Cordon Bleu - British Style

It is a lamentable affectation, but Eastern Europeans seem to look to France for matters cultural than to far, far more civilised England.  Think, for example, of Tolstoy’s aristocrats in War and Peace.  Prince Vassily doesn’t say “that absolute stinker, Napoleon, has bloody gone and nicked Genoa and Lucca” or something to that effect in Russian.  No, he twirls his doubtless heavily pomaded and perfumed moustache and announces “Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des pomestias, de la famille Buonaparte”.  Infuriating, isn’t it?

I thought of this when my good wife, who hails from Transylvania, glanced at the breakfast I had so beautifully prepared with a look of withering disdain.    What, on earth, is wrong with baked beans on Marmite toast accompanied by a mug of PG Tips?  Doubtless a couple of warm croissants would have gone down better especially if served with café au lait, but she is not getting it.   Nor, for that matter will there be anything resembling pain au chocolat or brioche.  

War has been declared on all things Gallic and my first move will take the form of tripe and onions served with steaming mushy peas.  Next there will be liver and bacon and that gustatory glory, a kind of mini haggis, but with a name that cannot be used in America.  This to be served with neeps & tatties.

Come Crispin Crispian (St. Crispen’s Day), we happy few will be drinking warm best bitter and munching roast beef, Yorkshire pudding with all the trimmings.  The grande finale will, of course, be steamed Spotted Dick.

Water, water, everywhere

It  puzzles the life out of me and it is something I see everyday as a teacher.  Almost all the children I encounter seem absolutely obsessed with their huge and surprisingly expensive water bottles, which they carry religiously from class to class and regularly refill at the plentiful water fountains on the campus. In fact, they remind me of a bunch of diminutive Ancient Mariners.

I am pretty sure this is an American thing … and I just don’t get it.  In England we occasionally carry a thermos filled with tea.  If I were wandering in Scotland, I might have a wee flask filled with a dram of the good stuff, but water! I suppose if you were some kind of Sassenach, you might add a few drops from one of the Highland streams, but you would risk Hibernian ire and that is about it.

I assume that this obsession with water is a recent fad  and evidence for this comes from the words of the late, great W.C. Fields, which I sadly cannot repeat here for reasons of obscenity, but which involves piscatorial copulation in the dank element. 

I don’t dare forbid the use of the distracting things in my class lest the poor dehydrated dears expire before my very eyes, turning into small puffs of dust rather like Count Dracula when exposed to sunlight. 

I should be grateful for enlightenment.

Small Dog and a Plum Tree by the Light of the Moon

After some 10 years, our elderly Chocolate  Labrador, Jasper Montgomery Esquire,  still puzzles us.  Over the last month he has taken to lying at the edge of our terrace gazing upwards.  My hypothesis was that it was an age thing and that was his favourite spot.  Of a similar vintage myself, relatively speaking, I tend to gravitate to a particular leather chair at the slightest opportunity.  “He just likes it there”, I opined.

My much smarter wife had already solved the mystery: he is waiting for the plums to ripen.

Great Waves and Ripples: Thoughts on ‘Japanese Prints in Transition’

There are a few very pretty things and a couple of absolute wonders in the current exhibition of Japanese prints at The Legion of Honor in San Francisco.  There are works by artists like Utamaro, Hokusai and Yoshitoshi that embody the courtly elegance of ‘the floating world’ and that are well worth seeing.  You should most definitely go, but be warned: there is also a lot of mediocre stuff.  After the courtly and hugely elegant Edo period, there is an abrupt falling off rather than a transition and the exhibition ends with what the gallery describes as Ukiyo Pop. The thing is to discriminate, but sadly discrimination is in short supply these days.

The problem lies in the homogenisation that is endemic in all areas of the art world.  Take the bureaucrats who run galleries and museums.  “OK, so we don’t have a Leonardo, a Piero della Francesca or a Raphael, but we have other works and they are all ART and, thus, priceless.  We have experts who tell us so.”  The academics  are biased though.  If you have spent five to seven years on a PhD, you are hardly likely to admit that the subject of your dissertation was an artistic nonentity.  No, he or - of you are lucky enough - she may have been an incredibly minor follower of some mediocrity who was vaguely connected to a relatively unimportant workshop or studio, but the artist was the producer of enormously insightful works that capture the very essence of the zeitgeist or that prematurely deconstruct the incipient dawn of the patriarchy.  Whatever the case, it is not tosh, but something deeply profound that demands a hell of a lot of verbiage.  

Then there are the trinket shops attached to the galleries and their themed merchandise.  The public will buy the coffee mugs and t-shirts whether they show works by Vermeer, Georgia O'Keeffe or - heaven forfend - Gilbert and George.  It is all the same; it is all art. The coffee-table catalogues are equally resplendent and equally costly whatever the artist.  It doesn’t really matter as no one reads the wretched things. The important thing is that when the worshippers emerge, they clutch some mark of culture that separates them from the philistine hoi polloi and it matters not a jot whether Hokusai’s ubiquitous wave graces a scarf, book, mug or tea cosy.  The object is a conspicuous sign of sanctity much like the smudged cross on the forehead of a believer leaving a  church on Ash Wednesday.

Is a lack of discrimination important if, as Oscar Wilde said, “All art is quite useless”? Well, I rather suspect that in an age like ours, where extremists flourish and hysteria reigns, where the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity (to borrow the words of another Irishman), it is important to make nuanced distinctions and to have confidence in one's own judgement. In politics, as in art, the ability to distinguish quality and substance from mediocrity and superficiality is crucial. Without such discernment, we risk elevating the trivial and ignoring the profound, thus impoverishing our cultural and political life.

Two and a half cheers for Harvard

Ah, Harvard—the hallowed halls where the brightest American minds congregate to garner the fruits of “the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Matthew Arnold if you were wondering) and to push the limits of human knowledge. And now, after five long and fatuous years, they’ve finally decided that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements are no longer required for hiring. Hip, hip, hooray! Meanwhile, in the land of local schools and community colleges, we are still confronted with the task of penning entirely ersatz but seemingly heartfelt DEI statements, lest we be deemed unfit to mould the minds of tomorrow. Yes, even for the humble position of part-time janitor.

Picture this: A tweed-clad Harvard professor sits in his office, finally free from the mind-forged chains of DEI declarations. His only concern? How to help the next generation get to grips with Kantian metaphysics. Not an easy task, but at least he can do this without concern for modish inanities or factitious guilt over daring to teach the works of an undeniably dead, European male.   Contrast this with the plight of the community college hopeful. Imagine me, your humble servant, furiously typing away, trying to convince a panel that I have a genuine, burning passion for creating a culturally responsive, hugely inclusive and exceedingly diverse syllabus for a survey course in philosophy or Western literature. Why, you might ask? Because it’s apparently the key to securing that coveted adjunct position with a salary that barely covers an evening at the pub.

And it’s not just the academics. The custodial staff, too, must share their visions of an inclusive, equitable mop and bucket strategy. ‘What’s your DEI approach to cleaning the cafeteria?’—a question that could stump even the most seasoned of janitors.

In the grand scheme of things, one must wonder whether we are truly advancing education, or merely adding layers of bureaucracy that would make Franz Kafka proud? As Harvard returns to its primary responsibilities, perhaps it’s time for us, in the trenches of local education, to follow suit. Until then, I’ll be here, drafting my next DEI statement, ensuring it’s as inclusive as the campus recycling program.