Professor Sandy Fenton: Scholar of Scottish antiquities

Posted on 14th May 2012 in The monuments of world

Sandy Fenton was among the very greatest scholars of the Ethnology and Antiquities of Scotland of this age – or of any age. For 15 years he was a member of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland, from 1979 to 1994.

My wife was one of the Board members, and they had the civilised habit of allowing paying spouses to come on their annual expeditions to those parts of Scotland well endowed with antiquities. Thus I saw at first hand Sandy Fenton’s charming erudition, which was a marvel of serious scholarship to us all. Indelibly etched on my memory is Fenton’s explanation of life at the Black House at 42 Arnol in the north end of the Island of Lewis. His written description, first published in 1978 and reissued in 1989, is the greatest record of a way of life that once dominated so much of the Highlands and Islands.

Sandy Fenton was born in 1929 at Shotts, then a mining town at the heart of the productive North Lanarkshire coalfield. Among family and friends were the Herbisons; Margaret Herbison was later to be the miners’ MP, Chairman of the Labour Party (UK) and Harold Wilson’s first Minister of Pensions. His father, also Alexander Fenton, and his wife Annie Stronach moved north to Turrif, where Sandy Fenton attended the academy and progressed to Aberdeen University.

Aberdeen had the tradition of sending its most talented graduates for further study in Cambridge and Fenton entered and completed the archaeological and anthropological tripos with an optional subject of Norse and medieval language. For archaeology he sat at the feet of Glyn Daniel, who educated us all on television, and at the feet of Meyer Fortes, the great anthropologist and expert on indigenous peoples.

Fenton was grateful for the inspiration of Cambridge before going on to complete a DLit in Edinburgh, which led to his becoming a Senior Assistant Editor of the Scottish National Dictionary between 1955 and 1959 combined with part-time lecturing in English as a foreign language. He became Assistant Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities in Scotland, progressing to Deputy Keeper and Director. He combined this with being part-time lecturing in the Department of Scottish History at Edinburgh University.

As Rector of the University from 2003 to 2006 I know that the now flourishing Department of Scottish Studies regarded Fenton as one of their founders. Later he was to occupy the Chair of Scottish Ethnology and Director of the School of Scottish Studies.

However, Fenton was no insular, narrow scholar. He was a foreign member of the Royal Gustav Adolf Academy at Uppsala, Sweden, appointed in 1978, and of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1979. He was given the honour of becoming an honorary member of the Volkskundliche Kommision Fur Westfalen in 1980. In 1983 he was made a member of the Hungarian Ethnographical Society and became a jury member in 1975 – and subsequently for 20 years of the Europa Prize for Folk Art.

He was also President of the Permanent International Committee of the International Secretariat for Research on the History of Agricultural Implements. Hearing Fenton on site on some windswept landscape describing the use of a particular agricultural instrument in ancient and medieval times was a revelation. He was also Honorary President of the Scottish Vernacular Buildings Working Group and of the Scottish Country Life Museums Trust. Many modest if interesting buildings owe their survival to Fenton’s work.

Fenton’s writing is characterised by the greatest detail teased out of ancient records. In the 1970s he illuminated the place names of Shetland and his book Scottish Country Life (1976, republished in 1999) won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award. His The Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland, (1978, republished in 1997) won him the Dag Stromback Award. In 1985 he published an essay under the title “If All The World Were a Blackbird”, which he translated from the Hungarian. Almost as difficult as Hungarian is the language and dialect of Buchan, but Fenton’s 1995 work Craiters – or Twenty Buchan Tales, and Buchan Words and Ways in 2005, really saved a subculture which but for Fenton would have vanished.

Tam Dalyell

Professor Alexander Fenton, ethnologist and scholar of Scottish Studies; born Shotts, Lanarkshire 26 June 1929; Assistant Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland 1959-75, Deputy Keeper 1975-78, Director 1978-85; Member of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland 1979-94; CBE 1986; married 1956 Evelyn Hunter (two daughters); died Edinburgh 9 May 2012.

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Review: Paolo Bacigalupi returns with another dark vision in 'The Drowned Cities'

Posted on 14th May 2012 in The monuments of world

“The Drowned Cities,” (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), by Paolo Bacigalupi: A new Paolo Bacigalupi novel is reason to celebrate — no matter how old you are.

Bacigalupi’s latest, “The Drowned Cities,” is his second straight young adult release, but that shouldn’t deter the writer’s older fans from picking up the book (even if you have to do it on the sly).

It’s packed with the same kind of entrancing insight that made Bacigalupi‘s previous work — “Ship Breaker” for young readers and the novel “The Windup Girl” and the short story collection “Pump Six and Other Stories” for adults — so unforgettable.

His characters and plots play out a few centuries in the future, but they’re so grounded in the now, they often make the reader stop and ponder the intricate game of connect the dots he plays to render such a convincing — if gloomy — outcome for humanity, and especially its children.

There are few adults in “The Drowned Cities,” the result of years of fractious infighting in a lawless section of the eastern U.S. around Washington, D.C. A multisided civil war waged by child soldiers has raged since the oceans rose, flooding some of the country’s most populous areas, and the world returned to The Dark Ages after the failure of our Accelerated Age.

At one time there were Chinese peacekeepers to help restore order, but they sailed away on their clipper ships, leaving the country to fall into chaos and young Mahlia to fend for herself. A “castoff,” she was left behind by her father and loses her mother to one of the many factions vying for control. The colour of her skin and cast of her eyes mark her as a pariah in a vengeful society.

Mahlia is saved by a young boy named Mouse after her right arm is chopped off by a child soldier who intends to leave her limbless, and they eventually find a home with kindly Dr. Mahfouz in a relatively safe region. She learns to aid the doctor and is carving out a future in a time when life expectancy barely creeps into the double-digits.

Everything changes with the appearance of genetic experiment Tool, the part-man, part-dog, part-tiger, part-hyena supersoldier who appeared in “Ship Breaker.” He’s on the run from faction leader Col. Glenn Stern’s United Patriot Front, and Mahlia’s decision to help him — despite the clear danger he presents to everyone — drives the rest of the novel.

The plot’s pretty simple, set on overdrive and laid out for easy conversion to screenplay. But we’re not here for the plot, are we? It’s Bacigalupi’s ripped-from-the-real characters and his cleareyed visions of the future that draw the mind.

Bacigalupi uses powerful images and symbols in “The Drowned Cities.” Life still goes on in the never-ending, kudzu-covered cityscape that hangs on above the second-story waterline and in the streets turned canals. Boy soldiers from the UPF with their hashtag facial brands, Army of God, Freedom Militia and the countless factions terrorize everyone.

Slaves move barges and power salvage operations by overseas corporations that fund the constant violence. The Capitol Dome is pounded into oblivion under heavy artillery in yet another pointless battle. Old American flags, statuary raided from monuments and other pieces of precious U.S. history are sold as “antiques” to blood buyers who move them to the new power centre in Asia where they are treasured relics.

Sounds outlandish? Not in Bacigalupi’s hands.

“The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken,” Bacigalupi writes. “People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and kept it going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond.”

Sure, it’s a made-up story for kids. But the powerful thing about Bacigalupi’s work — for them or anyone else willing to spend the time — is it feels so real.

___

Follow Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott at www.twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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The call of culture

Posted on 14th May 2012 in The monuments of world

When you visit ancient temples don’t stop with clicking photos, suggests S. Jayakumar, who along with a group of volunteers runs Prastara to help young people connect to heritage. Anusha Parthasarathy gets the details

A conversation with S. Jayakumar takes one through the endless, pillared corridors of many of Tamil Nadu’s lesser-known temples, stories that take form through their inscriptions and the symbols their idols represent. He is part of Prastara, an initiative that strives to spread awareness about temples.

What began as a field trip to the historic places that formed “Ponniyin Selvan” became a passionate urge to conserve heritage. “A bunch of us met on an Orkut group for ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, and one day a few of us decided to visit the places mentioned in the book. As we travelled, we discovered there were so many monuments vandalised and in ruins; so many temples were thousands of years old and not cared for. We wondered what was going to happen to them, say 10 or 20 years from now; do we just visit these places and take pictures or do something more?” says Jayakumar.

The big start

That’s when the group decided it wanted to protect, restore and conserve such temples, especially in the Kumbakonam-Thanjavur belt. With a team of eight, Prastara began a couple of years ago to help locals connect with their heritage. “We want the locals to be aware of their heritage and its importance so they can stand up for it.”

Jayakumar, who teaches music at Kalakshetra Foundation, has majored in History, studied Epigraphy, been trained by an archaeologist and epigraphist, and attended lectures on heritage issues. “We use this knowledge to study each temple we visit,” he says.

Prastara’s first project was at the Thiruvengad Girls High School. “We spoke about the local heritage, the importance of preserving monuments and told them to find out about the history of their area. We took 32 children on a field trip to the Thanjavur Big Temple to teach them how to find a monument, look at it and study it. A lot of them seemed very interested in local culture; they hadn’t had such an opportunity or the right people to explain it to them.”

The initiative focusses on rural pockets since most old temples are concentrated in such areas. “The movement must start where most temples are. What is more important is that the awareness reach the children of that area because they’re the ones that will be around for long. We also want to look into proper methods of renovation. In a lot of temples, they use mosaic tiles and sandblast the area for renovation, which damages inscriptions and carvings beyond repair. We are working with art conservationists, sthapathis, historians and other stalwarts to stop this. We’re in the process of creating a database of experts and structures, and will soon begin work.”

Right now, the group is focussed on the temples themselves. “Our resource people are the ones who provide us with maximum information about a place before we visit it. We take books along and try to decipher the inscriptions, and when you do that, you discover so much. Paintings on temple walls are important because they tell us how people lived 1,000 years ago, their culture, dressing style, the ornaments they wore and the ambience. Since the temple was the centre of administration those days, the inscriptions tell you the number of people who lived in the area, the hospitals, schools, land disputes and funds collected then. Even the temple tanks are important and most inscriptions have details about them. But you often find people bathing in it, and leaving plastic sachets and bottles around. We are looking to educate people and catch them young.”

Prastara hopes to spread across the State. “We’re planning on taking two other schools on field trips and conducting workshops. We will sponsor the trips for children from rural areas, if they can’t afford our fee. We’re also planning a documentary on the Thanjavur Brihadeeswarar Temple in consultation with experts. Our monthly online magazine Prastara has just been launched too,” he says.

Prastara refers to the roof that completes a temple structure. It also means a flat bed of stone. “A stone that needs sculpting to take shape,” says Jayakumar. Just like their own organisation. And taking shape is vital simply because as Jayakumar puts it “learning about a temple is like discovering a whole new world. Or, sometimes a travel back in time”.

(For more details, visit www.prastara.in)

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Review: Bacigalupi back with another dark vision

Posted on 11th May 2012 in The monuments of world

“The Drowned Cities,” (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), by Paolo Bacigalupi: A new Paolo Bacigalupi novel is reason to celebrate — no matter how old you are.

Bacigalupi’s latest, “The Drowned Cities,” is his second straight young adult release, but that shouldn’t deter the writer’s older fans from picking up the book (even if you have to do it on the sly).

It’s packed with the same kind of entrancing insight that made Bacigalupi‘s previous work — “Ship Breaker” for young readers and the novel “The Windup Girl” and the short story collection “Pump Six and Other Stories” for adults — so unforgettable.

His characters and plots play out a few centuries in the future, but they’re so grounded in the now, they often make the reader stop and ponder the intricate game of connect the dots he plays to render such a convincing — if gloomy — outcome for humanity, and especially its children.

There are few adults in “The Drowned Cities,” the result of years of fractious infighting in a lawless section of the eastern U.S. around Washington, D.C. A multisided civil war waged by child soldiers has raged since the oceans rose, flooding some of the country’s most populous areas, and the world returned to The Dark Ages after the failure of our Accelerated Age.

At one time there were Chinese peacekeepers to help restore order, but they sailed away on their clipper ships, leaving the country to fall into chaos and young Mahlia to fend for herself. A “castoff,” she was left behind by her father and loses her mother to one of the many factions vying for control. The color of her skin and cast of her eyes mark her as a pariah in a vengeful society.

Mahlia is saved by a young boy named Mouse after her right arm is chopped off by a child soldier who intends to leave her limbless, and they eventually find a home with kindly Dr. Mahfouz in a relatively safe region. She learns to aid the doctor despite her handicap and is carving out a future in a time when life expectancy barely creeps into the double-digits.

Everything changes with the appearance of genetic experiment Tool, the part-man, part-dog, part-tiger, part-hyena supersoldier who appeared in “Ship Breaker.” He’s on the run from faction leader Col. Glenn Stern’s United Patriot Front, and Mahlia’s decision to help him — despite the clear danger he presents to everyone — drives the rest of the novel.

The plot’s pretty simple, set on overdrive and laid out for easy conversion to screenplay. But we’re not here for the plot, are we? It’s Bacigalupi’s ripped-from-the-real characters and his cleareyed visions of the future that draw the mind.

Bacigalupi uses powerful images and symbols in “The Drowned Cities.” Life still goes on in the never-ending, kudzu-covered cityscape that hangs on above the second-story waterline and in the streets turned canals. Boy soldiers from the UPF with their hashtag facial brands, Army of God, Freedom Militia and the countless factions terrorize everyone.

Slaves move barges and power salvage operations by overseas corporations that fund the constant violence. The Capitol Dome is pounded into oblivion under heavy artillery in yet another pointless battle. Old American flags, statuary raided from monuments and other pieces of precious U.S. history are sold as “antiques” to blood buyers who move them to the new power center in Asia where they are treasured relics.

Sounds outlandish? Not in Bacigalupi’s hands.

“The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken,” Bacigalupi writes. “People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and kept it going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond.”

Sure, it’s a made-up story for kids. But the powerful thing about Bacigalupi’s work — for them or anyone else willing to spend the time — is it feels so real.

___

Follow Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott at www.twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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From Norwood's Morrill Memorial Library: Touring the nation’s capital

Posted on 11th May 2012 in The monuments of world

In 1965, my parents packed our family of six into our Oldsmobile sedan and spent one month touring the country from California to Boston and back again. We first navigated south, stopping at over a dozen national parks along the way. Our trip home was to the north and included Niagara Falls and Reno, Nevada.

On that family vacation, I had my first lessons in navigation using multiple road maps and AAA tour books. I often won the front seat between my parents and spent hours studying the highways, motel amenities, restaurant offerings and sightseeing highlights in the guidebooks.

In this 21st Century, GPS devices guide us along the highways and our smart phones find our favorite coffee and food fixes. We have a plethora of websites to surf before we go and shelves of books, both in the stores and the library, with which to plan an itinerary.

My most profound memories on that trip in 1965, other than a weeklong family reunion in Boston, were those in Washington, D.C.

Recently, when Gerry and I realized that our grandson, Colin, would miss his eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C. this spring because we will be attending a family wedding elsewhere, we quickly decided that we would make the trip to Washington. We traveled this year during April vacation at the time of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

You can read about Washington D.C.’s famous cherry trees in “Eliza’s Cherry Trees: Japan’s Gift to America,” a fabulous children’s picture book written by Andrea Zimmerman. I had always thought Lady Bird Johnson was responsible for the flowering cherry trees in Washington, DC. (While the Japanese government gave 3,800 trees to Lady Bird for the beautification of the capital city in 1965, the origination of cherry trees in Washington, DC began many years before.) Zimmerman explains in her book that Mrs. Eliza Scidmore tried to bring cherry trees to Washington for more than 24 years and finally succeeded in 1909. First Lady Helen Taft received a donation of 2,000 trees from Japan when Washington’s cherry blossom parade and festival became the highlight of a week in April each year.

Of course, on any trip to Washington, a visit to as many monuments as possible is a must. An overview in the book for adults, “Monuments and Memorials of Washington, D.C.” by Allan M. Heller, will help you decide which ones to visit. Besides the obvious memorials and monuments, the book includes information on monuments to American patriot Nathan Hale, the celebrated writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and inventors Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin and a check-off list so you can see and do everything.

The beauty of the city is, however, that you can visit most of the monuments on a long and leisurely afternoon walk. Both of J.S. Burrows’ books, “Korean War Memorial” and “Vietnam War Memorial” will introduce you to the reasons why these visits are so fundamental to Americans and those across the world. Brent Ashabranner’s “A Memorial for Mr. Lincoln” and “The Washington Monument: A Beacon for America” explain the planning and reverence for awe-inspiring monuments that never cease to amaze everyone who visits them. (The Washington Monument has been closed to the public since the earthquake in August of 2011 but it is still an astonishing beacon in the center of the mall.)

During our recent trip, we were able to visit the newly-dedicated Martin Luther King Memorial where visitors meet in a plaza somewhat isolated from Washington, D.C.’s bustling traffic on the tidal basis side off the mall. You can read more about this amazing monument in “The Stone of Hope: Martin Luther King Memorial and Master Sculptor Lei Yixin” by Mike Xiong.

Further along the tidal basin on the way to the Jefferson Memorial is the awe-inspiring FDR Memorial. It is a park-like wonder filled with waterfalls and life-sized sculptures. Read “The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial” by Ted and Lola Schaefer.

No trip to Washington, D.C. would be complete without seeing the Capitol or the White House from every angle. This is not as easy as it used to be; 9/11 changed much of the world for us and visits to these notable buildings and grounds are no exception. With our noses pressed to the fence along Constitution Avenue, I was excited to see the White House victory garden planted by Michelle Obama and a beehive, which takes center stage. Robin Gourley’s book for children, “First Garden: The White House Garden and How It Grew” explains how this natural feast came to be. Other terrific children’s books are “The White House: An Illustrated History” by Catherine O’Neill, or “Our White House: Looking In and Looking Out” by the National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance.

In this column, I’ve left out so many of the must-see places – the Arlington Cemetery where we walked among the graves of the three Kennedy brothers and the Tomb of the Unknowns. And, of course, no visit to Washington, D.C. would be complete without the Smithsonian museums such as the National Air and Space Museum where a new exhibit dedicated to the Wright Brothers was a remarkable adventure for us.

Martha Day Zschock has written many delightful books that travel through places using the alphabet and “Journey Around Washington, D.C., from A to Z” is one of them. Another terrific journey is “Capital! Washington D.C. from A to Z” by Laura Krauss Melmed. Another overall tour of Washington, D.C. is the late Edward Kennedy’s “My Senator and Me: A Dog’s View of Washington, D.C.” illustrated by New England author/illustrator David Small.

Before you plan your next visit, pick up an armful of children’s books or a stack of tour books to  introduce your family effortlessly and effectively to one of the best places to visit in this country, Washington, DC. If you would like to reserve any of these titles in DVD or CD version please call the Reference or Information desks of the library, 781-769-0200, or reserve them in the Minuteman Library catalog.

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Bio traces achievements, troubled life of food writer who revolutionized US approach to food

Posted on 7th May 2012 in The monuments of world

“The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance” (Free Press), by Thomas McNamee: Many of us can no longer remember what life was like before arugula and balsamic vinegar became part of the larder, celebrity chefs strutted their stuff on TV and the term “foodie” made its way into common parlance.

But that was the state of the culinary scene little more than a half-century ago when the writer who was to become arguably the most influential restaurant critic of our time landed his dream job by being named food editor of The New York Times.

“What Craig Claiborne saw when he looked out across the vast expanse of the United States was a gastronomic landscape blighted by ignorance and apathy, a drearily insular domain of overdone roast beef and canned green beans,” Thomas McNamee writes in “The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance,” his comprehensive biography of this towering figure whose public success masked a troubled life.

Claiborne reshaped the world of food criticism, taking it from advertiser-friendly puff pieces displayed on what were then known as the newspaper’s women’s page to a respected genre whose work reflected the same rigour and gravity as that of the Times’ drama, music and art critics. He guided a generation of readers from TV dinners, Reddi-wip and Cheez Whiz to classic French cuisine, Szechwan cooking from China and Mexican dishes that went beyond tacos and tortillas.

“Julia Child was beloved, but Craig Claiborne was the authority,” says McNamee.

The author recounts Claiborne’s unhappy childhood in the Mississippi Delta, where he grew up in genteel poverty, was bullied by schoolmates and found refuge in the kitchen of his mother’s boarding house. After studying journalism in college, he joined the Navy during World War II and was introduced to exotic cuisine and gay sex during a stint in Casablanca.

Claiborne joined the Times after training in classic French cuisine and service at a prestigious hotel school in Switzerland and writing for Gourmet magazine. His prodigious output went beyond his newspaper columns and reviews, encompassing a string of bestselling cookbooks, many co-authored by longtime friend Pierre Franey.

Despite his success and many honours, Claiborne’s life appears to have brought only superficial joy. Forced by the strictures of the times to hide his homosexuality, he was often depressed and nagged by self-doubt. His alcohol consumption was mind-boggling, as he routinely downed a half-dozen margaritas or scotches, a bottle or two of wine and a few stingers or cognacs before, during and after dinner. It was a rare morning that didn’t include a hangover.

This first comprehensive account of Claiborne’s life transports readers to renowned restaurants, profiles innovative chefs and traces the revolution in dining that his writings did much to inspire.

The book is replete with anecdotes and memorable incidents, some of them monuments to breathtaking excess. There is the lavish party on the liner SS France to celebrate Claiborne’s 50th birthday, where guests included Salvador Dali and his pet ocelot; the closing of the legendary restaurant Le Pavillon in 1960 after the staff walked out amid a feud with its tyrannical boss, Henri Soule; and, of course, Claiborne’s $4,000 dinner for two in Paris, an outgrowth of a public television auction.

Students of social history and readers with an abiding interest in food will find much to savour in this book. But those whose palates aren’t attuned to the likes of foie gras and truffles may get their fill early on. De gustibus.

___

Online:

http://www.thomasmcnamee.com/index.htm

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Survivor's tale among gems in 'Titanic Tragedy'

Posted on 11th April 2012 in The monuments of world

“TITANIC TRAGEDY: A NEW LOOK AT THE LOST LINER” By John Maxtone-Graham. W.W. Norton & Co., $24.95.: A

John Maxtone-Graham did something that’s tough to do after a century of documentation of one of the world’s greatest sea disasters.

He found a survivor of the Titanic who, he says, no one else had ever interviewed — ship stewardess Violet Jessop, who jumped from a lifeboat that was being sucked toward one of the liner’s huge, still-rotating propellers before it sank. She suffered a knock on the skull that gave her a concussion and caused her hair never to grow properly for the rest of her life. Her tale, recorded by Maxtone-Graham in 1971, is breathtaking.

Jessop is just one gem in “Titanic Tragedy” — one of the many books released 100 years after the disaster.

Finding something new in a historic event that has been chronicled in every way possible — from news-paper articles in the days following the sinking, to books to movies, to TV specials and even to dives to the ship itself — is like sticking your hand in the cushions of a thrift-store couch and pulling out a 1912 $20 gold piece.

It just doesn’t happen.

But it did for Maxtone-Graham, a maritime historian who takes a different approach in his book than most other works on the doomed liner.

Instead of writing a sweeping history, he focuses on smaller and sometimes peripheral bits of the tragedy, starting with Samuel Morse and Guglielmo Marconi. The former perfected an alphabetical code that allowed signals to be transmitted along a wire, and the latter figured out how to send that code through wireless technology.

Maxtone-Graham credits both with saving roughly 700 souls out of about 2,200 on board. Had a liner passing about 50 miles away not picked up a Morse signal — C.Q.D., an early distress signal, not the now–common S.O.S. — sent from Titanic’s wireless Marconi radio set, there is a good chance that all of the ship’s passengers would have perished in the iceberg-clogged North Atlantic.

An odd footnote: Marconi and his family had been invited to sail on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. But pressing business in New York led him to book passage aboard a faster liner, Lusitania, that sailed earlier than Titanic. His wife, Beatrice, and their children did not board Titanic, either. One of the children took ill, Maxtone-Graham writes, and she and the kids watched from the shore near their home in Southampton as the liner steamed toward the English Channel.

Maxtone-Graham gives similar treatment to the Ocean Dock in Southampton, where Titanic tied up before starting the Atlantic crossing; to Carpathia, the small Cunard liner that picked up the wireless signal and packed itself stem to stern with the survivors; and to the victims among the crew and the statues, plinths and other monuments erected to them on both sides of the Atlantic.

There’s much more in the little 217-page book, but I’ll leave that for you to discover. “Titanic Tragedy” is a don’t-miss for both the Titanic historian and those with just a passing curiosity about a night to remember in April 1912.

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The Gateway to Moscow

Posted on 10th April 2012 in The monuments of world

By Howard Amos

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: April 11, 2012 (Issue # 1703)



HOWARD AMOS / SPT

A monument of Mikhail Yaroslavich, a prince of Tver in the 13th century, standing on Sovietskaya Ploshchad in the well-maintained city center.

TVER — Scattered across the world are three monuments to Afanasy Nikitin, one of the first-recorded Europeans to go to India — and a Tver native.

There is a black obelisk to the south of Mumbai where he purportedly stepped ashore and a statue in Ukraine’s Feodosiya where he documented his adventures. But the grandest memorial stands in his hometown.

The bronze figure shows the bearded explorer, who may have converted to Islam while in India, striding forward and full of purpose. It stands by the Volga River on the city’s long embankment, which is fringed on both sides by churches and the pastel-colored facades of 18th-century houses.  

Nikitin left the city known as the “gateway to Moscow” in the 15th century and traveled down the Volga, down to Baku and then across the Caspian Sea and through Persia to India.

Though he never made it back alive, his book “Journey Across Three Seas” became a famous travelogue. A movie of Nikitin’s life was made in both Hindi and Russian in 1958, and rock heartthrob Boris Grebenshchikov even wrote a song about the merchant with wanderlust.

But Tver’s link with India is not just something that belongs to history. One of the city’s poster boys today is Indian-born Harminder Chhatwal, owner of the region’s most successful supermarket chain, Tverskoi Kupets. Chhatwal came to the city as a student in 1991 and has lived there ever since. Now a Russian citizen, he even entered local politics on the United Russia ticket.

Chhatwal is not the only foreign presence in town. Japan’s Hitachi began the construction of a heavy-machinery factory with the support of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development last year. And there are joint ventures with Swedish and Swiss firms. Finnish coffee giant Paulig opened a roaster in 2011, which can process up to 6 million kilograms of coffee annually.      

The older of the two bridges that straddle the Volga as it meanders through Tver is a formidable cast-iron structure built by a Czech engineer in 1898 and partly financed by a French-Belgian carriage-making company.

The Volga is the heart of the city, which grew from the point where the 3,530-kilometer waterway joins with its more diminutive partner, the Tvertsa River. The city is the first big urban center of note on the Volga, which arises from a spring nearby in the Tver region.  

Tver is also located on the main railway lines and roads between the country’s two biggest cities — under the tsars the city was the 19th of 25 postal stations from the capital, St. Petersburg.

Though historians trace its origins back to the 12th century when Tver was founded by traders from Novgorod and recount its medieval struggle for supremacy with a young Moscow, there is little trace left of those times. A cataclysmic fire in 1763 means that the dominating architectural decor today is of Catherine the Great’s 18th century.

Much, of course, was reconstructed after World War II and the Nazi occupation. About 20,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in the 1941 battle for the city. Then Tver was known as Kalinin, after the Bolshevik revolutionary and official head of the Soviet Union between 1919 and 1946.      

In recent years, Tver has undergone a new cultural renaissance. As part of a state program called, Ver v Tver, or “Believe in Tver,” Moscow art entrepreneur Marat Gelman has launched a modern art gallery, TverCA, in the run-down Soviet river station at the confluence of the Volga and the Tvertsa. Following a similar project in Perm, Gelman is looking to replicate his success.      

But the well-maintained city center, redolent with neoclassical elegance, fades when you venture outside the city. The region as a whole has one of the highest levels of population decline in central Russia, losing 8 percent of its residents between 2002 and 2010, according to census figures.

More poetically, the region is also littered with the crumbling country estates of the imperial nobility that used to exit en masse from St. Petersburg in the summer months. A lack of funds and the sheer quantity of these sites mean that they are gradually being lost forever.

HOWARD AMOS / SPT

A bundled up woman selling fish caught in the Volga River, the heart of the city.

One modern son of Tver, the chanson superstar Mikhail Krug, had a particularly tragic end when he was killed by intruders in his city apartment in 2002 at the age of 50. His grave is still a point of pilgrimage for avid fans.

In a song about his home, “My Dear Town,” Krug’s opening verse goes: “My dear town of grief and tear/ The trusty foundation of Old Russia / You fall asleep to the whispers of the Volga and the Tvertsa / You fall asleep to the whispers of birches / Sleep my dear Mother Tver.”  

Krug is buried in the Dmitovo-Cherkassky Cemetery.   

What to see if you have two hours

Any visitor to Tver will be drawn inexorably to the city’s riverfront. But, never fear, this is where you should be. The city’s main sites, including onion-domed churches, monasteries, parks, monuments and the graceful 18th-century houses, line the flanks of the Volga. One can simply stroll up and down the two sides of the river, enjoying the view.

The most spectacular site to visit is Catherine the Great’s Travel Palace (3-3a Sovietskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-34-25-61; gallery.tversu.ru), where emperors would stay on their trips between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Set slightly back from the river, Russia’s most famous historian, Mikhail Karamzin, once did a public reading in the building to an audience, which included Alexander I. Today, it is an art gallery housing works by local artists and some treasures from nearby archaeological excavations.

What to do if you have two days

Those with more time on their hands can drop by some of the city’s churches and museums, or even venture out into a hinterland famed for its thousands of freshwater lakes.

Some of the small museums worth a visit include the Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin House-Museum (11/37 Rybatskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-34-34-96), where the famous satirist lived while he was serving as a deputy governor, and if peasant tools and merchant trinkets are your thing, the Museum of Tver’s Way of Life (19/4 Ulitsa Gorkova; +7 4822-52-49-03) or the Tver Local History Museum (5 Sovietskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-34-47-15). Information about all of Tver’s museums — and those in nearby towns — can be found at Tvermuzeum.ru.

If you have time to leave the city, a pleasant day trip can be made 60 kilometers along the road to St. Petersburg to the old town of Torzhok that has its own Travel Palace built for Catherine the Great. Further to the east is the picturesque Seliger Lake — actually a system of lakes — set in the rolling Valdai Hills. In July, the area is inundated with tens of thousands of youthful supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin taking part in their annual political forum.   

If you have time to head westward, you could aim for the small town of Kalyazin — also within striking distance of Sergiyev Posad and some of the northernmost towns of Moscow’s Golden Ring. On the Volga, Kalyazin is known for the haunting sight of the bell tower of the Makaryevsky Monastery that rises above the waters of the Uglich reservoir. The site was flooded during the construction of a hydroelectric station in 1940.

Nightlife

HOWARD AMOS / SPT

A street poster calling on local residents to be proud of their Tver heritage.

Classical music-lovers can visit the Tver Region Philharmonic (Teatralnaya Ploshad; +7 4822-34-64-34; tverfilarmonic.ru) that puts on regular concerts. Or you could see a movie at one of the only Soviet architectural intrusions on the city’s riverfront — the Zvezda Cinema (1 Naberezhnaya Stepana Razina; +7 4822-77-71-91; zvezda-kino.ru), which was built in 1937 as the constructivist movement was ending. The Tver Academic Drama Theater (16 Sovietskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-32-09-09; dramteatr-tver.ru) also puts on regular shows.

If you’re looking to lengthen your evening, however, then the Sunrise Club (50 Ulitsa Zhigareva; +7 4822-34-96-55; clubsunrise.ru) has one of the biggest dance floors in town — it also functions as a restaurant during the day. And for fans of the 1980s, there is the ‘80s Disco (5 Ulitsa Blagoyeva; +7 4822 50-33-22).  

Where to eat

The pedestrian mall Tryokhsvyatskaya Ulitsa — Tver’s version of Moscow’s Arbat — that runs through the center, part way between the railway station and the Volga is packed with fast-food outlets, coffee houses and restaurants. Western chains like Baskin-Robbins compete with Russian chains. Andy Warhol mock-ups of Saddam Hussein and Colonel Moammar Gadhafi make the Kalinin Bar (25/29 Tryokhsvyatskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-35-71-42) one of the most visible. It serves basic food as well as drinks. Another option is Fortuna (15 Tryokhsvyatskaya Ulitsa; +7 4822-33-09-49; fortuna-tver.ru) that offers a wide variety of dishes in an old merchant house. Main courses start from about 500 rubles ($17).  

Many of Tver’s pricier restaurants are to be found attached to its hotels. One is Birch Groves (14 Moskovskoye Shosse; +7 4822-49-77-80; parkhotel.ru/restaurant), a part of the Tver Park Hotel, where meat dishes cost about 1,000 rubles.  

Where to stay

The 159-room Volga Hotel (1 Ulitsa Zhelyabova; +7 4822 34-81-23; volga-tver.ru) is an unlovely building near the center of town — but rooms can be had from 2,500 rubles ($83) a night and apartments from upward of 5,000 rubles ($166). An even more budget option is the Tourist Hotel (47/102 Ulitsa Kominterna; +7 4822-34-61-78; hotel-tourist.ru), a stone’s throw from the railroad and bus stations. A one-person room starts at 1,300 rubles ($44) a night.

With a restaurant, spa room and conference facilities, the Osnabruk Hotel (20 Ulitsa Saltykova-Shchedrina; +7 4822-35-84-33; hotel.tver.ru) in the center of town offers a more upmarket stay. A one-person bedroom begins at 3,200 rubles ($110) while the top-range luxury rooms will set you back between 4,900 rubles and 5,900 rubles ($165-200). Nearer the edge of town but overlooking the Volga River is the smaller Tver Park Hotel (14 Moskovskoye Shosse; +7 4822-53-77-22; parkhotel.ru). A deluxe suite with a Volga view costs 4,600 rubles per night.

Conversation starters

If you want to get a reaction out of somebody from Tver — possibly a smile, possibly not — call them by their nickname — kozyol (for a man) or kozla (for a woman), which means goat. The apocryphal reason behind the (affectionate) term is that once, arriving in Tver after long delay, Catherine the Great found only a stray goat waiting where she was supposed to have been met by cheering crowds.

Or you could bring up former Tver Governor Dmitry Zelenin who stepped down in 2011, shortly after he used Twitter to post a photo of a worm he purportedly found in his food at a presidential reception. The Kremlin cast doubt on the veracity of his claim.  

HOWARD AMOS / SPT

One of the numerous ancient churches scattered throughout the city.

How to get there

The easiest way to reach Tver from St. Petersburg is by train. There are dozens of daily trains from the city’s Moscow Railway Station. The journey takes at least six hours and tickets cost 870 rubles ($30) for a platzkart ticket and 2,070 rubles ($70) for a coupe ticket each way.

On the main line between St. Petersburg and the capital, the express Sapsan service is the quickest option — it stops in Tver 2 hours and 40 minutes after leaving St. Petersburg. Ticket prices vary depending on the day and time, but can cost between 2,200 and 6,000 rubles ($74 to $200).

Tver is not served by a civilian airport, although there are plans to build one.

Tver

Population: 404,150

Main industries: Machine-building and chemicals

Mayor: Vladimir Babichev

Founded in 1135

Interesting fact: Empress Catherine the Great said Tver was Russia’s second most beautiful city after St. Petersburg.

Helpful contacts: • Mayor Vladimir Babichev (+7 4822-35-57-88; tverduma.ru), • head of the Tver Chamber of Commerce Leonid Musin (+7 4822-35-98-43; tverregion.ru)

Sister cities: Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria; Yingkou, China; Hämeenlinna, Finland; Besancon, France; Kaspovar, Hungary; Bergamo, Italy; Khmelnitsky, Ukraine.

Major Businesses

• Tver Wagon Factory (45B Peterburgskoye Shosse; +7 4822-55-91-00; tvz.ru). One of the oldest factories in town, it has been churning out railway cars since its opening under Tsar Nicholas II in 1898. The biggest factory of its type in the country, it is 42.5 percent state-controlled.

• Tvershyolk (1 Dvor Proletarki;

+7 4822-42-24-97). Built in 1954 on the ruins of a cotton factory destroyed during World War II, Tver’s silk factory actually works with a variety of fabrics, including flax, and fulfills uniform contracts for the Defense Ministry and other security agencies.

• Tverstekloplastik (45 Ulitsa P. Savelevoi; +7 4822-55-33-11; steklonit.com) is one of two factories owned by Steklonit, part of the Ruskompozit group, the country’s biggest producer of synthetic materials and fiberglass. The plant produces glass fibers used for everything from small boats to ice hockey protection pads.

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Malaya Business Insight

Posted on 10th April 2012 in The monuments of world
Details
Published on Wednesday, 11 April 2012 00:00

‘Time, they say, heals pain but it is something to be concerned of when history is revised and truth is perverted.’

IN last Monday’s commemoration of Bataan day, Japanese Ambassador Toshinao Urabe once again expressed his country’s “heart-felt apologies and deep sense of remorse of the tragedy” that occurred 70 years ago.

It’s good that we commemorate what happened on April 9, 1942 so the younger generation would be told what our forefathers sacrificed to us to enjoy the freedom that we have today.

Time, they say, heals pain but it is something to be concerned of when history is revised and truth is perverted. The book “Under the Stacks” by Saul Hofileña criticized many of those perversions.

There is a chapter “The Yasukuni Shrine and the Japanese War Monuments in the Philippines” where he talked about the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo which pays homage to the millions of Japanese war dead.

He said in the shrine is an Imperial War Museum which displays countless weapons, guns, armaments, military impedimenta and war memorabilia.

Hofileña said that prominently displayed in the halls of the museum is a “ strange looking midget plane called an Oka aircraft.”

“It is an engineless, cigar-shaped suicide aircraft. When called to use, its nose was packed with explosives and bore a single kamikaze helmsman who would guide the plane’s deadly cargo to its predetermined target,” he wrote.

There is also a statue of a lone kamikaze pilot prominently displayed on the museum grounds, he said.

Hofileña continued his account of the Yakusuni Shrine: “The statue is an identical twin of another statue which stands in an enclosed shrine in Mabalacat, Pampanga and erected by the Japanese with the help of a former mayor of the town. It is outrageous that a government official would agree to the establishment of a kamikaze statue on the Philippine soil when Filipinos suffered so much in the hands of the Japanese during the Second World War.

“Aside from that kamikaze monument in Mabalacat, there are two other objectionable war memorials erected by the Japanese and situated in Los Baños, laguna. One honors the memory of Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita, the ‘Tiger of Malaya’, who was given the mission by Tokyo to defend the Philippines during the waning days of Japan’s militaristic empire.

“His monument is erected on the very site where he was hanged before dawn. There is a plaque written in Japanese without an English or Tagalog translation. Some say it is the last haiku written by Yamashita. The other monument shamelessly honors Gen. Masaharu Homma as a martyr to world peace when we know it was he who led the 14th Army responsible for the fall of the Philippines and for the infamous death march.

“The twin monuments are disgraceful because Laguna was ground zero for the numerous massacres perpetrated by the Japanese in their ‘subjugation’ campaigns in Southern Luzon.

“The existence of these monuments on Philippine soil are beyond comprehension to those who have read their history. Maybe the alleged haiku extols Yamashita for a job well done.

“Why we have forgotten our past so soon should be the subject of another monument to remind us of our collective amnesia.”

Hofileña’s book is good material to jolt us out of that self-induced amnesia.

Hofileña said the title of his book , Under the Stacks, is a phrase which means “buried under a pile or heap of books, papers, musty documents, unread volumes, and treasured ephemera bearing words embaled by time.”

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Research and Markets: Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide

Posted on 21st March 2012 in The monuments of world

DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/da1a4140/managing_image_col) has announced the addition of Woodhead Publishing Ltd’s new book “Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide” to their offering.

This book explores issues surrounding all aspects of visual collection management, taken from real-world experience in creating management systems and digitizing core content. Readers will gain the knowledge to manage the digitization process from beginning to end, assess and define the needs of their particular project, and evaluate digitization options. Additionally, they will select strategies which best meet current and future needs, acquire the knowledge to select the best images for digitization, and understand the legal issues surrounding digitization of visual collections.

Key Features

- Offers practical information for the busy information professional

- Concentrates solely on image management

- Focuses on unique needs of born digital and digitized images

- Provides a step-by-step guide on starting a digitization project

- Centres on image management in a non-museum institutional setting

- Presents accessible, action-oriented information

Readership

Information professionals with average technical abilities and little or no art history knowledge who may find themselves in the position of managing image collections by themselves or a small staff and directing a digitization project. Library science students and those who may be thinking of a career in image management in an institutional setting may also be interested.

Author

Margot Note has a Master’s in History from Sarah Lawrence College a Master’s in Library and Information Science, and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Archives and Records Management, both from Drexel University. She is a Certified Archivist based in New York and is the Director of Archives and Information Management at World Monuments Fund, an international historic preservation organization.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/da1a4140/managing_image_col

Source: Woodhead Publishing Ltd

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