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Margaret Atwood, “In Other Worlds”
Margaret Atwood in extended conversation at Emory University last year where she delivered the Ellmann Lecture, “Science Fiction and Human Imagination.”
The Globe and Mail and The Star have articles on Margaret Atwood’s new collection, In Other Worlds, that make reference to her relationship to Frye. The Telegraph fills in a little more detail.
A previous post on Frye and Atwood here.
“Why I Love the Goddamned Hippies”
Goddamned hippies in Austin, Texas
Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Beast:
The revolts in the West require nothing of the courage displayed by Egyptians or Syrians or Tunisians standing up to tanks and bullets and torture. But they have a similar dynamic. They have occupied public spaces in the center of cities, as if to reclaim ownership of a society they feel has been privatized into nonexistence. This is not Protest Wall Street; it is Occupy It. It does not march through; it stops and sits and waits—as if the genie of Tahrir Square could not be kept bottled up in Egypt for very long. The very act is empowering, a form of theater as well as politics. But the theater works only when it reflects underlying truths—truths that cut through cultural divides. Because this is not the 1960s. These are not the children of the affluent acting out for sexual and personal liberation. They are the children of the golden years of hyped-up, unregulated, lightly taxed capitalism—now facing the same unemployment and austerity as the rest of the world.
And that’s why polls have shown unusual support for the basic complaints of the hippies. The Occupy movement has, according to recent polling, significantly more general support than the Tea Party, and its specific demands are highly popular. Huge majorities agree that corporate special interests have too much clout in Washington, that inequality has gotten out of control, that taxes can and should be raised on the successful, that the gamblers of Wall Street deserve some direct comeuppance for the wreckage they have bestowed on the rest of us. Polling data do not show a salient cultural split between blue-collar whites and the countercultural drum circles in dozens of cities around America. And the facts are behind the majority position. Social and economic inequality is higher than it has been since the 1920s, and is showing no signs of declining.
Naomi Wolf Arrested at OWS; Frye on Police Power
Wolf’s account of her illegal arrest and detention here.
Frye on police power in a free society:
But in an atmosphere of real fear and real suspicion the police must become both more efficient and more tolerant if they are to be of any use in defending democracy. Otherwise, they will be not only unjust to individuals, but dangerous to their own community. (Canadian Forum 29, no. 346 [November 1949]: 170)
Saturday Night Video: Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex
I posted on riot grrrl a couple of weeks ago, so I don’t want to push my luck, but I only heard this week that Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex died of cancer in April at the age of 53. Poly was one of the few women who were part of the English punk offensive when it hit North America in the mid-1970s like a blast of hot, sour air from an unventilated pub.
Above is an excellent segment about Poly from the British documentary, The Punk Years. If you don’t know her, it is a pleasant and insightful four minutes of video.
After the jump is a do-it-yourself, live-in-someone’s-basement performance of “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” from 1977, when Poly was 19. (This single was followed a year later by the band’s debut album with the inspired title, Germ Free Adolescents, the best cut from which, “The Day the World Turned Day-Glo,” is also after the jump.) Poly had a classical vocal training, but she used her voice to be noisily and cheerfully insolent about a world of mindless consumption and the human and environmental waste it produces.
(Executing a lateral move in pertinence, here’s Joe Fasler in The Atlantic on the horizontal transfer between “high” and “low” culture.)
Happy Birthday, Bob Denham
Bob with his wife, Rachel
Today is Bob Denham’s birthday.
We do not have to say much about Bob’s extensive work as a scholar because anyone who knows him knows about it. However, we do have much to say about Bob’s contribution here. Bob, more than anyone else, has made this website what it is. It was easy enough to set it up in its present form: a daily blog, a library of resources, and a journal of articles about Frye. But all of these would have been shells without Bob’s extraordinarily generous contribution. This generosity is worth detailing.
Bob has so far submitted more than 200 posts to the daily blog portion of the site in the two years since we first went online, which is a remarkable effort in itself. The blog is put together daily on the fly, and Bob’s posts provide the best that can be accomplished on such short notice; and they are, not surprisingly, the most widely read. As a very modest birthday present to him, we have designated a new Bob Denham category, which means that anyone wanting to search out and read his archived posts can now do so without having to scroll through the daily entries looking for them.
Bob has also kindly archived six articles in our journal, including papers he delivered at three Frye Festivals in Moncton.
His greatest contribution, however, that makes this site a significant scholarly resource, is his patronage of the library we established under his name, and which currently holds more than 100 items, virtually every one of them bequeathed to us by Bob. These include:
* An archive of all ten volumes of Bob’s Northrop Frye Newsletter, which he published between 1988 and 2007.
* Several “Previously Unpublished” items, including two notebooks, and a number of letters, among other treasures.
* Ten sets of class notes, as well as some exams, from a number of Frye’s courses between 1947 and 1955. This is a singular resource to provide insights to Frye as a teacher.
* All nine of the introductions to the editions of the Collected Works Bob has edited, which make up a third of the Collected Works as a whole.
* Four lectures.
* A large sampling of reviews of a number of Frye’s works.
* Thirteen “Miscellaneous Compilations” on various subjects, including chess, Islam and the Koran, and movies Frye had seen and refers to throughout the Collected Works.
If it ended here, this would constitute an exceptional contribution to the Frye scholarship to be found here. But it does not, of course, end here. Bob has also allowed us to post in their entirety two books: his first comprehensive study, Northrop Frye and Critical Method, as well as his latest collection, Essays on Northrop Frye, which includes seven new essays on Frye’s relation to a number of thinkers and writers, from Aristotle to Lewis Carroll.
It is not just a courtesy to say that without him this site would not be much more than a hobby shop of Frye enthusiasm. We therefore offer our warmest thanks, and wish him a very happy birthday.
A Report from Occupy Washington
My wife Rachel and our neighbor Barbara Kingsolver went to an OWS demonstration in Johnson City, TN, on Saturday. Check it out here. You can see part of the interview with Kingsolver in the “Related Video” window on the upper left.
Below is an eyewitness account of Occupy Washington.
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Report on October 2011 by Cinny Poppen
Stop yer bitching. . . start a revolution! (message on a t-shirt)
The Occupy movement is spreading all over this country. Roger and I felt extremely moved by the encampment we joined in Washington, DC, from its first day, Thursday, October 6, 2011, through Saturday, October 9.
People were well-organized, peaceful, angry, and determined to make their desires known. We found the hundreds of colorful signs dotting Freedom Plaza extremely entertaining.
The first night we witnessed a large crowed making decisions by consensus. An excellent facilitator asked for proposals on the subject of where the demonstrators should sleep, limiting speakers to a minute apiece. People reacted with what I learned is called “sparkling”: hands in the air with fingers waving means agreement, hands pointed downward means disagreement. Through this process the many proposals were finally boiled down to one with two tiers. After much helpful clarification, especially by members of DC’s homeless population, it seemed that the plaza might be under federal jurisdiction, so sleeping there could lead to arrest by federal police. Sleeping on nearby streets might be less risky because the park police, or DC police, or transit police, or yet another of the many policing entities in our nation’s capitol, would be in control. As it turned out, around 300 people slept outside with no arrests at all.
During the subsequent days, several marches took off down the street, at least once to another occupation in McPherson Square, and once to the Art and Space Museum in an ill-advised attempt to protest the current exhibit of drones there. When I first saw Bread and Puppet Theater in Chicago years ago, some of the actors, dressed in black, pretended to be bombers, with great effect; nowmembers portrayed even more threatening drones. On Saturday welistened to a talk on US national security policy by iinvestigative historian/ journalist Gareth Porter, participated in a workshop on economics for the people, and then had the great pleasure of hearing from Ralph Nader. He advised us to keep our focus and warned us not to be co-opted–because we are the 99%.The permit was supposed to end on Sunday, October 10, but the city has agreed to extend it for four months.
From an article in the Washington Post on Tuesday, October 11, by Tim Craig:
Several D.C. Council members said Tuesday they have no problem with antiwar and anti-Wall Street protesters setting up extended encampments on National Park Service property in the city, and one council member hopes they ”‘stay for years.”
Two groups are entrenched in Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square downtown. Protesters with the Stop the Machine and Occupy DC groups have erected tents and piled up boxes and other living materials as they hold meetings, decamp for marches and protests and otherwise traverse the city. In Freedom Plaza, Stop the Machine group organizer Margaret Flowers said Tuesday that the group and the National Park Service agreed to extend its permit to stay there through Dec. 30. At McPherson Square, Occupy DC protesters have said they have no permit and have not been bothered by authorities.
In interviews Tuesday, eight of 13 council members supported the protesters’ presence.
“Sometimes for people without means, the only way to get a message out is a public display,”’ said council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), a constitutional law professor at George Washington University. “Other issues could develop, such as public health, but I think we shouldn’t be too quick to sweep them off the public plaza. Flowers said Tuesday that while her group has a permit for the entire Freedom Plaza park area, other groups have permits for events there and she would make sure space is cleared. Meanwhile, she said her group may apply for another extension that would run through February. “’We can’t say how long we’ll be here,’ Flowers said. ‘We’ll see an end when our groups accomplish what they need to accomplish.’”
And from the most recent email from the Occupy 2011 organizers:
One of the beautiful aspects of the occupation is that it has brought people out into the open to talk about the issues. Everywhere we look right now as we gaze out at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC, people are engaged in conversations. Some are standing in groups, and some are sitting in circles in the assembly area or between the tents. This is the first step in this evolution to a more peaceful, just and sustainable planet. For too long we have been focused on divisions. Now we are finding what unites us.
Increasing numbers of people are becoming unemployed, uninsured, losing their homes or pensions or dignity. Students are dropping out of college due to cost or graduating with lifelong debt in a deteriorating job market. The days of sitting in silence and blaming ourselves for not working hard enough are over. The first step in the process of change is awareness of the problem. We are encouraging all people to come out of their homes. Join us in the streets either through your local occupation or on the local playground. Talk to those around you. Talk about the way things are with increasing wealth disparity and poverty. Talk about the way you want things to be – a society based on openness, acceptance, honesty, transparency and kindness.Following are the 15 issues we’re working on. Please talk about them and share what you learn with your family, friends and colleagues. This is the first step in the nonviolent transformation of our country.
This Week in Climate Change Denial: Arctic Ice “Death Spiral”
Charts of the Day: Increases in Extreme Weather Events, Global Temperatures, Carbon Emissions
Increase in extreme meteorological and climate events in the U.S., 1980-2011.
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Increase in average global temperature, 1980-2010.
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Increase in global carbon emissions, 1980-2010.
Quote of the Day
Occupy Toronto, yesterday
“For these kids who are driving this thing, being in The New York Times doesn’t mean shit to them. It’s not their frame of reference.” – – Danny Schechter on OWS.