More recent books

The whole putting a book on hold feature at the library is great, provided you know exactly what to look for. We put things on hold, and let the computer system manage the lineup. It takes however long it takes. I think we waited about a year for our turn with American Gods season one DVD. I just put a hold on Three Thousand Years of Longing, and I'm 227 on 6 copies. It's going to be a while. We've been expecting a particular book and it's taking forever to get from 3 holds on 3 copies, to us reading it.

And no, since you ask, we haven't signed up for any streaming services since Netflix changed it's rules and kicked us off a legit shared account. Linda has been reading up a storm, and I haven't been much in the mood to watch TV. We still have a set of DVDs to chew through.

But I'm old fashioned in some ways. I like browsing the shelves of a library, head turned to the side to read the titles. I like seeing the results of the librarians updating the 'what's new' section. I like seeing the gradual turnover of books, some of the old being replaced by the new. I absolutely love the discovery of a new book in a section I'm familiar with. I like that the parking lot is full, because it means the library is full of life. Libraries are one of the foundation stones of a civilized society. There's a reason those in power try to ban books and defund libraries.

Like the first one below. It was new to me, and I've lately become much more interested in black and white, so it was an easy book to pull off the shelf. The Photographer's Black and White Handbook by Harold Davis.

I ended up being disappointed. It's more about what I think of as digital trickery than the art of finding a composition and capturing light on a scene. Photographers sometimes look at an image and say that it's over baked. The colours are too intense, or there's a certain something about it that we know isn't the way the world looks at any time. Sure, there are photos with magical light, or unusual settings, and yes, every photo you've ever seen has been edited, but we recognize the real world in them.

Most of Davis's images are interesting, are compositionally well done, but just a bit too intense or a bit too sharp. It seems strange to say that a black and white image can be over baked, but that's where I ended up.

It could have been redeemed if the text was more interesting, but it's quite repetitive. It's all Photoshop layers and merging multiple exposures. For some photographers that's right up their alley and how nice for them. Not for me. It's probably worth getting out of the library, or a really good browse, but I wouldn't buy it.

Caste, The Origins of our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson.

This is an uncomfortable read. I'd always thought that racism was a white vs black thing. But it isn't. It's a status thing. A power thing. Who has it, who doesn't, and the gradations between them. 

Once you get that, it becomes much easier to understand the why behind the insanity happening in the US recently. It's about a group that knows it's behind the demographic 8 ball, and are desperately trying to maintain their position at the top of the pyramid. Part of the whole point of the caste system is about one group exerting their influence over another, just because they can. 

It's just assumed that the higher castes can interfere in the lives of lower caste people, which is why we see cops being called on black people going about their business in perfectly legitimate ways. Those higher caste people DON'T see it as legitimate. Even well off Black people are occasionally reminded of their place in the caste system (at the bottom, if you've lost track). We read about a politician, a sports star, or celebrity pulled over and harassed because of course a Black person is suspicious if they're dressed well driving a nice car in a nice neighbourhood. This is not a mistake or an accident. It's part of the system.

As a digression, the pronunciation of caste. Say these words to yourself:

baste

haste

paste

taste

waste

and ask yourself would you pronounce caste? But really, it's more like kawst or kahst. Or so they say. Don't get me started on reforming English spelling.

The book compares the caste systems in India and Nazi Germany to USA. You know it's bad when the Nazi's thought the American laws were too extreme. The only reason the caste system went away in Germany is because it was militarily defeated, and Germany has gone through a decades long soul-searching journey to come to grips with it's history. I wonder if there are any biographies of Jews that escaped Nazi Germany, and then moved back in the 50's or 60's?

India has outlawed the caste system, but it hasn't totally gone away. It's been part of their society for thousands of years, regulating how groups interacted with each other. It isn't a completely rigid structure, but the barriers between the Jati (think of them as sub-castes) are pretty firm. I think many Indian names are long and complicated, but their name and where they're from is often enough for someone to know what Jati you are, and thus determining the relationship between you. In some ways it's like Professor Henry Higgins saying, "Whenever any Englishman opens his mouth, he makes some other Englishman despise him."

America's caste system isn't nearly as old, but there's a lot of similarities. In India there are 4 main castes, plus the 'untouchables', now called Dalits. In America, there's pretty well only white people, and everybody else, with some subtle gradations within that group. Except that who is defined as White has changed. At first it was only people descended from western Europeans. Even Southern and Eastern Europeans did not qualify. Even the Irish didn't qualify at first. Chinese and Japanese people didn't either. Of course, slaves and former slaves didn't qualify, not even remotely. In fact, the common phrase was that 'one drop of Negro blood' made one a Negro. 

What that meant was that immigrants struggled to be classed as 'White'. It meant the world in terms of making a better life in America. Many (but not all) immigrant groups have successfully managed to get themselves classed as White regardless of their actual skin colour. They were allowed into the club mainly I think because it bolstered the numbers and staved off that demographic catastrophe. Which reminds me of the classic "One of Us" episode of Yes Minister.

So who isn't White now? Mainly its Native Americans, and some people with brown skin. It doesn't matter if they are descended from slaves or are a recent immigrant. What confuses things is when religion comes into it.

We tell ourselves stories to explain the world in front of us. For a long time that involved a multiple pantheons of gods squabbling with one another. When you learn to think of those gods as children, the stories make a whole lot more sense. Then we developed a more scientific way of looking at the world and we've got a pretty good grip on the natural world. We can predict the weather, we can send a robot millions of kilometres and have it land on another planet within a couple of kilometres of the intend spot and have that robot last 50 times longer than the expected useful lifespan. But we're still getting a grip on how our brains work, so we're still figuring out the story there.

And then there's the stories of how we relate to each other and why. How we make collective decisions and what the balance is between societal expectations and individual freedoms. The stories (being polite) that politicians tell to get and stay elected. The stories the people in each caste tell each other about themselves and the 'other'. We've always been afraid of the other. 

What these stories have in common is that many of them are poisonous, and the caste system story is one of the worst. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Tombstone

Film (new)

This is bridge 3 on Acros II.

Film (old)

Nefertitti trying to take advantage of a sleeping Sebastian. It didn't work. She got thumped.