Kung Hei Fat Choi! Xin Nian Kuai Le!

In English, that is equivalent to "Happy New Year!"

Image courtesy of www.koreanpress.com.

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year (the Year of the Rabbit), also known as the Spring Festival.  It begins on the first day of the first month of the Chinese traditional calendar, and ends on the fifteenth day with the Lantern Festival.  It is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar, and one that is centuries old.  The dates are consistent when determined by the Chinese calendar, which is lunisolar - a calendar whose date indicates the time of the solar year and the moon phase.  In the Gregorian calendar the event falls on different dates each year, between January 21 and February 20.

It's silly to try and assign customs and traditions to an ethnic or cultural group and think that they apply to everyone in it.  In any group there will be a wide variance by region.  This is no less true with Chinese New Year.  There are some commonalities, however, that can be found all over China and the Chinese communities all over the world.

New year items for sale at a Chinese  market.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

One of the legends regarding the beginning of Chinese New Year is that it began with a mythical beast called the Nian.  It would come on the first day of the new year and devour everything; it especially liked children.  People began to put food out in front of their doors, hoping the Nian would eat it and leave.  One day the Nian saw a child wearing red and it ran off, so the villagers learned that it was afraid of the color red.  So now every new year red lanterns, red scrolls, and red coverings on windows and doors are hung.  Firecrackers are also used to scare the Nian away.  The Nian was eventually captured by a Taoist monk who used it as a vehicle.

Red is the predominant color and is associated with virtue, truth, and sincerity. The word for red in Chinese is also the word for prosperous, making red an auspicious color with an auspicious sound.  Fireworks, invented by the Chinese, are an old custom.  They are banned for private use in many areas though, because of the injuries that have occurred.  Municipalities often put on a public fireworks show.

Fireworks in Sydney Harbor, Australia.
Image courtesy of  www.mymym.com.

On the day before the celebration starts, people thoroughly clean their homes.  Bad luck is swept out to make room for good luck.  Doors and windows are sometimes given a fresh coat of red paint.  Family altars are cleaned, and the decorations put up the year before are burned and new ones added.  Banners are hung stating "happiness", "wealth", "longevity" and other positive affirmations.  In addition, people buy new clothing, shoes, and get haircuts in order to make a new start.  The day before is also a big cooking day.  Food is prepared for a big family dinner that night, and the food for the following day is prepared, as it is bad luck to make fires or use knives on the first day.

Image courtesy of The Baltimore Sun.

During the two weeks of the festival the emphasis is on family and honoring the gods and the ancestors.  Every day has its prescribed activities.  A lion dance troop may be invited to scare bad spirits.  It is traditional to give gifts, usually food or sweets, to friends or relatives of different households.  Oranges, cakes, biscuits, or chocolate would be a typical gift.  Married members of the family give out red envelopes containing money to kids and teens.  The amounts can range from a couple dollars to hundreds, but are always even numbers (uneven amounts are given at funerals).  Odd and even numbers are determined by the first number, hence 10, 30, or 50 would be odd numbers.  Bosses give bonuses in red envelopes to their employees.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Near the end of the celebration, on the thirteenth day, people eat vegetarian food to clean out their systems from eating too much rich food the past two weeks.  On this day, organizations and businesses honor the Chinese god of war, General Guan Yu.  Because he won so many battles, he is considered a symbol of wealth and success.  On the fifteenth day, the Lantern Festival signals the end of the festivities; families walk the streets carrying lit lanterns to guide wayward spirits home.

This chart shows the twelve animals of the Chinese calendar.  Although they represent individuals born during their respective cycles, they are not the same as astrological signs.  Chinese astrology, like Western, is complex.  Western astrology uses one's sun sign as only part of a person's character - the moon sign, rising sign, and positions of houses are also some of the things considered when casting someone's horoscope.  Likewise, Chinese astrology - which does not calculate the positions of the sun, moon and planets - uses the five elements (metal, wood, water, earth, and fire), inner animals and secret animals, Yin and Yang, and other considerations.

Today begins the Year of the Rabbit.  May your new year be prosperous!

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The Rodent Arises...

Punxsutawney Phil from Gobbler's Knob.
Image courtesy of Groundhog Org.

Today is Groundhog Day.  It is customary in the U.S. to wait for and watch a groundhog poke its head out of its burrow to check out the weather.  If he sees his shadow, then we can expect six more weeks of winter.  If not, then we will have an early spring.

The groundhog is not a hog.  It's formal name is Marmota Monax, and it is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, basically just a large ground squirrel.  It is also known as a marmot or a woodchuck.  Woodchucks do not chuck wood, despite the tongue-twister.  Since they burrow, they don't have anything to do with trees.

The groundhog is a rodent belonging to the family of large ground squirrels.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

"Woodchuck" is a word we borrowed from the Algonquian language, "wuchak", along with chipmunk, raccoon, opossom, moose, caribou, and squash.  Various tribes of the north and east parts of the U.S. spoke dialects of Algonquian, including the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Mohican, Powhatan, and Ojibwa, among others.

The U.S. custom began with the Pennsylvania Germans in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, about 84 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, where it has been celebrated since about 1886.  In Alaska the holiday is called Marmot Day, a holiday created by a bill in the Alaska legislature that was signed in 2009 by then-Governor Sarah Palin.

Punxsutawney Phil giving his prognosis.
Photo by Gene J. Puskar, AP

Some European countries have similar customs, such as Serbia.  On February 15 Sretenje is celebrated.  On this day a bear will wake up, and if it sees its own shadow it will get scared and go back to sleep, which means a longer winter.  If it doesn't then winter is almost over.

In England, Candlemas is celebrated either February 2nd, or the Sunday between January 28th and February 3rd.  If bears or wolves emerge to inspect the weather and return to their dens and lairs, there will be at least another 40 days of severe weather.  Italy has the same custom called Candelora.

Imbolc, or St. Brigid's Day is an ancient Celtic festival marking the beginning of spring.  It is commonly celebrated on February 1st or 2nd.  It is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and there is an old tradition of waiting to see if badgers come out of their winter dens.  It is also the day the Cailleach, or hag, gathers firewood for the remaining winter.  If she intends to make the winter last longer, she will cause the weather to be sunny and bright so she can collect plenty of firewood.

No celebration of Groundhog Day would be complete without a clip from the eponymous movie.  And so, without further ado, here is Bill Murray as Phil Connors....

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When the Saint comes beboppin' in...

John Coltrane
Image courtesy of www.flickr.com

"My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music.

If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is

part of the whole thing.  To be a musician is really something.  It goes

very, very deep.  My music is the spiritual expression of what I am -

my faith, my knowledge, my being."

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (1926-1967) was arguably the greatest tenor saxophone player in jazz history.  "Trane" was at the helm of bebop and hard bop, and helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz.  He was a prolific composer, and explored and developed a harmonic progression variation known as the Coltrane changes, among other names.  A jazz musician's improvising ability is measured by how well s/he can solo over the Giant Steps/Coltrane cycle from Coltrane's 1960 Giant Steps album.  (For a detailed explanation of this, click here.)

Seeing Charlie Parker play, in 1945, was a momentous occasion for Coltrane.  He told DownBeat in 1960, "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."  They played together in the late 1940s.  In the early and mid 1950s Coltrane played with Dizzy Gillespie, among others.  But he had a longer association with Miles Davis.

From the summer of 1955 until April of 1957, Coltrane was in Davis's band the "First Great Quartet" which showed Coltrane's increasing ability.  They disbanded because of Davis's heroin addiction.  Coltrane then played with Thelonious Monk, and went on to make what is widely considered his best album from this time, Blue Train.  He and Davis played together again from 1958 to 1960.  It was at the end of this period that Coltrane composed Giant Steps.  Not long afterward he began playing the soprano saxophone, an instrument that had not been used much in jazz before.

From 1960 - 1962, Coltrane took a new direction, playing the most experimental music ever, influenced by modal jazz, free jazz, and even Indian ragas.  However, he did not receive much critical acclaim for this.  This new kind of jazz was perplexing to audiences, and Coltrane was even booed off the stage playing with Davis in France.  DownBeat in 1961 pronounced Coltrane as one of the players of "Anti-Jazz".

Coltrane in 1960, photographed by Francis Wolff.

It was in his "classic quartet" period from 1962 - 1965 that Coltrane's spiritual concerns came front and center.  From this time forth, he became more and more involved with experimental jazz, pushing the limits and often becoming incomprehensible to much of his audience.  It is suggested that he might have been experimenting with LSD in 1965, which may have influenced his music.  He died of liver cancer at the age of 40.  His death was unexpected, as few knew of his illness.

Coltrane's maternal and paternal grandfathers were both ministers of an AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Zion Church.  His first wife was Muslim and it was from her that he came in contact with Islam.  He was very interested in religion, studied Hinduism, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and the philosophers Plato and Aristotle.  He had problems with heroin addiction and alcoholism, but claimed a religious experience caused him to overcome his addictions.  In the liner notes of his 1965 album A Love Supreme he stated, "During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.  At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music."  In 1966, Coltrane was asked by a journalist what he would like to be in five years.  His answer:  "A saint."

St. John Coltrane
Photo by Heidi Schumann for the NY Times.

Well, he got his wish.  Archbishop Franzo King and Reverend Mother Marina King began a church, inspired from hearing Coltrane perform in San Francisco in 1965.  They say they knew the presence of the Lord when they heard his music. They make it clear that they are "not dealing with St. John the man, but St. John the sound and St. John the Evangelist and Sound Baptist, who attained union with God through sound".  They call their church the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church.

Members of the church include jazz musicians who play for the
congregation each Sunday.  (Archbishop King is on the right.)
Photo by Heidi Schumann for the NY Times.

Sunday services, which begin at 11:45 A.M. and last until 2:30 P.M., are part revival meeting and part jam session.  Besides the unusual hagiography and music, the church's activities include personal "witnessing" and various social activities. Each week the church features "sound baptism" using St. John Coltrane's later albums, after he saw the light and quit drugs, referred to as the "Risen Trane". Although Coltrane's music is the focus, all types of music are played, including funk, reggae, and gospel.  Members are encouraged to bring their own instruments.

The highlight of each week's sound baptism is the choir reciting Psalm 23 over the track "Acknowledgment" from the A Love Supreme album.  There is a call-and-response participation as the audience calls out "a love supreme" during selected moments.  The musical ministry is delivered through the "Ministers of Sound" aka Ohnedaruth (Sanskrit for "compassion"), a group that has played internationally, and can be booked for events.

Sunday service at the St. John Coltrane church.
Photo by Heidi Schumann for the NY Times.

And if you are not in San Francisco but like the concept, just listen to Coltrane. Not many people who aspire to sainthood make it.  It must be the music.

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Bibliokleptomania

This book advocates rebelling against authority, and
 has been referred to as reflecting the "yippie zeitgeist".

Bibliokleptomania has existed for as long as there have been biblios to klept.  Of course, it’s a lot easier to sneak a small paperback home than a large illuminated manuscript, but that’s only a small deterrent to a determined bibliokleptomaniac.  Scrolls could be easily hidden under robes, capes, and togas, and as for large tomes, well, where there is a will there is a way.

Take Dr. Elois Pichler.  He was a German librarian who worked in the Russian Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg.  In 1871 he was caught with around 4,000 volumes stolen from the library – the largest known amount of books stolen in Europe.  He had a large overcoat with a special sack in the lining.  He was an eclectic thief, and stole both rare volumes and ordinary books.  He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to exile in Siberia, presumably without any books.

The Imperial Public Library in St. Peterburg, 1884, engraving by
De La Charlerie, image courtesy of this site.

I know the anguish of Don Vincente, although I don’t condone how he assuaged it.  He was a friar at a convent whose library was plundered during the reign of Queen Christina of Spain in 1834.  He went to Barcelona and established himself as a book dealer.  But he fell in love with his books and was only able to sell them when absolutely necessary.  When he was outbid at an auction for a copy of a rare and perhaps unique book, Ordinacions per los Gloriosos Keys de Arago, Don Vincente set the successful bidder’s house on fire, killing him but making it look as though the victim’s pipe caused the fire.  More mysterious murders followed.  Finally Don Vincente’s shop was searched.  The Ordinations volume was found there, which begged the question of how it escaped the fire.  Don Vincente finally confessed to all his murders, including customers to whom he had reluctantly sold books, and sought to get them back.  At his trial his defense lawyer claimed that there was a copy of Ordinations in the Louvre, so it wasn’t so unique, and there may be more copies.  At that Don Vincente cried.  Not at his heinous actions, but because the book was not unique.

Stephen Carrie Blumberg may have the distinction of being the greatest book thief in history.  Holding a high school diploma, he passed as a Professor Matthew McGue from the University of Minnesota at university libraries.  He, too, wore long coats with long pockets in the lining, but had many ways of stealing books.  He stole 23,600 rare books from 268 libraries, totaling a cost estimated to be $5.3 million.  He took very good care of them, housing them in an old house with floor to ceiling bookshelves.  To him it wasn’t stealing, but rather building a great collection of books.  To carefully remove the glue of the library card pockets, he would lick them.  He tried for 100 books a day, or until he got sick from the glue.  His lawyers unsuccessfully pled insanity, but to no avail.  I have to wonder if the glue impaired his brain.

Stanislas Gosse, in 2003, admitted to stealing over 1,000 volumes of rare books from the monastery library of Mont Sainte-Odile, which sits 2,500 feet up in the Vosges mountains of France.  Mont Sainte-Odile dates to the 7th century CE, dedicated to St. Odile of Alsace.  Remote, the monastery/convent is surrounded by the walls of the ruins of old fortifications.  Its buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt many times.  Gosse learned of a secret passage from medieval times through a map in the city archives that seemed to have been forgotten.  He climbed the walls, took the passage and entered the library from a bookcase that swung open.

Mont Sainte-Odile

Gosse was a local teacher, who couldn’t resist the thrill and challenges of the task.  When the missing books were first noticed, it was a big mystery since the library was locked and off limits to the public.  It was only after two years, and the boarding of windows and replacement of the locks, that the police figured out there must be another entrance.  When they found the swinging section of bookcase and the secret passage, they set up hidden cameras. 

Mont Sainte-Odile

They caught Gosse in the act and he was finally arrested with rope and three suitcases of books in hand.  In his apartment they found all the books he had taken.  He had taken good care of them, even restoring some of them.  He confessed to “the thrill of the chase”, and stated his concern was also for the books.  He felt they had been abandoned – no one was reading them, and they were covered with dust and pigeon poop. 

Gosse was a former naval officer, and a teacher at a local engineering school.  He was charged with “burglary by ruse and escalade”.  The archbishop and the head of Mont Sainte-Odile forgave him, and stated they would like to see him continue his work as a teacher.  The court granted him permission to teach, a suspended prison term, community service helping the monks catalog the books, and a fine of approximately $20,000.  Which doesn't answer the questions of why no one at Mont Sainte-Odile nor the police knew of the secret passage or bookcase, but documentation was available at the city archives for anyone to see.  And why did it take so long to get serious about finding the culprit?

Image showing the careful cutting of a book by Hakimzadeh.
Courtesy of the Guardian.

Farhad Hakimzadeh is a wealthy, Harvard-educated businessman, who was also a publisher and an intellectual.  He also took a scalpel to 150 books from the British Library and the Bodleian Library over seven years.  He stole maps, pictures, and some pages out of rare books so carefully that the damage is only visible to a trained eye who is looking for it.

Map taken by Hakimzadeh from a book in the British Library.
Image courtesy of the Guardian.

It all came to light when a reader reported the book he was looking at had missing pages.  After careful examination, it turned out to be true, and the search for who had done the damage and what other works might have suffered began.  They found that books from the same period of history about European encounters in the geographical area of Syria to Bangladesh were also damaged - books that Hakimzadeh had contact with.  Soon it was discovered that of the 842 books that he had taken out, at least 150 had been cut up. 

Dr. Kristian Jensen, head of British and Early Printed
Collections at the British Library, examines a book
with cut page.  Image courtesy of the Guardian.

Forensic scientists analyzed the books.  A search of his home revealed that he had inserted the stolen pages in his own books, and others were found loose.  One of the pages was worth close to $51,000.  Since he was an expert in the field from which the pages referred to, officials felt that makes his crime even worse, since he knew the value of what he took and the books he defaced.  He is currently being sued for full compensation, but that may be difficult to ascertain, as many of the pages have not been found.  So far he has been sentenced to two years in prison on criminal charges and fined $11,000 in court costs, but faces civil suits as well.

It is interesting to note that those afflicted with this mania are not from the criminal element but from respectable and educated backgrounds.  Some have had prior problems and/or convictions.  Libraries have traditionally dealt with theft and mutilation quietly, either out of embarrassment or not to give out ideas.   It is reported that in the Middle Ages curses were used as a safeguard against thievery.  There is a famous oft-quoted, curse that is sometimes believed to be from these times, but has proven not to be.  (Click here to see more about this curse and the comments about it.)  Another punishment that was issued from the Middle Ages through the 19th century was forcible exile.  In the latter years, in Britain that meant being sent to Australia, a punitive measure that equated book thieves with hardened criminals.

Librarians and bibliophiles alike have been outraged at this kind of behavior, feeling it gives bibliomania a bad connotation, rather than denoting someone with a passion for books.  Some book collectors see this extreme form of passion as a romantic, noble thing.  Bibliokleptomania is more than a passion, it is a mania, a mental illness.  Current thinking is to send a strong message and publicly address the thief.  More advanced security and prevention is also being sought.  It is sad that this is necessary, particularly at a time when libraries are so ill-funded.  These rare and unique books belong to us all, and it is a privilege to have access to them. So do we spend available monies purchasing more books, or spend it on protecting what we have from selfish and somewhat demented individuals?  Not an easy choice...

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Ophiuchus and Cetus, Too

An anatomical man showing which sign of the zodiac
corresponds to each part of the body.  15th century.
The Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

Poor Pluto.  Unceremoniously demoted without even a farewell.  We tend to be possessive about our skies, and if you don’t fit the right definition, well, tough (kind of like some people’s racial, religious, and cultural biases).  I feel for Pluto as I’m going through a bit of an identity crisis myself.  Recently it has been announced publicly that I am no longer a Sagittarius, but am under the sign of Ophiuchus.  (This is pronounced "of-ee-yoo-kuhs".)

Actually, I had known about this constellation before.  In my teens I turned to astrology to find answers to questions that were troubling me.  Questions like:  Who am I?  What is my purpose in life?  Why do I either have a zit on my face or green vegetable matter in my teeth when approached by a cute boy?  I never found the answers in astrology, but fortunately a cute boy looked beyond the zits and greens and married me.  (He is a Southerner, which may explain his predilection for greens.)

The belief that there is a connection between the world around us and humans, and that our lives are influenced and affected by it is an ancient one.  Besides astrology, the world has looked for portents in stones, animals, and a variety of things and places.  Even physiognomy, the study of facial features, was once a respected science.  The search for omens certainly pertained to the skies, and it must've been a wonder to ancient humans to look up and try and figure out what was going on up there, especially as they noticed things moved.

16th century woodcut of the signs of the zodiac.

Astrology and astronomy came from the same study.  Astrology was the interpretation of celestial objects, their movements, and phenomena.  Astronomy was at one time the attempt to predict celestial events.  Astronomy is now a full-fledged science, while astrology is at best a pseudo-science.  However, many still believe in astrology, but only when it's done by a skilled and knowledgeable interpreter.

Astrology was used in ancient times to seek the fate of important matters of state, or of rulers.  The ancient Greek astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition, and the planets, houses, and signs of the zodiac from his works have changed little today.  It wasn't until Alexander the Great conquered Egypt that the Hellenic influence changed Alexandrian astrology, and the use of astrology to plot personal horoscopes began.  Arab astrologers took it up and revived the learning of the ancient Greeks.  The Arabs greatly added to the nascent field of astronomy, naming many of the major stars in the process.

Scenographia Systematis Mvndani Ptolemaici
The Ptolemaic system depicted by Andreas Cellarius, circa 1660.

In the Middle Ages astrologers were called "mathematici".  A "mathematicus" denoted a person proficient in astrology, astronomy, and mathematics.  The practice of medicine was also dependent on astrology, so early physicians learned it as well.

God the Geometer, circa 1250
from The Frontispiece of Bible Moralisee
Codex Vindobonensis 2554 in the
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

During the Renaissance, many individuals who we now credit with refuting (refudiating?) astrology were astrologers themselves, such as Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler.  However, most medieval and Renaissance astrologers practiced palmistry, using astrology as back-up for their findings. Kepler famously referred to astronomy as the wise mother and astrology the foolish daughter, and said that the existence of the daughter was necessary to the life of the mother.  It was the interest in astrology that fueled the study of astronomy.

Ophiuchus, whose name in Greek means "serpent-bearer", was one of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, in the 2nd century.  It's earliest mention, however, is in Aratus, who was referring to the lost catalog of Eudoxus of Cnidus from the 4th century BCE.  In antiquity, Ophiuchus and some of its fixed stars were used by astrologers as "extra-zodiacal" indicators, meaning significant celestial phenomena that was outside of the twelve signs proper.

Illustration by Kepler from his book
De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii
("On the new star in Ophiuchu's foot")
"Kepler's Supernova" is marked with an "N"
circa early 1600s

In 1930, the IAU (International Astronomical Union) defined constellation boundaries.  Because Ophiuchus sits behind the sun between November 29 and December 17, it has been used on occasion as a thirteenth sign.  That idea originated in the 1970s and even Cetus - a constellation known as "the whale" today - was added as a fourteenth sign.  Cetus was a sea monster in Greek mythology, and in ancient Mesopotamia was identified with Tiamat, the primordial cosmic female principle (and sea monster!)

Constellation of Cetus
Sir James Thornhill, 1729.

So, really, there's nothing new under the sun (and stars), and this new zodiacal craze will soon be forgotten and join all the departed crazes that have been born and have died since the beginning of humankind.  And all of us Sagittarius types can get back to horsing around.

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All images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Something Cheesy...

"A meal without some cheese is like a

beautiful women with only one eye."

Brillat-Savarin

The moon IS made of cheese!
Cheese sculpture by Sarah Kaufmann.

The earliest cheeses may have been a happy accident, made by nomadic tribes in Central Asia.  Historians believe that they most likely carried milk in containers made of animal skins and internal organs, where it coagulated.  Pressed, these curds would've made an early form of cheese.  Cheese was a good way to preserve milk.

The earliest written reference to cheese is from tomb murals of Egypt dating to 2,000 BCE.  Dairy cattle have been raised in Europe for almost 5,000 years, and there is archaeological evidence that cheese was being made in the Netherlands about 2,000 BCE as well.

Cheese is usually made from the milk of animals who are ruminant and whose milk contains a short chain of fatty acids.  Milk from non-ruminants (pigs, boars, etc.) is not suitable because their milk contains  long chains of fatty acids.  We most commonly eat cheese made from cows, sheep, and goat.  However....

Balkan donkeys.

The most expensive cheese in the world is Pule, a cheese made from donkey milk. Priced at $616 a pound, it is made at Zasavica Special Nature Reserve in Belgrade, Serbia.  The milk is collected from the  Balkan donkeys that live at the reserve. "Pule" is Serbian for "foal".  Donkey milk has a history of desirability, beginning with the Greeks who saw it as a remedy for various ailments.  Hippocrates recommended it for the treatment of some diseases and a remedy for poisoning. Cleopatra was said to bathe in it, but Cleo is said to have done so many exotic things.

Pule

Moose milk cheese is exotic and also expensive.  There are moose cheesemakers in Scandinavia and Russia, but the most famous is Moose House, a fifty-nine acre farm in northern Sweden.  It is part of The Elk House (Älgens Hus) farm in Bjurholm, Sweden, run by Christer and Ulla Johansson.  Their cheese, sold mainly to upscale Swedish restaurants and hotels, sells for approximately $500 a pound. Moose produce milk from May to September, and it takes two hours to milk one moose.  Each moose delivers about one gallon a day.  The farm produces 660 pounds of the cheese a year in three varieties.  Their farm is a tourist site and attracts 25,000 visitors a year.  The cheese can be sampled on the farm.

Moose cheese.

Yak cheese, which is three times higher is omega-3 fatty acids than cheddar, is now being touted by health experts.  Yaks can be as a big as cows, but only give a few liters of milk each day, like a goat.  Since yaks eat a lot of wildflowers, that taste is reflected in their milk, and thus the cheese made from it.  Jonathan White tells of his experience helping Tibetan yak herders make cheese on his website.

Flower of Rajya yak milk cheese.

Now if these cheeses aren't exotic enough for you, or if you really think you are an intrepid foodie, then consider cheese made from human breast milk.  Chef Daniel Angerer crafted breast milk cheese from his wife's extra milk.  His website gives directions on making your own.  He uses it in his exclusive dishes:

Maple-caramelized pumpkin seeds encrust Mommy's milk cheese.

Mommy's milk cheese with beets and romaine.

There is also a farm in France that specializes in human milk cheese.  Le Petit Singly expects their donneuses (breast milk donors) to follow specific rules in their diet:

100 G of bread (or cereal equivalents) at a rate of 60g in the morning, 40g in the afternoon
cooked starchy food 200g at midday, 100 G in the evening

green vegetables at will

2 X 100 G of meat or equivalent (fish, eggs…)

2 fruits and a fruit juice

2 X 40g of cheese and 3 dairy products (of cow exclusively)

In addition the donneuses have other restrictions:

do not smoke

do not drink alcohol in excessive quantities

do not make use of narcotics or any domestic products likely to pass into milk

Wheels of human milk cheese from Le Petit Singly.

If you still have an appetite for cheese, here a couple of dishes that may interest you.  They are currently the most expensive of their respective kind, and perhaps much more appetizing...

Martin Blunos and his expensive sandwich.

Martin Blunos, a Michelin-starred chef, created the most expensive cheese sandwich in the world, although it has other ingredients.  The sandwich costs $174.10, partly because of the cheese.  Blunos worked with cheddar cheesemakers at Pilgrim's Choice to create the special white truffle cheese used.  Besides this special cheese, the sandwich includes slices from a $8 loaf of sourdough bread, dressed with extra virgin olive oil and 100-year-old balsamic vinegar, slices of quail's egg, heirloom black tomato, epicure apple, fresh figs, red frill mustard, pea shoots, and red amaranth.  The whole thing is topped with edible gold dust.

Sandwich with gold dust.

Welsh rarebit is a type of cheese toast.  Chef Tom Bridge makes one that is the most expensive costing a grand total of $609 to make.  He uses a slice of Warburtons Toastie bread topped with Lancashire cheese, which melts nicely, and L'Aguila white Umbrian truffles ($1,228 per pound), Matsutake Chinese mushrooms ($556 per pound), shredded Red Velvet Organic beetroot, and slow-roasted vine cherry tomatoes in extra virgin white truffle oil.  Click here for his recipe.

Bridge's Welsh Rarebit.

These aren't your childhood grilled cheeses, which I remember fondly.  Nor are they processed with preservatives and food coloring, and they don't come in an aerosol can.  The quality of ingredients and processing dictates the very high prices.  However, the love and use of cheese is not universal.  It is rarely found in East Asian dishes, as there is a high incidence of lactose intolerance in that part of the world.  On the other hand, cheese is a vital source of nutrition in many areas of the world.  Speaking of which, I hear some Havarti calling me...

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All images from their respective websites.

Thanks to the staff of Culture Magazine for referring me to Pule.

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We're Not in Kansas Anymore

"Touched by His Noodly Appendage" by Niklas Jansson, August 2005.
A parody of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam", this depiction is the
brand image for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In May of 2005 the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee met to change the teaching methods of evolution and the origin of life in high school classrooms.  These hearings were arranged by the Christian Board of Education whose agenda was to use intelligent design (ID) in the curriculum.  The hearings attracted lots of interest and were attended by the major players in the ID movement.  They were boycotted by the scientific community, who rejected the concept that ID was science.  The Board of Education adopted the teaching of ID over the objections of the State Board Science Hearing Committee.  But on February 13, 2007, the Board reversed itself.

In January 2005, just months prior to the hearings, Oregon State University physics grad Bobby Henderson sent an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education with his own theory, which he claimed was equal to ID.  Enter the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM).  Henderson's thinking was that since ID used ambiguous references to a "Designer", then any conceivable party could be that figure, including the FSM.  A new parody religion was born, taking its place alongside Russell's teapot and the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

A hand-crafted model of the FSM.

In May, 2005, hearing no response from the Kansas State Board of Education, Henderson posted his letter on his website.  Pastafarianism, as the belief in the supernatural creator FSM is called, became a huge internet sensation.  Since then he has published responses from Board members, hate mail, and death threats. Within a year he received more than 15,000 emails about the FSM, which he stated were 95% supportive.  His website had more then 350,000,000 hits and used 700 gigabytes of bandwidth a month.  The open letter was printed in many newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Sun Times, and received worldwide attention.

The FSM "fish" emblem is a parody of the Christian Ichthys symbol.

As the concept gained popularity, the satire became popular with bloggers and internet humor websites.  An International Society for Flying Spaghetti Monster Awareness emerged, along with other fan sites.  In August of 2005, Boing Boing offered a $250,000 prize (later upped to $1,000,000) of "Intelligently Designed currency" to anyone who could produce empirical evidence that Jesus is not the son of the FSM.  The challenged sparked even more interest in the FSM.

Henderson's book, entitled The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, was released in March of 2006. The book presents the beliefs of Pastafarianism, and includes a creation myth, a propaganda guide for proselytizing, and pseudo-scientific proof.  The FSM is invisible and undetectable.  It separated the waters from the heavens on the first day; on the second he created land, as he couldn't swim for long and grew tired of flying.  The land featured a beer volcano, which the FSM overindulged in.  Hung over and in a drunken state he went on creating, including Man.  Man and Woman lived in the Olive Garden of Eden until the FSM caused a global flood from a cooking accident.  The book was well-received for its irony and humor, and was nominated for the Quill Award in Humor that same year.

The Gospel, written by the prophet
of Pastafarianism, Bobby Henderson.

Mosey the Pirate received ten stone tablets from the FSM, but dropped two of them climbing down from Mount Salsa.  The Eight "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts" that survived address a number of behaviors, but the loss of two of them accounts for Pastafarians' weak morals.  The cause for the Earth's flaws is from the FSM's intoxication.  Every Friday is a holy day, and prayers are concluded with the affirmation, "Ramen".  September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Official logo.

Pirates are big with Pastafarians.  In his original letter to the Kansas State Board of Education, Henderson argued that global warming and natural disasters are the direct result of the shrinking number of pirates since the 1800s.  This parodies the belief that the high number of natural disasters is the result of lack of respect for the deity worshipped by religious groups.  In 2008, Henderson pointed out that all the pirate activities in the Gulf of Aden were proof of his theory because Somalia has both the highest number of pirates and lowest carbon emissions in the world. Pastafarians believe pirates were peaceful explorers, and the connotation that they were thieves and outcasts came from misinformation spread by Christian theologians from the Middle Ages and Hare Krishnas.

Satirical diagram included in Henderson's open letter.

Currently The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has thousands of followers, most from college campuses and Europe.  The Associated Press calls Henderson's website, "a kind of cyber-watercooler for opponents of Intelligent Design". Missouri State University, since October of 2008,  holds an annual convention called Skepticon on campus which includes Pastafarians.  Atheists and skeptics give speeches and debate Christian experts.  It's touted as the "largest gathering of atheists in the Midwest".

The American Academy of Religion at their 2007 annual meeting featured four talks regarding the FSM, which examined the elements necessary for a group to be considered a religion.  On Kiva, the non-profit website promoting microfinance, Pastafarians are in competition with a Mormon faction to best all the other religious groups in the number of loans issued via their team efforts.  As of September 2010, Pastafarians had funded more than $380,000 in loans.

The popularity of the FSM shows that belief in creation is arbitrary and that one view is as good as the next.  As supporters and free thinkers alike have said, the onus of proof is on the believer.

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All images courtesy of Wikipedia.

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"Tremble and Obey"

Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor (1711 - 1799)
on a silk scroll in court dress by an anonymous artist.
  Image courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

Thus was the imperial closing of a letter to England's King George III by the Chinese Qianlong Emperor.  He was the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and a successful military leader and a major patron of the arts. He commissioned a catalog of all important works on Chinese culture, the Siku Quanshu, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature.  Using about 15,000 copyists, it took twenty years to produce the 36,000 volumes of 3,450 complete works.  This is the largest collection of books in Chinese history, and perhaps the most ambitious editorial project ever.

An interior of the Qianlong Garden Restoration Project that has been restored.

While it preserved many works, it also suppressed works of political opponents. The full editing of the Siku Quanshu took about ten years.  In the process 3,100 works and 150,000 copies of books were banned or burned.  "Literary Inquisition" was the official persecution of intellectuals for their writings in Imperial China, and the Qing dynasty were infamous for using it.  A nefarious political tool, even a single phrase or word could be considered offensive by the ruler.  Persecution of those found guilty could result in beheading, mutilated corpses, or victims sliced into pieces until dead.  Sometimes the punishment would extend to the families of those found guilty.

A fan made from Yanghe Jingshe wood, brass, and paint.

The Qianlong Emperor was more favorably known as a patron of the arts.  A very prolific poet and essayist himself, over 40,000 poems and 1,300 prose texts that he wrote were published between 1749 and 1800.  Ceramics, pottery, enameling, lacquer and metal work prospered, and much of his own collection is now shared in the Percival David Foundation in London.  Many pieces of his fine art collection can be found in the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Screen from the Garden site.

As an emperor, he presided over the Qing dynasty, China's last, at the zenith of its wealth and power.  In 1771 he created a retirement retreat within the Forbidden City, and filled it with paintings and decorative and religious works.  Deep within the Forbidden City, this two-acre retreat truly was forbidden.  Since the last emperor left in 1924 not many have seen this site.  The Qianlong Garden Restoration Project is being restored with help from the World Monument Fund.

An imperial theater room with stage.

The garden has four courtyards and 27 pavilions and structures.  The decorations and furnishings reflect the spectacular art from this period of Chinese history, and the site has remained unchanged from imperial times. Imagine!  Untouched since 1795!  Only one building is finished in its restoration, and the entire garden is expected to be done by 2019.

Shrine and statue of Jingang, made of either calcite or lapis lazuli,
with gilt, copper, silver, and glass.

With names like the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (the only one whose restoration is completed), the Supreme Chamber of Cultivating Harmony, the Studio of Self-restraint, the Pavilion of Purification, and the Terrace for Collecting Morning Dew, who wouldn't want to retire here?

Mural from one of the interiors of the site.

An exhibition organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in partnership with the Palace Museum and with cooperation from the World Monument Fund opened last September and ended earlier this month.  It will go on exhibit at the MET beginning February 1st for three months, then move on to open at the Milwaukee Art Museum on June 11th.  There was some consternation in China that these objects were to be shown publicly for the first time in the U.S., but in the interest of promoting the restoration of the entire Forbidden City site, it was decided to allow the Peabody Essex Museum to present the first glimpse of these objects anywhere in the world.

A hanging shrine on silk with intricate depictions of
supernatural beings.  The Qianlong Emperor holds
the center position and is shown in gold.

These objects represent the crème de la crème of extant art at the time.  And most reflect the contemplative aspect of the Qianlong Emperor's life as a scholar, a Buddhist, and a Confucian.  It was not about the power and the glory, but rather the rich life and informed taste of the elite mind.

A wood cabinet made of lacquer and gilding.

With the release of these objects one can only hope that further cultural sharing will be forthcoming from China.  Their complex and rich history has only begun to be understood, and these cultural icons will be an interesting and important way to "read" their history.

A hanging panel with niches and Buddhist figures.

Locked away, hidden to all but a few, these items and the site itself will be available to all with an interest in a unique time and place.

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All images courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, except as noted.

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