Category: Book Review

“If you have a library and a garden, you want for nothing else”: British saying.

From Chapter 4. What we can learn from the British, Mark Cullen and Ben Cullen’s Escape to Reality: how the world is changing gardening and gardening is changing the world.

I found in the COGS Library Alice Sparberg Alexiou’s biography Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary.

Chapter 10, Economist without Portfolio, starts with the question ” Why do some places get rich, but not others ?” (p 169).

In ‘On the Mechanics of Economic Development’, Robert Lucas, who would win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1995, argued that places that thrive do so mostly as a result of what economists call ‘human capital’ (p169). When Lucas was developing his hypothesis, he read Jacob’s 1969 book The Economy of Cities. Her book, Lucas realized, was all about the external effects of human capital, and it helped his ideas take shape (p 170).
“As Jacobs had rightly emphasized and illustrated with hundreds of concrete examples, much of economic life is ‘creative’ in much the same way as ‘art’ or ‘science’ (p 171).

“All economic growth since the industrial revolution is due to ideas,” Lucas says ” But growth theory for years ignored the force of ideas. For Jacobs, this question is the centre of everything’. ” Jacobs, he says “shows that most of the ideas come from the ground, not R & D departments” (p 171).

From Jacobs, ” I think we are misled by universities … into thinking that there actually are separate fields of knowledge. But no, they link up … everything is a seamless web … and its a very functional thing, not just a poetic expression.”

Combine these observations by Jacobs with the Chronicle Herald article on the new rural economy. The PLACE model of Community Development comes from seven years of research on Fogo Island by Memorial University in partnership with the Shorefast Foundation.

Promote community champions
Link Insiders and Outsiders
Assess local capacities
Convey compelling narratives
Engage both/and thinking

‘It is through a commitment to place, and principles of PLACE, that champions muster the energy, creativity and other resources to renew a community’s economy and sense of purpose.’

Further to my conversations with Brian Arnott (see my earlier blog) Jane Jacobs can be considered both an urban visionary and a rural visionary.

Postscript

This week, we settled on the format for the Local Authors Question and Answer session at the EBLES event on June 29th. Bob Bent, Marilyn Jones and Dianne LeGard, all members of Authors Ink, will discuss their work. They will address the question: Why do I write? What do I like to write about? How is my writing published? How to market my book(s)?

Acknowledgements
Brian Arnott for his thoughts on economic development in rural communities. Edward Wedler for his graphics contribution.

References

Alice Sparberg Alexiou. 2006. Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary. Harper Collins Publishing.

Mark Cullen and Ben Cullen. 2018. Escape to Reality. How the World is changing Gardening and how Gardening is changing the World. Nimbus Books.

Barbara Dean-Simmons. Chronicle Herald. Friday, May 24,2019. How unexpected ideas are leading to a new rural economy. Part 3. Taking the Past into the Future. p A8-A9.

After five weeks in the North, what has changed on the home front? First, Dr Mackinnon has retired. This means no family doctor. Make sure that you have registered on the 811 list; not an encouraging sign, especially given the recent video that went viral on a young cancer patient. Second, Highway #201 is still full of logging trucks removing trees from the remaining forests of Southwest Nova Scotia. Third, no news on the Gordonstoun build outside of Bridgetown. It does make you wonder whether we need a change in our political leadership. or are most of our woes related to the performance of the civil service? In which case, we need a ‘change in the culture’.

On a more positive note, courtesy of Amazon, I returned to find two new books by David Manners. You may recall from an earlier blog, that he wrote a novel in the 1940s about rural living in Centrelea. In The Wonder within You, David Morgan-Jones gives a useful biographical introduction to Manners’ life. Manners was born in Halifax in 1900. After going to the University of Toronto to study Forestry, while there, he started his acting career. In the 1930’s he was a Hollywood film star. He dropped out, and moved to Yucca Loma where he wrote two novels: Convenient Season (1941) and Under Running Laughter (1943). He shared his life with Bill Mercer (1948-1978) in both Yucca Loma and Santa Barbara. Manners died in 1998. Awakening from the Dream of Me (1987) was described as ‘a unique collection of aphorisms from an American sage‘. The Wonder within You (2005), edited by Morgan-Jones, was published after his death. It contains a selection of quotation from both his newsletters and journals. For example,

‘No tools, no money, no travel, no teacher, no group, no organization is needed. The ultimate is here, and it is free and open to everyone. No identification card is needed, no scroll of great deeds or list of failures. Come as you are, naked of the world’s judgements.’

From the past, this month, I have received emails from students who were in Lawrencetown in the 1980s. Bill Castel and his mother, Pat, were both students at NSLSI in the Scientific Computer programming program. Sidey Timmins and his sister, Ann, were both students in the new GIS program from the mid-eighties. I have also been in contact with Danielle Robinson. She is PhD candidate at the University of Guelph looking at food sustainability and rural tourism.  She is making a comparison between the Okanagan Valley, BC and the Annapolis Valley, NS. I look forward to her visit to Nova Scotia next month.

My last piece of reading, I picked up this week, at my father-in-law’s house in New Glasgow. The book is by Joan Dawson Nova Scotia’s Lost Communities: the early settlements that helped build the province. Besides raising questions about the historical exploitation of the Nova Scotian landscape, whether saw mills, shipbuilding or mining, it offers us a reminder that the current overexploitation of our resources will again pass into history. However, it does beg the question: will we ever learn? To do things differently?

Acknowledgements

To those friends and relatives who believe that ‘there must be a better way’ without exploiting people and the planet. To Heather Stewart and Edward Wedler, fellow travellers.

Postscript

After five weeks away, I have five issues of The Guardian Weekly to digest. Just imagine.     In the April 19th. edition, there is a promising book review of Outpost by Dan Richards. Alex Preston, the reviewer compares the writing to the work of Robert MacFarlane. Time to use the services of inter-library loan in Lawrencetown.

 

References

David Manners.1987. Awakening from the Dream of Me. Non-stop Books.

David Morgan-Jones. (ed).2005. The Wonder within You. From the Metaphysical journals of David Manners. Trafford Publishing.

Joan Dawson. 2018. Nova Scotia’s Lost Communities: The Early Settlements that helped Build the Province. Nimbus Publishing.

We have been in Iqaluit for a week. One of the first stops was the Arctic Ventures store. They have a good collection of Northern literature from Inhabit Media. All week, I have been reading The Hands’ Measure. It is a series of essays honouring Leah Aksaajuk Otak’s contribution to Arctic Science.

”Leah was an oral historian and linguist with the Nunavut Research Institute in Igloolik. Leah’s lifelong advocacy of Inuit culture and language was uniquely expressed in her passionate promotion of traditional sewing skills and clothing-making techniques.

”To measure with the hands” she asserted, was the essential first step in producing a perfectly fitting garment. Aptly this axiom serves as a proxy for Leah’s unwavering certainty about the essential role of tradition in contemporary Inuit society”.

The nineteen essays were edited by John MacDonald and Nancy Wachowich. Of particular note, for myself, were the contributions by Claudio Aporta and Hugh Brody. Claudio teaches at Dalhousie University. Hugh is an anthropologist and filmmaker and holds the Canada Research Chair at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Aporto’s essay ‘Living, Travelling, Sharing. How the Land permeates the Town through Stories’ contained the following quotation.

”The concept of ‘body of knowledge’ only scratches the surface of that complex relationship that Inuit have with their environment. As Tim Ingold (2000) has argued, it is in the unveiling of relationships that people truly learn, through a process that he calls ‘enskilment’. Many books have been written describing this or that aspect of Inuit knowledge, but knowledge separated from skills (and actual performance) has only partial meaning in the Inuit world. This is perhaps true of any knowledge, but in the Inuit approach to learning, knowledge, skills and performance are fundamentally entangled, to the point that separating them is detrimental or nonsensical.”

Or Hugh Brody’s essay on ‘The People’s Land – the Film’

”To write about the film now is to be reminded that… hundreds of others in the North were determined that Inuit history be known, Inuit knowledge respected and the Inuit land – the people’s land – be a continuing source of every kind of nourishment for the Inuit.” The People’s Land was filmed in Pond Inlet in 1974.

Visiting grandchildren in the North, this book raises a number of questions.

For example,
What is the concept of an elder in Western society?
What skills do we have to pass on?
What happens when you remove people (elders) from the land?

References

John MacDonald and Nancy Wachowich (ed). 2018. The Hands’ Measure. Published by Nunavut Arctic College Media.

Inhabit Education is a Nunavut-based educational publishing company with a mandate to provide educators and parents with educational resources that are infused with authentic Northern perspectives, ways of life and imagery.Inhabit Education

 

 

 

 

Measure

Last week at the Box of Delights bookstore in Wolfville, I noticed a new series of Penguin Books – Great Ideas. Number #99 was by George Orwell Some Thoughts on the Common Toad. It contained eight essays, including a defence of PG Wodehouse, an examination of Gullivers Travels, and a commentary on Tolstoy and William Shakespeare.

In the Great Ideas series, Orwell also contributed #20 Why I Write and also #57 Books v. Cigarettes. Further online research took me to the Penguin Classics web site.

From Some Thoughts on the Common Toad:

” So long as you are not critically ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp. Spring is still Spring.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth still goes around the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it” p.6.

With minus 20 degrees centigrade on the outside thermometer, it was good to stay indoors with a wood stove and the comfort of Penguin books.

The Orwell essays complemented my reading of Ernest Buckler. I had the opportunity to read Glance in the Mirror. This quotation caught my eye.

“They thought that writing was always wonderful, but most of the time it was the loneliest job in the world. That crippling stillness when you sat down to try the first few lines. As if everything you looked at was tensed for you to make a sound and you are tongue-tied, like someone in a nightmare. If that lasted long enough you would sit there then and hear the sound of your own life going by. A lifetime is not forever, and yours was already half gone.”

EBLES hopes to present Glance in the Mirror as a short play on June 29th at the Temple in Bridgetown.

For the last two weeks, we have been dog-sitting Uke and Siqsiq, our son’s twelve-year-old retired sled dogs. As Arctic dogs, they enjoy the cold weather. Cold comfort! Daily walks make us appreciate the wood stove and the books.

Acknowledgements

Anne Crossman for transcribing Glance in the Mirror. Heather Stewart for help with the dog walking and loading the wood stove. Edward Wedler for the graphics.

References

George Orwell. 2010. Some Thoughts on the Common Toad. Penguin Books. Great Ideas #99

Ernest Buckler. Glance in the Mirror

The idea for the Ernest Blair Experiment blog came from a combination of Ernest Buckler, writing about the Annapolis Valley and Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) known for his writing about England. When I came across John Sutherland’s book Orwell’s Nose – a pathological biography, it was hard to resist.

Sutherland, Emeritus Professor of English at the University College London describes Orwell’s life (b. 1903 and d. 1950) in terms of his literary career, but within the context of smells.

David Lodge, in his review of the book, states. ‘Orwell’s obsession with smells, agreeable and (more often) offensive, has been noted before, but never explored to such effect, not excluding the smells of shag tobacco and BO he emitted himself’.

Orwell was born before the First World War and died after the Second. He went to school at Eton, served in the Burma police service. He was inspired by social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. He spent time ‘down and out in Paris and London’, as well as visiting the North of England (The Road to Wigan Pier).
 
His final book was Nineteen Eighty-Four, completed on the remote Scottish island of Jura.

Robert MacFarlane, in The Wild Places, writes:

” It is clear that Orwell needed to be in that wild landscape to create his novel; that there was reciprocality between the self-willed land in which he was living and the autonomy of spirit about which he was writing. The price of this vision, though, was his life’.  p.140.

It is interesting to reflect on the next generation in England, born around the start of the Second World War and subsequently emigrating to either Canada or Australasia. I am part of that generation, as well as my older brother. This year my artist-brother has put together a series of postcard paintings for his grandchildren, with notes for every five years of his life. This has now been supplemented with a YouTube video matching each postcard painting.

All of this reflection has set me thinking. How does the landscape enter into the writing task?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Edward  Wedler for his graphics contribution. Peter Maher for sharing his autobiographical work in progress. Shared memories indeed.

References

John Sutherland. 2016. Orwell’s Nose. Reaktion Books.

Robert MacFarlane. 2008. The Wild Places. Penguin Books.

George Orwell’s books include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Coming up for Air, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

 

On CBC’s The Sunday Edition (December 2nd), Michael Enright interviewed Maryanne Wolf on the subject of the reading brain in the digital world and her new book.  

 

The following day, we went over to Mahone Bay and Lunenburg. At Lexicon Books, I purchased a copy of the earlier book Proust and the Squid: the story and science of the Reading Brain.

‘Knowing what reading demands of our brain and knowing how it contributes to our capacity to think, to feel, to infer and to understand other human beings is especially important today, as we make the transition from a reading brain to an increasingly digital one.’ p.4.

Wolf describes the reading brain’s development and evolution – both the personal-intellectual and the biological. She uses Marcel Proust as a metaphor and the squid as an analogy for two different aspects of reading.

Proust saw reading as a kind of ‘intellectual sanctuary’ where human beings have access to thousands of different realities.

‘The study of what the human brain has to do to read is analogous to the study of the squid in earlier neuroscience’.

My interest revolves around the relationship between reading about a landscape and experiencing that landscape. From my blogs, you will have noticed the tendency to link reading of a variety of local authors to our sense of place.

The other dimension relates to our changing digital world (check out the podcast). There is a difference between book-length reading and short blogs. It is increasingly difficult to balance the reading brain between these different formats. However, the challenges presented by Wolf in her books make it all worthwhile.

Addendum

Kent Thompson describes his search for copies of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as an excuse for getting out of town on his bicycle. Today, I found two volumes of this book at the Thrift store in the village of Lawrencetown.

My second link relates to Alain de Botton’s book The Art of Travel. He describes the work of John Ruskin on word-painting.

‘The effectiveness of Ruskin’s word-painting derived from his method of not only describing what places looked like but also analyzing their effect on us in psychological language. He recognized that many places strike us as beautiful not on the basis of aesthetic criteria – but on the basis of psychological criteria because they embody a value or mood of importance to us’.

Back to Wolf (in fact Walter Ong)

‘The interaction between morality that all human beings are born into, and the technology of writing, which no one is born into, touches the depth of the psyche.

Writing introduces division and alienation, but a higher unity as well. It intensifies the sense of self and fosters more conscious interaction between persons. Writing is consciousness-raising’.

Finally, Marcel Proust:

‘I believe that reading, in its original essence, is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.

References

CBC Sunday Edition. December 2, 2018. Michael Enright. Podcast.  Come Home: the Reading Brain in the Digital World.

Maryanne Wolf. 2008. Proust and the Squid. The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Harper Perennial.

Maryanne Wolf. 2018. Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper and Collins.

Alain de Botton.2002. The Art of Travel. Penguin Books.

In 1926, William Inglis Morse self-published a limited edition book, Eccentrics in Paradise and Other Essays. Besides short descriptions of some of the characters in the village, it also offers a description of the village itself.

‘In the Notes of 1888 (Ticknor and Company, Boston) Paradise is sketched as a ‘pleasantly situated village of about 400 inhabitants, with several sawmills, grist mills and tanneries. The principal exports are lumber and cheese, though there are also large deposits of merchantable granite in the vicinity’. p.8.

With reference to the Mi’kmaq:

‘their habitat was a government grant on the south side of the Annapolis River, at the head of the tide, from which vantage ground they witnessed the passing of the years and the river flowing to the sea.’ p.12

The book’s appeal, besides the title, is the relationship between the author and a specific place. Today, we still have the Morse estate and Burnbrae Farm.

A second example of author and place is between Elizabeth Bishop and Great Village. This week, Sandra Barry gave me a copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s Great Village. A Self-guided Tour. This is a beautiful combination of maps, history and images linked to Bishop’s writing.

‘ Bishop’s childhood in Great Village had a profound effect on her and years later her memories found their way into poems and stories. The village and its people were not merely subjects in Bishop’s work, her experience with them fundamentally shaped her worldview and artistic sensibility’. p 1.

A third example can be found in the writing of Kent Thompson, Getting out of town by book and bike. Thompson describes a bicycle ride from Annapolis Royal to West Dalhousie, and then back to Lequille on the old Dalhousie Road.

” Some 65 kilometres. Great day; one of the great rides in Nova Scotia. I almost hate to tell anyone about it. Might want to keep it a secret” p.98

En route, he visits Ernest Buckler’s gravesite at Gibson’s Lake.

” The graveyard sloped upward on one side, and on the other, the lake lapped softly in the sun, like the breathing of someone asleep”. p 91.

The original quote is from The Mountain and the Valley p. 89. For the full context, read Thompson, Chapter 6 Secret Road to the Lost Village. p. 83-98.

There, we have three very different examples of the relationship between literature and geography. I am not sure whether the self-guided tour format produced by Sandra Barry for the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia could be transferred to a self-guided bicycle tour of West Dalhousie for the Ernest Buckler Literary Event Society. What is evident, is that there are ‘eccentrics’ in many small rural communities. Their observations on rural life continue to sustain us, or in Sandra Barry’s words:

” Great Village is a place where roads converge. Each road (each travelled by Bishop) is followed to the edge of the village with hints of what lies beyond’ p. 1.

or Kent Thompson:

‘You can even capture passing time, a way of life with all its implements and terms, which is escaping. And is gone to the eye, now. Not a farm left on this road.” p.98.

The last word is with David Canaan (aka Ernest Buckler)

‘Suddenly he knew how to surmount everything….. (And all that time the key to freedom had been lying in these lines, this book) There was only one way to possess anything: to say it exactly. Then it would be outside you, captured and conquered.” MV p.195.

Note
Discussions with Edward Wedler reveals that economic development has sprung from connecting literature/film to place (including Nova Scotia), as noted in his blog post “What do the Films Outlander, Titanic and Def-Con 4 have in Common?”

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Edward Wedler, Sandra Barry and Heather Stewart.

Reminder

There is a screening of Climate Change and the Human Prospect on Wednesday, November 28th at Kings Theatre, Annapolis Royal at 7:30 pm. It will be followed by a Question and Answer session with Timothy Habinski, Gregory Heming and Robert Cervelli.

References

Willam Inglis Morse. 1926. Eccentrics in Paradise and Other Essays. Nathan Sawyer, Boston.

Sandra Barry 2005. Elizabeth Bishop’s Great Village. A Self-Guided Tour. Gaspereau Press.

Kent Thompson. 2001. Getting out of town by book and bike. Gaspereau Press.

Ernest Buckler. 1952. The Mountain and the Valley. McClelland and Stewart.(MV)