Finding the Found Book: Whither Cultural and Individual Memory

I have put off writing this one for several weeks, because I kept re-framing what I wanted to say. Luckily, I have now forgotten most of those thoughts, so I am returning to my initial motivation. Unlike other essays, this does not begin with wandering the Internet, but with old media--books, book stalls, and libraries.

My local public library accepts donations of books and, with the Friends of the Library, generates income by selling these books at the library, but moving books, etc., that don't sell to a 10-cent cart sitting by the entrance. I am prone to looking at the 10-cent cart (and not the other sale books), and recently found this book with drawings by Art Spiegelman, which I did not know about. While a friend and owner of various Art Spiegelman's books,I was intrigued by The Wild Partyand bought it with my hard-earned dime.

Spiegelman takes Joseph Moncure March's poem and subtitles it "The Lost Classic," and this was my theme. For it turns out, just as I bought Spiegelman's book at a used book stall, so did he come across the original himself:

It was the spine that grabbed me. I'm like a drunk who is as attracted to bottles and their labels as to the liquid within. I mean, I once even bought a cookbook – cookbook! – because of its binding. I get the same pleasure from used bookstores as an alcoholic finds in bars. Both places, though public, make room for feverish solitude and both allow unhealthy cravings to be filled to excess. And just like a drunk who won't touch, say, rye, except as a last resort, I rarely stray for the poetry shelves; so it's peculiar that I ever stumbled onto The Wild Party. It was the twenties typography on the spine that first made me pick up the book in the early seventies, and it was a perfunctory frontpiece by Reginal Marsh that made me linger.

So, "art" made us both stop and look, typography for Spiegelman, Spiegelman's drawings for me. However, Internet wandering became my comeuppance. After my own perfunctory stop at Wikipedia to read about "The Wild Party", with not much new added, further idle searching led me to find a link to the June 27, 1994, issue of The New Yorker. So, what do I find but almost the same introduction that Spiegelman has in the book and excerpts from the poems and his drawings. So, the "lost classic" was lost not just to others, but to me, too, an almost lifelong subscriber.


So, how many times has "The Wild Party" been lost? And how many times has serendipity brought it back to life (for one person, or many). And, does this blog entry mean that someone future sole may also now stumble upon the poem--which is left completely undescribed by this entry--and is what is found the poem or Spiegelman's drawings, or both? Or, will they find a pre-Spiegelman found version of the poem, the "poorly received" 1975 movie of the same name?! For those that believe that all culture grafts into our collective memory, even if it is lost and never found, then it may not matter.

Robert Coover, the Hypertext Hotel, and Disappearing Trends

Internet wondering and wandering can be marvelous at times; disconnected threads combine to find a home in one's thoughts. However, what is the goal of the wondering wanderer? To find a home in the wanderer's thoughts, or to be able to learn and teach about the experience? Does one need to be a pondering panderer instead? Regardless, let us start with the dual threads:

• The March 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.
• The Intellectual Capital Management (ICM).

Thread No. 1--The New Yorker: This begins with opening up the issue to a full page photograph of an angry Kewpie. For most people, this would mean nothing; but for graduates of David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, well I guess yes, a Kewpie is it--our unique team mascot. But, the post isn't about the Kewpie, but about the facing single page short story: "Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover. I was an avid fan of Coover's novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.,read his other work (backward and forward), and lost track of him after he published (in 1977) The Public Burning,so was very surprised to see that he was still around and writing, so have now embarked to catch up again.

 Thread No.2--ICM and the ICM Movement: This is not my thread, but as with my exploration of the seven principles of learning and of knowledge journalists, a Google search inspired by my wife's reading and wanting to know who or what was the Intellectual Capital Movement and the ICM Group and the ICM Gathering. Well, I found out some stuff, but it was a bit difficult, as it appears to be a thing of the past. ICM built up steam over the 1980's and 1990's as a discipline for channeling the intellectual capital in corporations and then ratcheted up in the early 2000's as a capital M Movement. And then, it was over.

The Seven Principles of Learning (or the Seven Principles of Learning (or the Seven Principles of Learning))

It is a familiar form of discourse to orient thinking around a number--two for yes and no and black and white and on or off and good and evil and yin and yang; three for trinity; four for nice little spacial boxes built on an x axis and a y axis; etc. One of the classic numbers is, for course, seven: seven days of the week, seven deadly sins, seven sages, and--as none of you knew before now--the seven principles of learning!

The Google winner (Number One, Top of the Charts) on the Seven Principles of Learning comes from the National Research Council and are supposedly based on the "Cognitive Science of How People Learn." As presented on a Utah Valley University website, they are:

1. Learning with understanding is facilitated when new and existing knowledge is structured around the major concepts and principles of the discipline.

2.Learners use what they already know to construct new understandings.

3. Learning is facilitated through the use of metacognitive strategies that identify, monitor, and regulate cognitive processes.

4. Learners have different strategies, approaches, patterns of abilities, and learning styles that are a function of the interaction between their heredity and their prior experiences.

5. Learners’ motivation to learn and sense of self affects what is learned, how much is learned, and how much effort will be put into the learning process.

6. The practices and activities in which people engage while learning shape what is learned.

7. Learning is enhanced through socially supported interactions.

But, wait, I have faked you out, because these are not the seven principles of learning I was trying to source on the Internet. But, then, neither are these, the next set that we find on Google. This time from ASAE, the Center for Association Leadership:

1. Learning involves both support and challenge.

2. Learning involves changing both thinking and action.

3. Learning is an ongoing process of self-discovery.

4. Participants need to feel that the learning experience is both relevant to their situation and authentic to them as a person.

5. Learners and faculty should be involved as equal contributors in the learning process.

6. Learning is a social activity and happens best in the context of a trusting community.

7. Learning experiences should surprise and delight participants.

Whew, that must be the right one, correct? .. Not.

On Becoming a "Knowledge Journalist"

In search of encore careers, my wife told me about "knowledge journalists"; that seemed to be a valid trigger for some internet wondering/wandering, so here we go! While there are some wasted hits on the first page of Google results, the first hit is a goodie, but oldie. From 1999, Tom Fineran writes about "A Component-Based Knowledge Management System" and says:

One essential aspect of knowledge quality is meaningful classification. Although it may be possible to perform some classification automatically, a considerable amount of manual effort will be required initially. "Knowledge Journalists" will be required to perform some of these activities. This is not to say that Knowledge Journalists are essential for a functioning Knowledge Management System.. What it means is that those organizations that require high-quality information need to consider developing Knowledge Journalist professionals.

The next good hit is about someone who apparently was a knowledge journalist for some time. From what seems to be an old, not-update web site, we can learn about Sylva Foti:

Then she became a Knowledge Journalist at Hewitt, which is a lot like being a Regular Journalist, except that she wrote confidential business profiles from the consultants' point of view. The idea was to share consultants' stories on their clients so they could learn from each other. It's the latest in Knowledge Management.

Up next, an abstract from a publication on "Knowledge Management"( but I am not paying $25 to see what's in the detail):

Walt Whitman's "Democratic Vistas"

My only purpose in going online for this work was that I am cleaning out papers and one thing I had in my possession was a photocopy of a 1949 edition of this book with an introduction by John Valente. I have no memory of why I made this copy, but it presumably dates from my interest in political theory. In any case, I didn't want to discard this without first establishing that it was, as one would expect 35 (40?) years later. And, so it is, I refer to Bartleby.com's reprint in five documents, as part of the a complete set of Whitman's prose works. (Or, for a somewhat harder to read but all in one web page, see this hypertext version from the American Studies program at the University of Virginia, although the hypertexts table of contents does not include this document).

Of not particular relevance to my endeavor, I do note that one of the Google hits is to a 2004 collection of essays taking Whitman's title as its own, but at least including one essay on Lincoln and Whitman. According to the publishers, "A dozen contributors consider the nature and prospects of democracy as it relates to the American experience-free markets, religion, family life, the Cold War, higher education, and more." I guess the question is whether it is any better to read any of these instead of just charging ahead into Whitman's own "Democratic Vistas"?

­

One wonders what Whitman would have thought of the democratic vista offered by the Internet for his words and all the other words that are out here. He has at least one fan in George H. Jensen, Jr., Chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who has taken Whitman's title for his own blog and, in introducing his title, promising to "quote from this work often, as well as from Leaves of Grass, as I drive around the United States, searching for America and the American character.":

In Democratic Vistas, Whitman says something that most Americans would find startling: America is not yet a democracy. Before we can have a democracy, he argues, we must have a people who are capable of democratic behavior. Whitman truly believed (and hoped) that we, as a people, would one day be able to develop original ideas and yet respect the ideas of others. Without that respect, we would never be able to enter into a democratic dialogue. We could not have a democracy.

Not sure that Jensen has followed up on quoting extensively from Whitman, since Steinbeck seems to be his real focus as he travels America, so let us conclude with our own quote from Whitman:

For our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come. Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these things?

How would Whitman evaluate the "results to come" that we have to show him? Have we progressed any further in our democratic principels in the 130 or so years since these words were written?

The Missing Stock Market Factor: Having a Sense of Mix of Holding Periods on a Security

Anyone can make a buy recommendation, but hold and sell recommendations are next to impossible to state. This is because the same recommendation might vary considerably on how long a person had held a stock, or more importantly at what price a person had obtained the stock. But, I have seen no discussion of this over the years. Now that brokers are going to have to issue 1099s showing actuals gains or losses, it seems that there will be a reservoir of information now that, theoretically, could be compiled and merged from various brokerage houses of how much stock is outstanding by price point of purchase.

So, with that as the premise, what can I find. With a Google search of "how i long have stocks been held" I find a lot of trash

Washington's Blog points out program traders on average hold stock for 11 seconds. Clearly that is irrelevant to the consumer investor.

I feel I just don't even know the words to use to conduct a search. The real issue, of course, is whether there are any rich investors who have programs that have been developed to predict what the numbers are. I have to imaging that, for example, one could have two companies, each of whose shares are prices at $10 will have very different trading experiences with a 25% increase in price if one has 80% of its holders having paid well over $10 and have been holding for years, while the other has 80% of its investors having paid $5 or less and become holders in the last five years.

Thoughts?

Beach Pyjamas, Alan Aldridge, and "Corpse at the Carnival" by George Bellairs

The wonderful meanderings (same as a wandering? I wonder!) of the web. So, I bought, for US$0.10, a Penguin Crime novel by an author I had never heard of--George Bellairs, who--as of this writing--is barely worth a stub on Wikipedia. First published in 1958, "Corpse at the Carnival" was published by Penguin in 1964 and is amusing romp of a mystery that takes one on a tour of the Isle of Man during a week of summer vacations.

My first reason for hitting the Net was to look up Manx, partly to see whether the cat by that name was also associated with the Isle of Man, but also because for those who don't know anything about the Isle of Man, Manx is just a great word. But the real reason for the post isn't Manx. Rather it is the other searching brought on by the book -- and its cover.

So, it is a summer in the mid-1950's of vacationers from across the waters, as the Manx say. Bellairs first sent me to the Net because of the idea that Brits were already investing in artificial tans by then, which turned out to be true. But, then on to beach pyjamas: I had never heard the term before I read it in this book. This was an easy search, first taking me to a Flickr page with a picture of such from the 1930's:

Beach pyjamas were very popular with the fashionable ladies of the 30s. Worn with bare backs, the beach suit had the arms revealed and long flared legs- the start of elegant leisure wear.

Well, I was satisfied that 20 years later, this could still be fashionable on the Isle of Man; or George Bellairs, being in his 50's himself was relying on pre-war memories of Manx visitors.

What really bothered me, however, was the cover. So poor Uncle Fred, lying dead on the promenade, is fine. But what in tarnation is he doing with a bright red Coca-Cola sticker on the bottom of each shoe, in this otherwise black, pen-lined drawing? I am not going to re-read the whole book, but I am sure I remember nothing about Coca-Cola. I did check his death scene, as well as the description of him and his possessions while laid out in the morgue, but nothing there either.

The back of the book tells me that the illustrator was Alan Aldridge. Another name that means nothing to me. However, this time, I get more from Wikipedia and learn about his association with all sorts of iconographic art of the 1960s. I do learn that before being associated with the Beatles, he was the art director at Penguin Books, where he was noted for his own vision with science fiction books. Before joining Penguin in 1965, he had done some freelance covers for them, so, therefore, the one he did for this book was produced at that time. So, wonderful, what do I know? Mainly speculation that Aldridge was just incorporating a popular culture icon (the Coca-Cola emblem) for his own artistic sense?

There you have it. Until now, a Google search for ""Beach Pyjamas" "Alan Aldridge"" would generate no hits, so this will soon be remedied. I have updated his Wikipedia article for his Penguin career. For other Aldridge work, check out: