Footnotes to a Conversation, May 6, 2024
“In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten… Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Storytelling
Two quotes from Ursula Le Guin that I found meaningful. I hope you will too.
“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in – or out – and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said.”
“History is one way of telling stories, just like myth, fiction, or oral storytelling. But over the last hundred years, history has preempted the other forms of storytelling because of its claim to absolute, objective truth. Trying to be scientists, historians stood outside of history and told the story of how it was. All that has changed radically over the last twenty years. Historians now laugh at the pretense of objective truth. They agree that every age has its own history, and if there is any objective truth, we can’t reach it with words. History is not a science, it’s an art.” [The Marginalian]
The New Realities of Travel
Steve Burgess, a freelance writer living in Vancouver, has published Reservations: The Pleasures and Perils of Travel. He explores “one big question: Can the positives of travel done better outweigh the damage tourism does to cultures and nature?”
He says, “I truly believe travel is important and worthwhile. But how do we deal with the new realities, the new awareness of the collective effects of all our wandering? …. I don’t want to tell people not to go overseas, which would be pointless, not to mention hypocritical. But I do think at the very least we have to be more aware of the climatic effects of our travel and carefully consider whether a particular flight is worth taking. At least a modicum of flygskam, or flight shame, ought to be in everyone’s travel kit.” [The Tyee]
But Why a Penguin?
Penguin books with their engaging wee icon first came on the market in 1935 and were sold in non-traditional places – newsagents, variety, and chain stores. They were designed to democratize the public through engaged reading, but they relied on capitalism’s mass production, distribution, and retail to be successful.
There was already a strong tradition of branding mascots, including Johnnie Walker (scotch), the Quaker (oats), the tramp in need of a bath (soap), but the new publisher wanted a bird. “A penguin is, of course, a penguin, not a person. But these upright, waddling birds are comically people-like. The live specimens at the London Zoo’s Penguin Pond ‘provoked a range of anthropomorphic media analogies, including soldiers on parade, ‘Dominicans in feathers,’ and ‘self-conscious chorus girls.’”
The design proved highly effective. People bought Penguins because they were Penguins. [JSTOR Daily]
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.