Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I have made it to Luhansk safely and soundly with no problems. This year’s logistics were made incredibly difficult due to the grounding of much of the domestic air fleet in Ukraine, so some alternative plans had to be found…

This year, I flew though Amsterdam on Northwest Airlines. Northwest is partnered with Air France and Royal Dutch Airlines, but luckily the association with Air France has not adversely affected it. For some reason, I was not able to check in all the way through to Kiev, but would have to do so once again in Amsterdam, which was a bit of a concern. I think it had something to do with the odd security arrangements in the Amsterdam airport; when we got out of the plane, we were just “dumped” in an unsecured terminal.

It took about a half hour to secure a boarding pass at the transfer desk, but the departure terminal was not ridiculously far away, so I made it with about twenty minutes to spare. Security was pretty simple- it seems that each gate has its own checkpoint, so it went pretty quickly.

We flew to Kiev in a Boeing 737, which was like flying in an old friend after the cramped and crowded 757 I took from Boston. On that flight there were three of us in our row, and none of us was particularly petite, so we were packed in like sardines. The flight to Kiev on the other hand was pretty spacious- I shared a row for three with a Ukrainian physicist teaching at UC Sacramento. She was a little nervous about flying, but was good conversation.

The baggage did show up in Kiev, but I believe mine was the last off the plane, so I was getting pretty nervous. I couldn’t find a luggage cart, so I was forced to deal with my two suitcases, carry on, and backpack on my own. Luckily the driver from the Hotel Lybid spotted me pretty quickly and helped me navigate past the land sharks that are Kiev taxi drivers.

Getting to the hotel took quite a long lime. Kiev is a massive and spread out city. My driver spoke passable English and pointed out the sites along the way, including the square where the Orange Revolution took place, the Parliament building, and Prime Minister’s office. There were also several old churches and a monastery. On top of the hill that Kiev surrounds is the “Iron Lady” a huge statue to memorialize the suffering of Ukrainians under the Nazis.

The Hotel Lybid was a built in Soviet times, but renovated recently and seems to cater to the growing tourist and international business industries. The “standard” room was quite small, but comfortable. The beds were very narrow, but comfortable. The TV even had the BBC world service so I could catch up on some news. The best part of the room was the view. My room was on the 15th floor overlooking a square with a beautiful monument to WWII veterans and the local circus building.

I tried to do a little exploring around the hotel, but unlike Luhansk, where the streets are on a grid pattern, Kiev’s streets go every which way. After an unsuccessful attempt to find an international phone card, I simply gave up and went back to the hotel for dinner. I did get a free pair of jeans for stopping by a cell phone kiosk. The worker told me it was a gift from the people of Kiev. I hope they will fit my son, because there is no way I will ever be able to stuff myself into them.

Coming bask to the hotel, I found Mike with my train ticket to Luhansk. Mike is Olena’s (my Luhansk contact) brother. After explaining the train schedule, he made arrangements to have his wife Tatiana show me around the city the next day. After dinner and a well needed shower, I slept like the dead.

I woke up at 8am. Tatiana was to meet me at 11:30, so I walked around the square, had a good breakfast, and secured rooms for my return trip. Tatiana found me and we took a whirlwind tour of the city. We stopped by St. Michael’s (?) church which is about 900 years old. The icon and fresco work were breathtaking. I was allowed to take some pictures, but had to pay 3hr to do so.

From there, we walked to the Golden Gate which is a reconstruction of the ruins of the old city walls. I was struck by the shear mass of the thing. Much of the exterior masonry work is modern, although the internal work is from the 11th century. There are several levels which if you are willing to walk up the steps to the top offer a fantastic view.

Tatiana and I then went on a search for an international phone center so I could call home. We found one near Independence Square and also found some phone cards for future use. Since we still had a few hours, we went to a 12th century monastery.

The monastery is a massive complex, built on the side of the hill. Once inside the gates, the interior is dominated by a church and bell tower. The church was just as beautiful as St. Michael’s, but no pictures were allowed. Of special interest to me was a book museum with looked at the history of printing in the monastery and Kiev, covering everything from illuminated manuscripts to the most modern children’s popup book.

After a quick meal at a Ukrainian cafeteria, Tatiana and I went back to the Lybid to meet Mike, collect my stored luggage, and get to the train station. Mike organized a taxi, so we hauled all my stuff into the van and took off. The driver informed us that it can take up to an hour to get to the train station, even though it is only a 5-10 minute walk. That made me nervous as we had forty minutes to get there, find the track and get my luggage on board.

Luckily the traffic gods were with us and we got there in about 10 minutes, but the scene that unfolded before is at the station defies description (but I’ll try anyway). The building is huge, and was completely surrounded by taxi cabs, cars, and busses, about 10 deep, just dropping people off anywhere and everywhere. Somehow the driver managed to get us up close, so we literally jumped out and grabbed the luggage so the next car could get through. Once inside the station, the chaos continued, but everything was so well laid out and marked, that it was a breeze to get to the train, which we did with 10 minutes to spare.

Mike and Tatiana helped get me situated in my compartment, which I would share with some woman who spoke no English. After saying my goodbyes, I settled in at a window in the corridor, and watched the scenery go by. I have never been on a long distance train ride before do I was not really sure of what goes on. After about an hour a woman came by with beer, so I bought a warm liter of Stella. Once it was too dark to see anything, I settled into my bunk and read Peter Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread, part of AK Press’s Working Classics Series (a review will be forthcoming).I dozed off around 10pm, but woke up at 1 and could not fall back to sleep. Part of the problem was that we could not figure out how to turn off the light over the bunks.

After tossing fitfully until 6am, I did manage to fall back to sleep for a few hours. The rest of the ride into Luhansk was uneventful and Olena and Irina found me right away. Before going to the hotel, we stopped by the travel agency to get a plane ticket from Doneskt to Kiev for the return trip.

A lot has changed in the last year. The theater building that has been under construction for years is just about done, as are the University’s new business center and two new office blocks on Defense Street. Sadly, the University Café where I took my meals for the last two years is closed for the summer, so I will be eating at the hotel, which apparently has always had a dining room. The food is very good there and the portions are huge, far more than I can hope to eat. I did happen to bump into the Galina, who used to run the café, but now works down the street. It was nice to see her, when I was sick my first year, she worked very hard to get the right food into me.

I hope to have a better update later on the city as a whole, pretty soon, so stay tuned.

On the Road Again

I will be hitting the road again tonight for Luhansk for a third round of Franklin Pierce's Summer Language Institute. It will be a long trip this time around, but I'll get a good view of the country.

Nowtopia

What is the nature of work and class in this postmodern age? That is the fundamental question Chris Carlsson asks in his latest book, Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today! Carlsson’s analysis of the way ordinary men and women challenge selected aspects of the commercialism of life and the atomization of the “classical” working class is both insightful and will lead to further theoretical investigation of what a reconstituted working class will eventually look like.

Carlsson begins his book on a discussion of how we define work. Is it just the paid work we do? Or is it the ways in which people come together to make their goals happen? Carlsson understands that the ordinary worker (and if we draw a paycheck, we are, after all workers) cannot completely separate themselves from the logic of the capitalist economic system. We need to be able to pay the rent and provide for the other necessities/niceties of life. During the time we work, we are at the mercy of the system. It is how workers organize the free time that becomes meaningful in his analysis.

The late capitalist system in which we live has become quite adept at colonizing the free time of the workers in the system, especially those workers who identify themselves as the middle/professional class. The extra hours, the working vacations, the work done at home are all part of a system that expects more from people while giving them less of what workers have traditionally worked for- security, money, and free time.

Nowtopia focuses on how some segments of our society are trying to reclaim their “free time” and rebuild communities. The gardeners, bikers, and programmers that Carlsson features in the book have these two things in common. The creation of a community that is not profit based becomes a type of work, but a work that is not defined by the capitalist system.

Carlsson’s analysis is excellent and he understands completely that pervasiveness of the capitalist system and its ability to colonize even the activities of these emerging communities. The rent, after all, needs to be paid in cash, not garden grown tomatoes.

D.M. James Parsons, Oct. 25, 1966-Mar. 13, 2008

For my brother, Jim Parsons

Catullus 101
Tr. William Parsons
Carried through many lands and many seas,
I have come, brother, to this sad grave
so I may give to you the final offices of the dead
and to speak in vain to your voiceless ashes.
Alas, since Fortune has unfairly taken
you away from me,
now accept, under these circumstances,
these sad gifts, the ancient custom of our parents,
flowing with brotherly tears,
and now and forever, hale and farewell.

Sunday Salon, November 25, 2007

The Archimedes Codex
Reviel Netz & William Noel

The Archimedes Codex is the story of the conservation and study of a palimpsest. For the general reader, this is probably not the most enthralling premise for a book. For a book person, especially one who cares about ancient literature, it is a bombshell. What the authors of this book and their team have done is re-present several lost texts of the Greek polymath Archimedes and orator Hyperides to the world.

The “ugly” little prayer book which contains these extraordinary texts is a palimpsest. A palimpsest is a parchment book that has been scraped (erased) and reused. In 1229, a monk/scribe named Ioannes Myronas reused the parchment from several manuscripts to copy out the prayer book. Since then the book survived wars, the elements, and neglect to end up in the hands of a private collector who wisely turned it over the Walter Art Gallery in Baltimore for conservation and scholarly attention.

Natz, a Stanford classicist interested in ancient science, and Noel, the curator of manuscripts at the Walters, trade chapters, each explaining the part of the project that they are most familiar with. I would like to look at each author’s contribution separately.

Natz’s description of the significance of Archimedes’ math is very helpful, especially for the non-specialist. What is significant about the findings in the codex is how advanced Archimedes was; he was anticipating the work of Newton and Galileo by almost 2,000 years. Scholars knew Archimedes was an inspiration to the later physicists, but did not understand the true extent of his contribution. Much of his work was lost by the time of Newton. What the codex is showing scholars is a fuller picture of just what Archimedes was capable of. Infinity and probability, two of the most surprising issues that Archimedes tackles in the palimpsested leaves of the codex would elude scholars for hundreds if not thousands of years. One has to question what would have happened to the history of science if Archimedes was widely read in his own day or not ignored in medieval times.

The project to conserve and study the codex was the overall responsibility of Noel. The Walters has an impressive manuscript collection which I have visited several times over the years. Certainly the eye is drawn to the beautifully illuminated examples that grace the collection. The codex is aesthetically “ugly” to use Noel’s words, but significant for the information hidden in its pages. Noel takes the reader through the process of acquisition, conservation, and imaging the codex that will allow it to be read by scholars today and preserve it for future generations. Noel’s explanation of the various imaging techniques is invaluable for the layman.

What is especially fascinating in Noel’s account is the reconstruction of the codex’ providence. There was a real question about the legality of the sale of the manuscript. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul claimed that the book was stolen, and there is evidence that they did indeed own it at some point. The mechanism of transfer from a religious institution in Istanbul to a private collection in Paris is not satisfactorily explained, perhaps because such an explanation is now impossible. The role of the book dealer Dikran Kelekian, who was supposed to have been involved with the book in Paris in 1931, needs further investigation or explanation at the very least, as does the role of Marie Louis Sirieix; how did he end up with the manuscript from Istanbul?

The Archimedes Codex is a fascinating read. While the book is written for the layman, I believe there is something for the scholar as well. The mathematics of Archimedes is explained in simple language as is the advanced technology used to pull the text from the pages. And what a text it is! Ever since reading Luciano Ganfora’s The Vanished Library, as a young undergraduate, I have been fascinated by what western civilization has lost of its intellectual heritage. Netz and Noel have closed that gap just a little for us and I, for one, am eternally grateful.

Sunday Salon, November 18, 2007

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Umberto Eco

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is the latest novel by the Italian semiotician and essayist Umberto Eco. Whenever confronted by a new work of fiction by Eco, you can count on two things-- an erudite discussion on some aspect of culture and history and a storyline that that will leave you riveted.

The plot of the book is deceptively simple. Yambo, and elderly book dealer awakes from a post-stroke coma to realize that he remembers nothing of his life-his past, his family, and his passions—but can remember every line of every book he has read. Yambo, with the help of his wife, beautiful and smart assistant, best friend, and the woman who cares for his ancestral house, tries to untangle the mystery of his life by looking at the books he has read and then relating them to the anecdotes the others tell him of his life.

What Eco presents in this novel is a discussion on the meaning of identity. As a book person, I know how personal my choices of reading have been. So much of life, especially for someone whose stock and trade are books and words, is tied to what we have read. But that picture is incomplete. We are more than what our intellects devour; to those books are alloyed the people and the tangle of emotions that populate the world outside our reading chairs.

As Yambo searches his books for some clue to his past, he discovers his childhood involvement in the resistance to the fascists, his relationship to his grandfather, and most importantly, his Dante-like idealized love of the girl, Lila. What bothers him most about his condition is that while he can reconstruct the events of his life and even his love of Lila, he cannot see her face.
In the end, Yambo succumbs to another stroke after finding the one book that is the Holy Grail of antiquarian book lovers, a First Folio of Shakespeare. The episode triggers further latent memories, but the one that most eludes him, Lila’s face, is denied. Whether the ending of the Name of the Rose, Eco’s first novel, was intentionally inverted, I suppose is up to debate. Adso of Melk, the narrator of that novel loses a library, but retains his memory.

Who we are and what is important to us in our personal lives is more important than who we are in our intellectual lives. Hopefully, we didn’t need Eco to remind us of that. That being said, however, Eco does make us examine the relationship between the two. Eco’s novels are filled with literate people, living literate lives. In this, The Mysterious Flame is nothing new. But the human quest of deciphering one’s own past is a quest we must all confront at some point in our lives. Doing so through our libraries must prove inadequate.

Sunday Salon, October 28, 2007

The Sunday Salon is an informal "reading circle" where a group of willing individuals discuss their readings. You can read more at http://dhamel.typepad.com/sundaysalon/ . I wanted to get something in for the first week, so I threw something together pretty quickly; excuse the roughness. I think this will be fun.

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire: Books
Caroline Finkel

Osman’s Dream is a one volume history of the Ottoman Empire. The book is a much needed antidote to the West’s Eurocentric historical view. Like many people who are not Middle East specialists, our perceptions of the Ottoman Empire are filtered through histories of their adversaries and their relationship to the West. We learned that the Ottomans were the people who finally lay to rest the rump of the Roman Empire with their conquest of Byzantine Constantinople. They were the people whose empire was itself finally defeated by WWI. Osman’s Dream demonstrates conclusively that the Ottoman Empire is worthy of our attention in its own right.

Finkel’s treatment of the Ottomans does not ignore Europe, rather it does provides a nuanced analysis of the often complicated and contradictory set of relationships between the Empire their western counterparts. The book’s major strength, however, is its detailed description of the relationships within the empire. Finkel’s periodization is natural and dictated by the political and social forces native to the Ottomans, not artificial western models.

Like any book that tries to relate 800 years of history in a relatively short book (600+ pages), there are some glosses. Especially missed was a detailed description of the relationship between the highest levels of the bureaucracy and the middle. A greater attention to the cultural achievements of the Ottomans would also have been welcome.

Osman’s Dream is a great book to introduce a non-specialist to the Ottoman Empire. With the general knowledge gained by reading this book, the interested layman could easily move on to more specialized histories or reinterpret western histories, such as Norwich’s A short History of Byzantium.