A Green Thought in a Green Shade

Writing a la Bach

2006-04-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be neat if there were a way to simultaneously write multiple streams of thoughts at once? I refer to the experience of writing one set of ideas while thinking other thougthts and contemplating other things that all develop simultaneously in the mind, while the hand is working away at transfering one set of thoughts onto paper. A rather self-conscious exercise, perhaps, to be able to write all one's thoughts at one and the same time, but for me anyways, I want to capture everything that I'm thinking at any moment because while the flow of things in the brain are seemingly random, there is a kind of order (at some level, I'm sure) to one's thoughts. Certainly I am writing this to you, my reader, but I may also be thinking about such mundanities as what part of my room to clean next alongside such abstruse thoughts as what the music I'm listening to reminds me of. And while everything seems to be a jumbled mix of thinking thinking thinking, how neat it would be to represent it all on the page--to see every detail laid out, notated, plotted, mapped--use what metaphor you will. I have no other reason for doing this than pure curiosity--another way to look at how I think.

I would like to write my thoughts in the manner of Bach's fugues: three parts that move alongside, around, and about each other, in perfect counterpoint. Each musical part by iteself has its own character and movement; it exists independently. Add the parts together, allowing now one, then another voice to dance on its own before joining the others in an intricate harmony, and you have a beautifully complex melody that is a pleasure to listen to.

In corollary, have you ever tried to hear a Bach fugue in your head just as you heard it performed? Can you hear every part, every figure and turn that each voice makes? Difficult, no? If not impossible--and that is what makes such carefully constructed music so extraodinary and contradictory: it is thick with notes, yet as a whole the music floats delicately on its various melodies; it is simple to pick out the different voices, yet challenging to hear them all together.

Meta-this, meta-that

2006-04-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

My readers must forgive me for this entry, which I aim to make the first and last time I will be completely and disgustingly self-indulgent in publishing a post about how anxious and angry I am with myself for being anxious and angry about school and other things about my life. These days I alternate between believing that I'm fine and that my assignments will be completed and the next two weeks of school-related madness will soon be over. Then I spend the rest of my time feeling as if I cannnot possibly deal with all the work I have to do before the term ends--which includes things that must be taken care of for the immediate and near-distant future.

And I know that I should not worry--that everything will get done, that I always get everything done, that life will sort itself out, that I am so lucky to be in school, that I should be grateful. . . Well, I don't care. I just do not care at this point that I am lucky, fortunate, and otherwise extremely priviliged to be in school studying for a degree that will launch me into life and lead me to new experiences.

See? I'm now meta-worrying and having meta-anxiety and meta-anger: frustrated, annoyed, worried about the fact that I am worrying about life and irritated that I'm letting rather insignificant matters bother me and beat me down. I feel like a Bad Child and an Ungrateful Person--and though I wish I could escape this mindset, it just does not seem possible.

So I suppose I should just be quiet now, go away, and do my homework.

. . . But she does have favourite poets

2006-03-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

While I may declare that I do not have favourite books, I can point out some poets and poems that I really like--those that are expressive or that make me stop and think. There is, perhaps, less commitment to having favourite poets, or maybe it is that poetry speaks more immediately and powerfully sometimes than prose--I don't know, but I can say that in my reading life there have been poems that I have seized upon and that have captivated me from the first reading.

So, to begin: Emily Dickinson is one who I have liked from my first encounter with her many years ago. Her poems have a distinctive rhythm and style that is like someone having a quiet, whispered conversation with you. Her imagery focuses on the little things of life, which I like, and her sometimes morbid sentiment is at once disturbing yet oddly enjoyable to me. Of her many poems, my favourite is "The Moon upon her fluent Route."

I like to read Gerard Manley Hopkins's poems in conjunction with Dickinson; they both have an idiosyncratic use of line and punctuation that makes their poetry resonate. Hopkins writes what I consider joyful poetry--there is an ebullient quality to his verse that reminds me that the world is a beautiful place when I've forgotten that there is more to life than work and school.* However, he does have a darker aspect that I nevertheless like as well as his other poems. I'm divided between naming "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame" and "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves" as my favourite Hopkins poem.

John Keats--one of the first and best poets of my reading life. His language and imagery, the lyricism of his expression. . . This is poetry that I could dwell in and ruminate upon for a long time. Of all his poems, one that I return to often is "To Autumn."

Percy Bysshe Shelley--Even though he was a rotter, a few of his poems are quite wonderful. I do like "Adonais," "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills," and "Mutability." Shelley is not an unequivocal favourite--sometimes he really annoys me--but he does describes things in a way that makes me pause and think.

Andrew Marvell--I've already talked about how wonderful I think he is, and so I leave you with a poem of his that I like, "On a Drop of Dew."

*By the way, today is a Hopkins-esque day: brilliant blue sky and warm sunshine.

FIS Cooking Club

2006-03-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

Saturday night was the first dinner of the FIS Cooking Club. A. and I came up with the idea of one during the Hart House Farm trip, and from the number of people who came and the wonderful food that everyone prepared, this will definitely continue next year. But first, the dinner. . .

The theme was Middle Eastern food--the idea being that we choose a cuisine that not many of us are familiar with and which will give the avid cooks amongst us an opportunity to prepare a dish that we otherwise would have no occasion to try out. And so, the menu was as diverse and delicious as anyone could hope for: there were a few couscous dishes, mixed lentils and rice, muhamara (roasted red pepper and walnut dip), hummus, fresh tomato and cucumber-feta salads, kebabs, tomato, lamb, and orzo soup, chicken, olive, and preserved lemon stew, and my bisteeya.* There were a few more dishes, but this is what I remember offhand. I'm afraid that I didn't get to photograph all the food, but I did take pictures of my bisteeya

A. graciously hosted the dinner at her apartment and she did a fantastic job, not only in setting a festive mood through the many candles and music (streamed from the Internet), but also in ensuring that we were all comfortable. We ate middle eastern style, seated on the floor with all the dishes spread out in the centre of the cloth we had laid down.

If you were to ask what my favourite dishes of the evening were, they would have to be J's chicken, olive, and preserved lemon stew, R-E's lentils and rice (so simple, yet so tasty!), and A.'s halvah torte. I must pause and give proper praise to the baker and the cake she made--it was absolutely wonderful--a layered cookie-like confection made of two layers of pistachio halvah pastry sandwiching caramel and the whole torte covered with a chocolate glaze (or ganache? I'll need to get the recipe from A.) and studded with whole pistachios. It was intensely flavoured, and contrary to appearence, not terribly sweet, which is to say a slice of it did not leave the diner with a sickly over-sugared feeling (I suppose the proper word to use, but which I don't particularly like, is "bilious"-but again, the torte did not have that effect). Actually, A. provided the entire dessert course, an impressive feat indeed, for she had also prepared a platter of sliced oranges, marzipan-stuffed dates, and some store-bought nougat, beautifully presented on a plate decorated with rose petals. We had fragrant mint tea to drink with dessert-a lovely way to end a memorable feast.

I can't wait until the next meeting--I have so many ideas planned. . .

*Several people have been asking me about how I would prepare this, a Moroccan filo pie filled with poultry, herbed eggs, and sugared almonds, especially after S. asked a reference librarian on my behalf to help find recipes for the pie during her presentation for my 1310 class. I've posted a detailed acount of this rather involved recipe at Toast and Mantequilla.

Thoughts on the reading life

2006-03-17T07:53:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about books lately, and as happens so often with me, a subject that occupies my mind begins to come up in class or in conversation with people. The question I'm ruminating over is what books I have read that have left a significant mark on me--books that have "changed my life," as people like to say. Quite frankly, I don't think I've yet read anything that could be identified as life-changing. As well, when people ask me what my favourite books are, I can't really name any book. There are books I've enjoyed, and favourite books of the moment (have you met my best friend Zola yet?), but nothing that I would name important enough to be a favourite, let alone "life-changing."

There's something so librarian-ish about sharing what books one considers to be personally significant or at least a favourite. In fact, according to the ideas behind readers' advisory, finding out what books are important to a reader is a useful way to get a sense of the individual's tastes. Although there are some who would argue against me, I draw a distinction between favourite books and personally significant books: the former are enjoyed, liked, or favoured by readers for a variety of reasons that are not necessarily related to the narratives' impact on readers' lives. The latter are meaningful because of the way that they have changed the reader, perhaps in terms of self-identity, or because they challenged the way the reader thinks--but they are not necessarily favourites, and in fact, they don't even have to be likeable. While favourite books can also be personally significant books, a significant, "life-changing" book is not necessarily one that was liked at all.

I like to hear about people's favourite books--it's wonderful to see people get excited about stories that are particularly meaningful to them and learning why people consider certain books their favourites is an interesting way to get insights into what a person is like. But perhaps this kind of inquiry only works well with book-people, that is, readers. What is probably more accurate for me to say is that finding out a fellow reader's favourite/personally significant books is a way to commune with that person.

So what accounts for the dearth of favourite and significant books in my reading life? I really can't say, and part of me wonders how important the whole idea is at all. Should any book be accorded some extraordinary rank in the realm of books? Perhaps. I can see the process of identifying favourites as a meaningful way of making sense of the infinite number of books/texts that exist in the world. Otherwise, reading would not be so pleasurable, if everything one read had the same level of significance in one's life. The rather sardonic joke that "nothing kills the enjoyment of reading like an English degree" has a note of truth to it, I'm afraid to say--most of what I've read in the past few years have been for courses and I've had precious little capacity to simply enjoy reading books after expending so much of my reading self analysing texts. . . .And I am reluctant to ascribe so much value to a book when there is always something else to read--something that will speak to the moment and resonate with the ways things are at a certain point in my life.

Choosing favourites is, to an extent, a self-reflexive and self-reflective exercise; there's an element of identification with the text or the narrative that draws on personal experience--immediate or past--that influences ones preference for a book. For me, to declare favourites would be to select titles that are significant for a finite time period. Thus, I may have favourite books, but they can only be so for a certain time because I myself am always changing. To think of it another way, favourite books are subject to mutability.

Is music a text?

2006-03-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

I went to a FIS colloquium yesterday, on score annotation and musicians' interpretation of music. It was presented by a FIS faculty candidate, Megan Winget, and was quite fascinating, although her presentation was ultimately unsatisfying and appeared to leave people with more questions than at the beginning.

One assertion that Winget made was that music is not a text--it is only symbols. To her, it seems, notes, rests, and other "marks" on the page are not textual--they are not readable or decipherable, and dont' "stand for anything." To hear her claim that written music is nothing more than symbols was, for me anyways, indicative of her rather narrow definition of "text" (restricted to words only) and probably limited knowledge of and experience in playing music herself. Of course notes, rests, and other musical "symbols" are meaningless and merely symbolic if one does not have the means (that is, knowledge of the notation) to decode or read it.

As a muscian who has immersed herself in many aspects of music as both a performer and scholar, I conceive of music as a text. In fact, I understand music to be a type of language with its own unique diction, syntax, and grammar. There are rules about what notes can be played together and follow after each other. Notes, rests, and the like are uncontestable signs--a "C" always means that a musician plays a "C"; the written note does not have a multiplicity of meanings in the way that a literary symbol does, for example.

It occured to me that Winget thought musical symbols, especially the progression of notes, are quite arbitrary because she does not have a background in music composition (harmony and counterpoint). While there most definitely are composers/"creators" today who challenge the formal rules of music (and of what defines music), much of what constitutes the Western tradition has been based on the musical grammar and syntax developed over the centuries. (I realize that the history of music, notation, and composition would not be neccessary to Winget's thesis, but it would probably elucidate some of her questions and ideas).

The language of music is, to a certain extent, fixed--and rightly so. What is amazing about a musical grammar is the beautiful works created over the centuries by composers who write according to the rules of music. Notes are like the alphabet of music, rests are the punctuation. What can change and is continually challenged are the grammar and syntax: how combinations of notes are created and how a succession of notes progess over the course of a piece. Music notation is not, as Winget asserts, inscrutable nor undecipherable; it does "make sense" and functions quite well as a way to record someone's musical creation--is this not a function of writing as well, to record what was expressed?

Alphabet Annoyance

2006-03-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

Have you ever played the game where everyone must come up with an adjective to describe themselves and that starts with the first letter of their name? I have played this many times and it is my least favourite of all the horrid "ice-breaker" games that exist. Why? Well, there are pitifully few adjectives that begin with "n" that I would happily affix to my name. Let's go through the OED so that I can show you a few of my favourite words. . .

Nescient: Ignorant. Does this need any further glossing?
Noxious: Harmful, poisonous, or very unpleasant.-->Indeed, the very way I would want people to remember me.
Neurotic: 1) Having, caused by, or relating to neurosis. 2) abnormally sensitive and obsessive. -->Incidentally, this is the adjective that many people have used to describe me. Of course, now that I've said it, more people are probably thinking that yes, this is a good word to describe Natalie. I, on the other hand, beg to differ.
Nihilistic: 1)[Concerning] the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. 2) [Characterizing] extreme scepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence.-->I do try to enjoy life, actually.
Nefarious: Wicked or criminal.-->Right. This is exactly how I would describe myself.

Plus there are countless words of negation: non--, ne--, not-- . . . Oh, and don't forget such lovely prefixes as necro-and neuro-. I've a lot to choose from, dont' I? And I mustn't leave out some very useful nouns that are not easily made into adjectives, but whose very meaning adds insult to injury in the world of "N":

Nosema: A spore-forming parasitic protozoan that causes disease in honey-bees.
Nosode: A preparation of substances secreted in the course of a disease, used in homeopathy.
Nosy parker
Nincompoop
Nuisance

Fun, isn't it? While I'm sure that there are many positive adjectives starting with the letter "n," there are too many "n" words in the English language that I would be ashamed to have preceding my name.

FIS 1311 Article Review

2006-03-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

Review of “The museum and the media divide: Building and using digital collections at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena” by W. Brent Seales and George V. Landon

We all know of digital libraries filled with e-books and of electronic archives, but what of digital museums? What use is digitalisation to museum collections? Seales and Landon assert that the digital divide that is of concern today is revolves around users’ accessibility to content; this leads to their contention that for museums, the “digital media divide” is “the gap between the museum’s physical holdings and its digital offerings” (Seales and Landon, 2005, p. 2). They argue for museums to engage in content creation, which they define as “data acquisition followed by data organization for access by users” (p.2). To illustrate the steps in the process of content creation they report on their own digitalisation project with the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena. They worked on creating digital representations of three different collections in the museum—sculpture, paintings, and petroglyphs (“symbols and figures carved into rock” [p.5]), all of which presented unique challenges to data acquisition. Throughout the article they emphasise repeatedly the importance for museums to take on the challenges of content creation and work to close the gap between museums’ physical holdings and digital representations.

The authors base their argument for museums to participate in the digital community on the assumption that more and more people have computers and network connections available to them, therefore museums should grasp the opportunity to reach more users by making use of new imaging and rendering technologies to digitise their collections. Their arguments proceed from this assumption and are framed in a way that is meant to sway their target audience, the museum community.

The authors clearly have a firm belief in the vital importance of content creation for museums, as evinced by the many “musts” that museums need to consider: they must employ practical strategies, dedicate extra resources, and systematically construct digital collections, for example (p. 4). Their insistent tone is meant to convey the essentiality of content creation for museums, but the repetition of “museums must” loses its rhetorical weight after a while and makes their points slightly less convincing because it is daunting, not encouraging, to be told that you “must” do all the things they tell you. Earnestness aside, the authors are commendable for being honest about the challenges and demands, yet the rewards as well, of translating museum holdings into digital format.

All through the article Seales and Landon refer to their intended audience as “users,” a fairly innocuous term that is actually quite meaningful in its vagueness. Rather than calling their users “museum-goers,” “visitors,” or “patrons” thereby limiting the idea of digital collection users to those who go to see the exhibits, the authors’ choice of label allows for an expanded understanding of who uses the museum. The possibilities created by digital technology would greatly enhance scholars’ work and research by facilitating studies of artefacts, especially those which are fragile, rare, or otherwise too vulnerable to the environment to be extensively handled. Digital renderings and images would also simply make it more convenient for scholars to conduct their research because the digital collections would be accessible from any computer in the world, eliminating the need to be physically present to examine the museum holdings. These same benefits also apply to “museum-goers,” who will be able to examine an artefact far more closely than would be permitted in the physical museum.

Just how willing are museums to invest in digitalisation projects? The authors recognize that many museums, especially smaller ones with tighter budgets, would be apprehensive about investing time and money into an endeavour that is relatively new and contingent upon many factors. In describing the imaging and rendering processes the authors incorporate practical suggestions on how to most easily and economically proceed with digitalisation of the collections. Seales and Landon anticipate concerns by stating upfront the cost of equipment, feasible substitutions for more expensive systems, and ways to make use of museums’ existing technology and equipment. Their suggestions are persuasively presented and show awareness of the realities of operating museums. They recommend, for example, coordinating access to holdings for digitalisation with access to the same items for routine handling. The authors contend that the most important goal for museums is display of content; this assertion reinforces their argument for accessibility, for without unobstructed presentation of the digital collection, the work that went into digitalising artefacts is useless.

One question that the article does not address is how users will access the digital collections: will they be allowed to explore collections in the digital museum on a user-fee basis, thus limiting actual access only to those who can pay, or will it be free and open access, in which case what effect will a free digital visit to the museum have on visitors to the physical museum? Even after the necessary steps to presenting artefacts digitally are accomplished it would be of limited benefit if economic or other barriers presented themselves.

In the end, how important is it to digitise museum holdings? Clearly, content creation is a useful practice that facilitates greater access to important social, cultural artefacts; it also has significant archival applications, enabling more sophisticated records with multiple levels of description and representation to be created and preserved for posterity (both physical rendering of object and metadata about the object, its history, place in the museum’s collection, according to the authors). The arguments that the authors put forth are compelling and clearly convey their enthusiasm for this kind of endeavour, yet it would be interesting to know what museums have been convinced of the benefits of digitalisation. Nevertheless, from a museum-goer’s perspective, the educational opportunities and cultural enrichment afforded by digitalisation make the undeniably challenging task of transforming museums’ holdings into virtual representations (simulacra, if you will) worth the effort.

Reference List

Seales, Brent W., and Landon, George V. (2005). The museum and the media divide: Building and Using Digital Collections at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena. [Electronic version]. D-Lib Magazine, 11(5). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may05/seales/05seales.html

Remembering my city

2006-02-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

I’m doubtful of how interesting this will be to those who’ve never been to Vancouver, but I hope that what I say will resonate with those of you who have ever felt longing for the little aspects of your life from another time or place.

What parts of Vancouver do I like best? L* asked me the other day. To my surprise, I realized in my mind that I have no idea—I cannot think of my favourite places in the city, which is strange, given that I have moments of intense longing for Vancouver while living here in Toronto. Although I said Main Street was an area I like, the truth is that I’ve hardly spent time there—it represents a desire for a part of the city that I have yet to explore thoroughly, and this desire mixes with preference for aspects of the city. I like the boutiques and coffee shops and cafes around Main, but truthfully, it doesn’t form a strong part of *my* Vancouver.

So what is my Vancouver? I thought for a while, and came to the conclusion that the places I like best about my home are because of the people and activities that I associate with them. While I’m in town, I don’t think of them in the same fond way that I do when I’m gone. What confounds the question even more, I realized, is that for the last two years I’ve been so busy all the time that I hardly ever went out. I’ve been absent in my own city—so consumed by or engrossed in school and work that I barely made time to enjoy living in this place.

Thus, what I see of the city in my mind is made from memories of working away in my room writing papers while the afternoon sun slowly fills the space until it becomes too bright to type anymore, and of hiding away in the Koerner library at UBC, solitarily making notes and watching the day fade into dusk. I like to think of my own neighbourhood—the cosiness of West 10th and the park. I even daydream about Kerrisdale, but not for the expensive shopping that brings out the Shaughnassey moms in droves—I think of Saturday mornings with my mom when the two of us can do as we please while my little brother has his weekly piano lesson. I think of the Drive and time spent with my friend S.; also our trips downtown to Cordova and West Hastings to go fabric shopping and eat croissants at Brioche. What I love and miss most of all is the beach: the view from my front door, the solitude of early summer mornings when I go running, and especially the smell of the beach after it rains. My favourite places are blends of nostalgia and remembrance. These parts of Vancouver are not noteworthy in the way that a travel guide would wish them to be (Granville Island or Robson Street immediately come to mind), but they are my places because of the memories linked to them.

Photos!

2006-02-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

Now that I've got my computer set up to download photos from my phone, I can show you pictures of the things that I made this past weekend. (You don't have to be thrilled, or even leave a comment--this is as much as self-gratifying exercise as anything else, just to show myself that I can put up pictures.)

The bread turned out nicely--it looks like a pillow to me. But at least it tastes like bread, not cotton.
The necklace is made of clear glass beads that have lovely gold and green swirls on them, with opalescent gold-colored E-beads between.

I'll put more details about the bread (including the recipe) on my other blog:
Toast and Mantequilla

Inter-biblio

2006-02-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

Or, my pseudo-Greek for being between books. I've finished reading Piping Hot! (how I do love Zola), and I am trying to find something new to read that is not horribly depressing or gory. Perhaps something a little out of the ordinary world, but not "fantasy" fiction. Within one week I've already picked up and put down two books: The Mapmaker's Opera by Bea Gonzalez (the writing is good but the author tries too hard in some passages), and Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin (she is my favourite food writer, but this work, an example of her fiction writing, is not very satisfying and furthermore, I don't feel like reading about a married woman's love affair--at least not the way Colwin is narrating it. Incidentally, I was thinking of reading Anna Karenina, so I suppose it was the silly characters and tedious set-up in Family Happiness that was boring). I'm currently four chapters into Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, but it is not gripping; I can only drum up so much interest in subjects nautical and military, which seem to be the main themes so far. In any case, I'm soliciting titles from people for something to read next. Have you any suggestions?

Hey! She's not in the Inforum!

2006-02-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

Now then, I was uncharacteristically not in the Inforum on Saturday as I had decided that I deserved a day off to do absolutely no homework--hence, you did not see me at the library (what a surprise!). Instead, I spent the day doing the kind of things I enjoy doing when I'm not working:

I went out with my fabulous cousin, M.
I relaxed at home--a place I hardly ever seem to be these days, so I fully enjoyed lounging about.
I made a necklace--yay! New jewellery and I didn't have to spend any money!
I couldn't stand the thought of eating another slice of Dempster's 12-Grain bread (the loaf of choice in my aunt and uncle's household), so I made some whole-wheat bread. Quite plain, but it is what I call honest bread: only water, flour, salt, a little honey and a little olive oil, plus a small amount of yeast. I mixed, kneaded, and left it to do its own thing. Hopefully it will be ready to bake tonight.

And there you are--my version of a day off.

How Fitting

2006-02-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

Look at what my cousin M. found while looking up stuff using Google:

http://www.bitterasianmen.com/rants.html

Touche.* This site neatly articulates why I have not appreciated the Asian men** my well-meaning parents have advertised to me so far. Humph. But of course my resentment (of sorts) did not prevent me from dissolving into laughter at the apologia.

* I can't figure out how to add an accent, so please excuse the Anglicised spelling.
**N.b. Not a generalization, but rather, a specification about the Asian-parent ideal of a "good man."

Wednesday I was most giddy

2006-02-15T22:15:00.000-08:00

Clearly, I need more sleep, as my memory of Wednesday morning's Research Methods class has shown me--I was most indecorous. . .

Actually, I was fine for the first half of the class on hypotheses, and it wasn't until after I had drunk perhaps half my coffee (nasty Starbucks from Robarts) and the stats lecture had begun that I started to lose it: D. was delivering his after-the-stats-quiz "pep talk," emphasizing to us that the quiz was intended to test our skills on Excel, and asking what should we do in order to complete the test within the alloted time? Ignoring the obvious answer, R.E. whispered,"amphetamines" to me, which started my fit of giggling. Thus began my downward spiral into a delirious mental space where everything seemed rather funny. . .

Things worsened when the lecture turned to D.'s favourite topic, homicides, and his argument that went along the lines that successful serial killers murder marginal people; for comparison, he asked (rhetorically, I suppose) how we, the class, would find out if one of our colleagues were missing and how we might notice that we had not seen them in their usual places. At this I started giggling, for R.E. whispered exactly what I was thinking: "Oh no, she's not in the Inforum!" I lost my composure and dissolved into a laughing fit because her remark is so apt--the two of us are "perennially in the library," as S. has said before. Well, I suppose that if I were to be murdered, it wouldn't take long to notice that something strange had happened, because "That's unusual, we haven't seen Natalie in the Inforum at all this week." Statistically, perhaps, I would be an easy homicide case to solve. . .

Now that's enough giddiness and morbidity for one night . . . I should really try to sleep instead of inventing reasons to stay up . . .

Total Textual Analysis: TEI

2006-02-14T19:47:00.000-08:00

What is TEI?
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is an established standard that is used by libraries, museums, and scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences to represent literary and linguistic texts electronically; it is like a language for encoding texts so that they can be easily searched by elements specific to the disciplines, such as character or place name, literary theme, paragraph, or stanza. As the TEI Consortium states on their website, the guidelines are valuable for research, teaching, and preservation of texts (The Text Encoding Initiative, home page, ¶ 1).

TEI began in 1987 with the aim to develop standards for encoding machine-readable texts. In 1994 a “public release” version of TEI, called P3 Guidelines, was made available; it has since become the de facto standard for encoding texts and other materials (The Text Encoding Initiative). The TEI project was re-established in 2001 as a member-funded, non-profit Consortium of institutions and research projects; members collectively maintain and develop the standard for representing texts electronically (The Text Encoding Initiative; Wikipedia, 2005). The current usable version of the TEI Guidelines, P4, is a revision of P3 from SGML to XML format; the newest version of the original guidelines, P5, is still being revised.

The Guidelines define some 400 textual components and concepts that are expressed in markup language (SGML or XML). TEI is a modular scheme that is designed for customization to fit particular research projects and production tasks; this characteristic makes possible many different applications of TEI (Wikipedia, 2005). However, it is this modularity scheme that can detract from its usability, for customization of TEI according to one’s unique requirements demands a thorough knowledge and understanding of the schema. A solution to the difficulties of learning the entire standard is TEI Lite, which is a “best of” distillation of the full TEI that has only the most commonly-used elements on it, and as such is the most widely used (The Text Encoding Initiative).

TEI in the Library
It would be wise to incorporate TEI into the library and eventually encode all texts and materials in the collection. Judging from the ongoing projects using TEI, this resource is highly relevant to a rare book library such as ours; a primary benefit of TEI (aside from the search functions that it enables) is that it preserves texts in an electronic format for posterity. This would not only ensure the perpetuity of the collection but would also make the more delicate and rare items in the collection more accessible and available to library users. Establishing ourselves in the electronic library community would also enable us to work more closely and cooperatively with other libraries that have digitised their collections; sharing resources would enrich the collective pool of knowledge created by such collaborative work.

A further advantage to encoding texts in the library collection is that such practice would greatly facilitate the research work of students and scholars at the library. Members of the TEI Consortium are exploring the ways in which elements and concepts in a text can be encoded so that sorting and collating materials by particular themes and ideas can be quickly and thoroughly accomplished. An excellent example of this endeavour is The Orlando Project, based at the University of Alberta. Its aim is “to provide the first integrated history of British women’s writing” (The Orlando project, 2002, ¶ 1). TEI is used to encode not only identifying elements (title, author, etc.) but also what The Orlando Project calls “intellectual structures,” that is, thematic and analytical elements that are important in evaluations of texts. This project models for us the possible uses to which we can turn our collection, in particular for special exhibits. We could sort through the collection by theme, quickly collating all our items on 19th century French Naturalist literature or Early Modern plays, for example. Furthermore, the same applications could be performed by scholars visiting our collection, so that not only would they quickly find items of interest to them in our collection, but our materials could be compared with the holdings of other libraries, should we store electronic representations of our texts in a digital repository.

TEI would also be a useful resource for collection development; encoding would enable the librarians to efficiently sort through the existing collection by theme or subject to assess what we own and determine what would enhance the collection. Another pro of TEI is its application in textual analysis and analytical bibliography, as it facilitates close study of a text’s physical form as well as its content. Moreover, along with computers, the encoding should make cross-checking texts easier and more accurate (provided that the texts have been encoded correctly). An example of this application would be the comparison of a particular known edition of a text with an unknown one, looking for characteristic typographical marks that would help to identify the unknown one. In similar fashion, we could examine texts in our collection against each other and against copies of the same texts held in other libraries and institutions.

There are some important considerations that accompany the possible introduction of TEI into our library, of which the most immediate are the money and time. The TEI Guidelines cost $90 USD (or $60 if we become a member of the Consortium), which is reasonable given the advantages that this standard would give our library. There would be a considerable investment in time to train our librarians and other qualified staff in using the Guidelines and in patiently encoding all items in our collection. I noticed that there were problems with wrong syntax, spelling errors, and inaccurate XML language in materials encoded by many of the projects using TEI (see http://www.tei-c.org/Applications/ for examples of projects). The mistakes emphasise the importance of accuracy in TEI, as texts that are incorrectly encoded are not useful to anyone; however, the challenges of correct encoding should not deter us from adopting the TEI Guidelines. Plenty of help is offered to users in the form of case studies, tutorials, presentations and software. In addition, we are welcome to join any of the special interest groups (there is one for libraries) along with the mailing list in order to become more integrated into the TEI community.

Introducing TEI into our library will be accompanied by the demands of learning and implementing a new “language” into our infrastructure. However, given an suitable time-frame in which to devise strategies to incorporate TEI, the benefits accrued from a descriptive standard which has been tailored to fit the humanities and social sciences disciplines would be observed in the maintenance and posterity of a rare books collection and the knowledge developed from easier and more efficient access to and manipulation of texts in our library.

References
The Orlando project: An integrated history of women’s writing in the British Isles. (2002, January 23). Retrieved February 10, 2006 from http://www.ualberta.ca/ORLANDO/
The Text Encoding Initiative. (n.d.). TEI: Yesterday’s information tomorrow. Retrieved February 10, 2006 from http://www.tei-c.org/

The Text Encoding Initiative. (n.d.). What is TEI Lite? Retrieved February 10, 2006 from http://www.tei-c.org/Faq/index.xml.ID=body.1_div.4

The Text Encoding Initiative. (n.d.). What is the TEI? Retrieved February 10, 2006 from http://www.tei-c.org/Faq/index.xml.ID=body.1_div.5

Wikipedia. (2005, November 16). Text Encoding Initiative. Retrieved February 10, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative

On Andrew Marvell

2006-02-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

Andrew Marvell is one of my favourite poets, as you perhaps have surmised from my blog title. Why is he wonderful? His poetry has a resonant quality with me--his imagery is beautiful and the expression of his ideas are both beautifully lyrical and intellectually stimulating--it's of the kind that makes me think about the significance of the lines long after I have finished reading his poetry. I must confess that I don't particularly like his politically-themed poems, but the pastorals are another thing altogether--so incredible in the way that they have a full-sensory impact on me when I read them. Take, for example, "The Garden," my favourite Marvell poem, from which I derive the title of my blog.* It's all about the consonance/assonance, the imagery, the mixing of comedy (stanza 5) and metaphysical thought (stanzas 6 to 8), amongst the other aspects of the poem that I like so much.

My favourite part of the poem is the latter half, actually--the stanza that begins "Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less . . ." For me, it's the description of thinking and a conception of imagination (although it's anachronistic to talk about imagination and Marvell's poetry I don't know how else to express it) that I value the most about the poem because those stanzas (6 and 7) articulate best the idea I have about thought and thinking and the imaginative mind. The first time I read "The Garden" I stumbled over the line about "Annihilating all that's made / To a green thought in a green shade"--but rather than dislike the moment of incomprehension I dwelt in it, thinking and thinking about what Marvell meant by it. I still wonder about it's meaning which I now think finds it's resolution in the succeeding stanza about the bird of the soul (this is striking imagery and diction for me--I love it). Although there's always room to change my mind. . .

*I'll try to provide a link to the poem here, so you can read it:
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/garden.htm

Reading Language

2006-02-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

In Book History today we talked about orality and the literacy, and the difference between literacy and textuality. Our “theme” today was reading and readers and what fascinated me was the whole concept of reading a text yet not understanding what the words meant (textuality), and reading a text with comprehension of the meaning of the words (literacy). Leaving behind the discourse on how difficult/impossible it is to actually define literacy and textuality, I want to focus on the experience of textuality, in particular, trying to read in another language without first translating the words into the language in which you operate daily—this recalls PF’s comment about how she tries to read “in French,” rather than translating the French into English in order to understand the text. I know what she means by this: when I recently started reading Spanish and French periodicals again to brush up my faltering facility with the languages, I could sense myself wavering between “reading in the language” and translating words into English as I read.

What I wonder is where the point of comprehension, of making meaning occurs. Have you ever thought of this? The junction between an array of letters that are meaningless and a word that tells you something—where is the transition from not knowing to knowing/understanding, and how can it be grasped? I was really bothered by this and was thinking about it the whole trip home on the subway tonight. Is there a sort of parallel comprehension going on, a kind of simultaneous translation?

I think of when I’m speaking Cantonese or listening to my family talk—I’ve tried to determine if I’m understanding in Cantonese (which is my first language, after all) or if I’ve become so engrained in English that I don’t even notice that I’m translating. I know that I barely think in Cantonese anymore (and I highly doubt that I dream in Cantonese), but I know that when I’m listening to the language there is minimal effort, if any at all, really, to understand what I’m hearing. I also have no trouble switching between English and Cantonese-but how do you comprehend this kind of double-language?

This idea of textuality, of reading but not necessarily comprehending, brings me to a conversation I had with my cousin M. about languages and how they sound. I said that French and Italian sound best (they have a smooth, lyric quality that I enjoy), and Finnish was quite lovely as well. She said that she had read somewhere that English sounded like tin—but how would you arrive at that? Apart from philologists, phonology, and the like, as I’m not interested in the “scientific” conception of language, but one that is a little abstracted from the everyday, from empirical observation. What I thought was this: it is almost impossible for me to distance myself from English enough to describe its sound in the way that I can describe a language as soft and round (Finnish) or harsh and angular (Cantonese). I’m distracted by the words and cannot separate the sound from the meaning conveyed through speech. So I wonder, can one separate meaning from the sound in order to hear a language and not understand it? (Of course there is also the issue of deaf people and language, but that and a whole host of other things I will leave aside for now). How would you describe the sound of English?

From blogging to books

2006-01-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

If this post means anything, it tells me that blogging is going to become rather like doing homework: you know you should start on it, but you really need to be doing other things at the moment, so maybe later. . . and "later" doesn't actually happen until you eventually become ridden with guilt, consicous that you're being A Very Bad Student and knowing that you should. . . But I digress. What I'd like to talk about is how wonderful _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_ (Michael Chabon) is. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but I must say that it is as fantastic as the blurbs suggest. The author has a thoughtful prose style that I like, and he does interesting things with the narrative that I find amusing. Part of the novel centres around the rise of comic books in the US, and so there are pseudo-citations and facts sprinkled throughout that suggest the novel's authority, but which are not to be taken seriously. Chabon's narrative picks up on many subtleties of character, making for a nuanced read that conveys the excitement of the time and yet the disappointments that beset the two main characters. Has anyone else read this novel and enjoyed it as much as I have?

Beginnings

2006-01-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

First of all, the origins of my blog's title is because Marvell's poem "The Garden" popped into my head as I was setting this up, so really, while on the one hand my blog title is rather arbitrary, it is to some extent reflective of the way that I seem to think too much about most things.