The Amazon statement reads: "Our contract to sell Bloomsbury titles was scheduled to expire last year. We extended the contract under its current terms several times in an effort to reach an agreement, but despite our best efforts over the last seven months, Bloomsbury has refused to engage in a good faith negotiation to discuss a new contract to sell their titles in our store. Unfortunately, the latest extension expires at midnight on the 23rd January and after that time, Amazon will no longer be able to sell Bloomsbury print books in the UK, Europe, and Australia, or Bloomsbury Kindle books worldwide.

From The Bookseller

Amazon did this to Hachette, which led to a convoluted lawsuit that ended in 2014.

You should read this for 4/02/2023:

Art, Music, and Film

Inside the Fan-Powered Push for a Bigger Extended Edition of Lord of the Rings Hardcore Tolkien fans have learned over the last 20 years of a huge treasure trove of scenes from these films that have never been publicly released, and now an alliance of online personalities, podcasters and educators are organizing in the hopes of a Second Extended Edition being released with the 25th anniversary of the films.

History and Archaeology

The Shaman's Secrets

The ideology of 1930s Germany helped shape scholars’ initial interpretation of the grave. Discovered barely a year and a half after the Nazis took power, politics quickly became enmeshed in the skeleton’s story. Archaeologists were a fundamental part of Adolf Hitler’s nation-building program, which sought to locate physical evidence of the original Aryans, who the Nazis believed were blond-haired and blue-eyed and came from northern Europe.

Yes, of course, the Nazis got it pretty much completely wrong. Subsequent examination of the bones and artifacts revealed that the adult was a woman, from the Mesolithic era, much earlier than the Nazis asserted. Later excavation of the original site garnered far more data and material, including enough for modern DNA analysis. The adult woman was possibly a shaman, and positively someone important to her community, even generations later. Read the article; it's detailed, reasonable and well documented.

Technology

My impossible search for the best, most powerful, most private journaling app ever

I started out looking for a way to keep a digital journal. I ended up trying to figure out what it means to have a space of my own online — and whether an app can be both good and responsible.

Women’s Work

Indigenous elder removed from Barack Obama event for being ‘too difficult’

“I am 78 years of age. I have never been treated or spoken to in this way in the past. I do not want this to be a reflection on President Obama. I am a leader of the Wurundjeri Nation. I asked to be treated as an equal.”

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Nathan Lane Says Robin Williams Stepped In To 'Protect' Him From Being Outed On 'Oprah'

Something Wonderful

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, the Largest Medieval Map Still in Existence (Circa 1300) High resolution scans allow you to thoroughly examine the map, depicting one medieval concept of the known world.

Buy me a Coffee! If you find this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.

I never knew my paternal grandfather. He died long before I was born. My grandfather was born in Germany, and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. One of the things he taught my father was how to weave paper stars, as Christmas ornaments, out of four strips of paper.

The stars are known by all sorts of names; Folded Paper Stars, German Stars or German Star Ornaments, Swedish Stars, Froebel's Stars, Christmas Stars, Origami Stars, Star Ornaments, Ribbon Star. You'll sometimes see them called Moravian stars; they aren't (that's a different kind of star). In Germany, they were often made of tin. The stars were created, initially, by a German educator Friedrich Fröbel (April 21, 1782–June 21, 1852). Fröbel invented the idea (and the word) behind the modern concept of a kindergarten, and was deeply committed to early childhood education as crucial in the eventual production of well-educated adults. He was keenly interested in, and promoted, the idea of learning via active engagement, and play. The stars were part of that; they actively teach a number of basic geometric and mathematical concepts.

My father used to make these every year at Christmas, and came up with a number of different versions involving small variations. They're one of my fondest memories of my father. There are all sorts of videos on YouTube showing how to make the stars, as well as instructions about how to make them on the Web; I've linked to a few below. It's a good idea to practice using plain paper first; it can take a bit to get the hang of making the stars. Once you understand the basic method, try using two colors of paper, or try different kinds of points, or using ribbon. I've made stars that were a foot or more across, as well as stars that are smaller than an aspirin.

Here's one site about making German stars; here's another that's a downloadable, printable .pdf. Here are two YouTube videos: video 1, video 2.

The New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado is best known for their Fat Tire amber. But New Belgium makes a lot of beer as one of the first generation of commercially distributed American craft breweries, going all the way back to 1991; it's now the third largest craft brewery in the United States. Their second most recognized beer was the second one released; New Belgium Abbey Ale.

New Belgium Abbey Ale is a Belgian dubbel (that's double in English) style beer. It's called an “Abbey” beer because Abbey Ale’s creation was inspired by the beers brewed at Trappist monasteries in Belgium and the Netherlands. In an innovation started in the early 1800s, these beers are fermented twice, once in the cask and then again in the bottle (sometimes called “bottle conditioned”). In Belgium, such beers often include kettle-heated caramelized sugar, and they're always a higher ABV. This particular Belgian dubbel began as the first home-brewed beer of brewer and New Belgium co-founder, Jeff Lebesch, and he continued to improve it after opening New Belgium.
New Belgium’s Abbey Ale is a 7% ABV, made with six different malts, and a Belgian yeast strain. It's a dark brown, with lovely copper highlights in the glass, and a decent head. The aroma is mouthwatering—brown bread, caramel and chocolate, and it's a close parallel to the taste; the hops are there, and give it some body, but the final impression is one of caramel and chocolate, and quite lovely. It makes me want to pair it a really crusty, chewy whole grain bread. I'm not alone in my positive reactions to this beer: it's won four World Beer Cup medals and eight medals at the Great American Beer Festival. Beer Advocate is unusually positive, giving it an A- rating.

Abbey Ale is a beer that just cries out for food pairing. I note that the New Belgium Website suggests pairing it with chocolate, and I concur, notes that it works well as a dessert on its own merit, which again, I completely agree with, but I would also suggest a very coffee ice cream, possibly a mocha-coffee offering.

I was thinking of this beer, which I first tried ten years ago, and am sad to see that it’s not longer being brewed. New Belgium Abbey Ale was retired in 2020.

An earlier version of this post first appeared on Beer Report.

New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado began as a local brewery.  Co-Founder and brewer Jeff Lebesch spent time in 1989 riding a mountain bike with “fat tires”through Belgium, sampling the beers as he went. Inspired by the experience, the beers, and the Belgian malts, hops, and yeast, Lebesch returned to Fort Collins and began home brewing Belgian style beers. His first beers were a brown Trappist-inspired dubbel (later known as Abbey), and an amber that eventually became New Belgium’s flagship brew, Fat Tire. Lebesch, trained as an electrical engineer, turned his engineering know-how to brewing, creating a home-brewery in his basement using recycled dairy equipment. His beers were received extremely well, after a bit of tinkering, by friends, relatives and family members.

In 1991, Lebesch and his spouse Kim Jordan opened up New Belgium Brewery. Jordan served as distributor, marketer, and art director, convincing a neighbor, Ann Fitch, to create water colors to serve as the labels for New Belgium brews. New Belgium, with Fat Tire and Abbey, began to sell the first commercial Belgian style beers in the U.S. As the brewery grew, Jordan and Lebesch added another brewer, Brian Callahan, and began to create an employee-owned brewery by making Callahan a part owner. All employees after a year at New Belgium begin to accrue. When Jordan New Belgium brewery to Little World Beverages (Japan’s Kirin beer’s parent corporation) in 2019, they had 100% employee equity.

New Belgium has continued to create new beers, including seasonals, and slowly increased distribution; they are now the third largest craft brewer in the U.S. They are also one of the greenest, since they use the methane that’s a side product of their brewing, as well as wind power, to provide substantial amounts of their electricity.
One of the reasons that New Belgium beers have been so very recognizable right from the start has been the label art by Ann Fitch. In fact, I suspect that New Belgium may have been influential in terms of establishing the “craft brew look” in terms of bottle labels and branding. I’m a little surprised (and sad) that that they’ve changed many of their labels to a more austere style. I miss the old labels.

An earler version of this post originally appeared on Beer Report.

On March 22 2020, Sir Patrick Stewart posted on Instagram a video of himself reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 119 “Let not marriage . . ..” The reception was so enthusiastic that on March 23 Stewart posted again:

I was delighted by the response to my posting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. It has led me to undertake what follows. When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn’t much) and as she put it in front of me she would say: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How about, “A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away”? So…here we go: Sonnet 1.

Stewart has thus far proceeded to post a sonnet a day; as I write this on March 26, Stewart has posted sonnet 4 “Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend . . . ”.

As many have noted since the lock-downs and self-isolation of COVID-19 in 2020, Shakespeare’s life was marked by various incursions of the plague. Shakespeare was christened on April 26, 1564, at the Stratford Parish church; by July of that year the town, like most of England, was ravaged by bubonic plague. Waves of plague affected England all of Shakespeare’s life, resulting in multiple closures of the London theaters, in an effort to practice what we are calling “social distancing.” The theaters were closed in February 1564, the year Shakespeare was born, in 1593, in 1603–1604 the theaters closed for 11 months, again in July of 1606 (when Shakespeare was occupied with King Lear), and in 1608.¹

The summer of 1592 is almost certainly when Shakespeare wrote his long poem Venus and Adonis, published in 1593 when theaters were still closed because of the plague. That Shakespeare was acutely aware of the plague is clear from this passage of Venus and Adonis:

“Long may they kiss each other for this cure.
O never let their crimson liveries wear,
And as they last, their verdour still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year,
   That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
   May say the plague is banished by thy breath” (Venus and Adonis ll. 505–10)

Stephen Greenblatt theorizes that the sonnets were largely written during the summer of 1592, when the theaters had been closed first because of concerns regarding social unrest, and later, in 1593, because of plague. It is thus particularly appropriate, perhaps, to turn to Shakespeare’s sonnets for consolation during 2020, the year of the Coronavirus, COVID-19.

I have for several years been working my own way through Shakespeare’s sonnets, making notes and annotating them as I read, and incororating scholarship. This began as part of the preparation for my Ph.D. qualifying exams, continued as an aide to teaching, and then simply became an enjoyable meditative habit. Stewart has inspired me to try put all my notes in coherent order.

1. Regarding the history of King Lear’s composition and initial performances, see the excellent 1606: A Year of Lear by James Shapiro.

Peter Ackroyd. The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend. Thomas Malory.
Adapted by Peter Ackroyd. (Viking. November 10, 2011). ISBN: 978-0670023073

Ackroyd, perhaps best known for his door-stopper fictionalized biography of Charles Dickens, has turned his hand to Malory’s compilation of Arthurian tales. Malory created his compilation/re-telling of various Arthurian texts while in prison. He used a number of sources, both French and English, to create his work (though Ackroyd only refers to Malory’s French sources). Malory’s title was The hoole booke of kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table but when William Caxton printed Malory’s work in 1485, he referred to the entire collection with the attention-grabbing title of the last part; Le Morte Darthur.

Ackyroyd says his intention in this “translation,” as he calls it is

to convert Malory's sonorous and exhilarating prose into a more contemporary idiom; this is a loose, rather than punctilious, translation.

In fact, what Ackroyd has done is to butcher Malory’s prose, and insert entire sentences into the text, drastically changing the story. For instance, here’s the opening of the first book in Malory’s version, which delineates the circumstances of Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon’s attraction to Igraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall.

It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the Duke of Tintagel. And so by means King Uther sent for this duke, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine.

So when the duke and his wife were come unto the king, by the means of great lords they were accorded both. The king liked and loved this lady well, and he made them great cheer out of measure, and desired to have lain by her. But she was a passing good woman, and would not assent unto the king. And then she told the duke her husband, and said, I suppose that we were sent for that I should be dishonoured; wherefore, husband, I counsel you, that we depart from hence suddenly, that we may ride all night unto our own castle. And in like wise as she said so they departed, that neither the king nor none of his council were ware of their departing.

And here’s what Ackroyd makes of it:

In the old wild days of the world there was a king of England known as Uther Pendragon; he was a dragon in wrath as well as in power. There were various regions in his kingdom, many of them warring one against another, and so it came about that one day he summoned a mighty duke to his court at Winchester. This noblman was of Cornwall, and he was called Duke of Tintagel; he reigned over a western tribe from the fastness of his castle on the rocks, where he looked down upon the violent sea. Uther Pendragon asked the duke to bring with him to court his wife, Igraine, who had the reputation of being a great beauty. She was wise as well as beautiful, and it was said that she could read the secrets of any man’s heart on the instant she looked at him.

When the duke and his wife were presented to the king, he rose from his throne and invited them forward with open arms. “Come,” he said, “embrace me. This dragon will not bite.” They were treated with all possible courtesy and honour by the whole, court, but the lady Igraine had seen into the king's dark heart. She knew well enough that he wanted to violate her. He looked at her with lust and cunning. The moment came when he took her by the shoulders and whispered something in her ear. She shook her head, disgusted, and broke away from him. She went to her husband at once and told him what had occurred. He was enraged, so angry that he smashed his fist against one of the tapestries that lined the wall of the great palace. “We were summoned here to be dishonoured,” he said. “I will never submit to that. Pride is the essence of knighthood.”

This isn’t a translation, or really, even a retelling; it’s a hack-job. The prose is crude, without any vigor or life. The characterization and subtlety of Malory’s narration and dialog have been flattened, and the circumstances of the episodes altered in telling ways. Ackroyd has introduced his own reading in a particularly annoying flat-footed and didactic fashion; his take on the character of Uther is fairly typical of his tendency to iron out any subtleties.

Ackroyd appears to be the textual equivalent of a tone-deaf musician. For instance, where Malory says of Morgan Le Fay “And the third sister Morgan le Fay was put to school in a nunnery, and there she learned so much that she was a great clerk of necromancy.” Ackroyd gives us “Igraine’s third daughter, Morgan le Fay, was put into a nunnery where she learned the mysteries of the magic stone as well as other secret arts.” The “magic stone” is entirely Ackroyd’s invention. The farther you read, the more Akroyd wrenches the story, and the prose, out of all recognition. If you’re a fan of Akroyd’s other work, then by all means, read this, but don’t read it thinking you’re reading a translation of Malory. You’re reading Akroyd’s take on Malory’s take on the matter of Britain.

Rather than look to Ackroyd’s book for a modernized Malory, I’d look to John Steinbeck’s masterful re-telling. Steinbeck never finished his version; his re-telling stops at the beginning of the love affair between Lancelot and Guenivere, but it’s still well-worth reading. While Steinbeck was thinking of his audience as young boys and teens, from ten on, the writing is not at all dumbed down, and Steinbeck has made these tales as much his as Malory's, without turning them into heavy-handed toneless prose. The collection of letters between Steinbeck and his editor and others about the book at the end are interesting in that they reflect Steinbeck’s desire to due justice to Malory’s language and style, while making the stories live for younger readers.

If you’re not interested in Steinbeck’s re-telling, I heartily endorse Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy. Stewart has adroitly produced a genuine retelling (though one based on Monmouth more than Malory), with all the skill at story telling and prose that Ackroyd’s ham-fisted rendition lacks. Malory’s prose is really not that difficult; you can easily find modern editions of the version printed by William Caxton, or one based on the Winchester manuscript, which was probably used by Caxton, with revision. Do take a look at The Malory Project “an electronic edition and commentary of Malory’s Morte Darthur (1469-70), with digital facsimiles of the Winchester Manuscript (British Library, Add. MS 59678) and John Rylands Copy of Caxton’s first edition” is an ongoing project, and worth keeping an eye on.

Peter Ackroyd. The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend. Thomas Malory.
Adapted by Peter Ackroyd. (Viking. November 10, 2011). ISBN: 978-0670023073

I received a digital ARC for review of Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind via Netgalley; I confess that I am somewhat astonished by the official description of the book, provided by the publisher, Scribner:

From the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time, comes a portrait of Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare’s most complex and compelling anti-heroes—the final volume in a series of five short books about the great playwright’s most significant personalities: Falstaff, Cleopatra, Lear, Iago, Macbeth.

As the description notes, this is the fifth book in a series by Bloom wherein he examines characters in Shakespeare’s plays. The previous volumes explored the personalities of Falstaff, Cleopatra, Lear, and Iago. In this volume, Bloom works his way through Macbeth, quoting great swathes of the text, summarizing the plot and paraphrasing freely while concentrating on the personality and character of Macbeth as Bloom perceives him. Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind is not so much a critical study, or even a character analysis, as it is Bloom’s personal meditation on the character of Macbeth, with occasional asides regarding Lady Macbeth and other characters. It might have been subtitled “What Macbeth Means to Me By Harold Bloom.”

Bloom is a respected academic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale. He is perhaps best respected for his books regarding Romanticism, and for his popular books about the nature of the English canon and literary analysis. Bloom is not generally regarded by Shakespearean scholars as “the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time”; he is not in fact, even cited very often. In short, Bloom isn’t someone to rely on for accurate commentary or analysis of Shakespeare, which is why a statement like this from Blooms’ Authors Note is a cautionary flag:

In some places I have restored what I believe to be Shakespeare’s language, whenever I judge traditional emendations to be in error (Author’s Note)

Bloom does tend to point out where he has “restored” Shakespeare, which is good, but his restorations are not. As an example, in Act I vii, the final scene of Act one, one of the standard passages memorized by school children and actors for auditions, shown here from the text of the A. R. Braunmuller’s New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of Macbeth:¹

MACBETH
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly. If th’ assassination
Could trammel up the consequence and catch
With his surcease, success, that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all – here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come (Act I vii).

Bloom notes:

The ‘bank and shoal’ is an emendation which I am reluctant to accept. Shakespeare’s word is ‘schoole’ and ‘this bank’ is probably a bench (Chapter 2)

The reason that shoal is a standard orthographic correction (not an emendation, a change in spelling) is that it makes sense, and it is supported by contemporary documents which also spell shoal as schoole. See for instance Braunmuller’s note 6 in his edition of Macbeth:

6 bank and shoal sand-bank (or river bank) and shallow. F’s ‘Banke and Schoole’ could also be modernised as ‘bench and school’; OED defines ‘bank’ (= bench) as referring to the seat of justice, the mountebank’s stage, or the rower’s bench (OED Bank sb2 1–3), but does not define ‘bank’ as ‘school bench’. ‘Schoole’ is a well-attested form of ‘shoal’ in the period. Although Macbeth soon mentions ‘instructions’ and ‘justice’ (which might be anticipated in ‘school’ and ‘bench’), the phrase seems more likely to be a characteristic Shakespearean near-redundancy, treating time as a river: Macbeth momentarily halts time’s flow by standing on a shoal or by grasping the bank. See Mahood, p. 24.[ref] (A. R. Braunmuller. “Commentary notes for Act I, Scene vii” Note 6[/ref]

One of the troubling aspects of Bloom’s preference for reading school instead of schoal is Bloom’s naïvete regarding his reference to “Shakespeare’s word.” We don’t have Shakespeare’s word; what we have is the printed edition of the 1623 First Folio; not an autograph MS. Even the various extant first folios are not identical; there are numerous small variations as each folio was typeset by hand one page at a time. Moreover, the text of Macbeth as represented in the Folio, is probably derived from a Jacobean playhouse script, not from the pen of Shakespeare (A. R. Braunmuller “Note on the Text”).
Another troubling aspect of Bloom’s reading are the personal idiosyncrasies of his interpretation of Macbeth the man. For instance, Bloom’s declaration that

There are verbal hints throughout the play that Macbeth’s ardor is so intense that he climaxes too soon, each time he carnally embraces his wife (Chapter 2)

That’s at best a personal interpretation; while there might be textual support for his assertion, Bloom doesn’t provide it. Nor does he provide an explanation regarding why an inference about premature ejaculation reflects on Macbeth's character. This kind of declaration is typical of Bloom’s reading of the play and of the character Macbeth. He tells us how he views Macbeth, but he doesn’t support his conclusions with evidence from the play.

Later, regarding Act II ii, just after Macbeth has murdered King Duncan, Macbeth reports to Lady Macbeth:

MACBETH
I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
LADY MACBETH
I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry (II ii 14–15).

Bloom asserts, without any support, that

The crickets are familiars of the witches (Chapter 3)

This is tossed off casually, but there is no support for this in the text; while there are contemporary documents from the sixteenth century asserting that flies are familiars, there are no such references to crickets. Moreover, none of the editions I have checked suggest that the crickets are the witches’ familiars; there is no textual support, or indeed, any need or reason to make such an assumption. This is another of the many instances where Bloom offers a personal interpretation that isn’t supported by his text or that of the play, and that honestly, does nothing to enhance understanding of the Macbeth the character or Macbeth the play.

This is not a book to offer a reader who is not fairly familiar with Macbeth. I am not sure who really is the intended reader; as it stands, the book isn’t scholarly nor is it very engaging unless you are terribly interested in Bloom’s personal take on Macbeth. I wouldn’t recommend Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind to students since it is at best an idiosyncratic interpretation of Shakespeare, one which is thinly tied to the play but closely tied to Bloom’s own thoughts about the play. There are better books about Shakespeare, beginning with a good edition of the play, or even one of the many filmed performances, if live theater isn't an available option.

Bloom, Harold. Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind (Shakespeare’s Personalities Book 5). Scribner (April 2, 2019). ISBN: 1501164252.

1. Braunmuller, A. R. Ed. Macbeth (The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd. Edition 2008; reprinted 2011. ISBN: 13-978-0-521-68098. Subsequently referred to as A R. Braunmuller.

Guinness was the first stout I ever had, before I even knew what stout was. I’ve loved Guinness from the very first sip in Boston. Guinness is known for its dark color in contrast to the lighter foam, but Guinness is not really as dark as you might think. Guinness is really a dark amber, closer to red than black. While Guinness is not, technically, a meal in a glass, it does seem like it ought to be; Guinness is very filling.

Guinness is also very firmly fixed in the minds of Americans with Irish ancestry as one of the quintessential Irish totems. Although Guinness was originally Arthur Guinness’ brewery, first in Leixlip, Ireland, then, in 1759, he moved to Dublin, and the St. James’s Gate Brewery, it is now longer Irish-owned. Guinness is now one of the many breweries and distillers owned by Diageo PLC. One of Diageo’s greatest assets is the St. James Gate Brewery—Arthur Guinness, way back in 1759, had the exceedingly good sense to sign a 900 year lease for the property. 

Guinness is International

Since 2005 all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland is brewed at St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin—but that’s just one of many breweries all over the world, on several different continents, including North America (since 2000), and Africa. While Guinness is more popular than ever in the U.S., it has declined in favor in the beer’s native Ireland. I should mention that the Diageo corporation also owns Harp lager, which is second only to Guinness in terms of associations in the U. S. with Irish beer. 

The Guinness you drink in the U.S. is not the Guinness you drink elsewhere; there are several different varieties, presumably designed to suit national beer preferences. The bottled Guinness is Guinness Extra Stout, while the others are simply Guinness. The Extra Stout is brewed with more roast barley and isn’t quite as mellow as Guinness, and, when compared in a clear glass, is a bit more reddish in color. In Nigeria, where barley is not allowed as an import, the Guinness is made with sorghum. 

Draught Guinness in the U.S. is 4.2% abv. Bottled Guinness in the U.S. is an “Extra Stout” and 6% abv. You will notice that cans and bottles of Guinness in the U.S. often have a little plastic widget in them. That’s an attempt, and a fairly successful one, to implement the effect of the nitrogen fueled kegs. It means that when the Guinness is opened, beer and nitrogen, trapped in the widget, are forced out through the rest of the beer as you pour it into a glass (yes, of course, you drink Guinness from a glass!) producint the striking creamy head that’s expected from Guinness.

The Black-and-Tan

It’s a very common thing to order a “Black-and-Tan.” In the U.S., at some bars, this is regarded as a request for half Bass Pale ale, and half Guinness. I’m here to tell you that is heresy. Or at least not standard in Ireland, where typically a “Black-and-Tan” is Harp lager and Guinness. In some cases, you’ll hear this identified as a “All Guinness Black-and-Tan,” since the same brewery makes Harp lager and Guinness. That said, Bass Ale and Guinness is not a bad thing at all, but it is more properly identified as half-and-half. 

Now that you know the Right and Proper Way to have a Black-and-Tan, you need to know about Guinness and good chocolate. Guinness and chocolate are absolutely fabulous together; mind now, it needs to be a very good 70% or so cacao dark chocolate. I heartily endorse Guinness and really good chocolate ice cream, and Guinness and really good chocolate brownies; particularly brownies made with Guinness. Do use at least Ghirardelli or similar quality chocolate for this; you really will be pleased. There’s nothing wrong with buying a bar of the right sort of chocolate, and chopping it into bits for easier melting.

Guinness on Draft: The Proper Pull

Now then—and this is where we enter personal preferences—Guinness is best on draft. It just is. If you can’t get Guinness on draft, then look for the Guinness Extra Stout in the bottle. If you are drinking draft Guinness, then note that there’s a special technique to pulling Guinness. The barkeep will fill the glass, most of the way, but not completely, then set it aside. This is to let it “settle.” it is as vital a step for draft Guinness as breathing is for red wine. A moment or so later, the barkeep will finish the pull, leaving you with the rich creamy head that Guinness is known for, in stark contrast to the dark beer below. This is because Guinness on draft, like a few others (Murphy’s Irish, and Boddingtons, for instance) is kegged with and carbonated with nitrogen; that means smaller bubbles, and that means that the beer cascades (more like a waterfall than a fountain—the bubbles sink, rather than rise) when it's poured into a glass. If after your first swig—neither a sip nor a gulp—you do not notice a ring, then something has gone terribly terribly wrong. Note that when you have drunk the first two thirds of your Guinness, you are expected to order the second; Guinness only travels in pairs. 

An earlier version of this post appeared on Beer Report.

Iceland is not a huge country, but it has a millennia long rich literary history, beginning with the Old Norse Sagas. Everybody in Iceland reads, and everyone buys books, and just about half of the people of Iceland have written (and often self-published) books. Every year, there’s a traditions of Jólabókaflóð, or “Yule Book Flood,” a reference to the national Icelandic practice of giving books to friends and family, who then spend Christmas Eve staying up and reading their new books.

Jólabókaflóð started because of World War II; import tariffs and currency problems, among other difficulties, made gift-giving difficult. But paper wasn’t so dear, and books were available. Book-giving became a cultural institution, and in a nation of readers (Icelanders read more books per capita than most), a Yule-tide phenomena, culminating in a national book catalog, the bókatíðindi, sent to all Iceland households. The tradition has shaped Iceland’s publishing tradition, with most books, and almost all hardcover books released between October and November, in time for gift-giving.

Gifts are usually opened on Christmas Eve, and it’s not Christmas if you don’t receive at least one book. Memes about Jólabókaflóð have reached Facebook, Twitter and mainstream media, popularizing the idea of curling up with a books, some chocolate and a beverage as you read through Christmas Eve.

The bright red blossoms and attractive green leaves of the poinsettia plant have become almost as closely associated with Christmas as the holly plant and the evergreen conifer. Technically known as Euphorbia pulcherrima, the poinsettia is a native plant of Mexico, introduced to the U.S. in 1828 by the first American Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett. A botanist, Poinsett was fascinated by the plant’s botanical oddities as well as its striking appearance and seasonal bloom. In its native tropical habitat the poinsettia is a low-growing skimpy-looking bush. The brilliant red poinsettia blossoms (which can also be striated, pink white or pale green) are merely leaves lacking in chlorophyll. The actual flowers are the small yellow clusters slightly beneath and surrounded by the leaves.

The dramatic appearance of the poinsettia encouraged the Aztecs to value the poinsettia. They used the bracts (the technical name for the brightly colored, but not solidly green leaves) to make a dye, and as an anti-bacterial for dressing wounds. Montezuma, the last of the Aztec kings, had caravans of the Cuetlaxochitl plants brought to the area now known as Mexico City since the plants did not thrive at high altitudes. Towards the end of the sixteenth century in Mexico, folklore references to a variety of stories about a little girl from a family too poor to afford a gift for the local before the church’s altar. Miraculously, the legend says, the leaves turned into bright crimson blossoms. By the mid seventeenth century, Franciscan friars serving missions throughout Mexico began incorporating poinsettia into their Christmas festivals.

The Eckes had two secret techniques for poinsettia propagation. First, they grafted two varieties of poinsettia together, thus making it possible for the resulting seedlings to branch outwardly, rather than merely grow upward. Secondly, they knew that the colors of the bracts derive from photoperiodism. The bracts are initially  green, but then change to red (or pink or cream) but the bracts require darkness (12 hours at a time for at least five days in a row) to change color. On the other hand, once Poinsettias finish that process, the plants require abundant light during the day for the brightest color.

It is thanks to the Ecke family of Southern California that we are so very familiar with the poinsettia as a Christmas and holiday plant. In their native habitat, poinsettias can grow up to ten feet tall. Until the 1990s, when a university botanist figured out how they did it, the Eckes controlled the secret of propagating Poinsettias so that their poinsettias were were bushy, leafy and compact, instead of the usual spindly, vertical-growing shrubs.

It’s not terribly difficult to keep a poinsettia healthy and in “bloom” during the Christmas season, and even after. It’s even possible to have the same poinsettia plant bloom year after year, since they are perennials. During December and January, while the plant has crimson or other colored bracts, check the soil daily. If the soil is dry to the touch, then water the poinsettia until the water runs out of the drainage hole (but do not leave the plant sitting in water). I usually put the pot in the sink and use the sprayer to thoroughly soak the soil. Poinsettias need sun, so avoid a northern window in favor of one facing, south, east or even west. Avoid direct contact with the window’s cold surface. For year-round care, see this page.

Although the poinsettia is not poisonous, some people may have a contact allergy to the latex in the poinsettia’s sap, a characteristic of Euphorbia plants, including Crown of Thorns. Cats and dogs, however, should be kept away from Poinsettias.

I rather like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I like it so much that two years ago I created an annotated version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I liked Patrick Stewart’s one-man performance every time I saw it at UCLA. I am less fond of Stewart’s film version, but that’s partially because I dearly love the George C. Scott A Christmas Carol film available in DVD or Blu-ray.

David Sibley. Sibley's Birding Basics. (Knopf, 2002). ISBN: 978-0375709661.

David Sibley, the author and illustrator of Sibley’s Birding Basics is best known as the man responsible for The Sibley Guide to Birds (second edition 2014). David Sibley is also the content expert behind the iOS app The Sibley eGuide. The son of an ornithologist, Sibley grew up birding, beginning to draw birds as a young child, eventually leading birding tours. Deciding that the current birding field guides could be better, he released his first New York Times bestselling bird guide, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds in 2000 (second edition 2014). He’s also partnered with Audubon in producing the new Audubon Online Field Guide To North American Birds.

Sibley’s Birding Basics is not a bird identification field guide; instead, it’s a how-to manual about bird watching and identification. Or, as Sibley says in his “Introduction”:

“It is the challenge and the process of identification that is the primary focus of this book.”—David Sibley. Sibley’s Birding Basics.

This isn’t a book for the casual birder, instead it’s a book for the kind of birder who keeps a list of birds they’ve seen at their feeder (or in their life). It’s a book intended for someone interested in the next level of birding, someone who already has a field guide (or three) and is interested in becoming a better birder.

In addition to the Introduction, there are sixteen chapters; the first eight are broadly about locating and identifying birds based on physical traits and behavior. The first chapter, Getting Started is particularly helpful int terms of specific tips like “Learn to see details,” and “Focus on the bird’s bill and face.” He talks about the importance of watching for various patterns in terms of appearance and behavior. I particularly like that he talks about the value of not only a good field guide and binoculars, but suggests using a notebook for quick notes and sketches (whether or not a birder is artistic, sketches help remind us of what we noticed). I also liked that Sibley points out the usefulness of marking up a field guide with annotations or stickers as a way to help remember and to make finding information easier.

Sibley also covers “Finding Birds,” “The Challenges of Bird Identification,” “Misidentification,” “Identifying Rare Birds,” “Taxonomy,” and “Using Behavioral Cues.” He offers lots of specific examples of what to avoid in terms of attempting to identify a specific bird, and a wealth of tips. The tips are both specific and practical, for instance, “A simple method of ‘measuring’ part of a bird in the field is to compare it to another part of the bird.”

I’m particularly pleased to see an entire chapter of Sibley’s Birding Basics devoted to identifying and paying attention to “Voice,” or the songs and calls that birds make. Sibley offers clear description and definitions of the distinction between calls and songs, and breaks them down even further, with kinds of calls: Contact call, Flight call, Other calls. I also like the way he notes the common mnemonics birders use to remember what birds make what songs; like the White-throated Sparrow “Old Sam, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.” This is one of the most helpful things for a new birder to know. I wish that he had included more mnemonics (and that more birders knew about them).

The second half of the book is largely devoted to bird anatomy and the correct terms of art for various parts of birds in order to specifically focus on identifying the species, and even the age and sex of a particular bird. There are particularly helpful and deep discussion about feathers, how they function, what the various sections are called, coloration and color patterns, and the nature and function of molting, both as a seasonal event and in terms of the changes some birds pass through as they age from fledgling to breeding adult. I am particularly glad that the final chapter is on “Ethics and Conservation” in the context of birding.

The ebook version seems to have all 200 illustrations (though I didn’t count them), but honestly, this is an instance where personally, I’d much rather have the printed version than the ebook. The artwork is fantastic, and it really does add a lot to the book. The binding is a semi-rigid “flexibound” plastic binding. It's flexible but durable. The paper is high quality and the artwork, which includes full birds as well as detailed images of specific features, really does shine.

David Sibley’s Sibley’s Birding Basics is very much like having an experienced birder by your side. Lots of specific practical tips, terms of art carefully explained and illustrated, and loaded with specific examples, often profusely illustrated with 200 of Sibley’s paintings. Birding Basics is not a substitute for a field guide, but it is a wonderful introduction to birding effectively and a great companion to a field guide.

David Sibley has a Website. He’s also written a number of other books about birds, birding, and trees.

David Sibley. Sibley's Birding Basics. (Knopf, 2002). ISBN: 978-0375709661.

Purchase:
Alibris | Amazon.com | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | Apple | IndieBound | Kindle | Kobo | Powells

Joe Kissell. Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner. (Take Control Books, October 2023).

I’m a fan of the Take Control series of ebooks that make technology understandable and practical. I’ve been impressed with this affordable ($15.00, with free updates for new versions) series of .pdf , Mobi, and ePub ebooks (you can print the .pdf if you’d rather) right from the start.

In Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner, Joe Kissell, an able and adept technical writer about all things Macintosh, and a long-term foodie, turned his geekly technical writing skills to creating Thanksgiving dinner.

The first version of Kissell’s Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner came out in 2007. This is an updated edition. Kissell outlines, in simple understandable terms exactly what to do in terms of planning a menu, organizing your shopping list, and figuring out a cooking and prep schedule for a typical Thanksgiving dinner (roasted turkey, with gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, candied sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie) with a number of alternates for dishes, and cooking styles, and the idiosyncrasies of guests.

Kissell, who is very much aware of the importance of presentation and visual appeal in terms of creating food people want to eat, feels that, properly speaking, a proper Thanksgiving dinner is built around the colors of “the traditional Thanksgiving colors of white, yellow, orange, red, and brown” (TCT 61), nonetheless offers not only the “traditional” Green Bean Casserole recipe, but a nifty suggestion for Roasting Green Beans. I’ve used his method, and it works beautifully.

One of the things I love about this book, aside from the easy, comfortable, and clear writing, is that there’s a lot of practical help here. Don’t have time for a day of shopping and a day of prep? Joe’s got that covered. Need to cook for more people? See the section explaining how to scale recipes. Worried about a post-Thanksgiving day  life that includes six months of turkey tetrazzini? It doesn’t have to be that way, if you use Kissell's very smart “Deal With Leftovers” advice. Plus, in one of the really, smart, helpful user-friendly parts of the Take Control of ThanksgivingDinner ebook there’s a file of shopping guides, and prep schedules ready to print and use. Kissell really does cover all the bases—including feeding vegetarian guests, Tofurkey Roasts, and a homemade Polenta Dome (à la Moosewood Cafe).

Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner is a book that’s good to have in terms of trying something new, as a guide to planning your first “cook a whole bird” Thanksgiving, or if you’re in charge of planning a very large scale community or family gathering for Thanksgiving.

You can download a free 38-page sample of Take Control of Thanksgiving.

Joe Kissell. Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner. (Take Control Books, October 2023). ISBN: 978-1-990783-40-1.

Purchase From: Take Control Books

Ich am¹ of Irlaunde
And of the holy londe
Of Irlande.
Gode sire, preye ich the,²
For of saynte charite
Come ant daunce wyt me³
In Ireland.

This is one of those early poems that’s particularly dear to my heart; there’s an almost infectious joy in the invitation to “Come and dance.” This Middle English lyric is by one of my very favorite poets, Anonymous. She’s quite prolific, and exceedingly long-lived.⁴

“Ich am of Ireland,” or “I am of Ireland” is from about 1400, so roughly contemporaneous with Chaucer. This short lyric is preserved in a single manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D.913 f. 1v.
Here’s the lyric in Modern English:

I am of Ireland
And of the holy land
Of Ireland.
Good sir, I pray you,
For holy charity
Come and dance with me
In Ireland.

“Ich am of Ireland” is one of several rather hastily scrawled lyrics on a single fragment of parchment. It’s probably a carol, a ring-dance, where one dancer invites another to join him or her in the center of the ring, or “Ireland.” It is not outside the realm of possibility that this carol, or a version of it, is very old indeed.

Line 5, “For of saynte charite” or “for of holy charity” doesn't mean what it looks like. Charity, perhaps more familiar in the Latin form, caritas, had a different meaning in the tenth through seventeenth centuries than it has today. In Middle English, charity doesn’t generally mean giving to others, rather, it means love; here, it means Christian love. Saynte means “holy” here, or “blessed.”.

Yeats adopted “Ich am of Irelaunde” for his poem “XX — I Am of Ireland” in his collection of poems Words for Music Perhaps, first published in 1933.

1. Ich am “I am”

2. Preye ich the “I pray thee.”

3. Ant “and” wyt “with.”

4. In all seriousness, I have no real reason to assert that the speaker or the poet is female, other than wishful thinking. I note that assertions like this one “the famous lyric, whose speaker is clearly female” have nothing to support them, either.  Keep in mind that most dances of the Medieval era in England (and presumably Ireland) were not paired dances lukewarm, for instance a waltz. There were a number of carols, ring dances, where you didn’t have a single partner.

Hot cross buns! Hot cross Buns!
One a penny, two a penny
Hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters
Give them to your sons
One a penny, two a penny
Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!
If you haven't got a penny
A ha'penny will do.
If you haven't got a ha'penny,
Well God bless you.

One of my very favorite childhood associations with Easter is that my mother would make hot cross buns a few days before Easter Sundsay. We would often have them on Good Friday, and we almost always had them for breakfast on Easter morning. Strictly speaking, they’re actually Cross Buns, meant to be served "hot." Cross buns are a sweet bread, with a sweet yeast dough made with currants and cinnamon; sometimes cloves or other spices, or candied orange peel are used. The round bun is then marked with a knife on the top; the cook makes two quick slashes with the knife before baking, and then (or in stead of) decorated with a white sugar-based glaze drizzled on the top of the warm-from-the-oven bun in the shape of a cross.

Despite a fair number of assertions that hot cross buns are pagan, the limited verifiable data we have about their origins associates cross buns firmly with England, Christianity, and the season of Lent, or more accurately, with Good Friday. The earliest specific reference we have is from 1733, when, according to the OED, Poor Robin’s Almanack asserts that “Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns,” in an alternate version of the nursery rhyme at the top of this post. In Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791), Boswell notes: “9 Apr. An. 1773 Being Good Friday I breakfasted with him and cross-buns,” another probable reference to the proverbial Hot Cross bun.

The buns were usually sold hot, fresh from the bakery, or sometimes, from street vendors. In the Elizabethan era, Queen Elizabeth I passed a law forbidding bakers to make spiced breads and buns and sell on days other than those specified in the statute of 1592, which reads:

That no bakers, etc, at any time or times hereafter make, utter, or sell by retail, within or without their houses, unto any of the Queen's subject any spice cakes, buns, biscuits, or other spice bread (being bread out of size and not by law allowed) except it be at burials, or on Friday before Easter, or at Christmas, upon pain or forfeiture of all such spiced bread to the poor

People would be free to make cross buns at home, for personal consumption; they just couldn't sell them. There’s some suggestion of a tradition that called for using the same dough for the Sunday communion wafer to make the buns; though I’m finding many references to this as practice, none of the references, printed or digital, cite a primary source for the practice, and frankly it sounds a little suspect to me. I don’t know the reason behind the statute, except perhaps, that because of the cross and the tradition of serving them on Good Friday that the buns had a strong association in the popular mind with Catholicism, something that Elizabeth I, as a Protestant monarch, was understandably touchy about. The statute didn’t last long; by the time James I took the throne it was already proving difficult to enforce, and the crown soon abandoned the attempt, and the law. In addition to the tradition of only preparing them on Good Friday, for many Catholics there's a parallel tradition that that is all that they may eat.
There are a number of recipes for cross buns online. This one calls for cinnamon, allspice, currants and orange rind, and is likely much closer to the “authentic”eighteenth century (and presumably older) versions. This one, using British measuring units also uses orange, and lime. This is a very straight-forward cinnamon and currants version. This is the recipe for Hot Cross Buns my Mom  used when I was a child and that I still use today.

Western wind, when will thou blow?

The small rain down can rain.

Christ, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again!

Anonymous; British Library Royal Appendix 58 c. Early Sixteenth Century

“Western Wind” (or “Westron Wynde” as the ms. has it) is an anonymous lyric from the early 16th century (c. 1530). It’s extant in a single manuscript that appears to have been a commonplace book used by several English court musicians associated with the royal court and were collecting musical pieces for lute. As Julia Craig-McFeely notes  British Library Royal Appendix 58 is actually

two music manuscripts that became bound together as the single source, Royal Appendix 58, one inserted inside the other some considerable time after their respective compilations—possibly at the time they became part of the Royal collection in the British Museum. The outer portions of RA58, the part of the MS containing the lute music, was written throughout by the same scribe, though it is difficult to see this as the tablature section has little text with which to compare the other music, and the manuscript is suffering badly from the effects of fading. This section of the MS is a collection of tenor voice parts, and the original parchment cover was marked ‘Tenor’ by its owner. The inserted book was a collection of medius and contratenor parts, indicated by its scribe writing ‘medius’ at the top of the first page.

The general consensus regarding the RA 58 is that it’s from about 1530; the language of the poem could easily be earlier, and I suspect (but can not prove) that it’s perhaps c. 1400. There is music presented in RA58 with the text, but interpreting what the notation means is a bit difficult. Musicians and composers have come up with different melodies.

“Western Wind” is one of the first poems that grabbed my attention in that This Is Important way when I was teenager reading my father’s old copy of the Quiller-Couch edition of The Oxford Book of English Poetry. The poem seemed so very simple, a tiny four-line love-lyric (a particularly English love-lyric, given its reference to rain). It captures the feeling of love-in-absence, the emotional state of the lover longing for the presence of the beloved, the comforts of home and a familiar and shared bed.

I like the way the poem uses repetition in the second line, drawing our attention to the phrase “The small rain down can rain” — notice the way the line catches our ear and eye with the repetition of “rain,” as both verb and noun, and the way the meter emphasizes the words as if they were themselves falling rain.

“The small rain” is a particularly English phrase as well, referring both to the constant steady fall of micro drops that are almost more like mist than rain, and to “a little rain,” where “small” refers to quantity rather than the size of the drops. The phrase “the small rain” is one with an ancient history. Here’s the entry from the OED for the phrase. You’ll notice that there’s an archaic letter, the eth (ð = th sound) no longer used in English.

Small rain III. 10. a. Composed of fine or minute particles, drops, etc. In later use chiefly of rain. c897 K. AELFRED Gregory’s Past. C. lvii. 437 Swiðe lytle beoð ða dropan ðaes smalan renes, ac hi wyrceað ðeah swiðe micel flod. c1000 Sax. Leechd. 1649 WINTHROP New Eng. (1853) I. 209 The Rebecka,…two days before, was frozen twenty miles up the river; but a small rain falling set her free. 1676 WOOD Jrnl. in Acc. Sev. Late Voy. I. (1694) 177 Thick Fogs with small Rain. 1727 A. HAMILTON New Acc. E. Indies I. xxii. 262 A small Rain happened to fall that damped my Powder. 1823 SCOTT Quentin D. i, Heaven, who works by the tempest as well as by the soft small rain (OED small, a. and n.2 III.10.a).

The same phrase is used in the King James 1611 Bible, in Deuteronomy 32:2:

My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.

The date of the King James translation is too late to have directly influenced “Western Wind,” but it does show the use of the phrase—and it’s not impossible that it was influenced by the lyric. In English custom and poetry the western wind is the wind of spring; see for instance Robert Herrick’s short lyric, “To the Western Wind,” which also treats the west wind as a gentle wind that brings rain. John Masefield does something similar in his “The West Wind.” The spring opening of Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales summons the west wind by name in Chaucer’s invocation of Zephyru, the Greek god associated with the west wind and spring. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind” has a similar association between the western wind and rain—but in Shelley’s poem the wind is associated with autumn, and Italy. In this very English poem, notice that the narrater—who could be a woman or a man, we don’t know—says, somewhat urgently, or perhaps plaintively, “when” will the small rain come? It reminds me very much of the moment when the barometric pressure changes, just before the rain comes, and it’s suggestive of the speaker’s own state of mind.

A melody with the same “Western Wind” title was used by a number of sixteenth century English composers (most notably Thomas Tallis, Richard Taverner and Christopher Tye) as the cantus firmus in the Mass, under the less than surprising title of the Western Wind Mass, but it isn’t clear that the tune used by the masses is the same one recorded in British Library Royal Appendix 58 c;  in fact it seems rather unlikely. It’s also not clear that the tune used by the composers wasn’t simply another tune for our lyric.  Either way, the various masses are all quite lovely, whether or not directly related to the lyric.

John Donne A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day

’Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,¹
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks,
The Sun is spent, and now his flasks²
Send forth light squibs,³ no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk:
The general balm th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,⁴
Whither,⁵  as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,⁶
Dead and enterr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with me, who am their Epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;⁷
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,⁸
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.⁹

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love’s limbec,¹⁰ am the grave
Of all that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so¹¹
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow¹²
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences¹³
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death¹⁴ (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;¹⁵
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.
But I am none; nor will my sun renew.¹⁶
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run¹⁷
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival,¹⁸
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is.¹⁹

Commentary

Saint Lucy’s day is December 13. The Catholic church’s traditional order of prayers in the early church included prayers at midnight called nocturnes or vigils. The night office today is often called Matins. The Julian calendar was still in use when Donne wrote, so that the Winter solstice and consequently the shortest day of the year (and thus the darkest) fell on the 13th of December, and the feast day of Saint Lucy. It is also the point at which, astrologically speaking, the Sun entered the sign of the Goat (in the modern calendar, Capricorn operates between December 22, the day after the modern Winter solstice, and January 19).

Saint Lucy is, more specifically, Lucia of Syracuse or Saint Lucia, She was a Christian martyr who died during the Diocletian Persecution c. 304 C.E. after a spurned suitor denounced Lucy as a Christian. Lucy (via the Latin form of her name Lucia) is cognate with Latin lux, or  light. In terms of both her various legends, one of which includes her eye being gouged out in an effort to force her to renounce Christianity, Saint Lucy is iconographically associated with light and vision (and often, with a cup or platter on which she displays her gouged-out eyes).

Donne’s “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day” describes the darkest part of the darkest day. The poem revolves around the absence of light. It is also about transformation, in the sense of an alchemist trying to create something out of nothing, or something noble out of chaos, though here the transformation is in the opposite direction; the transformation of light to darkness.

In this poem Donne speaks in the persona of a lover. This is both a convention of his era, and a frequent practice of Donne’s, who is sometimes clearly referring to his spouse, Ann More Donne, while at other times his subject is not specific—and may not have been specific even for Donne himself. Critics have argued that the Lucy referred to in the title is both the saint, and an homage to his patron, Lucy the Countess of Bedford, for whom Donne named a daughter and to whom he dedicated several poems. Others are equally certain that the “she” referenced as his beloved is Donne’s wife. Neither are mutually exclusive, and it might well be that both women were in his thoughts. We do not know the year Donne wrote the poem, which further complicates efforts towards biographic criticism.

I freely confess that the last stanza in particular makes me think Donne was writing about Ann More, and using St. Lucy’s Day (and night) as a vehicle for his mourning. Ann died August 15, 1617, in childbirth, delivering what would have been their twelfth child had the baby lived. She was thirty-three, and was survived by her spouse and seven of their children.

There are several motifs present that are familiar from Donne’s other Songs and Sonnets, including Donne as the model lover, one who has been transformed by his passion for his beloved, and metaphors drawn from the study of alchemy whose goal at its highest level is to transform a base metal like lead to gold.

I have modernized the spelling in most instances.

1. The Winter solstice is the midpoint of the year, the turning of the tide from the darkest night of the year towards the renewal of light and the arrival of Spring. Donne is also writing at midnight, the mid-point of the night.

2. The flasks are stars; stars were thought to store energy and light from the Sun.

3. Squibs were both small firecrackers and malfunctioning firecrackers, whose explosive force was less than expected.

4. Hydroptique is the Modern English hydroptic. Current medical theory in Donne’s era postulated that all life contained and generated a “general balm,” a life-giving and preserving essence, which, in Winter, like sap in a tree, sinks. Hydroptique here means excessively thirsty, as people with dropsy were thought to be.

5. Whither, typical of Donne, is serving multiple purposes. Whither can be read as both whither meaning where, to what place, and wither, to shrink or dry up. The balm has retreated inside the Earth as sap in a tree retreats in winter.

6. With to the beds-feet, Donne shifts his metaphors from sap and balm to an image of a person in bed; the beds-feet is the foot of the bed; this may mean both that the person who is in a bed, presumably dying, has his or her world reduced (shrunk) to their bed. It may also be a reference to the way a corpse shrinks and withers, given the subsequent explicit reference to death.

7. The Winter solstice marks the “death” of the world.

8. A quintessence is literally the “fifth essence,” derived from Medieval Latin qunta essentia. In terms of alchemy, the fifth essence is the highest element, more pure than the four elements of earth, air, fire or water. The fifth element is the essence of life itself and of the heavenly bodies. Yes Luke, it’s very like the Force in Star Wars.

9. Donne is himself thus the quintessence even from nothingness referred to in line 6.

10. A limbec (a shortened form of alembic) is a type of still used by alchemists; it is essentially two vessels joined by a tube. Love is the alchemist who transformed Donne.

11. With we two Donne shifts from examining himself to his relationship with his beloved. 

12. The reference to the two lovers having “Drown’d the whole world” sounds remarkably like ll. 14–20 of Donne’s “A Valediction: Of Weeping”: 

    So doth each tear
    Which thee doth wear,
    A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
    Till thy tears mix’d with mine do overflow
    This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
    O more than moon,
    Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,

13. Absences here also echoes Donne’s “A Valediction: Of Weeping.”

14. I read “her death” as a reference to the death of Ann Donne, John Donne's wife.

15. The science of the day suggested that even rocks and plants experienced attraction and repulsion.

16. I read this as my sun referring to Ann Donne, as well as a comment on Donne’s own dark emotional state, and the solstice.

17. The lesser sun is the solar body; now entering the sign of Capricorn, the goat.

18. The she here is a problem for my reading, since it clearly refers to Lucy, and consequently both the saint, and Lucy Countess of Bedford, Donne’s patron.

19. Donne ends much as he began, cycling back as does the Sun.

John Donne Meditation XVII from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)¹

The Devotions were written, for the most part, in December of 1623 when Donne was recovering from (and possibly still suffering from) a serious illness that began during the previous November. At the time, many in London were suffering and died from a mysterious illness that included high fevers and “spots” (possibly typhus). When he began writing the Devotions, Donne had been Dean of St. Paul’s for two years. The Devotions are a personal exploration of his sickness and recovery in the context of Christian humanism.

The Devotions consist of 23 sequentially numbered sections, each of which opens with a “meditation” in which Donne explores an aspect of his illness, followed by an “expostulation” containing his reaction to his illness, much of it in the form of direct address to God, and concludes with a prayer. Donne’s illness was serious; he had little or no expectation of survival. The direct cause of his desire to write was his illness; he wrote while he was still quite ill. The Devotions are an example of a Protestant genre of the time in which the details of daily life were examined in a religious and spiritual context.

The work was registered at the Stationer’s Office in January of 1624 and published later that year, one of a handful of works published during Donne’s lifetime.

This post is concerned entirely with the Meditation portion of XVII, which follows.

XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris
Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.²
Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls³ may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.⁴ And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated⁵ into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit⁶ (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation⁷, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.⁸ If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him⁹ as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

A Meditation on Donne’s Meditation XVII

When Donne wrote this meditation, he was deeply concerned about his own mortality. He had lost his beloved wife Anne More Donne. They had lost several children to early death. London was in the throes of a mysterious disease sometimes called “spotted fever,” marked by a rash and prolonged fevers, and often, death.

The central theme moves quickly from contemplation of his own mortality, to the idea that he is merely a part of the greater Christian body, the Christian “volume,” one leaf out of many.

There are two touchstones from this meditation that have been absorbed into general consciousness (thanks in no small part to Heminway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls:

No man is an island, entire of itself; ... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Aside from the Christian concept of memento mori, embodied in the idea that the bell tolling another’s death is a reminder of our own inevitable death, these passages have always been a reminder to me that we are all part of humanity. We are, as Donne put it earlier, leaves in the same volume. We are all “involved” in mankind, part of a single body; we are not islands, we are connected to each other. Thus, any man’s death, (or woman’s; I do think Donne very much included women in his man/mankind) diminishes all of us; we are made less by it.

Ultimately, for me, this meditation reminds me that we are all part of something larger, and by emphasizing our connection to each other, we are emphasizing our connections to something larger than our separate selves.

1. The complete (and rarely used) title is Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes. The spelling here has been modernized, and I’ve added paragraph breaks. The text is based on the edition by John Sparrow. Cambridge University Press, 1923: 96–98.

2. This is Donne’s own translation. 

3. The bell is simultaneously the passing bell that tolls once for each year of a deceased person’s life, and the bell that rings to call the congregation to service, and the bell that rang (until silenced by the dissolution of the monasteries and religious orders under Henry VIII) to call to prayers during the day.

4. The Christian church is the head of all people, as well as a body composed of all members of that church (i.e. all Christians).

5. Translated, from Latin trānslātus means to “carry across,” or transfer, both from one language to another or one place or another. In a Christian or spiritual context Donne alludes to the idea that souls are translated from one level or sphere to another. By this means, Donne constructs an elaborate metaphor wherein he is a single member of the Christian body, one volume or book that is translated by God.

6. That is controversy in the form of a law suit.

7. Where Donne uses “estimation,” today we would say self-esteem.

8. Main here means “mainland.”

9. “Defray him,” or rather defray or cover his expenses.

Sara Kasdan. Love and Knishes. (Fawcett 1956).

Sara Kasdan’s Love and Knishes is both a cultural guide, and a cookbook. Sara Kasdan’s much loved guide to traditional Jewish cooking (illustrated by Louis Slobodin) first appeared in 1956. The book was rapidly reprinted as it proved strikingly popular with Jews and non-Jews alike who wanted to know how to make traditional Ashkenazi comfort food from matzah ball soup to kugel and mandelbrot. It’s all here, from knaydelach to kugel, and everything in between, including hamentaschen.

Kasdan’s Love and Knishes is a basic primer for Jewish cuisine; it’s not fancy, and it’s very down to earth for people who want to make tsimmes, not have one. Note that parts of Love and Knishes is written in authentic dialect; ignore those reviewers who are wringing their hands over the use of dialect. Here, it’s done well, and it’s both authentic and charming, and a mark of affectionate nostalgia rather than mockery. There are many who remember that bubula used just that phrase. There are also those who are offended by Kasdan’s cultural impropriety in including a few standard American dishes of the 1950s; they should get a life and get over themselves. This cookbook was written for the generation that was all about adapting to life in America, yet still missing the food they grew up with. And yes, it’s true, there is an entry in the table of contents for Yom Kippur; if you turn to the chapter in question, you’ll see “Shame! You looked.” What’s not to love about an authentic cookbook with a sense of humor?

This is the cookbook I used when I learned to make latkes. It’s also the one I used for hamentaschen. There are lots of copies of Love and Knishes at the usual used book sites (including the first hardcover edition) it is, alas, no longer in print. If you’re looking for a broader, less Americanized take on Jewish cuisine, I suggest Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food. Roden’s book is a thorough international culinary, cultural and historic survey of Jewish history via a very large selection of recipes, many of which she presents with regional variations. For a kosher survey of Jewish cuisine, see Spice and Spirit The Complete Kosher Jewish Cookbook by Esther Blau, Tzirrel Deitsch, and Cherna Light. For those interested in Jewish desserts specifically, see George Greenstein’s A Jewish Baker’s Pastry Secrets: Recipes from a New York Baking Legend for Strudel, Stollen, Danishes, Puff Pastry, and More.

Sara Kasdan. Love and Knishes. (Fawcett 1956).