Crazy Monarchs

I was reading in my 'Easy French Reader' the other day and there was something that I found quite striking. I was reading a story of French history and there were references to the crazy/mad monarch, Charles VI: "En 1392, le roi de France, Charles VI, devient fou...En 1420 les Anglais forcent Charles VI, qui est encore fou..."

Reading this got me thinking...Was he really crazy or did he just not follow societal or leadership conventions of the time. I think about how many monarchs throughout history we have heard were mad. Were there bad genetics (and destructive inbreeding) in royal veins or were they unable to deal with the pressures of court or where they raised to have unreal/unpractical perspectives of the world they they were unable to maintain the image of sanity or were they just beyond their time in not believing in the social conventions and were therefore considered mad.

I think it is interesting to delve into what really made them be considered crazy. I have found a link that explores these mad monarchs from King George III of England to Ludwig II of Germany. This is some of what the page says about Charles VI:

In April 1392 Charles suffered from a mysterious illness which caused his hair and nails to fall out. He was hardly recovered, still suffering from occasional bouts of fever and behaving incoherently, when he set out on a punitive expedition after an assassination attempt on one of his advisors...Charles' mysterious illness of 1392 could have been typhus or encephalitis. If this disease was encephalitis, then it could very likely have been a contributory factor to the bizarre features of Charles' behaviour, for encephalitis can cause a marked character change and give rise to impulsive, aggressive and intemperate activity, similar in its symptoms to those of schizophrenia.

So it appears that he truly did suffer from constrained mental capacities. The question can then become why people tolerated being ruled by the unwell. Locke would argue that the contract between the governed and the governing had been broken. I think part of this revolt can be seen with the American revolution under King George III. Had George III not been ill would the course of history be different?

My Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving, the most traveled and family oriented holiday in the US. Nine out of ten people are spending the day with their family. However, it is disheartening when I am one of those 10% who are not at home. I actually traveled away from my family for the holiday. Working provides ample opportunities and enjoyment but I think that with such a family oriented holiday it is really hard to be away.

This holiday is I believe the most raw of all our holidays. It is not glamorized or commercialized like others nor does it revolve even around religion (meaning no one is left out). This holiday is the one time that I think Americans take the time to find their families and their gratitude and recenter. It is a humbling experience that Americans can all share. Though families hold a lot of drama and sometimes these events are stressful, there is a shared connection that cannot easily be pushed away like at other holidays. We have to take the time to look at what is important to us and attempt to show it.

So the big question then...what am I thankful for? I am thankful for so many things that I do not want to sit here and list them. I will say that my family and friends are always my greatest blessings. They are the most challenging and therefore the most rewarding. I am appreciative of my work and that I have such fun people to spend the holiday with here. And though I felt quite alone today I am grateful for those people who contacted me today to greet me. With that, I will head to sleep with a belly full of food and despite being thankful will feel slightly sorry for myself about having to be away from my home.

Message, manner and art

I went to an exhibition about Street Art recently in Coventry which was, to my surprise, quite interesting. In addition, the art gallery included a museum incorporating some pieces from the 18^th century to now. 

The street art exhibition was focusing on artists such as Banksy (arguably the most famous of them), Miss Tick, Sickboy or Pure Evil. These pseudonyms already manifest a statement about the authors and their wish to remain anonymous. The wishes of some artists to remain absolutely anonymous like Banksy might reveal some form of existentialism thought about just being an average person in the world. This practice is normal considering the nature of their works and its illegality. Indeed, graffiti is their main modus-operandi (but not the only one) and can be found, as it name implies, anywhere in a city. This is one of the main characteristic of street art and it reflects the desire of the authors to use the public space so they can reach the public and thus diffuse their designs or ideas. 

This idea of using the street as a tool also reflect the fact that they feel they cannot be seen in regular art galleries, mainly due to the elitism present there, and also probably for financial and time management reason. This has given way to the development of an underground culture which has been appealing to many. A lot of these graffiti bring with them a political message often encapsulated with some dark humour. They often appear to be criticising governments, traditions and denounce the unfairness of the world. Indeed, the use of opposite symbols in the same work or their falsifications is a recurrent technique leading to a caricatured scene.

I find the dark humour, facetiousness and creativity of these artists funny and interesting. Yet, seeing these works in an art gallery is making feel uneasy about the motives of displaying these already public works in a different place. Is this art a way for them to cry out their feeling of unjustice? Is this wish to remain anonymous genuine or do they just want to be famous in another way? Or is their seemingly opposition to traditions and government a genuine critique of their time or a childish idealist caprice? These artists probably do not care about how people judge them. I guess that my main bite against them is more born out of a weariness of art or rather what is called art and the whole elitism behind it. In particular contemporary art and its interpretation which I believe  is quite grotesque and a bad satire of the art world (especially when it comes to price).

Thus, when I read and look at street art, which is supposed to be radically opposed to capitalism and by proxy to contemporary art, how it is used, displayed and talked about in general; I cannot help but think about contemporary art and that, although street art tries to be different in its approach and in its aspiration, people still long for popularity and a desire to be different which in the end make them very similar. I, for one, could just appreciate art whether it be street art, contemporary or anything else just for the aesthetic aspect of the works and would gladly ignore any critical messages conveyed in most of them. I do not condemn the fact that art can be used to convey a message but rather, the manner in which it is done and its genuineness.

-Croissant

The Three Musketeers

Arriving in the mail as a thoughtful gift, I have started reading The Three Musketeers. I am approximately a third of the way through the book and already have a few comments. Though I find the book entertaining I am not nearly as pleased with this book as I was with The Count of Monte Cristo, and this is why...

1. I believe that Dumas is a thorough writer. As he is writing a serial, he add a lot of details and people and events to extend his story and therefore his pay. However, though I am familiar with The Three Musketeers I was more knowledgeable about the plot and characters in The Count. I think that reading a novel of this nature becomes very slow and bogged down with details if you are less familiar with the general flow of the book. I have stopped looking at all the notes in the back of the book and have decided that it would be impossible to get everything from the book on the first read.

2. D'Artagnan is beyond annoying. As he is the ever present character and I cannot stand him, I find myself frustrated listening to his story. He is quite immature, rash, and has very little foresight. He has just accepted a trip to London to retrieve earrings. This is just one of many actions that moves the plot along but demonstrates his inability to be calm and control himself. He lacks composure and has a vengeance that is quickly activated. Certainly this is just a story and many intrigues are meant for entertainment but I am quickly bothered by his demeanor.

3. Though I like the inclusion of issues pertaining to King Louis XIII and Richelieu, I wish there was more in relation to this topic. In The Count there were many scenes with the King and political questions of revolution. I am sure there will be more about the King and Queen to come in The Three Musketeers however, I like issues of politics and I want to see more in both the royal relationship and the tension between the King and Richelieu. I just imagine that I have not yet hit the climax of events yet. However this only goes to show that the novel is too long in making one wait so long before getting to plot development and away from character development.

4. The book is entitled, The Three Musketeers, however much of the character development does not include these musketeers at all. I am more interested in the characters of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Yet I know so little about them at this point and to be honest I cannot tell the difference between any of them. Their individual characters have been described yet there is not enough about them to distinguish them in my mind yet. This however could be the point? They are one unit as the title implies and I do not need to establish individual relationships with any of them.

These are such some brief opinions yet I am anxious to continue reading so I can develop completed opinions.

Dawson City

Dawson City will be the first city that I will write about. I will mainly detail the current state of the city and what made it famous and why it is not the case anymore.

Dawson City owes its existence to the discovery of gold fields in its area. In August 1896, a certain Robert Henderson was prospecting in the area. He met on his way back a group of men led by George Carmack and invited them to have a look. Carmack and his companions discovered what they called “Bonanza” creek and went to claim it in the town of Forty Miles.  This news provoked the birth of the city of Dawson at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. By June 1897 the new town had a population of some 4,000, by June the following year the population had grown to over 25,000. Word of the Klondike gold discovery hit San Francisco and Seattle in July of 1897, prompting people to this new gold field in the Canadian North West. All that winter they had been arriving in Dawson, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1898, when several hundred boats and scows of all description and size left Lake Bennett, as soon as the ice went out of the lake all heading for the Klondike goldfields some 600 mile away down north on the Yukon river. Many of them had a disastrous trip wrecking their boats in the White Horse Rapids, or the Five finger rapids, losing everything, many lost their lives. By mid-summer the new town of Dawson City had a population of some 30,000 people. Everyone looking for an opportunity to stake a claim and go back home with their pockets full of gold.

The Klondike gold rush was characterised by a sudden start and a short span. In addition, the travel that the prospector, people from all walks of life who had left their original activities behind them, had to do was exhausting. Boats of all kinds sailed north out of western port cities (Seattle, Portland), nearly bursting with people, gear and pack animals. This journey was the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of the gold rush. Stampeders were physically unprepared and poorly equipped for the severe northern climate and terrain. Some died and many abandoned the journey. Travellers did not always fare better in the summer. Stampeders struggled in rain, fog, boulders, and bogs. Without its covering of snow and ice, the trail to the summit led over giant boulders over which people literally crawled. For instance, to move one outfit over Chilkoot pass, stampeders packed and cached their goods up to forty times and hiked up to 1,000 miles. The terrain on the last four miles of the trail was too rough for pack animals. Discarded supplies littered the trail as stampeders cast unnecessary items aside. Many took three months to move their goods from Dyea to the summit. Most stampeders felt disappointed when they reached Dawson. Local miners had claimed all the gold-bearing creeks up to a year earlier. Without gold "for the taking," late arrivals milled about town. Many went home. Some found jobs in and around Dawson. People made good wages working another miner’s claim, or in saloons, hotels, and other support positions. Others looked for gold on nearby creeks but rarely found any. The irony of the gold rush was that after risking their lives and fortunes on the journey, most stampeders never struck it rich. About 40,000 people reached the Klondike, only four of every ten who tried.

As for the city of Dawson itself, although this boom town was destroyed by fire on Thanksgiving 1897, it became by 1898 the “Paris of the north”: the biggest city west of Winnipeg and north of San Francisco, with all the amenities of the outside world only 286 km (165 miles) south of the Arctic Circle,. On June 13, 1898, Yukon Territory was formed out of the western part of the Northwest Territories encompassing the Yukon River water shed. The Yukon was governed by Ottawa, with a Commissioner who had his headquarters in Dawson which was now the capital of the new Yukon Territory. Dawson offered entertainments in its elaborate theatres, hotels, saloons and dance halls. Moreover, fine stores were selling all the things that were available in the stores in the rest of Canada and the United States, including the latest fashions from Paris. Four major religious orders erected churches, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic. By 1900 Dawson had electricity, water and sewer, and telephone, and in 1901 was connected by a telegraph system to the rest of the world. However the golden age of Dawson City was short and when gold was found on the beaches of Nome Alaska, in 1899, it was estimated that by spring 8,000 left Dawson for Nome. In 1900 Dawson had a population of 5,400.

By 1903, more than $96 million in gold had been taken out of the creeks. Ten years after the discovery of gold, the rush was over. There were a few millionaires and many who left with unfulfilled dreams. The Klondike Gold Rush is remembered as the greatest adventure of them all. It was a brief, exciting period of history that continues to live through memory and existing reminders of the gold rush period in Dawson City, Whitehorse, Skagway and places in between. By 1960, there were 350 permanent residents and tourism had become a growing focus for Yukoners. The Yukon and Canadian governments realized that Dawson City provided a priceless heritage that should be preserved. Dawson was declared a National Historic Site and the National Parks Service was placed in charge of the restoration of significant Dawson buildings and gold mining sites.

Today Dawson city has been reconverted as a touristic attraction that largely take profit from its history. It is thus possible to visit the house of writer Jack London, who started his career as a gold prospector and ended up writing short stories about his adventures proving that the Klondike gold rush spawned more than dream of gold and riches. It is also possible to come to the first modern licensed gambling casino in Canada: Diamond Teeth Gertie. Gold Prospecting is still going around and it is possible for the neophytes to try out their luck in one of the free claims available such as Claims 6. Dawson City seems to host a lot of events, ranging from the dog sledge race to French Can-Can spectacle, all along the year which is given its size quite unexpected. Dawson City has been saved from History thanks to its interesting past and the desire from the Canadian government to development its attractiveness to tourism. Not to be forgotten is also the spirit of adventure that it conveys thanks to its remote location, the reason of its existence and its beautiful landscapes and faunas which extend on an immense surface.

-Croissant

New Flight Security

I am concerned about the new Transport Security Administration (TSA) processes implemented last week. Either I have to enter a screener that basically strip searches me or have an extensive grope session in front of fellow uncomfortable passengers. Hmmm. This is not only degrading but can it be questioned whether my rights are in jeopardy?

I have chosen to fly and therefore am subject to those terms and conditions which includes extreme tactics to maintain safety. I am all for safety but how much will this aid the process versus just take additional time to get through the gate and appear to improve safety. Is my body meant to be private? I wonder why we are not yet flying nude (though crevices will still remain a problem). Why maintain personal privacy and modesty if a government agency can require you share it with these hired officials? If I went however to check into my flight while naked, I would be arrested. This is a hypocritical policy that I doubt will largely deter those who want to compromise flight safety.

I want to continue but I have to work...