Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.

The post Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turns 240 years old appeared first on OUPblog.

This sketch was originally done a couple of weeks ago, but I liked the mood so much I put some finish on it finally. Edith is one of my favourite Downton characters and she’s always getting the crappy ending of the stick. Hopefully season 6 will bring her up and she’ll get to stop wearing such mopey hats.

Writers are always looking for things to enhance our creative output. We worry about whether we write best early in the morning or late at night; we fret about whether reading other novels while working on our own is inspiring or distracting; we deliberate over getting our admin out of the way first, or leaving it till afterwards... But what about location? Which is more inspiring - the city or the countryside?

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

 Bradley, Alan. (2010) The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. (The Flavia de Luce Series) Bantam, division of Random House. ISBN 978-0385343459. Litland recommends ages 14-100!

 Publisher’s description:  Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who’d do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What about Porson’s charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head? (Bantam Books)

 Our thoughts:

 Flavia De Luce is back and in full force! Still precocious. Still brilliant. Still holding an unfortunate fascination with poisons…

 As with the first book of the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, we begin with a seemingly urgent, if not sheer emergency, situation that once again turns out to be Flavia’s form of play.  We also see the depth of her sister’s cruelty as they emotionally badger their little sister, and Flavia’s immediate plan for the most cruel of poisoned deaths as revenge. Readers will find themselves chuckling throughout the book!

 And while the family does not present the best of role models (smile), our little heroine does demonstrate good character here and there as she progresses through this adventure. As explained in my first review on this series, the protagonist may be 11 but that doesn’t mean the book was written for 11-year olds :>) For readers who are parents, however (myself included), we shudder to wonder what might have happened if we had bought that chemistry kit for our own kids!

 Alas, the story has much more to it than mere chemistry. The author’s writing style is incredibly rich and entertaining, with too many amusing moments to even give example of here. From page 1 the reader is engaged and intrigued, and our imagination is easily transported into  the 1950’s Post WWII England village. In this edition of the series, we have more perspective of Flavia as filled in by what the neighbors know and think of her. Quite the manipulative character as she flits  around Bishop’s Lacy on her mother’s old bike, Flavia may think she goes unnoticed but begins to learn not all are fooled…

 The interesting treatment of perceptions around German prisoners of war from WWII add historical perspective, and Flavia’s critical view of villagers, such as the Vicar’s mean wife and their sad relationship, fill in character profiles with deep colors. Coupled with her attention to detail that helps her unveil the little white lies told by antagonists, not a word is wasted in this story.

 I admit to being enviou

 The Wild West: 365 days

 Wallis, Michael. (2011) The Wild West: 365 days. New York, NY: Abrams Press. ISBN 978-0810996892 All ages.

 Publisher’s description: The Wild West: 365 Days is a day-by-day adventure that tells the stories of pioneers and cowboys, gold rushes and saloon shoot-outs in America’s frontier. The lure of land rich in minerals, fertile for farming, and plentiful with buffalo bred an all-out obsession with heading westward. The Wild West: 365 Days takes the reader back to these booming frontier towns that became the stuff of American legend, breeding characters such as Butch Cassidy and Jesse James. Author Michael Wallis spins a colorful narrative, separating myth from fact, in 365 vignettes. The reader will learn the stories of Davy Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok, and Annie Oakley; travel to the O.K. Corral and Dodge City; ride with the Pony Express; and witness the invention of the Colt revolver. The images are drawn from Robert G. McCubbin’s extensive collection of Western memorabilia, encompassing rare books, photographs, ephemera, and artifacts, including Billy the Kid’s knife.

 Our thoughts:

 This is one of the neatest books I’ve seen in a long time. The entire family will love it. Keep it on the coffee table but don’t let it gather dust!

 Every page is a look back into history with a well-known cowboy, pioneer, outlaw, native American or other adventurer tale complete with numerous authentic art and photo reproductions. The book is worth owning just for the original pictures.  But there is more…an index of its contents for easy reference too! Not only is this fun for the family, it is excellent for the school or home classroom use too. A really fun way to study the 19^th century too and also well received as a gift.  I highly recommend this captivating collection! See for yourself at the Litland.com Bookstore.

Tonto broke into new territory when he took the art of the clown out of ancient times; a time when he was given permission to, and was even expected, to represent the deviant side of human nature. I realized there was already too much of that about. And the Pope was doing a good enough job of that on his own, anyway. The fool’s errand had become an overpopulated pursuit. What the world needed was a trickster, similar to that of the traditions in mythology. This seemed amusing for awhile--until quite by accident, I stumbled upon the character of the professional subordinate, beset by giggles and clumsiness, enjoying in his own helplessness almost as much the indignation and incomprehension of his superiors. It was a bathos everyone could appreciate: the sensitive soul in the makeup of a fool. That was--until I realized that it would be impossible for Tonto to be the true voice of the people. By nature, I am too idiosyncratic. Freakishly so! I passed the thing on to my old buddy, Charlie. The unicycle thing wasn’t working out for him the way he had hoped, and was looking for a new trick.

There's no denying that falling for someone forbidden can be a buzz. I had fallen head over heels for Aiko, the daughter of Koji Kobayashi, the Japanese visionary industrialist who guided the NEC Corp toward computers and other high-tech products. The problem for me was that after our passion was unmasked, she was subsequently sequestered in the family penthouse fifty stories above any discernable access points. That Koji was one cagey kikuza, but he did not take into account the enormous size of my kintama’s. Only the cable, connecting our buildings, separated us. As it turned out though, the buzz I got from crossing that high wire trumped her sexiness. I then took this skill on the road, walking the wire between the tallest buildings in the world, while poor Aiko ended up a spinster taking care of dear old daddy in his old age.

The 1925 silent film, The Battleship Potemkin directed by Sergei Eisenstein, was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. The film is composed of five episodes or parts, one of which has the famous scene where Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans. In the most famous scene, N. Poltavseva played the “Woman With Pince-nez shot on steps.” But few know that Tonto Fielding made his acting debut as “Baby in Baby Carriage,” as the carriage rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd. Lost in the credits, was that the use of montage was actually dad’s idea. This slight omission put Eisenstein on the map. The bastard took credit and my father never spoke of it until just before his death when he confided to me it was also him who talked Trotsky into writing the introduction.

During the age of Voltaire, a select group of master toy makers and clock makers set about designing several automatons that were almost perfect facsimiles of the original. At first they were solely used as sex toys for a number of Russian Czarinas, but through time they had adapted new technologies and with enhanced AI, had blended into society so well that it was virtually impossible to identify any of them. It was only through exhaustive investigative work, that Tonto was able to search out one these marvels. I could instantly tell, when he answered one of my questions, during the interrogation, with a hint of a colloquial dialect from eighteenth century Leipzig. Also it became quite clear that I was correct, when at the stroke of the seventh hour, a door in his chest opened and a small bird emerged chirping seven times.

Not even the Strait of Malacca could keep me and my faithful K-9, Banshee (fully trained in the skills of biting, loud barking and reducing attackers to inoffensive positions in which she has the power), from the investment potential in Singapore. Tonto would go to any length to secure a casino license before his competitors, even if it meant sabotaging their on board security systems and sinking some of their yachts. I heard there was $5 billion on the line. That’s a lot of Alpo.

Oh, I was such a fool… to be perceived as nothing but the plain and idiotic numskull, instead of the daring political jester. The fine line between the two, often times, may seem a specter; the William Kemp instead of the Robert Armin. I love fools’ experiments; perhaps that is why I am always making them. So if the distinction is lost, I say play the bumbling, fat, immoral, boastful ass. It is so much more fun, in the end.

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum wrote an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America of the 1890s. To many, the Wicked Witch of the West represented a "malign nature," and the difficult physical environment in which farmers on the Great Plains were trying to make their living. To others, she symbolized left-wing Populism. Yet Tonto recently discovered a journal, which Baum kept when working as a journalist and editor of a small newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota, that reveals the true story of how the witch actually represented the infamous cowgirl stripper, Kitty Gonzalez, who repeatedly rebuffing his sexual advances. Kitty filed a lawsuit against Baum and the club, The Great Dakota Bush Company, saying she was "humiliated and degraded by that sleazebag and his cronies." Baum fired back, “just wait till I expose you to infamy in my new book, you ‘witch.’”
And so the literary detective work of Tonto Fielding once again sheds light into the landscape of implied meaning, and perhaps, ironic suggestion.

Here I am after emerging from the cave in Nepal with Dharma Master AAkash Dhakwa. I was being instructed in the Bodhisattva Precepts in order to learn how to be truly stupid. Where does wisdom come from anyway? It comes from stupidity. If you weren't stupid, you couldn't become wise. If you know that you are stupid, that means that your wisdom is starting to manifest. The lengths I went to, to prepare for my next job as a Greyhound bus driver, was extraordinary indeed. In order to pass the written exam to become a driver, you actually have to score in the "below average" level. They don’t want their drivers to think too much when staying on the roads for twenty hour shifts.

Tonto’s side kick of long ago and many cattle drives (not to be mistaken for the time I spent as a gaucho in Argentina), Ragshag Jim, wrote the famous cowboy song, “Days of 49.” The verse I am indebted to went like this—

“There is Tattooed Tonto, the roaring man,
Who could out-roar a buffalo you bet.
He roared all day, he roared all night,
And I guess he's roaring yet.
One night Tonto fell in a washout hole,
'Twas a roaring bad design,
And in that hole Tonto roared out his soul
In the days of Forty - Nine.”

My first attempt at chainsaw sculpture drew rave reviews not just from the judges at the Athens County Rib fest and Saw-Off, but from several animal behaviorists, who were in attendance, as well. My piece sparked the supposition that the origins of human language could lie in gestures, not words. They took this intellectual breakthrough back to the University and later postulated that it went beyond simple postures or walking patterns - they are movements of the hand, limbs and feet, specifically directed at another individual. This is when Tonto became a foot note in the annals of Darwinism.

Tonto remembers all too well how history can repeat itself. I could recount to you the horrifying tales, told to me by my great-great grandfather, about how he barely survived the East Coast/West Coast Coronet Band Wars of the 1890’s--most notably the renowned square off between the Oxford and St. George’s bands. Grandpa explained how many people believed that brass band music was just a glorification of violence. He on the other hand saw how band music was simply showing how horrible and inhumane life was in the new industrialized age. It expressed what was really happening out there. And then it escalated into conflict between West Coast and East Coast “wild” players with balloon lungs. Unfortunately, since only a few years had passed from the gun slinging days of the “wild, wild west,” the fighting became a vicious cycle that left hundreds dead in the streets. Sadly, life went on and many people in our growing country felt there was only one answer to problems like this: retaliation.

Since Tonto was already well versed in many crafts, such as carpentry, woodworking, tanning, molding and casting; yet was feeling the need to express myself through the art of sculpture, painting and drawing; it was only a natural step which led me to the ancient art of taxidermy. But first I had to find a worthy adversary for the hunt. This meant that I had no other choice but to find and kill the illusive Ultraseven, who no doubt would be inimical to seizure, yet not impossible since his Ultra Eye had melted after the Magma attack while trying to stop Alien Magma and the Giras brothers. Once I tracked him down to the island of Ostrov Urip, I used the fact that Ultraseven's head could be detached and used as a throwing weapon against him. The projectile was captured in a modified, collapsible and telescoping net (a polygonal tubular frame formed by bending a length of tubular stock so that it forms an opening having a perimeter with angular corners and the ends of the tubular stock meet, now referred to as the Tonto net)). Hence we have this beautiful mount, just before being placed above my fire place.

Bail could not come quick enough, after I had been tossed into a Sri Lankan jail for heckling their premier Elvis impersonator, Sanjeewa Gunawarden. Having partaken in several nips of Kasippu, the local hooch, I said something like, “Hey Elvis, you a Malayali, or what?” And then things got a little thorny when someone... mistakenly referred to me as an Australian. I'm only saying--the offense certainly did not warrant the accommodations.

Just a footnote here…to add that it was not all bleakness. The constabulary chef, “one eyed” Dinesh, known to the population simply as, Pete, prepared the Curry exactly as I preferred it: bloody hot and rancid. One thimble’s worth could excommunicate the unsteadfast more effectually than a one month’s fast.

It was a momentous day when Silas Plummer was in attendance for my pitching debut with the Pocatalico Possums minor league baseball team, As it turned out, Silas was scouting for the High Andes League of Ecuador at the time, and it was after five impressive innings pitched that a decision was made which eventually put ...me in Valle de Guamuez, where I would come face to face with the infamous femme fatale, Bonita Flores. What happened next may some day become a required read in military academies.

Margaret Thatcher had begged me to destroy the sketches and oils in which she was the model, from back in those eupeptic bohemian days. I can only remember how we would work through the night dosed with coffee, the recurrent illnesses, and how the lack of success, would always remain the central material of our vocatio...n. The real lives behind the story were considerably more sordid than they would ever appear on the canvas. Back then our friendship could never have been more optimistic nor so generous and unselfish. Because of this, I had to decline her request.

In the first lesson we covered how to say “Hello, how are you?” and “What is your name?” in German. In this lesson we will look at possible answers to general questions. Phrases in brackets are the pronunciation of the adjacent word. NOTE: In German you may come across an awkward character (ß) it may look like the letter B but actually represents a double s. But this character is now only used in special circumstances. For the sake of this lesson we will use ss instead of ß so you don’t get confused.

The most simple of answers are “Yes” and “No”. Which in German are “Ja” (Ya) and “Nein” (nine).

Out loud or in your head say “Yes” and then “Ja”. Repeat this three times. Do the same with “No” and “Nein”.

If your not sure how to answer something I suggest three phrases. “Maybe” - “Vielleicht” (vee-liked), “I don’t know.” - “Ich weiss nicht.” (Ick vise nickt) or “I don’t understand.” - “Ich vestehe nicht.” (Ick ver-shter-hir nickt). Now these are slightly harder phrases to learn if you are not yet familiar with German. Start by revising “Maybe” and “Vielleicht” over in your head.

It should become clear by looking at the other two phrases that “Ich” means “I”. Also you might have been able to tell that “nicht” is “not”. We have “I do not know.” and “I do not understand”. In German, however, they literally say “I know not.” or “I understand not.”. Once you know “Ich” and “nicht” these phrases should become easier to learn.

All you have to learn now is “weiss” and “vestehe”. “Weiss” meaning “know” and “vestehe” meaning “understand”. Write these words down if this is hard to memorise and use this to revise at various points during the day.

Remember to try and practice these phrases with a partner for more practical learning. Thank-you for reading my article and hopefully you can catch the next lesson.

Megan Branch, Intern

Patrick Wright a Professor at the Institute for Cultural Analysis at Nottingham Trent University and a fellow of the London Consortium.  Wright wrote On Living in An Old Country and its companion, A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London (read an excerpt here). On Living in an Old Country looks at history’s role in shaping identity and everyday life in England. Below is an excerpt about the house of Miss May Alice Savidge. Upon finding out that her pre-Tudor house was scheduled for demolition to make way for road work, Savidge dismantled it, shipped it 100 miles away, and began reassembling the house piece-by-piece.

On Camping out in the Modern World

“History appears as the derailment, the disruption of the everyday…” - Karel Kosik

So far I have not identified the political complexion of the local authority in Ware, not for that matter of the national government when the decision to redevelop Miss Savidge’s home was made. This has not been the result of any reluctance to deal with the political implications of Miss Savidge’s story. On the contrary, my point is that these implications will not be appreciable unless one also grasps the extent to which politics, at least in the traditional frame of the major electoral parties, have become irrelevant to the issues finding expression in this affair.

In a phrase of Habermas’s, the political system is increasingly ‘decoupled’ from the traditional measures of everyday life, and Miss Savidge cannot be adequately defined as the victim of one party as opposed to another. She fell instead (and, of course, rose again) on the common ground of the post-war settlement, a ground which is made up of rationalised procedures and methods of administration as much as of any shared policies about, say, the efficacy of the mixed economy or the legitimacy of the welfare state. Miss Savidge’s house stood in the way of an ethos of development and a practice of social planning and calculation which have formed the procedural basis of the welfare state under both Conservative and Labour administrations. Governments have come and gone (at the behest of an electorate oscillating at a rate which itself reflects the situation), but a professionalised conduct of social administration has persisted throughout.

The professionals of this world are almost bound to see the more traditional forms of self-understanding persisting among the citizenry as merely quaint and eccentric, if not more dismissively as obstructive and inadequate to modern reality. While there is always room for an arrogant contempt to develop here, the most frequent manifestation consists of a resigned and pragmatic realism (the bureaucratic sigh which responds to people’s demands by saying that things are always more complicated than that) with which officials draw out and exhaust the discussion and patience of residents’ associations around the country. That this system of planning is less than perfect goes without saying, and Miss Savidge is well stocked with complaints on this score. For anyone who stops to ask she will talk about the callousness of the officials who turned up the Saturday before Christmas (1953) to look at the buildings which they had already decided to pull down—even though this was the first the residents had heard of it. She will mention inconsiderate rules applying to council tenants (no cat or dog unless you have a family, and so on). She will also talk about a general bureaucratic incompetence which, in her experience, made it possible to get a council grant towards the cost of installing a bathroom in a house which was already up for demolition, and which was also evident in the many changes of plan regarding the road development itself. Is it to be a new road with a roundabout, or can the old road be widened, and which local authority (town or country) is to be responsible?

Bureaucratic procedure may indeed be conducted as if its rationality were contained entirely within its own calculations, and in this respect it may well seem to stand impervious: free from any responsibility to the world in which its works eventually materialise. But whatever the appearance, this is obviously not a matter of rationality alone. The system of planning into which Miss Savidge was well caught up by 1969 is characteristic of a welfare state that was both corporatist in character (public discussion and political negotiation simulated in thoroughly institutionalised forms), and caught in the contradictions of its commodifying pact with private capital. More than this, the welfare state has developed through a period of extensive cultural upheaval, and Miss Savidge’s is therefore a story of the times in its discovery of tradition not just in the lifeworld but also in an apparently hopeless contest with modernity. While the dislocation of traditional self-understanding could indeed prepare the way for better possibilities, Miss Savidge stands there as a testimony to another scenario in which the prevailing atmosphere is one of insecurity which develops when extensive cultural dislocation has occurred without any better, or even reasonably meaningful, future coming into view.

Megan Branch, Intern

For many people, country music has always been a crossover genre. Artists like Taylor Swift, Reba McEntire and the late Johnny Cash are able to tread the line between popular and country music, with hits that please the ears of the thirteen-year-old next door and your grandmother. What most people may not know is that Swift, McEntire, Cash and a whole slew of other performers, including Louis Armstrong, owe much of their success to Jimmie Rodgers. In his new book, Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America’s Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century, Barry Mazor chronicles Rodgers’ life and career up until his unfortunate death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-five. Then Mazor goes on to detail Rodgers’ far-reaching influence that continues even now, almost 80 years since his death. Below, from Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, are 10 of the most interesting things about the father of country music you may not have known.

1. He ran away from home to join a traveling show:
“By the age of twelve, Jimmie had attempted to stage a tent carnival of his own, and even took it on the road locally […] Soon after, he ran away from home with a medicine show, having convinced the management, based on his amateur ‘experience,’ that he was a professional performer.”
2. He had a voice like no one else:
“…[Y]ou always knew—literally—where he was coming from. The speech from which his singing extended was Mississippi speech, not just in references, but also in sound. On record, his accent is particularly light, sweet, and most of all present—not diluted or eradicated […] he rather charmingly loses a few middle-of-the-word r’s to rhyme a very liquid barrel with gal…”

3. He raised a huge amount of money for the Red Cross during the Depression:
“[Will] Rogers, Rodgers, and crew flew from town to town across Texas and up into Oklahoma, pulling in unprecedented amounts of cash for relief…every dime going to the Red Cross for food and basics like vegetable seeds, so families could stay fed.”

4. BB King is a fan:
“‘My aunt was a kind of collector of music of her time,’ King recalls […] ‘But of the many [records] she had, Jimmie Rodgers was one of my own favorites […] I never tried to yodel—though he was good at that.’”

5. He didn’t stick to only one style of music:
“There would be Peer-produced Jimmie Rodgers recordings featuring Hawaiian bands, jazz bands, country stringbands, pop orchestras, protocowboy and Texas string contingents, and also those groundbreaking sessions with African-American musicians from Louis Armstrong to the Louisville Jug Band.”

6. He inspired many imitators:
“After the unmistakable success of the first blue yodel, ‘T for Texas,’ brazen imitators immediately started to appear, matching the blue yodeling on their records as closely as possible to the original…Many were utterly inconsequential; many only good enough to be recalled in their context…”

7. He made songs his own:
“Slim Bryant recalls how Jimmie changed precisely one line of ‘Mother, the Queen of My Heart,’[…]Jimmie wrote the line ‘I knew I was wrong from the start’ near the end—the whole function of which is to make the storyteller’s own reaction to the story the emotional punch line of the tale.”

8. He had first-hand experience with tragedy:
Songwriter Steve Forbert “focuses on the traumatic winter of 1923 when Jimmie and Carrie’s baby daughter, June Rebecca, died. Jimmie took off for points West for months, then returned to Meridian and received the formal diagnosis of tuberculosis—which, by then, he had surely understood was coming.”

9. He is in our “musical DNA”:
“And while there is no credible evidence that any actual cattle workers had ever yodeled in the moonlight, after Jimmie Rodgers developed this cowboy theme, legions of screen and recording cowboys were going to be doing it until people across the world thought yodeling cowboys were history, not fantasy.”

10. He inspired women, too:
Tanya Tucker, a “famously, singularly, affectingly earthy country heroine—born, it seems in retrospect, to tackle Jimmie Rodgers songs head-on—took the unmitigated yet, as she proved, still timely sentiment of Jimmie’s ‘Daddy and Home’ to the upper reaches of the country charts in 1988, after having fought to make it a single. Tanya Tucker was born in the late ‘50s but had been raised on Rodgers music.”

Here's a very recent doodle. I seem to be drawing a lot of fantasy towns lately, I think it's all part of the way my mind works with escapism.


Strange to say, much as I love the natural world my imagination tends to be most energized when I'm in a crowded, urban city environment. I love the country, exploring forests and craggy landscapes, but if I spend too long away from the city my imagination is dulled. My mind perhaps feeds off the surroundings but rarely goes beyond, I become relaxed and inspired by oneness with nature, but that's as far as it goes.

In the city however I'm always mentally escaping, my imagination is constantly finding ways to soar beyond the concrete or seeking escapism within it. It's that switching-off from reality, a yearning to escape the shackles of the town that really motivates my fantasy vision.

It's a paradox that although my art is closely connected to the natural world I need the city for my creative vision to soar. In essence I need both - no trees: no vision, but no city: no escapism. The more concrete, the more inhuman the environment, the more I seek humanity in my art. Many of the greatest fantasy artists are often from very urban backgrounds, it can be said that city dwellers really appreciate the fantastic properties of the natural world because they yearned for these things when they grew up. Fantasy for them is a magical release from the humdrum.