All posts by Phil

Bookselling, Poetry, Uncategorized

Winter Quiet, New Bookstores, and Libraries Disposing of Printed Resources

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It’s been cold this week. We even had a bit of wintery precipitation, which we call snow around here, but you probably have real snow in your area and would laugh at us for using the same word to refer to whatever that was in the air a minute ago. It’s winter here. With current events as they are, it feels like winter everywhere.

Contemporary Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan wrote in his poem, “A bridge used to be there, someone recalled,” these lines about muddling through.

He recalled the city he’d escaped from,
the scorched terrain he searched by hand.
He recalled a weeping man
saved by the squad.

Life will be quiet, not terrifying.
He should have returned a while ago.
What could happen to him, exactly?
What could happen?

The patrol will let him through,
and god will forgive.
God’s got other things to do.

Winter can feel like that. Quiet enough to allow you to push back both real and imagined terrors, worries that the world is leaning into the curse, that God has other things to do. But such feelings belie the hope we have in Christ. As Christina Rossetti wrote in “A Better Resurrection“:

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

What else to we have today?

Bookstores: Focusing on a new store in Concord, N.C., called Goldberry Books, World magazine reports on the return of small booksellers. “In the last decade, the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade organization for independent bookstores, has actually seen steady growth. In 2022, its members operated more than 2,500 locations—up more than 50 ­percent since 2009.”

Libraries: The Vermont State Colleges System intends to divest itself of printed books and offer only digital access by July 1, 2023. Joel Miller talks through how bad that could be. The faculty of three colleges in the state system have pushed back, calling the board of trustees’ decision “reckless.”

Fathers: Ted Kluck talks about his friends’ fathers, who are coming to the end of their lives. “They taught us how to goof off and bust chops and work hard and be generous and stay married. . . . Do they make dads like these anymore?”

Remembering: Joseph Conrad wrote, “The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.” Patrick Kurp reflects on this as well as Thelonious Monk’s love of the hymn “Abide with Me.”

Non-fiction, Reviews

2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, by John C. Lennox

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Professor Joseph McRae Mellichamp of the University of Alabama, speaking at conference at Yale University to an audience that contained the Novel Price winner Sir John Eccles, famous for his discovery of the synapse, together with a number of the pioneers of AI, said: “It seems to me that lot of needless debate could be avoided if AI researchers would admit that there are fundamental differences between machine intelligence and human intelligence — differences that cannot be overcome by any amount of research.” In other words, to cite the succinct title of Mellichamp’s talks, “‘the artificial’ in artificial intelligence is real.”

What was the last thing you heard about artificial intelligence? Maybe it was about ChatGPT, an open AI web app that invites people to ask the computer to write anything they can think of.

Chris Hutchinson on Twitter asked it to rewrite the Gettysburg Address in the style of the psychedelic funk band Sly and the Family Stone. The AI said it would be disrespectful to rewrite such a historic speech in this style. Then he asked for a rewrite of the speech as a haiku, and the AI complied. Later, another user was able to get the speech in the style of Sly and the Family Stone by wording the request differently (and possibly by his preceding requests). Maybe ChatGPT had a change of heart after refusing the first request.

Educators have been worried that this program (and others produced in its wake) will allow students to task their computers with writing papers for them with minimal chance of detection, but educators are prove to worrying and are probably assuming too much AI language proficiency at this point. Writers worry this program threatens their jobs, and those who work for any of the click-bait sites on pop culture, movies, and games should worry. The garbage prose ChatGPT spits out is totally on par with their daily posts.

You won’t find this in Lennox’s book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. It was published in 2020. Developments in this field will be fast and fierce (no, frenetic. Wait, it’s fast and feverish, right? Fulminous?) Lennox couldn’t deal with the very latest news, but he does deal with the ideas and claims many in the field of artificial intelligence are making.

Current advances in AI have sparked hopes and fears similar to George Orwell’s 1984, but instead of INGSOC controlling our society, it would be supercomputers that had developed themselves beyond their creators’ imagination. If it came to reality by 2084, supporters ask, wouldn’t it be poetic?

Lennox explains some of the benefits of current machine learning and some of the changes we see coming as robots take over select jobs. For example, the freight industry could be transformed by trucks that drove themselves. (How would they refuel? Could criminals take advantage of them?) He also explains some of the dangers we can already see in AI’s current uses. China’s surveillance state already looks resembles an episode of Black Mirror in which approved behavior and social media influence controls a society of people constantly monitored by unseeing eyes. Facial recognition programs may violate privacy by design and are only as good as they are accurate. False matches have already gotten a few people in trouble.

Continue reading 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, by John C. Lennox →
Music

Sunday Singing: Rejoice, the Lord Is King!

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“Rejoice, the Lord Is King!” sung by the congregation of Grace Community Church,
Sun Valley, California

The great Charles Wesley gave us today’s hymn. “Rejoice, the Lord Is King!” focuses our attention on his perfect majesty and our glorious hope. The Trinity hymnal has an extra verse, which is also in some of the oldest hymn texts I checked, so I assume Wesley wrote it too.

As a man said on his dying day, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

1 Rejoice, the Lord is King:
Your Lord and King adore!
Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
And triumph evermore.

Refrain: Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

2 Jesus, the Savior, reigns,
The God of truth and love;
When He has purged our stains,
He took his seat above; [Refrain]

3 His kingdom cannot fail,
He rules o’er earth and heav’n;
The keys of death and hell
Are to our Jesus giv’n: [Refrain]

4 He sits at God’s right hand
’til all his foes submit,
and bow to his command,
and fall beneath his feet. [Refrain]

5 Rejoice in glorious hope!
Our Lord and judge shall come
And take His servants up
To their eternal home: [Refrain]

Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Publishing

Southern Hospitality and Artificial Translation

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Recently I had a conversation about something related to Southern culture, and a friend originally from another state asked me to define Southern hospitality. Having lived in the South my whole life, I was disappointed I couldn’t say more than I did. I have actually read a bit about manners and what it means to be Southern. I still know a thing or two about the history of the English language in the South, but I couldn’t define this hospitality thing.

It would be easy, if you took a superficial route. You could say Southern hospitality is fried chicken, corn bread, and iced tea, but that isn’t essentially different than, say, krauts and beer or hot dish and dinner rolls. (What do Midwesterners drink with a casserole? I always drink water, but I know I’m supposed to be drinking tea.)

Southern Living lists six qualities of Southern hospitality in this article from earlier this year: politeness, good home cooking, kindness, helpfulness, charm, and charity. I’m going to call this a puff piece (and maybe the whole magazine is too). This is the kind of thing we say about ourselves no matter who we are. Dang! If we ain’t the best, you know it? But if these are true as Southern characteristics, not Christian characteristics, then it demonstrates that Christ still haunts the South.

That’s part of what I said to my friend. I have a hard time distinguishing Christian hospitality from Southern or Yankee or any other kind of hospitality you might define. The differences seem only superficial b/c the virtue is found in Christ.

And maybe Southern hospitality is what it is because we’ve had the best branding.

In other news, Artificial Intelligence already works on video captioning and language translation. Now, a Japanese student of the Korean language has won translation award by editing an AI translation of a webtoon. She doesn’t know Korean enough to translate the work herself, but using AI and research tools, she got through it well enough to win Rookie of the Year from LTI Korea.

Kim Wook-dong, emeritus professor of English Literature and Linguistics at Sogang University, told The Korea Herald that AI can translate technical writing “almost perfectly,” but is has “limits in capturing the subtle emotions, connotations and nuances in literary translations. It can help and serve as an assistant to translators but AI cannot replace humans in literary translation. I doubt it ever will.” [via The Literary Saloon]

Normal Living, Extraordinary Prose: “Clean-shaved and conservatively dressed, with no oddities of posture or gait, he should have merged imperceptibly into a street crowd. But he didn’t. He stuck out, for reasons almost impossible to capture and fix in words. The best one can say is that he stood and walked and talked like other men, only more so. He was conspicuously normal.” 

This description from H.L. Mencken reminds me of H. Matisse in Ray Bradbury’s story about “a terrifyingly ordinary man.”

Poetry: The great Dana Gioia has a new collection of poems called Meet Me at the Lighthouse.

Photo by Sunira Moses on Unsplash

Music

Sunday Singing: Fairest Lord Jesus

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Taken from “Fairest Lord Jesus” performed at the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the St. Olaf Choir

This month, I plan to post hymns focused on Christ Jesus. “Fairest Lord Jesus” was written anonymously and set to a Polish folk tune. Franz Liszt used the tune in a crusaders’ march in The Legend of St. Elizabeth, which is apparently the most concrete thing that can be said about its origin.

1 Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
Son of God and Son of Man!
Thee will I cherish, thee will I honor,
thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.

2 Fair are the meadows, fair are the woodlands,
robed in the blooming garb of spring:
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
who makes the woeful heart to sing.

3 Fair is the sunshine, fair is the moonlight,
and all the twinkling, starry host:
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
than all the angels heav’n can boast.

4 Beautiful Savior! Lord of the nations!
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, praise, adoration,
now and forevermore be thine.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Writing

Games Tell Stories Too, Some Author’s Birthday, and Who Needs Editors?

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Games can hit all the marks of story, even when it isn’t a storytelling game. The basic conflict between sporting teams can feel like a good story without the themes and only light characterizations. A good ball game can be more epic than the average thriller.

History-based board games can give you the feel of playing within a historic novel. I enjoyed putting several hours into Avalon Hill’s Kingmaker, an old game set in England during the War of Roses. The pathos you feel in a game like that could be a spark of humanity or megalomania.

I’m thinking about this because on Thursday I finished playing for the second time Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a compelling, open world adventure that gets close to having an epic feel, but doesn’t have the depth of character for that. The gameplay is a ton of fun. The environment and main characters are marvelous. It’s comparable to your favorite light-weight fantasy novel with that immersive quality of moving the story forward by your own efforts.

But enough about me. What else do we have?

Translation: A plug for the English translation of a couple more authors.

Political Divide: “Stories are critical starting points for civility. If we understand one another, we are more likely to see each other as fellow human beings and fellow citizens rather than opponents or even worse, enemies. If we know each other’s stories we are more likely to trust one another.” (via RealClearBooks)

Happy Birthday: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has a Toronto-based fan club that has been celebrating his birthday (February 7) since 1905. They also hold a Dickens-themed Christmas tea. “This is not a scholarly society.” (via ArtsJournal)

Video: How would each of the Southern states prepare a meal for you?

Editors: Do copy editors crush young words beneath plodding feet? “One man’s infelicity is another man’s favored choice of expression. And there’s neither romance nor adventure without some inconsistency.”

Image by Edwin Francisco from Pixabay

Music

Sunday Singing: Tis the Church Triumphant Singing

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“Tis the Church Triumphant Singing” performed in Boe Memorial Chapel, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

English Calvinist John Kent (1766-1843) wrote this hymn of praise to our eternal God with the imagery of Revelation. It was published in 1803. The tune is traditional Welsh. “As a working shipwright his opportunities for acquiring the education and polish necessary for the production of refined verse were naturally limited,” notes The Dictionary of Hymnology.

1. ‘Tis the church triumphant singing,
Worthy the Lamb!
Heav’n thro’out with praises ringing,
Worthy the Lamb!
Thrones and pow’rs before Him bending,
Odors sweet with voice ascending
Swell the chorus never ending,
Worthy the Lamb!

2. Ev’ry kindred, tongue and nation–
Worthy the Lamb!
Join to sing the great salvation;
Worthy the Lamb!
Loud as mighty thunders roaring,
Floods of mighty waters pouring,
Prostrate at his feet adoring,
Worthy the Lamb!

3. Harps and songs forever sounding
Worthy the Lamb!
Mighty grace o’er sin abounding,
Worthy the Lamb!
By His blood he dearly bought us;
Wand’ring from the fold He sought us;
And to glory safely brought us:
Worthy the Lamb!

4. Sing with blest anticipation,
Worthy the Lamb!
Thro’ the vale of tribulation,
Worthy the Lamb!
Sweetest notes, all notes excelling,
On the theme forever dwelling,
Still untold, tho’ ever telling,
Worthy the Lamb!

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Fiction

Word Games, Moscow, and the Secret Life of a Librarian

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I may have just found a book I must read this year.

Joel Miller asks, “If you lived in a society that was strictly and officially materialist in which the state and its officers vetoed disagreement, what would you do if you still recognized the transcendent and dissented from the party line?”

One option would be to “write a surrealist satire that mocked the materialists and dropped the devil and his entourage in Moscow to bend the party line well past breaking.”

That’s what Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov did in his posthumously published work The Master and Margarita (1970). Miller explains one of the author’s themes this way. “For all their anti-capitalistic propaganda, Muscovites were every bit as covetous and grasping as anyone, maybe worse. And as far as the Soviet insistence on strict atheism, Bulgakov replies: Fine, if you won’t have God, you can have the devil—and the devil will have you.”

Word Games: Merrium-Webster shelled out an undisclosed 7-figure amount to purchase Quordle, the word-guessing game that gives you four target words at once. I played many times last year and have gotten away from it for a while. Returning to it this week has not been easy. I want to blame Wordle’s hard mode. You can’t guess four words at once while using all your current hints. Maybe the dictionary has placed harder words.

Quordle is a different challenge than Daily Sectordle, which gives you 32 words at once.

Are word games actually good for your brain? If it’s a challenge, if you aren’t running through them on auto pilot, then yes.

Librarian: There’s a novelization of Belle da Costa Greene, the woman who built J. P. Morgan’s personal library, by Alexandra Lapierre. Gina Dalfonzo writes, “Lapierre is the kind of writer who can make a rare book auction into a thrilling action scene, and make a reader yearn to hold a copy of the bejeweled 8th-century Lindau Gospels. She gets you so caught up in Belle’s untiring passion for her work, it tears at your heart to think that Belle would have been barred from that work if her heritage had been known.”

Finding a Good Home for Books: Steve Donoghue says being a “book person” tends to attract orphan books. “I’m talking about squalling little orphans furtively deposited at the back door of the rectory by tearful (or grateful) parents who have decided that their babies will have a better chance for happiness if cast onto the mercy of a rude stream than if they stay neglected and underfed at home.”

Apocalypse Next Door: Russian sci-fi novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky says his apocalyptic novel set in the Moscow metro system is selling well after his government condemned him for opposing the war in Ukraine.

Coffee: At least among customers of Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, iced coffee has overtaken hot coffee orders by three to one. Next month, Starbucks is changing its rewards program to make getting free hot coffee or tea 100 stars (not 50) and free iced coffee or tea 100 stars (not 150). Fans are upset, maybe because handcrafted drinks cost 50 stars more, maybe because change of any kind upsets people.

Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

Music

Sunday Singing: Thy Mercy, My God

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“Thy Mercy, My God” performed by Sandra McCracken

This hymn, “Thy mercy, my God,” was attributed to J.S. when it was published in 1776, and someone along the way connected those initials to Englishman John Stocker, but apparently there is no paper trail to say this is or isn’t an accurate attribute.

Musician Sandra McCracken, working with the hymn revivalists of Indelible Grace, wrote new music for it and performs her composition above. I copied the words from the 1792 American edition of A Selection of Hymns:  from the best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watt’s psalms and hymns.

1 Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last
Hath won my affections and bound my soul fast.

2 Without thy sweet mercy I could not live here
Sin soon would reduce me to utter despair;
But, thro’ thy free goodness, my spirits revive,
And he that first made me, still keeps me alive.

3 Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart
Dissolv’d by thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I found.

4 The door of thy mercy stands open all day
To th’ poor and the needy, who knock by the way;
No sinner shall ever be empty sent back,
Who comes seeking mercy for Jesus’s sake.

5 Thy mercy is endless, most tender and free;
No sinner need doubt, since ’tis given to me;
No merit will buy it, nor fears stop its course;
Good works are the fruits of its freeness and force.

6 Thy mercy in Jesus exempts me from hell;
Its glories I’ll sing: and its wonders I’ll tell:
‘Twas Jesus my friend when he hung on the tree
That open’d the channel of mercy for me.

7 Great Father of mercies, thy goodness I own,
And covenant love of thy crucify’d son:
All praise to the spirit whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.

Non-fiction

The Halifax Diasaster of 1917

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The city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, settled by Britons in 1749, has always held an important role in maritime trade. The video above describes the remarkable story of the horrific disaster that destroyed one square mile of the port city and damaged other communities miles away. Thousands were killed and injured by the results of the largest man-made explosion prior to December 6, 1917, when the Mont-Blanc destroyed Halifax.