Synaptic gasp, neural architectonics and Descartes’ error

This is a work in process vaguely entitled Synaptic Gasp. The synaptic cleft in the human brain reminds me of the gap between the hand of God and Adam in Michaelangelo’s visualization of Creation.

Neurons must be triggered by a stimulus to produce nerve impulses, which are waves of electrical charge moving along the nerve fibres. When the neuron receives a stimulus, the electrical charge on the inside of the cell membrane changes from negative to positive. A nerve impulse travels down the fibre to a synaptic knob at its end, triggering the release of chemicals (neurotransmitters) that cross the gap between the neuron and the target cell, stimulating a response in the target (Baggaley 2001:104).

My mind is stuck on the image of the gap. That’s the leap of faith between that which we can know and that which is beyond our capacity to know. In the human brain this synaptic gap is so macroscopic no one has ever seen it. But there are amazing images that are somewhat like science fiction as artists attempt to compile scientific data into visualizations of what it might look like. I am not attempting to be a science illustrator. But I think somehow this image will be like a cartography of a way of thinking that resonates more with complex hyperlinkages than with the human brain. I have been working on this Adobe Photoshop Image which seems to keep getting larger and larger.

This is the larger version of Synaptic Gasp,
originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

I used the starry night wallpaper for the background. I did a pencil drawing of the the neural architecture learning as I was drawing. And I keep making sketches of close-ups so now I am trying to imagine terminal nerve fibres entwined in neurofilament, proteins at the interface of the downstream end of neuron’s dendritic spine and an excitary synapse.

The brain is a supersystem of systems. Each system is composed of an elaborate interconnection of small but macroscopic cortical regions and subcortical nuclei, which are made of microscopic local circuits, which are made of neurons, all of which are connected by synapses (Damasio 1994:30).

Damasio’s elegant text reads like poetry. He describes the neural underpinnings of reason and challenges Cartesian dualisms of mind/body, emotions/reason. Feelings and logical thinking are not like oil and water.

The “body [. . .] represented in the brain [constitutes] an indispensable frame of reference for the neural process that we experience as the mind (Damasio 1994:xvi).”

Our bodies are the ground reference for the construction we make of the world. Our embodied selves construct the ever-present sense of subjectivity, our experience. The body becomes is the instrument through which we construct our most refined thoughts and actions (Damasio 1994:xvi).

Churchland takes this reasoning to imply that we, our subjective selves — our very consciousness — are merely chemical reactions, synapses firing across synaptic gaps for purely physical reasons that science alone (not religion) will one day explain and interpret for us.

The ontology of things ─ objects, substance, stuff are all one thing ─ raises questions about the world’s origin or original principle (arche) and its nature (physis). The Conflicting-Worlds model holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing. Science is one ontological perspective, a way of studying what exists and ways of being of different kinds of things. Religion provides another ontological perspective or another way of adding something to the study of what exists. Those who adopt the Same-Worlds-Model, argue that science and religion are different epistemologies not different ontologies. Probably most of those who believe in the Same-Worlds-Model believe in a Higher Power, a God, Divine Architect in some form, who created man with the capacity and responsibility to explore logic, pure mathematics and physics. I can believe what I want but I like to read from both sides of the Möbius Strip.

Flashback: A uniformed unsmiling, fully armed police officer pulled me over. What had I done? What was I, my young, idealistic, apolitical and therefore politically naïve self ─ doing there in a Third World country under an unstable, potentially dangerous, communist, military dictatorship? The officer leaned into the open window on the passenger side of our old Renault 4. There was a long silent pause as he decided what to do with this flushed creature whose hands were clenched on the steering wheel like a ship’s railing in a storm. He reached in and picked up the book on the front car seat and calmly asked me a question in a voice that could have been saying, “Did you know you failed to stop back there?” But that’s not what he asked. Instead, I can still hear his words even decades later. He asked me, “Do you pray?” Is this a threat? No, he was fingering the book entitled Livres de prière indicating that he too prayed and would appreciate having the book. As I drove away trembling I looked in the rear view mirror as he opened the book, then pocketed it.

After I returned to my Western home and graduate studies, I could not forget this incident which repeated itself in many forms. In spite of the pervasive even dogmatic message that the logical next step in human consciousness resided in the 20^th century’s western form of atheism, humanism and materialism most people  many still living in fragmented nation states that were former colonies ─ still believe that humans are spiritual beings and that some form of prayer unites us all even if it is a silent “Help!”

For more on the body/mind duality debate see Dawkins, Pinker, Fodor, Searle. According to Richard Dawkins (1976 SG, 2006 GD) these scientific and religious ways of knowing are conflicting and mutually exclusive.

Heraclites described the ontological ultimate stuff a process, a ceaseless flux like fire, not a substance retaining its identity through time.

These sources include:

Baggaley, Ann, Ed. (2001), “Anatomy of the Human Body,” Human Body, Dorling Kindersley Publishing: NY, p. 104.
Damasio, Antonio R., 1994, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Grosset/Putnam: New York.
Damasio, Hanna, (1994) “Gage’s skull, illustrations” in Damasio, Antonio R., 1994, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Grosset/Putnam: New York. p. 31-2.
Johnson, Graham, (2005), “The Synapse Revealed,” 23 September 2005, Science Magazine and the National Science Foundation. The first place winner of the Science and Engineering Visualization Challengewas Graham Johnson from Medical Media, Boulder, Colorado. His image is described on Science Magazine’s web page:

Deep inside the brain, a neuron prepares to transmit a signal to its target. To capture that fleeting moment, Graham Johnson based this elegant drawing on ultra-thin micrographs of sequential brain slices. After scanning a sketch into 3D modeling software, he colored the image and added texture and glowing lighting reminiscent of a scanning electron micrograph.

Angels and Demons

Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Athenian Caratyds, a Roman copy of 4th century BC Greek sculptor Praxitele’s Hermes and Dionysos (300 BC), Bernini’s (whose patrons included Pope Urban VIII) The Ecstasy of Saint Therese (1647-52), Hermaphrodite Sarrasine’s relief (18^th century), Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1767-1824) Endymion(1791) and his Pygmalion et Galatée(1819), Honoré de Balzac’s (1830) Sarrassine, Michel Serre’s (1987) Hermaphrodite: Sarrasine Sculpteur Précédé de Balzac Sarrasine and Serres (1982) Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy.

I layered these images after reading Michel Serres (1987).
There is something about the inspired playfulness of Dan Brown’s characters in Angels and Demons and setting that reminded me of this image. I hope to use free internet tools to connect the dots between layers. Dan Brown’s protagonist, the art historian, Renaissance expert and James Bond of the art world, irreverently described the ecstasy of Saint Theresa as sexual and secular not sacred.

Links: Hermes, hermeneutics, East and East, Persian and Greek Empires, Greek and Roman sculpture, Greek and Roman culture and art, Greek and Christian art, Greek, Roman and Renaissance sculpture, originality, copies, derivatives, Western art, western metaphysics, interpretation, contributions of East and West.

These are the free technical tools helping me to map my mind:

wordpress | del.icio.us | gather | swicki | flickr | thinkfree | digg | picasaweb | Carleton |

blogspot | frimr | photoblog

This is a from an interview with Dan Brown posted on his web page. I have been trying to read Angels and Demons as a way of relaxing before my grandchildren arrive in a few hours. But the book Angels and Demons is exciting not soothing:

In many ways I see science and religion as the same thing. Both are manifestations of man’s quest to understand the divine. Religion savors the questions while science savors the quest for answers. Science and religion seem to be two different languages attempting to tell the same story, and yet the battle between them has been raging for centuries and continues today. The war in our schools over whether to teach Creationism or Darwinism is a perfect example. We live in an exciting era, though, because for the first time in human history, the line between science and religion is starting to blur. Particle physicists exploring the subatomic level are suddenly witnessing an interconnectivity of all things and having religious experiences…Buddhist monks are reading physics books and learning about experiments that confirm what they have believed in their hearts for centuries and have been unable to quantify. (I will connect his url. Meanwhile it is on my del.icio.us).

Moziro and the slow world

For awhile I wasn’t sure if it was a snow fall or a sun shower. The early afternoon sun cut through the trees glittering with raindrops and blinded me as I drove along winding roads to the quiet village of Shawnigan Lake. There is one field along the way where half a dozen deer may be grazing one minute and leaping into traffic the next. I drive by Cobble Hill village and think of the summer hike to the summit of the hill. I pass by Masson’s Beach where we went swimming or launched the canoe just weeks ago. My favourite places in Shawnigan Village are on Dundas Road. There’s a small art gallery upstairs with constantly changing displays of Island artists’ work. Next door is Moziro: Coffee Roasters and Chocolatiers, a family-run business where you can get the best chocolate in the region and where a discussion about coffee sounds oddly like someone discussing an art collection. Mom and Dad named their shop using two letters from the names of each of their three children. Downstairs is a coffee shop (serving Moziro’s freshly ground coffee & chocolate) that is always busy usually with local customers of all ages. There are comfortable chairs, great artwork (from upstairs) and a no-rush atmosphere. It’s the kind of safe, family environment place where a stranded school girl can wait until her embarrased and tardy grandpa shows up. Next door is a small restaurant with delicious, inexpensive soups and stews that also provide fresh baked goods for the coffee shop.

Raymond Rees’ “What is Web 2.0?”

Raymond Rees wrote this useful article explaining “What is Web 2.0?” on their PI Technology Blog. I learned about this entry because I have customized my Google News page so I only get the news sources I have selected! I wanted to Digg the article but I was third. It was already posted and dugg on Digg. So I left the following comment to thank Raymond Rees. I really liked the digitage he posted with this article. Pictures help us visual learners to understand at a different level. (I had been working just last evening trying to create an attractive digitage with hot links to each of these logos using WordPress’s HTML friendly blog service and Adobe Photoshop’s tools to create .png images.) It took me a long time to realize that Adobe Photoshop hides the option of making transparent images under the “Help” menu. I had been trying to figure that out since early September when I wanted to add .png images to Google Earth. Anyhow WordPress allows us to upload all kinds of images that can then be accessed by right-clicking on the media library and selecting “copy url.” I’m writing this down because I forget everytime I try to do it. Note to myself do not select “add to page” under the options for “uploading images” because WordPress creates a new page for every image when I do this.Tuesday, November 21, 2006, 01:29 PM

Hi Raymond, I am a bricoleuse, basically learning by starting with basic tools. I am attracted to the technology for the way in which we can collaborate. In September 2006, I started using Web 2.0 without knowing I was. Previously I had only used HTML for web pages and prior to that Toolbook authoring software in the early 1990s. Web 2.0, if I understand it correctly, seems like a huge revolutionary shift in maximizing connectivity for independent researchers who are not affiliated with any particular cultural, social or economic institution.I could not believe how quickly concepts I needed for my own research like “memory work” could take on a whole new life using the combined forces of Swicki, Google’s customized search engines, del.icio.us, wikipedia, technorati, WordPress tags, Flickr and of course Digg, etc. Very specific concepts have been developed for more nuanced discussions on democracy for example. Terms and ideas are slowly built by reading both sides of debates about social justice vs economic efficiency, human rights, distorted histories, etc. The readership is small, scattered all over the planet, not necessarily with formal education. They are people who are politically engaged with a small “p” who are concerned about a renewed democracy. The concept of “memory work” has been built over decades and has become clarified since WWII. I can see how Web 2.0 is a powerful tool providing a forum for the slow world using fast world technology. Thank you for contributing to making technology that works for us. Maureen Flynn-Burhoe

WordPress also allows users to create pages as opposed to posts so I created a more linear page on memory work to keep track of useful content resources with better connectivity. For example there has been an elegant edit of my original article which started the wiki nuanced dialogue on the concept of “memory work.” On this linear page I can keep track of changes.

Friedman:social responsibility of business is to increase its profits (1970)

Economist Milton Friedman, propagated 18th century values in the Post-WWII global economy. Like Adam Smith he preached the gospel of minimal government, laissez-faire. The triad, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944), Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957), and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (1962) pit economic efficiency against social justice.

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A Circumtomato Globe: Devouring the Earth, Extremes of Wealth and Poverty

I compiled this digitized collage, inspired by Deborah Barndt’s Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail on November 16, 2006. I used a Google earth generated globe to situate as a kind of circumtomato globe. I developed the concept of John Elkington’s Cannibals with Forks for the image of a world being devoured by those who choose to make decisions based on only one bottom line.

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In its Oxford style debate 2.0 on sustainability and corporate responsibility, The Economist set forth the proposition for debate, “Without outside pressure, corporations will not take meaningful action on sustainability.” The final vote count was: Pro 73% / Con 27%.

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Henry C K Liu, chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group wrote this in his article (2003) about Hong Kong’s benign colonialism that seduced Milton Friedman.

Love is blind and infatuation disguises faults as virtues. As Rudyard Kipling fell in love with the pageantry of colonialism and saw racial exploitation as the “White Man’s Burden”, Milton Friedman, Nobel economist, fell in love with colonial Hong Kong, seduced by the wine-and-dine hospitality of its colonial masters and elite compradores. Friedman mistook Hong Kong’s colonial economic system as a free market, despite Hong Kong’s highly orchestrated colonial command economy.

The violence of extremes of wealth and poverty is the moral dilemma of the 21st century, not the acquisition of wealth by individuals, corporations and nation-states. The use of that wealth to convince civil society through mass media of a fair redistribution of wealth is unconscionable. In his book entitled The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Times, Harvard Economist, Jeffrey D. Sachs (2005) reveals the gaping chasm between the real and the perceptions of the real in terms of the ways in which the world’s wealthiest share their wealth with the world’s most vulnerable, at-risk populations. Based on OECD statistics and his own research Sachs claims that the extremes of poverty could be overcome in 25 years if wealthy nations devoted just 0.7% of their GNP (instead of the 0.33% currently provided) official development assistance (ODA) in developing countries. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that Canada’s official development assistance (ODA) was 0.28% of gross national income (GNI) up from an all time low of 0.22% in 2001. In 2005 the world’s most powerful, wealth nation, the United States devoted just 0.22% of its GNP to foreign aid.

Public perceptions reflect support for higher levels of aid. When asked what percentage of the federal budget they think goes to foreign aid, Americans’ median estimate is 25% of the budget, more than 25 times the actual level. Only 2% of Americans give a correct estimate of 1% of the budget or less. When asked how much of the budget should go to foreign aid, the median response is 10%. Only 13% of Americans believe that the percentage should be 1% or less. Over 60% of Americans believe that contributing 0.7% of national income to meet the Millennium Development Goals is the right thing to do (Sachs 2005).

In an article published in The Economist in 2005 entitled “The Biggest Contract” (in reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of social contract), Ian Davis challenged Anglo-Saxon corporate management to revisit, redefine, re-articulate and reinforce with greater subtlety their relationship with society as an implicit social contract that acknowledges obligations, opportunities and mutual advantage for both sides.” Corporate management needs to recast this debate and recapture the intellectual and moral high ground from their critics.” Davis argued that like the political leaders in Rousseau’s 18th century, corporate management in the 21st century will lose legitimacy if they refuse to serve the public good. Davis rejects the nonproductive binary oppositional environment of public debate on economic efficiency vs social justice. The strongly held belief in Anglo-Saxon economies [1] that the “business of business is business” (to create shareholder value) is as outworn, ideology-based and caricature-driven as is the extreme version of Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR).

Davis argued that an informed, educated and engaged [2] CEOs and upper-level management should map-out long term options and responses to relevant, evolving, overarching, broad, carefully researched social pressures and issues as an implicit and integral (not merely peripheral) part of corporate strategy rather than depending exclusively on lower-level public-relations tacticians operating with a knee-jerk, defensive, narrow, reactionary, rebuttal stance to individual, local and immediate (at times, ill-defined) laws, (political, ideological, etc) tensions and (environmental, sustainability, NGO) concerns. “Large companies need to build social issues into strategy in a way which reflects their actual business importance.” The CEOs should blend and harmonize their supporting efforts, such as trade regimes, with sophisticated, sensitive and successful approaches to risk management, social and economic development issues, access to social services particularly for the most vulnerable populations and resolutions of regional geopolitical conflicts.

See The Economist premium content.

Notes

1. The Anglo-Saxon shareholder-value model has increasingly taken on global significance.

2. Davis argued that executive managers must introduce explicit processes which include the development of resources such as broad metrics, summaries and analysis of relevant social issues in order to systematically “educate and engage their boards of directors.

For more on this topic see also papergirls.wordpress.com

Selected Bibliography

Barndt, Deborah (2001) Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail, Aurora, ON, Garamond Press.

Davis, Ian. 2005. “The biggest contract: By building social issues into strategy, big business can recast the debate about its role, argues Ian Davis.” The Economist. May 28.

Elkington, John (1997) Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, New Society Publishers, Limited.

Elkington, John (2003) Chrysalis Economy: How Citizen CEOs and Corporations Can Fuse Values and Value Creation, Wiley, John and Sons, Incorporated.

Friedman, Milton. 1970. “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company.

Liu, Henry C. K., 2003, “China: a Case of Self-Delusion, from colonialism to confusion,” Asia Times, May 14, 2003.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2005. “Facts on International Aid.” The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Times.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. “The Strategic Significance of Global Inequality.”

Anna Packwood, Dr. Carrie Best, Tommy Simmons

In the 1998 Anna Packwood’s family and friends came from across continents to celebrate her 100th birthday. This was the culmination of research on the Positive Presence of Absence: a history of the African Canadian community through works in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. I can honestly say that of the ten years working at the NGC, this impromptu gathering — which almost did not happen because of security concerns over the large numbers and the last-minute arrangements — this was the high point of a decade of work there. The National Gallery of Canada now presents six images in their African Canadian section which the portrait bust of Tommy Simmons on their educational web site entitled Cybermuse.

One of the catalysts for my research in the early 1990s was a conversation with Fritz Benjamin, a Haitian-Canadian who was working at that time as a security guard. He asked me who Tommy Simmons was, the man portrayed in the larger than life bronze bust prominently displayed in the water court. I didn’t know but once I started looking there were more questions about more works of art. After sharing my interests with Mairuth Sarsfield, author of No Crystal Stairs and her sister Lucille Vaughan-Cuevas they became my mentors. Lucille in particular spent hours with me clarifying histories. I eventually met other members of the Montreal community and wove various fragments together so I could present this walking tour to friends, then to fellow graduate students and finally to the public. It was a personal project that the Gallery promoted from 1995-1997 when they advertised it and offered it as a contract tour.

The image is my first experiment in using Adobe Photoshop to create transparent .png images. I needed to learn .png for my new Google Earth community.

The Adobe Photoshop layers include Anna Packwood on the lower left, with a bronze of her daughter, Lucille Vaughan, an activist, educator and librarian. Beside them is Dr. Carrie Best, pioneer Nova Scotia journalist, activist and author. To the right of the water court is Jennifer Hodge Sarsfield, Anna Packwood’s granddaughter ,a pioneer in Canadian film narratology and beside her is the cover of Mairuth Sarsfield’s book entitled No Crystal Stairs, which was on the short list for Canada Reads filmmaker. A photograph taken in that part of Montreal Mairuth called ‘burgundy city’ shows Mairuth, Susan and Lucille, Anna Packwoods, daughters in the 1940? The collage of the family and friends from across the States, Canada and the Caribbean wasn’t large enough to include them all.

I wrote this in a May 3, 1998 thank you note to NGC Education Division Director, Mary Ellen Herbert, CC: Judith Parker, Mairuth Sarsfield.

After the luncheon celebration with Anne Packwood, about fifty of the invited guests came to the NGC. It was larger than anticipated but it was a huge success. Among the guests were Dr. Carrie Best, OC., Lucille Vaughan-Cuevas, Dominique Sarsfield, numerous friends of Anne Packwood from many different parts of Canada from Edmonton, Dartmouth, and of course, Montreal. There were guests from the United States and from Bermuda. The group included four or five elderly people in wheelchairs, a baby in a carriage, children of all ages. After a warm greeting under the Water Court we went to the Seminar Room. I showed about a dozen slides of the Picasso exhibition and a few of Orson Wheeler’s sculptures: Tommy Simmons and Lucille Vaughan-Cuevas. The group applauded warmly when they saw the bust of Lucille. Then we went to the Water Court to see Tommy Simmons. The discussion there is something I wish I had on tape. Many at first did not recognize the model by name or by the sculpted bust. But as we talked more and more people remembered something about him. One woman had babysat his children. Another played on teams that competed with his. Another told me of a Wheeler sculpture of an African Canadian model once owned by David? States. An artist from Detroit was excited by what could be done in galleries and plans on following up when she gets home. I invited Lucille to speak about her experience as Wheeler’s model for the 1950’s bust. It was captivating listening to her describe Wheeler’s special qualities as educator and artist. She had been particularly touched by his openness to Black history at that time. This experience was a highlight for me in my years at the NGC.

In the 1920’s awareness of black culture spread from Harlem in New York across the continent and the ocean. During this Renaissance African American arts and literature reached new pinnacles of celebrity. Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong inspired Canadians. Visual artists in Canada attempted to reverse negative stereotypes of black subjects. This sculpture of Tommy Simmons, which celebrates both his blackness and his individuality, gave the emerging artist Orson Wheeler a sense of accomplishment. Simmons was a Montreal sleeping car porter for forty-three years. Work conditions were difficult. The transcontinental trips meant days away from home. Severe employment limitations were placed on black workers. Many, including those with higher education, even doctors and lawyers, were obliged to become porters. Sleeping car porters became the economic elite and catalysts of change in African Canadian communities. Tommy Simmons was a dedicated coach of winning teams. His integrated baseball teams which included girls of African, French and Italian descent, were unprecedented in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Because he was bilingual he entered tournaments in French and English communities from Chicoutimi, Québec to St. John, N.B. [Interviews with Carl Simmons and B. Jones, 1995]

Sinking Neptune: some background reading for memory work praxis

See also MySwicki (in process)

Angelou, Maya (1994) Phenomenal Woman: four poems celebrating women, New York, NY, Random House

Assche, Christine Van (1993) Stan Douglas, Paris, Editions du Centre Pompidou

Auguste, A. (1993a) “If They Come for Me in the Morning”. Share Magazine, 8

Auguste, A. (1993b) “Tired of Being Your Niggers”, Toronto, ON

Baldwin, James (1955) Notes of a Native Son,

Berton, Pierre (1993) “Let’s Not Scrub Show Boat Too Clean.” The Toronto Star. Toronto, ON,

Best, Dr. Carrie (1977) That Lonesome Road: the Autobiography of Carrie M. Best, New Glasgow, Clarion Publishing Co. Ltd.

Blakeley, Phillis R. (1957) “William Hall, Canada’s First Naval V.C.” Dalhousie Review, 250-58

Blatchford, C. (1990) The Toronto Sun. Toronto, ON,

Boyd, Georgia & Tremaine, Carole (1976) Anne Marie Weems, Toronto

Brand, D. (1991) No burden to carry: narratives of Black working women in Ontario, 1920’s – 1950’s.

Brand, Dionne (1982) Primitive Offensive, Toronto, Williams-Wallace

Brand, Dionne (1983) Winter Epigrams and Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defence of Claudia, Toronto, Williams-Wallace

Brand, Dionne (1984) Chronicles of the Hostile Sun, Toronto, Williams-Wallace

Brand, Dionne (1988) Sans Souci, Toronto, Williams-Wallace

Brant, B. (1990) “From the Outside Looking In: Racism and Writing”. Panel Discussion, Gay Cultural Festival. Vancouver, BC,

Breon, Robin (1993a) “Protest Greets Prince’s Show Boat in Toronto”. American Theatre. 10

Breon, Robin (1993b) “The Thorny Roles of Race in North American Theater.” Communication: The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Breon, Robin (1993?) “Show Boat’s Comin.’” Theatre Perspectives International.

Breon, Robin (1994) “Rivival and Controversy: ‘Show Boat’.” The Toronto Review, 12:1-15.

Breon, Robin (1995) “Show Boat The Revival, the Racism.” The Drama Review: the Journal of Performance Review, 39.

Breon, Robin & Cudjoe, Vera (1994) The Story of John Ware, Toronto, Carib-Can Communications.

Butler, S. (1993) “Contested Representations: Revisiting ‘Into the Heart of Africa’.” Department of Anthropology. North York,ON, York University.

Cannizzo, Jeanne (1989) Into the Heart of Africa, Toronto, ON, ROM.

CBC (1993) Show Boat: Journey of an Epic Musical. CBC.

CBC (2006) 400-year-old play stirs controversy in Nova Scotia. Accessed November 14, 2006 http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/11/14/theatre-neptune.html

Chateaubriand, François-René De (1802 [1832]). http://un2sg4.unige.ch/athena/chateaubriand/chat_ren.html

Clairmont, Donald H. & W., Dennis Magill (1970) Nova Scotian Blacks: An Historical and Structural Overview, Halifax

Clairmount, D. (1987) Africville: the life and death of a Canadian community,

Clarke, George Elliot (1990) “Voices out of the Whirlwind: the Genesis of Afro-Nova Scotian Literature.” The Atlantic Provinces Book Review,

Clips (1991a) “Racism charges against gallery aired.” Vancouver Sun.

Clips (1991b) “Sweeping changes sought in Nova Scotia: advisory group makes 94 recommendations aimed at easing racism.” Globe & Mail. Toronto,

Cox, Kevin (1991) “Black culture sold short by tourist brochures.” Globe and Mail. Toronto,

D’oyley, Vincent (1978) “Black Presence in Multi-Ethnic Canada,” Toronto, Centre for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction

D’oyley, Vincent (Ed.) (1994) Innovations in Black Education in Canada, Toronto, Umbrella Press

Dabydeen, Cyril (Ed.) (1987) A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape, Oakville, Mosaic Press

Drake, John Poad (formerly attributed to) (1820) “View of Halifax.” Ottawa, ON, National Gallery of Canada

Duberman, Martin Bauml (1988) Paul Robeson, New York, Alfred A. Knopf

Dubois, William Edward Burghardt (1970 [1903]) The Souls of Black Folk, New York, Washington Square Press

Elliot, Lorris (1985) Other Voices: Writings by Blacks in Canada, Toronto, Williams-Wallace

Essed, Philomena (1990) Everyday Racism.

Ferber, Edna (1927) Show Boat, Grosset and Dunlap

Fischer, Barbara (1987) Perspective 87, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario

Flynn-Burhoe & Rainey, Matt (1999) “Interview on Charlottetown CBC with Matt Rainey about the Reflexivity exhibition.” Correspondence June 1999.

Forsythe, Dennis (1971) “The Black Writers Conference: Days to Remember.” IN Forsythe, Dennis (Ed.) Let the Niggers Burn: theSir George Williams University Affair and its Caribbean Aftermath. Montreal, Black Rose

Frances, Henry (1973) Forgotten Canadians: The Blacks of Nova Scotia, Don Mills, Ontario, Longmans Canada

Frones, Hugo (1991) “Ancestral Memory.” Globe and Mail. Toronto,

Gaffen, Fred (1985) Forgotten Soldiers, Penticton, British Columbia, Theytus Books

Gara, Larry (1960) “The Underground Railroad: A Re-evaluation.” Ohio History Quarterly, 69, 217-30

Grant, John N. (1970) The Immigration and Settlement of the Black Refugees of the War of 1812 in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. University of New Brunswick

Greaves, Ida (1930) The Negro in Canada, Montreal, Packet-Times Press for the Department of Economics and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal.

Hamilton, Sylvia (1989) Black Mother Black Daughter. Halifax, National Film Board of Canada

Hamilton, Sylvia (1991) “Our Mothers Grand and Great: Black Women of Nova Scotia.” Canadian Woman Studies: York University, 11, 45-48

Harris, Robert (1886) “Meeting of the School Trustees.” Ottawa, ON, National Gallery of Canada

Henry, Frances, Tator, Carol, Mattis, W. & Rees, T. (1995) The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society, Toronto, ON,

Harcourt Brace & Co. http://www.yorku.ca/fhenry/colourofdemocracy.htm

Hill, Dan (1981) The Freedom Seekers,

Hill, Lawrence (1993) Trials and Triumphs: the Story of African-Canadians, Toronto, Umbrella Press

Holly, Ellen (1990) “Why the Furor Over ‘Miss Saigon’ Won’t Fade.” The New York Times.

Holman, H. T. Slaves and Servants on Prince Edward Island: the Case of Jupiter Wise. Acadiensis,

Hornby (1991) Black Islander: Prince Edward Island’s Historical Black Community, Charlottetown, Institute of Island Studies

Hume (1991) “Caribbean exhibit [Caribbean Festival Arts]: hot colors, cool politics.” Toronto Star. Toronto,

Hume, Christopher (1992) “Retro show finally introduces reticent artist.” Toronto Star. Toronto,

Humes, Christopher (1991) “Reflections on black history and artists.” Toronto Star. Toronto,

Hunter, Lynette (1992-3) “After Modernism: Alternative Voices in the Writings of Dionne Brand, Claire Harris, and Marlene Philip.” University of Toronto Quarterly, 62, 256-82

Ifejika, Nkechi (1991) “Dispelling African Stereotypes.” The Globe and Mail. Toronto,

Kreuger, Miles (1977) Show Boat, The Story of a Classic American Musical, Oxford University Press

Lacey, Liam (1991) “Topical shows probe cultural identity.” The Globe and Mail. Toronto,

Lewis, Dennis (1991) Hyphens and Hybrids.

Lippard, Lucy (1990) Mixed Blessings: New Art in Multicultural America, New York, Pantheon Books

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Art Gallery

Chronology of Show Boat: Some Memory Work for Neptune

1812 One of the most powerful earthquakes to hit North American, struck New Madrid, Missouri temporarily reversing the flow of the mighty Mississippi according to a riverlorian.

1831 First show boat William Chapman

1863 President Lincoln, after two years of civil war declared the Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves.

1865-77 Reconstruction period: The period after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.

1870 Fifteenth Amendment gave Black people the right to vote.

1880s and 1890s Fear of Black’s political power led to lynchings…

1883 Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

1889 Chapter One of Ferber’s novel Show Boat opens on an April morning in Natchez, Mississippi. Natchez is south of Cairo where Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri come together. It takes place over a 43 year period.

1893 Chicago World’s Fair World’s Columbian Exposition.

1896 Ziegfeld met actress, Anna Held in London. She encouraged him to develop a show similar to the Paris revue, the Folies-Bergére.

1907 First Ziegfeld revue, the Follies of 1907, opened at the New York Theatre. It was the first of a series of long-running musicals that transformed musical theatre. His musical revues combined beautiful, but scantily clad chorus girls and showgirls with good legs, comedians, innovative and extravagant staging. He spared no expense in hiring the best actors, singers, comedians, composers, lyricists, costumers and set designers.

1909 W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black man to earn a Phd from Harvard University called for the creation of a black encyclopedia.

1912, 1914 and 1919 Ziegfield Follies.

1918 Blacks who had served in WWI ideas and scholarship challenged theories of racial determinism and supremacy.

1918 Blacks who had served in WWI ideas and scholarship challenged theories of racial determinism and supremacy.

1920s Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Arna Bobtemps, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer.

1920s Romantic cynicism replaces 19th century idealism?

1922 George Gershwin’s wrote Blue Monday an opera about Harlem. Blue Monday was orchestrated by Will Vodery, “a prominent Negro musician of the time who worked as an orchestrator for Ziegfeld’s follies and an accomplished conductor.” (Crouch, Stanley (1999) “An Inspired Borrower of a Black Tradition” (NYTimes) January 1999.)

1926 Jerome Kern gets stage rights to Edna Ferber’s Show Boat. He collaborates with Oscar Hammerstein II to write a musical comedy.

1926 Twenty six lynchings in the south.

1927 The original production of Show Boat produced by Ziegfeld opened in December, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre. It was the first great modern musical. It ran for 572 performances. “It was the second longest running musical of the 1920s.” The music was written by? Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (uncredited?). Tess Gardella plays Queenie.

1928 – 1929 Show Boat opens May 3, 1928 at the Drury Lane Theatre, London, England and plays 572 performances. It was directed by Felix Edwardes. Paul Robeson as Joe becomes the star of the musical.

1929 Stock market crash. The Depression struck.

1929 May 5 Universal Studios film version of Show Boat is released.

1931 The Ziegfeld Girl: Alvina Casucci, danced on Broadway for ten years during the Depression with Ginger Rogers and Milton Birle. She danced nude as a mermaid 1931 Ziegfeld Follies. Ziegfeld lost his personal fortune through massive gambling debts and Wall Street losses. (Kreuger :99) Ziegfeld’s last show had to be financed by mobsters.

1932 The Ziegfeld revival. It was his last production. Show Boat played in New York, 180 performances at the Casino Theatre. Edna Ferber was moved by Paul Robeson, who replaced Jules Bledsoe playing Joe. The original Casino Theatre was built in exotic Moorish design in 1882. (Kreuger:101)

1936 The Great Ziegfield, a film on the life of Broadway producer, Ziegfeld, produced by Henry Blanke and British director, James Whale, received the best picture award of 1936.

1936 Universel film directed by Englishman James Whale. Musical version of Show Boat with Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne and Hattie McDaniel. The Great Depression continues.

1930s Richard Wright: Black writers.

1940 Edna Ferber writes her biography A Peculiar Treasure.

1945 MGM film production ZIEGFELD FOLLIES (1945) directed by Vincente Minnelli. With a cast of top stars:William Powell, Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Gene Kelly, Fanny Brice, Edward Arnold. It was the first time Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly danced together. It made over $5 million.

1945 End of WWII. Returned Black servicemen demand integration and civil rights.

1947 Broadway production of Show Boat. check date 1946?

1951 MGM Film version of Show Boat. Directed by George Sidney. Ava Gardner plays Julie. William Warfield plays Joe. The film grossed over $8 million. Frank Sinatra sang Ol’ Man River.?

1951 Till the Clouds Roll By Tony Martin as Ravenal; Julie is Lena Horne.

1954 On April 8 the New York City Opera presented Show Boat at the New York City Centre. The musical was elevated to the role of great art. (Kreuger:198)

1954 Brown vs the Board of Education ended segregation in education in the U.S.A.

1959 Film Version of Show Boat starring Ava Gardner as Julie?

1965 Assassination of Malcolm X.

1966 Stage production at the Lincoln Centre.

1960s Revivals of musicals. The era of nostalgia. (Marks 1999) NYT 99/01/24)

1960s Motown glory years.

1971 Thomas Carey in role of Joe is a sensation in London.

1987 Harold Prince revival of Cabaret.

1988 Show Boat recording with Frederica von Stade and Teresa Stratas.

1989 Livent opens The Phantom of the Opera in December. Receipts for The Phantom of the Opera were $1.5 million. Livent developed their first educational program.

1991 Livent begins to manage the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts for the North York Performing Arts Centre Corporation.

1992 The Stephen Lewis Report (anti-Black racism in Ontario).

1993 World premiere of Livent’s $10 million production Show Boat opened in October 17, 1993 at the North York. Livent, Drabinsky’s production company uses Show Boat as a teaching tool.

1995-99 Dr. Henry Louis Gates develops the CD-ROM Encarta Africana in Microsoft’s Encarta series.

1994 – 1997 The Broadway production of Livent’s Show Boat opened October 2, 1994 to ‘unanimous critical acclaim’ (www.livent.com) played 951 performances over a 27 week period. Its receipts were $100 million. It attracted 1.5 million people. It won five Tony awards including Best Revival of a Musical.

1998 Livent’s Show Boat opens in Australia.

1998 U.S. businessmen Roy Furman and Michael Ovitz take control of Livent. They file for bankruptcy protection in November. Livent Inc. last annual financial balance sheet listed total revenue of $321,092,000; a loss of -44,131,000. It’s operations were suspended in November, 1998. (Thomson Canada Ltd.)

1999 Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, co-founders of Livent, face criminal charges in the United States. They are accused of fraud.

1999 Broadway Musical Annie Get Your Gun, the 1946 hit musical with music by Irving Berlin, is revived in a “wholesale renovation”. (Marks (1999) “Rewrite a Classic Musical?” NYT.

1999 The Mississippi: River of Song a PBS seven-part radio series on Mississippi River music. (Rogers, J.

(1999) www.ottawacitizen/990105/e010521.html)

2000 Livent’s Show Boat’s (www.livent.com) North American tour supposed to continue into 2000. It was sponsored by Canadian Airlines.

Bateke Mask (1998-9) Acrylic on Arches paper (30″ x 22.5″)

Bateke Mask (1998-9) Acrylic on Arches paper (30″ x 22.5″)
ocean.flynn

We left the P. R. Congo in 1989 taking very little with us. We had purchased the masks from a Congolese who came to our home, sang songs for us in Kicongo and even posed for two portraits, one for me and one for him. At that time he was concerned because this generation of youth in his village no longer wanted to learn how to make these masks. I learned later in preparing for a Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada that Picasso had a mask similar to this one collected in the early 1900s..

The warm, dark wood of the interior of the A-frame cottage on the lake contrasted with the cold, blue-white snow and December sky. Coming back to Canadian winters was just part of the unexpected reverse cultural shock experienced by those returning to their countries of origin after extended time away. By 1999 when I painted this we were all living our Canadian lives enjoying winter again with ice skating on frozen lakes like Lac Gauvreau, La Peche, Quebec.

Selected webliography and bibliography

Robert, Anne-Cécile. 2006. “Du cauchemar à l’espoir? Rêve d’une ’seconde indépendance’ sur le continent africain.” Le monde diplomatique.November 2006.

Fishbowl writing

The fishbowl often half-filled or empty reflecting my own image and the subtle changes in light of my embodied living space became a visual metaphor for the complex reflexive way I see and live the world. I took this image on April 15, 2006 from our Cowichan Bay home which looks out over Mount Tzuhalem, Saltspring Island, the Cowichan and Koksilah rivers watershed which feeds into Cowichan bay. In April I was barely beginning to identify places through maps, naming, etc. It was the first image I uploaded to Flickr on September 12, 2006 when I registered with their free online digital image-sharing service. I called it
“Mirrored mountain, marina and clouds” and the text I inserted was a paragraph copied from the home page of the Hul’qumi’num First Nations. I began to seriously explore the customized features of Google Earth on August 8, 2006 after returning from an overwhelmingly beautiful, stimulating Sea-to-Sky-to-Sea road trip. I wanted to relive the entire experience virtually learning by navigating through search engines. Then my real world entertainment technical tools gave up the ghost in unison: TV, VCR and digital camera all within ten days! So I switched from blurking other people’s blogs to making my own. 772 people have viewed Speechless since I uploaded my first blog entry 2006/10/03 entitled “Navigation Tools for the Blogosphere.” 574 people have viewed the 17 images I posted through Flickr over the past two months, 66 people viewed this one alone.

Today I would like to send out a message to embodied friends in the real world, that I need a drive to the gym; or a visit from an embodied person. I have a goal to return to my three-times-a-week gym sessions. I will begin today by packing my gym bag ready to go. My walking buddy cannot walk anymore because of her knee condition.

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I wrote this a few weeks ago as part of another entry. I am learning how to better use the artful science of folksonomy, so I separated the two entries to fit the tags. Do I train my tags or do they train me?

Strange it is that I am still unable after all these months to pick up the phone to call a dear friend or family member or to write them a personal email but I feel safe, solitary and satisfied while growing this strange, organic rhizome of virtual synapses from the security of my fish bowl here in this tiny but stunning island village. It is easier for me to compose the bulk of this reference letter as a blog than it is to open an MS Word document and write it. How can I be so verbiose and speechless at the same time?

Well, I’ve just gotten off the phone with a lawyer whose daughter was a former student. She’s now applying for law school and needs a reference. The letter would have written itself since she has such a stellar personality but I had asked to talk with someone who knows her well so I could refine adjectives and situate the fine qualities I had come to know within the broader framework of where she has been and where she is going. I had cautioned her that I am on medical leave and have not been doing teaching or research since 2005 and a letter from me might have no academic capital. But she still preferred to ask me. It is a bit ironical because that class was the last I taught at the university that turned me into a ghost, a non-entity in the department. Talking to her father reminded me of why I loved teaching so much. With or without my letter this young woman will become a fine lawyer with a fresh approach who will examine the law from a broader perspective. She isn’t afraid to ask “Why?” Her creative, original arguments will make judges blink without being disrespectful. Her clients will be in excellent hands. She will model ground rules of fair play by debating her arguments skillfully and forcefully without belittling her opponents or making personal attacks. She recognizes her God-given talents but they have not made her arrogant or boastful. Although she is a strong advocate of human rights she has a heightened sense of inclusivity and is therefore not blind-sided by the ‘we’ question. While she has the courage to take risks she is not rash or imprudent as it is in her nature to be reflexive in her thinking.

Her father acknowledged that the law itself is not rigid and timeless but organic and changing as we evolve. I understood that he was reminding me that something might be legal without being ethical. I found these useful citations through Google which I have added to my del.icio.us bookmarks.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. Jacques Anatole François Thibault) (1894) The Red Lily

What does it profit a poor and ignorant man that he is equal to his strong antagonist before the law if there is no one to inform him what the law is? Or that the courts are open to him on the same terms as all other persons when he has not the wherewithal to pay the admission fee?” Vance, William (1926) “The Historical Background of the Legal Aid Movement,” The Annals from the National Equal Justice Library

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

del.icio.us | swicki | Technorati Profile | wordpress | Flickr | blogspot | photoblog | gather | thinkfree | Picasaweb | Carleton homepage

My contributions to Wikipedia: Memory work

See also Memory work resource pages @ oceanflynn.wordpress.com

citationography
My Dashboard
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