Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
Thus I found the following article somewhat compelling, but ultimately a bit irritating. On the one hand: it’s a rare example of history written by economists rather than historians. On the other hand: it’s an example of history written by economists rather than historians. (Assume a Reformation...) Anyway, the article demonstrates how computer number-crunching allows for new statistical analysis of meta-data, to shed light on historical events already well-covered by generations of historians. The implications are thousand-fold; but you can mumble those over yourselves, at your leisure, which, if you’re a good Protestant, or a good capitalist, you shouldn’t have any of. It’s a fast, easy read and it’s fun to try to decode the maps (Since they don’t give you any help identifying cities, I offer a map, presumably NOT made by economists).
Scotland, which overwhelmingly DOESN’T want Brexit, might very well vote to break the Union (1707) if Brexit goes through. Or they still might, even if it does, with a deal that sells out the Scottish fisherfolk. Essentially the big sticking point comes down to fishing rights — which sounds arcane and small bore and pettifogging; but it isn’t for Scotland. What they’re saying seems to be, we don’t want to leave Europe, but if we do, we don’t want to see bloody Dutch and French and Danish trawlers up and doon the herring banks. It could all come down to fish, on Dec. 31. Here are three fantastic fish songs: get the roll of the swell in your legs, the whip of salt in your face, and that fishy tang in your nostrils.
You’ve GOT to sing along when it’s the Corries. Swing that octave leap into the voce, you’ll need it later.
How about that octave leap fish call? No Leith wife ever shouted Caller Herrin’ – fresh fish — into the wind like Jean Redpath. My God, what a voice… The words are by Lady Nairne; it was the first of her songs I ever learned. Of course you can’t be shy singing in the Scottish idiom; cock an ear to Christine Kydd, belting the AMAZING Song of the Fishgutters, preserved with all its folkloricum, on the Scots Language Center website:
Finally, the View recalls the fascinating saga of Mac Fisheries, and of Lord Leverhulme, who tried to buy the Isle of Lewis (as in the British film, I Know Where I’m Going)l; and the emergence, from mountains of Scottish fishguts, of Unilever as the gigantic industrial-products globalist octopus that was partly the impetus for the EU in the first place.
They once cornered the British fish market, but are now defunct. Click for a Wayback Machine Archive of Mac Fisheries:
Mac Fisheries was a branded United Kingdom retail chain of fishmongers, founded by William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, the co-founder with his brother of Lever Brothers, which later merged to become Unilever. In his thirties, Lord Leverhulme had taken a boat trip and fallen in love with the Western Isles of Scotland. In May 1918 at the age of 66, he bought the Isle of Lewis for £167,000. Convinced that he could resurrect the fishing industry, he set about investing in all aspects of the supporting industries and supply/distribution chain. Leverhulme’s plan was to build an ice-making plant in Stornoway, building refrigerated cargo ships to take fish to a depot atFleetwood, where he would build herring-curing facilities, a canning factory and a plant installed to make fish cakes, fish paste,glue, animal feed and fertiliser. To create a market for the fish, he started buying up independent fishmongers throughout Britain, rebranding them Mac Fisheries. But in 1919, servicemen demobilised from World War I and promised land, started occupying plots on the Isle of Lewis. Leverhulme protested and took legal action against the people he considered squatters, but the Scottish Office took the side of the ex-servicemen, leaving Leverhulme’s plan in tatters. Leverhulme announced that he would leave Lewis in 1923, offering to gift the Isle to the locals. But suspicion ran so high, that he was forced to sell again to long-term absentee landlords.
Don’t make lemonade! At least not with these, which are on public land at Franklin Canyon Reservoir Park. The shady upper canyon has the most magnificent stands of this chaparral beauty; but this year the bounty was truly incredible! The birds and beasts will enjoy their feasts.
Ours is vigorous and green, with red growth tips. Rhus integrifolia — get the integrity in that foliage!
But it has never berried. It looks like we’ll get to make REAL lemonade (from our hard-working Meyer) long before our California slacker starts producing.
A panorama of the San Fernando Valley, shot from the Topanga Overlook. Santa Susanna Mountains at left; San Fernando Pass in the middle, the San Gabriels on the right. Happy Thanksgiving from the View!
The Royal Scottish Museum — The National Museum of Scotland — Great BBC Documentary — click, with glee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDfogg You know the algorithm is working its fingers to the bone, to suddenly pop this 2016 BBC documentary into my “why don’t you watch this?” queue. All right, algorithm; you win. I watched it. (No nasty commercials!)
The history of Scottish silver; a Viking chess set; preserving a sperm whale skeleton to hang; Mary Queen of Scots, her harp; restoring Bonnie Prince Charlie’s tartan; meteorites; Audubon’s Birds of North America!!!; early Egyptology; the fashions of designer Jean Muir. I was spellbound for an hour. Youse, will be too.
In 2006 they built a handsome and PERFECT new addition to the venerable old pile on Chambers Street, to modernize and incorporate the collections of several other institutions. This made me glad, for it is in the tradition of Edinburgh, as a place that pools its intellectual history; it really led the world in mass public education, by exhibiting the evidence itself, the actual objects. (The Museum was founded from combining the old University collections with those of the Society of Antiquarians, and many other private sources, including the Crown.)
Students got in cheap when I was there, and I went browsing in the Museum about once a week. It was amazing – the fustiest possible, the Ur-fusty, Eminent Museum of Victorian Progress. That is not in any way a criticism — trilobites upon trilobites, Old Red Sandstone overlaying Silurian greywacke, extinct birds of the Southern Hemisphere; James Watt’s Steam Engine. The cultural, intellectual and natural history of the world lay open in those days for a geek’s kick-around visit. Glory be, and blessings on my folks.
There was a stuffed dodo, in a glass case. LESSON LEARNED.
Feathered costumes of Pacific Islanders. Bones….bones. Tons of what we would call steampunk: Newcomen engines, assaying tools, and on the ground floor two ancient locomotives: Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly, built to haul coal a few hundred feet out of the mine. Those engines were interpreted by a looped tape of a woman’s voice, so soporific and hypnotic, that it cast a kind of Druidic enchantment upon anyone foolish enough to enter the gallery. You were stuck to the spot, like Merlin, until you learned every detail of Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly from the drear Nimue’s spell. (None of this made the cut of the documentary, and bloody right. It’s much better now!)
Ken, one of my fondest days with you, ever, was spent crawling through here.
William Chambers, Lord Provost of Edinburgh. If Embro is truly “the Athens of the North,” he is its MacPericles.
The Valley Village View 