regularly, but now that the norm has shifted, for most of us this is the one opportunity. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774870477369602" border="0" /></a>The service starts in the back of the nave (technically, in the narthex, but ours is too small and not positioned right). The point is that you start out on the doorstep, and as the service progresses, you enter into the rest of the body. Godfather Jim is to my right, without his cigar but still looking very much the part. Jenna looks pretty happy, doesn't she? Poor kid has no idea what's coming. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774872931357186" border="0" /></a>After the questioning and the exorcism (yeah, that's right), we proceed to the middle of the nave where the font awaits. Since I'd already been baptized as a heretic, I was received by chrismation and confession only. Along with Ian and Jenna, there was one other baby baptized on this particular occasion. They have a nice, silver font for babies, but Ian's a little beyond that, so they broke out the cattle trough. Godmother Laura's ready to help out. Jenna still has no clue. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774872037867810" border="0" /></a>There's a lot of oil spilled in this service. We haven't even got to the chrismations yet, but before the baptisms, both the water and the catechumens are anointed, so that the whole process may be for their healing both physical and spiritual. Remember, this part is about restoring the fallen human back to the life we had in the Garden. Chrismation will carry us beyond to what God always intended for mankind--infusion with the gift of the Holy Spirit. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774876328399010" border="0" /></a>Ian got a little ahead of the game. They were still trying to get him to kneel, and he was already putting his head in the water. Fr. Gregory made sure the rest of him got wet, as he said the appropriate words. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774671312004898" border="0" /></a>Now, I think she's beginning to figure it out. Maybe watching Big Brother go through it first helped to drive home the point. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774674503322882" border="0" /></a>Yep--we immerse babies too. Three times, no less. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774672555613538" border="0" /></a>As the only adult entering in this service, I wrapped up my confession (given earlier to Fr. Gregory) by receiving absolution. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774677480498466" border="0" /></a>Jenna seems to have recovered OK by this point. She's always loved playing with the cross around my neck--now she gets one of her own. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774679467325746" border="0" /></a>As, of course, does Ian. His is very cool and manly looking, with Longinus's lance and a skull at the bottom. (This is Traditional iconography; the Aramaic name for the hill on which Jesus was crucified is Golgoltha--"the skull.") Good call by the Godparents! <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774339748995234" border="0" /></a>Part of the chrismation involves tonsuring. In the ancient Near East, slaves wore a distinctive haircut to show that they belonged to their master. In the Torah, the Israelites were instructed to shave their heads when they fulfilled a vow to the Lord. Most Westerners are probably familiar with the monk's tonsure--this is essentially the same idea, though it's made somewhat symbolic by cutting off so little hair that it can hardly be noticed. Still, the point is that even our physical appearance should reflect that we belong to Christ. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774337934475186" border="0" /></a>And for the final sacrament of the morning (after baptism, chrismation, and confession), of course we all took communion for the first time. Jenna, of course, is a pro at taking food from a spoon and letting others wipe her face. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774343658462434" border="0" /></a>With a little practice, Ian didn't do so bad either. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215774349627158466" border="0" /></a>So there you have it. I've already given my <a href="2008/06/i-thank-thee-o-lord-my-god.html">reflections</a> on the day's events; now you get a glimpse of what it looked like. <a href="2008/06/that-i-may-dwell-in-house-of-lord.html">Again</a>, feel free to post comments, questions, whatever. I'll respond where necessary, but this is it for new posts. Of course, the doorstep is still there for anyone who wants to come knocking. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5215786767828762882" border="0" /></a>2008/06/crossing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-917734925005435978Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:00:00 +00002008-06-18T09:09:44.868-04:00that I may dwell in the house of the Lord<blockquote>One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may behold the delight of the Lord, and that I may visit His holy temple (Ps 26, LXX).</blockquote>The time has come to leave the doorstep. I <a href="2006/04/better-is-one-day-in-thy-courts.html">started this blog</a> two years ago, before I was a <a href="2006/11/few-steps-with-theotokos.html">catechumen</a>, to write about my life in between. By that point, I knew where I wanted to be. (Remember, I had been investigating Orthodoxy for two years already.) But I still had important lessons to learn in patience, faith, and humility, before I could move any further. I still have a long way to go in those and many other areas; the journey, of course, never ends. But now I enter a new phase, properly within the nave--the ark--of the Church, where the real work begins. For those who aren't familiar, the metaphor of this blog's title is based on Traditional Church architecture. As you enter, you come first to the narthex--the porch, or entrance, or vestibule. Various services are meant to be observed here--parts of memorial and funeral services, I believe, and most notably for our purposes, the beginning of baptism and chrismation, by which someone formally enters the Church. Also, it was traditionally where the non-Orthodox would stand if they were allowed to be present at all in a service. This restriction is still observed in some monasteries, but for the most part Orthodox parish practice accepts that the basic rituals of Christianity are no longer so foreign to outsiders that their presence in the service will cause more harm than good. Catechumens fell somewhere in the middle. They were allowed to enter the nave--the main room--for most services, but before the Eucharistic portion of the Divine Liturgy, they would be dismissed. Inspired by lines from a psalm about choosing to stand on the doorstep of God's Temple, I identified my own situation with that of a beginning inquirer, peering in from the narthex, to catch a blessed glimpse of God's grace at work in his Church. Even after becoming a catechumen, the metaphor still worked, since I was not yet all the way inside. Now that I am inside (again, more beginning than culmination), a good deal changes. I am a convert to Orthodoxy, which I suppose has its distinctive features, but more to the point, I am an Orthodox Christian, plain and simple. As the journey moves forward, the earlier metaphor no longer applies. One solution, I suppose, would be simply to change the name of the blog. Perhaps better, I could end this blog and start another. And it may be that, in time, I will blog again. But for now, I think it makes sense to wrap things up. The personal need I felt to justify my path, to argue my points, to respond to critics, has mostly dried up. What remains I think is best ignored. For me, such things too easily stand in for real life in whatever I'm supposed to be doing here and now. I need to learn silence, before I'll ever have anything truly worthwhile to say. What is here, warts and all, may still be of benefit to someone; for that reason, I don't think I'll take it down anytime soon. I also plan to post something in the way of pictures from the chrismation service, when I get a chance. It will still be possible to post comments, and from time to time I may respond to those who do. Otherwise, I'll be about the business of being human. Lord willing, we'll all find some success at it in whatever life brings us.2008/06/that-i-may-dwell-in-house-of-lord.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-7777899873203166676Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:08:00 +00002008-06-16T09:20:30.388-04:00and I thank my dear wife as wellJulie deserves such heartfelt thanks for her part in all this. Considering that she doesn't even believe in Orthodoxy, her cooperation with allowing me to convert, the kids to get baptized with me, helping to get their outfits, get them ready, dealing with a sleep-deprived baby, humoring Ian by playing church after we got home, coming to services with me in the first place, hosting the in-laws for another visit, coordinating a get-together in honor of the occasion, and the host of other things that I don't remember or notice in the first place, are far above and beyond the call of duty. I literally could not ask for a better partner and friend. Poor sinner that I am, I don't even deserve the one I have. I love you!2008/06/and-i-thank-my-dear-wife-as-well.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-3235173471038049209Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:03:00 +00002008-06-16T09:06:52.131-04:00I thank Thee, O Lord my God . . .<blockquote> . . . that Thou hast not rejected me, a sinner, but hast granted me to be a communicant of Thy holy Things. I thank Thee that Thou hast granted me, unworthy as I am, to partake of Thy pure and heavenly Gifts.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">--Thanksgiving after Holy Communion </div> If there's ever anything to be said for <a href="2008/06/getting-ready.html">preparing</a> in advance, it's this: When it came to the point yesterday, I almost missed what happened. I don't mean that I didn't get there in time or anything. I mean, it's all kind of a blur in my memory. I don't remember feeling so much this way at our wedding, but I think Julie did. The first thing she needed to do when we got home from our honeymoon was look at the pictures and video, because going through the event itself, it was so hard to take in what was actually going on. In this case, I was so preoccupied with making sure the kids got through everything, that I didn't have much time to contemplate the significance of what was happening. If I had come expecting just to focus all my attention on the liturgy, I would have been sorely disappointed. That's where the days and weeks (years, even) of preparation were a true Godsend. Actually, the comparison with a wedding is kind of apropos--and not my idea, either. Julie asked me last night if I felt any different after being chrismated. I didn't particularly, and she said it's probably like when people ask at a wedding if you feel married. After thinking a bit, I did remark that it felt somewhat different being in the service, knowing it was going to end with actual communion, vs. so many times when I've been in a service and known it was off-limits. I guess, to stretch the comparison into possible sacrilege, it's kind of like a wedding when you've preserved your virginity until marriage. As was more or less expected, Jenna didn't exactly cooperate on her sleep schedule. The past few days she's been sleeping until about 6:00. In general, that's better than what she was doing, getting up around 5:00, but this time it might have worked better if she'd got up earlier; she might have been ready to take some kind of a nap before we left. As it was, she was just about ready for a nap but didn't sleep in the car. She was kind of irritable when we arrived, and grumbled until I held her instead of our Godparents. (Does having the same Godparents make us brother and sister?) Even then, she still did her fair share of screeching, grunting, and wriggling. She was also kicking Ian in the head through quite a bit of it, but he seemed to appreciate the distraction, so I didn't intervene too much. The water was a shock to her, but she recovered quickly enough. (At least she was awake--poor Aidan was practically asleep until he hit the water.) After the chrismations were over, and we got her dressed, Julie took her out in the car to nap until it was time for communion. Ian was looking forward to getting baptized and quite the trooper in the event. He cooperated with two anointings, getting breathed and blown on by Fr. Gregory, a public haircut, and of course the baptism itself. They were trying to get him to kneel down after he got in the water, and he just went ahead and stuck his head in. Fr. Gregory went with it, said the right words, splashed some water to get his back wet, and the thing was done. He was hungry after getting dressed downstairs, so since kids aren't absolutely required to fast, we let him have a quarter of a bagel. We knew we were supposed to get back up in the service for the procession at a certain point, and it came while he was still eating. He had to drop everything, and we ran upstairs, joined the procession already in progress (Orthodox conga line?), then went back down afterward so he could finish his snack, and got back up for the homily and the rest of the service. Communion went off without a hitch, though I was so preoccupied with making sure Jenna got through it OK, that I'm pretty sure I forgot to cross my arms after handing her to Laura. Jim shepherded Ian through the process, who was excited that he got to grab bread out of the basket and share some with Grandpa and Grandma. Possibly the most poignant moment--because I didn't have to do anything with either of the kids and could actually take in what was going on--was the prayer for the catechumens, when for the first time in a year and a half, I didn't go up. I just stood there and prayed with all my heart for the catechumens who will soon follow. I'll probably post some pics when they're available.2008/06/i-thank-thee-o-lord-my-god.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-8142243505337416382Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:45:00 +00002008-06-14T21:45:01.006-04:00Behold, I approach the Divine Communion . . .<blockquote>O Creator, let me not be burnt by communicating, For Thou art Fire, consuming the unworthy. But, rather, purify me of all impurity.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">--St. Symeon Metaphrastes</div>2008/06/behold-i-approach-divine-communion.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-2988555055164168723Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:24:00 +00002008-06-13T19:56:27.766-04:00getting readyLess than 40 hours to go! Today I gave my confession--the leave-me-hangin' sacrament. Baptism and chrismation are the entrance into all the other sacraments of the Church (simply because they're the entrance into the Church). But Orthodox do everything at once--baptism, chrismation, first communion. Rather than stop the service so the newly illumined can give their lifetime confession before communion, the hard part is done in advance. All but the absolution, that is. That step waits until after chrismation. Julie asked, who gives you absolution? God, naturally. Then aren't you already absolved? Well, this is the part where our heads start hurting. Of course, God is eternal. He's not waiting around to forgive us when it's convenient scheduling. But he's given us the sacraments by which these things are manifested in time. And as he gave the apostles the keys to the kingdom, the Church is entrusted with binding and loosing sins. For God, forgiveness happens in the eternal present. For us time-bound mortals, it plays out in some kind of sequence. Even then, there's a lot that we can only struggle to grasp. I've heard that there's a reason processions in church tend to go counter-clockwise. It shows how Christ's resurrection reversed the order of fallen nature. Similarly, they say some icons of his baptism depict the Jordan flowing backward. (What's more, in some places at the Theophany blessing of waterways, the miracle is repeated.) We have to be open-minded when it comes to God's working in time. He can answer our prayers before they're asked; sometimes in the New Testament we see people baptized before they receive the Spirit, sometimes after. I passed through the water 20 years ago; this Sunday I will be born into the Church. Ian had one more go at putting his face in the water this evening at the pool. I think he'll do OK on Sunday. We've got the kids' clothes, I have the service book to review, and my parents are coming into town tomorrow. Ian and I have one more service to attend before the big day. Tomorrow is a memorial Saturday, when we pray for those who have reposed before us. We'll attend matins and hopefully the first part of divine liturgy. This last time, after the prayer for the catechumens, it will be appropriate for us to leave. (Holy Cross doesn't recite the ancient dismissal of the catechumens, nor do most parishes actually require that catechumens or anyone else leave the service; but the division is still there between the liturgy of the catechumens and the liturgy of the faithful.) Mostly, we're doing it that way so we can get home and see my parents when they arrive, but it still seems fitting. Fr. Gregory posted an <a href="; today about the weekend's services. In Orthodoxy, we do know how to prepare.2008/06/getting-ready.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-2458712397001286374Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:13:00 +00002008-06-07T16:07:10.233-04:00vacationWe're back from vacation. We didn't plan very far ahead this year. A few weeks ago, we decided to find something through <a href=" Employee Travel Opportunities</a>--a great program, BTW, which we heartily recommend to anyone who's eligible (any kind of government employee, and you can extend the program to your families as well). We wanted to keep it fairly local, so as not to burn too much gas on the way there and back, so returned to Massanutten, about three hours away in VA. (We stayed there two years ago, the first time we tried this program.) It's a nice resort, and we knew the sleeping arrangements would suit our kids' needs. A major drawback is that you have to pay for just about anything you want to do there. Last year, we went to Williamsburg, and the resort we stayed at there had more stuff included in the price--miniature golf, arcades, etc. Of course, those were two of the activities Ian was really looking forward to, so we had to limit his fun. We did the timeshare "tour" (read: sales pitch) again, so we could afford the water park. They have a big indoor/outdoor water park--fun, but pricey. This year Ian was just tall enough to do everything, which meant we had to pay full price for him. The $100 we got for enduring the three-hour tour (not nearly as much fun as Gilligan's Island would lead you to believe) didn't quite cover the admission fee for one day. At least we maximized what we got out of it. We got there when they opened, and aside from a couple of breaks for meals, Julie and Ian were there pretty much the whole day. I stayed in the condo with Jenna for her second nap, which was fine with me. Anyway, it was a very relaxing time. I didn't bring a lot of reading material, so I could focus more on the kids and on spiritual preparation for chrismation. I'll give my confession this week, so I had some soul-searching to do for that. I also wanted to make sure I kept a regular prayer rule throughout the vacation, when a lot of other routine was out the window. I didn't attend a service on Sunday, but I did make it to vespers for the Ascension. There appear to be three Orthodox parishes, all about an hour's drive from the resort. The Russian parish wasn't having a service because the priest was away; that left a Greek parish and a <a href=";. I heard back first from the Ukrainian priest, and it seemed more likely to be an English service. It was a beautiful drive down and back, alongside the mountains. A strong storm came through during the service, which left fog visibly resting on the slopes as I returned. Julie said it hit the resort earlier in the evening, but we got it toward the end. The power went out at the very moment that the service ended. (I thought they were just very prompt about turning out the lights at the end, until someone commented on it in the narthex.) The parish has been there about ten years. The priest and his wife are Carpatho-Rusyn and found the Ukrainian bishop to be the most cooperative about starting a new parish for non-Greeks in the area. I had a good talk with both of them after the service. I also met someone who lives in Harrisonburg, up by the resort. I think it's bad to have to travel 35 min. each way to church; they've got to run closer to an hour each way! With gas prices climbing, I don't want to think about it . . . The service was very refreshing and a great way to keep me going through the week. In my spare time, I also worked on learning how to crochet. I've been thinking for some time about trying to learn some kind of hand craft. It comes up a lot in ascetic literature, not only as a source of income for the desert fathers, but more importantly to keep productive and awake while praying. For my circumstances, none of the more traditionally "manly" crafts seems to make much sense. I don't have the kind of work space for serious woodworking or anything like that. Even basket weaving seems to require some room to spread out, and it's not very portable. Whittling might be an option, but it's pretty much an outdoor activity (and it doesn't look like I'm going to have much of a porch for it any time soon). So, for compact, portable, do-almost-anywhere crafts, it's hard to beat crocheting. Even knitting requires a bit more equipment and elbow-room. I have no idea yet what I'd make with it--right now, my interest is more in the activity than the end product. I have one skein of yarn (black, of course--there has to be something masculine about it) and one hook to start. This week I muddled my way through some written instructions. Hopefully I can get some input soon from someone who actually knows what they're doing, before I establish too many bad habits. (I know both my mom and my Godmother crochet, so help is there.) I guess those are the highlights from my standpoint. We went some places, saw some stuff, did some things. Ian said constantly how much he liked being on vacation. He also said he liked being home when we got back today, so it seems like a good balance. Jenna found the condo to be suitable for rolling, but it seemed like most of our outings involved harder surfaces than she really cared for. She might have enjoyed eating gravel, if I hadn't intervened. She started freaking out a few minutes from home. Julie sang "Twinkle Twinkle" over and over (backed up by Ian), until she was gasping for air and everyone was laughing. Even with that, it took Jenna quite a while to calm down, but we made it, safe and sound. Oh, and one nice thing. Julie was rear-ended a couple of weeks back, and to keep a long story short, we couldn't get the car into the shop for repairs until this week. We were able to drop it on Saturday, it was fixed by Friday, and we can pick it up any time now. Part of the week's rental is covered by insurance, so at minimal cost we got to spare the extra wear on our own car and drive someone else's. If we play our cards right, we'll even get to drive separately to church tomorrow, so I can get in one more service before the chrismation. Woo hoo!2008/06/vacation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-396020712636548500Fri, 23 May 2008 02:16:00 +00002008-05-22T23:14:37.329-04:00and there was evening, and there was morningCranky Old Guy's back for more. Looking at my most recent posts, I'm really starting to wonder. Anyway . . . From metrics, to digital, to standard time. I've been reading lately about the development of standard time in America. I never really thought about there being much controversy around this stuff, and as with metrics, I've probably spent most of my life wholeheartedly embracing the current norms. I liked to set my watch down to the second, usually at New Year's. (Yeah, that's what I did at midnight--set my watch.) I'm the one who zealously goes through the house resetting all the clocks twice a year. When I first discovered that I could sync my computer clock with the Naval Observatory online, I couldn't get enough of it. And I was really pretty excited (as much as I disliked the idea of getting a cell phone) about having a clock built into my phone that syncs itself regularly. But once I realized that these time standards were not implemented without controversy--that they were largely introduced only in a context of war--once I started thinking about them as imposed standards that the government had no business setting, my opinions formed pretty quickly. I'm not sure it would be at all practical to "turn back the clock" on this issue (so to speak), but I'm definitely nostalgic for solar time. For just about all of human history until the past couple of centuries, the basic standards of time were found in nature--the sun, the moon, the seasons, etc. For marking out the time of day, the sun was the norm. Sunrise in the morning, high noon, sunset in the evening, and some regular divisions in between. Of course, by colonial times in America, there were clocks to help keep things a bit more regular and bridge the gaps when the sun was not readily visible. But they weren't very consistent and had to be constantly re-calibrated--to the sun. And because they weren't very accurate, it was uncommon to find precise agreement between one clock and another, so they couldn't be taken very seriously. Their manufacture was relatively expensive, so many people didn't own one. Needs for common time, to schedule a meeting or show up for an event, were met by public devices--a church bell or clock tower, or maybe a town hall. Those who had their own clocks or watches could set them by the public clock in town, and any clock could be set by a sundial. In a less mechanized world, the system worked well enough. Ever since moving to Maryland, I've had a conviction that drivers around here lack a certain perspective on their own existence. They drive like there is no higher power. When it snows, half of them drive like the roads are perfectly dry and there's nothing to worry about. The other half panic like the world is about to end. The result, of course, is total chaos. But things are different in Western New York, where I learned to drive. Snow is a fact of life and a substantial reminder of things beyond human control. You learn to drive with a healthy sense of contingency. We'll get there at such and such time--if God wills. It doesn't always go as planned. There seems to be a broader pattern to all of this. There is an older, more traditional way of life that recognizes our place within the natural order; there is a newer, more modern view that rejects this order and seeks the control that comes from crafting our own arbitrary existence. This newer view took the lowly clock and elevated it to a sovereign role for which it was never intended. Instead of expressing the sun's time, it came to define its own time. The sun was just too irregular and too local in its effects. Factories had to run like clockwork, and trains had to keep tight schedules. Indeed, it was the railroads that pushed for, developed, and implemented what we now know as standard time. No longer could timekeeping be a merely local affair. Clocks had to be synced across the continent. The time zones were established, but not without objection. Cities that fell between one meridian and another often balked at adjusting their time as much as a half-hour forward or backward. States were split up by time zones and proceeded to wobble back and forth. The Federal government did not step in until it also chose to impose daylight saving time during WWI, at which point it also codified standard time. DST also sparked controversy--and contrary to popular belief, it was not primarily for the benefit of farmers. They were, if anything, its most consistent opponents. Their lives operated by natural patterns that could not arbitrarily adjust back and forth each year. The main advocates of DST wanted it for recreational purposes, but it never passed into law without the conviction that it would save energy. (Energy savings is actually the hardest defense of DST to substantiate.) And that usually happened when we were at war. So I take my stand with the more traditional way. (Surprise, surprise!) Again, I don't think it's at all likely that I'll be on solar time next week. I do, after all, have to interact with the world around me. I have to show up for work, catch buses, and even attend church according to standard and daylight time. But I'm still going to be looking for ways to take back some sanity. One interesting thought I had as I was contemplating all this: Not so long ago, I was actually closer to practicing what I now preach (yet without any principled stance at the time). When I was in school, I kept my watch set to the bell tower at the Basilica. I have (and had) no idea what it was set to (probably standard time). But the point is that my referent was local. In a sense, it didn't matter what it was set to. It was the most prominent public timekeeper in my life, and it was enough to go by. (Admittedly, if it had been too far off from standard time, I wouldn't have used it--but that was me then.) I can't think of a similar referent in my life right now, but if I could, it just might be enough to get me wearing a watch again (instead of always going by the time on my cell phone). Which of course would be ironic in itself--another clock, to free myself from over-mechanized time. For now, about the most I can do is find those times to ignore the clock altogether. And maybe invest in a sundial . . .2008/05/and-there-was-evening-and-there-was.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-2384900755506293245Sun, 18 May 2008 00:36:00 +00002008-05-17T21:46:40.732-04:00the digital stone-ageRANT WARNING: This entire post is just me complaining. It has nothing useful to do with anything. Read at your own risk. So, today we got a digital receiver for our TV. We have continued to watch only broadcast TV, mostly because I'm too cheap and too anti-TV to invest the money in cable or satellite. We augment the broadcast offerings with a subscription to Netflix, which includes a generous selection of TV series on disc. We also have a lot of movies and TV series available for free through the local library. To my thinking, this is more than sufficient. Well, as hopefully everyone knows by now, in about nine months everything will change. Congress has mandated that all broadcast TV convert to digital signals, so frequencies are freed up for other uses. (Apparently, digital signals are more compact.) The newly available frequencies will be used for "public safety communications" and commercial wireless. Needless to say, they are listed in that order on the <a href=" Web site</a>. We're told that benefits will include improved clarity and expanded variety due to the opportunity for sub-channels. Our local PBS station, for instance, has already developed multiple digital sub-channels with greater programming specialization. So what's the catch? Well, like most technological "progress," the first thing you'll notice is widespread obsolescence. There are plenty of new TVs out there with the capability to receive a digital signal, and of course those who already pay hundreds of dollars a year for cable or satellite can pretty much ignore the change. But for the countless older TVs being used to watch broadcast TV, there are only two options--buy a new one, or buy a separate digital receiver. Not to worry--your helpful government is providing $40 coupons--two per household upon request--for the external receivers. Right now, you can easily find a receiver priced at $50, so $10 out of pocket isn't too bad. Given the benefits, what's to complain about? Plenty. Yes, a good digital signal gives a cleaner output than a comparable analog signal. But what happens with the signal is less than perfect? With analog, you might get a fuzzy image that makes it a little hard to read print on the screen. You might even get some static in the audio that obscures quiet dialog. But you can still watch the show. With digital, you get severe pixelation, frozen picture and sound, and complete loss of the signal. Watching a show like Lost, where every detail counts, you might experience some frustration with a weak analog signal where dark scenes are a bit hard to follow. But try missing a piece of dialog because your signal faded a bit. Think, watching a scratched DVD where you finally have to give up and skip to the next scene. That's worse than just about anything you'd get with analog. Well, with the possible exception of a badly positioned antenna while taping your favorite show and finding out the static was so bad you can't hear anything. But that brings us to the next problem. Get ready to junk your VCR. Of course, if you've already migrated to DVR, you might not have much to worry about. (I wouldn't know.) And I guess there are some newer VCR/DVD combos (you can't buy just a VCR anymore) with built-in digital receivers. But most of the stand-alone VCRs out there will become practically useless for recording programs. For starters, you can hook your receiver to your VCR (supposedly--it didn't seem to work right when I tried it), but say goodbye to taping one show while watching another. The VCR must stay parked on channel 3, while the receiver controls the actual channel. There is a work-around--buy two receivers, so you can have one on your TV and one on your VCR. I'm not sure if that means you also need two antennas, but either way, you've just used up your allotment of coupons. Say goodbye as well to easily programmable taping of shows you can't be there to watch. You can still use your VCR's program feature to set the time to record, but remember--you can only record channel 3. The receiver needs to be set to the right channel ahead of time; although you might program the VCR to tape your favorite show every Wednesday evening, you'll need to verify every Wednesday morning or afternoon that the channel is set properly. And forget taping two shows on two different channels in the same evening if you can't be there to change the channel. If none of that is bad enough, you will probably lose channels that you can get now. We live between Washington and Baltimore, where it is sometimes possible to get channels from both cities. Tests so far have shown that the fuzzy stations you might have got before could become non-existent. Hopefully there will be some improvement on this count. Apparently many broadcasters are waiting for the official switchover to beef up the power on their digital signals. Right now, we can't get either of the two Baltimore PBS stations, but according to <a href="; the signal strength is pretty minimal. It's disappointing, because Ian watches a lot of PBS as it is, and we were looking forward to the better niche programming of their digital offerings. Without any signal at all, it's a deal-breaker for now. We've boxed up the receiver until February, in hopes that things will improve. For now, we'll stick with our trusty analog. It's sad, really. Analog TV still works fine. Old VCRs still serve the purposes for which they were created. The only problem is that, in less than a year, there will be no signal to receive. I'm reminded of Ralph Nader's point that the airwaves belong to us. Somewhere along the line, we (through our elected representatives) sold them off to big corporations. Don't hold your breath for some renegade broadcaster to keep sending out analog signals for all the freedom-loving fuddy-duddies who want to receive them. Is it a conspiracy to force more of us into buying cable or satellite service? Or is it just simple crowding of free broadcast to make way for more important things? Either way, the outcome seems to be more expensive for anyone who hasn't already chosen to pay for TV (beyond what we already pay to the manipulative advertisers). Well, there's one other group that won't be paying more--anyone who has chosen or chooses now to opt out. Your analog equipment will continue to work just fine. If you can't get a signal, so what? You can still watch VHS tapes, DVDs--heck, you can even watch Beta if that's your thing. Many of the networks are now providing current episodes online for free. If you don't mind being a year or so behind, you can watch a favorite series on video. Or you can find something more productive to do with your time than sit in front of a TV. I don't plan to challenge anyone's right to complain about this scam. But I do offer this encouragement: You are not a slave. You still can choose. You don't have to play their game. You have nine months to think about it.2008/05/digital-stone-age.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-7796709463831500421Wed, 14 May 2008 11:26:00 +00002008-05-14T08:52:20.468-04:00in praise of traditional measurementsOK, I'll admit it. I swallowed a lot of liberal propaganda when I was growing up in public school. Somewhere along the way, for instance, I bought into environmentalism--even adopted my own humpback whale--then later repudiated the idea under the influence of Rush Limbaugh. I've since come back around to what is more properly labeled "conservation," which is a great conservative value (even etymologically) and resonates with my innate abhorrence of waste and the way I was brought up. Something I accepted more wholeheartedly and never thought to repudiate until now was the metric system. My ambitions at the time were mathematical and scientific, and it did seem like a natural fit. I embraced the simplicity of the decimal base, the regularity of its fit to scientific applications, and the universality of the system. On the other hand, I guess I did come to accept that America wasn't changing anytime soon. And by that point I'd already internalized traditional America measurements. Metrics was a nice system to play around with in science classes, but since then I haven't given it much thought. I just went on with the assumption that it was better. Well, no more! I am now decidedly pro-traditional measurements. Why? Glad you asked :-) <ul><li>They're traditional; and, well, you should know by now how I feel about tradition. The point here is that they've been used for centuries, even millennia, and they've worked quite well. You have to ask--or at least I do--what's the compelling reason to change? (And whom does it serve to do so?)</li><li>They're endangered. There's been a specific campaign to abolish traditional measurements, mostly by governments and pseudo-governments that have no business in such areas anyway. The U.S. may be only one of three countries that still use traditional measurements officially (though there are plenty of others that haven't given them up altogether), but I don't see that as a bad thing. The bad thing is that so many others have caved to an artificial standard.</li><li>From an antiquarian perspective, traditional measurements are a whole lot more interesting. The metric system is a boring, bureaucratic standardization. Its history is the sort of thing to help with insomnia. The story of traditional measurements has twists and turns and legends and myths. What's not to like about that?</li><li>Traditional measurements, to a great extent, make more sense in real life. The scales fit our normal measurement needs. The units are based on familiar things to which we can relate. (Well, they would be if our culture weren't so degenerate that it no longer knows what length of furrow makes good sense with an ox-drawn plow.) But let's look at some examples.</li></ul>Units of length, based on the human body: inch = thumb width = (etymologically) 1/12 ft. palm = hand width w/o thumb (3 in.) hand = palm + thumb (4 in.) span = hand width stretched out (9 in.) foot = foot length cubit = forearm length (18 in.) yard = belt length (or 1/2 fathom) fathom = armspan (6 ft.) Of course, everyone's body is a little different, and I suppose there's something mildly sexist in the assumption that we're talking about the body of an adult male. (Though I must say, there are some women around who could squash me like a bug.) But the point is that as rough approximations, these units are pretty good. And the nice thing is, you can estimate lengths in a pinch without any ruler at all. Units of distance, based largely on agriculture: pace = paired marching step (5 ft.) rod = 16 men's feet (16-1/2 ft.) chain = 4 rods furlong = standard plow furrow length = 10 chains Roman mile = (etymologically) 1000 paces English mile = 8 furlongs league = hour's walk = 3 mi. Now, this section needs some extra clarification. Keep in mind that standard definitions and conversions would have come later. For generations, the different units could have got along quite nicely without correlating in any precise way. Most notably, the shorter length units seem to have developed in isolation from the longer distance units, resulting in the awkward relationship between feet and rods. Also, we have a historical development from the Roman mile to various local standards. In the English system, which we adopted here, the accepted conversion came to be eight furlongs to a mile. (Eight is in fact the closest estimate, if you're going to define a mile in terms of furlongs.) The rod and chain were surveyors' tools to break down the furlong into more manageable units. As the tradition goes, you get the length of a rod by having 16 men line up their left feet. In any case, there was probably no specific concern to make the rod come out an even number of feet until much later, at which point the length was relatively stable and didn't easily fit. Not that it makes much difference--we don't have too many instances where it's even necessary to convert from the shorter inches, feet, and yards to chains, furlongs, and miles. The etymology of "furlong" is pretty obviously the length of a standard plow furrow. This is fairly meaningless to us now (though it may not be for long, with the way fuel prices are going), but it would have been almost universally relevant for talking about land measurements up until the past century or so. Now that we mostly think of acreage as applied to suburban and exurban residential parcels, perhaps we should adjust to something specific to lawn-mowing. But sticking with the agricultural standard, the logic gets even more interesting when we turn to area measurements: rood = furlong x rod acre = day's plow w/two oxen = furlong x chain subdivision = 1/4 division (40 acres) division = 1/4 section (160 acres) section = sq. mi. (640 acres) township = 36 sections (6 mi. x 6 mi.) In particular, note the definition of an acre, which becomes much more elegant once you know what a chain and a furlong are. So assuming a standard plow drawn by two yoked oxen, you'd have a parcel of land that could be done in a day. The furrows were an acceptable length, and the optimal number of passes fit into a tenth of that distance. The rood would make sense as a unit, just because you could measure the width easily with a rod. (And I suppose it might be worth knowing that it takes a quarter of a day to plow a rood--two before lunch, two after?) The rest shows a more uniquely American system, which established one-square-mile sections, divided them into quarters, then again into quarters, which is why 40 acres comes up as a basic parcel of farmland ("back 40," "40 acres and a mule," etc.). I included "township" just because I've heard the term used so often but never knew where it came from. Units of volume, based mostly on containers: teaspoon = teaspoon volume (1/3 T.) tablespoon = soup spoon volume (1/2 oz.) ounce = volume of 1 oz.-weight of water cup = 8 oz. pint = 2 c. quart = 2 pints gallon = 4 qt. peck = 2 gal. bushel = 4 pecks bag = 3 bushels barrel = 31-1/2 gal. hogshead = 2 barrels cord = 8' x 4' x 4' The barrel is actually somewhat variable depending on where and what is contained. I haven't found where the term hogshead originates, but I just love the term. Which leads me, of course, to a Simpsons quote: <blockquote>The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it. <div style="text-align: right;">--Abe Simpson, "A Star is Burns"</div></blockquote>I don't expect to convince anyone; it's just my own preference. But don't be surprised if I talk about a two-quart bottle of pop instead of a 2-L bottle of soda :-)2008/05/in-praise-of-traditional-measurements.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (abuian)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974528.post-612950667236778384Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:41:00 +00002008-04-30T06:11:17.641-04:00CorfuI went to high school in a little blip on the map named <a href=", NY</a>. People kept wanting to call it corfoo, but we pronounced it corfyu. It's from an Italian form, which I would now guess is supposed to be pronounced more like outsiders' initial expectation. I didn't know then that it was named after a Greek island, and still don't know now why it was named after that Greek island. (The only remark I could find about it on their Web site was that some postmaster suggested it.) It's interesting to me, nonetheless. The original <a href="; (Gk. Κέρκυρας) is off the coast, just north of modern Greece, next to Albania. The Gospel reached the island in the time of the Apostles, and it has remained predominantly Greek Orthodox down to this day. For much of its history, Corfu fell on the border of the Eastern Roman Empire and bounced back and forth between Eastern and Western control. It was saved from the Ottoman conquest by appealing to Venice for protection. There was an influx of Latins, which has left a permanent mark on the cultural landscape, but the Greeks were allowed to practice their own Christian traditions in relative freedom. Over the centuries, several Ottoman

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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369Sat, 31 Aug 2024 13:00:33 +0000GSoCHaskellDarcsAdventures in a Pure Worldnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)Blogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-1640645564061088370Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:36:00 +00002010-08-11T20:46:21.599-07:00GSoC Week 12Wow, this is my last gsoc related entry, I'm publishing earlier because I won't be around during the weekend. I <a href="2010/08/gsoc-week-11.html">mentioned</a> last week that we had know a better mechanism to handle bad cache, during this week I worked mainly adding documentation, extending user manual and finally sending the patch to set the environment variable DARCS_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT. Overall my experience with the people from Darcs was really good, giving that this was my first experience contributing to an open source project, sometimes I had moments when I felt really awkward, but my mentor and the rest of people on irc will kindly help me to understand the stuff I didn't know. With Eric (my mentor) things went pretty neat, We would meet weekly and discuss about what I had done during the previous week, what I accomplished, my doubts, and what I would work next. He always tried to keep a culture of get things done, and at the beginning when I wasn't very familiar with Darcs he would help me to get more familiar doing some "quiz" questions, which would take me to an "aha!" moment and finding some answer by myself. What's next ? I plan to continue contributing with Darcs, for me the most difficult part in an open source project is getting started, I think I have passed through that, and I want to keep the momentum, I will try to keep contributing as much as I can. I would also like to say thanks to the following people on irc who somehow help me when I appeared there asking questions: kowey, mornfall, lispy, Heffalump, sm. Thanks to the Darcs team and I hope to continue having fun and learning lots with you. All the documentation of my project is in the <a href=";.2010/08/gsoc-week-12.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-2374492414166265270Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:39:00 +00002010-08-08T21:00:33.471-07:00DarcsGSoCHaskellGSoC Week 11In my last entry I mentioned I had already sent a patch, which would allow Darcs to have a better handling of bad caches, I'm happy to announce that my patch is now in the current head :). Now we have a better handling of bad entries in the cache, some of the main benefits of this fix is that some operations that would take more than 10 minutes were now reduced to less than 1 minute, the time changes depending the number of patches in the repository( look my report of <a href="2010/07/gsoc-report-week-8-dealing-with-bad.html">week 8</a> for a better idea of what was happening). Also I mentioned I was having some issues trying to use the timeout function from System.Timeout in Windows, I wrote to haskell-cafe and someone claimed that It would work for him in Windows 7, and then other person claim the same behaviour I was having with Windows XP, then I tried in a friend's computer, and it'd work intermittently, so the conclusion is that this is a Windows systems related issue and not a GHC's as I though at the beginning, I would really appreciate if someone with more experience with Haskell and Windows systems could point out what is really happening. For the coming week, I would focus on extending the documentation, sending my implementation for the timeout flag, and completing the section "Future work" in the high level document.2010/08/gsoc-week-11.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-4844238659588073710Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:49:00 +00002010-07-25T20:14:24.826-07:00GSoC Week 9Last week I <a href="2010/07/gsoc-report-week-8-dealing-with-bad.html">mentioned</a> I almost had ready the implementation to deal with bad entries in the cache, finally during the week I sent a first version of the patch, I got some review and now I'm working to improve it. One of the things I will change is the way we determinate which error we had when trying to use one of the entries in the cache, in my patch I was using the error string ( but it was because at the moment we don't have an ADT for some errors, for example the ones which are thrown from libcurl), so I will implement an new data type which will helps us to determinate in a safer way, which was the error that we got. Other thing I will rewrite is the way to determinate if a ssh is bad or not, again we have the problem of the error type with ssh ( which we couldn't infer), so what I was doing was to do a request to the server and check if it was reachable or not, but then I realized that It wasn't correct, having a ssh server listening in port 22, doesn't necessarily mean that it does in port 80 too. Also I got a first draft of the high level documentation doc, which aim to explain how the cache system works, I did a <a href="; in the darcs-users mailing list for feedback, which wasn't very successful, I would really appreciate if you can give a look at it and give me some feedback. During the coming weeks I will finish this patch, and work on documentation and testing, more information of my progress can be found in the <a href=";.2010/07/gsoc-week-9.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-9028592717301082998Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:36:00 +00002010-07-17T10:48:10.099-07:00GSoC Report Week 8: Dealing with bad entries in the cacheDuring this week I have been working in the implementation to deal with the bad entries in the cache, to get a bit of background of how the cache works read my <a href="2010/06/gsoc-report-week-5.html">previous</a> post. When we have remote entries, we consider conflictive the ones that 1) Are not accessible ( give time-out each time we try to access) and 2) are accessible but the repository doesn't exist. We consider a bad local entry, the one which points to a repository which doesn't exist. At the beginning the idea was to automatically remove those entries from the cache, but as I mentioned in the previous post, sometimes there are externals factors which won't allow me to reach an entry, so the approach taken to solve this problem was just not using that entries during the rest of the command, and at the end notify to the user about it and allow her to delete the bad entries interactively, something like: $ There seems to be a problem with the following repos: repo1, repo2, repo3 Would you like to delete them from the cache ? Y/N I haven't implemented the part of notifying to the user about the bad entries, but I introduced the changes to stop using an entry if we have a problem with it, so for the remote repositories which give time out, they get added immediately to the list of bad caches and we don't try to fetch patches from them, if it's a remote entry which doesn't give timeout but throws an error it could be because a) the requested file wasn't there b) the repository doesn't exist, so in this case when I get an error of this type I verify what caused the error, if the reason is that the repository doesn't exist, it is added to the list of bad caches, if not, it is added to a list of "good entries", if we get again other error because the file doesn't exist, we won't need to check for any of the conditions mentioned before. An approach similar to the remote repositories is taken for the local entries which fail. After I introduce the changes, I did a <a href=" get</a> of <a href=";, then introduce a bogus entry for the timeout case and check the time difference calling the command <a href=" changes</a>, I did it with my version and with the version in hackage. For 2.4.4 (release) which is the version in hackage, it took a bit more than 13 minutes. real 13m38.415s user 0m4.148s sys 0m1.060s Then after I rebuild with my changes the result were really good, taking less than 1 minute to fetch the changes: real 0m55.679s user 0m1.092s sys 0m0.240s Before my changes Darcs will try to establish a connection with each of the entries in the cache for each patch ( waiting for timeout), now with the changes, if it founds a bad entry it doesn't try to use it in the rest of the command, which make faster the operations since we don't waste time trying to use bad resources. Also I implement an environment variable "DARCS_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT" which set the waiting time for a request. To implement such functionality if we are using libcurl, I setup the CURLOPT_TIMEOUT option, if we are not using libcurl but Network.HTTP, I wrapped the operation of simpleHTTP in the function timeout from System.Timeout. In Linux it works perfect both with libcurl or simpleHTTP, but in Windows I have a problem with the 'timeout' function from System.Timeout, it doesn't behave as expected and it seems like it gets ignored. For the next week I will focus on finishing this, extending the haddock documentation of the cache and tests. Remember you can always check my advance in the <a href=";.2010/07/gsoc-report-week-8-dealing-with-bad.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-1746166443115328610Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:50:00 +00002010-06-26T13:41:53.225-07:00DarcsGSoCHaskellGSoC Report: Week 5In my last post I said I had complete the warm-up phase and that I will start to think about how to handle caches which are no longer available. The caching mechanism relies in the files _darcs/prefs/sources and ~/.darcs/sources, basically the content of those file is used to generate the cache entries, each of the entries in that file indicate an alternative source to get files. If we want to specify global caches we put that in ~/.Darcs/sources but if we want an alternative repositories to pull from, we specify that in the repository sources file which is in _Darcs/prefs/sources, also each time we do a pull from an external repository it is added to the sources file automatically. The problem of expiring caches is given because sometimes it happens that repositories that were available, can become unavailable. For example if I had pulled from 3 different repositories and 2 of them stop being available, it could take up to 2 minutes to get each patch, because Darcs could try to fetch every patch it needs from those 2 not longer available repositories, it tries to establish a connection, an then waits for a time-out or a bad response code. After the problem I just mentioned, the idea is to design a mechanism which can help Darcs to establish which entries should be expired. We can split the cache entries in two groups: locals and remotes. Dealing with local non-longer reachable repositories is not a big deal since if we don't find the local entries we can assume they don't exist and we can drop them from the cache and stop trying to fetch files from them. Remote repositories are more tricky, for example I can't eliminate an entry just because it gives a time-out when it tries to establish a connection with it, there are other external factors which could interfere with that particular entry in a given moment (firewalls). So as we seem this is not an easy task, handling remote repositories is out of our hands, we don't have control over the external sources, we don't have control over the network configuration and so on. So a first approach to this is to mark the entries which are not working and ignore them for the rest of the pulling since we don't want to try to establish a connection with an entry which we know is not available. If we try to establish a connection and fails we can mark it as a bad entry but also I think it could be awkward to wait for a 60 seconds time out, something we could implement is a default time for waiting for a connection to succeed (10-15 seconds maybe) if it doesn't happen between that time we can skip it, mark it as bad, and don't try for the rest of the patches that particular entry. Other approach suggested in the bug tracker was to try to establish a connection with all of the entries and use the one that responds first but then what if all the entries are bad entries?. I have to think more about it, I will discuss on irc and the mailing and then with a clearer idea I will start to code a patch to solve the issue. Also I sent a first version of a failing test for the case of unreachable entries, but I need to amend, as there are some missing cases. More of my progress can be found in the <a href=";.2010/06/gsoc-report-week-5.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-3615616129574155736Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:26:00 +00002010-06-20T13:02:39.453-07:00DarcsGSoCHaskellGSoC Report: Week 4I have completed my phase of warm up issues which was oriented to allow me to get familiar with the Darcs system, specifically the cache part. I have sent the patches and they have been applied. During the week I worked in finishing issue 1176, continued with the documentation part, more specifically describing in a higher level how a patch is fetch with a given hash, making easier for someone with a non-technical background understand what is happening, fixing a test which was failing in Windows when it shouldn't and finding out why the IO operations over hashedRepos were put in a different module. For fixing issue 1176 I did some modifications over some code I had already sent which was about keeping the caches sorted by locality, the initial idea was that anything which was local should be first in the list and then the remote sources, but we realized that between the remotes also exist a "wanted" hierarchy, basically we would prefer to access first http repos over ssh, so the new sorting keeps all the locals first, http in the middle and ssh repos at the end. One of the problems this solve is that weird behaviour of darcs trying to establish a ssh connection when pulling from a http or local repository. While I was working in the test which was failing we redefine what gets saved in the _darcs/prefs/sources, the global caches were one of those things, it wasn't necessary to have them there because that's why a global cache configuration file exist (~/.darcs/sources), so basically we just drop anything related with global caches before saving the sources file of a repository. For the next week I will start to work in the problem of how to deal with the unused cache, the idea is by the end of the week to have a work plan and write a test case. You can check out more of my progress in the <a href=";.2010/06/gsoc-report-week-4.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-8834839630486996729Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:52:00 +00002010-06-06T12:05:41.757-07:00GSoCHaskellGSoC Week 2After last week's meeting with Eric ( my mentor) we got a better time line written down, and now I have clear goals for each week until the midterms evaluation, for this week my goals were: * Complete issue1503 * Complete issue1210 * Description of cache usage for each module in Darcs.Repository I'm happy to say that issue 1503 was closed, and I sent the patch for issue1210 but is waiting for revision, also I noticed that I'm more familiar with the darcs structure ( at least the part in which I'm working ) and I've started to know where I have to search for something each time I need a particular functionality. When I first sent the patch for issue 1503, Eric and Petr did some comments about design and style which took me to rewrite the original patch, thanks to them I have learn to push myself more into thinking in a bigger view each time I plan to introduce changes somewhere, sometimes you just develop bad practices which you don't see unless someone else point it to you, so I feel more convinced that a good way to learn and become a better programmer is contributing to this kind of projects, where you interact with other people, where they are commenting on you code, making you think better about what you are doing, all this kind of stuff is something you won't learn from the university, but just getting involve in something in the real world. Other thing that I learnt was that I had a wrong idea of the concept of tests, I thought the test case for a certain issue would be one were it used to fail before applying the changes, but I didn't thought about how should the test behave in case of failing, here thanks again to Eric for explaining it to me :). For the next week I plan to work on issue1176, start to elaborate a test plan for issue 1599, write the test cases for issues 1503 and 1210 and continue my work in the document of the darcs cache. You can always check out my advance and know more about my project in the <a href=" wiki </a> where we are documenting everything.2010/06/gsoc-week-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-2207363749507222586Sat, 29 May 2010 21:59:00 +00002010-05-30T13:15:37.880-07:00GSoCHaskellGSoC Week 1: Getting to know youIt has been almost a week since hacking started, during the week my activities were focused in getting to know Darcs code, working in the skeleton of a high level document for the cache system, and looking at one of the warm-up issues, I won't say I already know how it all works, but I'm picking up new things each day and that's fine :). From the Darcs code section, I know most of my work would be done in the module Darcs.Repository where the cache code lives, I still need to go deeply and see why, how, and what for is it used in each of the submodules, and how the cache system fits in all the system. The first sketch of the skeleton for the high level document can be found in <a href=";, we are putting all the administrative stuff in <a href="; to help us to keep track of everything. About one of the first warm-up issues (1503), I found a possible way to fix it, you can read more about it in the last comment in <a href=";, I haven't sent a patch yet, but I hope to have it before Tuesday. While I was looking at this issue we noticed something weird in the log and we found another issue <a href=";, I have a test left to do, and check if that is a problem specific to the installation in my server or is something from the current branch. For the coming week I plan to: - Close issue 1503. - Pick up other issue. - Elaborate more in the "Internal" section of the document. [1]- <a href=" />[2]- <a href=" />[3]- <a href=" />[4]- <a href=";2010/05/gsoc-week-1-getting-to-know-you.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264335596042843369.post-6759731564688232931Wed, 12 May 2010 02:39:00 +00002010-05-11T20:05:11.562-07:00DarcsGSoCHaskellImproving Darcs Performance - My GSoC Project.I was accepted for this year GSoC, I will be working for Haskell.org and my project will be focus in improvements of Darcs performance, specifically I'll work in the global cache, you can find a full specification of my project <a href=" /> I'm pretty excited about it and really looking forward to start working on this, also my mentor would by Eric Kow (a.k.a kowey). I'll try to keep weekly updates of how my work is going, and let you know about the ups and downs that I find in my way. Thanks Haskell.org, thanks Darcs and last but not least thanks Google for given us this awesome opportunity.2010/05/improving-darcs-performance-my-gsoc.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Adolfo Builes)0

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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:44:54 +0000A Burning Patience"And, in the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities." -- Arthur Rimbaudnoreply@blogger.com (Lyle Daggett)Blogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339.post-761058708015002636Tue, 17 May 2016 22:01:00 +00002016-05-17T17:01:02.227-05:00I'm still hereJust posting here to let anyone know (whoever is still dropping by from time to time) that I still haven't disappeared, I've just been spending time away from the computer and the internet for a while. I plan to be back, possibly fairly soon. We'll see how life goes.2016/05/im-still-here.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lyle Daggett)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339.post-6158304580925427991Sun, 05 Apr 2015 15:35:00 +00002015-04-05T10:35:49.597-05:00AWP in Minneapolis, and recommended readingAgain I've been away from this blog longer than I'd intended. Much busy with writing, and reading, and life in general. I'll be attending the annual AWP conference this year, this coming week here in Minneapolis. Some general information for anyone not familiar with Minneapolis: most of the conference events will be at the Minneapolis convention center, at the southern edge of downtown. The weather here this time of year can be highly variable. The forecasts I've seen are saying high temps in the 50's, and lows in the 30's. Either rain or snow are possible this time of year. (This past week it got warm, up to 83 degrees one day, though that's not in the forecast for this coming week.) Most of the buildings in downtown Minneapolis are connected by enclosed overhead walkways (known locally as "skyways") at the second floor level of the buildings, which can be a big help if the weather turns nasty. The skyways are mostly open from early morning through early evening, though it varies somewhat. If you Google "minneapolis skyway" that should give a bunch of links to maps of the skyway system. The convention center is also connected to the skyways. A lot of the (relatively) cheaper places to eat are in the skyway/second floor level of the office buildings. You can get from the airport to downtown Minneapolis by the light rail train. Train fair is $2.25 during morning and evening rush hours, and $1.75 during non-rush hour times and all day on weekends. There are ticket machines on the station platforms. (At the airport, last I knew, the ticket machines are at the top of the escalator before you go down to the train station.) * If you're staying at any of the "official" AWP hotels downtown, or any other hotels nearby, you'll probably want to get off at the Nicollet Mall station downtown, and walk south. * Some of the AWP events I plan to check out are include: On Thursday, a 10:30 panel on "Robert Bly and the Minnesota Writers Publishing House," and a Tribute event (at 3:00) for poets Joy Harjo and Linda Hogan (both Harjo and Hogan are listed among the panel members); also, an offsite event, a Red Dragonfly Press Social and Reading, at 6:00 p.m. at the Gamut Gallery, 1006 Marquette Avenue (across the street from the Hilton hotel); On Friday, a panel on "James Wright in Minneapolis", at 1:30; On Saturday, "Writing into the World: Memoir, History and Private Life," a panel at 12:00 featuring poet Carolyn Forche among others; "Tribute to Tom McGrath," at 1:30, with panelists Mike Hazard, John Bradley, Michael Dennis Browne, and Ray Gonzales; a Robert Bly tribute event at 3:00; an at 8:00 p.m. a reading and conversation with Carolyn Forche and Kevin Young. The above are the highest-priority events for me; there are others I may also try to get to if I have the stamina and concentration. Plus there's the bookfair... * There are several poets and books of poems I've been trying to get to, to write about here. I've been slow and delinquent in this. Two I want to mention in particular that I highly hope to get to, and that I highly recommend: Lavando la Dirty Laundry by Natalia Trevino (should be a tilde over the n in her last name), published 2014 by <a href=" Empire Press</a> And Continuous Performance by Maggie Jaffe, a selected poems from her body of work, published 2014 by <a href=" Dragonfly Press</a>. * Anyway I'm still here. Hoping to get back here shortly and say some more.2015/04/awp-in-minneapolis-and-recommended.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lyle Daggett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339.post-1054593386662749517Sun, 28 Dec 2014 03:18:00 +00002014-12-27T21:18:38.929-06:00Petrified TimeThis past fall I read Petrified Time by Yannis Ritsos, translated by Martin McKinsey and Scott King, published in 2014 by <a href=" Dragonfly Press</a>. This is one of the strongest translations of Ritsos that I've read, and one of the books of poems published this past year that spoke to me most powerfully. (The book includes the original Greek along with the English translations.) Yannis Ritsos spent periods of his life on various prison islands in Greece for his left-wing political activites, imprisoned for left-wing political activities along with many other members of the left-wing resistance. The poems in Petrified Time come from a period of roughly four years of imprisonment in the late 1940's and early 1950's, including a year in the particularly brutal prison on Makronisos. The poems evoke a deeply rooted endurance, a love and embrace of the hearts and lives of the vast majority of the people of the world, in quiet stubborn defiance of all efforts to crush the fires of life. From the poem "Things We Know": A sun of stone went with us scorching the desert wind and thorns. The afternoon hung from the sea's selvage like a bare yellow bulb in some deep forest of memory. We had no time for such things -- but even so now and then we'd look up, and there on our blankets with the dirt, the oil stains and the olive pits a few willow leaves, a few pine needles remained. [...] [...] Yet we knew that off at the great crossroads was a city lit by a thousand colored lights where people greet you with the simple nod of the forehead -- we recognize them by their hands by the way they cut their bread by the shadows they cast on the dinner table as every voice grows sleepy in their eyes and a lonely star makes a cross on their pillow. We know them by the strife that furrows their brow but more than that -- when the night sky deepens overhead we know them by their poised, conspiratorial manner as they slip their heart like an illegal leaflet under the world's closed door. Much of the poetry of Yannis Ritsos has been translated into English during the past half century; too often, translators blur or miss entirely the political weight his poems carry. (I've written about Ritsos previously in this blog, <a href="2005/05/translating-yannis-ritsos.html">here</a>.) Ritsos was a Communist, and remained one to the end of his life; he remained fully committed to the promise (not yet realized) of remaking the world in the name and interests of the billions of us who daily make and build the world with our hands and feet and minds and voices and hearts. One of the things I especially like about McKinsey and King's translation of Petrified Time is that the political intent of the poems if not obscured overlooked. Comrades, they forced us to remain silent. We had no chance to give voice to our song. As usual, the afternoon fills with dust, dust from the traffic of mothers in black dresses returning from Averoff Prison or Hadzikosta Hospital or the Department of Transfers, grieving mothers in black dresses, with their hearts wrapped in handkerchiefs like crusts of dry bread, bread so hard Death can't chew it. Comrades, they are forcing us to remain silent. They are forcing away our sun. They don't want us to give voice to our song -- the one that begins simply, with strength and bitterness: Workers of the world, unite! At night, when an illicit moon rises above the horizon without a word, The shadow from a gigantic crutch is etched onto the rocks of Makronisos. "We could make this crutch into a ladder," Vangelis suggests, leaning toward Petros' ear, as if giving voice to the first line of our future song. Comrades, it's getting late. It's very late. We must give voice to our song. (From the poem "Duty".) In the daily struggle of living in the world, hope and fatigue come and go. Some days it's a little easier to face the first morning light than other days; some evenings the gathering dark weighs heavier than other nights. In his poems Ritsos and the others imprisoned with him persist and endure, but at no time is he fully outside of the experience. During the days and nights on an island of rock and wind and relentless sun, amid tents sloping toward the sea, surrounded by arms soldiers and barbwire, at no time does he in any way soften or romanticize what is hard and difficult and oppressive. A crumb of death in our pockets -- we go unshaven. Where is there a stalk of wheat to bend on its knees to heaven? Night is slow to fall. The shadows can't hide the hardness of the rock. The dead man's canteen is swallowed up in the sand. The moon anchored on another shore, rocked to and fro by the calm's little finger. But what shore? and what calm? Our thirst was great as we sweated all day at the stone. Beneath our thirst lay the roots of the world. (From the poem "The Roots of the World".) This is a book of poems about remaining alive and thriving in spite of crushing work and crushing monotony. This is a book of poems about continuing to seek possibilities when none offer themselves, or when possibility itself seems to be held incommunicado behind arms guard and barbwire. Yannis Ritsos published over a hundred books during his lifetime -- poetry, essays, drama, autobiography, translations of other poets into Greek. Certain images recur throughout the whole body of his work, in perpetual variation -- sun and sea and stone and wind, moon and movements in the night, long days and nights of watching and waiting and making ready. Behind the ever-present imagery are the years on the prison isles, the sea viewed through barbwire, the sun on the bare backs of forced labor, a group of prisoners taken away to be shot. One month, two months... then many more. We measured them by hauling both stones and fears on our shoulders, by tapping a hooked finger along the side of the clay pitcher to hear the sound of water just as we listen for the voice of our wife behind a door, just as our wife listens for the voices of even the smallest of stars, just as the stars listen for the bleating of flocks at dusk. [...] [...] If only we were less thirsty, it wouldn't occupy our minds, if only there was one tree on the hillside or at the top of the island, if only there was a handful of shade, and less bitterness, and less injustice. We've forgotten the shape of a tree -- is it, perhaps, like a large banner of water? or like a "Thank you" that someone said to you in the past? or like a lover's hand searching for your hand? In the future, we'll plant thousands of trees. (From the poem "Noon".) In the aftermath of the Second World War, a civil war ensued in Greece, between the populist and labor-oriented political movements of the political left and the right-wing political movements of corporate capitalism and the military; Greece wasn't the only place in the world where this was going on during those years. The business class and military prevailed, in part due to economic and military backing they received from the U.S. government and allies of the U.S. This is some of the wider background to how Yannis Ritsos and thousands of others were sent to prison on islands of rock hammered daily by the sun. * I hadn't intended to let six months pass since my last post in this blog. To any of may have come by looking for anything new during this time, my thanks -- I haven't gone away, just had a few months submerged in the various things of life. I'm still here and will keep posting things in this blog as I'm able to. I don't plan to let six months go again until the next blogpost. Winter solstice in the northern hemisphere; here in Minneapolis, it's dark when I leave for work in the morning, and dark when I get home in the evening. By the end of January the daylight will have advanced enough so that there will be at least a glow of light in the west, on clear evenings anyway, as I'm getting home in the evening. Poetry is everywhere. There is nowhere on earth that it doesn't belong. * I'll finish with a few more lines by Yannis Ritsos from Petrified Time. The days come and go. The rock never changes. Sometimes a ship sails past, or a cloud -- leaving behind it a scrap of shade, a little window onto a memory of trees. Nothing ever changes. Neither heart nor rock changes. [...] [...] Evening folds up its red banner. Once again we will sleep with a stone between our teeth, with the sea's breathing at the back of our ears. Brothers, whatever comes now will find us with our bundles slung over our shoulders, and in those bundles, all of our hearts turning our pledge to Democracy over in our minds the way we twist our finger in the buttonhold of a friend's jacket not because we have nothing to say but because of all the love we feel for him -- and so it is: when we love we cannot speak, we toy with a branch of wild olive, scratch a name in the dirt, and it's always the same, and we'll always be ready, and it's always the name of Freedom. (From the poem "Ready".) 2014/12/petrified-time.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lyle Daggett)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339.post-5971357421675026671Wed, 02 Jul 2014 04:08:00 +00002014-07-01T23:08:00.855-05:00Savage CoastI've been away from this blog longer than I'd intended to be -- I've been caught up in daily life stuff again, and doing much reading in "spare time." One of the books I read this past spring, and really liked, is Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser (2013, <a href=" Feminist Press at the City University of New York</a>). Savage Coast is a novel based on Rukeyser's experiences in northeastern Spain (Barcelona and the Catalonia region in general) for a few days at the time of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July, 1936. The Spanish Civil War is a large subject; during the years the war took place, roughly July 1936 through early 1939, it became a gravity point for the international political Left, as volunteers from many countries joined the International Brigades and travelled to Spain, and entered full and brutal military war against Fascist armies (led by upper-ranking officers of Spain's military) who were trying to overthrow the elected government. Rukeyser's novel gives a deeply close-up and personal account, full of remarkable detail, sometimes almost random, sometimes carefully observed and chosen. The overall arc of the story moves from chaos and isolation and vague gestures to sharp vision and collective movement and clarity of purpose. It is a radically political novel, clearly and intentionally, both in the intimately personal-is-political sense and in the public activist communal sense. Rukeyser travelled to Spain in July 1936 to write and report about an alternative People's Olympics that had been organized in Spain, as a protest and defiance against the "official" summer Olympics that were taking place that year in Germany (and were being used as a propaganda device by the Nazi government there). The lead character in the novel, named Helen, is loosely based on Rukeyser herself, and a number of the other major characters are based on real people who also were there, though Rukeyser says in a short note at the front of the book, "None of the persons are imaginary, but none are represented at all photographically; for any scenes or words in the least part identifiable, innumerable liberties and distortions may be traced." In the first half of the book the story action takes place mostly on a train after it has entered northeastern Spain; much of the time is spent at a small village where the train has halted because war has broken out further south, and because of a general labor strike in much of the country as a protest against the attempted Fascist counter-revolution. The people do what people do: the passengers on the train try to find information, food, places to sleep, in the village and in whatever small supplies they have with them on the train; the people in the town cope with the sudden influx of visitors as best they're able. Here's a brief passage from early in the book, to give a little flavor of Rukeyser's writing: All the passengers in third were filling the aisle now, crowding out the open windows, talking to the groups whose heads could be seen, banked thick against the sides of the train, standing on both sides of the station platform. Helen pushed back through the swarming cars, through the holiday knots, laughter, gossip. An arm reached out and seized her wrist. Igt was the tight-skinned Hungarian, the manager. "Have you heard the rumors?" he shouted, over the laughter and talk. "All sorts of rumors, already. The English are saying that the Communists have bombed the tracks and that we can't go farther; and I heard the Frenchman say that the engineer has gone on strike, and won't move the train until he gets some kind of extravagant promise." He fanned himself with the straw hat. "But come in and meet our team anyway." The Hungarians were standing, politeness and warmth ran around the compartment. The fine-faced printer was introduced. "It looks like something real," he said. "But obviously nobody knows that. You probably ought to find the other Americans." "I know one of them," said Helen. "I wish you'd go down and reassure her. She's on her way to the bullfights, and she turned into jelly when they searched the train." "They were absolute correct to search the train," the printer answered. They destroyed some snapshots we were taking, too. Last spring, they said, the Fascists caught a lot of photographs of armed civilians, and anyone whose face was clear got his. They're not taking any chances." "But if you've been talking with them --" Helen cried, her face darkening with excitement. "What do they say is happening?" "They only said that," the printer told her. He was a young student, from his look, his earnest clear glance, but the marks about his mouth and his darkened, blunt fingers showed how long he had spent at work; he looked straightforward at Helen now, obviously telling all he knew. "They were ordered to go through the train; for all they knew, the girl said, it's just an examination, and we'll go right on through to Barcelona." As I read the book, I kept thinking of the word "cinematic" to describe the shifts in scene, the dialogue that often seems carefully written and offhand at the same time, the changes in view from long shot to close-up to angular glance to clear simple frame, again both carefully set up and almost randomly occurring. Muriel Rukeyser was in Spain for a few days. During that time, she met a man from Germany, Otto Boch, a runner who had come to Spain for the Olympics. They became lovers. Boch stayed, and joined the anti-Fascist International Brigades, and was killed in the civil war. One of the characters in Savage Coast is a German runner based on Boch, and in novel he and Rukeyser's character Helen become lovers. Some years later, in the late 1940's after the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, Rukeyser dedicated her poem cycle Elegies to Otto Boch. In the second half of the novel, Helen and her several traveling companions find a way to Barcelona, a city bright and joyous with popular insurgence; the city shows marks of recent fighting, and there is still danger from Fascist snipers and abductors. The days become filled with large public gatherings, official ceremonies, following rumors and threads of news reports, as the weight of the mounting events of the larger world grows ever greater. And mingled with this, the realization by the many visitors that they'll need to decide, and soon, whether to leave for home or to stay and join the coming storm. Here's another passage from the book; the scene takes place on the first morning after Helen and others from the train have arrived in Barcelona: Helen went immediate to the window, hauled up the venetian blind, and stood in the broad panel of sunlight the struck across the room. The gunfire continued. Facing her, a curved wall of arches surprised her, thrown block-long and receding; it took her a second to recognize the tiers and galleries of the arena, the slim pillars which were so perfect for snipers. Her eye ran over the shaded colonnade with animal speed: she had become vigilant, it gave her a tremendous sense of health and freshness to wake without fear and speculate on concealed rifles. The angle of the Olympic cut down across her view to the right, and she could see nothing but a boarded up café, a filling station, and the radiator and front wheels of the overturned car. But to the left lay the new city, ruled square, block after block of new apartment houses patched white with flags of truce. Behind them stood the high fortress on its strip of cliff, cutting the mountain range abruptly to an end. Olive and Peter were lying awake in bed. "That was the seven o'clock bell, wasn't it?" "That was the beginning of the shooting," laughed Olive. Correct response, thought Helen. She came over to the window in Helen's room. "They said something about leaving the blinds drawn." "I don't know," Helen said slowly. "I don't mind an open window on a street, so much, today." "I think I'm finished with all that too. Peter and I were walking to dinner when we missed you; Peter had just said something about the truck-ride and fear when a car came up. The driver asked us to get in, and we didn't think anything of it. There was a guard with a submachine gun; everything seemed proper until they started driving and took us miles through the country, or park -- darkness, anyway. They didn't say a word to us. Then we began to remember things -- we hadn't noticed the initials on the car, fascists can drive cars too, we didn't speak Catalan, the car had only one door -- all of those things." "It's a big park," Helen said. "A goddamned big park. But it may have cured me." They hung out the window. At the filling station, cars and trucks were already lined up, C.N.T and U.G.T cars for the most part, and the proprietor and two assistants were supplying them, lifting the dripping nozzle out of one tank and dropping it into the next without bothering to check the stream of gas. "They're going to run short of cars," Helen remarked under the grinding of gears as they rushed down the street." "The state's requisitioning cars from dealers," said Peter, from bed. "There was a Ford sign on the road." Helen knew she would always have this first morning of complete confidence. Peter and Olive had it too, she saw, reading their faces. One more lie to hold against the books! she reflected; the foolish irrelevant stories of people's characters changing like wind which shifts. She had wanted a life for herself, and found she was unequipped; and adjusting her wants, cared to be a person prepared for that life. I want greatness, she thought, the rich faces of the living. All the tenseness stood in the way, and see how it removes! One morning, and the fear of death is replaced. Rukeyser wrote Savage Coast immediately after her return from Spain in 1936. Early reactions from at least one reader of the manuscript, and one potential publisher, were strongly negative -- likely reacting against the left-leaning politics of the novel, as much as against the courage and joy and audacity of a woman making a strong clear statement -- and she put the novel away among her papers, and it remained mostly unknown, and unpublished, during her lifetime and for several decades after that. The edition published by The Feminist Press has been edited with skill and sensitivity by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, and includes an Introduction by Kennedy-Epstein and useful endnotes. Over the years Rukeyser wrote several journalistic articles about her days in Spain in 1936, and the Feminist Press edition includes one of these at the end of the book, "We Came for the Games: A Memoir of the People's Olympics, Barcelona, 1936," originally published in Esquire magazine in October 1974. The Feminist Press has also published a booklet of several other short pieces by Muriel Rukeyser, <a href=", 1936" and Selections from the Spanish Civil War Archive</a>, Series 2, Number 6, published in the Lost and Found series of the CUNY Center for the Humanties, Spring 2011. Both articles help highlight how closely Rukeyser held to the essential facts of the events that occurred during her days in Spain, including many critical details of dialogue, descriptions of buildings and people and public places, and so on. The "Barcelona, 1936" pamplet includes, among other things, an image of a hand-drawn map of the small town where the train waited for a few days. I'll finish here with one further passage from near the end of the novel; the scene is a large public gathering in Barcelona, in which speakers recount the difficult previous days and the hard time of struggle that waits ahead. This section of the novel includes interspersed lists of names of people in Spain who had died during the previous days of fighting. They could not be seen, they could not yet be heard; it was the cry advancing with them, its front advancing as their front rank came up, that made them known: a great female animal cry, victorious wail of spectators, the city acclaim of those on the edge and sympathetic, who still have throats to cheer, while those silent fighters pass between their lines. And now the "Internationale" sprang up, strange, in foreign inflections, as the Norwegians began to sing, changing the wordfall, the sound, almost the song itself. The Dutch, and the Hungarians; picked it up, unfamiliar, only the form carrying it through, the marching tune. The French were missing. But it reached the crowd of Belgians, the song came nearer, the great crying welcome to the army came, mixing, until the chorus became a crying greet: "C'est la lutte finale, "Groupon-nous, et demain," ...El directive de la C.N.T. Francisco Acaso, Eduardo Gorgot, José Biota, Javier Noguera, Alejandro Prodonis y Fuentes, Concepción Canet y Alcaráz, Vicente Vásquez, Salvador Guerrero, José González y Valencia, Enrique Arnau y Erude, Julián Gil y González... "L'Internationale..." Here! The first line of set faces, brackets of arms set in perpetual fist, red bands about the head, straight stony foreheads dark. "Sera le genre humain..." In a high sung note, praising, crying, speeding an army of unarmed men, who walked rope-soled, blankets slung at the shoulder, their women with them, a few, among them, a few, running beside in the blaze, past the shining confiscated roadsters, the homemade armored cars, the lines of spectators, and the Olympic lines who backed them, singing the unique song, finally arriving to the double English version, the English and Americans singing, welcoming, as the army passed; an army, not in the pathetic small battalions of the night before, but rounded up, strong in numbers, unshakeable, but barely clothed, barely helmeted, barely armed. They passed for minutes, the lines of soldiers, passing to a new phase of war. The city was strong now in its own defense; in a day, eferything would be running once more, the city would be held; but these were going to be the outer front. Almost exhausted by the internal battle, with the strenuous look of purity on their faces, they must be renewed to the next front. They must be renewed. They must be enough. * I've written about Muriel Rukeyser previously in this blog, <a href="2007/01/all-shimmering-names.html">here</a>, and <a href="2014/03/muriel-rukeysers-elegies.html">here</a>. There's a great deal of information and general background on the internet about the Spanish Civil War, with varying reliability. A good place to start is the website of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive, <a href=";. The Lincoln Brigade was the name taken by many of the volunteers from the United States who went to Spain to join the international struggle against the Fascist military invasion. The Lincoln Brigade website includes history, educational materials, current upcoming events related to study of the Spanish Civil War, links to other online sources, and other material. 2014/07/savage-coast.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lyle Daggett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12345339.post-9135190768110206370Wed, 16 Apr 2014 02:03:00 +00002014-04-15T21:03:19.840-05:00A few paragraphs from John BergerHere are a few paragraphs from the British Marxist art critic John Berger, from his essay "A Professional Secret," in his Selected Essays published 2001 by Vintage Books. Berger talks here primarily about some of his encounters with paintings, visual art; his comments surely are relevant to poetry writing and other creative work as well. I've read much of John Berger's writing over the years, mostly his art criticism and other essays, also his novel From A to X, which I loved. I often go to his writing when I need to clear my mind, sharpen my critical thought, step back and get some perspective on things. I've learned a great deal from Berger's work, about looking at art and looking at the world. In his essay "A Professional Secret," originally published in 1987, Berger begins by talking about a painting by Hans Holbein he wants to go and see in Switzerland (he's lived for many years in the foothills of the French Alps). He arrives in Berne, discovers the Holbein painting is in a different city in Switzerland, so he and his companion go and visit an art museum in Berne. He talks a little about painted Christian images of violence and brutality (depictions of Christian martyrs, the crucifixion, etc.) -- the contradictory nature of such images, such subject matter painted so beautifully -- and then he asks: "how can the brutal be made visibly acceptable?" Berger continues: The question begins with the Renaissance. In medieval art the suffering of the body was subservient to the live of the soul. And this was an article of faith which the spectator brought with him to the image; the life of the soul did not have to be demonstrated in the image itself. A lot of medieval art is grotesque -- that is to say a reminder of the worthlessness of everything physical. Renaissance art idealizes the body and reduces the body to gesture. (A similar reduction occurs in Westerns: see John Wayne or Gary Cooper.) [...] At the beginning of the nineteenth century Goya, because of his unflinching approach to horror and brutality, was the first modern artist. Yes those who look at his etchings would never choose to look at the mutilated corpses they depict with such fidelity. So we are forced back to the same question, which one might formulate differently: how does catharsis work in visual art, if it does? Berger then says, in effect, that catharsis doesn't work in art: "Paintings don't offer catharsis. They offer something similar, but different." Berger mentions several paintings in the museum, from the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century: Courbet, Monet, Braque, Klee, Rothko. Quoting Berger again:<b

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