Celebratin' Rabbie Burns

Everyone with a wee dram of Scots blood in 'em should be throwing a party today--a Burns Supper--to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the most celebrated figure in Scottish history. I mean celebrated in the more literal sense--rather than simply in the "celebrity" sense. Probably Mary, Queen of Scots, or even Gordon Brown (or for that matter Sean Connery) are more written about and discussed these days. But every year, all over the world, proud fans of the poet celebrate his birth with single malt and toddy and haggis* and a great deal of pompous recitation of his works, ending with a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne.

Well, mostly. I, for one, leave out the haggis*--although I have been known to make oatmeal (thanks to the Slow Cook blog for the article) for breakfast to mark the day. And to be honest, I've only actually ever attended a few Burns Suppers in my life (primarily in my years at Penn, where such traditions were held dear amongst my friends). But this year's special, so I thought I'd mark it, in honor of the attachment of one man to one place, and the enjoyment anyone with a connection to that place feels on such an occasion.

Although many folk of Scottish descent claim relation to Burns, probably the only way I could would be if he'd had children with his great love, Highland Mary (Campbell), since I've got both Campbell and MacDonald blood flowin' in my very veins. I have mentioned, have I not, that my great grandfather's name was Angus Campbell McDonald? But, alas, there was apparently no issue from this union--however consecrated, or not, it might have been. And my relation to Burns is thus merely that of a devotee.

One of the best sources of cool stuff related to Burns (or Burruns, as my Glaswegian friend Victor pronounces it) is the online Future Museum that provides access to collections from south-west Scotland museums. Their Burns artifacts are all absolutely fascinating, from the ordinary to the sublime. I urge a visit to peruse everything from pipes to manuscripts to whiskey bottles, like the one at left, which was produced in 1896 to commemorate the centenary of Burns's death.

Seldom have I had as much fun noodling around a virtual space. Thanks to the staff for providing such a valuable and entertaining resource.

And so, in parting, a bit of my favorite poem of all, untranslated and with its wit intact, "To A Mouse" (the link is to a study guide):

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I think of this poem every time a member of my menagerie goes after a cotton rat.

Should one feel the need for further celebration, here are some Burnsian links:

The Robert Burns World Federation

Scottish Gemini's Worldwide Toast To Robert Burns site, where you can donate a pound to help preserve the Burns birthplace in Alloway. The page has a history of Burns Night, complete with a picture (which is as close as I want to get) of a haggis.*

The self-proclaimed official Robert Burns website, Burns Country, with a page of instructions on how to throw your own Burns Supper (there's still time!). I'd do one my own self sometime, if I could just get past the haggis.*

*Haggis: Traditional Scottish dish consisting of a sheep's stomach stuffed with oatmeal and all manner of other ingredients. It's actually admirable in that it represents the consummate example of not wasting anything, and may account for the reputation of Scots as "thrifty."

Google video results for "haggis" (some videos not for the squeamish) including one of a recitation of Burns's poem, "To A Haggis."

Haggis Recipes from (of all places) the Gumbo Pages (stands to reason, though; Gumbo's an example of food frugality as well--and Lord knows New Orlean's has been through some tough times of late).

Here's hoping that folk will still be raising glasses and eating haggis in Burns's honor 250 years from now.

Image source: the portrait (by whom they don't say) is from the Wikipedia article on Burns.

A Brief History of the Heart: In Pictures

As I mentioned over on the Farm, I've been looking up images of the heart in conjunction with my current preoccupation with impending surgery (not until March, I hope). For someone interested in the visual arts in general, and design in particular, the history of ways in which human beings have imagined the heart visually offers a fascinating journey into imagination and understanding.

Metaphor-makers that we are, human beings have to understand new concepts in terms of what they already know. I remember a history of science professor once telling us that the real breakthrough in modern understanding of heart function didn't occur until the hydraulic pump was invented, because until then we had no way to envision what was going on. I'm not entirely convinced that this is the case, since William Harvey's understanding of the pumping action of the heart was in place by the early seventeenth century, and the hydraulic ram is an eighteenth-century invention; ideas about pumping in general had also been around since the Middle Ages. But the popular understanding of the relationship between the heart and the pulse must certainly been made clearer to the general public after sophisticated pumping devices became more commonplace.

There are several terrific websites available on the heart and the history of what we know about it (one of the best is the PBS program, The Mysterious Human Heart; see also the Franklin Institute's online exhibit, The Human Heart). But most histories start with Harvey, and the more intriguing ideas are those that preceded our modern notions.

Take, for example, this illuminated drawing of the circulatory system from a thirteenth-century medical miscellany (Oxford). I show this to my art and design history students as an example of Medieval secular manuscripts, and they hoot over the goofiness of it. But if that little circle in the middle of the chest is supposed to be the heart, it's clear that the illustrator had some notion of the relationship between heart and veins. If it simply acknowledges the connections between vessels and the heart, without really understanding how it all worked, it's still interesting that folks were poking around in bodies trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

Or consider this Persian image, from The Medicine of Akbar (via the National Library of Medicine's Historical Anatomies site), which suggests a similar view of the heart and the veins.
The "anatomical squat" as I like to call it is a common pose in early medical documents. Sometimes annotations and rubrications can be entertaining, because they describe (in languages I don't read) what's going on in the drawings, at both ends of the digestive system, and are frequently placed in amusing contexts. What's clear, though, is that the image of the heart with which we're familiar today isn't intuitively obvious.

As printing and graphic arts burgeoned beginning in the sixteenth century, lovely illustrations appeared in anatomical treatises, such as this woodcut from Anatomiae, by Johann Drylander, published in 1537 (from the University of Toronto's Anatomia, an exhibit of prints from the Thomas Fisher Library). The catalogue description indicates that even if functions weren't completely fathomable, the artist could still depict what he saw.
Anatomy of the heart, pericardium reflected and heart ventricles incised. Aorta, superior vena cava, pulmonary vessels and diaphragm shown. Structures shown in isolation. Anterior view.

As much as I admire what earlier illustrators accomplished, I can't help but think that living in this particular technological moment has its rewards. For one, digital imaging machines and programs of all varieties are making it possible not only to explore the physiology of the heart in ways that the early theorists couldn't imagine, but to use these technologies to fix what ails us. Some of what's produced is quite beautiful:

This particular image (as well as the one used to open this post), by medical illustrator Patrick Lynch (available from Wikimedia Commons; his medical illustration portfolio is on his website) shows just how lovely instructional media can be thanks to the new technological tools available to talented artists. And as much as I appreciate the efforts of the early physicians, I'm thankful to live in a time when the visual arts, married to advances in medicine, can provide us with the technology and expertise to repair hearts that don't work.

Orientalist Switchplates

Once in a great while I wax creative with stuff I've collected over the years: odd images, bits of paper, stamps, and other ephemera. As an unabashed fan of the pioneers of collage and papier collé (Picasso and Braque) as well as of their heirs (Joseph Cornell, Nick Bantock, and others), I occasionally dabble in the practice of sticking things onto other things.

Some of the best imaginable "canvases" for such an endeavor are the cheesy blank plastic plates generally used to surround light switches and power outlets in our homes. Since I can't really throw anything away without a damned good reason, and am appalled by the prices some sources ask for more artful examples, I took it upon myself a couple of years ago to decorate my own. The first couple were usable, but not exactly awe-inspiring. I finally perfected the technique to my own satisfaction, however: first paint the plate with flat acrylic, and when it's dry begin to apply the desired bits with decoupage gel and a paintbrush. After that's dry, add metallic paint or leaf, or a stamped image or two, and then coat with another layer of gel. They turn out nicely and are pretty indestructible once coated.

All of mine so far are created from origami papers, kimono wrapping paper, washi, postage stamps from Asia, newspaper, fabric, photos, images from Dover design books and other bits of Japonisme or Chinoiserie I've come across over the years--even my mother's signature "chop." I grew up in Japan and Taiwan, and (because I hoard material evidence of my past experiences--it's a genetic defect and probably also has something to do with my archaeological training) have collected myriad boxes of things that can be used for collages on small surfaces.

I once made a couple of Impressionist examples for a mother-in-law as a Christmas gift by simply applying note cards cut out to fit blank wooden plates, and used gold paint on the edges. They looked like a million bucks--but also like something you'd buy in a hobby store. The collage versions are much more personal, and offer me a connection with my past every time I turn on a light or plug in the toaster.

As we've been working on the house and making rooms more habitable, I've been adding the plates as a finishing touch. It's just plain fun to do, and a nice way to work of tensions that can't be eased by gardening this time of year. The materials are ready-to-hand, cheap to acquire, and simple to use, providing the perfect sort of art therapy one might need around the holidays. They make nice gifts, too, especially if you spring for the wooden versions. Nick Bantock I ain't, but I have nice switchplates nonetheless. The iPhone images don't exactly do them justice--but provide a general idea of the results.

Channelling Frank Gehry

A couple of weeks ago I showed a film on Frank Gehry in my Art & Design Since 1945 class, and then gave them this assignment:

Using Gehry's process, design and build a model of a building for a specific use. The model must be completed by the end of the class (3 hours from when the film ended), and must fit the footprint of a letter-sized manila folder. Include the names of the team members and design sketches in the folder.

They picked buildings out of a hat (more or less), and these are some of the results (I apologize for the meager information provided by the photos--I took them with my iPhone):

A performance space with indoor and outdoor venues.


A brewery, with a tasting room and a bistro.


A high-school science lab.


The science lab was the clear winner, but I really appreciated the ingenuity and spirit all of these guys put into the project. I'd mention their names, but I can't find the list. I'll edit this post to add them when I locate it.

The class is now busily working on group seminar projects like "The Artist's Book in the Twenty-first Century" and "Public Art and Architecture in the DFW Area." The results are almost always interesting, and this particular class shows more promise than usual. Can't wait to see what happens.

Days of the Dead

Before I moved to Texas, my end-of-October celebratory experience was limited to Halloween, which lost its fascination quickly after I started getting serious about health and environmental issues, and after my kids had outgrown (I thought) dressing up like Han Solo and fairy princesses. I am, of course, completely wrong about that, since I'm pretty sure they both gleefully dress up as video game characters or Sex in the City types on a regular basis. But I've gone a bit bah-humbug on the candy-giving/costuming mania over the past few years. We've handed out treats only once since we moved to this neighborhood; mostly we keep the porch light off and hunker down to watch a movie with the curtains drawn.

I still do like the idea of celebrating the dead, but I'm not sure that scoring pounds of candy is the most poetic way of doing it. The last time I "dressed up" I wore a white Victorian nightgown and pasty white makeup and drifted about the trails of the Heard Museum, a nearby nature center, to frighten paying guests. But that was over twenty years ago. More recently, I've grown fond of local Day of the Dead festivities, and of the lovely sugar skulls and crepe-paper colors, and the music that floats down the street when folks from our local barrio drive by on their way to the highway.

My grandmother was a great one for remembering those who'd gone before, but her ceremonies (which included gathering up every stray flower in the yard into a couple of buckets of water) focused on the family plot in Big Pine, on Memorial Day. Once or twice we drove up on Veterans Day to put flowers on my grandfather's grave, but Day of the Dead wasn't in our vocabulary then, despite the fact that the Valley was home to a fairly large population of second- and third- (and probably more than a few fourth-) generation Mexican immigrants.

Outside my hometown lies an old, mostly-forgotten graveyard with only a few headstones left, some engraved in Spanish, some in Russian. I've never pursued the sources of the graves, but maybe this would be a good time to do so. Sometimes we'd visit the site when I took the kids to see Grandma, and we'd go out and walk among the graves on a hot summer evening. The setting sun always made the scene a bit eerie, and once (about twenty five years ago) I took the picture here--of my daughter in her nightie next to one of the headstones that had fallen over (or had been pushed) and then cracked.

An aside: Following my own instructions (issued to my students only yesterday) to follow any question that arises with research, I conducted a quick search on Owens Valley graves and found this through Google Books (it refers to the very gravestone beside which my daughter is standing in the photo):

Josefa de Alday's tombstone reads, 'Your children wish to remember the proof of the great love they had for you.' In 1880, Josefa was 40 years old and living in Inyo County wth two children. The D. E. P. at the bottom of her stone means 'rest in peace.'

From Cemeteries of the Eastern Sierra, p. 119
by Gena Philibert-Ortega

Now, in exile far from familiar graves and family bones, I've taken to enjoying what goes on locally. This year, at least one of my Visual Anthropology group projects will involve Día de los Muertos celebrations in town. The last time I taught the class was during the fall quarter a year ago, and one team visited a street party in Fort Worth to record Cowtown's version of the Day of the Dead. Because it involves community and tradition, it's a natural subject for anthropology in the first place, and an especially good topic if the focus is on recording it on film. These two guys took lovely pictures of the festivities and exhibits. This picture that opens this post is from those taken for the project.

Holidays like All Saints' and All Souls' days have roots in far more ancient traditions than the Christian beliefs that finally embraced them. Celebrating Los Días de los Muertos is itself a hybrid of Aztec and Christian views of the dead and of the afterlife, just as Halloween marries Christian and pagan rituals. I'm not sure why I now enjoy the Day of the Dead idea so much more than Halloween, except that the focus on remembrance (rather than on greed?) reassures me that when my remains have been scattered in the Sierras, or buried under a tree in an eco-cemetery somewhere, somebody might build a little altar in my honor, with pictures of things I loved and a little sugar skull. At least I'll know that nobody will be posing their daughter next to my tombstone!

Photo credit: Thanks to Alex Antonio and Drew Simon for the great picture and for inspiring the direction of the post.

The Peter Patter Book

When I was little, we spent a great deal of time overseas, first in Bermuda, then Japan, then Taiwan. Between every posting (my father was career Air Force), we'd go home to my grandparents little bungalow next to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power intake and power station at Cottonwood, in the Owens River Valley in California.

The first thing my brother and I would do upon arriving, after we had been greeted by grandparents with hugs and cookies, was to grab a timeworn copy of The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (by Leroy F. Jackson, illustrated exquisitely by Blanche Fisher Wright) and curl up on Grandma's lap to hear the poems read aloud:

Peter lives upon a mountain
Pretty near the sun,
Knows the bears and birds and rabbits
Nearly every one;
Has a home among the alders,
Bed of cedar bark,
Walks alone beneath the pine trees
Even when it’s dark.

Squirrels tell him everything
That happens in the trees,
Cricket in the gander-grass
Sings of all he sees;
Rimes from bats and butterflies,
Crabs and waterfowl;
But the best of all he gets
From his Uncle Owl.

Sometimes when its day-time,
But mostly in the night,
They sit beneath an oak tree
And hug each other tight,
And tell their rimes and riddles
Where the catty creatures prowl—
Funny little Peter Patter
And his Uncle Owl.

The telling of exploits involving one or more of our uncles was part of the total experience of hearing these poems. Since my father's two younger brothers were over ten years his junior, and close to one another in age, they had developed a friendly but spirited sibling rivalry that revealed itself upon hearing a particular favorite, "Jelly Jake and Butter Bill."


Jelly Jake and Butter Bill
One dark night when all was still
Pattered down the long, dark stair,
And no one saw the guilty pair;
Pushed aside the pantry-door
And there found everything galore,—
Honey, raisins, orange-peel,
Cold chicken aplenty for a meal,
Gingerbread enough to fill
Two such boys as Jake and Bill.
Well, they ate and ate and ate,
Gobbled at an awful rate
Till I’m sure they soon weighed more
Than double what they did before.
And then, it’s awful, still it’s true,
The floor gave way and they went thru.
Filled so full they couldn’t fight.
Slowly they sank out of sight.
Father, Mother, Cousin Ann,
Cook and nurse and furnace man
Fished in forty-dozen ways
After them, for twenty days;
But not a soul has chanced to get
A glimpse or glimmer of them yet.
And I’m afraid we never will—
Poor Jelly Jake and Butter Bill.

After she'd read (or rather recited, since she knew many of them by heart) about Jake and Bill, she proceed to tell us the story of how, when her boys were little, my Uncle Art would exclaim upon hearing the line "And no one saw the guilty pair," "Well I saw 'em too!" This was brought on by the fact that Art's older brother was named Owen, which sounded all too much like "no one"--so if Owen could see them, so could Art.

Of course, my brother and I always thought this was hilarious (Art was also known to claim, whenever anyone referred to Owen's Lake, the then-dry lake bed that dominated the landscape, "It's my lake too!"). We never got tired of hearing these stories, nor of hearing my grandmother tell them.

At some point after I'd gone off to college, married, and had children, I realized that I wanted to share those poems with my own kids. But by that time the book had disappeared from Gram's house, absconded with by some cousin or another. So one might be able to imagine my joy when several years later she acquired a copy through a book search service and presented to me and the children around the time of their birthdays in 1980, when my daughter turned one and my son four.

Lately I've been rearranging rooms and getting ready for an onslaught of visitors this coming December (my daughter will be graduating from college, at long last, after several years of working full time and going to school), and things keep reappearing after long years of being tucked away in odd corners. One of the books resurrected from a spider-webby corner of a closet was none other than the Peter Patter book. I thought of scanning some of the images to talk about here in the Cabinet, but a quick Google search led me to a Project Gutenburg edition, complete with illustrations.

Several years ago I saw a few reprints for sale in Barnes and Noble, but they had been "cleaned up" in order to meet to the present-day guidelines for political correctness to which publishers must adhere (with good reason, for the most part). But since I managed not to associate the "big black Bugoo" in my favorite rhyme, "Polly Picklenose" (which I can still recite from memory) with African Americans or become a racist as a result of reading this book (any more than I became a racist or a sexist from reading Enid Blyton as a child), I wonder about how much risk is actually involved. Gutenberg has, alas, used the revised version. A few unsavory stereotypes have been removed, but the bulk of the book is just as I remembered it, Wright's beautiful pictures, and Jackson's silly, funny, still-entertaining rhymes.

Also available through Project Gutenberg are Wright's illustrations in The Goody-Naughty Book written by Sarah Cory Rippey, and (perhaps her best known) The Real Mother Goose.

Images: The cover drawing, and "Jelly Jake and Butter Bill." The image just above is for "Hippity Hop to Bed."

A Surfeit of Pears

One of the lovlier aspects of my old, cranky house, is that its big property is home to a number of fruits and nuts--and that doesn't include the owners. Ahem.

This year there have been tons of pears, probably because of the relatively abundant rain. I just leave them be, so I didn't prune them or pinch buds, or perform any of the steps required for large, well-groomed fruit. As a result, the branches drape down to the grown, overburdened with their bumper crop. And now I've got to figure out what to do with them, because they're not the most photogenic of varieties, and are rock-hard, but quite good even when not quite ripe. If you'd like to plant pears hardy to North Texas, Willis Orchard Company seems to be a good source.

My two trees don't seem to be quite the same, but are probably Kieffer/Orient varieties, both pioneer favorites in Texas. They're highly resistant to fire blight (the Plague of Pears), and store well. The nifty thing about pears is that they ripen best off the tree. I've had a couple recently, still hard as granite, sliced and eaten with good cheese--crisp, like apples. Ugly as sin, though.

I had to harvest the lot last weekend, because the neighborhood urchins swarmed across the front lawn with glee when one of them noticed my over-laden trees placed invitingly next to an alley. After scolding them gruffly ("It would be decent of you to at least ask," I lectured. "Take some, but do leave some for me; it's my yard, after all!"). And then they all but cleaned me out.

The basket I filled with what remained was given me by one of my former mothers-in-law. Mind you, I've had five, thanks to the vagaries of modern marital patterns, but one of them was really good at finding unusual gifts. Since I had the reputation of being the family "earth mother," I got the reproduction Appalachian apple picking basket from the fancy mail-order catalogue one year. This is the first time I've used it for anything resembling its original purpose, and it does hold a good number of pears.

At any rate, now I've got to do something with them, since the weather's cooling off (thanks in part to the hurricanes now ravaging the Caribbean), and it's not too hot to work in the kitchen. I want to be able to give preserves or confits for Yule gifts, and to have something nice to marry with cashew or almond butter in sandwiches. Actually, the idea of sliced hard pear and cashew butter sounds great for a good midday nosh.

The first place I looked for a recipe was Mrs. Rudkin's cookbook about which I waxed enthusiastically a while ago. Once again, her antique recipes section had the answer, from 1658, and she modified it enticingly for the modern kitchen:

Weigh as many pears as you want to preserve and then weigh out half their weight in sugar. Core and stem but do not peel the pears. Put alternate layers of pears and sugar in an earthenware jar or crock. Add brandy to cover the fruit. Cover the jar closely and keep in the refrigerator or in a cool place for at least 2 weeks. For 8 quarts pears, 1 quart brandy will suffice.

I can see us all now come December, sitting around the fireplace getting tipsy on brandied pears. I'll still look for jam and conserve ideas, but this is my kind of recipe. For others, I recommend the page full of ideas from Alcestis (Cooky) Oberg, Galveston County Master Gardner--especially the one for "exotic pear pickles." I never thought of gulf-coast Texas as pear-growing country, but she's had success with varieties like mine. I just hope that the wave of hurricanes doesn't damage her crop.

Photos: Pears on one of the trees, ugly pears on a tablecloth, pears in an apple-picking basket with my neighbor's much-lovelier-than-mine yard in the background.