Toiling and Moiling

grasshopper

“Why not come and sing with me,” said the Grasshopper “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

Janis 1967

You’ll be toiling and moiling just to get through this.  If things become tedious, just scroll down to the jokes at the end.

samuel johnson

Samuel Johnson defined moil as “to labour in the mire.”

janis 68

Moiling in the mire, toiling in the muck.

bread moil

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Singing for your supper.

Verre-de-Murano-fabrication2-300x198

In the art of glassmaking, a moil is a superfluous piece of glass which is formed during blowing and removed in the finishing operation.

Janis-Ranier-Ale-300x237

Cut that moil, Jack, and put it in your pocket till I get back.

moil point tool

A moil to a miner is a short hand tool with a polygonal point, used for breaking or prying out rock.

BEF16-moil

Especially in the beginning of its life, the word moil had connotations of wetness.  Her tears moiled the letter.

ae 57

In Spanish, as in English, moil can be a noun or a verb:   trabajo duro or esforzarse.

Janis Joplin, Sam Andrew

A moil is definitely not a mohel, although the words are homophones, at least in the US.  In the UK, mohel and mole have the same sound.

Al primo posto

Toiling and Moiling is a pleonasm, really.

ann

Greek πλεονασμός pleonasmos from πλέον pleon ”more, too much”  is the use of more words or word parts than is necessary for clear expression.  You know, like black darkness, or burning fire.  ”Tuna fish” is a pleonasm.    So is “safe haven.”

ascoltando

A pleonasm is a tautology.  A tautology or a pleonasm can be used to reinforce an idea, an observation, a statement by making  writing clearer and easier to understand.  Legal documents are studded with pleonasms in order to make absolutely clear the intent of the wording.

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Here is how a lawyer would phrase a poem that we all know:  Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter “the House”) a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to, a mouse.

audrey

Pleonastic devices were so often used by the epic poets, Homer, Virgil, Luís Vaz de Camões , Milton.  Epic poets once sang all of their lines, and pleonasms helped with the memorizing.

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How many times is the phrase ‘rosy fingered dawn’ (rododactylos) used in the Iliad?  There are many of these set epithets in the poem. And each of them helps in the memorization of the whole work.

Sam Andrew Janis Joplin Leoni Samantha Leoni

In French, you can say Il est possible que.  Or  Il peut arriver que.  Or Il peut se passer que. They all mean roughly the same thing, they are often said in sequence and they are all more or less pleonastic.  Not really necessary to the sense of what follows.

bergen and caine

Toiling and moiling mean more or less the same thing and are only joined in this old cliché because they rhyme.

birk beat

She needed a respite from the moil of the modern world.

gendarme

calot is that kepi you see on a gendarme’s head in Paris.

bush_yarmulke4

A calotte is that skullcap you see on the rabbi’s head in Villejuif.

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Does the Pope wear a yarmulke?  Calotte can also mean the vault of heaven, or, the clergy.

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This is an example of metonymy, substituting the part (a priest’s cap) for the whole, the clergy.

booker 76

Men who moil for gold.

Sam Janis 68

The audience moiled around the stage.

charlotte rampling 66

Middle English mollen from French mouillir, Old French moillier, Vulgar Latin *molliare, Latin mollia, the soft part of the bread, Indo European *mel-

sam janis airport

The angry mob moiled around the ticket counter.

christa päffgen

From this same word mollia comes mojado, Spanish for ‘wet’ and slang for ‘wetback.’

christie avedon

Extreme manual labor:  the kind of moiling work that was done by farmers before the age of mechanization.

Cosa c'è in un nome?

Some words that mean more or less the same as moiling are:  arduous, Augean, backbreaking, demanding, difficult, formidable, grueling, heavy, herculean, hard, murderous, severe, strenuous, toilsome, tough.

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Mental moiling can be occupied with matters that are abstruse, complex, complicated, elusive, insoluble, intricate, involved, knotty, opaque, recondite, spiny, thorny, stubborn, onerous, taxing, irksome, vexatious, stringent.

duchess

I’m beginning to think that there is something to this -oiled sound.

Sam Janis outside 67

Let’s see, oiled, annoyed, boiled, boisterous, broiled, coiled, foiled, moiled, roiled, soiled, spoiled, toiled, there’s a kind of common meaning that emerges here from the mere sound -oiled.

due volte

A kind of confusion and turmoil.

dusty

During the counterculture period, there was a certain roiling instability in our town.

janis park

She was calm and happy as the equipment managers toiled and moiled at their tasks.

emmanuelle beart

The roiling surf excited her and stirred her hopes.

femmina di prima clase

Moil:     Alarums and excursions, ballyhoo, blather, bobbery, foofaraw, helter-skelter, hurry-scurry. kerfuffle, pother, ruction, welter, williwaw.

françoise hardy

Fracas, mêlée, lather, tizzy.

gabriele

There are strange things done in the midnight sun   By the men who moil for gold;  The Arctic Trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,   But the queerest they ever did see   Was that night on the marge of Lake LeBarge    I cremated Sam McGee.

mo

Her maiden name is Moil.

gatto e cane

Mollify: 14th century CE  ”to soften (a substance),” from Old French mollifier or directly from Late Latin mollificare ”make soft, mollify” from mollificus ”softening,” from Latin mollis ”soft” (see melt (v.)) + root of facere ”to make.”  Transferred sense of “soften in temper, appease, pacify” is recorded from early 15th century.

Gena and John 54

Proto Indo European root *mel

gretsch

In Latin a tudicula was a machine for crushing olives.  Tudiculare meant ‘stir around.’  In Norman French this word had become toiler.

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IABD

The Romans called a hammer a tudes and tundere meant ‘to beat.’  Both of these words are related to that olive bruising machine, the tudicula.

joey deborah

The happily named Thomas Crapper was one of the early makers of toilets in England.

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His name is, amazingly enough, sheer coincidence, and not related to ‘crap’ or ‘crapper.’

lana

Diseases, including cholera which still affects some three million people each year, can be largely prevented when effective sanitation and water treatment prevents fecal matter from contaminating waterways, groundwater and drinking water supplies.

margaret a

Infected water supplies can be treated to make the water safe for consumption and use.

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There have been five main cholera outbreaks and pandemics since 1825, during one of which 10,000 people died in 1849 in London alone.

Macon Georgia Telegraph microfilm Feb 1839-Apr 1842 to 1 Oct 1839  We give below, the names of the persons who died in Augusta, of the prevailing epidemic, from its commencement up to the 26th ult:  John Abbott, Frederick Selleck, James U. Jackson, Wm. Thompson,  Henry E. Parmelee, Thomas Allen, Welcome Allen, Wiley Hargroves, Allen Andrew.

Sam Andrew, calling card 1860

My ancestor Allen Andrew, a physician, died in an Atlanta, Georgia, cholera epidemic about 1839.  I like to think that he died helping people, but I don’t really know that.

museo

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.” 

natalie 61

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee. 

36

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.” 

zcrowd

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold, till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.” 

35

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee. 

neuve

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you, to cremate those last remains.” 

Washakie Badlands

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — Oh God! how I loathed the thing. 

z roiling

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin. 

nico 61

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.” 

33

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee. 

nina 60

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky. 

32

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; … then the door I opened wide. 

31

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear, you’ll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.” 

Non c'è niente da fare

   There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

30

Now, isn’t that a heartwarming tale?

Z

Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon wrote that.

ocin 62

I love the meter and the rhyme scheme.

29

Service wrote other such immortal odes. One was The Shooting of Dan McGrew.

X

Service wrote his first poem when he was six.

Ora che cosa?

God bless the cakes and bless the jam;  Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham:  Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,   And save us all from bellyaches.   Amen

28

OK, back to moiling.   Hey, these men aren’t moiling.

W

These men did with the hermits toil, With their hands in daily moil.

pamela tiffin

Moil first meant to moisten.  Later, the meaning became to work hard in unpleasantly wet conditions, from Old French moillier, ultimately from Latin mollis soft.

V

Fun dein moil tsu gots oyerin,”  is Yiddish for, “From your mouth to god’s ears,”  which means something like “Let’s hope god hears you say that and that she will grant your request.  This “moil” comes from German Maul, mouth, and has nothing to do with our word moil.

27

… and moylynge in their gaye manoures and mansions    (1548  Latimer)

patti d'arbanville

And moyleth for no more than their hyre.       (1559  Mirror for Magistrates)

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To toyle and moyle for worldly dross.     (1580   Gillflowers Poems)

T

Here was labour, drudge and moyle.       1593

paul jones

… molestation or moyle, miserie   1612

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s

But moile not too much under Ground.        1625   Bacon

päffgen 65

Vega hath spent 20 chapters wherein he moyles in sweate and dust.     1629   Burton

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r

The Masters say not what excesse of toile and moile servants undergoe.     1642

penelope

Their life for that space was hard travail or moyle.      1659

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This night his weekly moil is at end.     1785

q

Enduring moil and toil in the trenches before Troy.         1856

phillips

It is for love of me that he comes on foot and with all that moil.          1881

piaf reinhardt

Edith Piaf                        Django Reinhardt

quale disco scegliere

That with the madding moil the waves themselves Inflamed.        1855

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It is laughable after I have got out of the moil to think how miserably it affected me for the moment.         1864     Hawthorne

p

Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.          1885    Stevenson

real

The moil of death upon them.            1856    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Mwile, mire.   ‘A’s a-gettin’ vurder in the mwile, i.e.,  he’s going from bad to worse      1888   Berkshire Glossary

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1582     Thee seas, thee skies so sprightfulye moyling

rimini

1600         Much moiled they were all and sore toiled in this untoward.

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1604       Who is moyled with heavinesse…

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1640      This while Alcidamant and Griolanis were no less moiled, for the great knight of the Sun so stoutly withstood them.

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1653      We had been miserably moiled and our hurts that were great but ill looked unto.

sandy

1823       He seemed sadly moiled with matrimonial miseries.

Linda Huey studio Boston, MA

1560      We moiled and turmoiled ourselues in studying and deuising howe we maye come by giftes of glassy fortune.

m

1881    They moile themselues sore with the manners and condition of the nurse.

scarpette dorate

1600 Hakluyt    To moyle themselves with abject and base works.

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1611   Chapman  Iliad      No more tug one another thus, nor moyle yourselves.

settembre

1673   Marvell   He moyles himself with tumbling and tossing it that he is in danger of melting his Sperma Ceti.

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1869   Tennyson   But ‘e tued an’ moil’d ‘issen deäd.

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1567   Golding   They moyled why others myght not geve like gift as wele as shee.

she

1889    He’s tewin’ an’ moilin’ aboot for iver.

16

If I died and went straight to hell, it would take me a week to realize I wasn’t at work anymore.

k

To All Employees:        New Incentive Plan      Work — or get fired.

shrimp

Men At Work         Women work all the time.     Men have to put up signs when they work.

15

Why is Monday so far from Friday but Friday so close to Monday?

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Why aren’t you working?               I didn’t see you coming.

sonja kristina 75

Por fin es VIERNES.              Finally it’s FRIDAY.

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i

When the coffee stops working it is probably the right time to get drunk.

striscia

Three drunks get in a cab. The driver thinks he’ll play a trick on them, so he starts his engine, then turns it off. “We’re there,” he announces. The first drunk pays him. The second says “Thank you,” and the third hits him. “Hey, what was that for?”  ”Next time go a little slower. You almost killed us.”

13

If you’re going to wish for impossible things, here’s a starting list.    1. earn money without working,  2. be smart without studying, 3. love without getting hurt, and 4. eat without getting fat.

h

I would be more inclined to grow up if I saw that it worked out for anyone else.

twiggy newton

A lot of sleep can not only lengthen your life, it can make work hours shorter.

g

I could be the world’s laziest man if I applied myself.

uschi obermaier

You’re tired because you’re overworked. The population of this country is 237 million. 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work. There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to do the work. Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government, leaving 19 million to do the work. 2.8 million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 16.2 million to do the work. Take from the total the 14,800,000 people who work for State and City Governments and that leaves 1.4 million to do the work. At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals, leaving 1,212,000 to do the work. Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons. That leaves just two people to do the work. You and me. And I’m sitting here writing work jokes.

f

VACATION DAYS:   All employees will take their vacation at the same time every year. The vacation days are as follows: Jan. 1, July 4 & Dec. 25

veruschka penn

One way to keep a healthy level of insanity in the workplace:   In the memo field of all your checks, write “for sexual favors.”

e

The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.

10

OK, all right, I’m going to have a positive attitude about my self destructive habits.

vulpes

“I have an idea, boss,” Einstein’s chauffeur said. “I’ve heard you give this speech so many times. I’ll bet I could give it for you.” Einstein donned the chauffeur’s cap and jacket. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein’s speech and even answered a few questions expertly. Then a professor asked an extremely esoteric question. Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, “Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me.”

6

Someday, we’ll look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject.

wanda jackson 60

CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE in a help wanted ad means: We don’t pay enough to expect that you’ll dress up. A couple of the real daring guys wear earrings.

woolworth 1926

A vaudeville joke:      Boss:     You should have been here at 9.30 a.m.             Employee: Why what happened?

3

The boss says, “do you believe in life after death and the supernatural?”    ”Not really,” I replied.    ”I was wondering” he said. “Because yesterday after you left to go to your grandmother’s funeral, she came by to see you.”

d

I quit my job at the post office.  They handed me a letter to deliver and I thought, “This isn’t for me.”

9

The trouble with being punctual is that there’s never anybody there to appreciate it.

4

A musical director stands in front of the band and says, ”When a musician just can’t handle his instrument and doesn’t improve when given help, they take away the instrument, and give him two sticks, and make him a drummer.”   So the drummer says, ”And if he can’t handle even that, they take away one of his sticks and make him a conductor.”

Timothy O'Sullivan

You sound reasonable.   God, I probably should be taking more drugs.

b.

Why can’t you play hide-and-seek with mountains?     Because they peak.

zPam Bob

The devil visited a lawyer’s office and made him an offer. “I can arrange some things for you, ” the devil said. “I’ll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you’ll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife’s soul, your children’s souls, and their children’s souls rot in hell for eternity.”        The lawyer thought for a moment. “What’s the catch?” he asked.

1

Charles Dickens:   He wrote continuously.  In the middle of parties, crowded rooms, there would be twenty people in the room all talking and he talked the most, and kept on writing through it all. He would take a twenty mile walk in the afternoon and come home and write while all around him were chattering and carrying on.  Moil and toil?  He didn’t know what those words meant.  He wrote as he breathed, always and constantly. Driving his pen as a madman would.  He was a happy man despite one of the worst childhoods that anyone could have, a childhood which he expertly chronicled, writing ceaselessly in the middle of the party.  His energy and humor never flagged.  If you love it, it’s not work.

a

Q: Have you lived in this town all your life?               A: Not yet.

zbob

See you next week?

z Sam-Ben-Tucson final

Ben Nieves             Sam Andrew         It might look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy.

____________________________________________

Vaudeville

charles

yiddish-vaudeville

Vaudeville

berlin

SANDERSON: My friend has been elected mayor.
BOWMAN: Honestly?
SANDERSON: What does that matter?

1911-marx-brothers

Acting drama was seriously curtailed with the onset of the Revolutionary War when the Continental Congress convened and passed a recommendation that the colonists “discountenance and discourage all horse racing and all kinds of gaming, cock fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other expensive diversions and entertainments.”   The staging of plays all but ceased in the colonies.

1926

DUMMY: My father killed a hundred men in the war.
VENTRILOQUIST: What was he? A Gunner?
DUMMY: Nope, a cook.

1926nadmeeting

With the coming of peace, the feeling against plays began to lessen, but it wasn’t until 1787 that the American theatre began to flourish. Philadelphia and New York City became the twin hubs of the theatre, vying for supremacy up through the period of the Civil War when other forms of entertainment began to emerge on the American dramatic landscape.

1935-colored-vaudeville-show001

YOUNG MAN: I want to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.
OLD MAN: You’re an idiot!
YOUNG MAN: I know it. But I didn’t suppose you’d object to another one in the family.

cherry_sisters_drum

The Cherry Sisters  were considered the worst vaudeville act of all time. Ranging in number from five to two, their songs and recitations were so awful that audiences threw vegetables to show their disgust.

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Managers saw the possibilities and encouraged audiences to hurl produce.  The ladies drew huge cackling crowds, performed behind a net curtain to avoid injury, and they unsuccessfully sued complaining critics.

cherrysisters

All evidence suggests that the sisters believed their act was really good. Commanding a hefty $1,000 a week, they toured for decades.

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I just got back from a pleasure trip.  I took my mother-in-law to the train station.

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Vaudeville was variety. All the variety shows on television and onstage are descended from vaudeville  which was popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s.

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Each vaudeville show was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts.

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Vaudeville included such acts as popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels and films.

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A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian.

bedtimeBroxSisters

Yiddish vaudeville joke:   In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from medical school.

bobmay1

Vaudeville evolved out of the concert saloon, minstrel shows, freaks and geeks, dime museums and literary burlesque.

Carla-and-Cecil

Vaudeville was “the heart of American show business,” for several decades.

circus-and-vaudeville-acts-a-woman-everett

The newest Jewish-American-Princess horror movie?         It’s called, “Debbie Does Dishes.”

cool vaud

Many show business terms originated in vaudeville. When a performer’s name appeared on the top of the billboard listing each week’s acts, they were at the “top of the bill.”

crosbybennyburns

Headliners got the best dressing rooms and the highest salaries, up to $4000 a week in the big time.

d56tyg

Imagine being ‘on’ for two to five shows a day!  That’s difficult, I can tell you.

dim

The performers didn’t necessarily have to have a lot of talent, but they made up for that with personality and extraordinary stamina.

e

Since many of these longtime audience favorites predated the age of talking film, their names are now forgotten, but a few are still with us.

ea

They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.

eab

Keith and Albee were self elected censors of vaudeville and the standards they imposed on all vaudeville acts were hard on comedians.

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Working clean was difficult but people like Bert Williams pulled it off.

eabcd

Any good clean joke was a diamond and was likely to be stolen.

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Many a comic found that other performers had done his material in various towns.

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Early radio and television would rely on the same jokes.

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Indeed, you still hear some of those jokes today.

eabcdefgh

I know how you sleep . . . like a baby. You cry a little, then wet the bed a little.

duncan-postcard

The Duncan Sisters did a musical act as “Topsy and Eva,” characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They sang and played various instruments with limited skill but tremendous charm, pleasing fans for decades.

eabcdefghi

He hands out color photographs of two bottles of well-known household products, asking, “Have you seen my Pride and Joy?”

elsiewar

Elsie Janis sang and clowned her way to stardom in vaudeville and musical comedy before winding up a successful Hollywood screenwriter and lyricist.

eddie foy's dancing shoes

That’s the last time I steal a joke from Berle.

nora-bayes-c1920

Nora Bayes was the well dressed soprano who made “Shine On Harvest Moon” a hit.

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Her fans followed her scandalous marriages, most memorably to songwriter Jack Norworth (composer of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”)

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Nora Bayes was one of America’s first singers to attain national popularity.

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I saw a man lying in the street. I said, “Can I help you?” He said, “No, I found this parking place and I sent my wife out to buy a car.

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Smith and Dale were one of vaudeville’s most popular comedy teams.

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They were together for seventy-five years and they supposedly hated each other the whole time.  This is not that difficult to believe.

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Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys was based on Smith and Dale’s relationship.

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Their routines were corny but funny, relying on slapstick gags and carefully timed dialogue.

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I don’t want to say that business was bad at the last place I played, but when a fellow called up and asked what time is the next show, I said, “When can you make it?”

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Julian Eltinge was vaudeville’s most famous female impersonator.

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Eltinge’s lavish gowns and deft mimicry of feminine behavior made him a longtime favorite.

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His fame faded with vaudeville, and he found few engagements in his later years.

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Julian Eltinge was in The Fascinating Widow (1911).

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He was the only drag performer to have a Broadway theatre named after him.  The Eltinge later became the Empire, and its old façade and lobby are now part of the AMC Multiplex on 42nd Street.

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Other female impersonators with outstanding vaudeville careers include the campy Bert Savoy.

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There was also Karyl Norman.

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My brother-in-law saw a sign that said ‘Drink Canada Dry,’ so he did.

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Bert Williams was the first black performer to gain national stardom in the US, with comic gems like the song “Nobody.”

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After partnering with George Walker in vaudeville and musical comedy, Williams went on to solo success in vaudeville and starred in several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.

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Despite his tremendous popularity, Williams was often subjected to blind bigotry. When a bartender in a first class Chicago hotel told him that drinks for “coloreds” were $50 each, Williams pulled out a wad of fifties and ordered the man to pour a round for everyone at the bar.

Bert Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910

Doc, it hurts when I go like that.    Doc:  Don’t go like that.

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Leslie Townes Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), was an English-born American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, author, and athlete who appeared on Broadway, in vaudeville.

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What do you get when you cross a rooster and a duck?

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A bird who gets up at the quack of dawn.

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Hope’s English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light-opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple lived at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol.

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In 1908 the Hope family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908, before moving to Cleveland, Ohio.

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From the age of 12, Bob Hope earned pocket money by busking (frequently on the streetcar to Luna Park), singing, dancing, and performing comedy patter.

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He entered many dancing and amateur talent contests (as Lester Hope), and won a prize in 1915 for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

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Hope worked as a butcher’s assistant and a lineman in his teens and early twenties.

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He and his girlfriend, Millie Rosequist, signed up for dance lessons.

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Encouraged after they performed in a three-day engagement at a club, Hope then formed a partnership with Lloyd Durbin, a fellow pupil from the dance school.

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Silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw them perform in 1925 and obtained them steady work with a touring troupe called Hurley’s Jolly Follies.

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Within a year, Hope had formed an act called the Dancemedians with George Byrne and the Hilton Sisters, conjoined twins who performed a tap dancing routine on the vaudeville circuit.

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Hope and Byrne had an act as a pair of Siamese twins as well, and danced and sang while wearing blackface, before friends advised Hope that he was funnier as himself.

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In 1929, he changed his first name to “Bob”. In one version of the story, he named himself after racecar driver Bob Burman. In another, he said he chose Bob because he wanted a name with a friendly “Hiya, fellas!” sound to it.

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After five years doing vaudeville, Hope was very surprised when he failed a 1930 screen test for the French film production company Pathé at Culver City, California.

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Bob Hope began performing on the radio in 1934 and switched to television when that medium became popular in the 1950s. He began doing regular TV specials in 1954, and hosted the Academy Awards fourteen times in the period from 1941 to 1978.

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Bob’s first film was the comedy, Going Spanish (1934). He was not happy with the film, and told Walter Winchell, “When they catch John Dillinger, they’re going to make him sit through it twice.”

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Hope moved to Hollywood when Paramount Pictures signed him for the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938, also starring W.C. Fields. The song Thanks For The Memory, which later became his trademark, was introduced in this film as a duet with Shirley Ross and accompanied by Shep Fields and his orchestra.

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Bob Hope was best known for comedies like My Favorite Brunette and the highly successful Road movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. The series consists of seven films made between 1940 and 1962.

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Hope had seen Lamour as a nightclub singer in New York, and invited her to work on his United Service Organizations (USO) tours.

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Dorothy Lamour sometimes arrived for filming prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely re-written scripts or ad-lib dialogue between Hope and Crosby.

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One is reminded here of Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers films.  She never quite understood their routines.

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Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she remains the actress most associated with his film career.

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On July 27, 2003, two months after his 100th birthday, Bob Hope died at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles. His grandson, Zach Hope, told Soledad O’Brien that when asked on his deathbed where he wanted to be buried, Hope replied, “Surprise me.”

a

WOMAN: Someone is fooling with my knee.      MAN: It’s me, and I’m not fooling!

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Vaudeville’s audiences, as well as many of its stars, were drawn from the newly immigrated working classes.

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Just as goods in the late 19th century could be manufactured in a central location and shipped throughout the country, successful vaudeville routines and tours were first established in New York and other large cities and would then be booked on a tour lasting for months.

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The act would change little as it was performed throughout the United States, so vaudeville was a precursor of mass media — a means of creating and sharing a national culture.

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Vaudeville’s influence on most popular entertainment forms of the 20th century — musical comedy, motion pictures, music, radio, television — was pervasive.

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WOMAN: I’m not married.
MAN: Any children?
WOMAN: I told you, I’m not married.
MAN: Answer my question!

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The word “vaudeville” may come from the expression voix de ville which means “voice of the city” or “songs of the town.”

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Or, the term may come from a collection of fifteenth-century satirical songs by Olivier Basselin, “Vaux de Vire.” 

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Then again, the word vaudeville may derive from the Vau de Vire, a valley in Normandy noted for its style of satirical songs with topical themes.

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 Vaudeville, referring specifically to North American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871, with the formation of Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company of Louisville, Kentucky.

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CISSIE: She never married, did she?     MARIE: No, her children wouldn’t let her.

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Though the word “vaudeville” had been used in the US as early as the 1830s, most variety theatres adopted the term in the late 1880s and early 1890s for two reasons. First, they wished to distance themselves from the earlier rowdy, working-class variety halls.

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Second, the supposedly French term vaudeville lent an air of sophistication.

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Many people preferred the earlier term “variety” to what manager Tony Pastor called vaudeville’s “sissy and Frenchified” successor.

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Thus, vaudeville was marketed as “variety” well into the 20th century.

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Injured Man crosses stage in assorted bandages and casts.
Comic: 
What happened to you?
Injured Man: 
I was living the life of Riley.
Comic: And?
Injured Man: 
Riley came home!

q

A descendant of variety, (c. 1860s–1881), vaudeville was distinguished from the earlier form by its mixed-gender audience, usually alcohol-free halls, and often slavish devotion to respectability among members of the middle class.

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The form gradually evolved from the concert saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s.

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This more genteel form was known as “Polite Vaudeville.”

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Man at Desk: (picks up phone) Hello, Cohen, Cohen, Cohen and Cohen.
Caller:
 Let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man at Desk: 
He’s dead these six years. We keep his name on the door out of respect.
Caller:
 Then let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man: 
He’s on vacation.
Caller: (Exasperated
Well then, let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man: 
He’s out to lunch.
Caller: (Yells
Then let me speak to Mr. Cohen!
Man: 
Speaking.

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In the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale.

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Variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere.

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In the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy.

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There were even Chataquas where people could enjoy a slide presentation and lectures by eminent authorities on various subjects.

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Indeed, Mark Twain was a part of this circuit.

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When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Infinity Hall in Connecticut, Ben Nieves and I visited the little room where Twain waited to go on.

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Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns.

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Jerk – audience member
Yock – a belly laugh
Skull – make a funny face
Talking woman – delivers lines in comedy skits
Cover – perform someone’s scenes for them
The asbestos is down – the audience is ignoring the jokes
From hunger – a lousy performer
Mountaineer – a new comic, fresh from the Catskill resort circuit
Boston version – a cleaned-up routine
Blisters – a stripper’s breasts
Cheeks – a stripper’s backside
Gadget – a G-string
Trailer – the strut taken before a strip
Quiver – shake the bust
Shimmy – Shake the posterior
Bump – swing the hips forward
Grind – full circle swing of the pelvis
Milk it – get an audience to demand encores
Brush your teeth! – comedian’s response to a Bronx cheer

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Circuses regularly toured the country, dime museums appealed to the curious, amusement parks, riverboats, and town halls often featured “cleaner” presentations of variety entertainment, and saloons, music halls and burlesque houses catered to those with a taste for the risqué.

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In the 1840s, the minstrel show, another type of variety performance, and “the first emanation of a pervasive and purely American mass culture,” grew to enormous popularity and formed what Nick Tosches called “the heart of 19th-century show business.”

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Blaze tripped to the microphone. Looking down at her exposed breast, she said, “What are you doing out there, you gorgeous thing?” Then she covered herself. “You got to tell them they’re pretty,” she said; “it makes them grow” . . . Then she flung herself on the couch and quickly stripped down to a transparent bra and black garter pants. She produced a power puff and asked rhetorically, “Who’s going to powder my butt?”

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A significant influence also came from Dutch ministrels and comedians.

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Medicine shows traveled the countryside offering programs of comedy, music, jugglers and other novelties along with displays of tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs.

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“Wild West” shows provided romantic vistas of the disappearing frontier, complete with trick riding, music and drama. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in America’s growing urban hubs.

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WEBER: I am delightfulness to meet you!            FIELDS: Der disgust is all mine!

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In the early 1880s, impresario Tony Pastor, a circus ringmaster turned theatre manager, capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature “polite” variety programs in several of his Gotham City theatres.

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The usual date given for the “birth” of vaudeville is October 24, 1881 at New York’s Fourteenth Street Theater, when Pastor famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed “clean” vaudeville in New York City.

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Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale of liquor in his theatres, eliminated bawdy material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal and hams to attendees.

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Yes, folks, Fourteenth Street was uptown in the 1880s.

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Pastor’s experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit.

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B. F. Keith took the next step, starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the US and Canada.

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Later, E.F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success.

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Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville’s greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength.

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They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single-theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years.

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Albee also gave national prominence to vaudeville’s trumpeting “polite” entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children.

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Acts that violated this ethos (ones which used words such as “hell”) were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the week’s remaining performances or were canceled altogether.

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In spite of such threats, performers routinely flouted this censorship, often, of course, to the delight of the very audience members whose sensibilities were supposedly endangered.

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E.F. Albee eventually instituted a set of guidelines for audience members at his show, and these were reinforced by the ushers working in the theater.

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Thus “polite entertainment” also extended to B.F. Keith’s company members.

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Albee went to extreme measures to maintain this level of modesty.

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Keith even went as far as posting warnings backstage such as this: “Don’t say ‘slob’ or ‘son of a gun’ or ‘hully gee’ on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily…if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theater where Mr. Keith is in authority.”

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Along these same lines of discipline, Keith’s theater managers would occasionally send out blue envelopes with orders to omit certain suggestive lines of songs and possible substitutions for those words. This is the origin of the word ‘blue’ to describe off color material.

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If actors chose to ignore these orders or quit, they would get “a black mark” on their name and would never again be allowed to work on the Keith Circuit.

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Thus, actors learned to follow the instructions given them by B.F. Keith for fear of losing their careers forever.

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By the late 1890s, vaudeville had large circuits, houses (small and large) in almost every sizable location, standardized booking, broad pools of skilled acts, and a loyal national following.

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One of the biggest circuits was Martin Beck’s Orpheum Circuit. It incorporated in 1919 and brought together 45 vaudeville theaters in 36 cities throughout the US and Canada and a large interest in two vaudeville circuits.

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Another major circuit was that of Alexander Pantages. At its hey-day Pantages owned more than 30 vaudeville theaters and controlled, through management contracts, perhaps 60 more in both the US and Canada.

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Vaudeville was truly democratic. It played across multiple strata of economic class and auditorium size. On the vaudeville circuit, it was said that if an act would succeed in Peoria, Illinois, it would work anywhere. The question “Will it play in Peoria?” has now become a metaphor for whether something appeals to the American mainstream public.

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The three most common levels were the “small time” (lower-paying contracts for more frequent performances in rougher, often converted theatres), the “medium time” (moderate wages for two performances each day in purpose-built theatres), and the “big time” (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theatres largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes).

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As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and better pay of the big time.

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The capitol of the big time was New York City’s Palace Theatre (or just “The Palace” in vaudevillian slang), built by Martin Beck in 1913 and operated by B.F. Keith.

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The Palace had many inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville performance, such as writer, comedian and trick roper Will Rogers.

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The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.  Mr. Hoover didn’t know that the money trickled up.  Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow.  But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.

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Andrew Erdman’s book Blue Vaudeville notes that the Vaudeville stage was marked with descriptions like, “a highly sexualized space…where unclad bodies, provocative dancers, and singers of ‘blue’ lyrics all vied for attention.”

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I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.

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The Palace was the career apex f0r many a vaudevillian.

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When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident (sic) like.”   I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

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A vaudeville show at the Palace would begin with a sketch, follow with a single – an individual male or female performer, next would be an alley oop – an acrobatic act, then another single, followed by yet another sketch such as a blackface comedy.

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The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad.  It might be worth it except they keep coming back.

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What followed for the rest of the show would vary from musicals to jugglers to song and dance singles and end with a final extravaganza – either musical or drama – with the full company.

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Lord, the money we spend on Government! And it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake at Piano

These shows would feature such stars as Eubie Blake – the piano player, the famous and magical Harry Houdini and child star, Baby Rose Marie.

will-rogers

Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats.  If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.

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It is said that at any given time, Vaudeville was employing over twelve thousand different people throughout its entire industry. Each entertainer would be on the road 42 weeks at a time while working a particular “Circuit” – or an individual theatre chain of a major company.

Rog
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
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Vaudeville showed an increasing interest in the female figure.

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Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

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Vaudeville highlighted and objectified the female body as a “sexual delight,” a phenomenon that historians believe emerged in the mid-19th century.

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I can remember way back when a liberal was generous with his own money.

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Vaudeville marked a time in which the female body became its own “sexual spectacle” more than it ever had before.

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You can’t tell what a man is like or what he is thinking when you’re looking at him.  You must get around behind him and see what he’s been looking at.

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Even acts that were as innocent as a sister act were higher sellers than a good brother act.

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It isn’t what we know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

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Vaudeville performers such as Julie Mackey and Gibson’s Bathing Girls began to focus less on talent and more on physical appeal through their figure, tight gowns, and other revealing attire.

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This would be a great world to dance in if we didn’t have to pay the fiddler.

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It eventually came as a surprise to audience members when such beautiful women actually possessed talent in addition to their appealing looks. This element of surprise colored much of the reaction to the female entertainment of this time.

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A remeark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

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The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville.

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A difference of opinion is what makes horse races and missionaries.

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The same thing happened to cinema when television came along.

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Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

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Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the US in vaudeville halls. The first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in 1896.

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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

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Al Jolson, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Edgar Bergen, Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen and Eddie Cantor, to name a few, used their vaudeville status  to vault into the new medium of cinema.

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I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this– no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

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These former vaudeville performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years.

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If you find the right job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

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Jack Benny, Abbot and Costelle, Kate Smith, Cary Grant, Milton Berle, Judy Garland, Rose Marie, Sammy Davis, Jr. Red Skelton and The Three Stooges used vaudeville only as a launching pad for later careers. They left live performance before achieving the national celebrity of earlier vaudeville stars, and found fame in new venues.

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Why go out on a limb?  That’s where the fruit is.

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The line between live and filmed performances was blurred by the number of vaudeville entrepreneurs who made more or less successful forays into the movie business.

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I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him father.

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Alexander Pantages quickly realized the importance of motion pictures as a form of entertainment. He incorporated them in his shows as early as 1902. Later, he entered into partnership with the Famous Players-Lasky, a major Hollywood production company and an affiliate of Paramount Pictures.

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If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?

The Cook Sisters

By the late 1920s, almost no vaudeville bill failed to include a healthy selection of cinema.

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Top vaudeville stars filmed their acts for one-time pay-offs, inadvertently helping to speed the death of vaudeville.

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After all, when “small time” theatres could offer “big time” performers on screen at a nickel a seat, who could ask audiences to pay higher amounts for less impressive live talent?

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The newly-formed RKO studios took over the famed Orpheum vaudeville circuit and swiftly turned it into a chain of full-time movie theaters.

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The half-century tradition of vaudeville was effectively wiped out within less than four years.

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Managers further trimmed costs by eliminating the last of the live performances.

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Following the greater availability of inexpensive receiver sets later in the decade, radio contributed to vaudeville’s swift decline.

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Even the most optimistic people in vaudeville could see the writing, or rather the motion picture, on the wall. The perceptive knew that the death rattle was terminal.

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Standardized film distribution and talking pictures of the 1930s were the end of vaudeville.

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Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

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By 1930, the vast majority of formerly live theatres had been wired for sound, and none of the major studios was producing silent pictures.

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For a time, the most luxurious theatres continued to offer live entertainment, but most theatres were forced by the hard times in the 1930s to economize.

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There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly sagging by the late 1920s.

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The Palace Theatre in New York changed to an exclusively cinematic format on November 16, 1932. No other single event was more of a death knell for vaudeville.

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Though talk of vaudeville’s resurrection was heard during the 1930s and later, the demise of the supporting apparatus of the circuits and the higher cost of live performance made any large-scale renewal of vaudeville unrealistic.

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The most striking examples of Gilded Age theatre architecture were commissioned by the big time vaudeville magnates and stood as monuments of their wealth and ambition. Examples of such architecture are the theaters built by impresario Alexander Pantages, who often used architect B. Marcus Priteca (1881–1971), who in turn regularly worked with muralist Anthony Heinsbergen. Priteca devised an exotic, neo-classical style that his employer called “Pantages Greek”.

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Though classic vaudeville reached a zenith of capitalization and sophistication in urban areas dominated by national chains and commodious theatres, small-time vaudeville included countless more intimate and locally controlled houses. Small-time houses were often converted saloons, rough-hewn theatres or multi-purpose halls, together catering to a wide range of clientele. Many small towns had purpose-built theatres.

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Vaudeville was not wiped out by silent films. Many managers featured “flickers” at the end of their bills, finding them cheaper than the live closing acts that audiences walked out on anyway.

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Top screen stars made lucrative personal appearance tours on the big time circuits. So what killed vaudeville? The most truthful answer is that the public’s tastes changed and vaudeville’s managers (and most of its performers) failed to adjust to those changes.

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In the mid-1920s, when everyone knew vaudeville was in danger, E.F. Albee set expensive new production requirements which strained performers and made it harder for most houses to turn a profit.

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When well dressed comics entertained between numbers in place of an energetic slapstick act, vaudeville lost of a lot of its verve.

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Cycloramas, drapery and gorgeous scenery added to the beauty of the show, but not to its comedy. 

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According to Variety, by the end of 1926 only a dozen “big time” vaudeville houses remained – the rest had converted to film use.

Old-Favorite

In December 1927, no less a star than Julian Eltinge proclaimed in Variety that vaudeville was “shot to pieces,” and was no longer able to attract “big names.”

judy_garland_as_a_child

The success of talking films in the late 1920s sharpened the sense of crisis in vaudeville circles.

Judy+Garland+Baby+Gumm+6

In 1929, Albee replaced the Orpheum circuit’s two performance-a-day format with a crushing five-a-day policy.

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This only succeeded in exhausting performers and depleting the supply of fresh material.

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At the same time, risqué or “blue” material was allowed in major acts, offending many in vaudeville’s family-oriented audience.

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Albee hammered another nail into vaudeville’s coffin when he partnered with Joseph P. Kennedy’s Hollywood film company in 1928 to form Radio Keith Orpheum (RKO) Studios.

clarabowsilent

Kennedy wrangled control of the new organization from Albee, turning the glorious Orpheum circuit into a chain of movie houses. In October of 1929, Variety figured that there were only six full-time vaudeville houses still operating, with as many as three hundred theatres offering a bill of acts between feature films.

vintage_stock___circus_4_by_hello_tuesday-d4xeqos

It was extraordinary how the public had changed. They had become very blasé about entertainment. Whereas American used to arrange to spend an evening in the theatre for a treat, now they seemed to go to the theater just  to kill time.

photo Emily Soto (13)

 The theaters were full of children, noted Sophie Tucker. At the first two shows in the afternoon the house would be full of boys and girls, slumped down in their seats, obviously bored with the acts and only waiting for the picture to come on. Kids and necking couples.

sophie-e1279659600209

By the time of the last show, at 9:30 PM, when you had your best audience, you were dead tired. Too tired to care whether they liked you or not.

Judy Garland and Sophia Tucker

Sophie Tucker kept on performing. Sophie was a hero in more ways than one.

Webphoto 815

She was headlining at New York’s Palace Theater in February 1932 when a fire broke out backstage. To prevent panic, Tucker remained onstage to coax the audience out of the theatre – despite the sparks that threatened to ignite her flammable sequined gown.

sophietucker

The Palace soon reopened, but by that November it became a full-time movie theatre.

Eddie Cantor, Barbara Weeks and Charlotte Greenwood Palmy Days (1931)

The Palace’s first feature film was The Kid From Spain – starring vaudeville veteran Eddie Cantor. Live acts appeared between screenings, but were dropped as of 1935.

vintage-leg-contest

Although many theatres still presented vaudeville acts between films, the number of available gigs kept shrinking.

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A few vaudeville theaters managed to hold out.  I have mentioned before that I saw a vaudeville show on Market Street in San Francisco when I was six or seven.

josephine

New York City’s State Theatre at Broadway and 45th Street continued to present four-a-day bills until December 23, 1947.

FrenchVodvilHome

The final bill included comedian Jack Carter and Yiddish theatre legend Molly Picon. At the closing performance, veteran vaudevillian George Jessel, who eulogized many show biz greats, came on stage and said  “I heard vaudeville is finished here tonight, so I thought I’d drop in and tell you folks that talent can never die.”

COBl-1

It’s true, talent will never die, but it can move somewhere else.

MollyPicon

There have been numerous attempts to revive vaudeville – a hopeless task, given the changes in American popular culture.

vit-94-bobbe-arnst1

The last live echo of vaudeville was Radio City Music Hall, which kept the presentation house format alive until economics forced it to become a concert venue in 1979.

Jimmy_Durante

Some lucky vaudeville singers and comics found a new home on radio, where “variety shows” offered something like audio vaudeville.

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Even silent acts (jugglers, animal acts, etc.) found work on television, where variety shows remained popular for several decades.

Baby Rose Marie and Jimmy Durante

Ed Sullivan’s television show was pure vaudeville.  I was on that show with Big Brother and the Holding Company, so I can say I have done vaudeville.

Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, and Harvey Korman app

Carol Burnett’s Broadway-style reviews had the family-friendly spirit of big time vaudeville.

janis sam cavett

The talk shows carried on the legacy of the Chatauqua side of vaudeville.  Janis and I were on Dick Cavett. He was very fond of her, let’s put it that way.

durante-company

See you next week?

2009 10 oct vaudeville

Peter Albin and Sam Andrew still doing vaudeville.

_______________________________________________

A Chthonic Tonic

First Bank of San Anselmo, c. 1920.

A Chthonic Tonic

1914 CMPC

Chthonic, from Greek  χθόνιος – chthonios, “in, under, or beneath the earth”, from χθών – chthōn ”earth,” pertaining to the Earth.

ali akbar khan

Earthy. Subterranean.

a may pole kentfield

Apart from its literal translation meaning ‘subterranean,’ the historical definition of χθών designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld.

a SRPL

The Greek word χθών khthon is one of several for “earth.”

aa marin

χθών typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land (as Gaia or Ge does) or the land as territory (as khora (χώρα) does). χθών evokes at once abundance and the grave.

Aimi Dutra

There are connotations in the word χθών of mystery and secrecy.

aileen

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the first two letters in the word χθών should be pronounced (as /k/), but the American Heritage Dictionary considers these letters as silent, /ˈθɒnɪk/.   I would defer to the OED here, although I pronounce the ‘ch’ as a heavy breath sound. HTHonic. The way Scottish people pronounce loch, or how Germans say Ach!

alex

The modern pronunciation of the Greek word “χθόνιος” is [ˈxθonios], although the Classical Greek pronunciation would have been [kʰtʰónios].

alexandra

The words khthonie and khthonios, related to χθών, have a precise and technical meaning and they refer primarily to the manner, the way of offering sacrifices to the chthonic deity.

ally

Some chthonic cults practiced ritual sacrifice at night time.

amy

When a living creature was to be sacrificed, the animal was placed in a bothros (“pit”) or megaron (“sunken chamber”).

ann

In other chthonic cults, the animal was sacrificed on a raised bomos (altar).

ansel adams 1962

Offerings usually were burned whole or buried rather than being cooked and shared among the worshippers.

antea

The chthonic deities were gods of fertility.

b maypole

Demeter and Persephone both watched over aspects of the fertility of land, yet Demeter had a typically Olympian cult while Persephone had a chthonic one.

 

b SRPL

The ideas of  Olympian and chthonic were not completely separate.

becky

Some Olympian deities, such as Hermes and Zeus, also received chthonic sacrifices.

ben

Heracles and Asclepius, for example, might be worshipped as gods or chthonic heroes, depending on the site and the time of origin of the myth.

boyd penultimate

And Hecate was usually offered young dogs at crossroads, a practice neither typical of an Olympian sacrifice nor of a chthonic sacrifice to Persephone or the heroes.

Bradford House, 333 G St., San Rafael, CA

The idea of the ‘crossroads’ has played a part in mythology for a long, long time.

Chloë

A crossroads can be ”between the worlds,” a site where supernatural beings can be contacted and paranormal events can happen.

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The crossroads can mean a locality where two realms touch and represent a threshold, a liminality, a place “neither here nor there”, “betwixt and between”.

chrissy

In the Vodou tradition, Papa Legba is the Iwa of the crossroads.

clara

In rootwork and hoodoo, forms of African American magic spirituality, one may wait at a crossroads to acquire an artistic skill, or a “luck” in gambling. This can happen at a certain number of times, either at midnight or just before dawn, and one will meet a “black man,” who could be the Devil, who will give one the desired skills.

d maypole

In the United Kingdom, there was a tradition of burying criminals and suicides at the crossroads which often marked the boundaries of the settlement.

d SRPL

There was a desire to bury those outside of the law outside of the settlement. People thought that many roads would confuse the dead spirits.

dave

Mandalas and medicine wheels, such as the Christian cross, for example, are metonyms of the crossroads.

Brian

So, a long time ago, Hecate of the crossroads was generally thought of as χθών chthonic, because of her underworld activities.

c maypole

The term chthonic was often used in analytical psychology to describe the unconscious earthly impulses of the Self.

c SRPL

Carl Jung talks about the meaning of χθών in Man and his Symbols.

carole

“Envy, lust, sensuality, deceit, and all known vices are the negative, ‘dark’ aspect of the unconscious, which can manifest itself in two ways. In the positive sense, it appears as a ‘spirit of nature’, creatively animating Man, things, and the world. It is the ‘chthonic spirit’ that has been mentioned so often in this chapter. In the negative sense, the unconscious (that same spirit) manifests itself as a spirit of evil, as a drive to destroy.”

chelsea dawn

Chthonic (χθών) also retains some of its very physical, concrete connotations today.

chelsea

In geology, for example, the word allochthon is used describe a large block of rock which has been moved from its original site of formation, usually by low angle thrust faulting.

cherise

Allochthon from allo, other, and  χθών, refers to the process of the land mass being moved under the earth and connecting two horizontally stacked décollements, thus “under the earth.”

chitarrista

The word humus is Latin for earth and it comes from this Greek χθών.  Humus = χθών.  

david

Humilis meant low, earthy in Latin, so the word humble is also related to χθών.

dolls special

These dolls were made from the earth in Germany. They came from the χθών.

dorothy

This word chthon χθών was reconstructed as *dhghem in the original Indo European.

Duo-Sonic

Every heard about the mole men, who live underneath the ground in tunnels?

e maypole

Or the mutant alligators and cockroaches who live in the sewers?  Urban χθών legends?

e SRPL

These are examples of chthonic creatures: beings who live under the surface of the earth, the χθών.

edna

Chthonic beasts are more likely to be demons than angels.

elise bubble

Many mythologies feature chthonic creatures.  Elise Wainani Piliwale comes from the χθών of Hawaii.

f maypole

This sweet looking maypole has an origin far back in the mists of time when it was a link to the χθών, to the underworld.

f SRPL

Oh, those creatures who go bump in the night.  They scare you so much and give you a fright.

final Sam Brian Peter Cutting Room 2013

Words branch out very quickly, just the way family trees do, and one word can become related to many words in many different languages with many different meanings.  So it is with χθών.  This word for earth has come to be the mother of many other meanings.

frances

χθών is related to Latin homo, human.  Remember that Adam was made from the dust, from the earth.  Adam meant man in Hebrew as homo means human in Latin.

franco

χθών is related to gamos in Greek which is marriage (bigamy, polygamy).

Elise corner

And so to groom (bridegroom) which in German is Breutigam.

g maypole

Old English <brydguma> is related to the earth, to χθών.

garçonne

The first letter χ of χθών became a G in later languages.  The χ  and the G are articulated in the same part of the mouth, the palate. They are virtually the same sound but one, the χ  is not voiced and the other, the G  is.  So, the two sounds are very closely related.

geraldine

It’s much like two people in the same family who resemble each other.

gina

Words can begin with the same sounds and then diverge over a couple of generations. Bear (to carry a load in English) and fero (same meaning in Latin) were once exactly the same.

greta

Allochtoon (plural: allochtonen) is a Dutch word (from Greek ἀλλόχθων, from ἄλλος (allos), other, and χθών (chthōn) earth/land), literally meaning “originating from another country,” from another earth.  This is the word the Dutch use for “immigrant.”

gypsyrose

It is the opposite of the word autochtoon (in English, “autochthonous” or “autochthone”) This Dutch word is derived from Greek αὐτόχθων, from αὐτός (autos), self and again χθών), literally meaning “originating from this country”.

Elise dine

In the Netherlands (and Flanders), the term allochtoon is widely used to refer to immigrants and their descendants.

Hamilton gate

Officially the term allochtoon is much more specific and refers to anyone who had at least one parent born outside the Netherlands.

Hannah Gerstle

Hence, third-generation immigrants are no longer considered allochtoon.

hazel

The antonym autochtoon (autochthonous) is less widely used, but it roughly corresponds to ethnic Dutch, you know, white people.

kinopoisk.ru

Among a number of immigrant groups living in the Netherlands, a “Dutch” person (though the immigrants themselves be Dutch citizens) usually refers to the ethnic Dutch.

Elise Piliwale laundry July 2010

In the 1950s, Dutch descent, Dutch nationality, and Dutch citizenship were in practice identical.

helen

Dutch society almost exclusively consisted of ethnic Dutch and ethnic Frisans, with some colonial influences, and most Dutch were either Catholic, Protestant or atheists.

henry orton howitt 1893 1st doc

Decolonization and immigration from the 1960s to the present has altered the ethnic and religious composition of the country. This development has made the ‘ethnicity’ and national identity of the Dutch a political issue.

ileri

Dutch nationality law is based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis (“right of blood”). In other words, citizenship is conferred primarily by birth to a Dutch parent, irrespective of place of birth.

india

A first-generation allochtoon is a person living in the Netherlands but born in a foreign country and who has at least one parent also born abroad. The ‘country of origin’ is the country in which that person is born.

inside you

A second-generation allochtoon is a person born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born in a foreign country. When both parents are born abroad, the ‘country of origin’ is taken to be that of the mother. If one parent was born in the Netherlands, the ‘country of origin’ the other parent’s country of birth.

Elise Piliwale, aircraft

Note that someone who is born abroad, but with both parents born in the Netherlands, is an autochtoon. Again, this chtoon is from  χθόνιος, the Greek for ‘under the earth, of the earth.’    So, we are talking here about someone who is autochthonous according to Dutch law.

janet

A further distinction is made between “Western” and “non-Western” allochtoon people, the black, the brown and the white.

jeanne

A non-Western allochtoon is someone whose ‘country of origin’ is or lies in Turkey, Africa, Latin America and Asia, with the exception of Indonesia (or the former Dutch East Indies) and Japan.

jenn

This last distinction was made because the official definition of allochtoon deviates from the common use in popular speech, where people refer to someone as allochtoon only when that person is an immigrant or an asylum seeker who is clearly distinct in ethnicity, clothing or behavior from the traditional Dutch society.

jessy

In the official and strictest sense, the largest group of allochtoon people are of German ancestry.

jetara

The groups that people usually think of when they hear the word allochtoon are those of Turkish, Moroccan or Surinamese ancestry.

kathy

As of 2006, these groups comprise roughly 350,000 people each, together constituting just over 6% of the population.

Elise Piliwale, Sam Andrew, Xmas

So a new term was introduced that lies closer to that meaning, “niet-westers allochtoon“, which excludes allochtoon people from Europe, Japan (a developed high income country) and Indonesia (a former colony), but not those from the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname, even though the Netherlands Antilles are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and those from Suriname immigrated when that country was still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

katja

This definition coincides better with the popular conception of the word allochtoon as signifying people of low socio-economic status who are “different from us”.

kayleigh

Although some Dutch people view the usage of allochtoon as a stigma, several members of the Dutch Royal Family are officially allochtoon people, as one of the parents was foreign-born.

kerry

There is a regular stream of newspaper articles reporting statistics that unfavorably distinguish allochtoon people from the rest of the Dutch.

lancaster

In 2013, the city council of Amsterdam decided to stop using the term allochtoon because of its divisive effect

lillian

Chthonic – kθɒnɪk – comes from the Greek word χθόνιος – chthonios which means “in, under, or beneath the earth”, from χθών – chthōn “earth,” pertaining to the Earth.

Elise Piliwale, Thai mannikin

754 BCE – The very early Greek settlement of Cuma is about 4 kilometers from Baia, Italy. Cuma was traditionally founded at this date (Pithecusa – modern Ischia – had been occupied by Greeks some time earlier).

liz meg

700-600 BCE – The Greeks began to localize places where an actual descent to the underworld might be made through navels (omphalos) in the ground. In the seventh century BCE these were sought around the Ionian Sea, and in the sixth century BCE the omphalos navels were looked for in  Southern Italy.

Louise Boyd on Veslekari 1935

Circa 600 BCE:   According to Strabo, citing Ephorus, Lake Avernus was the site of the descent to the underworld, where the oracle of the dead existed. This was destroyed by a King of Cumae and afterwards this omphalos χθόνιος was restored elsewhere.

Lucie

Circa 550 BCE:   Orphic mystery cults appear. In the second half of the sixth century BCE, Greece underwent a religious rift. A new concept of humans having souls became widespread and there was a reaction against the Olympian and heroic mythology and values which had rewritten the ancient stories

lynn

χθόνιος Chthonic cults, preserved among the people in the countryside, were revived and given fresh meaning.

plutonium

In March 2013 a team led by Francesco D’Andria, Professor of Classic Archaeology at the University of Salento, announced the discovery of a Plutonium or Gate to Hell in the Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now known as the city of Pamukkale, in southwestern Turkey.

Elise Piliwale, Waschcenter

The root word of khanti is ksha which it shares in common with  kshama, and means soil,  earth,  dirt,  ground, χθόνιος.  It is a cognate of the Greek word chthon, as well as the Latin humus;which mean earth, soil. Related words include the Greek chamai, meaning on the ground; and the Latin homin or homo, meaning human.

m 1880

Several English words have a common origin with χθών, χθόνιος including humus, humble / humiliate / humiliation / humility,  exhume,  homicide, hominid, homage, and human / humanism / humanity / humanitarian / humane.

m

Home might also be a cognate of χθόνιος, but by a different, more  indirect root. It traces back through a German word to the Sanskrit word kshema, which means an inhabitable location,  a place of peace and safety.  The Sanskrit word shanti meaning peace, might also be related.

margaret

From Proto Indo European *dʰéǵʰōm. Cognates include Sanskrit क्ष (kṣa) and Ancient Greek χθών (khthōn). This word *dʰéǵʰōm is related to homo (“human being, man”).  *dʰéǵʰōm became χθόνιος.

marion

Russian: гумус (gumus) is also related to χθόνιος and, hence, *dʰéǵʰōm.

Erskine B. McNear House, 121 Knight Dr., San Rafael, CA

Humus has a Cyrillic spelling ху́мус, which is also related to χθόνιος.

mary

*dʰéǵʰōm = Dhghemon = person, all from the same Indo European root as that for chthon, χθόνιος.

matteo

Old English guma person comes from this same Indo European root.

maureen

Old Lithuanian zmuo person  zmunents  human, also from the same root as χθόνιος.

 David Studarus Photography

Celtic (Old Irish)  duine person from dyn, also from dhghom-yo.

michelena

These words are all from the same mother, *dʰéǵʰōm the mother of χθόνιος.

middle

Dheghom = *dʰéǵʰōm = humus = χθόνιος = earth

myrna

χθών,  related to chamaí = on the earth.

Olema lime kiln, c. 1911.

Sanskrit  ksah  ksam máh = earth = χθόνιος.

peter

Iranian (which is an Indo European language) has za zam zemo = earth = χθόνιος.

planet

All these words in all these languages are from the same mother.

PoolPerfJGandJorma_Olompali_Noelle_Risley_Peter623x412

Another related word is Old Church Slavonic,  zemi  zemlja = earth = χθόνιος.

Princess Margaret of Prussia Friedrich_Karl_of_Hesse

As is Old Prussian zeme = earth = χθόνιος.

princess margaret

Old Irish du = place   Welsh dyn = man

rampicando

Albanian   dhe = earth

ran Anselmo 1909

Tocharian   tkam  tkanis  kem   =  earth

redbird

Hittite   tekan   tagnas  =  earth

roberts montecito

I must again emphasize that these words are spread over great distances and great, long periods of time.

rosalba

If you saw your own family over all that distance and time, you would be amazed at their differences too.

Roy Haynes Brian Barry Craig Haynes 2013

The reason many people have trouble accepting the idea of evolution is that they have very little understanding of the immense amount of time that we are talking about.  All of these words, nearly all of them, have happened within historical time, and look how much they have differed that relatively short time.

Sam Cathy Reb Beach

Evolution has happened over four and a half BILLION years.

san domenico

Four and a half thousand million years.

san rafael high 1930

That is a long time.  Longer than the mere writing of the number would suggest. An unimaginably long time.

sarah

Many fundamentalists of all stripes consider that THE CREATION happened six thousand years ago, that is, around four thousand years before the common era.

sean

Six thousand years is the mere blink of an eye compared to four and a half thousand million years.

SG Standard Mouse

No wonder fundamentalists have difficulty comprehending the idea of evolution.

Sam Sharrie

I hear generational differences in the pronunciation of English over my lifetime which is an infinitesimal seventy years (seventy-two, if you want to get technical).

shana

People in their twenties pronounce the language differently from the way we do.  Have you noticed?

Sheik Araby

It’s not the vocabulary that I’m talking about, although there is that too.

shelby

I can tell how old someone is just from their accent in English, and I am not talking about the age in their voice, but about their intonation, stress on the words, and especially the pronunciation of the vowels.

smith ranch road 1880

Just to take the most trivial and obvious difference, many young people accent their declarative sentences with a ? at the end.

sofia

As I say, this is an obvious example.  There are many others, more subtle and more pervasive, but difficult to adduce, especially in writing.

SR 1900

So, that is one or two generations, where one can note changes in the language.

San Ans & Tunstead 1920

Over ten generations the differences will be quite glaring.

stephanie

Over twenty generations, the language may well be a different language.

One-arm Dumbbell Raise

Let’s see, we are separated from Chaucer and his middle English by, oh, thirty generations (allowing twenty years per generation).

The Ark in 1967

Most people today cannot understand Chaucer’s English without special training.

Tiburon ark 1902

That’s thirty generations, which are nothing compared to the distance separating many of these cognates for ‘earth,’ χθόνιος.

tom

ChthoniC is a band in Taiwan.

Tony & Giovannina Rostoni 1923

Metal musicians like the name because of its infernal underworld connotations.  Fair enough.

train

Chthonic law is defined as a system of law centered on the sacred character of the cosmos.

tyler

According to Professor H. Patrick Glenn, the Chthonic legal tradition emerged through experience, orality and memory.

ue rock 1910?

According to him it is the oldest of all traditions and can be understood as the law of a culture or tribe.

vanessa

Dr. Glenn refers to the laws of indigenous people as he believes these people are in close harmony to earth, to the χθόνιος

varin county courthouse 1873

At a broader level chthonic law is used with reference to any law which is a part of the custom or tradition of the people and in this regard is distinguishable from the traditional definition of law.

viktoria

Some authors believe that modern law has evolved from a scientific comparison of different Chthonic legal traditions.

Virada Cultural

It is studied as a part of pluralism of law.

vivianna

Although Chthonic law appears susceptible to confusion, any potential confusion is removed by preserving what’s important to the law over thousands of years.

wan rafael

Transmission of the χθόνιος law takes place with oral tradition and memory over the ages.

west end san rafael

Chthonic law has a communal basis and aims to promote consensus.

whitney

When dissent arises about chthonic law, new rules and traditions are generated.

ww2still

Although law of the χθόνιος does not lend itself to complexity, complex institutions such as councils of elders are present, and hence the highest authority is the council of elders.

xark annual picnic

Dispute resolution  is believed to be neither confusing nor alienating.

yawyers opening bridge

The importance of an individual in this χθόνιος law depends on his or her knowledge of traditions and culture and hence elders are valued.

Zhina Camp 1888

See you next week?

Narada Sam MHOF

Narada Michael Walden                 Sam Andrew

_______________________________

The Spanish Language

572px_Elecciones_generales_espa_olas_de_1977___distribuci_n_del_voto.svg

El español is the first language spoken in twenty countries around the world.

acciones-del-cuerpo-humano

Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers. Does it surprise you that Spanish has the second most native speakers on the planet? Between 470 and 500 million speak Spanish as a first language.

Alan y Bachelet besito

On the Internet el español is the third most commonly used language after English and Mandarin.

alberta

Spanish is the official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and where it originated, and is widely spoken in Gibraltar, although English is the official language there. It is also commonly spoken in Andorra, although Catalan is the Andorran official language. If you ever go to an event such as Competa feria, you’ll find that Spanish is the only language spoken by the natives.

alicia

Spanish is spoken in small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany. While there are many people in countries like the UK that know basic spanish describing words, the number of natives that are fluent speakers is much lower. It is an official language of the European Union. Spanish is the native languageof 1.7% of the Swiss population, representing the largest minority after the 4 official languages of Switzerland.

Alude a las personas que suelen inventar cosas o triunfos de los que carecen

Latin America has the most Spanish speakers. Of all the countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas.

Ana Barbara y Jaime Polo

Mexico has the most native Spanish speakers of any country. Spanish is the official language—either in fact or by law—of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Antonio Maceo de Cuba

English is the official language of Belize, but Spainish is spoken by 43% of the population there.

Año-de-bienes

Trinidad, Tobago and Brazil have implemented Spanish language teaching into their education systems. In Brazil many border towns and villages (especially in the Uruguayan-Brazilian and Paraguayan-Brazilian border areas), have a mixed language known as Portuñol.

Armas de destrucción masiva

Spanish, also called castellano, is a Romance language that originated in Castilla (Castile), a region of Spain.

Ausente

The Ibero-Romance group of languages evolved from several dialects of Latin in the land the Romans called Hispania after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. It had definitely become a separate language by the ninth century CE and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castilla into central and southern Iberia.

Ángela

The Spanish vocabulary was influenced by its contact with Basque and by other related Ibero-Romance languages and later absorbed many Arabic words during the seven hundred years that los Moros, the Moors, were in the Iberian Peninsula. Español also adopted many words from non-Iberian languages, particularly Occitan, French, Italian and Sardinian. In modern times, Spanish has adopted and adapted many English words.

barbara

Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the US. From the last decades of the 20th century, the study of Spanish as a foreign language has grown significantly, in part because of the growing populations and economies of many Spanish-speaking countries, and the growing international tourism in these countries.

El-Güero-Canelo SPANISH

Güero means ‘pale’ in Spanish, so it is a slang word (honky) for a gringo. Canelo means ‘cinnamon,’ and so el güero canelo means ‘cinnamon paleface,’ or, as we would say, ‘strawberry blonde,’ that is, a person with blonde hair tending to red. Sometimes if I see that a server in a coffeeshop is Hispanic, I order a güero doble (a double honky) instead of a double Americano. Sometimes they get it, and sometimes they don’t, but it’s really fun when they do.

basta-violencia-Mujeres-AI-300x224

Spanish is the most widely understood language in the Western Hemisphere, with significant populations of native Spanish speakers ranging from the tip of Patagonia to as far north as New York, Chicago and Toronto. Since the early 21st century, it has taken the place of French as the second-most-studied language and the second language in international communication, after English.

beatle paul mccartney en zocalo mexico caricatura soto

Spanish, or castellano, the language of the region of Castilla differs from Galician, Basque and Catalan. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano for the official language of the whole Spanish State, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III states:

El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. (…) Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas…

beatriz

The Spanish Royal Academy on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano.

bienvenidos

The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms, español and castellano, are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.

buen entendedor

The Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary posits two etymologies for the word español: it derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, ‘from—or pertaining to—Hispania’. Other authorities attribute it to a supposed medieval Latin term *hispani?ne, with the same meaning.

Burón

The Romans came to Hispania during the Second Punic war (wars with Carthage) beginning in 210 BCE. Previously, Paleohispanic languages not related to Latin were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian and Celtiberian. Traces of these languages, especially Basque, can be found in the Spanish vocabulary today, mainly in place names.

burro

The first documents (Glosas Elianenses) to record the language that became castellano or español are from the 9th century. The most important influence on the Spanish (Castilian) lexicon came from neighboring Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Mirandese, Occitan, Gason and later French and Italian—but also from Basque, Arabic and to a lesser extent the Germanic languages. Many words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written Latin and the liturgical language of the Church.

bush

Vulgar Latin evolved into español in the north of Iberia, in an area defined by Álava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja. The dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century.

camila vallejo en mexico invitada por #Yosoy132 caricatura politica soto

Español (castellano) then developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence. This distinctive dialect progressively spread south with the advance of the Reconquista, and so gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Andalusia, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects.

Camões

The written standard for this new language began to be developed in Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.

220px-Camões,_por_Fernão_Gomes

Luís Vaz de Camões is the poet of Portugal, so he comes from a place that is vacant on the Spanish map. I just like this drawing, and, not incidentally, his epic poem Os Lusíadas. I will write about Camões later in a web log about the Portuguese language.

caricaturas-g

The evolution of the sound system in español from Vulgar Latin is echoed by similar changes in other Western Romance languages, including lenition (softening) of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin v?ta ? Spanish vida).

caterina

The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o—which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:

Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Occitan French Italian Romanian English
petra piedra piedra (or pyedra) piedra piedra pedra pedra pedra pedra/pèira pierre pietra piatr? ‘stone’
terra tierra tierra (or tyerra) tierra tierra terra terra terra tèrra terre terra ?ar? ‘land’
moritur muere muere muere muerre morre morre mor morís meurt muore moare ‘dies (v.)’
mortem muerte muerte muerte muerte morte morte mort mòrt mort morte moarte ‘death’

Ladino is the Sephardic equivalent of Yiddish, and I will talk about this language/dialect later.

carlin-chile

El español is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants nn and ll (thus Latin annum ? Spanish año, and Latin anellum ? Spanish anillo).

CARLIN_grande081209

The consonant written ?u? or ?v? in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably become a bilabial fricative /?/ by the time of Vulgar Latin.

Carlos

In early español (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) /?/ merged with the consonant written ?b? (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern español, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic ?b? and ?v?.

carolina

I once photographed a door in Mexico that had many graffiti with misspelled words that were fascinating. The most common misspellings were those which confused b and v and between z and s. ’La bida es sueño.’ ‘Ben conmigo.’ Or, consider this inscription in New Mexico from almost three hundred years ago:

SPANISH

It says, “Por aqui pazó el Alfexes Joseph de Payba Basconzelos el añ0 que tuyo el Cauildo del Reyno a su costa a 18 de feb, de 1726 =

alférez

In today’s Spanish, this would be: Por aqui pasó el Alférez José de Payba Basconzelos (Vasconcelos) el año que tuvo el Cauildo del Reino a su costa a 18 de febrero, 1726.

insc

And the English would be something like: By here passed Second Lieutenant Joseph de Payba Vasoncelos, the year that he had the Council of the Kingdom at his cost on 18 February 1726.

alferez_jose_maria_sobral

An alférez is a second lieutenant, a subaltern, an ensign (in the navy). It’s the first rank that an officer achieves. The Spanish word was derived from the Arabic ?????? (al-f?ris), meaning “horseman” or “knight” or “cavalier”. I remember how proud I was when my father became a second lieutenant.

Catalunya

The initial Latin f- into h- came whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize.

centralam

The h-, still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words.

CHILE ESTUDIANTES EN LUCHA CARICATURA W

This is the reason why there are modern spelling variants Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for “Ferdinand”), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for “smith”), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for “iron”), and fondo and hondo (both Spanish for “deep”, but fondo means “bottom” while hondo means “deep”).

ciencia-ficción

Hacer (Spanish of “to make”) is the root word of satisfacer (Spanish of “to satisfy”), and hecho (“made”) is the root word of satisfecho (Spanish of “satisfied”). In Latin hacer was facere, to do, to make.

cojudo

In the 15th and 16th centuries, español underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes, which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ?j? and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [?] (“th-sound”) for the letter ?z? (and for ?c? before ?e? or ?i?). Thinko thentavos. What cinco centavos sounds like in castellano.

colombiano

The Gramática de la lengua castellano written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija was the first grammar written for a modern European language.

DELTORO

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, is so well known that castellano is often called la lengua de Cervantes.

elizabeta

In the twentieth century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea, the Western Sahara and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish empire, such as Spanish Harlem.

Colonizacion caricatura

Spanish is an inflected language, with two genders and about fifty conjugated forms per verb. People often choose español in school because they consider it an ‘easy’ language, and only find out later that the verb system is more involved than, say, French or German or Italian. There is actually a preterite subjunctive form that is routinely used in Spanish (Yo quisiera, hubiera) that has long disappeared from French.

conciencia

The syntax in castellano is often termed right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents (such as adjectives) tend to be placed after their head words.

constitución

The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns) for case, and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages.

Covarrubias

Español is generally a subject verb object language although variations are common, and it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are unnecessary because of the verb ending, which is most of the time.

pr23.jpg Producción ABC.

Spanish is a “verb-framed” language, meaning that the direction of motion is expressed in the verb while the mode of locomotion is expressed adverbially (subir corriendo or salir volando). English is ”satellite-framed,” that is, the English equivalents of these examples—’to run up’ and ‘to fly out’ have the mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and the direction in an adverbial modifier).

de la historieta chilena

Subject/verb inversion is not required in questions, and thus the recognition of a declarative or an interrogative phrase may depend entirely on intonation.

dejá tus dólares

The sounds of castellano consist of five vowel phonemes (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect).

Desempleo

The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ to glides—[j] and [w] respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel.

Dirty-Spanish-Words-Peru1

Mid vowels /e/ and /o/, determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs [je]and [we] respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological.

dolores

The consonant phonemes, /?/ and /?/ are often marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that they are preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects they have been merged, respectively, with /s/ and /?/, in the mergers called, respectively, seseo and yeísmo.

Ego sum qui sum

The phoneme /?/ is in often put in parentheses () to indicate that it appears only in words borrowed from another language.

el papa

The letters ?v? and ?b? normally represent the same phoneme, /b/, which is realized as [b] after a nasal consonant or a pause, and as [?] elsewhere, as in ambos [?ambos] (‘both’) envío [em?bi.o] (‘I send’), acabar [aka??a?] (‘to finish’) and mover [mo??e?] (‘to move’).

el profesor

The Royal Spanish Academy considers the /v/ pronunciation for the letter ?v? to be incorrect and even affected.

El_fraude_electoral_en_la_poca_de_la_Restauraci_n_espa_ola._Manipulaci_n_del_censo

Some Spanish speakers maintain the pronunciation of the /v/ sound as it is in other western European languages. The sound /v/ is used for the letter ?v? in Spanish by a few second-language speakers in Spain whose native language is Catalan, in the Balneares, around Valencia, and in southern Catalunya.

errores

In the US the pronunciation of the /v/ sound is also common because of the influence of English phonology, and the /v/ is also occasionally used in Mexico. Some parts of Central America also use /v/, which the Royal Academy attributes to the proximity of local indigenous languages.

Está loco por ti?

The /v/ pronunciation was uncommon, but considered correct well into the twentieth century in Spain.

evita

The Spanish rhythm is a syllable-timed language meaning that each syllable has approximately the same duration regardless of stress.

evitar y non evitar

The tuning or intonation of español varies significantly according to dialect, but generally conforms to a pattern of falling tone for declarative sentences and wh-questions (who, what, why, etc.), and rising tone for yes/no questions.

fallece jenny rivera cantante, soto caricatura homenaje de soto el metiche

There are no syntactic markers to distinguish between questions and statements, and thus the recognition of declarative or interrogative depends entirely on intonation.

Fatima_IED-Madrid

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth-last or earlier syllables.

  • In words that end with a vowel, stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.
  • Felipe Calderon anhelo
  • In words that end with a consonant, stress most often falls on the last syllable, with the following exceptions: The grammatical endings -n (for third-person-plural of verbs) and -s (whether for plural of nouns and adjectives or for second-person-singular of verbs) do not change the location of stress. Thus regular verbs ending with -n and the great majority of words ending with -s are stressed on the penult. Although a significant number of nouns and adjectives ending with -n are also stressed on the penult (e.g. joven, virgen, mitin), the great majority of nouns and adjectives ending with -n are stressed on their last syllable (e.g. capitán, almacén, jardín, corazón).
  • femmes d'espagne
  • Preantepenultimate stress (stress on the fourth-to-last syllable) occurs rarely, and only on verbs with clitic pronouns attached (guardándoselos ’saving them for him/her/them’).

francisca

There are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as sábana (‘sheet’) and sabana (‘savannah’), as well as límite (‘boundary’), limite (‘[that] he/she limits’) and limité (‘I limited’), or also líquido (‘liquid’), liquido (‘I sell off’) and liquidó (‘he/she sold off’).

Gadafi

gallina

As of 2006, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic by origin, and 38.3 million people, 13 percent, of the population more than five years old speak Spanish at home.

gerónima

The Spanish language has a long history in the United States due to Spanish and later, Mexican administration over territories in the southwest of the US as well as Florida which was Spanish until 1821.

hidalga

Spanish is by far the most widely taught second language in the US, and with over 50 million total speakers, the United States is now the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world after Mexico.

Hilaria

English is, of course the official language of the US, but Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels.

hilária

Spanish is used in administration in the state of New Mexico, and has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, and, really, everywhere. Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Houston, Baltimore-Washingont, D.C., all due to 20th and 21st century immigration patterns.

Hollywood

Spanish is the official in in Equatorial Guinea, and is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers there.

ignacia

In Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, an unknown number of Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish.

Ilegales

The Sawrawi Press Service, official news service of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic of Western Sahara, has been available in Spanish since 2001, and RASD TV, the official television channel of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, has a website available in Spanish.

imelda

Western Sahara’s only film festival, The Sahara International Film Festival, is largely funded by Spanish donors and Spanish films are popular.

Japonés?

There is a Spanish literature community among the Sahrawi people, but the Cervantes Institute has denied support and Spanish-language education to Sahrawis in Western Sahara and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria.

jose-carlos-mariategui

A group of Sahrawi poets known as Generación de la Amistad saharaui produces Sahrawi literature in Spanish.

Jota Leal artista

The integral territories of Spain in North Africa, which include Ceuta and Melilla, the Plazas de soberanía and the Canary Islands archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa have many Spanish speakers.

juana

Morocco is quite close to Spain, of course, and approximately 20,000 people there speak Spanish as a second language, while Arabic is the legal official language and French is widely spoken.

juanita

A small number of Moroccan Jews also speak the Sephardic Spanish dialect Haketia (related to the Ladino dialect spoken in Israel).

kiki

Spanish is spoken by some communities in Angola because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War and in the south of Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country’s independence.

Krina

There are important variations— phonological, grammatical and lexical—in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas.

laura

The variety of español with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish which is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world’s Spanish speakers. One of its main features is the reduction or loss of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.

libros_calleja[1]

In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years.

Liderazgo

The speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television, and is the variety that has most influenced the written standard for Spanish.

lola

The phoneme /?/ (spelled ?z?, or ?c? before ?e? or ?i?)—a voiceless dental fricative as in English thing—is maintained in northern and central Spain, but is merged with the sibilant /s/ in southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and all of Latin-American Spanish. A person from the north of Spain says thielos (cielos ‘heavens’) but in the south of Spain and in South America, they say sielos.

los ninis caricatura politica eduardo soto

This merger (/?/ to s) is called seseo in Spanish. The phoneme /?/ (spelled ?ll?)—a palatal lateral consonant sometimes compared in sound to the lli of English million—tends to be maintained in less-urbanized areas of northern Spain and in highland areas of South America, but in the speech of most other Spanish-speakers it is merged with /?/ (“curly-tail j“)—a non-lateral, usually voiced, usually fricative, palatal consonant—sometimes compared to English /j/ (yod) as in yacht, and spelled y in Spanish. This merger is called yeísmo in Spanish. And the debuccalization (pronunciation as [h], or loss) of syllable-final /s/ is associated with southern Spain, the Caribbean, and coastal areas of South America.

Luis Carreño

Almost all speakers of Spanish make the difference between a formal and a familiar second person singular, and so have two different pronouns meaning “you”: usted in the formal, and either or vos in the familiar (and each of these three pronouns has its associated verb forms), with the choice of or vos varying from one dialect to another.

mae

The use of vos (and/or its verb forms) is called voseo. In a few dialects, all three pronouns are used—usted, , and vos—denoting respectively formality, familiarity, and intimacy.

map_of_mexico

In voseo, vos is the subject form (vos decís, “you say”) and the form for the object of a preposition (voy con vos, “I’m going with you”), while the direct and indirect object forms, and the possessive, are the same as those associated with : Vos sabés que tus amigos te respetan. ”Vos te acostaste con el tuerto.” ”Lugar que odio […] como te odio a vos.” ”No cerrés tus ojos.

map_of_spain

The verb forms of general voseo are the same as those used with except in the present tense (indicative and imperative) verbs.

margarita

The forms for vos generally can be derived from those of vosotros (the traditional second-person familiar plural) by deleting the glide /i?/, or /d/, where it appears in the ending: vosotros pensáis ? vos pensás; vosotros volvéis ? vos volvés, pensad! (vosotros) ? pensá! (vos), volved! (vosotros) ? volvé!

Mariela Castro

The use of the pronoun vos with the verb forms of (e.g. vos piensas) is called “pronominal voseo“. And conversely, the use of the verb forms of vos with the pronoun (e.g. tú pensásor tú pensái) is called “verbal voseo“.

marta
In Chile, for example, verbal voseo is much more common than the actual use of the pronoun vos which is often reserved for deeply informal situations.

me lo ha pedido

Although vos is not used in Spain, it occurs in many Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas as the principal spoken form of the second-person singular familiar pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration.

mejorando

It can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of tuteo in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Peru and Venezuela, coastal Ecuador and the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

mexico-relief-map

Tuteo (the use of ) as a cultured form alternates with voseo as a popular or rural form in Bolivia, in the north and south of Peru, in Andean Ecuador, in small zones of the Venezuelan Andes (and most notably in the Venezuelan state of Zulia), and in a large part of Colombia. Some researchers claim that voseo can be heard in some parts of eastern Cuba, while others assert that it is absent from the island.

monita

In Chile, tuteo is used as the second-person pronoun with an intermediate degree of formality alongside the more familiar voseo. This is also the case in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia(Monteria, Sincelejo, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Riohacha and Valledupar), in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and in parts of Guatemala.

Mujeres-esloganes-protestar-Madrid-AFP_LNCIMA20120730_0047_20

Areas of generalized voseo include Argentina, Costa Rica, eastern Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian departments of Antioquia (the second largest in population), Caldas, Risaralda, Quindio, and parts of The Valle del Cauca department.

natalia

Ustedes serves as the formal and informal second person plural in over 90% of the Spanish-speaking world, including all of Latin America, the Canary Islands, and some regions of Andalusia.

Nie

In Sevilla, Cádiz and other parts of western Andalusia, the familiar form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the traditional second-person plural form of the verb. Most of Spain maintains the formal/familiar division with ustedes and vosotros respectively.

nina

Usted is the usual second-person singular pronoun in a formal context, used to convey respect toward someone who is a generation older or is of higher authority (“you, sir”/”you, ma’am”). It is also used in a familiar context by many speakers in Colombia and Costa Rica, and in parts of Ecuador and Panama, to the exclusion of or vos. This usage is sometimes called ustedeo in Spanish.

no sabía

Once upon a time, when people wanted to be polite, they addressed each other as Vuestra Merced (Your Mercy or Your Grace). In time, Vuestra Merced became usted, and that is why usted takes the singular third person form of the verb. Usted trabaja.

Nos marginan in justamente

In Central America, especially in Honduras, usted is often used as a formal pronoun to convey respect between the members of a romantic couple. Usted is also used in this way, as well as between parents and children, in the Andean regions of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Notas

The Real Academia Española prefers the pronouns lo and la for direct objects (masculine and feminine respectively, regardless of animacy, meaning “him”, “her”, or “it”), and le for indirect objects (regardless of gender or animacy, meaning “to him”, “to her”, or “to it”). This usage is sometimes called “etymological”, as these direct and indirect object pronouns are a continuation, respectively, of the accusative and dative pronouns of Latin, the mother language of Spanish.

2009 Person Of The Year Honoring Juan Gabriel - Arrivals

Most speakers adhere to the tradition, and deviations from this norm (more common in Spain than in the Americas) are called leísmo, loísmo or laísmo, according to which respective pronoun—le, lo, or la—has expanded beyond the etymological usage (that is, the use of le as a direct object, or lo or la as an indirect object).

olga

Vocabulary can differ, sometimes radically, in different Spanish speaking countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, ‘butter’, ‘avocado’, ‘apricot’) correspond to manteca, palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except manteca), Paraguay, Peru (except manteca and damasco), and Uruguay.

padrecito

The words coger (‘to take’), pisar (‘to step on’) and concha (‘seashell’) are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of coger and pisar is also “to have sex” and concha means “vulva”.

pantalla

The Puerto Rican word for “bobby pin” (pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, but in Nicaragua it simply means “stingy”, and in Spain refers to a chef’s helper.

pare

The last big earthquake in Mexico was on a Thursday, and there was a joke about Plácido Domingo who happened to be in the country at that time. Plácido Domingo means ‘calm Sunday’ and the joke was that after the quake he had changed his name to Pinche Jueves (‘Fuck Thursday’).

Parece

Taco means “swearword” (among other things) in Spain, “traffic jam” in Chile and “heels” (shoe) in Argentina and Peru, but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish.

pájaro

Pija in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is a slang word for “penis”, while in Spain the word also signifies “posh girl” or “snobby”.

penélope

Coche, which means “car” in Spain, central Mexico and Argentina, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means “baby-stroller” or “pushchair”, while carro means “car” in some Latin American countries and “cart” in others, as well as in Spain.

pienso en ti

Papaya is the slang term for “vagina” in parts of Cuba and Venezuela, where the fruit is instead called fruta bomba and lechosa, respectively.

plagiadas

In Argentina, one says “piña” when talking about ‘punching’ someone, whereas in other countries, “piña” refers to a pineapple.

precaución

Although Portuguese and Spanish are very closely related, particularly in vocabulary (89% lexically similar according to the Ethnologue of Languages), syntax and grammar, there are some differences that don’t exist between Catalan and Portuguese.

prostitutas

Spanish and Portuguese are widely considered to be mutually intelligible. However most Portuguese speakers can understand spoken Spanish with little difficulty, but Spanish speakers face more difficulty in understanding spoken Portuguese. The written forms are considered to be mutually intelligible.

Qina

Ladino, also known as Judaeo-Spanish, is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardim who were driven out of Spain in the fifteenth century.

Quién me ayuda?

Ladino is to Spanish as Yiddish is to German.

quintara

Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans. Most Ladino speakers now live in Israel and Turkey, and the United States, with a few pockets in Latin America.

Rabo de Paja

Ladino lacks many of the words that came into Spanish from the Americas during the colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Spanish, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.

raquela

Judaeo-Spanish is in danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, Ladino is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.

refranes-españoles

Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco is related to Ladino. This language also tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.

relief south america

Ladino is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time.

roberta

In the Sephardic communities of the Ottoman Empire, however, Ladino not only retained the older forms of Spanish, but borrowed so many words from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, and even French, that it became more and more distant from standard Spanish. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers.

salvadoreña

‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese.

Senales-de-trafico-Bacon-Alla-voy

The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words which have disappeared from modern day Spanish, and also includes many words from different languages that have been substituted for the original Spanish word, from the various places Ladino speaking Jews settled.

señales de seguridad

These foreign words derive mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Portuguese and Italian.

ser dominicana

Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro, a cursive method of writting letters.

servido señores

It was only in the 20th century that Ladino was written using the Latin alphabet.

Simón Bolívar

What is known as ‘rashi script’ was originally a Ladino script which became used centuries after Rashi’s death in printed books to differentiate Rashi’s commentary from the text of the Torah.

sophia

Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States (the highest populations being in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and south Florida) and Latin America.

south-america-globe

By the beginning of this century, with the spread of compulsory education in the language of the land, Ladino began to disintegrate. Emigration to Israel from the Balkans hastened the decline of Ladino in Eastern Europe and Turkey.

southamericalarge

Israel is now the country with the greatest number of Ladino speakers, with about 200,000 people who still speak or understand the language, but even they only know a very limited and basic Ladino.

spain-map

Here is an example of Ladino. Can you read it? Rika nasio en Estanbol, serka de la Kula de Galata, una parte de la sivdad ande biviyan los desandantes de akeyos espanyoles djudios a ken un sultan jeneroso aviya dado refujio debasho del kresiente turko, avriendoles las puertas i los brasos, kon las palavras historikas: “Los ke los mandan piedren, i yo gano”

Spanish Color Spots Jpeg

This is what it would be in Spanish: Rika nació en Istanbul, cerca de la Kula de Galata, una parte de la ciudad donde vivían los descendientes de aquellos españoles judíos a quien un sultan generoso había dado refúgio debajo del crescente turco, abriéndoles las puertas y los brazos, con las palabras históricas: “Los que los preguntan ayuda, y yo gano.”

rika

Rika was born in Istanbul, near the Kula of Galata, a part of the city where the descendants of those Spanish Jews lived, to whom a generous sultan had given refuge under the Turkish crescent, opening to them their doors and arms, with the historic words: ”Those that ask help, help them and we win.”

Spanish-for-Drinking-Straw-Infographic-662x1024

Su nombre era Ester, komo la reyna, i su tipo korrespondiya al ke descrive la Biblia: Brunika kon ojos pretos i kaveyos frizados. En el serklo familiar, la yamavan Esterika, i finalmente Rika.

susana

Su nombre era Ester, como la reina, y su tipo correspondía al que describe la Biblía: Morena con ojos prietos y cabellos frisados. En el cerclo familiar, la llamában Esterika, y finalmente Rika.

tala

Many of these spellings in Ladino look like the misspellings I saw so long ago on that bathroom door in Mexico. And they look like spellings that people use on iPhones and Facebook today, especially the k for que.

te lo juro

At least to judge by those examples above, Ladino is really Spanish and very little Hebrew, just as Yiddish is really German and very little Hebrew. I know almost no Hebrew and yet can read Yiddish and Ladino if they are written in a Roman alphabet.

teresa

Upon leaving Spain, whole communities of Jews headed east through Italy to the lands of the Ottoman Empire at the invitation of Sultan Bayazid.

tijeras-3claveles

Important centers for Ladino speakers, which survived until the Second World War, grew in present-day Turkey, Greece, Israel, and Egypt, with smaller ones in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the island of Rhodes. Their speech is described by linguists as eastern Judaeo Spanish.

La suegra

For a century or so prior to the Expulsion, persecuted Spanish Jews also found shelter in North Africa, and speech communities grew along the northern coast of Morocco.

topography

The speech of this region, which bears a marked resemblance to its eastern counterpart both phonetically and in the retention of Old Spanish lexemes, is denominated western.

uña

Spanyol is perhaps the most commonly used name for their language among speakers of Ladino, with its unmistakable reference to their linguistic and cultural origins.

uvalde

The widespread use of the term Spanyol is confirmed by the Modern Hebrew coinage Spanyolit (Spanyol + Heb. suffix for forming language names), the name by which the language was referred to until quite recently in Israel.

último dia de César

Ladino, probably the earliest attested name, has the widest currency today, and certainly so in Israel where the largest speech-communities in the modern world are to be found.

vegetables

The names Judezmo and Judió/Jidió, which are registered in some 19th- and early 20th-century communal publications, clearly have the function of underlining a Jewish identification among speakers.

VELASQUEZ

Judezmo is the Spanish word for “Judaism”, and, for this reason, is used by certain scholars today who wish, on ideological grounds, to draw a semantic equation between Judezmo and Yiddish.

victoria

It seems rather late in the day to rename the language. Faced by this terminological plurality, scholarship has generally opted for the more descriptive and neutral “Judeo-Spanish.”

wanda

In the western Mediterranean, the language is frequently referred to as hakitia or Haketia (formed on Moroccan Arabic haka “to converse” + diminutive suffix), although it is interesting to note that with the renewed impact of Modern Spanish in this area in the 19th century, the term is reserved by speakers to describe an artificial language of humor which abounds in archaic forms of Spanish and Hispanicized Arabisms, or else to the language as spoken in some distant past.

Wil Salgado

Athough it is more similar to Modern Spanish than its eastern counterpart, Haketia continues to preserve many characteristic features of Judeo Spanish.

willa

Up to the beginning of the 20th century the language was almost always written in Hebrew characters using the standard Hebrew alphabet with some modifications, mostly in the form of diacritical marks, to accommodate Hispanic phonemes.

xaviera

The earliest texts appeared in “square” characters either with or without vowels, but the bulk of printed material is in a cursive (rabbinic) script. Some early manuscripts preserve a cursive script known as solitreo, which is still in use among native speakers in personal correspondence.

xenia

The best-known and most widely translated Judeo Spanish work of the post exilic period is the Me’am Lo’ez (1730), which was begun by Yaacov Khuli and continued over a long period, in series form, by a number of different authors writing under the same name.

Y ahora qué ?

A midrashic work, the Me’am Lo’ez is structured mainly on the Pentateuch and spans the sources of Jewish thought.

ya se fue Obama

The beginning of the 19th century saw the growth of a secular literature, which was popular, for the most part, and included a sizable corpus of original compositions such as novels, short stories, plays, and popular histories as well as adaptations of major European novels of the period, where the impact of French on Judeo Spanish is significantly felt.

yolanda

This growth of secular literature is also observed in the Judeo Spanish press which began to flourish in the eastern Mediterranean at the same time.

Only a small number of Judeo Spanish newspapers continues to appear today.

zanahoria

Spanyol, Ladino, Judeo Spanish, whatever y0u want to call the language, it is quickly disappearing, despite much interest in it.

ZetaPé

This is the sort of paradox we see in the Celtic languages of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland and Wales. Now that they are almost gone, people begin to realize what is being lost and there is a fierce, patriotic interest in them.

zomos

See you next week?

sam & Jack Casady

Sam Andrew Jack Casady

__________________________________________

Amphibology

almacén de ramos generales

Amphibology (from the Greek ἀμφιβολία, amphibolia) is a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous, such as she sees more of her children than her husband.

anetta morozova

A sentence or phrase (as “nothing is good enough for you”) that can be interpreted in more than one way.
Angela
Amphibology is syntactic ambiguity.
anne
Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure implied thereby.   Thus, puns, being plays on single words, don’t really belong to the category amphibol0gy, but I will make free use of them below.
Ant Tara Mayotte
When a reader can reasonably interpret the same sentence as having more than one possible structure, the text meets the definition of amphibology.
Aston Martin
In legal disputes, courts may be asked to interpret the meaning of syntactic ambiguities in statutes or contracts. In some instances, arguments asserting highly unlikely interpretations have been deemed frivolous.
B4 cell phones
A globally ambiguous sentence is one that has at least two distinct interpretations. After one has read the entire sentence, the ambiguity is still present.
Barbara and Diana
Rereading the sentence does not resolve the ambiguity. Global ambiguities are often unnoticed because the reader tends to choose the meaning he or she understands to be more probable.
Bill and Vivianna
“The woman played with the baby in the gray shirt.” In this example, the baby could be wearing the gray shirt or the woman could be wearing the gray shirt.
Bill Elise
The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose. — Henry VI (1.4.30), Shakespeare
bill
This sentence could be taken to mean that Henry will depose the duke, or that the duke will depose Henry.
Billie
Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est. — Edward II, Marlowe.
Biloxi Elise
Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, famously plotted to murder Edward II in such a way as not to draw blame on themselves, sending a famous order in Latin which, depending on where the comma was inserted, could mean either “Do not be afraid to kill Edward; it is good” or “Do not kill Edward; it is good to fear.”
Blake and Kate
I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola. — Lola, Ray Davies
a ballet
SURVIVOR OF SIAMESE TWINS JOINS PARENTS
buscadores de oro
John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope.
Cara
Eat every carrot and pea on your plate.         (Actually this is amphibology and punning, which is a slightly different matter.)
Carolyn
Flying saucers can be dangerous.
carreta de carga
Whiskey running is risky.
a bather
IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS
cálmate
Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked forty miles.
charlotte
Fifty Yards to the Outhouse by Willy Makeit and Betty Wont.
Cherie
Tiger’s Revenge by Claude Balls
Clark
Hole In The Mattress by Mr. Completely
Colleen
The Yellow River by I.P. Freely
Column Elise
Are these amphibologies?   No. They are jokes I remember from the third grade.
compré
Amphibologies are often difficult, if not impossible, to translate.  Here is one that works in Spanish and English.  I bought a book called ‘Learn to speak English in 15 steps.’ I have walked 3 blocks and nothing!  Swindlers!
counterfeit
That one works in both languages.   Estafador!
Dale
If one combines the words ‘to write-while-not-writing’: for then it means, that he has the power to write and not to write at once; whereas if one does not combine them, it means that when he is not writing he has the power to write.       — Aristotle, Sophistical refutations, Book I, Part 4
lydia
REAGAN WINS ON BUDGET, BUT MORE LIES AHEAD
desfile
Farmer Bill Dies in House
diana
Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms
dog
Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
Donna
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
drummers
Infant Pulled from Wrecked Car Involved in Short Police Pursuit
Eartha Arthur Marilyn
French push bottles up German rear
Edd, Carla, Elise
Or, this one:     Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans
edie
British left waffles on Falklands
elizabeth
Stolen painting found by tree
Ella and Roy
Little Hope Given Brain-Damaged Man
emily
Somali Tied to Militants Held on U.S. Ship for Months
ENYC
I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.      Julius Marx
Escher
The peasants are revolting.
FDNY
A nurse complains:  He had two bowel movements on  me last night.
Gabrielle
Don’t Get Mad. Get Glad.
Gladys
The woman with the dog that had the parasol was brown.
government
The stress accent is on the third syllable  am phi BO lo gy.      [ˌæmfɪˈbɒlədʒɪ]
Greenlee
Save rags and waste paper
a musica

SHOT OFF WOMAN’S LEG HELPS NICKLAUS TO 66

Heather Greenlee
They are flying planes.
a hopper
Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors.
Heather
Teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to drive. It’s getting too dangerous on the streets.
Heston
Giving it to the public in the same location for over forty years.
a nudo disteso
2 Sisters Reunited After 18 Years At Checkout Counter
Hillary
chiara
Used cars for sale: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first!
Irizarry
Down through the flaming annals of history.
jack
Eat our curry, you won’t get better!
Jena and Anne
Throw mama from the train a kiss.
Jena
From the psychiatrist’s record at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital :  Patient was found lying naked in bed with a sitter.
jim siegel
“For goddes speken in amphibologies, And for o soth, they tellen twenty lyes.”     (Chaucer Troylus iv. 1406)
Jenefer
Such ambiguous termes they call Amphibologia, we call it the ambiguous, or figure of sence incertaine.     (Puttenham Eng. Poesie)
Joan Karen Elise
Late Middle English: from Old French amphibologie, from late Latin amphibologia, from Latin amphibolia, from Greek amphibolos ’ambiguous.’
Joanne and Claudia
Amphi’bolic or amphiboly
johan
Reading a book while growing mushrooms would be two ways of promoting life.  So, what would be the word for this, Amphibia?  Amphipharmikon?
a donna
Lawmen From Mexico Barbecue Guests
two girls
In Athens men learn’d […] to resolve a sophisticall argument, and to confound the imposture and amphibologie of words, captiously enterlaced together […].  1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 133
Julie
Dog for sale. Will eat anything. Especially fond of children.
karen
 Amphibology:  14th Century: from Late Latin amphibologia, ultimately from Greek amphibolos ambiguous
katie
At our drugstore, we dispense with accuracy!
Knee
Professor to student, on receiving a fifty-page term paper:     “I shall waste no time reading it.” (Often attributed to Disraeli.)
a smile
Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted
kodiak
No food is better than our food.
a femme
Dealers Will Hear Car Talk At Noon
Krauthammer
Does anyone else think that this guy looks like a Zombie?  He looks patched together from human parts.  They left out the heart.
Lakota Sioux 1891
Child’s Stool Great for Use in Garden.
Laura
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Laurel
We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.      Thomas Jefferson
Lauren Wood
Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3
Lauren
Some synomyms:  prevarication, ambiguity, casuistry, dissimulation, duplicity, misrepresentation, sophistry, speciousness, tergiversation, song and dance.
Leah
The anthropologists went to a remote area and took photographs of some native women, but they weren’t developed.
Leopard Elise
Man drills eighteen holes in his head and lives.   (About a man who died after drilling nineteen holes in his head)
Lilli and Stephanie
Chick accuses male colleagues of sexism.
Lillian
Rangers get whiff of Colon
limpiador
Ford, Reagan neck in presidential primary
Linda and Kurt
Student excited Dad got head job.
a gioconda
Enraged Cow Injures Farmer With Ax
Lisa
Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25.
Liz Elise NYC
Lady Jacks off to hot start in conference
LizBeth
Homicide victims rarely talk to police
Louis
A-Rod goes deep,  Wang hurt
Lynn and Narada
Porn star sues over rear-end collision
Lynn
Crack found in man’s buttocks
manu
Girls’ schools still offering ‘something special’… head
a maillol
12 On Their Way To Cruise Among Dead In Plane Crash
margaret
Study Shows Frequent Sex Enhances Pregnancy Chances
mari
Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison.
Marti and Glaucia
Condom truck tips, spills load
Martina
Deer with big rack female it turns out
Mel
City unsure why the sewer smells
Melodye
Weiner Exposed
Michael Miller & Elise
17 remain dead in morgue  Shooting Spree
Michelle
Puerto Rican teen named mistress of the Universe
Michelle and Jack
Local child wins gun from fundraiser
Mike
Tiger Woods plays with own balls, Nike says
Mindy
Keegan fills Schmeichel’s gap with Seaman
Mona
Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaulted her ex-girlfriend in gay pub after she waved at man dressed as Snickers bar.
Monika Jay
China Ferrari sex orgy death crash
observations
German throws puppy at Hells Angels bikers then flees on bulldozer
pancho
Jellyfish apocalypse not coming
paul
Man Accused of Killing Lawyer Receives a New Attorney
pay
Mayor Parris to homeless:  Go home
peggy
Missippi’s literacy program shows improvement
Perry Jack
Most earthquake damage is caused by shaking
Peter
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons
Phil and Glaucia
Alton attorney accidentally sues himself
Pilori
Man eats underwear to beat Breathalyzer
pope
State prisons to replace Easy-Open locks
post
Best Man left bleeding after being hit in head by flying dildo
profile GGate
Pigs die as houses are blown down
Rain Elise
Being Bullied?  Just act less gay, advise teachers
Ray and Ravi
SHE THOUGHT CYCLIST WAS A TREE BRANCH
reunión de esclavos 1917
Shakira Attacked By Sea Lion:   Blackberry Mistaken For Fish
reunión de jefes
I bottle-fed my children, but I breastfeed my pug dog
Rich
Clothed man drowns at lifeguard party celebrating drowning-free summer
Richard
Brazilian man dies after cow falls through his roof on top of him
rifles
Mississippi executes deformed mentally ill man after a last meal of steak, shrimp, Texas Toast, iced tea and a pack of Twizzlers.
Rodney and Emmy Lou
Gay man who tried to poison lesbian neighbors with slug pellets over three-legged cat feud walks free
Roy
Penguins Not Protests on Turkish TV Fuel Anger
Sally
Giraffe Mulling Suicide as ‘Terrorists’ Chant in Cairo
Sam
DSM’s Flirt With Red Hot Mamas Cuts Investor Love for Plastics
sandra
Brokers Go Gray as Youth Proves Unsustainable With No Cold Calls
Sarah Duke Billy
Cold War With Soup Tempts East Europeans to Menus of HBO, Sony
Sepia Elise
DoCoMo Cash, Girl Band Help Beat Softbank on Costs: Japan Credit
Shanice
Kill Your Wife While Sleepwalking or Get Goldman Touch
Shizuka
Forex During Birth Shows Asian Women Top Men Private Bankers
Slick
Shark Oil for HIV Shot Takes Cue From Hemingway’s Old Man
Sophia Ramos Elise Piliwale
The turkey is ready to eat.
stacy
Visiting relatives can be boring.
stefano
A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, ‘Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?’ I said, ‘All right, but we’re not going to get much done.’
Stephen and Leah
Planes can go around the world, iPhones can do a zillion things, but humans have not invented a machine that can debone a cow or a chicken as efficiently as a human being.
steve
They are cooking apples.
stingray Elise
The old men and women sat on the bench.
Tamre
John told the woman that Bill was dating a projectile point.
taxi NYC
They fed her rat poison.
Tina Elise
Kids make nutritious snacks.
elephants15
Grandmother of eight makes hole in one.
tirando wiskey 1909-1932
Drunk gets nine months in violin case.
tom shyman
Milk drinkers are turning to powder.
tom
I know the words to that song about the queen don’t rhyme.
tyler
Eye drops off shelf.
Up close Elise
Prostitutes appeal to pope.
vanessa
Queen Mary having bottom scraped.
Venere Elise
Miners refuse to work after death.
victor
Panda mating fails. Veterinarian takes over.
Victoria Rayles
Complaints about NBA referees growing ugly.
vivianna

MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH

vuelo de los hermanos Wright

ASTRONAUT TAKES BLAME FOR GAS IN SPACECRAFT

a cabeza

a duck

Do it in a microwave oven.  Save time.

a woman

Include Your Children When Baking Cookies

a dream

a child

Diaper market bottoms out.

atti

art lover

Is there a ring of débris around Uranus?

Wendy & Elise SFLR

LACK OF BRAINS HINDERS RESEARCH

tiger-woods-signature-wallpaper-2843

Tiger Goes Limp!   Pulls Out After Nine Holes

shame-on-us

Library Vote Upholds Decision To OK Guns But Bans Wooden Shoes

a correct

pb-120103-santorum-da.photoblog900

Poll:  Santorum Comes From Behind In Alabama Three-Way

housearrest

Homeless Man Under House Arrest

Sam Andrew Ike Turner, Thailand

ike

memic.net-angelina-jolie-smiling-1280x1024

Jolie Is Pregnant By Pitt

Child_pushing_grandmother_on_plastic_tricycle

Students Cook & Serve Grandparents

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

How To Buy A $450,000 Home for Only $750,000

Coffee-Calvin-Klein-Silver-Steel-Cotton-Briefs-Mens-Underwear

Man Arrested After Cops Spot Suspiciously Small Package In His Undies

A_skyline 1908

Midget Sues Grocer, Cites Belittling Remarks

1280px-2nd_Place_-_Bottoms_Up!_(6969930620)

Acceptance of Gay Marriage Must Be Won From Bottom Up

yisrael campbell

mohel_yelp_ad

Man On Way To Perform Circumcision Charged With Driving Drunk

a dea
See you next week?
Linda LaFlamme Sam Andrew
Linda LaFlamme             Sam Andrew
___________________________________________________________

Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall – Coast To Coast on a piece of toast….. by Andrew, Davies, Nieves, & Wall

I got together with some really talented people a while back and we recorded fifteen songs. The whole project is ready to go, and we need your help in getting it out there. Thank you so much.

Sam Andrew     Big Brother and the Holding Company

Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall – Coast To Coast on a piece of toast….. by Andrew, Davies, Nieves, & Wall

An album of 15 tracks of original music by Sam Andrew (Big Brother & The Holding Co.), Mary Bridget Davies, Ben Nieves, & Jim Wall

Sam Andrew

Sam Andrew

The stars have aligned!

Somehow, despite a wide geographic gap and an assortment of demanding schedules, a new musical release is in sight for former Janis Joplin band-mate, Sam Andrew, Broadway’s “A night with Janis Joplin” star, Mary Bridget Davies and Big Brother & the Holding Co. alumnus Ben Nieves and Jim Wall. With a collection of original material to record, 60′s rock pioneer Sam Andrew assembled his friends and frequent band mates at Blue Buddha Music Studio in Cleveland, Ohio. The result is Coast To Coast (on a piece of toast) by Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall, an album which cohesively and adventurously visits a vast array of styles including rock, jazz, blues, gospel, funk, r&b, soul and country. The track list features many numbers composed by Sam and additional collaborators over a span of decades as well as works written with Davies, Nieves and Wall.

Ben Nieves, Mary Bridget Davies, Jim Wall

Ben Nieves, Mary Bridget Davies, Jim Wall

The songs have been recorded!

The music is, as they say, “in the can”. In addition to outrageous performances by vocalist, Mary Bridget Davies and soul stirring guitar solos throughout, the record features inspired performances by guest keyboardist Chris Hanna, Rob Williams & Jake Wynne on horns and Becky Boyd & Claudia Schieve on Backing Vocals.

With your help, we can finish and release this collection of music!

Be among the first to own our new record while helping us bring our mission to fruition. Your involvement allows you to pre-order our cd and/or digital downloads. In addition, you will help to assure that the music we’ve worked so hard to create will reach the public. You will have access to the rewards we offer that are only available through our kickstarter campaign. You will also be supporting the creation of independently made and marketed music by facilitating mixing, mastering, pressing, artwork & layout, marketing and a wide variety of other costs involved.

Sharing is caring!

We’d love for you to  “SHARE” & “LIKE” and help us spread the word any way you can.YOU can take us beyond the set goal amount required to receive our kickstarter funding so we can light up your speakers ASAP!  Keep in mind that, if we do not reach our kickstarter goal by our preset end date, the project goes unfunded and all contributions are refunded. THANK YOU to those who get on board early and help us build up steam!

An Awesome Gift Idea!

You can pass your rewards on to friends and family as a holiday gift, as a thank you or just to be cool. Print the gift certificate below to let them know that they are a part of this musical creation because you’ve contributed on their behalf!

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Hope to see you soon!

Whether we’re performing together or with Big Brother, A Night With Janis Joplin, The Sam Andrew Band, Color Wheel or any of our other projects, we hope to run into you at the shows. Thanks for taking the time to visit our kickstarter page and an extra special thanks to those of you who contribute. Peace & Love

For more information about Sam, Mary, Ben and Jim, open the full bio (using the icon near the top right side of this page) and explore the links below. Also, visit bbhc.com and check out Sam’s artistic and informative blog… Sundays With Sam!

http://bbhc.com

http://marybridgetdavies.com

http://anightwithjanisjoplin.com

http://jimwallmusic.com

www.rockhall.com/blog/tag/ben-nieves

Risks and challenges – Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

Unforseeable delays are a part of life. If, for any reason such a delay occurs, we would send an update with an explanation and updated delivery information. The fact that the music is recorded greatly minimizes the risk of not completing the project in a timely manner.
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    Our sincere appreciation for the part you’ve played in the success of this project and a humble yet heartfelt THANK YOU email.

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Potatoes

VarietiesPotatoes

There are four main food crops on the planet, rice, wheat, maize and potatoes. Two of these, maize and potatoes, were not known to Europeans until the 16th century.

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The Inuit have twenty-six different words for snow, you have probably heard, and the Peruvians have even more different words for potatoes and for the condition of those potatoes.

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Potatoes have a far richer diversity than the average supermarket shelf suggests. There are 5,000 varieties worldwide, though 3,000 are found only in the Andes where a single valley may contain 100 different types.

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Only a handful of species were introduced to Europe in the 16th-century and from those, dedicated potato growers in the 19th and early 20th centuries bred many of the heritage gems that are again becoming popular.

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The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Nightshade family. The word may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species. Potatoes were introduced outside the Andes region four centuries ago, and have become an integral part of much of the world’s cuisine.

The-Introduction-of-the-Potato-into-Ireland-2

Wild potato species occur throughout the Americas, from the United States to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated independently in multiple locations, but later genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species proved a single origin for potatoes in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia (from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex), where they were domesticated 7,000–10,000 years ago.

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Following centuries of selective breeding, there are now over a thousand different types of potatoes. Of these subspecies, a variety that at one point grew in the Chiloé Archipelago (the potato’s south-central Chilean sub-center of origin) left its germplasm on over 99% of the cultivated potatoes worldwide.

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This is not such a good situation and the same holds true with maize (corn) which is even more restricted in variety than the potato. If something goes wrong with this one subspecies, there would be worldwide famine. It would be most beneficial to have more varieties of food crops in general use, as a kind of back up in case of catastrophic disease.

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The annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (73 lb) of potato.

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However, the local importance of potato is extremely variable and rapidly changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially eastern and central Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia. China is now the world’s largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China and India.

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The English word potato comes from Spanish patata (the name used in Spain, but not in South America). The Spanish Royal Academy says that the word patata is a compound of the Taino batata (sweet potato) and the Quechua papa (potato).

SARKO en patate

The French call them patates, although I seem to remember pommes de terre as being more common. The same idea holds true with tomates and pommes d’amour.

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The name potato originally referred to a type of sweet potato rather than the other way around, although there is actually no close relationship between the two plants. The English confused the two plants. In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two.

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The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard used the terms “bastard potatoes” and “Virginia potatoes” for this species, and referred to sweet potatoes as “common potatoes”. Gerard’s book, Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, was first published in 1597, and was the most widely circulated botany book in English in the 17th century.

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Potatoes are occasionally referred to as “Irish potatoes” or “white potatoes” in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes.

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The name spud for a small potato comes from the digging of soil (or a hole) prior to the planting of potatoes. The word has an unknown origin and was originally (circa 1440) used as a term for a short knife or dagger, probably related to Dutch spyd and/or the Latin “spad-” root meaning “sword”; cf. Spanish “espada”, English “spade” and “spadroon”.

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The word spud traces back to the 16th century. It subsequently transferred over to a variety of digging tools. Around 1845 it transferred over to the tuber itself. The origin of the word spud has erroneously been attributed to a 19th-century activist group dedicated to keeping the potato out of Britain, calling itself The Society for the Prevention of an Unwholesome Diet.

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It was Mario Pei’s 1949 The Story of Language that can be blamed for the false origin. Pei writes, “the potato, for its part, was in disrepute some centuries ago. Some Englishmen who did not fancy potatoes formed a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. The initials of the main words in this title gave rise to spud.” Like most other pre-20th century acronymic theories of origin, this one is false.

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Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow about 60 cm (24 in) high, depending on variety, the culms (stems) dying back after flowering. They bear white, pink, red, blue, or purple flowers with yellow stamens. In general, the tubers of varieties with white flowers have white skins, while those of varieties with colored flowers tend to have pinkish skins.

Cross-Pollination

Potatoes are cross-pollinated mostly by insects, including bumblebees, which carry pollen from other potato plants, but a substantial amount of self-fertilizing occurs as well. Tubers form in response to decreasing day length, although this tendency has been minimized in commercial varieties.

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After potato plants flower, some varieties produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes, each containing up to 300 true seeds. Potato fruit contains large amounts of the toxic alkaloid solanine and is therefore unsuitable for consumption.

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All new potato varieties are grown from seeds, also called “true seed” or “botanical seed” to distinguish it from seed tubers. By finely chopping the fruit and soaking it in water, the seeds separate from the flesh by sinking to the bottom after about a day (the remnants of the fruit float).

Sprouting Potato

Any potato variety can also be propagated vegetatively by planting tubers, pieces of tubers, cut to include at least one or two eyes, or also by cuttings, a practice used in greenhouses for the production of healthy seed tubers. During the production and growing process, you may find that something like a greenhouse heating system could help to make all of the difference when it comes to your potatoes. You’d usually find this type of feature in commercial greenhouses, but you could probably find something similar for your own personal greenhouse too. Moreover, commercial greenhouses are often able to make use of opaque black and white poly film that can be used for either ground cover or as a reflective blackout curtain for photoperiod control. As you can see here in this interesting guide, black and white plastic sheeting is widely used in crop control management. Whereas the white side is highly reflective and used to direct light away, the black side is completely opaque and absorbs light, keeping heat and light away. Accordingly, black and white poly film is also used for waterproofing and temperature control.

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Some commercial potato varieties do not produce seeds at all (they bear imperfect flowers) and are propagated only from tuber pieces. Confusingly, these tubers or tuber pieces are called “seed potatoes,” because the potato itself functions as “seed”.

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There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species, depending on the system of taxonomy used.

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A traditional Peruvian causa layers avocados and potatoes into a sort of casserole, which is sliced and served cold. Other layers might contain tuna, meat, or hard-boiled egg. Causa can also be like a cake or even a quiche made from golden potatoes, lemon, chicken, and mayonnaise.

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Apart from the 5,000 cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties, which has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the gene pool of wild species to the gene pool of cultivated potato species.

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Genetically modified potato varieties have met public resistance in the United States and in the European Union.

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Even McDonald’s has refused GMO potatoes.

This was a very wise decision, although they probably had some help with it.

Kartoffel_Gentechnik

No GMO potatoes in our bag!

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The major species of potato grown worldwide is Solanum tuberosum (a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes), and modern varieties of this species are the most widely cultivated. There are two major subspecies of Solanum tuberosum: andigena, or Andean; and tuberosum, or Chilean. The Andean potato is adapted to the short-day conditions prevalent in the mountainous equatorial and tropical regions where it originated. The Chilean potato, native to the Chiloé Archipelago, is adapted to the long-day conditions prevalent in the higher latitude region of southern Chile.

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The Centro Internacional de la Papa (International Potato Center CIP) based in Lima, Peru, holds an ISO-accredited collection of potato germplasm.

Potatoes

The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in 2009 that they had achieved a draft sequence of the potato genome, which contains 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs making it a medium-sized plant genome.

AColescott-Eat-Dem-Taters

Eat Dem Taters, a painting from 1975, substituted laughing black people for the pious Dutch peasants of van Gogh’s Potato Eaters to attack, in the words of the artist, Robert Colescott, “the myth of the happy darky.”

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I remember the potato fields of Long Island in the 1960s. They stretched for miles and it seemed like you could smell potatoes all the way out to the Hamptons. Some of those fields are still there but many have since been turned into housing developments and vineyards.

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Potatoes yield abundantly with little effort, and adapt readily to diverse climates as long as the climate is cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. Potatoes do not keep very well in storage and are vulnerable to molds that feed on the stored tubers, quickly turning them rotten. By contrast, grain can be stored for several years without much risk of rotting.

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According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by distrustful European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom.

potato-famine

However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine, all due to the use of very few species of potatoes, a condition that still exists today with both potatoes and corn (maize).

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Thousands of varieties still persist in the Andes however, where over 100 cultivars might be found in a valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.

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El poder de la papa nativa: “The power of the native potato.” The region around Lake Titicaca in southern Peru and northern Bolivia is particularly rich in genetic diversity, and the wild potatoes from here are valuable for their disease and pest resistance.

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In Spain and Italy, they say “patata.”

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In the American world, though, they say “papa,” which is the same as the word for “pope,” although the gender is different.

il Papa

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La papa is “the potato” in the Spanish of the new world, and the word probably came, as noted above, from the Quechua language. Il Papa, or el Papa, or Le Pape is the word for “pope” in the Latin languages. La papa = potato. El papa = the pope.

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Every language is full of such ambiguities and interesting quirks. When the NRA sends you a note saying they’ve been “missing” you, you really have to wonder a bit what they have in mind.

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The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the world production of potatoes in 2010 was about 324 million tons. (Fiat panis = let there be bread.)

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Just over two thirds of the global production is eaten directly by humans with the rest being fed to animals or used to produce starch.

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This means that the annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (or 73 lb) of potato.

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Or about the weight that this woman lost last year.

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China is now the world’s largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China and India.

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The geographic shift of potato production has been away from wealthier countries toward lower-income areas of the world, although the degree of this trend is ambiguous.

potato penis

In 2008, several international organizations highlighted the potato’s role in world food production, in the face of developing economic problems. They cited its potential derived from its status as a cheap and plentiful crop that grows in a wide variety of climates and locales.

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Potatoes don’t travel well. Only about 5% of the world’s potato crop is traded internationally; its minimal presence in world financial markets contributed to its stable pricing during the 2007-2008 world food price crisis. Thus, the United Nations officially declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato to raise its profile in developing nations, calling the crop a “hidden treasure”.

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Palindrome.

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The potato contains vitamins and minerals, as well as an assortment of phytochemicals, such as carotenoids and natural phenols. Chlorogenic acid constitutes up to 90% of the potato tuber natural phenols.

nutrition-facts

A medium-size 150 g (5.3 oz) potato with the skin provides 27 mg of vitamin C(45% of the Daily Value (DV)), 620 mg of potassium (18% of DV), 0.2 mg vitamin B6 (10% of DV) and trace amounts of thiamin, riboflavin, folate, niacin, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and zinc. The fiber content of a potato with skin (2 g) is equivalent to that of many whole grain breads, pastas, and cereals.

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The potato is best known for its carbohydrate content (approximately 26 grams in a medium potato). The predominant form of this carbohydrate is starch. A small but significant portion of this starch is resistant to digestion by enzymes in the stomach and small intestines and so reaches the large intestine essentially intact.

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This resistant starch is considered to have similar physiological effects and health benefits as fiber: It provides bulk, offers protection against colon cancer, improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, lowers plasma cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations, increases satiety, and possibly even reduces fat storage.

Vitamins-and-Minerals-How-Much-Should-You-Take

The amount of resistant starch in potatoes depends much on preparation methods. Cooking and then cooling potatoes significantly increases resistant starch. For example, cooked potato starch contains about 7% resistant starch, which increases to about 13% upon cooling.

The cooking method used can significantly affect the nutrient availability of the potato.

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Potatoes are often broadly classified as high on the glycemic index (GI) and so are often excluded from the diets of individuals trying to follow a low G-I diet. In fact, the GI of potatoes can vary considerably depending on type (such as red, russet, white, or Prince Edward), origin (where it was grown), preparation methods (i.e., cooking method, whether it is eaten hot or cold, whether it is mashed or cubed or consumed whole, etc.), and with what it is consumed (i.e., the addition of various high-fat or high-protein toppings).

Eating a healthy five portions of fruit and vegetables can cost less than 50 pence a day. In the United Kingdom, potatoes are not considered by the National Health Service as counting towards the five portions of fruit and vegetables diet.

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Potatoes contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Solanine is also found in other plants in the family Solanaceae, which includes such plants as the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyascyamos niger) and tobacco (Nicotiana) as well as the potato, eggplant, and tomato. This toxin affects the nervous system, causing weakness and confusion.

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These compounds, which protect the plant from its predators, are, in general, concentrated in its leaves, stems, sprouts, and fruits. Exposure to light, physical damage, and age increase glycoalkaloid content within the tuber. The highest concentrations occur just underneath the skin.

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Cooking at high temperatures -over 170 °C (340 °F)- partly destroys these. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes suffices to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and in severe cases coma and death. Poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely.

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Light exposure causes greening from chlorophyll synthesis, thus giving a visual clue as to areas of the tuber that may have become more toxic. This does not, however, provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other. Some varieties of potato contain greater glycoalkaloid concentrations than others. When breeders develop new varieties, they test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar.

The toxic fruits produced by mature potato plants.

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Breeders try to keep solanine levels below 200 mg/kg (200 ppmw). However, when these commercial varieties turn green, even they can approach concentrations of solanine of 1000 mg/kg (1000 ppmw).

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In normal potatoes, analysis has shown solanine levels may be as little as 3.5% of the breeders’ maximum, with 7–187 mg/kg being found. While a normal potato has 12–20 mg/kg of glycoalkaloid content, a green tuber contains 250–280 mg/kg, and green skin 1500–2200 mg/kg.

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The U.S. National Toxicology Program suggests that the average American consume at most 12.5 mg/day of solanine from potatoes (the toxic dose is actually several times this, depending on body weight).

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Douglas L. Holt, the State Extension Specialist for Food Safety at the University of Missouri notes that no reported cases of potato-source solanine poisoning have occurred in the U.S. in the last 50 years, and most cases involved eating green potatoes or drinking potato-leaf tea.

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Potatoes grown in a tall bag are common in gardens as they increase potato yield and minimize the amount of digging required at harvest.

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Potatoes are generally grown from seed potatoes – these are tubers specifically grown to be disease free and provide consistent and healthy plants. To be disease free, the areas where seed potatoes are grown are selected with care. In the USA this restricts production of seed potatoes to only 15 states out of the 50 states that grow potatoes.

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These locations are selected for their cold hard winters that kill pests and long sunshine hours in the summer for optimum growth. Some people prefer to grow their own potatoes in their garden, regardless of which state they live in. The downside to this is that it doesn’t kill pests, but it attracts them instead. The increased risk of having pests in your garden is that they can harm your potatoes, and could also cause harm to you if they somehow manage to find a way into your home. If this happens, the best thing that you may want to do is to find pest control in your area, similar to this terminix NH company. They will be able to help get rid of this unwanted problem for good, and your potatoes should be unharmed. It may help if you live in one of those locations though.

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In the UK, most seed potatoes originate in Scotland in areas where westerly winds prevent aphid attack and thus prevent spread of potato virus pathogens.

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Potato growth has been divided into five phases.

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During the first phase, sprouts emerge from the seed potatoes and root growth begins.

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In the second phase, photosynthesis begins as the plant develops leaves and branches.

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The third phase is when the stolons develop from lower leaf axils on the stem and grow downwards into the ground and on these stolons new tubers develop as swellings of the stolon. This phase is often (but not always) associated with flowering. Tuber formation halts when soil temperatures reach 27 °C (81 °F). Potatoes are considered a cool-season crop.

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During the fourth phase, tuber bulking occurs when the plant begins investing the majority of its resources in its newly formed tubers. At this stage, several factors are critical to yield: optimal soil moisture and temperature, soil nutrient availability and balance, and resistance to pest attacks.

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The fifth and final phase is maturation: The plant canopy dies back, the tuber skins harden, and their sugars convert to starches.

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New tubers may arise at the soil surface. Since exposure to light leads to greening of the skins and the development of solanine, growers are interested in covering such tubers. Commercial growers usually address this problem by piling additional soil around the base of the plant as it grows (“hilling”, or in British English “earthing up”).

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An alternative method used by home gardeners and smaller-scale growers involves covering the growing area with organic mulches such as straw or with plastic sheets.

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Growing potatoes can be a difficult task in some circumstances. Good ground preparation, harrowing, plowing and rolling are always needed, along with a little grace from the weather and a good source of water.

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Three successive plowings, with associated harrowing and rolling, are often needed before planting. Eliminating all root-weeds is desirable in potato cultivation.

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Potatoes are generally grown from the eyes of another potato and not from seed.

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Home gardeners often plant a piece of potato with two or three eyes in a hill of mounded soil. Commercial growers plant potatoes as a row crop using seed tubers, young plants or microtubers and may mound the entire row. Kartoffel is the German word for potato, and there is a very similar word in Russian.

bianca tartufuli

Romanian cartof, Ukrainian ????????(kartóplja), Bulgarian ?????? (kartof) are all obviously connected as well to the German and Danish kartoffel. But even this word comes from the Italian word tartufuli , meaning ‘truffle-like thingy’.

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The Polish name ziemniaki as well as the Slovak zemiak, which both come from the Slavic root ZEM meaning ‘earth’. Russian ?????, ‘earth/land.’ Like the French with pomme de terre ‘apple of the earth’, the Poles named it by where is was found.

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Seed potato crops are ‘rogued’ in some countries to eliminate diseased plants or those of a different variety from the seed crop. This is where the farmer goes over the seed bed and pulls up the ‘rogues,’ inferior plants.

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Potatoes are sensitive to heavy frosts, which damage them in the ground. Even cold weather makes potatoes more susceptible to bruising and possibly later rotting, which can quickly ruin a large stored crop.

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At harvest time, gardeners usually dig up potatoes with a long-handled, three-prong “grape” (or graip) a spading fork or a potato hook, which is similar to the graip but with tines at a 90° angle to the handle.

Native Peruvians gather potatoes from their terraced farms.

In larger plots, the plow is the fastest implement for unearthing potatoes.

Amaru 2

Commercial harvesting is typically done with large potato harvesters, which scoop up the plant and surrounding earth. This is transported up an apron chain consisting of steel links several feet wide, which separates some of the dirt. The chain deposits into an area where further separation occurs.

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Different designs use different systems at this point. The most complex designs use vine choppers and shakers, along with a blower system or “Flying Willard” to separate the potatoes from the plant. The result is then usually run past workers who continue to sort out plant material, stones, and rotten potatoes before the potatoes are continuously delivered to a wagon or truck. Further inspection and separation occurs when the potatoes are unloaded from the field vehicles and put into storage.

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Immature potatoes may be sold as “new potatoes” and are particularly valued for taste. These are often harvested by the home gardener or farmer by “grabbling”, pulling out the young tubers by hand while leaving the plant in place.

pommes d'or

Potatoes are usually cured after harvest to improve skin-set. Skin-set is the process by which the skin of the potato becomes resistant to skinning damage. Potato tubers may be susceptible to skinning at harvest and suffer skinning damage during harvest and handling operations.

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Curing allows the skin to fully set and any wounds to heal. Wound-healing prevents infection and water-loss from the tubers during storage. Curing is normally done at relatively warm temperatures 50 to 60 °C (122 to 140 °F) with high humidity and good gas-exchange if at all possible.

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Storage facilities need to be carefully designed to keep the potatoes alive and slow the natural process of decomposition, which involves the breakdown of starch.

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It is crucial that the storage area be dark, well ventilated and for long-term storage maintained at temperatures near 4 °C (39 °F). For short-term storage before cooking, temperatures of about 7 to 10 °C (45 to 50 °F) are preferred.

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On the other hand, temperatures below 4 °C (39 °F) convert potatoes’ starch into sugar, which alters their taste and cooking qualities and leads to higher acrylamide levels in the cooked product, especially in deep-fried dishes-the discovery of acrylamides in starchy foods in 2002 has led to many international health concerns as they are believed to be possible carcinogens and their occurrence in cooked foods are currently under study as possible influences in potential health problems.

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In commercial warehouses with very good conditions, potatoes can be stored for up to ten to twelve months.

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When stored in homes, the shelf life is usually only a few weeks. If potatoes develop green areas or start to sprout, these areas should be trimmed before using. Trimming or peeling green areas are inadequate to remove copresent toxins, and such potatoes are no longer suitable as animal food.

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Commercial storage of potatoes involves several phases: drying of surface moisture; a wound healing phase at 85% to 95% relative humidity and temperatures below 25 °C (77 °F); a staged cooling phase; a holding phase; and a reconditioning phase, during which the tubers are slowly warmed. Mechanical ventilation is used at various points during the process to prevent condensation and accumulation of carbon dioxide.

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Potatoes were grown on 18.6 million hectares in 2010, each hectare yielding 17.4 tons of tubers. Farms in the United States were the most productive in 2010, with a nationwide average of 44.3 tons per hectare. The United Kingdom was a close second.

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Farms in New Zealand have ranged between 60 to 80 tons per hectare, some reporting yields of 88 tons per hectare.

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There is a big gap among various countries between high and low yields, even with the same variety of potato. Average potato yields in developed economies ranges between 38–44 tons per hectare. The two largest producers of potatoes, China and India which accounted for over a third of world’s production in 2010, had yields of 14.7 and 19.9 tons per hectare respectively.

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The yield gap between farms in developing economies and developed economies represents an opportunity loss of over 400 million tons of potato, or an amount greater than 2010 world potato production. Potato crop yields are determined by factors such as the crop breed, seed age and quality, crop management practices and the plant environment. Improvements in one or more of these yield determinants, and a closure of the yield gap, can be a major boost to food supply and farmer incomes in the developing world.

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While there are close to 4000 different varieties of potato, there are many standard or well-known varieties, each of which has particular agricultural or culinary attributes.

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Varieties are categorized into a few main groups, such as russets, reds, whites, yellows (also called Yukons) and purples-based on common characteristics. Around 80 varieties are commercially available in the UK.

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For culinary purposes, varieties are often differentiated by their waxiness. Floury, or mealy (baking) potatoes have more starch (20–22%) than waxy (boiling) potatoes (16–18%).

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This painting is called Die Kartoffelschälerin, the Potato Peeler. As I mentioned Kartoffel is German for potato.

russian kartofely

The Russian word is quite close, Kartophely, or something like that. It’s difficult to transcribe Russian.

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The distinction between waxy and floury may also arise from variation in the comparative ratio of two potato starch compounds: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose, a long-chain molecule, diffuses from the starch granule when cooked in water, and lends itself to dishes where the potato is mashed. Varieties that contain a slightly higher amylopectin content, a highly branched molecule, help the potato retain its shape when boiled.

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Peru still has some 2,800 varieties of potato, more than any other country.

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The blue potato (or purple potato) originated in South America. It has purple skin and flesh, which becomes blue once cooked. It has a slight whitish scab that seems to be present in all samples. The variety, called “Cream of the Crop”, has been introduced into Ireland and has proved popular.

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Genetic research has produced several genetically modified varieties. ‘New Leaf’, owned by Monsanto incorporates genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, which confers resistance to the Colorado potato beetle.

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‘New Leaf Plus’ and ‘New Leaf Y’, approved by US regulatory agencies during the 1990s, also include resistance to viruses.McDonald’s, Burger King, Frito-Lay and Proctor & Gamble announced they would not use genetically modified potatoes, and Monsanto published its intent to discontinue the line in March 2001.

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All blight-resistant potatoes must be replaced every three generations by fresh new strains from the Andes, as they lose their resistance very quickly.

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Waxy potato varieties produce two main kinds of potato starch, amylose and amylopectin, the latter of which is most industrially useful. The German chemical company BASF created the Amflora potato, which has been modified to contain antisense against the enzyme that drives synthesis of amylose, namely granule bound starch synthase.

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The resulting potato almost exclusively produces amylopectin, and thus is more useful for the starch industry. In 2010, the European Commission cleared the way for ‘Amflora’ to be grown in the European Union for industrial purposes only-not for food. Nevertheless, under EU rules, individual countries have the right to decide whether they will allow this potato to be grown on their territory. Commercial planting of ‘Amflora’ was expected in the Czech Republic and Germany in the spring of 2010, and Sweden and the Netherlands in subsequent years.

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Another GM potato variety developed by BASF is ‘Fortuna’ which was made resistant to late blight by adding two resistance genes, blb1 and blb2, which originate from the Mexican wild potato Solanum bulbocastanum.

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In October 2011 BASF requested cultivation and marketing approval as a feed and food from the EFSA. In 2012 GMO development in Europe was stopped by BASF.

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In 2010, a team of Indian scientists announced they had developed a genetically modified potato with 35 to 60% more protein than non-modified potatoes. Protein content was boosted by adding the gene AmA1 from the grain amaranth. They also found 15 to 25% greater crop yields with these potatoes. The researchers expected that a key market for the GM potato would be the developing world, where more than a billion people are chronically undernourished.

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The historically significant Phytophthora infestans (late blight) remains an ongoing problem in Europe and the United States.

Giuseppe Penone - Patate (Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, 1977)

Other potato diseases include Rhizoctonia, Sclerotinia, black leg, powdery mildew, powdery scab and leafroll virus.

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Late blight is infamous as the cause of the Irish Potato Famine, an unforgettable period of Irish history in which four consecutive years of crop failure in the mid-1800s left millions of people starving or dead. And though these days most people think of the disease as a potato plague of the past, it remains a serious problem, threatening to wipe out potato crops in countries around the world every year.

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Over the past several decades it has been occurring with increasing frequency in the United States, and this year, it has returned with a vengeance, causing an epidemic in tomatoes in New England, infecting potatoes on farms in Michigan and Indiana, and popping up in isolated cases in potatoes in Wisconsin.

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Insects that commonly transmit potato diseases or damage the plants include the Colorado potato beetle, the potato tuber moth, the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae), the potato aphid, beetleafhoppers, thrips and mites.

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The potato root nematode is a microscopic worm that thrives on the roots, thus causing the potato plants to wilt. Since its eggs can survive in the soil for several years, crop rotation is necessary to solve the problem.

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During the crop year 2008, many of the certified organic potatoes produced in the United Kingdom and certified by the Soil Association as organic were sprayed with a copper pesticide to control potato blight (Phytophthora infestans). According to the Soil Association, the total copper that can be applied to organic land is 6 kg/ha/year.

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According to an Environmental Working Group analysis of USDA and FDA pesticide residue tests performed from 2000 through 2008, 84% of the 2,216 tested potato samples contained detectable traces of at least one pesticide. A total of 36 unique pesticides were detected on potatoes over the 2,216 samples, though no individual sample contained more than 6 unique pesticide traces, and the average was 1.29 detectable unique pesticide traces per sample. The average quantity of all pesticide traces found in the 2,216 samples was 1.602 ppm. While this is a very low value of pesticide residue, it is the highest amongst the 50 vegetables analyzed.

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  • Potatoes are used to brew alcoholic beverages such as vodka, potcheen and akvavit.
  • They are also used as food for domestic animals.
  • Potato starch is used in the food industry as, for example, thickeners and binders of soups and sauces, in the textile industry, as adhesives, and for the manufacturing of papers and boards.
  • Maine companies are exploring the possibilities of using waste potatoes to obtain polylactic acid for use in plastic products. Other research projects seek ways to use the starch as a base for biodegradable packaging.
  • Potato skins, along with honey, are a folk remedy for burns in India. Burn centers in India have experimented with the use of the thin outer skin layer to protect burns while healing.
  • Potatoes (mainly Russets) are commonly used in plant research. The consistent parenchyma tissue, the clonal nature of the plant and the low metabolic activity provide a very nice “model tissue” for experimentation. Wound-response studies are often done on potato tuber tissue, as are electron transport experiments. In this respect, potato tuber tissue is similar to Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans and Escherichia coli: they are all “standard” research organisms.

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Potatoes are prepared in many ways: skin-on or peeled, whole or cut up, with seasonings or without. The only requirement involves cooking to swell the starch granules. Most potato dishes are served hot, but some are first cooked, then served cold (potato salad, potato chips).

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Common dishes are: mashed potatoes, which are first boiled (usually peeled), and then mashed with milk or yogurt and butter; whole baked potatoes; boiled or steamed potatoes; French-fried potatoes or chips; cut into cubes and roasted; scalloped, diced, or sliced and fried (home fries); grated into small thin strips and fried (hash browns); grated and formed into dumplings, Rösti or potato pancakes.

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Unlike many foods, potatoes can also be easily cooked in a microwave oven and still retain nearly all of their nutritional value, provided they are covered in ventilated plastic wrap to prevent moisture from escaping. This method produces a meal very similar to a steamed potato, while retaining the appearance of a conventionally baked potato. Potato chunks also commonly appear as a stew ingredient.

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Potatoes are boiled between 10 and 25 minutes, depending on size and type, to become soft.

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Peruvians naturally use the potato as a primary ingredient in many dishes, as around 3,000 varieties of this tuber are grown there. Some of the more notable dishes include boiled potato as a base for several dishes or with ají-based sauces such as the Papa a la Huancaína or ocopa, diced potato for its use in soups like in cau cau, or in Carapulca with dried potato (papa seca).

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Smashed condimented potato is used in causa Limeña and papa rellena. French-fried potatoes are a typical ingredient in Peruvian stir-fries, including the classic dish lomo saltado.

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Chuño is a freeze dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Peru and Bolivia, and is known in various countries of South America, including Peru, Bolivia and Chile.

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In Chile’s Chiloé Archipelago, potatoes are the main ingredient of many dishes, including milcaos, chapaleles, curanto and chochoca. In Ecuador, the potato, as well as being a staple with most dishes, is featured in the hearty locro de papas, a thick soup of potato, squash, and cheese.

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In the UK, potatoes form part of the traditional staple fish and chips. Roast potatoes are commonly served with a Sunday roast and mashed potatoes form a major component of several other traditional dishes such as shepherd’s pie, bubble and squeak, and bangers and mash. New potatoes are often cooked with mint and served with a little melted butter.

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The Tattie scone is a popular Scottish dish containing potatoes. Colcannon is a traditional Irish food made with mashed potato, shredded kale or cabbage, and onion. Champ is a similar dish.

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Boxty pancakes are eaten throughout Ireland, although associated especially with the north, and in Irish diaspora communities; they are traditionally made with grated potatoes, soaked to loosen the starch and mixed with flour, buttermilk and baking powder. A variant eaten and sold in Lancashire,especially Liverpool, is made with cooked and mashed potatoes.

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Bryvanzové halusky is the Slovakian national dish, made of a batter of flour and finely grated potatoes that is boiled to form dumplings. These are then mixed with regionally varying ingredients.

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In Northern and Eastern Europe, especially in Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, newly harvested, early ripening varieties are considered a special delicacy. Boiled whole and served un-peeled with dill, these “new potatoes” are traditionally consumed with Baltic herring. Puddings made from grated potatoes (kugel, kugelis and potato babka) are popular items of Ashkenazi, Lithuanian and Belarussian cuisine.

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In Western Europe, especially in Belgium, sliced potatoes are fried to create frieten, the original French fried potatoes. Stampot, a traditional Dutch meal, is based on mashed potatoes mixed with vegetables.

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In France, the most notable potato dish is the Hachis Parmentier, named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, French pharmacist, nutritionist, and agronomist who, in the late 18th century, was instrumental in the acceptance of the potato as an edible crop in the country.

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The pâté aux pommes de terre is a regional potato dish from the central Allier and Limousin regions.

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In the north of Italy, in particular, in the Friuli region of the northeast, potatoes serve to make a type of pasta called gnocchi. Gnocchi with chicken essence, pancetta and fresh Périgord truffle.

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Friuli is a lovely area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. The capital is Udine where we played on a hilltop one beautiful afternoon. In the Middle Ages this place was called the Patriarchate of Aquileia, which was the fourth largest city of Italy during Roman imperial times.

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This is sign is written in standard Italian, top, and Friulian, bottom. The name Friuli comes from Forum Iulii. The area was important to the Romans because it was at the foot of the Alps, and Julius Caesar could intercept barbarian invasions here as well as wintering his troops. I wonder if they ate gnocchi then? The Roman soldiers lived on what they called frumentarium, which was basically wheat, Roman meal.

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Yes, Rome conquered the known world on a vegetarian diet of wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye. Roman soldiers ate meat but not very often, and never on their summer campaigns when meat would have spoiled. Anyway, they didn’t know any Peruvians yet, so gnocchi were unknown.

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Cooked and mashed potatoes or potato flour can be used in the Knödel or dumpling eaten with or added to meat dishes all over central and Eastern Europe, but especially in Bavaria and Luxembourg.

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Das Gulasch mit Knödel.

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Potatoes form one of the main ingredients in many soups such as the vichyssoise and Albanian potato and cabbage soup. In western Norway, komle, spheres of grated potato, wheat flour, barley flour, and salt, is popular.

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A traditional Canary Islands dish is wrinkly potatoes or papas arrugadas usually served with a pepper sauce called Mojo or as an accompaniment to meat dishes.

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Tortilla de patatas (potato omelete) and patatas bravas (a dish of fried potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce) are near-universal constituent of Spanish tapas.

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French fries and often hash browns are commonly found in typical American fast-food burger joints and cafeterias. One popular favorite involves a baked potato with cheddar cheese (or sour cream and chives) on top, and in New England “smashed potatoes” (a chunkier variation of mashed potatoes, retaining the peel) have great popularity.

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Potato flakes are popular as an instant variety of mashed potatoes, which reconstitute into mashed potatoes by adding water, with butter or oil and salt to taste.

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A regional dish of central New York, salt potatoes are bite-size new potatoes boiled in water saturated with salt then served with melted butter. This photograph is from the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse, where we played one happy night.

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American Jews eat latkes (fried potato pancakes) during Hanukkah. Yum!

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A traditional Acadian dish from New Brunswick is known as poutine râpée. The Acadian poutine is a ball of grated and mashed potato, salted, sometimes filled with pork in the center, and boiled. It is commonly eaten with salt and pepper or brown sugar, and is believed to have originated from the German Klöße, prepared by early German settlers who lived among the Acadians.

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Everyone knows that many Acadians migrated from the Canary Islands and Canada to Louisiana where they became Cajuns, right?

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Poutine is a hearty serving of French fries, fresh cheese curds and hot gravy, which originated in Québec in the 1950s, and became a widespread and popular dish throughout Canada.

Samosas

In India, the most popular potato dishes are aloo ki sabzi, batata vada and samosa, which is spicy mashed potato mixed with a small amount of vegetable stuffed in conical dough, and deep fried. Potatoes are also a major ingredient as fast food items, such as aloo chaat, where they are deep fried and served with chutney. In Northern India, alu dum and alu paratha are a favorite part of the diet; the first is a spicy curry of boiled potato, the second is a type of stuffed chapati.

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A dish called masala dosa from South India is common throughout India. It is a thin pancake of rice and pulse paste rolled over spicy smashed potato and eaten with sambhar and chutney. Poori in south India in particular in Tamil Nadu is almost always taken with smashed potato masal. Other favorite dishes are alu tikki and pakoda.

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Vada pav is a popular vegetarian fast food dish in Mumbai and other regions in the Maharashtra in India.

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Aloo posto (a curry with potatoes and poppy seeds) is immensely popular in East India, especially Bengal.

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Although potatoes are not native to India, they have become a vital part of food all over the country especially North Indian food preparations. In Tamil Nadu this tuber acquired a name based on its appearance ‘urulai-k-kizhangu’ (??????? ???????) meaning cylindrical tuber.

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In the southern part of East Asia, rice is by far the predominant starch crop, with potatoes a secondary crop, especially in China and Japan.

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In northern China the main crop is wheat, and rice is not easily grown. A potato dish in the north is ????? (q?ng ji?o t? dòu s?), made with green pepper, vinegar and thin slices of potato.

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Potatoes in Chinese cuisine are treated more like an ordinary vegetable than like a staple carb, and so it would not be unusual to see a potato-based dish served with rice. For the same reason, the potatoes tend to be somewhat undercooked to Western tastes.

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More vegetable like and undercooked. Both of these characteristics apply to ??? – it’s a fresh, crisp stirfry of very finely shredded potatoes that have been soaked in water before cooking, to remove as much of the starch as possible.

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In the winter, roadside sellers in northern China sell roasted potatoes.

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The Moche culture from Northern Peru made ceramics from earth, water, and fire.

Moche potato water vessel

They made pottery into potatoes.

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This pottery was a sacred substance, formed in significant shapes and used to represent important themes.

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The Moche culture made their pottery into startlingly realistic scenes of everyday life and people.

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The Moche didn’t seem to have any of the self censoring mechanisms that most cultures have.

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It’s almost like having photographs of these pre Inca people.

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This used to be a punishment in the American army, putting a soldier on KP (Kitchen Patrol). I bet no one peels potatos any more. They probably blast off the skins in nuclear microwave ovens. Really, the peelings should be eaten. They’re the best part.

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Here’s how the Italians do it. They don’t call it a potato peeler, they call it a “peel potato.”

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???????? means “potato” in a diminuitive, endearing sense. It would be like saying “papita” for papa in Spanish. Vod = water in Russian. Vodka = little water.

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You can get a good kartoshka here.

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Fully loaded.

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A store in Barcelona.

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Where it’s cold, people tend to eat root crops, turnips, beets, potatoes.

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Chestnut and potato festival.

Elise red blouse

We’ll see you next week, I hope.

Sam laura

Sam Andrew

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The Snitty, Skint and Sequacious Pettifogger Snaffles a Shunpike.

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Well, let’s see, “snitty” is shitty, being in a bad mood, cutting and evil tempered. Cutting is probably the origin of the word “snitty.” A cut is a Schnitt in German.

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This is the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where there was some incredible dancing being done. The place wasn’t segregated. Everybody came, and everybody had a good time. (1940s, 1950s)

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“Skint” is the British version of “skinned,” poor, without a sou, no money, broke. Actually, no one has a sou in France anymore. Well, maybe coin collectors. This unit of money, which probably came from Latin solidus has not existed for a long time. But… it’s still an expression. “He didn’t have a sou.”  He was, to put it bluntly and Britishly, skint.

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“Sequacious” is probably the term one would like least to be applied to oneself. Sequacious is related to sequence. It means a follower, someone who has a tendency to fall in line, to follow, to be obSEQuious and without conSEQuence.

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 A Pettifogger sounds like a “little fucker” to me. Petit = little and fogger = fucker, but I could be wrong.

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A pettifogger is a lawyer who does things on the cheap and the low down, not high ethically, nor any other way. That’s the initial meaning. Then “pettifogger” came to mean any petty practicioner. It stands for a mildly dishonest and mild person in every other way too, who thinks she is really getting over when she cheats you for a small sum of money. God bless these people, that is, if there is a god and she’s ready to put up with this sort of thing.

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Snaffle. This word has so many meanings. It’s a special bit that you put on a horse. It’s a sound you make when you have a cold. Not quite the sniffles, bigger, like the snaffles.

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Highwaymen in the 18th century liked to bill themselves as “snafflers.” Fielding uses that word for them, and I don’t remember any of them objecting. So “snaffle” can mean getting it on the sly, stealing.

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40 light years across

Shunpike is the best word here. This is where you are trying to avoid paying the toll, so you pull over onto a side road that you, as a local, know will go around the toll and take you to your goal.  You are shunning the pike.

14 Aug 93 Caspar

The term shunpike in our new California freeway life has come to mean the motorist who cuts off the freeway into a local residential area to avoid traffic in one of those horrendous commutes that we all know and love.

aaron

Never put off until tomorrow what you can forget about entirely.

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So, then, let us parse this title once again:  ”The Snitty, Skint and Sequacious Pettifogger Snaffles a Shunpike”  =  The ill tempered, poor, and conformist petty practitioner steals a ride on the frontage road.

anaconda

It’s a strange phrase, but there is a certain poetry to it.

balls

Both sentences are more than a little idiotic, right?  But not as idiotic as James Dean punching Rock Hudson in the, if you’ll pardon the expression, balls.

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Why can’t a snorer hear herself snore?

baterista

The life of a drummer:  How the bass player sees me. The singer sees me like this. The guitarist sees me like this. My sweetheart sees me like this. What I think I do. What I always do.

beat

Hah! You think this is a joke, right?  Being in a band?  This is an understatement.

beluga

Beluga whales live in the ice, so what are they going to do? They’re going to have fun with ice, right?  Looks like a lot of fun too.

Ben Chealsea

Ben Nieves (Nieves means snows, by the way.) and Chealsea Dawn. I love this photograph.  This is when we were at The Cutting Room, New York City. It was hot that night, in more ways than one.  I almost passed out.

bonne nuit

Oh, my father was the keeper of the Eddystone light, he slept with a mermaid one fine night. From this union there came three, A porpoise, and a porgy, and the other was me.

bubbles

Now I’m at the place in life where I look just as good standing on my head as I do right side up.

bulgaria

Laura Dern was bullied at school because her father, Bruce Dern, was the only person to “kill” John Wayne in the movies.  Janis Joplin called her publishing company Fantality, which she said meant fantasy and reality. People very easily confuse the two.

castle

The fathers of Harry Houdini, Erich Segal, Jackie Mason, Isaac Asimov and my friend Amos who lives right here in the San Geronimo Valley were all rabbis, although Amos’ father was a rabbi in a funny  place, Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Well, it’s a funny place to me anyway

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Probably not that funny to Amos.  After all, Walter White lived in Albuquerque, and I attended Holy Ghost School there for the eighth grade. Hey, it was important to me, and I won the prize there for being the “most musical boy at Holy Ghost.”  This was because I sang Palomita in Spanish. Sometimes it doesn’t take much.

odell

Three stages in life:   youth, middle age, and “Hey, you’re looking good.”

charles

chealsea

You can get a DUI (DWI) when you’re riding a horse. A horse is a vehicle.

cicada

This is a new cicada. They’re green when they’re new.  Don’t it make my brown eyes blue?

cjs

This isn’t the new Christy minstrels, but it could be.  That wouldn’t be a güiro there with the tambourine, would it?

cliffhouse

Cocaine Bill and Morphine Sue,   walking hand in hand down the avenue,   Oh, honey won’t you have a little (sniff) on me, have a (sniff) on me.

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Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.

compute

“Singapore” means City of the Lion.  Many, many people in the Punjab have the surname Singh, and I think it means “lion” there too. And let’s not forget Singha Beer from Thailand.

cop

The Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake’s famous three-master, was smaller than a modern tugboat.

costa

Buy the worst home on the best street.

cuore

Hijinks is the only word in English with three dotted letters in a row.

dale r

We’re all in this alone.

dawn

The Romans had three different types of kiss: basium, the kiss on the lips;  osculum, a friendly kiss on the cheek; and suavium, the kiss that the French say they invented.

desert doors

A philematophobe is someone who hates to be kissed. So, someone who likes to be kissed is probably a philematophile, and someone who really likes to be kissed could be a philematophiliac.

dre nis

Your left foot is probably just a tiny bit bigger than your right foot.

eagle owl

Judy Garland, Lenny Bruce and Elvis Presley died on the loo. George III died after falling off the loo.

eileen julie

“You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged.”   (Pope John XXIII)

eliane manu

Eat anything you want.  Just don’t swallow it.

elk

More men feel comfortable doing “public speaking,” while more women feel comfortable doing “private speaking.”

Erika & B Haley

Why attack god?  She could be as miserable as we are.

eruption

Imagine the painting in a museum, the stupidities it hears day in and day out.

evie

Monopoly: the person who makes the most deals wins.

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For a short interval you can lift twice your weight.  For a long distance you can carry half your weight uncomfortably or one fourth your weight comfortably.

feliz

What makes me happy at this time is the affection shared with the people who fill my life.

frack

franca

We are an idealistic people and we’ll make any sacrifice for any cause that won’t cost us anything.

gandhi sandhi

Sandy Gandhi.

gelada

Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus,  Hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons  Et paulum silvae super his foret.

GGate

This was in my prayers:  a parcel of land not so very large, which would have a garden and ever flowing water near the house and a bit of woods added to this.  (Horace wrote this long ago. We actually have these things and you can almost see them in this photograph.)

gin

Shoes: the earliest Anglo-Saxon term was sceo, “to cover,” which eventually became in the plural schewis, then shooys, and finally shoes.

glee

Barley cleans cholesterol from the blood.

god

Open marriage is nature’s way of telling you that you need a divorce.

guitar

hailey

You get a line and I’ll get a pole, We’ll go down to the crawdad hole, Honey, sugar baby mine.

honeymoon

To play in New York City bars, you need 45 minutes of original music, and, please, no ballads after midnight.

husband

Some people are like hit songs. They only last for three minutes.

ice

Every musician, however modest, keeps a most outrageous ego chained like a monster madman in the padded cell of his/her breast.

ingle

Nothing is more remarkable about this generation than its addiction to music.

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“Rosary” meaning “wreath of roses” first appeared in fifteenth century Europe, but the practice of reciting prayers on a string of knots or beads goes back to the Indic priests of the Middle East before 500 BCE.  The Sanskrit for rosary is the “remembrancer.”

irving

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

japanese

I don’t understand this at all.  Do you understand this?

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Brutality to an animal is cruelty to us all.

Jimi Buddy

Once upon a time there were no pockets. One convenient place for a man in the 1500s to carry his personal effects was in his codpiece, which was originally a opening, or fly, to his trousers. It was the fashion that the fastened flap be stuffed (à la Spinal Tap) and so it became an ideal place to carry keys and valuables wrapped in a cloth.

jota eme

karen c

You may talk about your kings of Gideon,  You may talk about your men of Saul,  But there’s none like good old Joshua,  At the battle of Jericho.

kusakabe

When nosing your car to a wall, turn on your high beams and look at the reflection on the wall as you slowly move closer. When the brightest part falls out of view, you are close enough.

look

Deer sleep only five minutes a day.

mad

mas bonitas

Ahhh, patriotism:   Welcome to the city of Allen Capital of the Pera and of the PRETTIEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD.

mazers

Phyllis Schlafly speaks for all women who oppose equal rights for themselves.

mel

Don’t be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Nazi party.

men

montaña

The guy who said, “Two can live as cheaply as one,”  has a lot of explaining to do.

moon

Which doesn’t fit with the rest:  AIDS, herpes, gonorrhea, condominiums.   Gonorrhea.  You can get rid of gonorrhea.

mouth

mutt

I am invariably and have been since adolescence inimical to the Republican mind which shows at the most inflated size the bad qualities of the bourgeoisie rather than the good qualities of the middle class which the Democrats call forth.     Janet Flanner.

ming-maggie1-225x300

Rosario was a name that puzzled me at first. It sounds masculine but it is a name for women in the Hispanic culture. It means “rosary,” of course.  Maybe Rocío (dew) is a woman’s name too.

neal

If you need to locate a stud in a stick-framed wall, keep in mind that most electricians are right-handed. Find an outlet and tap the wall directly to its left to find the stud. You can measure away from it in 16-inch increments to find the others.

Nercedes Benz

Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me this Mercedes Benz.

neut

Hey, it’s Neut Gangrich!

Alessia

Alessia Cianetti.

nicolette

So, here’s to a glass of whiskey,  Here’s to a good glass of beer,  They’re not half as sweet as a maiden’s kiss, But a damn sight more sincere.

norbert

Life is too short to worry about what someone else thinks or says. So have fun and give them something to talk about. Their own lives are probably too boring.

nurse violinists

Forks did not come into general use until quite recently, the eighteenth century. Up until then, the lower classes ate with five fingers and the upper classes ate with three. A little earlier than this a Venetian noblewoman had the effrontery to use a fork and she died ten days later. Some said it was because of the plague but the clergymen, holy and Christian as always, said it was because the woman used a fork.

Sandra Fabie-Gfeller

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,  Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,  Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant, Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

owl

When you are very old, in the evening, seated by the candle near the fire, winding and spinning, You will say, singing my  verses and marveling, Ronsard celebrated me when I was beautiful.

paz

Let’s make peace.

pee

Oops, clothing catastrophe, wardrobe wackiness, peenie peeking.

Philosophie

I’d like to be as tired at night as I am in the morning.

pile on

A silk fiber is triangular. It reflects light in the same manner as a prism. That’s why silk cloth shines.

pinki

Beauty, real beauty, is a serious matter. If there is a god, she must be beautiful.

pinnipeds

He sank beneath the icy waves, He sank down into the sea; No living thing wept a tear for him, Save that lonely willow tree.

Politiker

Hi, I’m 40 years old, a politician and an honorable and upright person.   Hi, Sweetheart. I’m a prostitute, 35 years old and still a virgin.

maggie-sam-james-plaque1-225x300

In the 1830s a popular patent medicine was “Dr. Miles’ Compound Extract of Tomato.”  It was ketchup.

pollyanna bush

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) was banned in Boron, California, in 1989 because of the word goddamn. This is probably the most famous work of fiction never to have been turned into a feature film.

post

pour

Pedantry:  stupidity that read a book.

rabbit

Advice that is most likely rarely followed:   To protect your eyes from strain, make sure the screen is just beyond arm’s length.

rear

Shrouds don’t have pockets.  Enjoy your money while you can.

record collection

Why are clams so secretive?     They’re shellfish.

richtigen Weg

Cemetery.      We’re headed in the right direction.

rock art

Heads or Tails Resuscitation:    If the face is red, raise the head.  If the face is pale, raise the tail.

rock

rushless

Mount Rushless

sand

Danish pastry, German measles, Brazil nuts, Mexican standoff, Dutch uncle, Russian roulette, Chinese fire drill, Swiss cheese, Hong Kong flu, Grecian urn, Singapore sling, Turkish baths, Indian food, French kisses, Maltese cross, Italian style, Panama hat, Spanish flu… ahhh, world music.

Schloss

When I was apprenticed in London, I went to see my dear, The candles all were burning, the moon shone bright and clear, I knocked upon her window to ease her of her pain, She rose to let me in, then she barred the door again.

Schrödinger

Selbst ?

In a world where everyone wants to make you into something else, the greatest success is to be yourself.

serena

Oysters are supposed to enhance your sexual prowess, but they don’t do much for me.  Maybe I put them on too soon?

serge

Come kiss me quick and make me whole, You’re good for my body, good for my soul.

sluggo

spiritual

Gladness, not madness.

Sprache

We all laugh in the same language.

rebel

The animal that lives the longest, the giant turtle, eats no meat.

steve

Cleveland was originally spelled Cleaveland, but a headline writer needed to cram the word in a one-column width, so that’s all she wrote.

sun

She didn’t write against the piano, but she didn’t write for it either.

sur

This is an interesting book. I’m not sure if it’s available in English. I did an interview in French for it at the Café des Deux Magots, once the trysting tipple for Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

tara tom

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.   Dante.   In the middle of the road of  our life.

theda

Little Boy Blue, Come blow your horn, The sheep’s in the meadow, The cow’s in the corn…  The boy blue was Cardinal Wolsey (Wolsey may have been originally woolsey) who, after a meteoric rise to power and wealth, was dashed down by Henry VIII after he failed to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey, as a boy in Ipswich, tended to his father’s sheep.

there

timmy

El Caballero de la Triste Figura.    The Knight of the Doleful Countenance.

tipple

“Who Ate Napoleons with Josephine When Bonaparte Was Away?”  Ahh, they just don’t write song titles like that anymore.

gretchen

A finger ring was used for weddings in the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, around 2800 BCE. To the Egyptians, a circle, having no beginning and no end, signified eternity.

tirer la langue

Why are they sticking out their tongues? Am I making them drool? My Wolves, how I love them… live!

tp

I’ll sing you a song, a good song of the sea, To me way, aye, blow the man down; And trust that you’ll join in the chorus with me, Give me some time to blow the man down.

train

Half of the amount of laundry detergent recommended by the manufacturer is plenty. This rule also applies to toothpaste.

tune

twit

Ich kenne mich auch nicht und Gott soll mich auch davor behüten.  Goethe.

venezia

I do not know myself and god forbid that I should.

vessel

Canada’s east coast is closer to London than to Victoria, British Columbia.

vinyl

volumes

Home is the place where my books are.

w güiro

The bayonet was invented in Bayonne, France, early in the 17th century.  Napoleon said you could do anything with a bayonet but sit on it.

war

wasteland

Je veux qu’il n’y ait si pauvre paysan en mon royaume qu’il n’ait tous les dimanches sa poule au pot.   Henri IV (1553-1610)

sea

I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he is unable to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.

way

The world belongs to the passionate person who can keep calm.

wedding

If today were a fish, I’d throw it back in.

whitney

I know a woman who plays an excellent piano.  It’s a Steinway.

ann

Guns are not the real problem.  The real problem is bullets.

Wickert

Never let a computer know you’re in a hurry.

yorkshire

People become conservative when they lose their hair, their juice and make a little money. They’re tired and rich and they don’t want to take any more chances.

z güiro

In an average lifetime one expands one’s vocabulary to 50,000 words, it says here.  I say I have expanded mine far more than that, and so have many people I know. And that’s just in English. I have often wondered whether learning other languages counts as adding to one’s vocabulary. If it does, then that would change everything, because, my vocabulary in French is almost as large as it is in English. Of course this is considerably helped by the fact that many words in French and English are the same… particularly the long and “difficult” or scientific words.

z samantha leoni

Take gynécologie, for example.  It wouldn’t take a genius to see what that means in English. But, if you take a small “practical,” common word like “wrench” (clef) or “tack” (semence), these are more difficult to learn, even if they are related somehow poetically to the English word.

Sam Jimmy

What is important in learning languages is to see the relationship among words in every language. That relationship is almost always there waiting to be discovered. Zahn is “tooth” in German. It is the same word from the same parent as the DEN in dental. That’s the relationship. It takes a bit of study and thought to see that relationship, and many others like it, but the time spent is well worth it. Zahn = dent = diente = dónti (Greek). All these words come from the same Sanskrit mother.

zandra

Many complain of their looks, but few of their brains.

IMG_2138

I’m going down the road feeling bad, I’m going down the road feeling bad, I’m going down the road feeling bad, Lord, Lord, And I ain’t gonna be treated this away.

zipa

Effortless prose takes about three or four rewrites. For me, more.

1 german articles

1 Lindsay Casanova Nathalie Delahousse

The British dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan told his son that he was cutting him out of his will and leaving him just a shilling. His son’s reaction was, “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. You don’t happen to have the shilling about you now, do you?”

1 paula baldassarri

Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility, Teutonic counterpart of the Latin goddess Venus or Greek Aphrodite. When the Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the Devil, a gathering of thirteen, and plotted evil turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was called the “Witches Sabbath.”

barbara holden

Never wear a hat that has more character than you do.

kathryn grayson

Kathryn Grayson.

buzz

victoria smith

You ought to see my Cindy, She lives way down south; She’s so sweet the honey bees Swarm around her mouth. Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, Get along home, Cindy, Cindy, I’ll marry you some day.

write on

leslie feffer

A titillomaniac is a person who is obsessed with scratching.

Kevin Dillon

Ira furor brevis est.  (Horace)  Anger is a short madness.

danielle

If you are happy, you will be good.

167251_1837041562766_4492850_n

An Arab is one who speaks Arabic, that’s all. Arabs are of numerous races, religions and nations.

oceana rain stuart

Much surviving prehistoric art consists of small portable sculptures.

VenusWillendorf 24 k bce

Take, for example, the group of female Venus figurines (Venus of Willendorf 24,000–22,000 BCE) found across central Europe.

Lion_man 30 k bce

The 30 centimeter tall Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel of about 30,000 BCE seems to be unique.

Sam Andrew sculpture Two heads Sunnyvale

I made these heads in the Silicon Valley in the 1980s.

Magdalenian_horse 15 k bce

The Magdalenian horse head of about 15,000 BCE is one of the carvings of animals from the Upper Paleolithic.  It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

salmon-sculpture-oregon

I have salmon in my creek too.

shark building

But not sharks.

linda

Christians have burnt each other, killed each other, cheated each other, lied to each other, thrown each other out of homes, out of marriages, out of families, quite convinced that Jesus would have done as they did.  After they do these things, they like to lecture people about how to live their lives.

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The world is a madhouse, so it’s only fitting that it is patrolled by armed imbeciles and governed by unprincipled administrators.

silke

Flying?  I’ve been to almost as many places as my guitar.

10590_525733174158215_266379529_n

People didn’t really wear underwear until around the 1830s. They began wearing underwear in the way we think of underwear due to a. Victorian prudishness, b. the introduction of finer, lighter dress fabrics, and c. the medical profession’s growing awareness of germs.

prima laurea

When Italians graduate from, say, university, they don’t wear the cap and mortarboard as we do. They wear the laurel leaves (bay leaves), a plant sacred to Apollo, the god of learning. That’s why we say “She earned her laurels that day.”  This is my friend Antea Salmaso. She has just earned her Laurea triennale (BA). Now she is studying for the Laurea magistrale (MA). After that, she will be an interpreter/translator, or she could choose to go for the PhD (Dottorato di Ricerca).

33902_124142157643551_7686417_n

amy

The first motion picture theatre, The Electric Theatre, which opened 2 April 1902 on Main Street in Los Angeles, charged a dime for admission.

1000513_619842548039643_1367879804_n

Ecuador is Hummingbird Heaven.  There are 163 species of hummingbird there.

annica

Donald Duck had a middle name.  It was Fauntleroy.

a great broads

Elise Piliwale & Lynn Asher

Lynn Asher and Elise Piliwale

James-Gurley-Michel-Bastian-choochoo

Michel Bastian and James Gurley

Lisa Battle

Lisa Battle

Francesca Capasso

Francesca Capasso

Kacee Clanton

Kacee Clanton

Mary Bridget Davies, le due Marie, Brendola

Mary Bridget Davies

Tom Finch, Houston Person, Sam Andrew, Halley DeVestern

Halley DeVestern (with Tom Finch and Bernard Purdie)

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Melissa Etheridge

Darby-Cathy

Darby Gould and Cathy Richardson

Valerie-Johnson

Valerie Johnson

Sam Janis never seen

Janis Joplin

Kitto

Kitto

Nina McCollum

Nina McCollum

6144575

Kathi McDonald

Lisa Mills

Lisa Mills

Jane Myrenget

Jane Myrenget

Kristina Kopriva-Rehling

Kristina Kopriva Rehling

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Wendy Rich

Ben Nieves, Sophia Ramos, Whippany

Sophia Ramos and Ben Nieves

Kate Russo

Kate Russo

Lana Spence

Lana Spence

Maria Stanford

Maria Stanford

Geri Verdi

Geri Verdi

new wave divas

Fivepiece

Fivepiece.

elise tiburon

Thank you for being here.

baby # 5

Sam Andrew  (baby # 5)

_________________________________________________

Grand Guignol

guigner 1

Guigner is French for wink, to steal a glance at,

guignant

to covet, to peep.

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A guignol is one who does these things.

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The word also means puppet and more specifically Punch as he is known in English (Policinello, Polichinelle in Italian and French).

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The puppet « Guignol » was created by Laurent Mourguet in 1808 and is now the most recognized well known puppet in France.

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Laurent Mourguet (1769-1844), was a silk worker in Lyon before the Revolution.

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After the war, he decided to change his profession and became a dentist or rather an « arracheur de dents » (« puller of teeth »).

arracheur

He set up a stall in the market.

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In order to attract patients to his stall, he created a simple « castelet » (puppet theatre) and performed scenes using his own hand made « glove» puppets.

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Monsieur Mourguet was the first person to pioneer this technique. Up until then, puppets had only been manipulated by strings.

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The first characters to appear were Polichinelle and the Devil. At the beginning of the XIXth century he introduced « Gnafron » followed by «Guignol » in 1808.

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In 1820, Laurent Mourguet created a traveling puppet troop which toured the Rhône, Loire and Isère.

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By 1830, they had perfected their technique and the show became a triumph.

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They eventually settled down in Lyon and opened their own Theatre  « Le Caveau des Célestins ».

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Almost a century later, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (The Theatre of the Big Puppet) was founded in 1894 by Oscar Méténier who planned it as a space for naturalist performance.

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With 293 seats, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was the smallest venue in Paris and was located in Pigalle, 20 bis, rue Chaptal.

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Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol owed its name to Guignol and to the Lyonnais Laurent Mourguet who had joined political satire with a puppet show.

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From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol specialized in naturalistic horror shows.

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The phrase grand guignol is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Webster’s The White Devil) to today’s splatter and snuff films.

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And then the term has expanded to describe generally any sensational and horrific event.

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The theatre’s peak was between World War I and World War II.

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It was often frequented by royalty and celebrities in evening dress.

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A former chapel, the theatre’s previous life was evident in the boxes – which looked like confessionals – and in the “angels” over the orchestra.

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Although the architecture created frustrating obstacles, this interior design that was initially a problem ultimately became a boon for the marketing of the theatre. The heavy furniture and gothic structures placed here and there on the walls of the building exuded a feeling of eeriness.

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People came to this theatre not for a mere show, but for a whole experience and they weren’t disappointed.

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The audience at Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol endured the terror of the shows because they wanted to feel strong emotions of real intensity.

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There was definitely a sexual component to the drama.

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Underneath the balcony were boxes (originally built for nuns to watch church services) that were available for theatre-goers to rent during performances for whatever purpose.

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The audience members would carry on to such an extent in these boxes, that the actors would sometimes break character and yell “keep it down in there!”

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On the other hand, there were audience members who could not physically handle the brutality of the actions taking place on stage and would sometimes faint and/or vomit during performances.

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Oscar Méténier was the Grand Guignol’s founder and original director. Under his direction, the theater produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, street urchins, and others at the lower end of the Parisian  social echelon.

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Max Maurey served as director from 1898 to 1914. Maurey shifted the theater’s emphasis to the horror plays it would become famous for and judged the success of a performance by the number of patrons who passed out from shock; the average was two faintings each evening.

De Lorde Portrait Mariani recadre

Maurey discovered André de Lorde who would become the most important playwright for the theatre and was the theater’s principal playwright from 1901 to 1926. He wrote at least 100 plays for the Grand Guignol and collaborated with experimental psychologist Alfred Binet to create plays about insanity, one of the theater’s frequently recurring themes.

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Camille Choisy served as director from 1914 to 1930. He contributed his expertise in special effects and scenery to the theater’s distinctive style.

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Paula Maxa was one of the Grand Guignol’s best-known performers. From 1917 to the 1930s, she performed most frequently as a victim and was known as “the most assassinated woman in the world”. During her career at the Grand Guignol, Maxa’s characters were murdered more than 10,000 times in at least 60 different ways and raped at least 3,000 times.

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Jack Jouvin served as director from 1930 to 1937. He shifted the theater’s subject matter, focusing performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership the theater’s popularity waned; and after World War II it was not well-attended.

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Charles Nonon was the theater’s last director.

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At the Grand Guignol, patrons would see five or six plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre’s naturalistic ideals.

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The plays were in a variety of styles, but the most popular and best known were the horror plays, featuring a distinctly bleak worldview as well as notably gory special effects in their notoriously bloody climaxes.

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These plays often explored the altered states, like insanity, hypnosis, panic, under which uncontrolled horror could happen. Some of the horror came from the nature of the crimes shown, which often had very little reason behind them and in which the evildoers were rarely punished or defeated. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies in order to, if you will, cleanse the palate between courses.

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Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, by André de Lorde: When a doctor finds his wife’s lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor’s brain.

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Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, by André de Lorde:  Two jealous hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate.

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L’Horrible Passion, also by André de Lorde:  A nanny strangles the children in her care.

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Le Baiser dans la nuit by Maurice Level: A young woman visits the man whose face she horribly disfigured with acid, and he obtains his revenge.

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Audiences waned in the years following World War II, and the Grand Guignol closed its doors in 1962, the year that I went to live in Paris. Management attributed the closure in part to the fact that the theater’s faux horrors had been eclipsed by the actual events of the Holocaust two decades earlier.

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“We could never equal Buchenwald,” said its final director, Charles Nonon. “Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality.”

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The Grand Guignol building still exists. It is occupied by International Visual Theatre, a company devoted to presenting plays in sign language.

Dame Sybil Thorndike at the BBC

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Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of Jose Levy, where it attracted the talents of Sybil Thorndyke and Noël Coward.

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A series of short English “Grand Guignol” films (using original screenplays, not play adaptations) was made at the same time, directed by Fred Paul.

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The Grand Guignol was revived once again in London in 1945, under the direction of Frederick Witney, where it ran for two seasons at the Granville Theatre. These included premiers of Witney’s own work as well as adaptations of French originals.

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In recent years, English director-writer, Richard Mazda, has re-introduced New York audiences to the Grand Guignol. His acting troupe, The Queens Players, have produced 6 mainstage productions of Grand Guignol plays, and Mazda is writing new plays in the classic Guignol style.

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The sixth production, Theatre of Fear, included De Lorde’s famous adaptation of Poe’s Le Système du Dr Goudron et Pr Plume (The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather) as well as two original plays, Double Crossed and The Good Death with The Tell Tale Heart.

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The 1963 mondo film Ecco includes a scene which may have been filmed at the Grand Guignol theatre during its final years.

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American avant-garde composer John Zorn released an album called Grand Guignol by Naked City in 1992, a reference to “the darker side of our existence which has always been with us and always will be”.

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The Washington, D.C.-based Molotov Theatre Group, established in 2007, is dedicated to preserving and exploring the aesthetic of the Grand Guignol. They have entered two plays into the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C.  Their 2007 show, For Boston, won “Best Comedy”, and their second show, The Sticking Place, won “Best Overall” in 2008.

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The Swiss theatre company, Compagnie Pied de Biche revisits the Grand Guignol genre in contemporary contexts since 2008.

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The company staged in 2010 a diptych Impact & Dr. Incubis, based on original texts by Nicolas Yazgi and directed by Frédéric Ozier.

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More than literal adaptations, the plays address violence, death, crime and fear in contemporary contexts, while revisiting many tropes of the original Grand Guignol corpus, often with humor.

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La Compagnie Pied de Biche defends the idea that theatre is nowadays the best space for audiences to experience genuine fears. As movies have overdone their explorations of the representation of violence, the intimate space of a theatre where actors hurt themselves and each other, at times with extra help from the theatrical illusion, might become again the most genuine stage of fears.

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The company also staged in 2011–12, Si seulement je pouvais avoir peur (If only I could be afraid) a production directed by Julie Burnier of a text by Nicolas Yazgi inspired by the Brothers Grimm.  The play addresses the themes of death, rejection, fear and violence for youth audiences.

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Set in a burlesque expressionist stage design, ghoulish puppets unveil the fate of a young boy who isn’t able to feel fear, because he hasn’t realized what death is.

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The recently formed London-based Grand Guignol company Theatre of the Damned, brought their first production to the Camden Fringe in 2010 and produced the award nominated Grand Guignol in November of that year.

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On May 2, 2011, they announced their new production “Revenge of the Grand Guignol”, which is to be staged in London from October 25 at the Courtyard Theatre, London, as part of the London Horror Festival.

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Also based in London, Le Nouveau Guignol form the UK’s only permanent reperatory Grand Guignol company.

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Plays within their current repertoire include French Guignol classics such as “The Final Kiss”, “Tics… Or Doing the Deed”, “The Lighthouse Keepers”, “Private Room Number Six” and “The Kiss of Blood”.

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Le Nouveau Guignol also encourages new writing, staging several new plays in the Grand-Guignol style, including “Eating For Two”, “Penalty” and “Ways and Means”.

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The Xoregos Performing Company presents Danse Macabre, a contemporary tribute to Grand Guignol at Theater for the New City in New York City. Danse Macabre is a program of four plays of psychological and physical terror and two humorous works, in keeping with Grand Guignol’s programming history.

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The playwrights are Dave DeChristopher, Jack Feldstein, Dylan Guy, Pamela Scott and Joel Trinidad.

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A dance to the famous orchestral score by Camille Saint-Saëns will be performed by the actors.

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There will be six performances between August 18-30, 2013 in the Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City, Manhattan.

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The Japanese music group ALI Project created the song “Gesshoku Grand Guignol” as the opening for the Bee-Train anime Avenger, while British rock band Duels also named an instrumental track after the theatre.

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While the original Grand Guignol attempted to present naturalistic horror, the performances would seem melodramatic and heightened to today’s audience. For this reason, the term is often applied to films and plays of a stylised nature with heightened acting, melodrama and theatrical effects such as

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

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Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

alice

What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice?

helen

What’s The Matter With Helen?

256015.1010.A

Night Watch

price

These films form a sub branch of the genre called Grande Dame Guignol because of its use of aging A-list women actors in sensational horror films. On the male side, Vincent Price was the king of grand guignol américain.

southern

And now, a gallery of contemporary grand guignol themes:

Aguilar guitar

Les Pantins du Vice        Puppets of vice

alert

Ce qu’on lit sur les routes.

ali

La perception extérieure

alice

Définition de la psychologie

andy w

Nouvelles recherches sur les mouvements graphiques

apodaca

Instruction pour étudier la double conscience chez les hystériques

arc

L’obsession ou les deux forces

stanley_aguilar_guitar_front-1

Le Cerveau d’un Imbécile

ari

Une Leçon à la Salpêtrière

arigato

art carles

L’Horrible expérience

artista

I am an artist. That doesn’t mean that I work for free. I have bills to pay too. Thank you for understanding.

azi

L’homme mystériux

big

blumer

Les Invisibles

book

brun

La Maison de la mort

bruno

Crime dans une maison de fous

buon copmpleanno

L’Homme étrange

cam

Le grand mystère

CANDY

Napoléon III

car

L’homme qui a tué la mort

carherine denise

Gott mit uns   (god with us)

carlyon jocelyn

La Cathédrale Engloutie

carmel

Louange à l’éternité

caroline

Elle

cassandra

La Dernière Torture

catharine

Gardiens de phare

cathy

La Veuve

ch

Après coup

che

Sous la lumière rouge

chiara

Le baiser dans la nuit

chichén itzá

Le Jardin des supplices

chr

Le Baiser du sang

coeur

Le Laboratoire des hallucinations

colleen

Le Système du Dr Goudron et Pr Plume

cor

Un Crime dans une maison de fous

cors

Monsieur, Madame et… les autres

cubano

Une bonne farce

dagna

Dans la nuit

dan rick

Madame Blanchard

dan s

Loreau est acquitté

dana

Rêves d’un soir

daniela

L’Affaire Boreau

daniella

La Lettre

de

La Dormeuse

dawn

Doux espoirs

debbie

Hermence de la vertu

dede

Au téléphone

del

La Jeune

della

Attaque nocturne

delphine

L’Idiot

den

Madame Hercule

dena

La Nuit rouge

deutsch

La Victime, ou l’Affaire de l’impasse des Trois-Poulets

ear

elena

Baratrie

fabi

À qui le tour?

flavia

Terre d’épouvante

floyd

Cordon sanitaire

elise gundersen, are you there?

Un concert chez les fous

emma

L’Innocent

emmy

Sur la dalle

españa

Bagnes d’enfants

estelle

Figure de cire

ethel

Le coeur de Floria

eva

La Petite Roque

evelina

Sous les marroniers

evemarie

L’Amour en cage

Érase una vez...

Ernestine est enragée.

fab

Le Truc d’Adolphe

falcon

La Folie au Théâtre

laurie

La Maffia

florencia

La Visiteuse

fed

Le Château de l’amour lente

FIAT

La Bonne amie

Franca

L’Enfant mort

Frieda

Napoléonette

gable

Forfaiture

gene

L’Homme de la nuit

ggate ww2

Un beau tableau

girls

Mon p’tit Tom

good life

green

Le Cerceuil de chair

group

L’Homme aux chèques

jaq

Le Feu de joie

joder

Mon curé chez les riches

jonathan

Le Cabinet du Docteur Caliguri, ou bien Caligari, comme tu veux

juegos reunidos

L’Étrangleuse

kar

Les Nuits rouges de la Tchéka

kelly

La Chambre ardente

lire

Une nuit d’Edgar Poe

Me flipa!

Mon curé chez les pauvres

methec

Dans les dunes

minnie

Le Roman d’une femme de chambre

more fun

Jack l’éventreur

mutande

Magie noire

music meeting

Pour jouer la comédie de salon

nice

Cauchemars

occupy

Rosette, ou l’Amoureuse conspiration

pam

Les Maîtres de la peur

petrizzo

L’Étrange amant du mal

piano

La Galerie des monstres

rossia

Le Second crime de la dame en noir

sal

Dernière conquète

shane

Contes du Grand-Guignol

simone de beauvoir

La Villa solitaire

sophie

La Courroie

susan beth

À la prochaine…

voce

Goodbye till next week, and thank you for reading.

Sam & Lizzy

Sam Andrew

___________________________________________

Mathaíno perissótera.

Learn More Mathaino Perissotera  20 Nov 2009 drawing

Learn more.

2010 26 sept draw

A lifelong motto.

abstract ideas

Mathaíno = I learn.  μάθημα (máthema) = a learned thing.  Mathemata are “learned things.”  This word is at the root of the word “mathematics.”

Adriana

Mathematics and reckoning (numbers, arithmetic) are not the same.

academic horse drawing 23 April 2005 Augsburg

Troy, for example, the town that lay between two continents, Europe and Asia, right in the strait that leads into the Black Sea, has a mathematical design.

Against The Binding Moon 2005

Many turf mazes in England were named Troy TownTroy-town or variations on that theme  presumably because, in popular legend, the walls of the city of Troy were constructed in such a confusing and complex way that any enemy who entered them would be unable to find his way out.

Alberta Edmonton 24 July 2010

Welsh hilltop turf mazes (none of which now exist) were called Caerdroia, which can be translated as “City of Troy” (or perhaps “castle of turns”).

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The name “Troy” has been associated with labyrinths from ancient times. An Etruscan terracotta wine-jar from Tragliatella, Italy, shows a seven-ring labyrinth marked with the word TRUIA (which may refer to Troy). To its left, two armed soldiers appear to be riding out of the labyrinth on horseback, while on the right two couples are shown copulating. The vase dates from about 630 BCE.

A seven-ring Classical labyrinth. The “Troy” mazes at Dalby and Somerton are based on this ancient design.

Medieval labyrinth

Elise Solstice

Of the eight surviving historic turf mazes in England, three have “Troy” names. “The City of Troy” is a small but well-maintained roadside maze near the small villages of Dalby, Brandsby, and Skewsby, not far from Sheriff Hutton in the Howardian Hills of North Yorkshire.

Embrace

“Troy”, a beautiful maze in a private garden at Troy Farm, Somerton, Oxfordshire, is rather larger, and “Troy Town” maze on St Agnes, the Isles of Scilly, is a small maze of turf and small stones and is reputed to have been laid down in 1729 by the son of a local lighthouse keeper.

eye anatomy Forum

All three follow the classical labyrinth pattern (as found on coins from ancient Knossos) rather than the medieval variation.

eyebrows, men and women

This  Troy design may be the oldest town planning scheme that we know. Even older than Jericho.

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This Troy design is a mathematical scheme.

Faustina drawing

There is a range of views even among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope and definition of mathematics.

2006 aug 10 Ft. Collins CO

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) said, “The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”

2006 aug 19 Webster Mass

Richard Feynman made the same point:  When nature speaks to us, she uses the language of mathematics.

2006 feb 26 Sherman Oaks

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) referred to mathematics as “the Queen of the Sciences,””

2006 june 17 cuyahoga falls OH

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) stated that “as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

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The most ancient mathematical texts are Plimpton 322 (Babylonian mathematics c. 1900 BCE), the Rhind mathematical papyrus (Egyptian mathematics c. 2000-1800 BCE) and the Moscow mathematical papyrus (Egyptian mathematics c. 1890 BCE).

2006 sept 10 Umea

All of these texts concern the so-called Pythagorean theorem which seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry. This theorem existed long before Pythagoras himself did. The Chinese and Egyptians knew it.

rib cage (pen and ink) 2003

The study of mathematics begins in the 6th century BCE with the Pythagoreans who coined the term “mathematics” from the ancient Greek μάθημα (mathema), meaning “subject of instruction.”  Note that μάθημα is from the same root as “mathaino perissotera,” (I Learn More) the title of this writing.

2006 aug 29 Leeds

Greek mathematics refined the methods (especially through the introduction of deductive reasoning and mathematical rigor in proofs) and expanded the subject matter of mathematics.

pink Egyptian

Chinese mathematics made very early contributions, including a place value system.

2006 aug 30 Clitheroe, Lancashire

The Hindu-Arabic numerical system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, likely evolved over the course of the first millennium CE in India and was transmitted to the west via Islamic mathematics.

Libyan

Islamic mathematics developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations.

2006 dec 3

Many Greek and Arabic texts on mathematics were then translated into Latin which led to further development of mathematics in medieval Europe.

2006 july 10 St. Louis

From ancient times through the middle ages spurts of mathematical creativity were often followed by centuries of stagnation.

2006-june-SF-204x300

In 16th century Renaissance Italy, new mathematical developments, interacting with new scientific discoveries, were made at an accelerating pace that continues to the present day.

2005 nov 18

The origins of mathematical thought lie in the concepts of number, magnitude and form.

Alterego 20 Oct 2010

Modern studies of animal cognition have shown that these concepts are not unique to humans.

2006 july 15 Battle Creek

Such concepts would have been part of everyday life in hunter-gatherer societies.

Baja California

The idea of the “number” concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between “one”, “two”, and “many”, but not of numbers larger than two.

2006 aug 28 Earby near Manchester

The oldest known possibly mathematical object is the Lebombo bone discovered in the Lebombo mountains of Swaziland and dated to approximately 35,000 BC.

2008 jan 10

The bone consists of 29 distinct notches cut into a baboon’s fibula.

2006 sept 11 Crawley near Gatwick

Also prehistoric artifacts discovered in Africa and France dated between 35,000 and 20,000 years old, suggest early attempts to quantify time.

2006 nov 30 Kihei, Maui

The Ishangi bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be as much as 20,000 years old and consists of a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone.

2006 sept 9 Uppsala

It is thought that the Ishango bone shows either the earliest known demonstration of sequences of prime numbers or a six-month lunar calendar.

BBHC, green

Peter Rudman argues in How Mathematics Happened: The First 50,000 Years,  that the development of the concept of prime numbers could only have come about after the concept of division, which he dates to after 10,000 BCE, with prime numbers probably not being understood until about 500 BCE.

2006 sept 8 Stockholm

Rudman also writes that “no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10.”

2006 june 14 aspen Zélé

The Ishango bone, according to scholar Alexander Marshack, may have influenced the later development of mathematics in Egypt since, like some entries on the Ishango bone, Egyptian arithmetic also made use of multiplication by 2; this, however, is disputed.

2006 nov 28 Tucson

Predynastic Egyptians of the 5th millennium BCE pictorially represented geometric designs.

2006 july 3 Las Vegas

Megalithic monuments in England and Scotland, dating from the 3rd millennium BCE, incorporate geometric ideas such as circles, ellipses, and Pythagorean triples in their design.

2006 nov 27 Phoenix

The currently oldest undisputed mathematical usage is in Babylonian and dynastic Egyptian sources.

Antea Arianna

Thus it took human beings at least 45,000 years from the time when they became more or less like us and used language to develop mathematics as such.

2006 feb 24 LA

Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the people of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the days of the early Sumerians through the Hellenistic period and up to the beginning of the Common Era.

Sophia Ramos

The term Babylonian mathematics is used due to the central role of Babylon as the place of study.

2006 sept 1 Glenfarg, Perthshire

During the Arab era, Mesopotamia, especially Baghdad, again became an important center of study for Islamic mathematics.

Joe Freshwater

It’s difficult to find information about Egyptian mathematics, but our knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s.

Reason By The Heart  2005

Written in cuneiform, the tablets were inscribed while the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun.

rib cage A

Some of these tablets appear to be graded homework.

arm 2005

The first evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia.

2008 jan 11

The Sumerians developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BCE.

2009 nov 17

From around 2500 BCE onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems.

Batesville, AR

The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.

Beautiful, Illegible

Most of the recovered clay tablets date from 1800 to 1600 BCE, and cover topics which include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations, and the calculation of regular reciprocal pairs.

Bielefeld

The tablets also include multiplication tables and methods for solving linear and quadratic equations.

blonde face colored pencil

The Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation of √2 accurate to five decimal places.

blue girl hands

Babylonian mathematics were written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system.

Wom Prop

This is where we get the idea of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 x 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree.

rib cage parts

Babylonian advances in mathematics were facilitated by the fact that 60 has many divisors.

rib cage recling

Unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the Babylonians had a true place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values, much as in the decimal system.

purple woman

The Babylonians had a place-value system, yes, but no kind of decimal point, and so the place value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context.

rib cage animal

Seen another way, though, this decimal point drawback is equivalent to the modern-day usage of floating point arithmetic.

rib cage animals

Also, the use of base 60 means that any reciprocal of an integer which is a multiple of divisors of 60 necessarily has a finite expansion to the base 60.

Russian

(In our arithmetic, only reciprocals of multiples of 2 and 5 have finite decimal expansions.)

Sam Andrew drawing A Grief Ago  2005

This means that there is a strong argument that the arithmetic Old Babylonian style is considerably more sophisticated than that of our current usage.

Saint Petersburg, Florida  2005

The interpretation of Plimpton 322 (the Babylonian mathematical text from 1900 BCE) was the source of controversy for many years after its significance in the context of Pythagorean triangles was realized.

Sam Andrew, dessin

Problems involving equal-area subdivision of triangular and trapezoidal fields (with integer length sides) quickly convert into the need to calculate the square root of 2, or to solve the “Pythagorean equation” in integers.

rib cage Bargue

Rather than considering a square as the sum of two squares, you can think of it as a difference of two squares. After division, (c-a)(c+a)= bb becomes the product of two rational numbers giving 1: (c/b-a/b)(c/b+a/b) = 1.

2010-aug-3-170x300

And then you can solve this by looking at a table of reciprocal pairs.

rocket man 2002

Solutions of the original equation are thus parametrized by the choice of a rational number x, from which Pythagorean-triple right-triangles can easily be constructed by integer-scaling a right-triangle with sides of length 2x, xx-1, xx+1 (but only if you wish to do so).

rib cage beauty

All Pythagorean triples arise in this way, and the examples provided in Plimpton 322 involve some quite large numbers, by modern standards, such as (4601, 4800, 6649) in decimal notation.

Sam Athens 5 Nov 2009

Egyptian mathematics refers to mathematics written in the Egyptian language. During the Hellenistic period, Greek replaced Egyptian as the written language of Egyptian scholars. Mathematical study in Egypt later continued under the Arab empire as part of Islamic mathematics when Arabic became the written language of Egyptian scholars.

rib cage pen

The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus(sometimes also called the Ahmes Papyrus after its author), dated to c. 1650 BCE but likely a copy of an older document from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000-1800 BC.

Sam Andrew, cards study

The Rhind papyrus is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry.

rib cage skeleton

In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including composite and prime numbers; arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means; and simplistic understandings of both the Sieve of Eratosthenes and perfect number theory (namely, that of the number 6).

Sam Andrew, viols

The Rhind papyrus also shows how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series.

rib cage sternum boxes

Another significant Egyptian mathematical text is the Moscow papyrus also from the Middle Kingdom period, dated to c. 1890 BCE.

Sculpture model

The Moscow papyrus consists of what are today called word problems or story problems, which were apparently intended as entertainment.

SD figure (pen)

One problem is considered to be of particular importance because it gives a method for finding the volume of a frustum: “If you are told: A truncated pyramid of 6 for the vertical height by 4 on the base by 2 on the top. You are to square this 4, result 16. You are to double 4, result 8. You are to square 2, result 4. You are to add the 16, the 8, and the 4, result 28. You are to take one third of 6, result 2. You are to take 28 twice, result 56. See, it is 56. You will find it right.”

stickman guitar

Finally, the Berlin papyrus (c. 1300 BCE) shows that ancient Egyptians could solve a second-order algebraic equation.

Sam Orpheus 4 Nov 2009 drawing

Greek mathematics refers to mathematics written in the Greek language from the time of Thales of Miletus (~600 BCE) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529 CE.

Solange

Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language.

rib cage structure

Greek mathematics of the period following Alexander the Great is often called Hellenistic mathematics.

Tom's Big Brother

Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures.

carpals 2

All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb.

Camila Coelho

Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.

carpals 1

Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BCE) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BCE).

BBHC France

Although the extent of the influence is disputed, Thales and Pythagoras were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics.

Blues From The Gods

According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests.

Sam Andrew, Fern Hill 2005

Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore.

Spirals Women

He is also credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales’ Theorem.

Blue Head

Thales, therefore, has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.

Sophia fuschia

Pythagoras established the Pythagorean school, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was “All is number.”

The Sinner's Dust Tongued Bell 2005

It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term “mathematics”, and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins.

Three Graces

The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem.

three heads pen and ink

The statement of the Pythagorean theorem has a long history and was known to Chinese and Egyptian thinkers.

Tiziana Tancredi

The Pythagoreans are also credited with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers.

Sarasota

Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to approximate the value of pi, and that’s what it would take, exhaustion.

We Trembled Listening  2005

I’ll talk a little about the method of exhaustion below.

We Rock the Summer 16 Nov 2009

Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BCE) is important as an inspiration in the history of mathematics and as a guide.

Woman hand in action

The Platonic Academy in Athens became the mathematical center of the world in the 4th century BCE, and it was this school that produced leading mathematicians of the day such as Eudoxus of Cnidus.

Woman pen torso

Plato discussed the foundations of mathematics, clarified some of the definitions (e.g. that of a line as “breadthless length”) and examined the assumptions everyone had up to that point.

virginia city sam

The analytic method of reasoning is ascribed to Plato, and a formula for obtaining Pythagorean triples bears his name.

Victoria drawing

Eudoxus (408–c.355 BCE) developed the method of exhaustion, a precursor of modern integration, and also a theory of ratios that avoided the problem of incommensurable magnitudes

You Green Person You

The method of exhaustion allowed the calculations of areas and volumes of curvilinear figures.

hand anatomy 1

The theory of ratios enabled subsequent geometers to make significant advances in geometry.

eye placement

Aristotle (384—c.322 BCE) contributed significantly to the development of mathematics by laying the foundations of logic, though he made no specific technical mathematical discoveries.

carpals 3

In the 3rd century BCE, the premier center of mathematical education and research was the Museum of Alexandria.

Chantal

It was in Alexandria that Euclid (c. 300 BCE) taught, and wrote the Elements, widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time.

Chair heart big

The Elements introduced mathematical rigor through the axiomatic method and is the earliest example of the format still used in mathematics today, that of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof.

Foot showing break

Most of the contents of the Elements were already known, but Euclid arranged them into a single, coherent logical framework.

child face colored pencil

The Elements was known to all educated people in the West until the middle of the 20th century and its contents are still taught in geometry classes today.

Circle Woman 30 September 2011

I remember this book well.

Cleveland woman

In addition to teaching the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, the Elements was meant as an introductory textbook to all mathematical subjects of the time, such as number theory, algebra and solid geometry, including proofs that the square root of two is irrational and that there are infinitely many prime numbers.

Couple Seattle

Euclid wrote extensively on other subjects, such as conic sections, optics, spherical geometry, and mechanics, but only half of his writings survive.

Debbie sketches

The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia of Alexandria (350 – 415 CE).

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Hypatia succeeded her father as the librarian at the great library of Alexandria and wrote many works on applied mathematics.

Devourer

The “Christian” community in Alexandria punished Hypatia for her intellectual “presumption” by stripping her naked and scraping off her skin with clamshells and roofing tiles.

Dido

Apollonius of Perga made significant advances in the study of conic sections.

Dimitra July 2010 drawing

Archimedes (c.287–212 BCE) of Syracuse, widely considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity, used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus.

Foot Cincinnatus

Archimedes also showed one could use the method of exhaustion to calculate the value of π with as much precision as desired, and obtained the most accurate value of π then known, 31071 < π < 31070.

hands

He also studied the spiral that bears his name, obtained formulas for the volumes of surfaces of revolution (paraboloid, ellipsoid, hyperboloid), and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.

Foot gestures

While he is also known for his contributions to physics and several advanced mechanical devices, Archimedes himself placed far greater value on the products of his thought and general mathematical principles.

drapery 2005

He regarded as his greatest achievement his finding of the surface area and volume of a sphere, which he obtained by proving these are 2/3 the surface area and volume a cylinder circumscribing the sphere.

Hand St. Petersburg cropped

Apollonius of Perga (c. 262-190 BCE) made significant advances to the study of conic sections, showing that one can obtain all three varieties of conic section by varying the angle of the plane that cuts a double-napped cone.

Foot bottom

Apollonius also coined the terminology in use today for conic sections, namely parabola (“place beside” or “comparison”), ellipse (“deficiency”), and hyperbola (“a throw beyond”).

flower sex

His work Conics is one of the best known and preserved mathematical works from antiquity, and in it he derives many theorems concerning conic sections that would prove invaluable to later mathematicians and astronomers studying planetary motion.

Flávia França

While neither Apollonius nor any other Greek mathematicians made the leap to coordinate geometry, Apollonius’ treatment of curves is in some ways similar to the modern treatment, and some of his work seems to anticipate the development of analytical geometry by René Descartes.

Find Meat On Bones  2005

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276-194 BCE) was the one who devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers.

hand claw

The 3rd century BCE is regarded as the “Golden Age” of Greek mathematics, with advances in pure mathematics henceforth in relative decline.

eye anatomy

In the centuries that followed, however, significant advances were made in applied mathematics, most notably  in trigonometry to help astronomers.

draped nude 2005

Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190-120 BCE) is considered the founder of trigonometry because he compiled the first known trigonometric table.

Foot break

He was also the first to use systematically the 360 degree circle.

drawing on magazine

Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–70 CE) created Heron’s formula for finding the area of a scalene triangle.

E pluribus unum pen

Heron also was the first to recognize the possibility of negative numbers possessing square roots.

hands copied Durer

Menelaus of Alexandria (c. 100 CE) pioneered spherical trigonometry with his Menelaus’ theorem.

Easy Chair

The most complete and influential trigonometric work of antiquity is the Almagest of Ptolemy (c. 90-168 CE), a landmark astronomical treatise whose trigonometric tables would be used by astronomers for the next thousand years.

Elise (charcoal)

Ptolemy also created Ptolemy’s theorem for deriving trigonometric quantities, and the most accurate value of π (3.1416) outside of China until the medieval period in Europe.

foot horse middle finger

The period between 250 and 350 CE is sometimes referred to as the “Silver Age” of Greek mathematics which had followed a period of stagnation in Greek mathematics.

guitarist scotland

During this Silver Age,  Diophantus made significant advances in algebra, particularly indterminate analysis which is also known as Diophantine analysis.

Foot in profile

The study of Diophantine equations and approximations is a significant area of research to this day.

hand arm

Diophantus’ main work was the Arithmetica, a collection of 150 algebraic problems dealing with exact solutions to determinate and indeterminate equations.

guitar drawings 2001

The Arithmetica had a significant influence on later mathematicians, such as Pierre de Fermat, who arrived at his famous Last theorem after trying to generalize a problem he had read in the Arithmetica (that of dividing a square into two squares).

Chester Arnold et alia

Diophantus also made significant advances in notation, the Arithmetica being the first instance of algebraic symbolism and syncopation.

hand japanese

Meanwhile in China,  mathematics was so different from that of other parts of the world  it is logical to assume an independent development of the science.

foot like hand

The oldest surviving mathematical text from China is the Chou Pei Suan Ching, variously dated to between 1200 BCE and 100 BCE, though a date of about 300 BCE seems the best guess.

Classical Dance

Of particular note is the use in Chinese mathematics of a decimal positional notation system, the so-called “rod numerals” in which distinct ciphers were used for numbers between 1 and 10, and additional ciphers for powers of ten.

Foot right

This system may have evolved from looking at an abacus.

Gioia bella

Thus, the number 123 would be written using the symbol for “1″, followed by the symbol for “100″, then the symbol for “2″ followed by the symbol for “10″, followed by the symbol for “3″.

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This was the most advanced number system in the world at the time, in use for several centuries before the common era in Europe and well before the development of the Indian/Arabic numeral system.

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Rod numerals allowed the representation of numbers as large as desired and allowed calculations to be carried out on the suan pan or Chinese abacus.

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When the suan pan was invented is not certain, but the earliest written mention dates from 190 CE, in Xu Yue’s Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures.

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The oldest Chinese work on geometry is the philosophical Mohist canon c. 330 BCE, compiled by the followers of Mozi (470–390 BCE).

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The Mo Jing described various aspects of many fields associated with physical science, and provided a small number of geometrical theorems as well.

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In 212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shih Huang (Shi Huang-ti) commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than officially sanctioned ones be burned.

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This book burning decree was flouted in some places, but as a consequence of this disastrous decree little is known about ancient Chinese mathematics before this date.

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After the babarian book burning of 212 BCE, the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) produced works of mathematics which presumably expanded on works that lost during the holocaust.

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(Notice that the Han period corresponds roughly with the time of the Roman empire in Europe. The Han Chinese are, by far, the largest group in China. They call themselves Han as do other peoples around them. The Japanese word for written characters borrowed from China is kanji which means “Han letter” in Japanese.)

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The most important of Han works that expanded on the earlier burned books is The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the full title of which appeared by 179 CE, but which had existed before under other titles.

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The Nine Chapters consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business, employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering and surveying.

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Material on right triangles and values of  π is also included.

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The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art created mathematical proof for the Pythagorean theorem and a mathematical formula for Gaussian elimination.

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Lin Hui commented on the work in the 3rd century CE, and gave a value of π accurate to 5 decimal places.

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Though more of a matter of computational stamina than theoretical insight, in the 5th century CE Zu Chongzhi computed the value of π to seven decimal places, which remained the most accurate value of π for almost the next 1000 years.

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He also established a method which would later be called Cavalieri’s principle to find the volume of a sphere.

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The high-water mark of Chinese mathematics occurs in the 13th century (Sung period), with the development of Chinese algebra.

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The classic text from the later Sung period is the Precious Mirror of the Four Elements by Chu Shih-chieh (fl. 1280-1303), dealing with the solution of simultaneous higher order algebraic equations similar to Horner’s method.

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The Precious Mirror also contains a diagram of Pascal’s triangle with coefficients of binomial expansions through the eighth power, though both appear in Chinese works as early as 1100.

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The Chinese also made use of the complex combinatorial diagram known as the magic square and magic circles, described in ancient times and perfected by Yang Hui (1238–1298 CE).

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Even after European mathematics began to flourish during the Renaissance, European and Chinese mathematics were separate traditions, with significant Chinese mathematical output in decline from the 13th century onwards.

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Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci carried mathematical ideas back and forth between the two cultures from the 16th to 18th centuries, though at this point far more mathematical ideas were entering China than leaving.

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On the Indian subcontinent was the Indus Valley civilization that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BCE in the Indus River basin.

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The Indus Valley cities were laid out with geometric regularity, but no known mathematical documents survive from this civilization.

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The oldest existing mathematical records from India are the Sulba Sutras, dated variously between the 8th century BCE and the 2nd century CE, appendices to religious texts which give simple rules for constructing altars of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and others.

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This preoccupation with temple functions points to an origin of mathematics in religious ritual, as was perhaps the case in Egypt.

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The Sulba Sutras give methods for constructing a circle with approximately the same area as a given square, which implies several different approximations of the value of  π.

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In addition, the Sutras compute the square root of 2 to several decimal places, list Pythagorean triples, and give a statement of the Pythagorean theorem.

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These were all present in Babylonian science, which would seem to indicate a Mesopotamian influence on Indian mathematics.

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It is not known to what extent the Sulba Sutras influenced later Indian mathematicians.

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As in China, there is a lack of continuity in Indian mathematics.

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Significant advances are separated by long periods of inactivity.

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Panini (c. 5th century BCE) formulated the rules for Sanskrit grammar.

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His notation was similar to the mathematical notation of today, andhe  used metarules, transformations and recursion.

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Pingala (roughly 3rd-1st centuries BCE) in his treatise of prosody uses a device corresponding to a binary numeral system.

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His discussion of the combinatrics of meters corresponds to an elementary version of the binomial theorem.

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Pingala’s work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci numbers, which he called mātrāmeru).

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The next significant mathematical documents from India after the Sulba Sutras are the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the 4th and 5th centuries CE, the Gupta period, showing strong Hellenistic influence.

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They are significant in that they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry.

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Through a series of translation errors, the words “sine” and “cosine” derive from the Sanskrit “jiya” and “kojiya”.

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In the 5th century CE, Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, a slim volume, written in verse, intended to supplement the rules of calculation used in astronomy and mathematical mensuration, though with no feeling for logic or deductive methodology.

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Though about half of the entries are wrong, it is in the Aryabhatiya that the decimal place-value system first appears.

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Several centuries later, the Muslim mathematician Abu Rihan Biruni described the Aryabhatiya as a “mix of common pebbles and costly crystals”.

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In the 7th century, Brahmagupta identified the Brahmagupta theorem, Brahmagupta’s identity, and for the first time, in Brahma sphuta siddhanta he lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and decimal digit and explained the Hindu Arabic numeral system.

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It was from a translation of this Indian text on mathematics (c. 770) that Islamic mathematicians were introduced to this numeral system, which they adapted as Arabic numerals.

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Islamic scholars carried knowledge of this number system to Europe by the 12th century, and it has now displaced all older number systems throughout the world.

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In the 10th century, Halayudha’s commentary on Pingala’s work contains a study of the Fibonacci sequence and Pascal’s triangle and describes the formation of a matrix.

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In the 12th century, Bhaskara II lived in southern India and wrote extensively on mathematics.

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His work contains mathematical objects equivalent or approximately equivalent to infinitesimals, derivatives, the mean value theorem and the derivative of the sine function.

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To what extent he anticipated the invention of calculus is a controversial subject among historians of mathematics.

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In the 14th century, Madhava of Sangamagrama, the founder of the so-called Kerala School of Mathematics, found the Madhava-Leibniz series, and, using 21 terms, computed the value of π as 3.14159265359.

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Madhava also found the Madhava-Gregory series to determine the arctangent, the Madhava-Newton power series to determine sine and cosine and the Taylor approximation for sine and cosine functions.

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In the 16th century, Jyesthadeva consolidated many of the Kerala School’s developments and theorems in the Yukti-bhāṣā.

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However, the Kerala School did not formulate a systematic theory of differentiation and integration, nor is there any direct evidence of their results being transmitted outside Kerala.

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Progress in mathematics along with other fields of science stagnated in India with the establishment of Muslim rule in India.

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The Islamic empire established across Persia, the Middle East,  Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia and in parts of India in the 8th century made significant contributions towards mathematics.

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Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, most of them were not written by Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time.

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Persians contributed to the world of Mathematics alongside Arabs.

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In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarismi wrote several important books on the Hindu-Arabic numerals and on methods for solving equations.

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His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West.

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The word algorhythm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works,Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fihisab al-gabr wa’l-mugabala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing).

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He gave an exhaustive explanation for the algebraic solution of quadratic equations with positive roots, and he was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake.

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He also discussed the fundamental method of “reduction” and “balancing”, referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation.

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This is the operation which al-Khwārizmī originally described asal-jabr.

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His algebra was also no longer concerned “with a series of problems to be resolved, but an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study.”

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He also studied an equation for its own sake and “in a generic manner, insofar as it does not simply emerge in the course of solving a problem, but is specifically called on to define an infinite class of problems.”

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Further developments in algebra were made by Al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integer powers and integer roots of unknown quantities.

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Something close to a proof by mathematical induction appears in a book written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove the binomial theorem, Pascal’s triangle and the sum of integral cubes.

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The historian of mathematics, F. Woepcke, praised Al-Karaji for being “the first who introduced the theory of algebraic calculus.”

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Also in the 10th century, Abul Wafa translated the works of Diophantus into Arabic.

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Ibn al-Haytham was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, using a method that is readily generalizable for determining the general formula for the sum of any integral powers.

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He performed an integration in order to find the volume of a paraboloid, and was able to generalize his result for the integrals of polynomials up to the fourth degree.

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So he came quite close to finding a general formula for the integrals of polynomials, but he was not concerned with any polynomials higher than the fourth degree.

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In the late 11th century, Omar Khayyam wrote Discussions of the Difficulties in Euclid, a book about what he perceived as flaws in Euclid’s Elements especially the parallel postulate.

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He was also the first to find the general geometric solution to cubic equations. He was also very influential in calendar reform.

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In the 13th century, Nasir al-Din Tusi  (Nasireddin) made advances in spherical trigonometry.

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He also wrote influential work on Euclid’s parallel postulate.

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In the 15th century, Ghiyath al-Kashi computed the value of π to the 16th decimal place.

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Kashi also had an algorithm for calculating nth roots, which was a special case of the methods given many centuries later by Ruffini and Horner.

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Other achievements of Muslim mathematicians during this period include the addition of the decimal point notation to the Arabic numerals, the discovery of all the modern trigonometric notation besides the sine, al-Kindi’s introduction of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis, the development of analytic geometry by Ibn al-Haytham, the beginning of algebraic geometry by Omar Khayyam and the development of an algebraic notation by al-Qalasadi.

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During the time of the Ottoman empire and the Safavid empire, from the 15th century, the development of Islamic mathematics stagnated. Why? What happened? This could be called the Arabic question, just as the problem of why China stopped her phenomenal growth and highly advanced development around the time our own Renaissance began could be called the China question. Are civilizations/cultures like plants? Do they have their own internal clocks?

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Interest in mathematics in Medieval Europe was driven by concerns quite different from those of modern mathematicians.

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People then believed that mathematics would provide the key to understanding the created order of nature, frequently justified by Plato’s Timaeus and the biblical passage (Book of Wisdom) that God had ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.

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Boethius provided a place for mathematics in the curriculum in the 6th century when he used the term quadrivium to describe the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

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De institutione arithmetica was Boethius’ free translation from the Greek of Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic.

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De institutione musica, also by Boethius, derived from Greek sources, especially from a series of excerpts of Euclid’s Elements.

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These works were theoretical, rather than practical, and were the basis of mathematical study until the recovery of Greek and Arabic mathematical works.

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European began to travel south to Spain and Italy by the twelfth century seeking scientific and philosophical Arab texts, including al-Kharizmi’s Compendius Boon on Calculation by Completeion and Balancing, which was then translated into Latin by Robert of Chester.

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The complete text of Euclid’s Elements was translated in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia and Gerard of Cremona.

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The new translations aroused a new interest in mathematics.

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Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (1170-1250), better known as Fibonacci, writing in the Liber Abaci (Book of the Abacus), produced the first significant mathematics in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes, a gap of more than a thousand years.

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Fibonacci’s book introduced Hindu/Arabic numerals (modus Indorum, method of the Indians) to Europe, and discussed many other mathematical problems.

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The 14th century saw the development of new mathematical concepts to investigate a wide range of problems.

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One important contribution was development of mathematics of local motion.

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Thomas Bradwardine proposed that speed (V) increases in arithmetic proportion as the ratio of force (F) to resistance (R) increases in geometric proportion.

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Bradwardine expressed this by a series of specific examples, but although the logarithm had not yet been conceived, we can express his conclusion anachronistically by writing: V = log (F/R).

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Bradwardine’s analysis is an example of transferring a mathematical technique used by al-Kindi and Arnald of Villanova to quantify the nature of compound medicines to a different physical problem.

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William Heytesbury (circa 1313 – 1372/1373), one of the 14th-century Oxford calculators, lacking differential calculus and the concept of limits, proposed to measure instantaneous speed “by the path that would be described by [a body] if… it were moved uniformly at the same degree of speed with which it is moved in that given instant.”

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Heytesbury mathematically determined the distance covered by a body undergoing uniformly accelerated motion (today solved by integration), stating that “a moving body uniformly acquiring or losing that increment [of speed] will traverse in some given time a [distance] completely equal to that which it would traverse if it were moving continuously through the same time with the mean degree [of speed]“.

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Nicole Oresme at the Université de Paris and the Italian Giovanni di Casali independently provided graphical demonstrations of this relationship, asserting that the area under the line depicting the constant acceleration, represented the total distance traveled.

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Later, commenting on Euclid’s Elements, Oresme made a more detailed general analysis in which he demonstrated that a body will acquire in each successive increment of time an increment of any quality that increases as the odd numbers.

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Since Euclid had demonstrated the sum of the odd numbers are the square numbers, the total quality acquired by the body increases as the square of the time.

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During the Renaissance, the development of mathematics and of accounting were intertwined were studied at the same time.

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While there is no direct relationship between algebra and accounting, the teaching of the subjects and the books published often intended for the children of merchants who were sent to reckoning schools in Flanders or Germany or abacus schools (known as abbaco in Italy), where they learned the skills useful for trade and commerce.

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In the abacus schools principles of reckoning were taught in the vernacular languages rather than in Latin.

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There is probably no need for algebra in performing bookkeeping operations, but for complex bartering operations or the calculation of compound interest, a basic knowledge of arithmetic was mandatory and knowledge of algebra was very useful.

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The Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità of Luca Pacioli was first printed and published in Venicein 1494,

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The Summa included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping “Particularis de Computis et Scripturis” (Details of Calculation and Recording). and was written primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons.

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Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and minus for the first time in the Summa, symbols that became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics.

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The Summa Arithmetica was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain algebra.

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It is important to note that Pacioli himself had borrowed much of the work of Piero della Francesca whom he plagiarized.

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Long passages in the book are merely a restating of della Francesca’s work.

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In Italy, during the first half of the 16th century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia discovered solutions for cubic equations. (“Tartaglia” means “the stammerer,” because Fontana was injured in a battle against an invading French army which caused his speech defect.)

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Gerolamo Cardano published the cubic equations in his 1545 book Ars Magna together with a solution for the quartic equations discovered by his student Lodovico Ferraro.

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In 1572 Rafael Bombelli published his L’Algebra in which he showed how to deal with the imaginary quantities that could appear in Cardano’s formula for solving cubic equations.

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De Thiende (‘the art of tenths’), by Simon Stevin, first published in Dutch in 1585, contained the first systematic treatment of decimal notation, which influenced all later work on the real number system.

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Stevin is credited with the invention of the decimal point, although, as we have seen, place value notation had long been practiced by the Chinese, Indians, Arabs and others.

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Trigonometry grew to be a major branch of mathematics because large areas of the world needed to be accurately mapped and there were many more ships at sea now.

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Bartholomaeus Pitiscus invented the word “trigonometry,” publishing his Trigonometria in 1595.

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Regiomontanus’s table of sines and cosines was published in 1533.

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During the Renaissance the desire of artists to represent the natural world realistically, together with the rediscovered philosophy of the Greeks, led artists to study mathematics and mathematicians to study art.

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Artists were also the engineers and architects of that time, and so had need of mathematics in any case.

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The art of painting in perspective, and the developments in geometry that involved, were studied intensely.

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The Seventeenth Century was an age of science in Europe.

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Robert Boyle began his experiments during this period and Galileo Galilei observed the moons of Jupiter in orbit about that planet, using a telescope based on a toy imported from Holland.

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Tycho Brahe had gathered an enormous quantity of mathematical data describing the positions of the planets in the sky.

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Johannes Kepler, Brahe’s assistant, was also, to put it mildly, very interested in planetary motion.

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The invention of logarithms by John Napier and Jost Bürgi made Kepler’s calculations a lot easier.

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Kepler succeeded in formulating mathematical laws of planetary motion.

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The analytic geometry of René Descartes (1596–1650) allowed those orbits to be plotted on a graph, as Cartesian coordinates.

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Simon Stevin, as we have mentioned, created the basis for modern decimal notation capable of describing all numbers, whether rational or irrational.

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Isaac Newton discovered the laws of physics explaining Kepler’s laws and brought together the concepts now known as infinitesimal calculus.

In one of those congruencies that happen now and again in human history, Newton and Leibniz independently invented calculus at about the same time.

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Probably most musicians have had the experience of writing something, putting it aside, and then hearing it later on the radio, the work of someone else.

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No one copied anyone.

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The idea was ready to be born and it was born in two places at once.

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Consider the countercultural movement that happened in San Francisco from 1965 to 1970.

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That movement, that questioning of authority, occurred all over the world at about the same time.

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The Red Guards in China were a part of that phenomenon, even though it would have disgusted them to realize that.

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It was the Chinese youth’s mission to do away with the old and to submit all received ideas to the cold light of reëxamination.

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There were excesses as there often are in such profound and universal movements.

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One has only to contemplate the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution to see that lawlessness can very quickly lead to fascism.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who is arguably the most important mathematician of the 17th century, developed this calculus that he and Newton had invented and also much of the calculus notation still in use today.

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In addition to the application of mathematics to the studies of the heavens, applied mathematics began to expand into new areas, as signaled in  the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal.

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Pascal and Fermat set the groundwork for the investigations of probability theory and the corresponding rules of combinatorics in their discussions over a game of gambling.

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Pascal, with his wager, attempted to use the newly developing probability theory to argue for a life devoted to religion, on the grounds that even if the probability of success was small, the rewards were infinite.

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In some sense, this foreshadowed the development of utility theory in the 18th–19th century.

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Leonhard Euler was probably the most influential mathematician of the 18th century.

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His contributions range from founding the study of graph theory with the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem to standardizing many modern mathematical terms and notations.

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Euler named the square root of minus 1 with the symbol i, and he popularized the use of the Greek letter \pi to stand for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

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He made numerous contributions to the study of topology, graph theory, calculus, combinatorics, and complex analysis, and a multitude of theorems and notations are named for him.

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Joseph Louis Lagrange, who did pioneering work in number theory, algebra, differential calculus, and the calculus of variations, and Laplace who, in the age of Napoléon did important work on the foundations of celestial mechanics and on statistics, were other important eighteenth century mathemaicians.

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In the 19th century mathematics became increasingly abstract.

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Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), setting aside his many contributions to pure mathematics, did revolutionary work on functions of complex variables, in geometry and on the convergence of series.

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Gauss gave the first satisfactory proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra and of the quadratic reciprocity law.

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The twentieth century saw the development of the two forms of non Euclidean geometry.

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The Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and his rival, the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, independently defined and studied hyperbolic geometry where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds.

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In this geometry the sum of angles in a triangle add up to less than 180°.

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Elliptic geometry was developed later in the 19th century by the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann.

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In elliptic geometry, there is no parallel and the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180°.

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Riemann also developed Riemannian geometry which unifies and vastly generalizes the three types of geometry, and he defined the concept of a manifold, which generalizes the ideas of curves and surfaces.

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Hermann Grassmann in Germany gave a first version of vector spaces, and William Rowan Hamilton  in Ireland developed noncommutative algebra.

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The British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now called Boolean algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1.

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Boolean algebra is the starting point of mathematical logic and has important applications in computer science.

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Agustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernhard Riemann and Karl Weierstrass reformulated the calculus in a more rigorous fashion.

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Niels Henrik Abel, a Norwegian, and Évariste Galois, from France, proved that there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial equations of degree greater than four (the Abel-Ruffini theorem).

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Other 19th-century mathematicians utilized this in their proofs that straightedge and compass alone are not sufficient to trisect an arbitrary angle.

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Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve all of these problems since the time of the ancient Greeks.

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The limitation of three dimensions in geometry, however, was surpassed in the 19th century through considerations of parameter space and hypercomplex numbers.

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The Abel and Galois investigations into the solutions of various polynomial equations laid the groundwork for further developments of group theory and the associated fields of abstract algebra.

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Twentieth century physicists and other scientists have seen group theory as the ideal way to study symmetry.

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In the later 19th century, Georg Cantor established the first foundations of set theory, which enabled the rigorous treatment of the notion of infinity and has become the common language of nearly all mathematics.

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Cantor’s set theory, and the rise of mathematical logic in the hands of Peano, L.E.J. Brouwer, David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead  initiated a long running debate on the foundations of mathematics.

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A number of national mathematical societies were founded in the nineteenth century: the London Mathematical Society in 1865; the Société Mathématique de France in 1872; the Circolo Matematico di Palermo in 1884; the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in 1883; and the American Mathematical Society in 1888.

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The first international, special-interest society, the Quaternion Society was formed in 1899, in the context of a vector controversy.

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Quaternions are a non-commutative number system that extends the complex numbers.

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Quaternions and their applications to rotations were first described in print by Olinde Rodrigues in all but name in 1840, but independently discovered by Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space.

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Quaternions find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations.

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The 20th century saw mathematics become a major profession.

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Every year, thousands of new Ph.D.s in mathematics were awarded, and jobs were available in both teaching and industry.

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An effort to catalogue the areas and applications of mathematics was undertaken in Klein’s encyclopedia.

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In a 1900 speech to the International Congress of Mathematicians, David Hilbert set out a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics.

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These problems, spanning many areas of mathematics, formed a central focus for much of 20th-century mathematics.

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Today, 10 of the 23 problems have been solved, 7 are partially solved, and 2 are still open. The remaining 4 are too loosely formulated to be stated as solved or not.

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In 1976, Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel used a computer to prove the four color theorem.

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Andrew Wiles, building on the work of others, proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1995.

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“Paul Cohen was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century,” said Princeton Math Professor Peter Sarnak, who received his doctorate from Stanford in 1980 under Cohen’s direction.

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Paul Cohen and Kurt Gödel proved that the continuum hypothesis is independent of (could neither be proved nor disproved from) the standard axioms of set theory.

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In 1998 Thomas Callister Hales proved the Kepler conjecture.

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Mathematical collaborations of unprecedented size and scope were happening.

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The classification of finite simple groups (also called the “enormous theorem”), whose proof between 1955 and 1983 required 500-odd journal articles by about 100 authors, fills tens of thousands of pages.

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A group of French mathematicians, including Jean Dieudonné and André Weil, publishing under the pseudonym “Nicolas Bourbaki,”   attempted to exposit all of known mathematics as a coherent rigorous whole.

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The resulting several dozen volumes has had a controversial influence on mathematical education.

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Differential geometry came into its own when Einstein used it in general relativity.

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Entire new areas of mathematics such as mathematical logic, topology and John von Neumann’s game theory changed the kinds of questions that could be answered by mathematical methods.

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In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the seven Millenium Prize Problems.

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And in 2003 the Poincaré conjecture was solved by Grigori Perelman (who declined to accept an award on this point).

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Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched.

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There is an increasing drive towards open access publishing first popularized by the arXiv.

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Sam Andrew

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