Photo of the Day: The Stonyhurst Gospel

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Photo from The Globe and Mail: "The St. Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book, created in the 7th century, is displayed at the British Library in London. The British Library launched a campaign [last] Thursday to try to raise the final 2.75 million pounds (4.43 US Dollars) to buy the book."

The St. Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel, is a Latin version of the Gospel of John. It supposedly belonged to Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (died 687). 

As an undergraduate at Tufts, contemplating doing art history as a double-major with history (I ended up doing political theory instead), I took a wonderful (and intimate, with just eight students) course on medieval illuminated manuscripts. To this day, I hold the Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and other such masterpieces, many on display at the British Library (and formerly at the British Museum) in awe. Indeed, one of the highlights of my life -- seriously -- was seeing the Book of Kells in person in Dublin. It's unbelievably beautiful. (Below is the remarkable "Chi-Rho" page, which depicts the two-letter christogram, a symbol/abbreviation for Jesus Christ (chi and rho for "Christ").)

I don't think the Stonyhurst Gospel is illuminated -- that is, it is all text, without the elaborate and colourful artwork that makes a manuscript "illuminated" -- but it's still pretty awesome. You don't have to be a Christian (and I'm certainly not) to admire it, nor to admire the Book of Kells, which contains the four primary gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), and other books like it. All you have to do is care about books, and about their history, and about the book as art.

And when you're talking about the oldest intact European book, well, that's pretty amazing.

Books by failed Republican candidates

By: R.K. Barry

I'm not sure any of us were waiting for this, but Christine O'Donnell, failed Delaware Republican Senate candidate, has a new book. Yes, it's called Trouble Maker: Let's Do What it Takes to Make America Great Again.

You may recall that Ms. O'Donnell took what was supposed to be an easy GOP pickup and single handedly turned it into a Democratic win. Not only does she have the clear gratitude of Christopher Coons, the successful Democratic, but also of so many of the rest of us, who wanted desperately to keep the Senate out of Republican control. Thank you Christine.

If her book can help other conservatives learn how to fail as she has so spectacularly done, I hope it is widely read.

My favourite line from the article promoting the book, which, by the way, appears on Sean Hannity's website, is that "[t]hough she didn't win the general election, O'Donnell did win the designation of 2010's Most Covered Candidate."

We all know the old adage about it not mattering what they say about you as long as they spell your name right. But I don't think that helps when they spell your name correctly in the same sentence that has you declaring that you are not a witch. Yes, Christine, you were the most covered candidate. How'd that work out for ya?

And, not to be outdone, I see that failed Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is also writing a book. Adorably enough, this one is going to be called Right Angle.

Another Republican who took a "sure thing" GOP win and turned it into rat shit. More wisdom we can only hope the Tea Party and their ilk absorb in liberal doses.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost)

Woodward slams Rumsfeld

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For writing a memoir that is essentially one big steaming pile of dishonesty:

Rumsfeld's memoir isone big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- includingPresident Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussingmatters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think therewrite job won't wash.

The Iraq War isessential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era atthe Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That isfair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it wasRumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of hismemoir.

*****

When all the records are available, the othermemoirs written and the history complete, this failure to accept responsibilitywill likely be his legacy.

Woodward has his own failings -- he too often trusts his sources unthinkingly, his analysis is often lacking, or non-existent, and he rarely connects the dots in any satisfactory way -- but he is undeniably a well-respected and generally non-partisan reporter of the historical record. There is still much blame to go around -- Cheney deserves his fair share, too, along with the various other warmongers in and around Bush's bubble, as well as those pushing for war generally -- but clearly Rumsfeld was a key architect of the disaster that was (and to a certain extent still is) the Iraq War and Woodward should be applauded for holding him to account.

One just wonders if this isn't part of some anti-Rumsfeld smear campaign conducted by those on the right -- those in or around Bush's bubble -- who see him as an easy scapegoat, a convenient fall guy for all that went wrong. You wouldn't think it could be Rumsfeld's pal Cheney, but what about someone else?

Okay, maybe not. Maybe Woodward just had to respond to Rumsfeld's blatant dishonesty? Maybe. (It is, after all, at the estimable Tom Ricks's blog.)

Either way, he makes some excellent points. Read the whole thing.

Will the truth set us free from Sarah Palin?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh Sarah, poor Sarah:

A leaked manuscript by one of Sarah Palin's closest aides from her time as governor charges that Palin broke state election law in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and was consumed by petty grievances up until she resigned.

The unpublished book by Frank Bailey was leaked to the media and widely circulated on Friday.

The manuscript opens with an account of Palin sending Bailey a message saying "I hate this damn job" shortly before she resigned as Alaska's governor in July 2009, less than three years into her four-year term. The manuscript goes on for nearly 500 pages, a mixture of analysis, gossip and allegation. 

Palin, or those speaking for her, as well as her admirers on the right, will no doubt attack the book as the work of a disgruntled ex-staffer with an ax to grind and no credibility, and as a work of unbridled partisanship (given that anti-Palin Mudflats blogger Jeanne Devon is a co-author), but of course the last thing Palin wants is for the truth to come out, and certainly this book is likely to contain more than just gossip and allegation. What we've learned about Palin and those who form her little bubble of delusion is that they strike back with venom whenever they're threatened, whenever the bubble threatens to burst, spilling the lies out into public view, and we can expect that here.

Because if there's one thing Palin, and more specifically the Palin myth, can't abide, it's the truth, even a speck of it.

Which reminds me:

Sarah Palin Media Addict from Gina Gershon

Hilarious.

Rumsfeld goes with the lies he wishes he had

By J. Thomas Duffy

Who knew? 

Lenny Bruce used to do a bit where he offered this advice:

Whatever happens, deny it. Flat-out deny it! If you really love your wife, deny it. If they walk in on you, deny it. Even if they got pictures, deny it. Even if she catches you with a chicken, deny it.

 I just can't picture Old Snowflakes being into Bruce, so he must have just taken his own advice and said, "You go to write a book with the lies you have, not the lies you might want or wish to have at a later time."

Yes, yet another of the Bush Grindhouse, one of their most prolific warmongers, has penned a "Not Me, Not My Fault" book, hitting the streets this week.

UGH!

From the NYT: 

“Two weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, those of us in the Department of Defense were fully occupied,” Mr. Rumsfeld recalls. But the president insisted on new military plans for Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld writes. “He wanted the options to be ‘creative.’"

[snip]

His biggest mistake, Mr. Rumsfeld writes, was in not forcing Mr. Bush to accept his offers to resign after the abuse of Iraqi detainees by American military jailers came to light in early 2004. Mr. Rumsfeld insists that the abuses were the actions of rogue soldiers and that they did not reflect any approved policies, but nevertheless he offered to step down.

[snip]

While generally defending the Bush administration’s counterterrorism legal policies, Mr. Rumsfeld expresses some regrets. He suggests several times that some criticism and setbacks could have been avoided if the administration had gone to Congress for legislation authorizing the policies instead of relying on the president’s war powers. 

"Oh, if we only didn't didn't have contempt and scorn for our critics (you know, the "appeasers... the morally and intellectually confused" ), and only if we didn't piss on the Constitution and make up our own laws, maybe things would have turned out better."

Will Bunch over at Attytood doesn't mince words: 

Heh, that's funny. Of course, since there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and in fact there apparentrly had not been any for a number of years, the reason that Rumsfeld would like to take "that one" back is because he was lying. Maybe someday someone will free the Washington Post from the tyranny of the inverted pyramid and they can actually say that. 

Donald Rumsfeld lied.

Jack Stuef at Wonkette weighed in as well: 

America’s Grandpa of Death Donald Rumsfeld is having his memoir published on Tuesday, serving as an addendum to George W. Bush’s book in that it has actual, alleged facts, opinions, and memories in it. So: Abu Ghraib? Not his fault, but he really wanted to resign over it and feels very emo that big meanie Bush wouldn’t let him. Initial troop levels? Not his fault, nobody in the military ever asked him for more troops. Guantanamo? Not his fault the jail existed, and actually he made sure there was less torture and fewer prisoners. Hmm, anything we’re forgetting here? Oh, that one war. What was it called again? Anyway, not his fault, Bush came to him about Iraq before the U.S. even invaded Afghanistan, but at the same meeting, he also talked about Rummy’s son’s drug addiction, so all Rummy could do was cry about that. Whoops! 

And this: 

Ah, there you have it. Rumsfeld could have said, “What the fuck are you talking about going to war with Iraq for? Our country was just attacked by a foreign terrorist organization we need to go try to destroy. Iraq has nothing to do with this. Aren’t you more concerned with winning this war we haven’t even begun yet?” But instead, his son had done some drugs. Sure thing, Rumsfeld. Perfectly good excuse. You should drop some leaflets on the families of people, American and Iraqi, whose children have died in that war. “Sorry, my son was doing drugs. I was emotional at the time. Not my fault.” 

Stuef also had a suggestion for those plans to invade and occupy Iraq to be "creative" that "Rummy says Defense was preparing for offense on Afghanistan at the time, but Bush asked him to be “creative.” Creative! Perhaps the military could stage a production of Grease for the people of Iraq before taking a bow and dropping a bomb on them?

No, instead we just got greasy lies at the time and more polished greasy lies now, with the book.

I wonder if his Lie Tour will interfere with his and his former Shadow President's Armageddon weekends?

Like we said above, Ugh!

Bonus Rummy Riffs

Top Ten Cloves: What Would Be Different If Rumsfeld Was A Dog, But Still Secretary of Defense

Leave It to Rumsfeld ... There's Not Enough Lying Going On!

“They’re coming here for the American experience” ...Rumsfeld Weighs In On Immigration Battle; Won’t Tie It To War With Iran ...Suggests Army Recruiting Woes Could Be Solved With Mandatory Service By Illegal Aliens

Rummy On The Run? ... Let's Give Him Some Chase Music!

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Knowing the enemy

By Greg Prince

This isn't exactly new news, but the book taking France by storm is a short (13 pages) call to arms against the real enemies of the day.

The Independent reports:

Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a publishing phenomenon.

Indignez Vouz! (Cry Out!), a slim pamphlet written by a wartime French resistance hero, Stéphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy".

It doesn't exist in translation yet, I haven't found it as an eBook, and thus far the only source I've found domestically is here. But it sounds like it'll be worth a read.

I prefer to not read large quantities in French, and I'd prefer the electronic version, but lacking those options and at only 13 pages I'm tempted to purchase sooner rather than later.

You may like it as well. If you don't read French, it's sure to be available in translation soon.

(Cross-posted from Greg Prince's Blog.)

Huck Finn, sanitized

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a genuine American classic and one of the greatest works in the history of literature, American or otherwise, is being re-released in a new, cleansed version that takes out the words "nigger," as well as "Injun," the one-word, over-hyped source of controversy that has seen the book, as Publishers Weekly puts it, "disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books."

This, to me, is utterly despicable, a concession to the forces of censorship and oppression. Yes, the book in its new, adulterated version will likely find many new readers, particularly young people, but it won't really be Huck Finn anymore, the timeless masterpiece that Twain wrote, a book written at a certain time and place, including a word or two that justifiably are no longer acceptable, but a book sanitized to appeal to a new time and place, today's America, that apparently is too immature to appreciate the book's, and the author's, context.

No, taking out the word "nigger" certainly doesn't mean that the rest of the book is compromised or worthless. Admittedly, the book even in this version remains a masterpiece, and perhaps the introduction will explain what has been changed.

But it's a slippery slope. Changing an undesirable word here or there, without the author's approval, can lead to more substantive changes that really do undermine the author's intent. This is sort of like what happened in the movie Cinema Paradiso, when sexually-repressive authorities in Italy edited out all the kissing scenes. A kiss is a kiss, sure, not an objectionable word, but the result is still censorship.

The fact is, the word "nigger" used to be used in common parlance, and we don't even have to go back to Twain's time for that. Isn't it better to tell people the truth, and to educate them about its context, than to hide it, to pretend that the realities of the past, including the ugliness, linguistic or otherwise, didn't exist? Are today's children, coming to Huck Finn for the first time, simply to believe, erroneously, that the word was never used? Why not take out references to slavery altogether? Why not turn Huck Finn into a picture book for two-year olds?

It's dangerous to revise the past this way, especially through censorship. It means that we lose touch with the past, that we do not even have the opportunity to understand the past as it was, to read books as they were meant to be read, to be forced to confront that which may not be pleasant, that which may challenge our self-righteous presumptions and biases. In this case, over time, over generations, the very essence of Huck Finn may be lost altogether, all because a single word was changed, all because the censors won.

The battle for true freedom is a battle against this sort of censorship, against efforts to cleanse the past, to cleanse art, to cleanse our culture -- and to cleanse our minds. I am certainly not justifying the use of "nigger" in contemporary speech. It is an ugly word, a word of bigotry. But this is totalitarian manipulation, pure and simple, and we should not accept it.

I LOVE NY

What books about the process of artmaking are on your shelves?

The Story Begins 26 x 28 mixed media 2007 L Pressman


I am trying to organize my books that are everywhere: the office, the bedroom and the studio.The dust is settling on the pile of philosophy and psychology of art books. I haven't even begun to collect the catalogs and individual artist books. I am looking forward to seeing what is up in my attic.

This week I have been looking through the creative process books ...here are several I have found so far. Always looking for new ones to add.

Have any suggestions?..............Maybe we could start a list of the essential creative process books.

Anais Nin: all the journals
Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit
The Artists Way: Julia Cameron
The Writing Life :Annie Dillard
Daybook: Anne Truit
May Sarton: The Journals of Solitude ( Marie-this one is yours-I will bring it back)
Centering: M.C. Richards
Spirit Taking Form: Nancy Azara
Trust the Process Shaun Mcniff
Art and Soul: Audrey Flack
Concerning the Spiritual in Art Kandinsky

Reading now or on "the list" to read:

deKooning An American Master Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
On Writing Stephen King
The Extreme of the Middle:Writings of Jack Tworkov JackTworkov; Edited by Mira Schor