Sarah Chaksad at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 12-15 July 2023

I saw Swiss saxophonist and composer Sarah Chaksad with a seven-piece band at the Bird's Eye in Basel on 9 January 2020 and adored her wonderful horn charts, which were so reminiscent to me of the work of the late British trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. After the show, I mentioned that echo to her, and she said that Wheeler has been a great influence on her. I haven't had another chance to see her since then, but this week she'll be playing four shows at the Bird's Eye with her thirteen-piece Large Ensemble, so as part of my ongoing quest for musical transformation, I've decided to go to all four of them! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 July 2023)

The reflection of Albert Sanz’s hands and Javier Colina’s fingers

From my perspective at the Albert Sanz concert in Valencia last night, I could see the piano keys clearly, with the reflection of Sanz's hands in the shiny black wood above the keys. But the positioning of the jazz quartet on the stage was unusual: because of the orchestra, the piano was front and center, with the conductor behind it, the drums behind him, and the vibes hidden from my view by the piano. So besides Sanz, I could only see bassist Javier Colina clearly — as well as the reflection of his right hand above the piano keys, in which his fingers plucking the strings looked unusually long and somewhat surreal. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 July 2023)

Albert Sanz and Aleph Abi Saad: two concerts in one evening in Valencia

I'd been waiting all week for the concert this evening at Valencia's Teatro Municipal by pianist Albert Sanz (with Jorge Rossy on vibraphone, Javier Colina on bass, Borja Barrueta on drums, and the Orquesta de Valencia), and the show lived up to its promise. But I had no idea the evening would end with a free concert at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento by Lebanese pianist Aleph Abi Saad and his orchestra, which featured a superb player of the qanun, a Middle Eastern stringed instrument that I don't think I had ever heard before. Unfortunately, I did not catch his name, nor the names of any of Aleph Abi Saad's other musicians. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 July 2023, posted at 12:15 am on 8 July) 

The cotorra argentina: An invasive species in Valencia and Spain

On Monday, I wrote about the small green parrots I had seen in the Jardín del Turia in Valencia. It was delightful to see them among all the other birds there. But yesterday, my Spanish teacher told me the cotorra argentina (the monk parrot or Quaker parrot) is "a plague" in Spain, and I was quickly able to confirm that they are seen as an invasive species in Spain, as well as elsewhere in Europe. And I also learned that they steal and eat eggs from smaller species like the common blackbird, and they compete for space with blackbirds and magpies. On Monday, I loved them; today, I think they're trouble! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 July 2023)

The Fallas in Valencia: A fiery sculptural tradition

Today, I learned about the Valencian tradition of the Fallas, first in class and then at a museum. Every year in March, gigantic sculptures of combustible material are displayed all over the city and in towns in the region. On 19 March, all of them are burned to the ground — a fiery and dangerous spectacle. The tradition began in the eighteenth century, and since 1934, one sculpture has been chosen by popular vote to be saved from the fire. Those sculptures are on display in the museum my Spanish class visited today. By coincidence, my three favorites were all made by the same artist, Vicent Agulleiro Aguilella, between 1979 and 1984. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 July 2023)

An impassable park and a flock of house martins in Valencia this morning

This morning, when I walked through the same park in Valencia on my way to Spanish class as I did yesterday, there were gigantic puddles everywhere after the storm with thunder and giant hailstones yesterday afternoon and evening. Ultimately, I had to leave the park because the path I was on became impassable. Just as I headed up a long ramp to the busy street above the park, the sky overhead was filled with birds I hadn't yet seen in this city: house martins. I looked up their name in Spanish and was amused to learn that they are called el avión de común, which could also mean "the common airplane". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 July 2023)

Swifts, blackbirds, collared doves, and parrots in the Jardín del Turia in Valencia

This morning, I walked to my Spanish course through the Jardín del Turia, a long and winding park that follows the earlier course of the river Turia through Valencia. There were many runners, and people walking dogs or riding bikes and electric scooters. Then I heard the telltale call of swifts overhead (my favorite birds). After spotting blackbirds and the local pigeons (specifically, Eurasian collared doves), I was thrilled to spot several small green parrots, which live wild in the city. And on my way back to my hotel this evening, I heard dozens of them calling in the trees, and saw several, too. Perhaps they were discussing the stormy weather. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 July 2023)

On the (far too) sunny side of the street in Valencia

While walking around Valencia late this hot afternoon (about 30 Celsius), I found myself on the sunny side of a street where traffic prevented me from crossing to the shade. Then I remembered "On the Sunny Side of the Street": "Life can be so sweet / On the sunny side of the street." With the Valencia heat making it not so sweet, I then stuck to the shady side. Now I've looked up the song; it was written in 1930 by Jimmy McHugh, with lyrics by the wonderful Dorothy Fields. They also collaborated on "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "I'm in the Mood for Love", among other songs. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 July 2023)

Visiting Spain, the 16th European country I have been to

Tomorrow, I'll be going to Valencia for a one-week Spanish course (with, by coincidence, the chance to see a concert with Basel-based Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy on Friday). I've never been to Spain before — it will be the 16th European country I have visited, after the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Hungary. I have lived in three of them: the United Kingdom when I was nine years old; Germany from August 1991 to September 1995; and Switzerland from then until today. I also had a second apartment in France when Andrea lived there from 1996 to 2000. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 July 2023)

Eliminating Affirmative Action in the United States as a restriction on membership in the country’s elite class

As James Fallows of The Atlantic pointed out yesterday, with reference to date from the website College Transitions, the number of college and university applicants influenced by the United States Supreme Court decisions in the Students for Fair Admissions cases is actually quite small: the highly competitive schools that accept under 20% of their applicants or less account for around 4% of students enrolled in the entire country. In other words, the resistance to affirmative action does not prevent minority students such as W. E. B. DuBois's "Talented Tenth" from getting higher education at all; it just makes it that much harder for them to become part of the country's elite. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 June 2023)

 

See also this study. 

William James and the “harlot” of the “multiverse” in 1895

In his 1895 lecture "Is Life Worth Living?", William James coined the term "multiverse", but he did not mean it in our sense of many universes. Rather, he meant that the universe does not offer humanity a singular morality: "Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe. To such a harlot we owe no allegiance; with her as a whole we can establish no moral communion [...]." The figure of the "harlot" that James uses to characterize this actually amoral multiverse must have been the most striking one he could imagine for a talk given at the Harvard YMCA. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 June 2023)

 

The “dgiaour” in James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” (1939) and Lord Byron’s “Giaour” in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” (1817)

As my fellow readers pointed out at this evening's "Finnegans Wake" reading group, the "dgiaour" in "dug of a dog of a dgiaour" (68.18) is a "giaour", a Turkish word for non-Muslims. I only knew the word before because it is mentioned in Jane Austen's "Persuasion" (1817) as one of the works discussed by Anne Elliot and her new acquaintance Captain Benwick during Anne's visit to the seaside town of Lyme: they first consider "whether 'Marmion' or 'The Lady of the Lake' were to be preferred", works by Sir Walter Scott from 1808 and 1810, respectively. Then they compare "the 'Giaour' and 'The Bride of Abydos'", 1813 works by Lord Byron. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 June 2023)

The day when Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” takes place

Today is the day when Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" (1948) takes place, with its bucolic opening sentence: "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." The story was first published in the New Yorker on 26 June 1948, to the shock of many readers; as I have learned in classes, it still triggers discussion today. Although I hope that this day starts as beautifully for you as it has for me this morning in Basel, let's hope that it doesn't end for us as it does in the story. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 June 2023)

“Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” trailers and their links to “Asteroid City"

One trailer at last night's showing of Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" at the Kult Kino Atelier in Basel was for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer", with Cillian Murphy as the J. Robert Oppenheimer. Another was for Greta Gerwig's "Barbie", with Margot Robbie in the title role. The "Barbie" trailer began with a parody of the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), complete with Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra", in which girls in an ancient landscape smashed their dolls after seeing a Barbie doll. The atomic bomb then came up in "Asteroid City", as did sassy girls (the triplets I mentioned yesterday) – and even Margot Robbie in a brief role. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 June 2023)

Ella, Gracie, and Willan Faris in Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” (2023)

Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" (2023) features not only actors from his usual ensemble (such as Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, and William Dafoe) but also Scarlet Johansson for her first live-action Anderson film (after her voice work in his 2018 "Isle of Dogs") and Tom Hanks in his first work with Anderson. But the stars of the movie are the triplets who play Schwartzman's character's young daughters Andromeda (Ella Faris), Pandora (Gracie Faris), and Cassiopeia (Willian Faris), who respond to a waitress who calls them "princesses" with the announcement that they are a vampire, a mummy, and a fairy, respectively. And they just get better from then on. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 June 2023)

Gracie, Ella, and Willan Faris in Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” (2023)

Dave Garbutt and the Thin Raft workshopping method for creative writing

I met my friend Dave Garbutt in 1996; the first thing I remember doing with him was attending a Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert in Zurich that June. Later that year, we began to organize the Thin Raft writing group that began meeting in early 1997 at the English Department of the University of Basel where I had started working in October 1995. Although I stopped attending around 2010 or so, the group is still running, as far as I know. Dave has just written a Medium post summarizing the procedures for Thin Raft meetings, which are very effective and which I still use in my poetry and songwriting classes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 June 2023)

 

The Summer Solstice, the latest sunset, and the earliest sunrise

The other day, on the Summer Solstice, I came across a surprising astronomical fact: while the Solstice is the longest day of the year, the sun does not immediately begin to set earlier. On the contrary, even though the days do begin to get shorter right after the Solstice, the latest sunset of the summer is a few days later (on 27 June this year). And the earliest sunrise correspondingly occurs a week or so earlier than the Solstice (on 15 June this year). As the original post I read about this pointed out (which I cannot find, but which several sites confirm), this is caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 June 2023)

Reading the FAZ and then the taz in summer 1991 in Weimar

In August 1991, my girlfriend Carolyn and I went to the Eurocentre German language school in Weimar, Germany, for three weeks (she took beginning German; I took advanced German). Every morning, there were several newspapers available to read, and I began reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. After a couple of days, I spoke to my teacher Mathias Hahn and confirmed my impression  that the FAZ, as it is called for short, was a relatively right-wing newspaper. The next morning Mathias showed up with Die Tageszeitung (or taz) from Berlin, which was founded in 1978 as a left-wing alternative to the mainstream German press (including the FAZ) and is still published today. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 June 2023) 

Things I learned about Williams Carlos Williams from John Felstiner, plus one correction

In the chapters on William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) in John Felstiner's "Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems" (2009), I have learned several things about Williams: he attended school in Switzerland in his mid-teens; his mother was from Puerto Rico), while his father, though born in England, grew up in the Dominican Republic; "during the flu epidemic of 1918 he made sixty house calls a day"; he called Emily Dickinson "my patron saint"; and his mother Raquel Hélène Hoheb Williams lived to be 102. But this last point is apparently wrong: according to her gravestone, Raquel Williams was born in 1856 and died in 1949 at 92. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 June 2023)

Spanish with Anki, García Márquez, Borges, Agathe Cortes, and Duolingo

When I began learning Spanish since November 2020, my sister introduced me to the Anki flashcard system, which I use for vocabulary and verb conjugations. In early 2021, I began slowly reading books by two of my favorite authors, Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges (and raiding them for more vocabulary). In early 2022, I added a novel by our friend Agathe Cortes. Now that I'm planning to co-teach a course on Puerto Rican poetry in the fall, I've begun using Duolingo to work on listening comprehension, and I'll be taking a course in Valencia next month, as well as another course in Basel just before the fall semester starts. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 June 2023) 

The absurdity of arguing that someone was “just a man of his time"

Among the papers of Mark Hatfield, Governor of Oregon (1959-1967) and then a Senator (1967-1997), historian Seth Cotlar recently found letters from right-wing constituents about Hatfield's participation in a 1961 event in Portland with Martin Luther King, Jr. These letters used talking points provided by neo-Nazi Walter Huss. But Cotlar also comments on a compelling pro-King letter from a white school janitor from Eugene, Ezra C. Baker: "So we’ll have none of this 'Walter Huss was just a man of his time' nonsense, because Mr. Baker was also 'a man of his time' [...]." The "man of his time" argument is always undermined by contemporaries who were critical of such men. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 June 2023)

 

Explaining baseball and explaning football (soccer)

My five 111-word texts explaining baseball should help someone not be completely lost at a game (especially if they found themselves next to someone who could answer any questions that arise), but I think that it would take several more just to finish covering the basics. In contrast, an explanation of the basics of football (soccer) would not need nearly as many words, even with an explanation of the offsides rule and some of the subtleties of when a hands violation is called or not. There'd still be a lot to describe in terms of strategies and tactics, but I'm still a long way from such issues in my baseball explanations. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 June 2023)

The fifth step in explaining baseball: A summary of the most common results of each pitch

So the most common results of each pitch in a baseball game are a ball, a strike, or a foul ball, as well as a flyball out, a groundout, or a hit (a single, double, triple, or homerun). With the last three, the batter is either out or on base, and it's now another batter's turn. With the first three, the batter will face another pitch – unless the pitcher has thrown four "balls", in which case the batter gets a "base on balls" or a "walk", which is yet another way to get to first base. If the pitcher has thrown three strikes, that's a "strikeout", and the batter is out. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 June 2023)

Previous step in the explanation:

https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-fourth-step-in-explaining-baseball.html 

A fourth step in explaining baseball: The outcomes when the batter hits a fair ball on the ground

When the batter hits a fair ball on the ground and runs toward first base, the pitcher's teammates try to get to the ball and throw it to the "first baseman" (who plays near first base) so that the ball gets there before the batter does. If they succeed, the batter is "out". If they fail, the batter is "safe" at first base. This is called a "hit"; if the batter reaches first base, it's a "single". If the pitcher's teammates cannot get the ball to a further base before the batter, the batter might reach second base (a double), third base (a triple), or even home plate (an "inside-the-park homerun"). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 June 2023)

Previous steps in the explanation:
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-first-step-in-explaining-baseball.html
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-second-step-of-explaining-baseball.html
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-third-step-in-explaining-baseball.html

A third step in explaining baseball: What the teams are trying to do

I've approached explaining baseball with the possible outcomes of each pitch, but before I turn to what can happen when the batter hits the ball into fair territory and it hits the ground, it's worth considering what each team's overall goal is. The team with the pitcher and the catcher, along with their seven teammates on the field, tries to get the batter "out"; after three "outs", the teams switch sides. The team with the batter tries to get players all the way around the four bases for a "run" (first, second, and third base, and then home plate). At the end of the game, the team with more "runs" wins. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 June 2023)

Note: this continues from the first and second steps.

I write a spontaneous poem; Roli Frei sings a spontaneous song

I went to Viertel Dach early for this evening's Roli Frei concert so I could eat something before the show. When Roli sat down nearby to prepare his set, I him if he would play his lovely version of The Smiths' "There is a light that never goes out", but he said he hadn't played it in too long. While I ate my cheeseburger, I composed a few lines to describe the evening on the roof, so I asked Roli for a piece of paper, wrote my poem down, and gave it to him with the challenge to improvise a song based on it. And late in his set, he did! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 June 2023)

Dancing to Tinariwen in 2016 and 2023

When I first saw Tinariwen in Basel on 17 November 2016, they performed without their bassist, Eyadou Ag Leche, who was in the hospital. Despite his absence, I was still able to dance cathartically throughout the concert. It helped that the Kaserne was crowded, but not packed. Tinariwen's concert at the Mühle Hunziken in Rubingen last night was packed – at least on the floor, where my son Miles and I were first standing. After a few songs, we headed upstairs, where we couldn't see the band (except on screens), but there was more room to dance. So dance we did! My phone counted almost 6000 steps between 8 and 10 pm. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 June 2023)

A Tinariwen concert to wrap up four days of oral exams

The Spring Semester at the University of Basel ended on Friday, 2 June, so I began my "Vorlesungsfreie Zeit" ("lecture-free time", as they say in German) with a concert that evening. Starting last week, I participated, as I have for years now, in the final English exams of students at the Gymnasium Bäumlihof in Basel. The first session was on Wednesday, 7 June, and the fourth and last one was this morning. I went to the Bird's Eye in Basel from Wednesday to Saturday for their Hammond-organ week – and tonight I'm going to Mühle Hunziken near Bern to hear one of my favorite bands, Tinariwen (from Mali), for the second time. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 June 2023)

The second step of explaining baseball: the possible outcomes when the batter hits the pitched ball

When a batter hits the ball, where does it go, and how? If it goes into the air, it could land in the stands and be either a foul ball (explain this) or a homerun (explain this). Or it could fly over the grass where the pitcher's teammates are and be caught by one of them. The batter is then "out". If the ball bounces (or goes into the air but lands before being caught), then it could land in the stands or outside the white lines on the field ("foul territory") and be a foul ball. If it lands between those lines ("fair territory"), there are again several possible outcomes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 June 2023)

Note: This continues from yesterday’s post.

The first step in explaining baseball: the four possible outcomes of each pitch

On a business trip, my wife Andrea and her Swiss colleagues went to a Detroit Tigers baseball game last night. Since none of them knew baseball, they asked me to explain it. So the pitch is where everything starts: the pitcher throws the ball to the catcher, and the batter might try to hit it. There are four possible outcomes, the easiest of which to understand being when the batter swings and misses for a strike. If the batter doesn't swing, then the pitch could be a strike or ball (explain the strike zone). If the batter hits the ball, then another 111 words are needed to explain the possible outcomes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 June 2023)

My paternal grandmother’s voting history, from 1920 to 1976

My paternal grandmother, Grace Shields, was born in 1895 and thus first voted in the 1920 United States Presidential election, after the Nineteenth Amemdment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote. In 1976, two years after the death of her husband, my grandfather Lewis Shields, she told my father she was glad she could finally vote for the Democratic candidate in the Presidential election. When my father asked why she had never done so before, she said she had always voted for the Republican candidate because her husband wanted her to. She knew it was a secret ballot, but she did not want to have to lie to him. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 June 2023)

The first two nights of Hammondwoche at the Bird’s Eye in Basel: LaBox and Florian Arbenz’s Truth

Last night at the first night of Hammondwoche at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, LaBox offered classic organ-trio jazz, with Roland Köppel soaring on Hammond, Marco Figini playing funky guitar solos with rich, bright tone, and Michael Wipf laying down tight and wide-ranging grooves. I had anticipated the band’s sound, so I stood by the bar and danced all through the two sets. Tonight, drummer Florian Arbenz’s Truth, with Arno Kryger on Hammond and Percy Pursglove on flugelhorn, offered a stark contrast with their textures of Hammond chords, drums coloring around the pulse, and long, surprising horn lines. It still made me move, but in my seat and in my head. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 June 2023)

A powerful Australian movie about schizophrenia whose title I had forgotten: “Angel Baby” (1995)

Occasionally, I remember a powerful Australian movie from a couple decades ago in which two people suffering from schizophrenia fall in love and try to make a life together outside clinics. The woman watches the game show "Wheel of Fortune" every day, and for her, the answers are messages that tell her things about her life. When the two lovers go off their medication, and he's away, the answer is "worst-case scenario" – and all I remember of the plot is that what follows is in fact such a scenario. – A bit of internet sleuthing helped me identify the movie as Michael Rymer's "Angel Baby" (1995), starring John Lynch and Jacqueline MacKenzie. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 June 2023)

“We learned to play our bloody instruments”: From Warsaw to Joy Division

After recording their EP "An Ideal for Living" in December 1977, only a year-and-a-half after they had begun playing their instruments, the band Warsaw changed their name to Joy Division and began writing further material. When they finally got into the studio again in April 1979, after complications with record companies, they recorded their debut LP "Unknown Pleasures", which was released in June 1979. Here's a story I heard long ago but have not been able to confirm: When a music journalist asked bassist Peter Hook whey Joy Division sounded so different than Warsaw, despite having the same band members, Hook's answer was flip: "We learned to play our bloody instruments." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 June 2023)

Ron DeSantis, Winston Churchill, Leon Trotsky, and Petrarch

On Saturday, 3 June, 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke in Iowa: "We will fight the woke in education. We will fight the woke in the corporations. We will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. We will make woke ideology, leave it to the dustbin of history." While his phrasing here imitates Winston Churchill's speech in 4 June 1940 after Dunkirk, DeSantis's "dustbin of history" pinches Leon Trotksy's November 1917 imitation, as the Bolsheviks seized power, of Petrarch's fourteenth-century phrase "the rubbish heap of history". So DeSantis hovers incoherently between Churchill, Trotsky, and "an Italian poet from the fourteenth century". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 June 2023) 

Felwine Sarr and Henri-Michel Yeré at the Kunstmuseum Basel

In a multilingual event at the Kunstmuseum Basel today, Felwine Sarr from Senegal presented his novel "Les Lieux qu'habitent mes rêves" in French, with German translations, and had a conversation in English with Henri-Michel Yeré (a Basler from Ivory Coast). The novel is about twin brothers. In the first passage that was read, the one who leaves Senegal tells the story of how he discovered poetry; in the second, the one who stays in Senegal tells a story of religious initation. The discussion also turned to Sarr's 2018 collaboration with Bénédicte Savoy on the restitution of African cultural heritage from French museums, which had been commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 June 2023)

A concert by Kind Regards as a perfect evening on the last day of the semester

With the semester over yesterday, I came back from taking my daughter Sara to her riding lesson with the plan of just relaxing at home all evening,. But then Facebook reminded me about an event I had said I was interested in: a concert by the Basel band Kind Regards at the Sääli in Zum Goldenen Fass in Kleinbasel. I checked their Facebook page, listened to a few seconds of a video, and thought, "This is the right music for me." And it was: David Schwarz, Pascal Grünenfelder, Gilbert Trefzger, Cyprian Kohut, and Beni Bürgin played folk-rock that was just to my taste, including a gorgeous cover of Wilco's "Jesus Etc." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 June 2023)

The end of the fourth round of "111 Words a Day: A Writing Project"

I first taught "111 Words a Day: A Writing Project" in the Spring Semester of 2020. Today, we finished the fourth round of the course (every Spring Semester). As always, the students love the course's openness, and we all I enjoy the wide range of topics and stories that the others write about. And I love the effect of the course, in which just the act of writing a short text every day jump starts every student's writing over the course of fourteen weeks. And my ongoing daily writing (for almost three-and-a-half years now) has become a good habit that, for now at least, I would not like to do without. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 June 2023)

My Worcester Red Sox Pride T-shirt

It's the first day of Pride Month in the United States. I didn't think about it, but this morning here in Switzerland, I put on my purple T-shirt that I got after the Worcester Red Sox baseball game I went to  last summer with my sister Sara, my daughter Sara, and our friends Liz, Scott, Mollie, and Burke. It has a stylized "W" with a white outline, inside which are the stripes of a Pride flag: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I had first found a red one, but purple is my favorite color, so I was overjoyed to find a purple one in another part of the store. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 June 2023)

 

Note: This is the black version of the T-shirt:

 

Remembering the Roxy CD store and the Bergli bookstore at Rümelinsplatz in Basel

This afternoon, I walked across Basel from Barfüsserplatz to Nadelberg (where I work at the English Department of the University of Basel). As I got to Rümelinsplatz, I remembered the two great stores that used to be there many years ago: the Roxy CD shop (with its wonderful jazz section upstairs) and the Bergli bookstore with English-language books. Hardly a week went by when I did not buy a CD from Roxy or a book from Bergli. The Roxy closed because CD sales declined, but despite being a successful business, the Bergli bookstore closed because the owner could not find a good successor to take over when she wanted to retire. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 31 May 2023)

The “Four Freedoms” of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 and the “Four Freedoms” of U. S. Republicans in 2023

On 19 May 2023, Jamelle Bouie published an opinion piece on "The Four Freedoms, According to Republicans": 1) The "freedom to control"; 2) The "freedom to exploit"; 3) The "freedom to censor"; and 4) The "freedom to menace". Bouie explicitly recalled the "Four Freedoms" of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's State of the Union Address on 6 January 1941: 1) The “freedom of speech and expression”; 2) the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way”; 3) the “freedom from want”;  and 4) The “freedom from fear.” Bouie's summary of visions of "freedom" offers an interpretive tool for understanding national and international politics in 2023 and beyond. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 May 2023)

FC Basel fans wearing jerseys with the names of player who have left the club

At this afternoon's FC Basel match at St. Jakob Park in Basel , many fans wore jerseys with the names of players no longer with the club, including Silvan Widmer (left in 2021, now with Mainz 05), Albian Ajeti (2019, Sturm Graz), Mohamed Elyounoussi (2018, Southampton), Jean-Paul Boëtius (2017, Hertha BSC), Breel Embolo (2016, AS Monaco), and Marcelo Díaz (2015, Audax Italiano). I also saw jerseys of now retired players: Walter Samuel (retired in 2016), Marco Streller (2015), and Alex Frei (2013; the club's head coach until February). There was even a mint-condition Ivan Ergić jersey — the Serbian footballer and poet left Basel in 2009 and retired from football in 2011. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 May 2023)

A rapid flow of images in a sequence of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (2022)

In a sequence in the Daniels' "Everything Everywhere All At Once" (2022), Michelle Yeoh's face is in the center of the screen with rapidly changing lighting while the background changes faster than the eye can take in. I was in the cinema with my daughter Sara, who turned to me when the sequence ended and said she hoped the movie came with a seizure warning. I agreed with her, but had thought something else: each of those background images that flickers past is a complete image someone filled up with numerous details, even though none of those details can be perceived when the film is shown at 24 frames per second. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 May 2023)

“Far and few between” in Gemma Files’s “The Kindly Ones"

A student chose "The Worm in Every Heart", a 2004 collection of short stories by Gemma Files, for an oral exam next week. While reading the book, I came across a variation on a familiar expression in "The Kindly Ones", as a mother recalls her rare contacts with her runaway daughter: "The postcards, far and few between as they were, retained an ever more strained optimism." I wondered if this was a one-off slip from "few and far between", or perhaps an occasional recent variation, but "far and few between" turns out to have been found in print as early as 1843 (while "few and far between" goes back to 1668. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 May 2023)

Note: The information in the last sentence comes from this blog post.

My last math class in college: Modern Algebra

After deciding not to major in math, I still took one last math class in the Fall of 1985: Modern Algebra. In the first session, Professor Gregory Brumfiel said that Rubik's Cube could be used to help us learn about group theory, but he had found that few students actually learned it well that way. Halfway through the term, he then mentioned that we had reached the point where the Cube would be useful, so if anyone wanted to come to his office hour, he'd show them how it represented groups. In a lost opportunity, I didn't go, and nobody from my study group did, either, as far as I remember. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 May 2023)

From physics to math to German to English: the course of my studies

I went to college to study physics, but Freshman Physics was all equations, so I thought I might as well study math. Late in my freshman year I read Nietzsche and began to consider German, too. In my sophomore year, I studied the German language all year and took courses on German thought from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, along with math courses. But when I had to declare a major after a year off, I chose English instead. Over the years, I had taken so many math courses that I do wonder if I might have also been able to finish a math major in my last two years. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 May 2023)

Telephones and technological ambivalence in three songs by Greg Brown from 1988 to 2006

In the title track of Greg Brown's 1988 album "One More Goodnight Kiss", one annoyance to overcome is a new telephone: "I'm gonna unplug that sucker." With "Think About You" from Brown's "Further In" (1996), the telephone, though still a landline, is joined by other technology to be turned off: "Gonna turn off the radio, control nothing remotely. / Ain't gonna rent me no video, disconnect the telephone." In "Eugene", from "The Evening Call" (2006), the technology to avoid becomes a cellphone: "You can try me on the cell, but most places I wanna be it Greg Brown's work." In Brown's songs, the devices develop, but this ambivalence about technology persists. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 May 2023)

 

On a swingset in an empty playground in Kharkiv, Ukraine

He leans his bike against the post on the corner of the playground. With nobody else around, he doesn't bother to lock it. With the swingset to himself, he sits down on one of the two swings and rocks back and forth for a moment. Looking up into the sky, he decides to fly there, so he begins swinging – legs stretched while going forward, tucked in while going back, a little higher each time. At the highest points, he looks up into the sky again and again, imagining that it's always been empty except for clouds, rain, and birds. He never looks to his left at what's left of the school. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 May 2023)

 

This is based on this photograph taken in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in April 2023 by Armin Smailovic. I saw it in this article in the Swiss online magazine Republik. 

An only partly apocryphal story about Xerox’s early work on personal computers

The story I heard in Palo Alto in the mid-1980s went like this: The designers from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center went to Xerox HQ with prototype personal computers to show to the higher-ups. The higher-ups were unimpressed, but the wives of some of them were there, and as former secretaries, they were very impressed. So the higher-ups thought the thing was just a glorified typewriter. — I posted this story to a Language Log post today as a comment, and commenter Gregory Kusnick confirmed that the story I heard is not entirely apocryphal (the key difference being that it wasn't the wives but the current secretaries who liked the new devices). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 May 2023)

 

“Negatived” in Charles Dicken’s “Little Dorrit” (1857) and “Our Mutual Friend” (1865)

In Charles Dicken's "Our Mutual Friend" (1865), when Mr. and Mrs. Boffin discuss how to find an orphan to adopt, one of Mrs. Boffins's suggestions is "negatived" by her husband. The verb form of "negative" surprised me, as I would have thought it was more recent than that (which is an example of the "recency illusion"). But the verb form of the adjective "negative" goes back to the early eighteenth century, and it also appears in Dickens's "Little Dorrit" (1857). Again, it involves a rejection of alternatives, now proposed by Jeremiah Flintwich to explain the mysterious sounds his wife is hearing: "Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 May 2023) 

Lost dog in Basel-Stadt: Not much help from the supposedly responsible authorities

Yesterday, Andrea found a lost dog with no collar. I checked online and saw that in Basel-Stadt, she should call the Tierfundstelle (lost animal office) or the Veterinäramt (veterinary office) – which is also what a police officer Andrea talked to said. The Tierfundstelle then said they could read the dog's chip if we could get the dog there, and the Veterinäramt said the same (after first asking, "What do you want from us?"). As we set out on foot to the Veterinäramt, a man across the street shouted that it was his dog. He'd heard from the Veterinäramt where his dog had been found and was driving around looking for him. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 May 2023)

Medical Emergencies at a football match and a movie showing

A few minutes into the second fifteen-minute half of overtime in last night's second leg of the UEFA Europa Conference League semifinal between FC Basel and AC Fiorentina, play was interrupted for over ten minutes because of a medical emergency in the guest sector where the Fiorentina fans were sitting. (Deep in the resulting stoppage time, Fiorentina scored to win the semifinal.) I was reminded of an earlier experience in March 2007 with a medical emergency during a very intense moment near the end of a showing of Kevin McDonald's "The Last King of Scotland": a team of paramedics came in to take a member of the audience to the hospital. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 May 2023)

 

2007 post on Forest Whitaker and "The Last King of Scotland”.

Playing Settlers of Catan on my phone

I like to play Settlers of Catan on my phone – specifically, the variation called Greater Catan, which includes the Seefarers and the Cities and Knights extensions, along with the gradual loss of resources on a large main island as the small neighboring islands are settled. When I play the regular game, I win about 80-90% of the time, but when I play Greater Catan, I win almost all the time. As with two related board games, Risk and Monopoly, this comes down to one simple thing: whoever takes a lead and controls resources tends to end up winning. In this scene, these militaristic, capitalistic, and colonialistic games are all very realistic. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 May 2023)

The "martiallawsey marses” and “Pompery” in James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” (1939)

In James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939), a man is woken by loud sounds that remind him "of the martiallawsey marses of foreign musikants' instrumongs or the overthrewer to the third last days of Pompery" (64.13-15). The layers of meaning in "martiallawsey marses" include "martial law", "La Marseillaise" as a march,  and the Roman god of war (and planet), "Mars" — which are all perhaps "lousy", too. The equally layered "Pompery" also turns to ancient Rome with the destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD — but it also includes not only "Popery" and "Pomp and Circumstance", but the French "pomper", "to pump", whose slang meanings include "getting very drunk" and "giving a blow job". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 May 2023)

“The war in Iraq” and the triumph of sarcasm: Toni Morrison’s “God Help the Child” in the mid-oughts in the United States

In Toni Morrison's "God Help the Child" (2015), Booker Starbern goes to college in a specific historical moment: "Student agitation about the war in Iraq that once roiled the campus had quieted. Now sarcasm fluttered its triumphant flag and giggles became its oath; now the docile manipulation of professors became routine." There may have been two "wars in Iraq" in the recent history of the United States, but as Morrison's characters use cellphones, this must refer to the 2003 war. Further, sarcasm is acerbic irony, and the mid-to-late oughts in the United States saw numerous discussions of how young people were all ironic about everything and didn't actually believe in anything. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 May 2023)

Anecdotes about “cancel culture” in the form of jokes

During his talk this afternoon at the University of Basel on his book "Cancel Culture Transfer: Wie eine moralische Panik die Welt erfasst" (Suhrkamp 2022), Adrian Daub, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, argued that the anecdote that is at the heart of journalism about "cancel culture" takes the form of a joke: "Have you heard the one about ...?" Any context that doesn't build toward the right punch line – or even any context at all – can and probably must be left out for the joke to be effective. Ideally, the person who is "cancelled" is in a socially prestigious position, while the cancellers are anonymous abstracctions, like "Twitter users". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 May 2023)

Two cases in football when the video assistant referee can intervene, and one similar case where they cannot

When a football player commits a foul in open play that isn't called by the referee, and their team's ensuing sequence leads to a goal, the video assistant referee (VAR) can intervene to ask the on-field referee to annul the goal. Or when the referee mistakenly calls a foul that leads to a penalty, the VAR can also intervene to have the call overturned. But there's a bug in the system: When the referee mistakenly calls a foul that leads to a free kick (no contact, or the attacker fouled the defender, not vice versa), the VAR isn't allowed to intervene — even when the free kick leads directly to a goal. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 May 2023)

The wedding cake ordered by Angelina Grimke and Theodore Dwight Weld for their wedding in May 1838

In "The Remarkable Grimkes", his review of Kerri K. Greenidge's "The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family" in the 9 March 2023 issue of "The New York Review of Books", David S. Reynolds includes a detail about the 1838 wedding of abolitionists Angelina Grimke (1805-1879) and Theodore Dwight Weld (1805-1895): "The wedding cake was made by African American bakers and contained no sugar produced by enslaved labor. The couple’s clothing was purchased from local Black businesses, and the invitations were designed by a Black engraver." Even in 1838, activists like Weld and Grimke (the daughter of enslavers in South Carolina) used their economic choices to make political points. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 May 2023)

FC Basel since August 2002

I began following FC Basel after attending their Champions League qualifying win against Glasgow Celtic in August 2002, when they first qualified for the Champions League. Ever since, they've always finished in the top three in Switzerland while also regularly performing well in European club competions, including qualifying for the Conference League semifinal this year (with a shot at the final in the second leg on Thursday). They've never really tested me with a truly bad season. Even if they finish out of the top three in Switzerland this year, which is still possible, their Conference League run has made it a historic season, whether or not they win the tournament. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 May 2023)

People with four shadow wings running on the grass in the early evening

In the early evening, people are running around on the grass in the light of four towers at the corners of the meadow. It's as if they all have four wings made of shadows, flapping as they run, but they never lift off into the air. As they move, they form lines across the grass, and their shadow wings blend briefly into each other and form larger patterns, chains of X's moving closer to each other and then farther apart. Sometimes almost everyone runs quickly in one direction, only to turn around and run quickly in the other, chasing and kicking the ball that they mostly avoid touching with their hands. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 May 2023)

Small change at the cafeteria

Just before class, I went to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. They'd just closed, but the woman cleaning up sold me a coffee capsule. When I asked where the coffee machine was, she said the closest one was three blocks away. I'd already paid for the capsule, so I asked for my money back. She gave me nothing but small change, including stacks of coins worth one and two rappen (which don't exist). When I told her I didn't want all those coins, I realized they'd gotten mixed up with the others, so I had to sort out the small ones. I was still sorting when I woke up. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 May 2023)

“Forgive the Aborigines, the Jews, women, and God”: The conclusion of Les Murray’s “Fredy Neptune” (1999)

In Les Murray's "Fredy Neptune" (1999), Fred Boettcher, a German-Australian sailor on a German ship in Trabzon in 1915, witnesses Armenian women being burned to death. Shortly thereafter, he loses all sensation in his skin. Although he occasionally gets some of it back, only at the novel's end does he recover sensation completely. A voice he calls his "inner man" tells him to "forgive": first, "the Aborigines", "for being on our conscience"; then "the Jews" (after which "cities stop[] burning in [his] mind"); then "women" (all women, not just those who were burned); and finally "God". Almost a quarter century later, I still can't get my head around this startling conclusion. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 May 2023)

Toni Morrison’s “God Help the Child” (2015) as "thorny, problematic, and difficult to love”

At the end of "Yes, Pain, But What Else?: Racial Liberalism and Late-Style Morrison" (2023), Melanie Abeygunawardana writes that Toni Morrison's "God Help the Child" (2015) is "thorny, problematic, and difficult to love." Such a judgment seems more like journalistic reviewing than literary scholarship; it offers not an interpretation of the novel but a description of the experience of reading it. In a review, such a claim needs no supporting evidence; it is implicitly the reviewer's experience. Especially as it was not my experience when reading "God Help the Child", I'll ask my students tomorrow, in our first session on the novel, whether their experience of the book was like Abeygunawardana's. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 May 2023)

The late-season unpredictability of the Swiss Super League in men’s football

The men's football league in Switzerland, the Super League, has ten teams. Each team plays four matches against each other, with two at each club's stadium, for a total of 36 matches per season. Young Boys from Bern already clinched this season's title last week; with four matches remaining, they are nineteen points ahead. The other nine teams are separated by 17 points from second to last place. My local team, FC Basel, is in fifth place, six points from second and eleven from last place. I used an online calculator for the rest of the season and determined that, theoretically, they could still finish anywhere from second to last place. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 May 2023)

The butterfly effect and the carbon footprint as vivid everyday images

The concept of the "butterfly effect" — the flap of a butterfly's wings can later cause a faraway torando — comes from chaos theory: Small changes in the initial conditions of a nonlinear system can generate large differences in a later state. The vivid everyday image of the butterfly and the tornado has surely helped popularize the concept, as has the figure's implication that our human decisions might also be like those butterfly wingflaps. The concept of the "carbon footprint" also takes a vivid everyday image — the footprint — and connects it to individual action: we can hope that our small individual decisions will accumulate to lead to signficant change at a later date. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 May 2023)

The Grateful Dead playing “Uncle John’s Band” in May 1991, and a memory of a show the night before

Today, the YouTube Grateful Dead page posted a performance of "Uncle John's Band" from 11 May 1991 at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. After the death of keyboard player Brent Mydland in July 1990, Vince Welnick, formerly of The Tubes, took over on keyboards, and the band also had Bruce Hornsby on grand piano for many shows at that time. I was at the show the night before, which included a memorable version of "New Speedway Boogie", with my friends Paul, Rainbow, and Carolyn. Two of the musicians on the stage that night (Welnick and guitarist Jerry Garcia) died later in the 1990s; two of those friends have died since. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 May 2023)

 

Ron Carter’s 86th birthday and the three times I have seen him live

Today is bassist Ron Carter's 86th birthday (which makes him ten days younger than my mother). He was in the extraordinary mid-sixties Miles Davis Quintet with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, and drummer Tony Williams. Though never with any of those musicians, I've seen him live in three memorably concerts, all in Basel: first with guitarist Russell Malone and the late pianist Mulgrew Miller in March 2007 (when Carter was a spry 69); then in March 2017 with accordionist Richard Galliano; and finally in November 2019 with his quartet with pianist Renee Rosnes, alto saxophonist Jimmy Greene, and drummer Payton Crossley, as well as special guest Franco Ambrosetti on trumpet. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 May 2023)

PS: I wrote this after that first concert in 2007.

“that that that” and “had had had” in James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” (1939)

In James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939), a man being threatened with a pistol by a "Waylayer" (62.35) responds "that that that was the snaps for him, Midweeks" (63.8). In this evening's reading group, we first tried to parse those three uses of "that" in a row, until we thought of two things: the man is drunk (he's been drinking "snaps" or "Schnaps" on this "Midweeks" or "Mittwoch"), and if he is Humphrey Chimpeden Earwicker, the main character, then he also has a stutter. The first interpretation is confirmed in the next paragraph with "the wretch's statement that, muttering Irish, he had had had o'gloriously a'lot too much [...] to drink" (63.22-24). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 May 2023)

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, by Gordon Lightfoot (1938-2023), and “Ohio”, by Neil Young: Songs responding to public events

On 10 November 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. Soon after, Gordon Lightfoot (1938-2023) read about the wreck in the 24 November issue of "Newsweek" and wrote "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He recorded it in December, and it was released in August 1976. That's a fast response to a public event, but Neil Young outdid Lightfoot with "Ohio", his song about the shooting of four students by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on 4 May 1970. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded "Ohio" on 21 May and released the single in June (with Stephen Stills's "Find the Cost of Freedom" as the B-side). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 May 2023)

August Spies, the eight-hour workday, the Haymarket Affair, and International Workers’ Day

On Saturday, 1 May 1886, a strike calling for an eight-hour workday began in the United States. On the following Monday, August Spies, an immigrant from Germany (who went to school in Kassel, my wife's hometown), gave a speech in Chicago; after that demonstration, violence broke out, and two workers who were not striking died. At a rally where Spies spoke the next day at Haymarket Square, a bomb went off, and Spies and seven others were accused of planting the bomb themselves, with Spies and three others executed on 11 November 1887. International Workers' Day was first celebrated in 1890 to honor the strike that led to the Haymarket Affair. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 May 2023

“Optic devices” and the creation of images in Denise Levertov’s “After ‘Mindwalk’” and Bruno Latour’s “Ou suis-je?"

In her poem "After 'Mindwalk'" from "Evening Train" (1992), Denise Levertov writes of how we must "admit what, / even through eyes not naked but robed / in optic devices, is not perceptible". When I read the poem today, the phrase "optic devices" reminded me of Bruno Latour's description in "Où suis-je? Leçons du confinement à l'usage des terrestres" (2021), which I read earlier this year, of how "optic devices" give us images of his "Univers", the "vaste extérieur" of what he calls "Terre": "nous les lisons, nous les apprenons, nous les calculons, mais toujours de l’intérieur de nos laboratoires, de nos télescopes ou de nos instituts, sans jamais en sortir." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 April 2023) 

“Unacceptabobble” “prodigygality”: Joycean words in Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” (1861)

Near the end of Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861), two characters use words that could have come straight out of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939). First, Joe Gargery says that when he heard Pip was ill, he thought that "a wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble." Later, while bothering Pip when he is eating breakfast, Mr. Pumblechook describes his "frame" as "exhausted by the debilitating effects of prodigygality." For Dickens, such stumbles in the pronunciation of words appear in dialogue to serve characterization: Joe the simple blacksmith; Pumblechook the pretentious self-proclaimed benefactor. In "Finnegans Wake", of course, such mixings of words permeate practically every moment of the narration. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 29 April 2023)

United States Vice President Kamala Harris’s call for “a better future for all"

On Wednesday, 26 April 2023, Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, tweeted about the achievements of the administration that President Joe Biden of the Democratic Party heads: "Our Administration has made the largest investment in infrastructure since President Eisenhower and the largest investment in climate action in history. We are investing in America and building a better future for all." That last phrase, "building a better future for all," might seem like a formula that any politician could utter, but in the contemporary United States, the other major party, the Republicans, does not want "a better future" for everyone, but only for its white supremacist and Christian nationalist supporters. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 April 2023)

“The highest form of knowledge”: Plato, Bill Bullard, and George Eliot

An internet quotation credits this to Plato: "The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world." As so often when I check if a quotation is from the person it's attributed to, this comes from someone else, California educator Bill Bullard: "The highest form of knowledge is empathy, according to George Eliot, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world." The closest Eliot passage I've found is from "Janet's Repentance" in "Scenes of Clerical Life" (1857): "Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 April 2023)

Selected recordings of Bill Frisell’s “Strange Meeting"

At the end of their opener of Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso" at the Stadtcasino in Basel on Sunday, guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan improvised a segue into Frisell's haunting "Strange Meeting". Frisell first recorded the tune with guitar, tuba, bass, trumpet, and drums on "Rambler" in 1984. Then it was the title track of a 1987 album by the trio Power Tools, with Frisell, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. For 1994's "This Land", Frisell wrote a beautiful horn chart (clarinet, alto saxophone, and trombone) with guitar, bass, and drums, and in 2001, he made it a trio again on "Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 April 2023)

Bill Frisell and Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso"

Guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan opened their duo concert at the Stadtcasino Basel on Sunday with Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso". Frisell previously recorded "Misterioso" on his 2006 album "Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian" (with Carter on bass and Motian on drums), but before that, Motian and Frisell recorded it with Joe Lovano on saxophone on the 1997 Paul Motian Trio album "Sound of Love", which was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York in 1995. It was the Motian version that I heard silent echoes of on Sunday, as if there were a trace of Lovano's saxophone and Motian's cymbals and toms hovering behind Frisell and Morgan. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 April 2023) 

“A certain slant of light” on this spring morning

On clear winter days in Basel, the opening lines of an Emily Dickinson poem often cross my mind: "There's a certain Slant of light, / Winter Afternoons" (Fr320). As I walk down the street in Basel at 47°33'N and find myself blinded by the "Slant" of light from winter's late afternoon sun, I imagine Emily looking out her window in Amherst at 42°23'N and experiencing the same (though perhaps with slightly less "Slant" in her case?). By April, I usually no longer experience that same sense of "Slant", but this morning, for a moment, sunlight came slanting through the clouds into our second-story living room, and Dickinson crossed my mind again. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 24 April 2023)

Pankaj Mishra misquotes Frantz Fanon and I misrember Claude McKay

In an old issue of the New Yorker (6 December 2021), I found Pankaj Mishra's article on "Frantz Fanon's Enduring Legacy," which quotes (and slightly misquotes) Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" (1961): "As [soon as] you and your fellow men are cut down like dogs, there is no other solution but to use every means available to reestablish your weight as a human being.” This image from the Martinique-born Fanon reminded me of Jamaican-born Claude McKay's poem "If We Must Die" (1919), but I was misremembering its first line: "If we must die, let it not be like hogs." McKay's "mad and hungry dogs" are the oppressors, not the oppressed. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 April 2023)

 

Possible features of excellent texts that we discussed in the 111 Words class yesterday

A student who read my text from yesterday evening sent me the list of points from our discussion of excllent texts in class yesterday morning. These features are not necessary to all excellent texts, but they did come up in at least one of the seven texts we looked at, and many came up in several: a clear message or purpose; rhetorical devices and figures; strong last sentences; memorability and resonance; rhythm; tension; variations on themes; vividness and immediacy, often grounded in specificity; word play and comedy; layout; defamiliarization or enstrangement à la Viktor Shklovsky; constraints (including the 111-word constraint); and the effect of seeming to be a train of thought. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 April 2023)

A discussion of excellent texts in the 111 Words a Day course

For today's session of "111 Words A Day: A Writing Project", I asked each student to pick one excellent text by another student and to be prepared to say why they thought it was excellent. This gives us a chance to praise each other's texts, rather than, as one student put it, to nitpick them. After each student's comment on the text they chose, I wrote a few words on the board, so by the end of the class, we had a nice list of features that contribute to making texts excellent. Unfortunately, I cleaned the whiteboard before thinking of taking a picture of it, so now I've lost that list! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 April 2023)

An FC Basel victory at the end of a long day

After a long day with two morning classes, a three-hour afternoon meeting, and a lecture and reception in the early evening, I made it home just in time for the second leg of the Europa Conference League quarterfinal between OGC Nice and FC Basel. And the match then made my day even longer: after Nice went ahead in the 9th minute, Basel finally equalized in the 86th minute with a goal by Jean-Kevin Augustin. After Basel's Zeki Amdouni only hit the post in the 90th minute, the match went into extra time. Basel's Kasim Adams Nuhu scored in the the 98th minute, so Basel qualified for their second European semifinal ever! (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 April 2023) 

Bill Frisell’s “Small Town” as a one-minute song and a nine-minute improvisation

The title track of guitarist Bill Frisell's duo album with bassist Thomas Morgan, "Small Town" (2017), first appeared on Frisell's "Disfarmer" (2009), with Greg Leisz, Jenny Scheinman, and Viktor Krauss. The original recording is 1:01 long: Frisell plays an acoustic melody that sounds like the first verse of a folk song, followed by a melodic fragment even briefer than a couplet. The live version with Morgan is 8:58 long; Frisell turns that simple form on the electric guitar into a vehicle for improvisation that keeps the folk-song feeling and quietly evolves into a Morgan solo. With a slightly heavier tone, Frisell returns to the melody and lets the tune drift out. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 April 2023)

 

Note: Frisell and Morgan will be playing in Basel on Sunday, 23 April 2023.

Bill Frisell’s recordings of music from movies, especially John Barry’s “James Bond” music

The debut album of John Zorn's band Naked City was guitarist Bill Frisell's first recording including movie music, such as John Barry's "James Bond" theme. His own albums occasionally featured other movie music, such as Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer's "Moon River" and "The Days of Wine and Roses", until in 2016 he released the movie-music album "When You Wish Upon a Star", which included Barry's "You Only Live Twice" (with Petra Haden on vocals). That song, along with Barry's theme to "Goldfinger", also features on "Small Town" (2017) and "Epistrophy" (2019), Frisell's two duet albums with bassist Thomas Morgan — the duo playing at the Stadtcasino Basel next Sunday, 23 April. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 April 2023)

“The Weight” and “What a Wonderful World” at Pink Pedrazzi and George Ricci’s concert in Basel last Friday

At the end of their duo concert at Ängel oder Aff in Basel last Friday, Pink Pedrazzi and George Ricci played "The Weight" from The Band's 1968 album "Music from Big Pink", which got the crowd in the small café singing along: "Take a load off, Fanny! / And put the load right on me." For the encore, Pink played Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" on ukulele, which also got us singing along. I thought it was a much older tune than "The Weight", but it was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss and released by Armstrong on 1 September 1967, ten months before "Music from Big Pink". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 April 2023)

Steve Swallow telling Larry Grenadier about the “secret” he learned when he was 70

In September 2014, bassist Larry Grenadier and I went to a concert at the Bird's Eye in Basel: trombonist and pianist Christian Muthspiel was playing compositions inspired by John Dowland tunes with Steve Swallow on bass, Matthieu Michel on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Franck Tortiller on vibraphone. The music was beautiful, but what I remember most is a moment in the conversation between Larry Grenadier and Steve Swallow during the set break, when Swallow, who turned 74 a few days later, told Grenadier, then 48, about a "secret" he had discovered when he was 70: "If you practice, you get better! How come nobody told me that when I was 20!" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 April 2023)

Heather Cox Richardson’s list of figures who opposed discrimination throughout the history of the United States

In her Letter from an American on 1 April 2023, Heather Cox Richardson offered a series of figures from American history to counter the implicit or even explicit Republican idea that "liberal democracy" is immoral. While I'm not sure that's what her examples were all standing up for, Richardson's list of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rose Herera, Julia Ward Howe, Benjamin Banneker, Sitting Bull, Saum Song Bo, Dr. Héctor García, Edward Roberts, and Stormé DeLarverie makes another point for me: all these examples of people in past historical periods who fought against discrimination are evidence that what we see today as discrimination has always been challenged by those who were subject to it. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 April 2023)

 

An apparently false memory of a story about Jason Moran playing piano for senior citizens

As I remember it, years ago I read a profile in "The New Yorker" of jazz pianist Jason Moran that included a story about Moran sometimes playing piano for senior citizens in nursing homes and retirement homes. At one home, he played a Duke Ellington composition, and a very old African-American man nodded appreciatively, so Moran continued to play Ellington for him. Later, he found out the man was over a hundred years old and had actually played with Ellington back in the 1930s. — That's how I remember it, but I just found the profile, which was published in 2013, and there's no mention of Ellington or playing in nursing homes. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 April 2023)

Pip’s nighttime plan to “enlist for India as a private soldier” in Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” (1861)

When Pip in Charles Dicken's "Great Expectations" (1861) first discovers that the "benefactor" who gave him his "great expectations" is Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict the young Pip had once stolen food for, he gets up in the middle of night and considers a plan to "enlist for India as a private soldier." According to Jerome Meckier's timeline for the novel, this takes place in November or December 1828. At the time, the military instrument of the East India Company's control of much of India was its own private army separate from the British Army. So Pip does not want to be Private Pirrip; he wants to join the Company's army. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 April 2023)

A scene from Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989) as an example of annotating a work of art as a starting point for interpretation

To demonstrate what happens when one feels the need to annotate a work that one is studying, I turned to an exemplary favorite today: a scene from Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (1989) in which Mookie (Spike Lee) is wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers Jackie Robinson jersey, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) is wearing Air Jordans, Cee (Martin Lawrence) is wearing a Los Angeles Lakers Earvin "Magic" Johnson jersey, and Clifton (John Savage) is wearing a Boston Celtics Larry Bird jersey. My twenty-something students know Michael Jordan and his shoes, but such history here as the rivalry between Magic and Bird needs annotation for them to begin to interpret the scene's implications. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 April 2023)

 

Marlene Dietrich and cinematographer Karl Freund in Les Murray’s “Fredy Neptune” (1999)

When Fred Boettcher in Les Murray's "Fredy Neptune" (1999) first sees Marlene Dietrich in Hollywood, where he is an extra on the 1930 film of "All Quiet on the Western Front", she is talking to "Freund the boss cameraman". The influential cinematographer Karl Freund (1890-1969) began his career in Berlin, most famously on Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", before moving to Hollywood in 1929, where his films included "Dracula" (1931) and "Key Largo" (1948). Dietrich (1901-1992) also began her career in Berlin, but with the success of "The Blue Angel" (1930), she also went to Hollywood. In Murray's verse novel, the transplanted Germans exchange the "Berlin wisecracks" that Fred hears in their conversation. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 April 2023)

“Secretary Cheney / made no mention”: Dick Cheney and in Denise Levertov’s “News Report, September 1991"

The subtitle of Denise Levertov's poem "News Report, September 1991" is an all-caps newspaper headline: "U.S. BURIED IRAQI SOLDERS ALIVE IN GULF WAR." The poem consists of quotations from that "news report" on a "tactic [...] designed / to terrorize", as one of the quotations put it. Another reads differently now than in 1992 when the poem was published in Levertov's collection "Evening Train": "Secretary Cheney / made no mention." At the time, Dick Cheney was George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense; just over ten years later, as George W. Bush's Vice President, he and his many henchmen from the first Gulf War were instrumental in starting the second one. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 April 2023)

“Funes el memorioso” and the “ferocious splendor” of Jorge Luis Borges’s imagination

The narrator of Jorge Luis Borges's "Funes el Memorioso" (1942, in "Ficciones", 1944) finally sums up the position in the world of Ireneo Funes, a young man who never forgets the slightest detail of his experiences: "Babilonia, Londres y Nueva York han abrumado con feroz esplendor la imaginación de los hombres; nadie, en sus torres populosas o en sus avenidas urgentes, ha sentido el calor y la presión de una realidad tan infatigable como la que día y noche convergía sobre el infeliz Ireneo, en su pobre arrabal sudamericano." Borges himself was a man on the margins living with "the ferocious splendor of his imagination" — and with ambitions to literary greatness. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 April 2023)

 

Note:

An English version of the quoted sentence: 

"Babylon, London and New York have overwhelmed with their ferocious splendor the imaginations of men; no one, in trleir populous towers or their urgent avenues, has felt the heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night converged upon the hapless Ireneo, in his poor South American suburb."

That's from this PDF of an English translation of the story, whose translator is unidentified.

The dates (January-March 1991) on Denise Levertov’s poem "Witnessing from Afar the New Escalation of Savage Power”

Unlike Adrienne Rich, who began dating her poems in the 1960s, Denise Levertov rarely dated her poems, so the dates for "Witnessing from Afar the New Escalation of Savage Power" in "Evening Train" (1992) stand out: "January-March 1991." This "escalation of savage power" is thus the Gulf War of 1991: "Operation Desert Storm" to expel Iraq from Kuwait ran from 17 January to 28 February. Levertov's distant "witnessing" reminds me of my own moment of "shock" and "shame": I was studying at the University of Pennsylvania library on a Wednesday evening when the news came that the aerial bombardment of Iraqi forces, radar sites, and airfields, as well as Baghdad itself. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 April 2023)

Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan in Basel on 23 April 2023

Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan will be playing a duo concert at the Stadtcasino in Basel on 23 April (as part of the Basel Jazz Festival by Offbeat Jazz). The duo's two albums, "Small Town" (2017) and "Epistrophy" (2019) — both recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York City — give a sense of what to expect: Frisell originals (such as "Small Town"), jazz standards (such as Thelonious Monk's "Epistrophy" or Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life"), pop songs (such as Fats Domino's "What A Party"), movie music (such as the themes to "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice"), and folks songs (such as "Red River Valley" and "Wildwood Flower"). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 April 2023)

 

Andrea Samborski singing between Canada and Switzerland at the Kult Kino in Basel

I call myself a Basler from Detroit; perhaps Andrea Samborski calls herself a Baslerin from Vancouver Island. At her short set at the Kult Kino in Basel tonight at this month's Theaterplatz-Tag, she shifted her patter fluidly beween English and Basel German, while her songs slipped back and forth between Canada and Switzerland — or touched both at once in Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel" with guest Roli Frei. Supported by her steady, fluid fingerpicking (with wonderful bass lines), Andrea's voice hovered through the haunting stories, landscapes, and mindscapes of her evocative lyrics. "Sea Wolves" shimmered with Pacific Ocean spray "Tiger Lilies" with the summer dust and winter snow of the Canadian prairies. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 April 2023)

Getting out of jury duty with Franz Kafka, Philadelphia 1990

In Philadelphia in 1990, I was called for jury duty. I had to miss a Monday-morning class to go to court, where I heard about the case I might serve on, how the jurors would be chosen, and what reasons one could give to be excused — including "education". The trial was expected to take until Wednesday afternoon, and I didn't want to miss a session on Franz Kafka that day, so I joined the line of those wanting to be excused. When I explained this to the lawyers and the stocky, graying, African-American judge, he chuckled and excused me in a deep voice, "Kafka? Didn't he write something about a trial?" (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 April 2023) 

Name the translator! (Including when it’s me)

Earlier today on Facebook, a friend posted an English quotation from a 1972 letter from Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt: "You are right: Schelling is much more difficult than Hegel; he risks more and sometimes leaves dry land entirely behind. Hegel always stays safely on the rails of the dialectic." I often ask for information when translated quotations do not include the translator's name, but in this case I didn't have to ask, since I translated the correspondence of Heidegger and Arendt around twenty years ago. So in this case, I didn't have to ask if he knew — I just pointed out that he was quoting me as well as Heidegger. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 April 2023) 

More defamiliarization in action: A. R. Moxon’s “A Good Guy with a Dinosaur"

After I watched Clint Smith on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on Thursday and his discussion of poetry as paying attention reminded of Viktor Shklovsky's "defamiliarization", I read novelist A. R. Moxon's latest Substack post on Sunday, "A Good Guy with a Dinosaur". As the title suggests, his discussion of a discourse on the right to own "killer dinosaurs" replaces references to guns with references to such dinosaurs and thus defamiliarizes and exposes the absurdities of the discourse on "gun rights" in the contemporary United States: "The people who released dinosaurs into crowds really seemed to like targeting elementary schools—perhaps because of how distressing it was to most people." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 April 2023)