This'll be a short one folks

I was going to do a post on the new social media app Bluesky but man...As far as I can tell it is not interesting at all. Granted, that's basically on the basis of a few screenshots, but who has time? The main story is that where there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth eight years ago, now it's basically just an extended public sulk. 

Anyway, the best reason to leave a social media platform isn't to find another one that flatters your biases more. It's to stop staring at your phone so damn much.

Awaiting

 

Demeter, in Greek mythology, is the goddess of the harvest and of plant life. The most prominent part of her legend is that her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades and forced to marry him. While Zeus ordered the underworld god to return Persephone to her mother, by that time she had eaten of the underworld's food. Thus she could not stay with Demeter always, but rather had to divide the year between husband and mother. Demeter would not allow plants to grow while her daughter was imprisoned, giving rise to the seasons.

The gods of Olympus could be grand, cruel, childish. Demeter's plight shows them at their most, well, human.

"Demeter" is also the title of the above painting by Patrick Procktor. Procktor's biography is easily summarized. He was a polymath likely headed for great things even before he became an artist. In the 1960s he became involved with London's gay demimonde, befriending Joe Orton (whose portrait he drew) and David Hockney. Hockney's still with us, but Procktor passed on in 2003.

It's his hand, eye, and judgment for which he'll be remembered, of course. The "Demeter" painting creates a contrast between lush green plant life in the upper rough half and austere white marble in the lower. A symbol of the daughter's absence, it seems. It's allegorical and more than a little melancholy, but above all alive.

Signs of the season

#1.

We had a lot of summery days in October, and a few even in early November. For whatever reason. That's not how it is now, though. We're getting overnight temperatures in the low 30s. Certainly some nice things about this. You can just snuggle into the blankets to get to sleep. And it's getting easier to go for a long walk in a jacket without overheating.

#2

The couple who live downstairs have a string of lights running around their doorframe. Colorful. Some of the lights are non-Christmas colors, so I don't think they're Christmas lights as such. Plus, strong chance the couple are Hindu. But it's certainly festive.

Character parts

Been reading The World Encyclopedia of Calligraphy, compiled and edited by Christopher Calderhead and Holly Cohen. Calderhead also writes the introduction to the chapter on Chinese calligraphy, and he says something striking:

Calligraphy holds a central role in the development of Chinese art and culture. The tools of the Chinese painter and calligrapher are one and the same, and there is no clean line of demarcation between the two arts as exists in the West.

This is another way of pointing out that in Chinese words are pictures to a greater extent than in the West. The Latin alphabet is descended, yes, from the Phoenician abjad, and through it Egyptian hieroglyphics. By necessity it still has graphic properties. But they're mostly incidental to the sounds that the letters make, much less the meanings of the words they form. This is in large part true of the other Western alphabets like Greek and Cyrillic.

Eastern scripts are made up of somewhat more complex images that are often stylized versions of the things they depict. You have to learn thousands of them before you know the language. These markings perform, to a greater extent, an actual depiction of what they're supposed to mean.

I don't think either of these systems is necessarily better. There are advantages to both an abstract writing system and one that's more embodied. It's just interesting to realize your own way isn't the only one.

To the lighthouse

I've actually seen Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse up close. It's on the waterfront in Baltimore, which is a beautiful area. The lighthouse itself is quite fascinating as well. It's a screw-pile lighthouse, and thus looks quite a bit different from what we generally associate with the word "lighthouse." Different design for a different situation, I guess.

The Prequel Problem

Young Sherlock Holmes supports the general rule that if you want to see a really good Barry Levinson movie you should watch one set and shot in Baltimore. It's also an illustration of what might be called The Prequel Problem. 

What was Sherlock Holmes like before he applied his brain to ratiocination? What was his life like before he met Dr. John Watson and Inspector Lestrade, before he acquired Professor Moriarty as an enemy? Devotees of Doyle's books have speculated for years, and there may or may not be a movie in it. So of course in Sherlock Holmes he meets Watson, Lestrade, and Moriarty in boarding school, where he's already a fully formed amateur detective.

This is the Prequel Problem in a nutshell. You may make the pitch that there are great stories to be told before the story everyone knows. But you're not really interested in those Before stories, and/or you don't think your audience is. So you just wind up retelling the well known stories, but set earlier.

Smallville, a show that I never really got into, meant to be the story of young secret alien Clark Kent before he chose to become Superman. But as things dragged on the entire DC Universe formed while Clark was still dicking around in his everlasting gap year. I liked Gotham better but the same thing happened there. After the first season the idea of this being a prelude to Batman's career, rather than just a bunch of Batman stories where he's an adolescent twit without a costume, disappears.

It might just be that burrowing into the "deep" past of pop culture figures isn't very conducive to creativity.

Similarities and differences

There have been five Presidents who took office without winning the popular vote.

The first was John Quincy Adams, a second-generation President. His presidency ended with his rematch with Andrew Jackson. Afterwards he had a distinguished career as Congressman and abolitionist.

Rutherford B. Hayes didn't even with the Electoral College outright. Rather, Congress decided the winner in his race with Samuel Tilden. Not too surprisingly his reputation never recovered.

Benjamin Harrison did at least with the Electoral College, but like Hayes he was mostly forgotten after his single term.

More recent are the cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. And they both present a change from their predecessors in that they lost the popular vote the first time and came back to win it the next time. But even between them their stories are more different than alike.

Bush was reelected and improved his share of voters for a very straightforward reason: 9/11 made him a War President. His big war was neither particularly just nor particularly well-prosecuted, but most Americans weren't going to criticize him. Not in 2004 at least.

Trump's story takes a more circuitous path. He was impeached twice and then spent four years out of office before winning a nonconsecutive second term. What drives the story here is that Joe Biden successfully campaigned on a return to decency, for which you can substitute "establishment norms." But then during his Presidency and the campaign of Kamala Harris, voters got a look at what the 2020s political establishment was. Not too surprisingly they ran screaming in the opposite direction.