The Story of The Story of Ferdinand

Once upon a time in New York City there was a little boy and his name was William. More than anything, he loved to read. One of his favorite illustrated books, which he enjoyed reading with his mother as well as on his own, was The Story of Ferdinand the Bull. In this story, Ferdinand liked to just sit quietly and smell the flowers. He had no interest in butting heads with the other young bulls or in going to Madrid to fight matadors.

Many summers later, William was learning Castilian, the national language of Spain. He had visited Spain the previous winter, including Madrid, Toledo, cities and towns around Andalusia, and Barcelona. While asking a question about how the Spanish language indicates two noun phrases are in apposition, he wrote an example with the words mi toro Ferdinand.

It had been decades since William had read The Story of Ferdinand the Bull, because he had not read it with his own children, so he decided to revisit the book. He started with the Wikipedia article, where he learned this little book was first published in 1936 and became immensely popular in the US among adults as well as children, outselling Gone with the Wind and topping bestseller lists. William also learned the story was banned in Spain during his childhood because it was considered a pacifist book against the Franco regime, as well as in Germany because Hitler considered it democratic propaganda. He learned the book drew the admiration of Thomas Mann, H.G. Wells, Mahatma Gandhi, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It compelled Ernest Hemingway, that inveterate admirer of bullfighting, to write his own children’s story in response. He realized that the illustrations included the iconic Puente Nueve spanning Ronda, the town where Hemingway spent many summers and which William and his family had visited last January.

It had also been decades since William saw the short Disney film, which won the 1938 Oscar for Best Animated Short. Watching it again, he winced at the narrator’s imitation of a Spanish accent, as well as the clichéd drawings of the women (who all looked like Snow White) and the matador (depicted as a fool). But he was still pleased to see the bridge in Ronda, adjacent to the parador where he and his family had stayed.

William also learned that another film adaptation had been made in 2017. While apprehensive about the padding necessary to stretch this simple tale into a full-length feature, he requested a DVD from his local library, which he had not visited in five months because of COVID-19.

COVID-19 is the disease that ravaged New York City, coursed across Spain, and shuttered libraries everywhere, not only at home. The closures of these public space disturbed William. Wherever they traveled, he and his family sought refuge among the stacks. On their family vacations in the last three years, they had visited libraries in Spain, Hong Kong, Ohio, Massachusetts, California, Utah, and Iceland. This summer, for the first time in memory, they are homebound.

Millions of children are homebound too. Searching now for videos of “ferdinand the bull”, there are many read-aloud videos made since last March by librarians, teachers, and other book lovers. These are lovely, sharing the pleasure of reading with children whose caregivers may also be home but are occupied. Still, these videos are not as intimate as two people reading in the same room together: pointing at letters and pictures, taking turns, wondering aloud about the thoughts and relationships of the characters, looking at each other, laughing with each other, making up back stories, admiring the art, flipping back to remind themselves of something that happened earlier — traveling through at their own pace, making it their own, reading as an activity.

I’ve been playing the Coda EDC flute for a couple of weeks. Here is the instrument with its inventor, Karl Ahrens.

This vessel flute, closely related to the ocarina, is marvelously durable and portable, perfect for Everyday Carry. Beyond being literally easy to bring, it’s also easy to pick up, particularly for anyone with a musical background. The fingering for diatonic notes is linear and remains constant across both full octaves.

The Coda is a joy to play and, more significantly, a joy to learn to play. Because it is in the key of C, spans more than two octaves starting with C4, and includes the entire chromatic scale of sharps and flats, there is a world of sheet music available. I have no prior experience with woodwind instruments, so at times I struggle with embouchure, especially because it is different for the two side-by-side mouth pieces. I also need to make sure the pads of my fingers cover the holes adequately. Finally, I am working on controlling the flow of my breath: to blow steadily in order to hit the right note and prevent the tone from wobbling, yet to vary the strength of my exhalation across notes as more or fewer holes are open. 

However, these challenges in technique are manageable, as well as fulfilling to confront. I can feel when the muscles in my face get a good workout. Likewise, my fingers are becoming stronger and I am learning how to position them better; these demands are especially gratifying for my left hand, serving as physical therapy for the internal scarring and tightness I suffered from a hard fall I took earlier this summer. Finally, I love being aware of my breath, even more at my current level than when I am scuba diving. My lungs feel good after I play.

Meanwhile, I am sounding better as I progress through the lessons on the Coda website, the songs in the included workbook (I am especially fond of “Silent Night” and “Scarborough Fair”), and melodies from a Beatles fake book I purchased last week. It is satisfying to make music and gratifying to hear my progress. I think that is just one of the reasons people like to make food (that is, if they like to program or cook at all): clear and immediate feedback. Writing computer code, while much less sensory, has this quality too.

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I taught myself to code with BASIC on the TRS-80 (“trash eighty'”) during high school, when programs were stored on the same cassette tapes we used to play music. A bit later in college I learned PL/C and kept my programs on 8-inch floppies. In grad school I programmed mostly in FORTRAN and backed up on TK50 cartridges. These computer languages are still in use in some form, although they are no longer state of the art. The hardware storage technologies are, of course, long obsolete.

These days I don’t code much at all. Still, I find it entertaining to work on similar problems by playing programming games. Recently I began while True: learn() , which is giving me a better understanding of machine learning as well as a tiny taste of visual programming. In that game I have progressed far enough in the timeline to begin using genetic algorithms, which in real life I first encountered twenty-eight summers ago at the Santa Fe Institute immediately after grad school. (As a graduate student, I handled my own multi-variable optimization problems with simulated annealing and Monte Carlo simulations.)

I’ve also been rehashing the problems in 7 Billion Humans. a game that focuses on parallel computing, a concept I initially learned while working on Cray supercomputers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Human Resource Machine, by the same game developer, is more focused on low-level, assembly-like programming, the same highly constrained code used in classic HP calculators, the same tightly succinct code that got twelve astronauts to the surface of the Moon. 

It’s wonderful to make music on the Coda (as well as on my guilele) and to code in computer languages (as well as learn human languages). In areas such as these, the immediate result tell the tale of how well I am doing. In other aspects of life, it’s more difficult to connect intent and result; head and tail are cloven.

In our most recent grocery delivery I ordered strawberries, cherries, and peaches. Here and now, the middle of July, this is a magical time. Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday because it convenes family and food, but you can’t beat the peak of summer for luscious variety of produce.

Although greenhouse strawberries can now be had year-round, I find them best in summer. I recall first enjoying them as a young child in our apartment in the Bronx, thawed from a bag in the freezer, served in a cereal bowl with milk that turned into strawberry soup and a sprinkle of granulated sugar. The first time that I had fresh strawberries, that I can distinctly remember, came after we moved to small-town Ohio. We went to a u-pick-it farm, and somewhere in that field I lost my favorite pair of sunglasses from childhood, which flipped up. After we moved to a bigger house we grew strawberries ourselves in the terraced rock garden in the backyard; I took them for granted. The most delicious strawberries I ever ate were tiny — smaller than cherries — when hiking in the Wind River Range. For three days I allowed myself to eat only what I could gather and knew to be edible. That ended up being only pale white tubers, save for two small hands of these most precious berries. The children will tell you the best strawberries they have ever enjoyed came from a roadside stand when we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway a couple of years ago. We were surrounded by fields of strawberries as far as the eye could see, eating them outside the rental car. As we continued to drive on, we saw the migrant field workers in the distance. I remarked on how hot the sun can get when picking fruit.

Growing up, we had a sour cherry tree in our backyard too, next to the crabapple tree. I believe the rock garden, the cherry and crabapple trees, certainly the locust tree I planted around Arbor Day in third or fourth grade, they are all gone now. When MM and I were dating, she included frozen cherries when cooking the ground beef for spaghetti sauce, because she had read the antioxidants were beneficial. Soon after we moved to Pittsburgh, I invited some former students over to our house and served cherries, chilled as I often enjoy them. Around that time we also enjoyed stewed cherries in a bed and breakfast in Columbus’ German Village, the one time we attended Origins. When the children were that age, I would pit cherries in my mouth before handing them over, under a vague belief that I was helping them build their immune systems. Cherries are my favorite fresh fruit as an adult, delicious in their sweetness and tartness.

The peaches we have are at that best moment of ripeness. They are dear, so I bought only four, and one remains, next to the bananas, oranges, and apples. I don’t have strong childhood memories of peaches, but as an adult there are three moments that stand out. Once upon a time, I taught intensive writing workshops for several summers at Bard College in the Hudson Valley. On the drive from the house I once rented up towards campus, there was a fruit stand in the summer where River Road intersects the highway leading up to the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. And that fruit stand, in August, had the most incredible peach pies. I stopped as often as I could. They were not made by the farmer, but rather by someone else who brought them to the stand. I have no knowledge about whether the peaches were grown in the Hudson Valley or even whether they were fresh. I just remember that the crust and the filling made the best pies I have ever had. I also remember peach cobbler from the party when my department head welcomed me to the Art Institute of Chicago, made by her mother, who grew up down South. I have made peach cobbler myself since then. But the best fresh, uncooked peaches that I ever had were sold from a truck in Georgia, just off the interstate when we were driving back home from Florida. We had a big brown bag of them and the juice ran down my arm as I was driving. I ate until my belly was full, they were warm from sitting outside.

I forgot to buy sweet corn on the cob, I’ll have to remember that for next time. As a pescetarian, I am acutely aware that this is also peak season for Maine lobster, although I don’t know if those can be delivered without incurring an incredibly high cost. How many more summers, how many more trips around the Sun to enjoy this bounty? People move on, places disappear, we should enjoy while we can.

I am home alone, except for Harry, who at the moment is in the kitchen eating kibble.

I have been alone outside. But now, with M. and S. meeting with the Boy Scouts and B. taking a rare walk on this gorgeous summer evening, this is the first moment in four months when I am the only human in the house.

While reading an article in the Chronicle early this morning (“The Campus Confederate Legacy We’re Not Talking About”, behind paywall) about the Kappa Alpha fraternity, I learned the name for the Ku Klux Klan may have originated from the Greek word κυκλος, — pronounced “KOO-klos” with the second vowel as in “soft” or “fox”. The word means “circle” and is etymologically related to English words like “cycle” and “cyclone”.

I have known Ancient Greek for nearly two decades, including teaching it at two colleges. I am out of practice, but κυκλος, is a word I have used when teaching my seminar Revolutions of Circularity. These days, knowledge of the language is largely confined to Classical and Biblical scholarship, although I did find it surprisingly handy a couple of years ago when navigating Modern Greek around Athens and the Peloponnese.

In contrast to the learned flair that surrounds Attic and Koine Greek, I have always associated the name Ku Klux Klan with the unlearned. I thought the misspelling of “clan” was unintentional and borne of illiteracy, or intentional as an appeal to the uneducated who join the organization. The truth is far worse. The replacement of “c” with “k” is a callback to the Greek letter κ (kappa) that appears twice in κυκλος.

This only goes to show that one may be schooled and yet unprincipled — or rather, perform hateful deeds even while principled.

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Side note 1: I have always been a bit unsure how to read the replacement of “c” with “k” in the names of other institutions of the American South, such as Krystal, which apparently makes burgers similar to White Castle, and Krispy Kreme, which makes the most delicious mass-produced donuts. I just realized that Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, uses the sound (but not the variant spelling) of the velar stop three times, just like Ku Klux Klan. But I want to be clear: as far as I know, these linguistic resemblances are absolutely not evidentiary of association with the KKK. Abstracted from any words, the K sound is appealing because it is funny; the letter K is striking because it is unusual.

Side note 2: This morning I also learned that the Proto-Indo-European root for “circle” (sker) is different from the PIE root for “cycle” (kwel) ! The closeness in sound, in both PIE and English, cannot be a coincidence. Sker is a homonym with another PIE word for “cut”, while kwel is homonymnal with a word meaning “sojourn”. Both words involve the reduplication that you hear in Greek and other languages such as Tagalog, so they allude to “cut and cut”, “sojourn and sojourn”. Still, it was a surprise to find out that “circle” and “cycle” stem from different roots.

There is a chapter in Ender’s Game where our protagonist, exhausted from endless, elaborate games of war, is sent back to Earth. As I recall, the young boy talks with his sister Valentine as they sun themselves floating on a raft in the middle of a pond in the lush green woods near their home in North Carolina.

Ever the strategist and tactician, Ender understands why the Battle School brought him back. He needed rest, but he could have relaxed anywhere, including remaining in sterile orbit. They brought him back to Earth to experience these moments, so that he would remember the beauty of what he was fighting for.

Yesterday in the late afternoon I walked around the neighborhood, through Westinghouse and then over to Frick. 

I don’t know why I don’t take long walks in the woods more often. As I left the house, Marissa warned me that it was about to rain. The rumble of distant thunder and the way the wind rustled the leaves on the trees did give me pause at times. But I grew up in this part of the planet, not so far from here, and I could see in the sky and feel on my skin that it would not be raining anytime soon.

Memories of walking among trees are emeralds on a necklace. The oldest jewels are from wandering the woods behind my last childhood home, past Mrs. Nuckols’ house, where I took piano, all the way over to the Marietta Times. There are no real trails, I don’t know if they were made by animals or how. Once when I took him back there off-leash, Mookie took off like a bolt, chasing a deer I never saw. I worried even though those woods extend far, about whether he would find his way back to me. But he did, of course, he always came home.

In truth I never explored those woods often, either. What was I thinking, what was I doing.

I love fireworks. I have never visited Mount Rushmore.

So when I learned last month that the National Parks Service was conducting a lottery for a Fourth of July fireworks show there, I visited their website to enter my name. I figured I could minimize COVID-19 exposure by driving out, loading the car with plenty of food, and staying in campgrounds during the trip. It would have been great to see the Badlands too. I even considered an extended trip, very much like my colleague who has been working on the road, visiting up to five of the remaining eight states where I haven’t been: South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon.

However,  after I learned President Trump would be there, hosting one of his divisive rallies, I recognized this would be a bad idea. I knew the crowd would be packed closely and would disdain masks. I knew the mere appearance of my brown skin could trigger some racist drunk (or racist, period). In the days since the lottery, I also realized the danger of wildfire, and recollected the slave ownership of Washington and Jefferson, as well as Theodore Roosevelt’s slaughter of Filipinos fighting for the liberation of their islands.

On the Fourth I did view impromptu fireworks, flashing above Homewood and some ground effects in the middle of the intersection at the far end of our block. And over the weekend I saw Mount Rushmore on film, rewatching North by Northwest, often considered one of the world’s greatest films, having been preserved twenty-five years ago in the National Film Registry.

I don’t think the movie is all that great.

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North by Northwest is certainly influential but it is very much a product of its time. The incidental music is heavy-handed and repetitive, the dialogue is more ham-fisted than clever, the characters — especially the gender roles — are stock. 

Watching this Hitchcock movie as a period piece created more than sixty years ago, I was most engaged by the scenery. The establishing shots occurred in New York, Chicago, Indiana, and Mount Rushmore. In New York, Grand Central looked precisely as I remember from real life and countless other films, the then-new United Nations Headquarters was iconic but depicted with an obvious matte painting background, and I didn’t recognize the Plaza Hotel until afterwards. The train from New York to Chicago looks like it is on tracks heading up the Hudson Valley, which would be a very indirect route (and originates in Penn Station, not Grand Central), but I’m willing to believe that change have occurred over the past six decades. Although I lived in Chicago four years, I didn’t see anything definitively identifiable of that city. The field in the middle of “Indiana” was apparently filmed in California’s Central Valley; the land looks a bit arid but I was fooled. I couldn’t tell how much of the Mount Rushmore scenes was done on location or on set.

There are two absolutely marvelous scenes. One is brief: a geometric overhead shot of Thornhill as a tiny dot, fleeing the United Nations. One is extended: when Thornhill finds himself in the middle of a field to meet the mysterious Kaplan. The suspense builds slowly and silently, unfolding at a pace that modern audiences probably no longer have patience for.

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We can admire the finer aspects of something (or someone) even while observing the imperfections.

Indeed, those imperfections can be integral.

When I visited the UN Building as a young child, I first encountered an idea that was completely strange to me, the notion that Islamic art deliberately introduces imperfections, because only God is perfect. When I entered the Minneapolis Institute of Art in the summer of 1992, I saw an incredible mandala and was stunned to read that it soon would be swept away, in concert with the Buddhist concept of impermanence. When I took a graphic design class at the Art Institute of Chicago, my friend and fellow professor taught me to work with what we initially perceive to be mistakes.

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Everything — films and mosaics, statues and statutes — is subject to interpretation. In my most recent Convertsation on Thursday evening, we discussed the complex topic of monuments that memorialize and offend. The Supreme Court recently upheld DACA on procedural grounds, prevented Louisiana from having only one abortion provider in the entire state, and barred discrimination against LGBT workers.

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Still, something is amiss when scenery is the unintentional highlight of a video. This is the case for two Netflix releases from the past month. I’ve watched only the first half hour of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga because it has been unfunny, all the more tragic because Will Ferrell is a comedic genius. The main draw to continue is the stunning landscape of Iceland, which we visited three years ago. I’ve nearly made it through the first season of Warrior Nun despite the incredibly uneven story arc and character motivations, in large part because Spain is so beautiful. The area of Ronda near the parador where we stayed last winter is featured in the sixth episode.

I would like to travel again sometime, see the scenery for real. I don’t mind being at home, in many ways I enjoy it. Technology brings aspects of the world to me, I can see and talk with my sisters who are a state and a continent away.

But I have not visited my sister who lives here in town, nor my parents who live only ten minutes away.

It will be good to travel again sometime.

I want to speak freely.

I want to express myself freely but must clarify that everything I write on this blog, I am writing as a private individual. My views do not necessarily reflect those of Carnegie Mellon University, where I have worked nearly fifteen years, or the Mellon College of Science, where I serve as assistant dean for diversity, or the Chemistry Department, where I am an associate teaching professor, or the Science and Humanities Scholars Program, which I direct, or the Pre-College Summer Session, which I also direct.

The university is a risk-averse institution, as my colleagues Jason England and Rich Purcell described last month. Their article “Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd” continues to resonate powerfully for me. It is now behind the Chronicle‘s paywall but there are excerpts here. In addition, the main point of the article remains visible in the pull quote

Statements by college leaders reflect an unholy alchemy of risk management, legal liability, and trustee anxiety

which is abstracted from the sentence

Instead, many of the statements released by college leaders about the killing of George Floyd reflect an unholy alchemy of risk management, legal liability, brand management, and trustee anxiety.

I often express myself, here as well as elsewhere, independently of the university. For example, when I signed a petition written by Rich Purcell, “Concerned CMU Faculty & Staff – It’s Time To Stand Up!” I now understand that I did so as a private individual, having provided my home zip code. Furthermore, I myself pay for the domain name and hosting for this website; the university provides no financial or technical support for this writing.

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So much for my legal disclaimer.

I will be writing in another post to criticize my government, which is my right as a United States citizen — indeed, this is a fundamental tradition, custom, and duty for US citizens. But in this post I am writing to criticize the Chinese government.

When I visited Hong Kong last year, I was taken by the citizens’ vigilant defense of their freedoms. The city is part of China and yet the Hong Kong Basic Law guarantees the region a high level of autonomy (“One Country, Two Systems”). Hong Kong has its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches, which in turn correspond to entities such as an police force independent of Mainland China, laws built on freedom of speech and other rights not upheld in Mainland China, and courts that run entirely separate from Mainland China.

The Basic Law is in force until 2047. However, the central Chinese government increasingly intrudes on Hong Kong’s internal affairs. In 2014, China proposed to reform the Hong Kong electoral system, and the people there responded with the Umbrella Movement. In 2015, five staff members mysteriously disappeared from Causeway Bay Books, a store that sold books critical of China. Early in 2019, after the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) proposed a bill to allow fugitives to be extradited to the notoriously opaque justice system in Mainland China, the Hong Kong people rose up again.

I unabashedly admire a city where millions march to defend their rights. 

Yet I often wonder what it would have been like for me to live in Hong Kong over the past twelve months. (I also wonder the same about Spain, which we visited as a family last winter.) The disruptions to the MTR, the subway network that unites the city; the frequent smell of tear gas hanging in the air; the closure of retail shops and the universities — all of these daily reminders would have been unnerving. And then, with the rise of COVID-19 in China last winter, I would likely have become even more concerned — as I am now, living in the US — for my personal health and safety.

The vast majority of Hong Kong people conducted their protests peacefully, and the government withdrew the extradition bill. The Hong Kong people, with their first-hand experience with SARS, isolated their borders and closely tracked any COVID-19 infections.

Thus, despite continuing unease around Hong Kong politics and public health, two months ago I had been in awe of how the citizens there had demonstrate resilience in the face of severe threats to their freedom and their health. 

But now, China has begun to tighten the screws. Now, starting this month, Hong Kong has become a place where merely humming the melody of a protest song, or failing to stand during the Chinese national anthem, or noting Xi Jinping’s physical resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, or speaking the words “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” could lead to immediate arrest.

People should be able to sing the songs of their hearts. Citizens should not be forced to stand during a national anthem. They should be able to make jokes at the expense of their leaders, or express differing political views.

Let me be clear: I don’t agree with every statement made by every Hong Kong dissident. Hong Kong is politically part of China, the Basic Law will end in 2047, and Hong Kong’s water and energy depend upon China. Therefore, it’s simply impractical to advocate complete liberation from China. In addition, I am aware that Hong Kong is an imperfect place: people of Filipino heritage generally are treated as lower class in Hong Kong, in a way that is even more open than in the US.

Nevertheless, I mourn for what is happening right now in Hong Kong, this illegal abrogation of their rights in the name of “security” and “stability”. Having observed the Lion Rock Spirit of the Hong Kong people over the past year and recognizing that they are, in fact, standing on moral high ground, I wouldn’t bet against them. But China is large and powerful, perhaps the world’s next empire. If I myself were living in Hong Kong right now, subject to this new law, I would, perhaps for the first time, at least seriously contemplate exit strategies.

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Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

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Update (2020-07-11): The day after I wrote this, Times Higher Education published an article on how Hong Kong scholars may decide to stay away because of the new security law.