Memory work, arcades and montage

Cupboards, drawers, boxes and storage bins are open and private everyday objects are strewn about, turned into something public in preparation for the moving sale. Personal histories related to each item are re-examined. Will they survive without the physical archives? Do they need to?

Le Carré describes this tortuous upending of a home in A Perfect Spy as agents tramp through every cranny and cupboard of her house. Mary’s husband, gifted in the spy tradecraft, has gone missing. He’s taken a ‘retirement’ and is writing his autobiography. I am intrigued by his process because he wants his story to read like a fiction and he wants his hero, himself to be lovable. In her interrogation with the agents, she said,

He’s not writing yet. He’s preparing.

He calls it a matrix.

When he retires, he’ll write.

He’s still finding the line. He likes to keep it to himself.

Listen to this: ‘ When the most horrible gloom was over the household; when Edward himself was in agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how. ‘

It’s from something he read. When he reads a book he underlines things in pencil. Then when he’s finished it he writes out his favourite bits (Le Carré 1986:51).

I think of a mise-en-abime, the hypodiegetic and diegetic framing narratology but this is only a spy mystery. But I also think of the collage-montage and I remember Benjamin. It seems to be what I am doing with my blog. I underline with digg or deli.cio.us. I cut and paste using Flickr, Youtube, Google docs or WordPress itself. But unlike Benjamin or the perfect spy, I scrupulously hot link the most reliable url I can find to every image, citation, idea. The blog itself may seem fragmented or may link the images with new juxtapositions but the sources can be followed by the reader. So my blog is more like a collage-montage than writing.

Before being driven to suicide through physical and mental exhaustion while fleeing the Nazis at the French border in 1940, German cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin was working on a consuming project to educate his own generation and awaken a new political consciousness (Buck-Morss 1991: 336, 47 in Holtorf 2001) . Using the Paris arcades as his prime metaphor, through his passion for collecting fragments of everyday urban experience he wanted his contemporaries to engage in a cleansing memory work, history with an ethical dimension, to revisit 19th century Parisian social and cultural history. He introduced a new form of ‘writing’ which consisted of cutting-and-pasting original citations without citation marks.

Benjamin’s fragmented direct, literal quotations, images and things were purposefully taken out of context. In this way they were deliberately not reduced to generally accepted theoretical or methodological frameworks or categories. He wanted his contemporaries to question unchallenged assumptions about anthropological nihilism, iron construction, the flâneur, the collector and capitalism itself. Something new was created from the old by constructed these fragmented, de-racinated elements into a collage-montage by juxtaposing them in a new way. In this way Benjamin questioned commonly held notions of ‘representation as finding some correspondence with an exterior reality’ (Shanks 1992: 188-90 Holtorf 2001).

Webliography and Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Trans. Buck-Morss. Das Passagen-Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V [1982]. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. [English edition 1996]

Buck-Morss, Susan (1991) The Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project [1989]. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.

Holtorf, Cornelius. 2001. Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk.

Le Carré, John. 1986. The Perfect Spy. New York: Penguin.

Shanks, Michael (1992) Experiencing the Past. On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge.

Moving Pictures History: the Monterey Bay Aquarium and H4X0R

This is a test: Jason Paterson hosts this live web cam of a tank of fish in the Monterey Bay Aquarium Jason’s email is mobtuff+robotsarewaycool@gmail.comand he describes the site as follows: “Monterey Bay Aquarium live web cam of the outer bay display. This web cam is live from 7am to 7pm. Feeding times are at 11am Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Keep an eye out for the Great White Shark! Please visit the Monterey Bay Aquariums website to learn more.” Jason’s photo is @ http://jpaterson.googlepages.com/ninjachild70x100.png and he describes himself as “I’m pretty much the coolest guy I know. People call me the H4X0R, Captain, Commander, WastedYeti, etc. What ever you prefer really. I mean I’m just a simple code crackin’, sword swingin’, ninja star throwin’ etc. Shoot me an email if you would like to converse with the most ultimate person ever.”

I read somewhere that one of the earliest moving pictures was of fish in an aquarium. I can’t find the source and I am beginning to question it now but I did find some interesting links to aquariums and the history of moving pictures.

Watching this tank full-screen from this site is oddly soothing. I have the .rss feed on my customized google home page. I’m going to email Jason to thank him and find out if this is a legitimate link! This is his url http://jpaterson.googlepages.com.

I am fascinated by social histories including histories of popular culture. According to David Curtis in his presentation which is now online entitled “Which History?” presented at the Tate International Council Conference on June 1st 2001, the Lumiere brother’s cameraman Alexander Promio who filmed the general section of the ‘Panorama of Liverpool docks taken from the electric railway’ in 1897 was Britain’s first film-artist.

This is Curtis’ full list of his nominations for a moving pictures history: Alexander Premio – ‘Liverpool Docks’ 1897
Chris Newby – ‘Stromboli’ 1990 -1997
Guy Sherwin – ‘Bicycle’ from ‘Short Film Series’ 1980
William Raban – ‘Thames Film’ 1984
Kenneth Macpherson – ‘Borderline’ 1930
Isaac Julien – ‘Long Road to Mazatlan’ 2000
Ian Bourn / Helen Chadwick – ‘End of the World’ 1982
Jayne Parker – ‘Crystal Aquarium’ 1989
Mark Wallinger – ‘Angel’ 1997
Rose Finn-Kelcey – ‘Glory’ 1982
David Lamelas – ‘To Pour Milk Into a Glass’ 1972
Peter Gidal – ‘Upside Down Feature’ 1972
Oswell Blakestone & Francis Bruguiere – ‘Light Rhythms’ 1930
Lis Rhodes – ‘Light Music’ 1975

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This is a history of moving pictures in Brighton which lists the “Aquarium Kinema, Madeira Drive, Brighton Film shows were given at the Aquarium before the turn of the century. The Winter Garden at the Aquarium was known as the Aquarium Kinema for a short time during the First World War. After remodelling in 1927-1929, it reopened on 12 June 1929. During the 1930s it was called the Princes Hall (Cinema); occasional film performances, as well as concerts and live theatre, were held here until 1939. During the Second World War it was requisitioned by the RAF. It was used for various purposes thereafter, including the Florida Nights dance hall and Montagu Motor Museum, but none of them including film.”

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This 1885 photo of the original Brighton aquarium is hosted on the virtual museum’s site.

[To be summarized]Eugenius Birch’s original design incorporated a variety of styles. Grand archways, columns and elaborate stonework reflected the Pompeian and Gothic influence. Statues of Bath stone, green marble and red Edinburgh granite were used in its construction. The Aquarium’s foundations were dug deep into the ground as the building was not allowed to be taller than the neighbouring promenade, Marine Parade. The distinctive clock tower and gateway to the Aquarium were added in 1874. The four corners of the clock tower bore bronze statues symbolising the seasons. Images of mermaids and sea-nymphs were evident elsewhere in the structure. A frieze inscription at the entrance stated: ‘And God said, Let the water bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life.’ Among those moving creatures were a number of specimens that inspired great interest. The Dublin Bay Prawn of 1874 attracted considerable excitement. In 1880 a manatee was displayed in a huge tank that enabled the viewer to witness the creature at eye level. Sea lions arrived in 1877 and were able to successfully breed. Rather drier attractions could be found elsewhere. The waterfall grotto proved a popular meeting place, and concerts were regularly held in the conservatory. By 1876 the roof terrace had been expanded to incorporate a roller-skating rink and smoking room. Film shows were increasingly common from the end of the nineteenth century, and the conservatory was briefly known as the Aquarium Kinema.

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A brief history of moving pictures in Randwick, Australia which included this section: “The Coogee Palace Aquarium had one of the earliest electric picture shows in about 1912. The first film shown was “The Defeat of the Spanish Armada”. Another cinema in Randwick, “The Orient Pictures” situated on the corner of Coogee Bay Road (opposite the Royal Hotel) was an open-air type, which provided “excellent up-to-date moving pictures” in 1911 and probably earlier.”

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Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, (1922) a record of Inuit Eskimo life, was the first feature film documentary or non-fictional narrative feature film. [The word “documentary” was reportedly first used in February, 1926, by John Grierson in his review of Flaherty’s Moana (1926) for the New York Sun. The term may also have been used 12 years earlier by famed photographer Edward Curtis in a prospectus for his Seattle-based Continental Film Company, referring to his film In the Land of the Headhunters (1914).] Flaherty’s film helped to usher in the documentary film movement, although it raised some controversy because it ‘re-created’ or staged some of its hunting scenes, rather than being truly non-fictional. Film site milestones in film history.

This is an excellent site with concise information about the history of moving pictures. I still haven’t found the reference to early films of fish tanks. I remember learning of this through the work of a contemporary Canadian artist who built a makeshift film-making device in reference to this early film using an old wringer washing machine.This particular popular culture history intrigues me since its effect on shared communal memory is probably so profound. Nanook of the North was known worldwide.

Speechless

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Somewhere on the Pacific a small lifeboat shared by two unwilling and unlikely passengers rolled with the waves. Pi knew he could do more than just survive once he realized that Richard was dependent on him. Pi could fish. A Bengal Tiger, king of his own ecosystem, would die at sea without the help of the seventeen-year-old. The book really ended there; it didn’t matter after that what was truth or fiction. Pi’s understanding of power in everyday life was his new reality.

Speechless refers to both the writer and reader. At one level it’s about a writers’ block being blogged. At another level is refers to deafening silence that occurs when one speaks with too much feeling or mentions an uncomfortable idea in a nice place, a unpleasant reminder in polite company, a divergent idea in a space of group think, another perspective than the Renaissance perspective. But it also refers to robust conversations among political philosophers who understand the power of language and everyday life. Socrates, Plato, Derrida called for renewals in philosophy. They examined what we do with words, the role of memory. Speechless alludes to Derrida’s urgent appeal for a renewed democracy, for a revitalized philosophy from a cosmopolitical point of view.

The human eye can distinguish 16 values of grey but that’s not including the subtle differences in the colours of grey. We just don’t have the time to see the variations.

I began speechless on October 16, 2006. Two months later I have learned what a permalink is and how to make one. It’s the equivalent to the old web page’s index.html. Now I have to learn where to use it.

https://oceanflynn.wordpress.com/index.php/2006/12/11/speechless

The cloud of tags below has grown organically since I first began using WordPress as my main blog host on October 16, 2006. I am building my customized clouds of folksonomies by working on and learning from a number of Web 2.0 feeds. This includes a Flickr account for photo blogging which attracts alot of viewers. I have only a couple of dozen images but one image alone uploaded on October 22, 2006 was viewed 1,179 times over a period of 64 days! I reworked this image again and posted it on speechless under “Wave Algorithms.”

Featured folksonomy:

Benign colonialism is a term that refers to an alleged form of colonialism in which benefits outweighed risks for indigenous population whose lands, resources, rights and freedoms were preempted by a colonizing nation-state. The historical source for the concept of benign colonialism resides with John Stuart Mills who was chief examiner of the British East India Company dealing with British interests in India in the 1820s and 1830s. Mills most well-known essays (1844) on benign colonialism are found in Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. Mills’ view contrasted with Burkean orientalists. Mills promoted the training of a corps of bureaucrats indigenous to India who could adopt the modern liberal perspective and values of 19th century Britain. Mills predicted this group’s eventual governance of India would be based on British values and perspectives. Those who adopt benign colonialism as a truth claim argue that education, health, housing and employment possibilities improved conditions for indigenous peoples as settlers, merchants and administrators also brought new industries, liberal markets, developed natural resources and introduced improved governance. The first wave of benign colonialism lasted from c. 1790s-1960s. The second wave included new colonial policies such as exemplified in Hong Kong (Liu 2003)), where unfettered expansion of the market created a new form of benign colonialism. Political interference and military interference (Doyle 2006) in independent nation-states, such as Iraq (Campo 2004 ), is also discussed under the rubric of benign colonialism in which a foreign power preempts national governance to protect a higher concept of freedom. The term is also used in the 21st century to refer to American, French and Chinese market activities in countries on the African continent with massive quantities of underdeveloped nonrenewable envied resources. Literature that challenges the assumptions of benign colonialism claiming colonialist project as it actually unfolded placed First Nations, Inuit and Métis at higher risks of vulnerabilities to catastrophes, to social exclusion and human rights abuses, have not been as widely publicized.

For more see Flynn-Burhoe (2007).

There is a widespread Canadian mythology that First Nations, Inuit and Métis are among those who benefited from settler colonies prempting, improving, managing and governing aboriginal lands, resources and educating, training, developing, serving, monitoring and governing its peoples. Those who adopt benign colonialism as a truth claim argue that education, health, housing and employment possibilities improved conditions for the indigenous peoples since the arrival of settlers. Literature that challenges the assumptions of benign colonialism claiming colonialist project as it actually unfolded placed First Nations, Inuit and Métis at higher risks of vulnerabilities to catastrophes, to social exclusion and human rights abuses, have not been as widely publicized. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) addressed these claims but the term benign colonialism is still a convenient truth for many. Celebratory and one-sided social histories of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the RCMP, and various government leaders such as John A. MacDonald or civil servants such as Indian Agents, northern adventurers, when viewed through the lens of settlers while ignoring the perspective of First Nations, Inuit and Métis contribute to on-going dissemination of distorted histories. Museums, maps and census contribute to these distorted histories by grave omissions.

Related citations:

“Today, Mill’s most controversial case would be benign colonialism. His principles of nonintervention only hold among “civilized” nations. “Uncivilized” peoples, among whom Mill dumps most of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are not fit for the principle of nonintervention. Like Oude (in India), they suffer four debilitating infirmities – despotism, anarchy, amoral presentism and familism — that make them incapable of self-determination. The people are imposed upon by a “despot… so oppressive and extortionate as to devastate the country.” Despotism long endured has produced “such a state of nerveless imbecility that everyone subject to their will, who had not the means of defending himself by his own armed followers, was the prey of anybody who had a band of ruffians in his pay.” The people as a result deteriorate into amoral relations in which the present overwhelms the future and no contracts can be relied upon. Moral duties extend no further than the family; national or civic identity is altogether absent. In these circumstances, Mill claims, benign colonialism is best for the population . Normal relations cannot be maintained in such an anarchic and lawless environment. It is important to note that Mill advocates neither exploitation nor racialist domination. He applies the same reasoning to once primitive northern Europeans who benefited from the imperial rule imposed by civilized Romans. The duties of paternal care, moreover, are real, precluding oppression and exploitation and requiring care and education designed to one day fit the colonized people for independent national existence. Nonetheless, the argument also rests on (wildly distorted) readings of the history and culture of Africa and Asia and Latin America. Anarchy and despotic oppression did afflict many of the peoples in these regions, but ancient cultures embodying deep senses of social obligation made nonsense of presentism and familism. Shorn of its cultural “Orientalism,” Mill’s argument for trusteeship addresses one serious gap in our strategies of humanitarian assistance: the devastations that cannot be readily redressed by a quick intervention designed to liberate an oppressed people from the clutches of foreign oppression or a domestic despot. But how does one prevent benign trusteeship from becoming malign imperialism, particularly when one recalls the flowery words and humanitarian intentions that accompanied the conquerors of Africa? How far is it from the Anti-Slavery Campaign and the Aborigine Rights Protection Society to King Leopold’s Congo and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”?

Here Doyle is referring to John S. Mill cited in “A Few Words on Nonintervention.” . 1973. In Essays on Politics and Culture, edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb, 368-84. Gloucester, Peter Smith.

See also WordPress featured blogs Benign colonialism.

Related tags: Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, Hackett and Zhao, economic efficiency, Power and everyday life, ethical topography of self and the Other, teaching learning and research, wealth disparities will intensify, C.D. Howe, Cannibals with Forks.Selected annotated webliography

Campo, Juan E.  2004. “Benign Colonialism? The Iraq War: Hidden Agendas and Babylonian Intrigue.” Interventionism. 26:1. Spring.

Doyle, Michael W.  2006. “Sovereignty and Humanitarian Military Intervention.” Hoover Institute.

Falk, Richard. Human Rights Horizons: the Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World. New York & London: Routledge.

Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. Benign colonialism. >> Speechless. Uploaded January 14th, 2007

Liu, Henry C. K. “China: a Case of Self-Delusion: Part 1: From colonialism to confusionLiu 2003.” Asia Times. May 14, 2003.

Kurtz,Stanley. 2003.”Lessons from the British in India.” Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint. Policy Review.Mill, John Stuart. 1844. Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy.
Of these Essays, which were written in 1829 and 1830,

Current debates on colonization and human rights (Falk 2000) raise questions about the notion of benign colonialism. The dominant language, culture and values of colonizers imposed on colonised peoples is often narrated as salutary. Dominant social and cultural institutions contributed to faciliating the entry of indigenous peoples trapped in unsustainable subsistence economies. Previously colonised peoples claim that the colonization process resulted in a parallel process of the colonization of the minds of indigenous peoples. The process of decolonization of memory (Ricoeur 1980), history and the spirit is crucial for the social inclusion (OECD) of indigenous peoples and nations within nations, such as Canada.

 

Arctic Adventurer: a Flicktion

Arctic Adventurer: a Flicktion

Under construction: work in process

June 2002

In the few short months that I have spent in Nunavut, two mothers who had become my colleagues and friends, lost youthful sons to suicide. Within a brief period of two months, four youth in a community of less than 1,500 people committed suicide. Almost the entire community attended the funeral. The hall was filled with infants, toddlers, children, youth, adults and elders. The youngest children wove between chairs and family members, comfortably a part of community life. Youth dressed in southern street-smart clothing respectfully gave their seats to elders. The shared pain in the room at the loss of their youth through suicide, was suffocating. At the graveside, it was cold and windy. It began to snow. As one mother witnessed the shovel-fulls of sand thudding onto her son’s coffin, another walked quietly alone to another fresh grave nearby. I stood there helpless feeling so overwhelmed I couldn’t move. I know many others felt the same paralysis. How many of us were mothers? How many of us had sons in their twenties?
The family of the young man, colleagues and friends provided support to the parents and to each other. On the return flight home, one man was unusually upbeat and talkative. Perhaps that is his way of dealing with the pain. I didn’t know who he was. He sat behind me. As I left the plane I asked the woman next to me who this man was. To my astonishment it was the *** for Nunavut. He was one of the few people who had it in his power to make policies to implement changes.

Following the suicides, friends and acquaintances attempted to find ways of absorbing yet another tragedy. Some felt anger at the youth who committed suicide. Many expressed feelings of numbness. Some regretted their own inability to know what to do. They felt guilty for not knowing how to prevent it. Like many others I feel a sense of powerlessness.

November 21, 2003:

Email communication:

I hope things go well with you. I am writing to ask your favour in helping a bit on your recent (and future) expense claims. I know that S.H. is a bit harried, working herself as a full-time instructor as well as the financial manager on this project. I really do not want her — nor is it fair — working as a glorified clerk. Therefore, in her behalf, could you send her a claim that she can file without amendment — that is, typed or in pen, a correct excess baggage sum, and an amended per diem (given kitchen facilities, it should be much less than $70.) working with an actual cost or estimated at around $35 or $40. We are tight on this project, especially as I went the extra mile on the term appointment. Many thanks.

December 11, 2002
While waiting for my plane at the Iqaluit airport I met a physician-researcher who had just completed a report on the Nunavut Ministry of Health. She told me about a two-hour conversation she had with a man called TNC in a hotel bar in Rankin Inlet. TNC had lost a friend to suicide. He was deeply bothered by his loss. He went to see a nurse. The nurse became very uncomfortable when TNC mentioned he was depressed and upset by this suicide. She sent him to a Social Worker. The Social Worker was also ill at ease. She called the police. TNC spent the night in jail. They were concerned he might hurt himself. Because the small hamlet had no counselling services, TNC was flown to Yellowknife. He was separated from the only real support system he had — his mother and grandmother in Rankin Inlet.

Later on the First Air Flight I sat beside a young man GRB. GRB worked for Baffin Correctional Centre. He started there in c.1996. He told me about a millionaire who made his fortune by buying high-end buildings in Iqaluit, then renting them at high rents to the Nunavut Government. GRB loved speed — the speed of the snow machine. His best moments were out on the land with a half a dozen friends on powerful machines. His work bothered him. He felt surrounded by uneducated, untrained fellow-workers — many of whom came from Halifax — who cared little for the young offenders. Many were there because they could earn huge salaries — especially with overtime. Some of them didn’t even have high school education and in Iqaluit they were earning much more than they ever could in the Maritimes. It frustrated him to see how these untrained workers wanted to work by the book to earn points from the supervisors. Sometimes a situation could be diffused before it became violent and ugly. By rigidly following the book, a small incident could escalate into an ugly incident very quickly. GRB came to know the offenders so he knew how to calm things. Increasingly the workers who lacked experience but were older than him, made the situations worse. GRB noticed the most improvement in the youth came through the on-the-land program. Youth would spend a couple of months with the elders. They came back healthier and more confident. He commented on the work of the psychiatrist Dr. Q He said that Dr. Q tried to prevent the worst from happening but he was not really in control of the situation. He was not able to make all the decisions that would be beneficial to the youth. GRB said that Iqaluit youth threatening suicide would be sent to the Youth detention centre. He would be stripped down, showered and then given ‘baby dolls’ to wear before being locked in a safe cell where he could do himself no harm. (What a contrast to the treatment my friend’s son received in Ottawa. )

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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My contributions to Wikipedia: Memory work

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

citationography
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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
papergirls.wordpress.com > my .rss feed news @ Digg