BERNEVAL

Not always driven by profit motive.

‘War,’ said I to myself, ‘is the evil genius of a time; but good food for all is a daily and a paramount necessity.’ These reflections led to a further communication with Messrs. Smith and Philips, of Snow Hill. I took out a patent for the stoves. This I did not like to do before I had introduced them to the Government, as every one would have supposed that I wished to make money by the patent. The object of a patent, after such a decided success, was to secure the solidity and perfection of the article. As it was difficult to make, and certain to be badly imitated, my reputation must have suffered. Instead of being expensive, they will be sold at a reasonable price, sufficient to repay the manufacturers, and to leave a fair profit; thus placing them within the reach of all — the million as well as the millionaire.

Alexis Soyer The Chef at War

And so for day 1941
06.04.2012

Written as if in the shadow of Derrida.

Fresh air always seems freshest outside an archive. We wander down to one of the cafés on campus and sit staring over a sun-drenched lawn dotted with students out enjoying the day. And when talk turns to the Bay Area light and the way Berkeley today looks like a painting from the Sixties or Seventies by David Hockney or Richard Diebenkorn, we catch ourselves wondering whether we can ever really leave the archive.

Deaths of the Poets Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts

And so for day 1940
05.04.2012

The poet bears witness.

[…]

We walked through the crowded class-rooms.
No map of Canada or the Territories,
No library or workshop,
Everywhere religious scenes,
Christ and Saints, Stations of the Cross,
Beads hanging from nails, crucifixes,
And two kinds of secular art —
Silk-screen prints of the Group of Seven,
And crayon drawings and masks
Made by the younger children,
The single visible expression
Of the soul of these broken people.

Upstairs on the second storey
Seventy little cots
Touching end to end
In a room 30 by 40
Housed the resident boys
In this firetrap mental gaol.

F.R. Scott “Fort Providence” (Section V of Letter from the Mackenzie River 1956) in The Dance Is One (McClellan and Stewart, 1973).

And so for day 1938
03.04.2012

My Mother Was a Computer by N. Katherine Hayles.

[…] the world is not a collection of preexisting objects but a continuing stream of processes. Although we customarily assume that the world preexists the processes, from a perceptual point of view the processes come first, and the objects we take as the world emerge from them. It is precisely this flux, this ongoingness of process from which the world emerges, that the realist in effect erases by privileging the underlying forms as the essential reality.

I am moved to ponder sedimentation. “Flux” is the kernel of the concretion. A rest. Arrest.

And so for day 1937
02.04.2012

Star Trek Beyond

Captain James T. Kirk: [epilogue] Space: the final frontier.
Commander Spock: These are the voyages of the starship…
Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott: …Enterprise. Its continuing mission…
Doctor ‘Bones’ McCoy: …to explore strange new worlds…
Sulu: …to seek out new life…
Chekov: …and new civilizations…
Lieutenant Uhura: …to boldly go where no one has gone before.

This coda delivered by a team rings true: I am struck by the pluralism (throughout the movie) and I like the update on the signature send off to make it more gender inclusive.

And so for day 1934
30.03.2012

David Mitchell: What my son’s autism has taught me

First up, is that we stop assuming a communicative impairment denotes a cognitive one. Let’s be wary of assuming that behind autism’s speechlessness lies nothing, or nothing to speak of. Instead, let’s assume that we’re dealing with a mind as keen as our own, and act accordingly. Talk to the person. Don’t worry if there’s no evidence he or she understands. Maybe there is evidence, but you’re not recognising it as such. If the person is there, never discuss them as if they’re not, or as if they’re only there like the coat stand is there. If they don’t notice this courtesy, no harm is done; but if they do, then someone who is often treated as a part-object, part-human, total nuisance gets to feel like a real, valid, card-carrying member of society.

The Guardian

And so for day 1933
29.03.2012