The Library at Alexandria, and RCA Victor

Twice in two days someone said, in my house, "The Library at Alexandria." One was me, to Keith, in a conversation about how bad I should feel if I decide to dump all my 36 years' worth of saved papers and artifacts from the local and regional history of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Oh... I have stuff from five years before I joined, too, given to me by people who wanted to dump their collections, and knew I had one.

The next day, a friend was over talking to Marty and me and mentioned the mystery of what might've been in that library.

In the course of a long conversationa bout saved things, and lost things, I mentioned the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archives. Neither Marty nor Bo knew about it. I use it frequently.

Today, planning to send them a link to it, I was in looking to see where it's backed up, because we had talked about that, too. When I first knew about the Internet Archive, I read that it was at The Prisidio, in San Francisco, which doesn't seem geographically stable. I guessed that it might be backed up in Bouler or some high-plateau sort of facility. I was in there reading about the history of the Internet Archives and some courtroom commentary and uses, and saw, at the bottom, a link to the Official mirror of the Wayback Machine at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina . Huh!

Then I looked up the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and found that it's a real (and really big) place, built as close as they could figure or get to where the original library was. That seems like as bad an idea as storing the internet archives in San Francisco, which seems prone to fire, earthquake, mudslide and maybe tsunami. Being on a historic military compound won't save them from any of that. So the backup is where the LAST Alexandrian library sank into the swamp! Mediterranean! Or burned. Or gradually declined. But I had already read, by then, that there was a backup at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, or that that's where it all lives now, maybe.

The Wayback Machine is named after one on Rocky and Bullwinkle that sounded like that, but looked like WABAC. Rocky and Bullwinkle didn't time travel; they weren't in those segments. A boy named Sherman would be taken into history by Mr. Peabody, a dog. I found a list of their destinations, and was sad to see they didn't travel to the Library at Alexandria. They did visit Cleopatra. Amazon Prime will show that and two other adventures here, free with Amazon Prime, $1.99 otherwise, and probably unavailable to some portion of humans on earth, in 2013.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, tile art found while they were excavating to build the new library:

>

That looks plenty enough like this:

I know what the second dog is looking at, and listening to. WHAT is that gold mouse-hotel-looking thing the top dog is posed with? Another thing mentioned last night is how long gold lasts. In a fairly recent conversation with Will Geusz, we were talking about how long tile lasts, if you don't drop it and break it, because an artist has put some of my words on tile plaques (here).

Here's an image from a better angle, with explanation:
A Beautiful Mosaic in the New Library of Alexandria

So here's what I intended to send to Bo and Marty. The oldest stored version of my unschooling web page: http://expage.com/RadicalUnschooling. Marty was 11. He's 24 now.

Here's the page that hosts the Wayback Machine: archive.org

And in a related topic, also at the Internet Archive, people can upload sound files, and many of my conference presentations are there (if you search Sandra Dodd and maybe add unschooling). http://archive.org/details/BigNoisyPeace

Sheep to bus to play to Singapore to movie

Retronaut had a photo of "Sheep on the strand" (in London in 1923). One of the busses had an ad for "The Unfair Sex." I thought it might be a movie, but it wasn't... yet.

I googled "The Unfair Sex" and 1923, and found a newspaper article describing a production of the play in 1931, but it mentions ..."'The Unfair Sex,' the Savoy Theatre Success of 1925..."

You might need to click an "I agree" box to see it, but the site seems safe and stable.

The play, which had a character who was obsessed with films, was made into a silent movie in 1926. http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19310330.2.9.aspx I googled "The Unfair Sex" and 1923, and found a newspaper article describing a production of the play in 1931, but it mentions ..."'The Unfair Sex,' the Savoy Theatre Success of 1925..." (You might need to click an "I agree" box to see it, but the site seems safe and stable.)

The play, which had a character who was obsessed with films, was made into a silent movie in 1926. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017499/

Nita Naldi was one of the stars. Someone has created a web presence for her (her photo is on IMDB, and there's a beautiful website).

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I could have kept following trails. Some of that will stay in my mind, though, and the idea that something from the 1920's could have such a web presence says something interesting about the progress of the internet.

Put things online! Add to our shared wealth of information.

International incident, with ducks

Amsterdam, Australia, France... Netherlander ducks, Just Add Light and Stir, England and New Mexico, 85 years.

So... Julie Daniel sent me some photos to us in Just Add Light and Stir. This one would've have been legible at the small size I use for that blog, but I liked it, so I thought I should share it. Then I wondered what it's about. An act of kindness? Lack of dedication to one's nation? Sports! Conservation. Connections? Different readers will connect it to different things in their thoughts and lives.

I don't know where the sign exists (where Julie took the photo), and I don't know who loved the story enough to make sure money was spent on a sign that would be there a long time. Wikipedia says this, about that (and some other things):

Pearce won all of his races with relative ease. He defeated his first opponent Walter Flinsch of Germany by 12 lengths and his second opponent Danish rower Schwartz by 8 lengths. In the quarter final he was easily beating French opponent Saurin when a family of ducks strayed into his lane. Pearce momentarily stopped rowing to let the ducks pass; he still won by 20 lengths and broke the course record. In the semifinals, Pearce was pressed by David Collett of Great Britain, winning by three-quarters of a length (roughly 1.5 sec). In the finals he became the first Australian to win gold in the single sculls by defeating Kenneth Myers of the United States by 9.8 seconds. In winning he established a new Olympic record, some 25 seconds faster than the previous mark. This also earned him the Philadelphia Gold Cup, which represented the amateur champion of the world. He was awarded an Honorary Life Membership of the Sydney Rowing Club.

That was sweet, about the ducks. Had he lost the story would have a different tone. But he didn't have teammates to be angry about it; he was there alone. And he could've been even better prepared, but there were rules then that aren't now:

In preparation for the 1928 Olympics, Pearce attempted to enter the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta, but was barred as he was a carpenter by trade: the rule relating to amateur status then in force barred anyone "Who is or has been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or labourer." This socially discriminatory wording was deleted in 1937.

One thing leads to another!

Rum Tum Tugger hooks up

One of my favorite correpondents, Colleen Prieto, sent me this note:

Hi Sandra –

So I played Rum Tum Tugger in the lyrics game, and then I was sitting on the couch singing it along to myself.

Robbie right away asked “what is that song?? I LOVE it!!!!”

I pulled it up online so he could hear it sung better than he’d hear it from me :-) and I told him it’s from the musical Cats which I had gone to see when I was little. He wanted to know right away if we could go see the show. He went to see his first theater show (A Christmas Carol at a small local theater) just last weekend and now he’s ready for another and knows just what he wants the next one to be!

Hopefully we’ll be able to find it playing, maybe in Boston, in the near future. And until then, I’ve added a filmed DVD version to our Netflix queue which should be fun to watch.

A happy consequence of a fun game – we have something new and interesting to go and do together!

Colleen :-)

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Here's documentation of when Holly got to see Cats: http://sandradodd.com/eastyorkshire

Somewhere there's a photo of her posing with the make-up kit she bought at the theatre, with her face "catted up." I'm putting this note here in hopes that when I find the photo I'll bring it here.

A week ago, Holly and I saw Emma Fuller star as Annie in a Landmark production of that musical, in Albuquerque. Her mom, Beth, was in the company and played four parts. Emma is unschooled. Though Holly had seen her a couple of times this year, the last time I had been with Emma was in London in the summer of 2011. She was wearing a pink raincoat she had bought in Paris. In the musical, the Warbucks house provides Annie with a new coat, which she loves, and it was also pink, but fancier, and longer. But seeing her with that coat saying "I LOVE IT!" reminded me of her other pink coat, in London, not so far from where Holly and I saw Cats.

I could go on, connecting one thing to another. If you could, too, that will help you with lateral thinking—with your own learning, and that of people around you.

Keep your ideas bouncing in unpredictable directions! Let them spring and fly.

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NOTE: For years I ran a lyrics game on a blog, but eventually it was repetitive and we started getting World of Warcraft gold farmers' spam, and too much other spam, so I closed it. But the tricks and procedures I had honed keeping that blog up led directly to my ability create and maintain Just Add Light and Stir, which is my favorite project and is over two years old now.

I've started a page for song lyrics play on facebook, here: Lyrics Game, Goofin' with Songs

For any reader who doesn't have Rum Tum Tugger in mind already, here it is:

Æ and its last gasps

Æ or æ isn't a very good typewriter or computer letter, but in handwriting it was very pretty.

It's called "an ash," and has fallen out of English usage. When I was a kid I used to see it in archæology and æsthetics, but no more. And even in this font, it's coming through too small, and not taking it's proper width.

With half-spaces in a typewriter, it worked well to type Ælflæd (my SCA name) or Træskæg (our friend Sigmund Træskæeg / Marty Tuft's SCA name). You ended up back on track and the end, for having used two half-spaces.

At the grocery store near us is a sign on the door, so I see it often.

I pronounce it in my mind "eee-yay-it" but they intended for it to say "exit." Someone at a sign company discovered that character and assumed it was a fancy "X".

There are names still around that were once spelled with that letter. I think "Ælflæd" went out of style for a girls' name 700 years ago or so. :-) But Elsie is still around (Ælsie). Schuyler Waynforth has a daughter named Linnaea, and it should be, in a way of thinking, a six-letter word (Linnæa) rather than seven. That's more important for calligraphers than for anyone else.

For men's names one medieval and still rare name is Elvis (once Ælvis). Others still around are Albert and Edward (Ælbert and Ædward, back in the day).

A living language changes, and English is one of the liveliest and changingest languages of them all.

Here are some ways my SCA name has been written down: OH WAIT!! I posted this too early. I'm sorry. If you care, check back. Or look through scrolls here. I intend to cut and paste just the names from some of them, but it's going to take some photo manipulation time. http://sandradodd.com/duckford/award/scorpion
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/award/wow
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/award/augmentation
http://sandradodd.com/duckford/award/heartofthescorpion

Big, float, camera, Ecclesfield, hospital, national health...

A 1933 horse-drawn float that seems to be made of flowers. I thought "Rose Bowl"?

But I could see (even in the smaller image that was in the e-mail from Retronaut) "Ecclesfield." For all I know, there's an Ecclesfield, California. So I googled it. Found "Ecclesfield parade," and all in just seconds.

Ecclesfield is in South Yorkshire, near Sheffield. I read about hospital parades, which were held there from the 1890's to 1936, and looked back at the photo. I could see "Ecclesfield Parade," but there was another word on the left. I got a magnifying glass, and it says "Hospital."

Now I know how hospitals were funded before the National Health program, and I have more pictures in my head of England. Nice.

Hospital Parades

The link says they were paper and flour paste on a wire frame. I wonder what they did with them afterwards. Maybe left them at someone's farmyard until the weather dissolved them?

When I was a kid I worked on a float once. We were wiring paper flowers (paper napkins made flowerish with a fluffy fold and a piece of wire) to chicken wire. I suppose (never thought about it until today) that at the end of it all, they cut the wire off the truck, rolled it all up and took it to the dump.

One thought leads to another, if you let your thoughts gallump along. :-) Retronaut has sparked a LOT Of thought! Here's their entry (introduced in the e-mail): http://www.retronaut.co/2011/12/vintage-big Vintage Big. All they cared about was that it was a big camera, in an old photo. That's enough.

Ganesha and the Methodists

All this happened in a twelve-hour span...

I read a hymn in a new Methodist hymnal (and took notes so I could look it up). I knew the tune, so I could hear it in my head. The notable thing was that the text was pretty much a prayer asking God to help people reconcile faith and science, mystery and proof.

The tune I know it to is here (let the intro stuff go by before the real melody starts):



Here's another organist playing it, also informally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgbS42n_U8

Here's the arrangement and words I grew up with, from The Baptist Hymnal of 1956:



I can play that on the piano. I'm likely to make a few mistakes but it still feels good.

I read the new text while waiting for a Christmas concert Holly was in. It's called "Praise the source of faith and learning," by Thomas Troeger. The hymnal was The Faith we Sing, 2004.

Here are lyrics: http://faculty.samford.edu/~twwoolle/Praise%20the%20Source%20of%20Faith%20and%20Learning.htm "...lest we justify some terror with the antiquated creed" was the end of one verse. It's to the tune above.

That's Holly with the short hair in the front row, black dress with sleeves, above the first poinsettia.

This morning I checked the overnight/international e-mail. Hema Bharadwaj and I have been having an exchange about Ganesha, because Marty did his final project in an Eastern Religions class on how to set up an altar to Ganesha. Hema sent a link she liked about the origin of Ganesha and some regional variations and symbolism. The final paragraph is this:

Thus various symbols with potent metaphysical themes telescope into the form and narrative that is Ganesha. They speak a profound truth in a language that bypasses the rational mind and connects intuitively with the soul. It is this silent language that we – a generation bombarded with unsubtle ‘Breaking News’ – are longing perhaps to hear. That is why we are so drawn to him, going to the extent of turning him into celluloid cartoons and plastic China-made dashboard displays. And Ganesha does not mind, so long as we appreciate the realm of his mother, and aspire for the realm of his father. (http://devdutt.com/decoding-ganesha/)

His mother(Shakti/Pavarti) wants to accept life and death in the real world; his father (Shiva) would prefer a spiritual life of renunciation. Ganesha melds those, and understands both.

I was excited to read this on that page, too: " Ganesha’s rat may be depicted in films as a cute mouse but it is a bandicoot..." I was in India a month and didn't see a single monkey, but the last night, on the way to the airport, I saw something running in the raised, wide median between lanes on the highway in Mumbai. I saw more than one. In Albuquerque it might've been prairie dogs, living in the dirt next to a freeway, but it was nighttime and this wasn't Albuquerque. I'm glad I saw them, and I'm glad that Hema and Pardnya believed I had seen them, and said "bandicoots." So I didn't see monkeys, but I did see bandicoots (fleetingly), and now I understand why sometimes (in English) I read that Ganesha has a rat, and sometimes I read it's a mouse, because as far as I (and probably others in the western-English-speaking-world) knew, Crash Bandicoot was nothing more than a video game character.

I've seen Ganesha's rodential friend portrayed sleeping, pulling Ganesha in a chariot, giving him a ride on his back, playing chess with him... On a wikipedia discussion of symbolism, there was this statement: "Martin-Dubost notes a view that the rat is a symbol suggesting that Ganesha, like the rat, penetrates even the most secret places." That's kind of cool. In Christian parallel, that's like The Holy Spirit. Kind of.