Summer Solstice Reading List

The news from Palomar Observatory is that, yes, the days are now getting shorter again. Should we be sad?

For the last week I've been able to see a pink sky when going to bed and another pink sky the following morning before getting up. That's kind of cool.

Nowadays our "midsummer" festivities seldom go beyond some grilling on the deck with friends, an overnight to a nearby state park, and a bike ride or two.  This year Hilary and I set up camp and walked the trails at Lake Carlos State Park, two hours northwest of the Cities, then unfolded our chairs on the park's deserted beach to watch the tree swallows jive and dart above the water in the waning light. While we were sitting there we spotted a group of women doing "cobra" and "downward-facing dog" on paddleboards out in the middle of the lake.

 Nature has outgrown its freshness, its youthful tenderness, its surprising loveliness, and now exhibits a fulsome vigor. The birds are still singing, but they're no longer showing themselves much. Though various plants will bloom, each in its time, the scene won't change much for the next two months. Our mission—our duty!—is to get out into it.

When not out scouring the countryside (or inside doing "real" work) I have also been doing some reading along these mid-summer lines, and I've come to the conclusion that Nature isn't that easy to write about convincingly. That is to say, reading about plants, animals, landscapes, and natural processes seldom generates the same kind of affection for one's surroundings that being out in them does. Maybe this is because Nature doesn't have a plot. It reaches us as a long succession of amuse-bouches, with a very pleasant soundtrack humming quietly in the background.

Then again, many nature-writers aren't really interested in conjuring Nature's allure. They're drawn to the intricate tidbits of information that help us to "understand" rather than appreciate the natural world. For example, I took a look recently at On Growth and Form, a classic piece of science written by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and published in 1942. It's clear from the onset that D'Arcy has profound appreciation for the beauty of natural forms. However, he is less interested in describing these forms in words than in coming up with mathematical formulas that somehow 'capture" them.

He describes the zoologist of his day as "deeply reluctant to compare the living with the ideal, or to explain by geometry or by mechanics the things which have their part in the mystery of life."

D'Arcy expresses a degree of sympathy for this approach, which is, after all,  spurred by curiosity and appreciation, and he admits that the results of such lines of thoughts can have interest.

"[The zoologist] has the help of many fascinating theories within the bounds of his own science, which, though a little lacking in precision, serve the purpose of ordering his thoughts and of suggesting new objects of inquiry. His art of classification becomes an endless search after the blood-relationships of things living and the pedigrees of things dead and gone. The facts of embryology record for him ... not only the life-history of the individual but the ancient annals of its race. The facts of geographical distribution or even of the migration of birds lead on and on to speculations regarding lost continents, sunken islands, or bridges across ancient seas. Every nesting bird, every ant-hill or spider’s web, displays its psychological problems of instinct or intel­ligence. Above all, in things both great and small, the naturalist is rightfully impressed and finally engrossed by the peculiar beauty which is manifested in apparent fitness or “adaptation"— the flower for the bee, the berry for the bird."

But in the end, D'Arcy rejects this approach, which, as he remarks at one point, "deals with ephemeral and accidental, not eternal nor universal things."

At that point, I reject D'Arcy. In the first place, how could any thinker equate eternal and universal things with statistical analysis? D'Arcy is infatuated with Fibonacci numbers and considers it worthwhile—one example among many—to reproduce a chart of "mean apparent length of one-year-old herring, as deduced by scale-reading from herring of various ages or 'year-classes.' "

"The whole subject is very difficult, " he writes, "as we might well expect it to be, and I am only concerned to show some small part of its difficulty."

Difficult? Perhaps. Interesting? Not in the slightest. The eternal and universal can be perceived far more easily and clearly in a single tendril of a pale green vine reaching out to wrap itself around the branch of a nearby shrub. It's path doesn't follow an arc or a spiral; it's much more elegant than that.

Nowadays the authors of works of natural history and popular science make less of an effort to approach the phenomena of Nature with slide-rule in hand. I dipped into The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman and was delighted by the concatenation of recently discovered facts about bird behavior she has gathered together. On the other hand, I'm not fond of the "scientists have shown that" terminology that invariably accompanies these reports. After all, no one who watches birds, even just out in the back yard, has ever considered them "dumb." And I'm afraid that too much specific information about neurons, genetics, vocal chords, and flight patterns might undercut the charm that these creatures so often possess.

I prefer a more poetic approach. Here the challenge lies in somehow avoiding generalities and making a few details stand for a larger whole. I brought a thick book of Antonio Machado's poems out on the deck a few nights ago. It was the perfect book for the evening ... bordering on the soporific. For example:

... the wind blows in squalls,

and between clouds and clouds

are patches of indigo sky.

Water and sun. The rainbow gleams.

In a remote cloud

zigzags

a thread of yellow lightning.

The rain batters the window

and the panes chime.

In the midst of the haze

shaped by the fine drizzle,

a green meadow emerges

and an oak forest blurs

and a mountain ridge is lost...

Though nothing is very specific, this sounds very much like experience to me. But having read one page, I'm likely to sit back and stare off into space with an inaudible but satisfied "hmmm" on my lips.

Let me assure you, I had no intention of systematically surveying a variety of approaches to writing about nature. Maybe it was just that after a few pleasant hours outside, I naturally selected a book off the shelf, time and again, that would preserve the mood of semi-detached reverie rather than suck me into that vortex of conflicting emotions that drive so many works of fiction.

Whatever the case may be, the other day I took a look at Mute Objects of Expression (1974) by the French poet Francis Ponge. In the introductory pages of this squarish paperback Ponge espouses a radical devotion to the think he chooses to describe, eschewing the limpid turns of poetic phrasing that might naturally come to mind.

From now on, [he writes] may nothing ever cause me to go back on my resolve: never sacrifice the object of my study in order to enhance some verbal turn discovered on the subject, nor piece together any such discoveries in a poem.

Always go back to the object itself, to its raw quality, its difference: particularly its difference from what I’ve (just then) written about it.

May my work be one of continual rectification of expression on behalf of the raw object (with no a priori concern about the form of that expression)...Recognize the greater right of the object, its inalienable right, in relation to any poem ...

This approach raises some thorny epistemological questions, of course. Does the poet, at any time, have a direct, objective, and unmediated awareness of his or her "object"? Can a description capture a thing faithfully, in the raw? I think not.

The essay/poems that follow take up, describe, or inquire after a variety of "things," including a wasp, birds, a mimosa tree, and a carnation. Ponge seems to be tussling with his own wayward imagination as he puts forth an adjective or a verbal phrase intended to convey some aspect of the creature or element under review, and as a result, the pieces often have a tone of playful nonsense.

Mimosa (prose poem). - A single spray of the hypersensitive golden chick plumes, seen through binoculars two kilometers down the lane, pervades the house. Full blown, the little mimosa balls give off a prodigious fragrance and then contract; they have lived. Are they flowers of the rostrum? Their speech, unanimously heeded and applauded by the throng with nostrils wide, carries far:

"MIraculous

MOmentary

SAtisfaction!

MInute

MOssy

SAffroned!”

Combs discouraged by the beauty of the golden lice born of their teeth! Lower yard upper yard of rooted ostriches, erupting with golden chicks. Brief fortune, young millionairess with dress fanned-out, tied at the base, fluttered in bouquets ...

Within this play of free associations, the mimosa itself returns to our attention repeatedly--presuming we already know what a mimosa sprig looks like!

I kind of like it.

But I think some benevolent editor ought to change the title of Ponge's collection: not Mute Objects of Expression but Mute Objects of Affection.

The Qing Dynasty Comes to Minneapolis

The featured exhibit currently at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts—the one you have to pay to get into—is devoted to artifacts from the Qing Dynasty. It has drawn widespread interest less for the artworks on display than for the way the items are displayed. Gone are the wordy placards, gone are the chatty headphone monologues. In their place we're left with a single program handout and a lot of nameless things to look at, accompanied by a wide array of piped-in music, unusual wall-coverings, variable lighting, and an unexpected thunderclap or two.

All of these trappings are the creation of Robert Wilson, whom, if I had been asked during a pub quiz, I might have identified as the lost Beach Boy. In fact, Wilson is a renowned theater, dance, and opera designer.

Visitors are lead into the first room of the exhibit in groups and told to sit on a bench in darkness. On the opposite wall, high up on the left, they will see a black vase, illuminated from above by four small bright lights. Some sort of meditative music fills the room, and it's pleasant sitting there in the dark with a bunch of strangers.

I was the first guest in our group to get up and walk over to the vase. It wasn't easy to see, even up close, due to the glare of the tiny lights, and whatever beauty it had was lost to me. It's described in the flier as a nineteenth-century object, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn someone had bought it recently at Pier 1. 

The strength of this introductory room lay in the peace and control it exerted. It was pleasant to imagine that when the doors were finally opened and we were allowed to move into the next room, it would be largely empty. There would be no one pressing in behind us, we would have lost our own anticipatory haste, and we'd be ready to look at things, one by one, with a calm, discerning, and appreciative eye.

Indeed, the second room was as brightly lit as the first had been dark. The room had a strangely pleasant brightness, like a scene from Interstellar.  Arranged in a matrix on shelves in a second square of walls inside the room were all sorts of "Chinese" things—incense-burners, mirrors, hats, pom-poms, religious effigies. I didn't know what half of them were, but most of them looked pretty cool. And as if that weren't enough, there were many more artifacts depicted in a similar matrix on the walls of the room.

The next room contained five exquisite robes. The walls were covered in straw. The next had robes, hats, furniture, and other items associated with women during the Qing Dynasty. The walls were covered in very reflective aluminum foil. I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I think "Tuche de gel sei cinta" from Puccini's Turandot was playing in the background.  

I think you get the idea. A throne room. A Daoist "cave" with scrolls. Especially effective, due to the lighting, was the room with five Buddhist statues.

I'm not sure that the darkened room nearby devoted to the common man was entirely effective. It was large, but contained only a single figurine, maybe 6 inches high.

But the biggest misfire, I think, was the final room, which was devoted to light, as opposed to the darkness of the first room. (You know, yin/yang?) It contained a single pale green jade vase, but was otherwise filled only with the cheery sounds of a British music hall number. That really didn't fit. Yet, it was "light" music. Better, I think, would have been some koro music by Toumani Diabate and the New Ancient Strings.

In short, I liked the show. And reading over the program later, I became aware of all sorts of connections between the rooms that hadn't occurred to me. I'm not sure the exhbit is quite worth the admission charge ... but the rest of the museum is free, for heaven's sake,and you could easily spend weeks exploring its many permanent and temporary exhibits.  

We stepped over a few feet to an exhibit called Boundless Peaks: Ink Paintings by Minol Araki.

Also very good stuff.

Deep Library Impact

All sorts of dreadful expressions enter the language simply as a result of being used over and over again by people who don't know any better. But I feel I must protest when an institution of literature, learning, and community outreach—I'm referring here to the public library system—encourages such practices in their widely distributed promotional emails.

I received a fund-raising appeal not long ago from the Hennepin County system in which recipients were encouraged to give money on the basis of a patron's enthusiastic claim that --

 This single remark appears in letters several inches high in the midst of an otherwise standard email. But this was an email from one of the most highly respected library systems in the country, responsible for the vocabulary enrichment of hundreds of thousands of young and innocent readers. I felt that something needed to be done.

I sent a courteous note to the library suggesting that the word "impactful" was a strange conglomerate not worthy of appearing in an epistle designed to solicit money for an institution claiming to serve the long-term interests of its patrons. 

And I actually got a reply.     

Greetings, John,

Thank you for reaching out to us! As always, we welcome all feedback regarding the language used in our materials, and “impactful” can certainly be a word that is controversial in terms of how it is received. Merriam Webster has an interesting article about it here on their website if you are interested in reading it. You are not alone in having strong feelings about that particular word choice! 

Again, we appreciate you taking the time to send us your response, and completely agree that language skills require continual emphasis in today’s culture. We hope that access to and support of our Libraries will help our community members grow in that regard.

Thank you again for your thoughtful feedback, we will certainly take it into consideration in our future writings!

As I'm sure you noticed, there's quite a bit of evasiveness and double-talk woven into the fabric of that cheerful response. In essence, what it says is, "We got your email. Thanks. Follow this link."

Naturally, I followed the link to the Merriam-Webster site, but what I found there did little to assuage my concern. Another light-hearted salvo seemed unavoidable.

Greetings library friend (I wrote),

First of all, thanks for taking the time to respond to my note.

You are going to think me a crashing bore with too much time on his hands, but I find word usage interesting, and have a few further thoughts to share with you if you have the time. Please consider them as speculative and curious rather than in any way haughty or irate.

It's true, as you observe, that many people share my view of "impactful," and the link was indeed interesting, as you suggested. Yes, the word has been around for quite a while. Yes, it's a "real' word. Yes, many people hate it. However, there are good reasons why many people hate it. I'm afraid the article only skims the issues involved without bringing serious thought to bear on any of them.

It touches on the semantic issue by remarking: " Another complaint leveled at impactful is that it's not a well-formed word: -ful means "full of," and impactful does not mean "full of impact."

The authors of the article try to wiggle out of this argument by observing that " -ful doesn't only mean 'full of.' It also means (among other things) 'characterized by,' as in playful and tasteful."

Not true. Playful means "full of play" and tasteful means "full of taste." In any case, impactful doesn't mean "characterized by impact." It actually does mean "full of impact."

But impact isn't a thing. It's actually an event. We use the phrase "point of impact" to describe the place where a projectile hits a target, for example, or where an artillery shell lands. A dent or a hole may be left behind, but the impact itself is fleeting. More to the point, we might also say that a speech or a film has significant impact. But there is little meaning in the notion that a mortar shell, an automobile collision, or a speech, is "full of impact." Such an expression creates the confused impression that the thing in question is "full of hitting something else."

An "impactful" moment during the battle of Ypres

Hitting it for good or for ill? We really don't know. The word "impactful" is value-neutral. I ask you, why would anyone choose such an awkward and imprecise word, when he or she could describe the speech-book-film-institution-whatever as beautiful, profound, thought-provoking, insightful, shrewd, mind-blowing, life-changing, nourishing, and so on.

The authors of the article you mention take up that issue, too, but once again fail to meet it squarely.

We read, “But since when does English like to limit itself? Synonyms abound, and most of them avoid the opprobrium that impactful endures.”

Once again, the issue is being avoided rather than addressed. The problem with "impactful" isn't just that it's widely hated. The problem is that it's inferior in clarity and depth of meaning—and also in sound, by the way—to scores of other words describing the same phenomenon. The best reasons not to use "impactful" are that  it's hard to say, it conveys little meaning, it lacks clarity, and just to round things off, it sounds "dumb."

“The library is one of the most impactful, far-reaching institutions in our community.”

The phrase doesn't signal the end of the world; it's more like fingernails on a chalk board. All the same, libraries really ought to promote clarity of expression and avoid jargon, don't you think?

What Amy meant to say, I think, is that she has personally been affected in a positive way by her visits to the library, and perhaps also by participating in the outreach programs it offers. Beyond that, she has observed that the library has had a similarly positive impact on other patrons.

Alas, that's not a catchy slogan.