This morning I went to my Greek class with my professor from last year, and it went reasonably well although I had forgotten to take along my grammar book and although she was speaking in Greek for much of the time.
Then I went to the bookshop where two books were bought by separate customers, one person returned a book since his children already had it, one lady chose a book and didn't buy it since the credit card machine wouldn't recognize that a chip existed in either of the two cards she tried, the post delivery man left a package for a neighbour, two gentlemen came in looking for a book I didn't have at hand, someone from the house management firm came by, I had dropped my key inside my purse so that I fished for it even though J. (who was guarding the shop) waved me through the open door, and last but not least, two or three plumbers went in and out to address a massive overflow into the cellar thanks in part to an ancient pipe. The plumber who explained what was wrong afterwards was polite to me, but obviously not impressed.
At home I had enough time to watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and then I was off to university again for a course in Byzantinian vernacular literature. By this point I had been up for almost twelve hours.
IMAGINE my surprise when I entered the class and, by and by, professors came in as well as the students. Since the professors were youngish and I thought that my professor may have shown up to provide moral support to a new teacher, it was a great surprise to me when I thought, 'Finally the professor has shown up,' and then he wrote out his name . . . and it was the name of the department head! It turns out that the first part of the lesson was allotted to an introductory event of the Greek faculty.
By this point I was incredibly grumpy, since I hate introductory events, cheerleading for upcoming university courses or semesters, and particularly being forcibly friendly and 'cool' with fellow students — when I think that the ideal relationship with a fellow student is to barely exchange a word during the entire year and then be happy to meet each other again by surprise. Besides I want to focus on the darned academic matter.
Anyway, the professors were introduced, we students were each supposed to say what our minor's programmes were, I refused to make eye contact and therefore got away with not answering; and then I had no chance to wriggle out of it when the department head asked us each to give a little background on ourselves, specifically why we were studying Greek (which is admittedly a reasonable question, but one whose answer is mostly boring for fellow students except if the answer is that one wishes to join a cult whose text is the untranslated New Testament). Besides I have to finish my essay and have no time for distractions!!! The structure of the bachelor's programme was elucidated, and then the professor contingent and the prelanguage course students left; and the actual class began after a short interval in which I read one of the most rebellious sections of the Autobiography of Malcolm X with a great deal of sympathy although my grievances were much more trivial.
As in a different course this morning and on Tuesday, because there are students in the incoming year who have actually gone to Greek schools and speak it amongst each other — whereas my classmates from last year wouldn't dream of it and like me exert themselves considerably to proffer two or three credible sentences at a time — some of the class was conducted in Greek!
As a person who sat in many a class where I inconveniently knew a little too much, like a German class in Canada and an English class in Germany, I did my best not to inconvenience my classmates or demand anything. I was bored and it didn't improve my working habits, but I dealt with it because otherwise I could have just knuckled down and learned extra grammar or whatever so that I could be put in a more difficult class. Besides I thought that some things would be new and in fact they were; and I don't think everything always goes the way one would like it and that it's useful to learn to handle that.
Such masochism should be widespread!
Anyway, as Mama also pointed out, the language immersion should be helpful. But it drives me mad that I, after only one year of language instruction, am being asked to keep up the same level as someone who has lived in Greece!!!
On Tuesday my saintlier reaction to this state of affairs was to begin listening to a Greek news video on a semi-daily basis again — not because I understand more than half of it but because it helps to have the language in one's ear. But today, muchly enraged, I surmised that I could passive-aggressively counterbalance the situation by coming in for extra help during my professor's office hour until the gaps of knowledge are closed and by taking up her time thusly practice a form of civil disobedience which neither Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, nor Mahatma Gandhi would likely recognize. Ge. and J. were not much impressed by this unsaintly notion, either, so I am just going to enjoy the idea of it.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
My Essay on the Moorish Science Temple, Part 2
Apologies in advance for the statistics salad which this part of the essay has become. I will undoubtedly have to condense and beautify it in the German-language version which I hand in. It is also subject to small changes as my research, er, finishes progressing.
THE FOUNDER AND PROPHET of the MSTA, Timothy Drew, was born in North Carolina, on January 8, 1886, by his own account. Greensboro is mentioned as his birthplace; it was a town of some 2,100 inhabitants at the time of the 1880 Census, with a long history of settlement including of the Quakers — First Lady Dolley Madison was born in present-day Greensboro in 1768 — and with its own War of Independence battle in 1781. During slavery it was a station on the Underground Railway; the abolitionist businessman Levi Coffin opened a Sunday school for slaves in 1821 which was however swiftly suppressed; during the Civil War, it was Confederate territory. Its population grew steadily; in 1910 it encompassed approximately 15,895 souls.
The south at the end of the 1800s was plagued by Jim Crow laws, segregation, and lynching,1 as it would continue to be until the 1950s. The Emancipation Proclamation had been passed in 1863, but so was the segregationalists' legal cornerstone Plessy v. Ferguson in the Supreme Court in 1889. There were serious miscarriages of justice, like the Scottsboro case in 1931. As far as voting rights were concerned, even in 1957 a Mississippi teacher — an African American — who tried to register to vote had obstacles set in his path. Then he was informed that the attention of the Ku Klux Klan had been drawn upon him, so he was under police protection for a time.2
There were continued attempts at procuring an education and establishing businesses, likewise in the north. Even before Booker T. Washington founded his National Negro Business League in 1900, there were thousands of African American businesses. Only two banks numbered amongst them, but by the end of the decade the quantity was 'nearly fifty.' A minuscule fraction of African Americans had also gone to college by 1899 (1,914 in the thirty-four black institutions and 390 in white ones, which included prestigious institutions like Bowdoin and Oberlin colleges; and women were among them). Newspapers proliferated and, in a few cases, had over a hundred thousand readers.
American culture of the turn of the century, and later, certainly facilitated the success of African Americans in the arts, if only in spotty fashion. Sidney Poitier, for instance, was only nominated for an Academy Award in 1958, after a lot of cinematic water had gone under the bridge.
THE FOUNDER AND PROPHET of the MSTA, Timothy Drew, was born in North Carolina, on January 8, 1886, by his own account. Greensboro is mentioned as his birthplace; it was a town of some 2,100 inhabitants at the time of the 1880 Census, with a long history of settlement including of the Quakers — First Lady Dolley Madison was born in present-day Greensboro in 1768 — and with its own War of Independence battle in 1781. During slavery it was a station on the Underground Railway; the abolitionist businessman Levi Coffin opened a Sunday school for slaves in 1821 which was however swiftly suppressed; during the Civil War, it was Confederate territory. Its population grew steadily; in 1910 it encompassed approximately 15,895 souls.
 |
| Photo: Drinking at "Colored" Water Cooler in Streetcar Terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (July 1939) By Russell Lee From Library of Congress, prob. public domain |
The south at the end of the 1800s was plagued by Jim Crow laws, segregation, and lynching,1 as it would continue to be until the 1950s. The Emancipation Proclamation had been passed in 1863, but so was the segregationalists' legal cornerstone Plessy v. Ferguson in the Supreme Court in 1889. There were serious miscarriages of justice, like the Scottsboro case in 1931. As far as voting rights were concerned, even in 1957 a Mississippi teacher — an African American — who tried to register to vote had obstacles set in his path. Then he was informed that the attention of the Ku Klux Klan had been drawn upon him, so he was under police protection for a time.2
There were continued attempts at procuring an education and establishing businesses, likewise in the north. Even before Booker T. Washington founded his National Negro Business League in 1900, there were thousands of African American businesses. Only two banks numbered amongst them, but by the end of the decade the quantity was 'nearly fifty.' A minuscule fraction of African Americans had also gone to college by 1899 (1,914 in the thirty-four black institutions and 390 in white ones, which included prestigious institutions like Bowdoin and Oberlin colleges; and women were among them). Newspapers proliferated and, in a few cases, had over a hundred thousand readers.
American culture of the turn of the century, and later, certainly facilitated the success of African Americans in the arts, if only in spotty fashion. Sidney Poitier, for instance, was only nominated for an Academy Award in 1958, after a lot of cinematic water had gone under the bridge.
Friday, October 12, 2012
My Essay on the Moorish Science Temple, Part 1
 |
| Current or former MST location in Chicago. Taken by Google Street View, April 2009 |
—David WalkerI DECLARE it does appear to me as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the privilege of believing—Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began—I say if God gives you peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation—would He be to us a God of Justice?
DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. "The Talented Tenth." in: Washington, Booker T., et al. The Negro Problem. Mobile Reference, 2009. Web. [Google Books]
—Barack ObamaIT'S not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
"Top 10 gaffes in presidential campaigns." SFGate.com. Web. 13 Oct. 2012. [http://www.sfgate.com/news/slideshow/Top-10-gaffes-in-presidential-campaigns-49242.php#photo-3472619]
***
If you seek out the places where the religious community Moorish Science Temple of America is or was once located, by present-day virtual means, you are often transported into disconsolate environments.
These tend to be urban ones: names of shops are painted onto signs and awnings by hand, the antiquish false fronts would fit perfectly into the Wild West, the street is fissured or seamed by dark tar strips, a quadrangle of grass grows where a house was torn down, old-fashioned sedans are parked alongside the road, in extreme cases the roof is dilapidated so that it must be drenched during rain, industrial terrain is immobile, windows of houses down the street are nailed shut with boards, and the shop or house itself has grates in front of the windows and door to ward off theft and violence. A casual search for an address in Pittsburgh leads to local news of three shooting deaths within two years in front of one bar, and one in Fayetteville in Georgia leads to a police blotter.
Therefore it seems, also if one reads of the history of the Temple, that to arrive at the truest picture of the origins and present state of the Moorish Science Temple's congregation, one must endeavour to understand its socioeconomic context, formerly and currently. Many aspects of the doctrine and mythology, and all of the internal politics, of the Temple will come short in this essay, also because even scholars dispute what information is fact and which fiction1; while Chicago is particularly focused upon since it can serve as a microcosm of the industrial north.
_______
Google Street View. Web. 7 Sept. - 13 Oct. 2012.
Sherman, Jerome L. "Does bar play a role in violence?". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 22 Nov. 2009. Web. 30 Sept. 2012.
"Rockdale Blotter - 10/29/10." Rockdale Citizen 28 Oct. 2010. Web. [http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/2010/oct/28/rockdale-blotter-102910/]
1 Even the year of the founder, Noble Drew Ali's, death varies depending on the scholar.
Pinn, Anthony B. Varieties of African American Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998. 215. Web. [Google Books]
The Illinois State Archives have a death record for "Timothy Drew" on July 20, 1929; and the African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender (the image is credited to a "Defender Staff Photographer"), apparently ran a photo of "Noble Drew Ali"'s funeral. The caption mentions that he was buried at Burr Oak cemetery, where his headstone bears the date "1929."
"Prophet Noble Drew Ali's funeral." Moorish Society. 4 Apr. 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2012. [http://moorishsociety.com/2012/04/04/prophet-noble-drew-alis-funeral/]
Illinois Statewide Death Index. Web. 2 Oct. 2012 [http://www.ilsos.gov/isavital/idphDeathSearch.do Search for "Drew" and "Timothy."]
"Noble Drew Ali." FindAGrave.com. 1 Feb. 2005. Web. 13 Oct. 2012. [Link]
So the year 1929 — not 1920 — seems plausible.
[P.S.: Really not so fond of the new MLA formating, which I am using for all my footnotes and which looks very different from what it did back in 2005 when I last applied it to university work.]
Monday, October 08, 2012
Notes From the Essay-Path
Last night I read the first part of a long history of Chicago's parks, particularly on the South Side, which I found extremely interesting and which has made me look at streets in a different way. Basically the idea is that the early magnates and city government of Chicago were privy to the fairly new arrangements of Haussmann in Paris, which served as an inspiration to the new streets; and that the same Frederick Law Olmsted who planned out Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn wanted to have boulevards as tree-beplanted 'tunnels' between parks. Since at that time the traffic was horsedrawn and pedestrian, the grandest boulevards seemed to consist of several different tracks; and it was only in the 1890s where asphalt and electric street lamps came into use. The question with the streets is how to arrange the drainage, prevent excessive strain on the surface, and stay aesthetically pleasing; for a while cedar wood paving was used on some roads and 'blast furnace slag' was one possibility for the gutters. The streets' forerunners were sometimes Native American trails, navigating through surer and less swampy soil, and one or two avenues which joined the park district later were pioneer plank streets. I liked the other trivia, too — that a gas lantern had 8 to 10 candlepower or something, whereas the electric lamp had 2000. Lastly, the park management on the West Side was clearly hugely corrupt, but at least in this report the management on the South Side looks highly respectable.
The whole point of the exercise is to have a contextual sense of urban development during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which may seem beside the point of my essay, but which isn't particularly as the socioeconomics which might bring forth religious groups are its focus. So I have read much more of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, for instance, but I don't think I will bring the Nation of Islam into the essay aside from mentioning that it is partially the legacy of the Moorish Science Temple's .
For the purposes of an essay it's self-defeating, but like during the last semester I keep on wondering what Truth is in relation to history. The basic question is, how can I write something which someone who is affected by the subject which I am writing about would recognize? I don't know all the time which facts are true and which are important. So I use instinct and I consult different sources from different perspectives in different disciplines. Obviously this takes longer, but I dislike feeling sloppy and mendacious.
Besides, I think that the principles and the historiographical ideas of the Moorish Science Temple are easily found enough, and that these are moreover fluid and open to interpretation by different followers and perhaps closed to interpretation by the skeptical outsider. The organization and its degrees of power don't interest me very much either, because they seem to me to be 'ersatz' for something else. So I want to take a very concrete approach, make something clear of the events like the Great Depression and the New Deal and the First World War, the formal and informal minutiae of segregation, and the evolution for instance of Chicago; perhaps something of the general religious foment if I manage to bring my investigation of the prominent branches of Christianity in the first half of the 20th century to a reasonable point; and still, I guess, in an authorial manner, capture some of the individual human drama.
In short, this is all overly ambitious, but it kind of sweeps one up in its breadth and historical momentum.
***
Anyway, right now I am at the bookshop, and it has been a quiet morning thus far. I went to sleep after 5 a.m. last night and woke up before 9 a.m., so I feel a little hollow-eyed. But this is definitely preferable to my original notion of remaining awake the entire night.
The whole point of the exercise is to have a contextual sense of urban development during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which may seem beside the point of my essay, but which isn't particularly as the socioeconomics which might bring forth religious groups are its focus. So I have read much more of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, for instance, but I don't think I will bring the Nation of Islam into the essay aside from mentioning that it is partially the legacy of the Moorish Science Temple's .
For the purposes of an essay it's self-defeating, but like during the last semester I keep on wondering what Truth is in relation to history. The basic question is, how can I write something which someone who is affected by the subject which I am writing about would recognize? I don't know all the time which facts are true and which are important. So I use instinct and I consult different sources from different perspectives in different disciplines. Obviously this takes longer, but I dislike feeling sloppy and mendacious.
Besides, I think that the principles and the historiographical ideas of the Moorish Science Temple are easily found enough, and that these are moreover fluid and open to interpretation by different followers and perhaps closed to interpretation by the skeptical outsider. The organization and its degrees of power don't interest me very much either, because they seem to me to be 'ersatz' for something else. So I want to take a very concrete approach, make something clear of the events like the Great Depression and the New Deal and the First World War, the formal and informal minutiae of segregation, and the evolution for instance of Chicago; perhaps something of the general religious foment if I manage to bring my investigation of the prominent branches of Christianity in the first half of the 20th century to a reasonable point; and still, I guess, in an authorial manner, capture some of the individual human drama.
In short, this is all overly ambitious, but it kind of sweeps one up in its breadth and historical momentum.
***
Anyway, right now I am at the bookshop, and it has been a quiet morning thus far. I went to sleep after 5 a.m. last night and woke up before 9 a.m., so I feel a little hollow-eyed. But this is definitely preferable to my original notion of remaining awake the entire night.
Saturday, October 06, 2012
A Poem on Fieldmouse Fodder
I wrote the original draft of this poem on November 26, 2008 and have thought of posting it several times because I like horse chestnut trees and it comes to mind sometimes when the seasons change. Some of these things are observed but I have no idea if fieldmice eat chestnuts. It's not a very good or original poem in my opinion, so I include it more for its atmosphere.
***
Its winding roots are dipped
into the clayey chilled soil
and the wetness of dark water
blooms and seeps around their threads;
grasping rock, enclosing pebble,
cleaving through the fundament.
Anchored there, the trunk swells stoutly,
rough and grey and boldly tall;
and grows athwart in hefty branches,
stalwart perches for a nest.
*
IN SPRING, its fuzzed and pale leaf-buds
curl up to the bald cool sky.
In summer, the palmeate rays of green
raise sprinkled towers of rose-flecked blossom
from these drift the lightsome petals
wandering over brooding grass;
and weigh with lazy dignity
in lonely clump on shadowed fields, —
or burst with power, a tree of life,
amidst the tomblike secluded domain
of some distressing cobbled yard.
In autumn, shrivelling as if by flame
of scorching sunsets, lit the world
as from a hidden fiery pool,
crowns of spikes, crowns of cruelly
slaughtered verdure;
spindly-tipped maces whose fresh green thorns
harden, whose casket breaks asunder,
whose milkwhite flesh grows soft and dies
as the dark-pearled nut
is unhusked and left to lie,
a treasure exposed,
to insects, fieldmice, squirrels, and men.
In winter, melancholy,
lofty twig and branch untenanted,
ordered flurry of raindark twigs,
gently scaled and bronzy tips
which promise much in coming springs,
and skeleton with tangled ribs
where birds alight, and hide, and sing.
***
Its winding roots are dipped
into the clayey chilled soil
and the wetness of dark water
blooms and seeps around their threads;
grasping rock, enclosing pebble,
cleaving through the fundament.
Anchored there, the trunk swells stoutly,
rough and grey and boldly tall;
and grows athwart in hefty branches,
stalwart perches for a nest.
*
IN SPRING, its fuzzed and pale leaf-buds
curl up to the bald cool sky.
In summer, the palmeate rays of green
raise sprinkled towers of rose-flecked blossom
from these drift the lightsome petals
wandering over brooding grass;
and weigh with lazy dignity
in lonely clump on shadowed fields, —
or burst with power, a tree of life,
amidst the tomblike secluded domain
of some distressing cobbled yard.
In autumn, shrivelling as if by flame
of scorching sunsets, lit the world
as from a hidden fiery pool,
crowns of spikes, crowns of cruelly
slaughtered verdure;
spindly-tipped maces whose fresh green thorns
harden, whose casket breaks asunder,
whose milkwhite flesh grows soft and dies
as the dark-pearled nut
is unhusked and left to lie,
a treasure exposed,
to insects, fieldmice, squirrels, and men.
In winter, melancholy,
lofty twig and branch untenanted,
ordered flurry of raindark twigs,
gently scaled and bronzy tips
which promise much in coming springs,
and skeleton with tangled ribs
where birds alight, and hide, and sing.
Thursday, October 04, 2012
Live-Blog of the Pacified Ogre
To be honest, I'm not working on my essay intensely today, since I feel scatter-brained and like my concentration needs a rest. I have a bad conscience, but I want this to be a 'complete' essay and for that I want to keep researching different aspects and keeping a thoughtful pace until everything falls into place. Besides, I want to be accurate and not lie about anything except if all of my sources are at fault and so there's no way I could know that it's untruthful. Anyway, this should be a leisurely live-blog.
1:09 a.m. I'm foraying into general American religious life in the early 20th century and have discovered a census from 1951 which lists denominations, the numbers of their churches or synagogues or other houses of worship, and the numbers of their members. Now I'm looking up the churches which were listed on Wikipedia. I expect some invigorating sensationalist reading; some of the first words I read were "speaking in tongues." It is really fun to be reading about a subject for a long time and partly overcoming pretty dry texts, and then to start reading tidbits which are as stimulating and striking as anything fictitious.
1:36 a.m. "Eschatological." I've seen it before and have no idea what it means.
1:38 a.m. "The wicked will not suffer eternal torment in hell, but instead will be permanently destroyed." Merciful Heavens!
1:42 a.m. Note to self: must read New Testament to see if Jesus in fact cared what clothes people wore.
2:49 a.m. Washing of feet! (Not mine; it's a practice within the church I'm reading about.) The "anointing of oil" also reminds me of the anecdote, courtesy an old New York Review of Books article, about the ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft, a ceremony, and vegetable shortening. Or, indirectly, about the time my mother taught Sunday School and we made a tincture of hyssop steeped in alcohol. I was wondering why I couldn't remember the sermons in the church, and now I realize that it was because I wasn't always in the room then; I was in the basement with my age peers learning about the trinity or about Lazarus instead, in an ecumenical way since I'm baptized Catholic and the church was Protestant. (Obviously I'm in a reminiscent mood.)
3:38 a.m. Snake-handling.
4:16 a.m. Re. eschatology: oh.
5:09 a.m. I'm tired and will thus go to bed soon. (c:
1:09 a.m. I'm foraying into general American religious life in the early 20th century and have discovered a census from 1951 which lists denominations, the numbers of their churches or synagogues or other houses of worship, and the numbers of their members. Now I'm looking up the churches which were listed on Wikipedia. I expect some invigorating sensationalist reading; some of the first words I read were "speaking in tongues." It is really fun to be reading about a subject for a long time and partly overcoming pretty dry texts, and then to start reading tidbits which are as stimulating and striking as anything fictitious.
1:36 a.m. "Eschatological." I've seen it before and have no idea what it means.
1:38 a.m. "The wicked will not suffer eternal torment in hell, but instead will be permanently destroyed." Merciful Heavens!
1:42 a.m. Note to self: must read New Testament to see if Jesus in fact cared what clothes people wore.
2:49 a.m. Washing of feet! (Not mine; it's a practice within the church I'm reading about.) The "anointing of oil" also reminds me of the anecdote, courtesy an old New York Review of Books article, about the ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft, a ceremony, and vegetable shortening. Or, indirectly, about the time my mother taught Sunday School and we made a tincture of hyssop steeped in alcohol. I was wondering why I couldn't remember the sermons in the church, and now I realize that it was because I wasn't always in the room then; I was in the basement with my age peers learning about the trinity or about Lazarus instead, in an ecumenical way since I'm baptized Catholic and the church was Protestant. (Obviously I'm in a reminiscent mood.)
3:38 a.m. Snake-handling.
4:16 a.m. Re. eschatology: oh.
5:09 a.m. I'm tired and will thus go to bed soon. (c:
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