TIME TRAVEL | A. E. (George William Russell), Irish Futurist Poet

George William Russell ("A.E.")

George William Russell was an Irish poet, born in Lurgan, Ulster on April 10, 1867. He used as his pseudonym the letters A.E., signifying the diphthong "AE" as in Aeon. 

The following notes are based primarily on the entry for A.E. by JC in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, and the entry by JE and JC on A. E.'s friend Joseph James O’Neill.

Much of A.E.’s work reflects a mystical agenda that he shared with William Butler Yeats. In 1886 they helped found the Dublin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. 

A. E.'s first book was a collection of supernatural tales, The Mask of Apollo, and Other Stories, published by Whaley in Dublin and Macmillan in London in 1904.

I have a copy of the first edition of The Mask of Apollo, illustrated by hand by my mother, Hilda van Stockum, in 1956, when we had left Ireland (having lived in the Dublin area for three years 1951-54 and in Paris for one, 1954-55) and were living again in Montreal. I am thinking of publishing the book with my mother's drawings. The book itself is now in the public domain, but not my mother's drawings.

Another book by A.E., published 18 years later, is described by JC as "more coherent" than The Mask of Apollo. It is called The Interpreters (Macmillan, 1922), set in a great City in the indeterminate future, as a long-lived Pax Aeronautica dissolves into factional warfare involving great Airships; those captured in this schism then engage in philosophical debates.

In another, later book set in a future Ireland, The Avatars: A Futurist Fantasy (Macmillan, 1932), two supernatural beings hauntingly invoke a vision of a world less abandoned to materialism. Their seductive discourse draws the protagonists to "the margin of the Great Deep", as Monk Gibbon puts it. Gibbon’s long, informative essay on A.E.’s work introduces The Living Torch (collected, Macmillan, 1937), a posthumous volume of nonfiction. "The House of the Titans", the long narrative tale that dominates The House of the Titans and Other Poems (a chapter in Macmillan’s 1934 collection), inhabits similar territory.

A.E. wrote an introduction to Joseph James O'Neill's book Land Under England (1935). A. E. takes the book to be a Satire on Hitlerian totalitarianism, an impression strengthened on the appearance of Day of Wrath (1936), a Future-War novel which describes the destruction of civilization in 1952 by advanced aircraft following a coalition between Germany, Japan and China (see Pax Aeronautica; Yellow Peril). 

A. E. died at 68 in Bournemouth, Dorset, July 17, 1935, at the height of his powers.

NIXON SIGNS ECO LAW | Endangered Species Act, Dec 28

Nixon Looking on as William Ruckelshaus
becomes the first EPA Administrator, 1970.

December 28, 2019 – On this day in 1973, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act.

In 1970 he created the Environmental Protection Agency and put it in the capable hands of the late William Ruckelshaus.

In 1972 he sent his environmental program to Congress, developed by the new EPA. Nixon said of it:

"This is the environmental awakening. It marks a new sensitivity of the American spirit and a new maturity of American public life. It is working a revolution in values, as commitment to responsible partnership with nature replaces cavalier assumptions that we can play God with our surroundings and survive."

He asked for the new Endangered Species Act to identify and protect threatened species. It also made hunting or capturing endangered species a federal offense. In 1973, the House and Senate versions were combined, and it was passed unanimously by the Senate and in the House by a vote of 355 to 4.

BIRTH | Marlene Dietrich, Dec 27

Marlene Dietrich

December 27, 2019–This day was born in 1901 the film actress and cabaret singer Marlene (originally named Marie Magdalene) Dietrich, in Berlin.

Her family called her “Lena”. Her father, Louis Otto Dietrich, was a former military officer who became a police lieutenant under the Kaiser. Her widowed mother married her husband’s best friend, Eduard von Losch, who was killed in World War I.

Lena Dietrich and her older sister Liesel were tutored at home in Germany, learning French, English, ballet, violin and piano. They attended the Augusta Victoria School for Girls. Lena also took up playing the mandolin.

When an injury precluded her pursuing a musical career, Dietrich pursued an acting career. continued acting in a diverse range of small roles before American director Josef von Sternberg discovered her in 1929 and put her in his famed film, The Blue Angel (1930), as Lola-Lola, the seductive cabaret singer in a top hat and silk stockings over whom a professor becomes obsessed.

Dietrich was appalled by what was happening in her beloved Germany in the 1930s and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937. Adolf Hitler approached her and offered her a lavish income to return   to Berlin. She refused and Hitler banned her films and burned all copies of The Blue Angel, except for one he kept for himself.

In the United States, she spent time at the North Shore resort of Asharoken on Long Island (between Northport and Fort Salonga). It is where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry stayed on vacations, self-exiled, during the war years when he was writing The Little Prince. Eugene O'Neill was another artist who stayed there.

She decided to join the U.S. war effort, recording anti-Nazi broadcasts in German and taking part in war-bond drives. She entertained half a million Allied troops across North Africa and Western Europe. The troops loved her. She slept in dugouts and played a musical saw. Of her war efforts, she said, “This is the only important work I’ve ever done.”

THE LITTLE PRINCE | Still inspiring

The Little Prince, 1943.

December 27, 2019 – 75 years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French novelist-pilot, came to New York after his country was crushed by the Nazi occupation. He wanted to fly a military airplane to fight Hitler but was rejected because of his age.

Instead, he moved to New York City at the end of December 1940. He also stayed at Asharoken, on the North Shore of Long Island.

He lobbied for the United States to join the war, and in 1942 wrote Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince, one of the most popular books ever written, selling 140 million copies in 300 languages.

In The Little Prince, the pilot-author describes himself as downed with his plane in a remote desert, when suddenly the Little Prince appears and asks: "Dessine-moi un mouton,” “Draw me a sheep.”

The pilot tries, but the Little Prince is dissatisfied with all of the drawings. Exasperated, the pilot just draws a box and tells the Little Prince that the sheep is inside.

Now the Little Prince is ecstatic.

Moral: Reality is not as powerful as Imagination, something fashion designers have always known.

Another moral of the book, a distrust of abstraction, is limned in Adam Gopnick's review of Saint-Exupéry's book in The New Yorker during the time of the 2014 exhibit of the book's original manuscript at the Morgan Library and Museum.

FELIX ROHATYN | Rescued NYC from Bankruptcy in 1975

L to R: Felix Rohatyn (1928-2019) and
NYS Governor Hugh Carey (1919-2011)

December 24, 2019 – Felix George Rohatyn died ten days ago in New York City. He is credited with the financial innovation that engineered the rescue in 1975 of the City of New York from bankruptcy. Creditors had refused to roll over NYC’s expiring bonds. As it was, many bondholders who couldn’t afford to wait through the process sold their bonds at a significant loss. 

Rohatyn was chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation from 1975 to 1993, appointed by Governor Hugh Carey. Known as "Big MAC", it had authority over the City budget and served as chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors. Its authority was exercised in part through the Financial Control Board, which lost its budget powers in 1986. MAC itself sold $10 billion in bonds before it was voted out of existence when the debt was repaid in full in 2008. However, the Control Board still exists as of 2019 and continues to monitor NYC’s finances.

Rohatyn was concerned about the risks created by derivatives, and in the 1990s described them as "financial hydrogen bombs, built on personal computers by 26-year-olds with M.B.A.s".

Born May 29, 1928 in Vienna, Rohatyn’s family left in 1935 for safety in France, moving again in 1940 when the Nazis occupied France, traveling first on a Brazilian visa from Marseilles to Casablanca and ending up in the United States. He said later that all they could take out of France was a few hidden gold coins and he added: “Ever since, I’ve had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head.”

He attended Middlebury College and landed at Lazard, where he prospered in the mergers and acquisitions business, arranging many transactions in the four decades from the 1960s through the 1990s. Rohatyn later became co-chair of the Commission on Public Infrastructure to raise funds for public works, including the effort to create a national infrastructure bank. After Hurricane Sandy he was appointed co-chair of the New York State 2100 Commission to rebuild New York City in the context of climate change. From 1997 to 2000, President Bill Clinton (after having considered Rohatyn as a possible Treasury Secretary) appointed him U.S. Ambassador to France.

PAUL VOLCKER | Former Federal Reserve Chairman

Paul A. Volcker

The following obituary of Paul Volcker was written by 2020 Vision, an economic policy monitoring and advocacy group in Washington, D.C. headed by Dana Chasin. I am posting it by permission: 

Volcker, Inflation Conqueror 

Paul Volcker served as the 12th Chairman of the Federal Reserve from August 1979 to August 1987. He is widely credited with bringing down skyrocketing inflation levels and putting the U.S. economy on more stable ground early in his tenure. When President Nixon ended the gold standard in 1973, the dollar tanked in value, import prices rose, and along with it, inflation. 

Enter President Carter and his new Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, who undertook then-extreme measures to meet the national emergency. Through gumption and steadfast commitment to his monetary theories, Volcker cemented himself in history as the Fed Chair who fought inflation and won. Annual inflation peaked at 14.8 percent in March 1980; by 1986, it plateaued at a healthy two percent. 

Today, politicians and economists from across the political spectrum celebrate Volcker’s tenure at the Fed, but progress at the time was painful. When Volcker took over at the Fed, unemployment stood at six percent. After his monetary tightening, joblessness peaked at 10.8 percent in 1982. Interest rates surpassed 20 percent, hindering growth. 

Volcker was responding to a national crisis as a nonpartisan and public servant. His views on the Fed were steadfast, original, and unpopular — he took that resoluteness into the rest of his life in public service.

Volcker, Public Advocate

Volcker dedicated his post-Fed life to improving the quality of governance. In 2013, he founded the Volcker Alliance, a New York City-based nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting more effective government management — from the local to federal level. The Alliance partners with educational institutions and business groups to sponsor research of government performance and recommend policy. 

Volcker also took a particular interest in financial regulation and systemic risk. In 1987, once inflation was tamped down and the country entered a prolonged period of economic expansion, President Reagan viewed Volcker as an impediment to financial deregulation. Reagan instead chose Alan Greenspan to succeed him as Fed Chair. Throughout the 1990s, Volcker levied harsh criticism of the modern financial industry and the opaque world of derivatives. 

In this, Volcker was prescient and re-emerged into the public spotlight after the 2007 financial crisis. President Obama appointed Volcker to be chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board from February 2009 to January 2011. Volcker helped draft the "Volcker Rule," which limited the types of trading that banks could do with their own proprietary accounts. The Volcker Rule became law as part of the Dodd Frank and Wall Street Reform Act. 

A Distinguished Life

Outside of good governance and monetary policy, Volcker’s altruistic approach to public service was evident. He chaired the commission to look into dormant Swiss bank accounts of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, recovering $1.25 billion. He also chaired the independent commission that inquired into the notorious oil-for-food scandal during the second Gulf war. 

More than anything, Volcker’s life should be remembered as a life dedicated to public service, with a legacy of independence and intellectual and moral integrity. In an age of demagoguery and cults of personality, he will be remembered as a decent and gifted man who materially advanced the causes of good government and self-government.  

BREXIT | Sir Ivor Crewe

Sir Ivor Crewe (L) with Univ Old Member
The Rt Hon Sir Alan Moses Law.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 14, 2019–Last month, Sir Ivor Crewe visited Washington and spoke to the Oxford University Society branch about Brexit. 

He is the Master since 2008 of University College, Oxford – one of the three oldest colleges at Oxford. It was the residence of Bill Clinton when he was a Rhodes Scholar. 

Sir Ivor is also the President of the Academy of Social Sciences. 

He pioneered in polling in Britain since the 1970s and predicted that the Labour Party was losing its base. 

He was certainly proven right this week, as the (well-deserved) rejection of Jeremy Corbyn means a continuation of Brexit. This outcome is not favorable for academic institutions in Britain because it inhibits exchanges of students and faculty. Some worry that the Scots will in due course secede from the United Kingdom.

None of this is so surprising when one appreciates the depth of the historical divisions within the United Kingdom. Some of that is covered in my book, Oxford College Arms, because the history of Britain is intertwined with the history of the coats of arms of the Oxford colleges.

After Sir Ivor's talk, I gave him a copy of my book, which includes illustrations by an excellent heraldic artist, Lee Lumbley. Sir Ivor wrote back (I include his comment here by permission):

Thank you for your gift of Oxford College Arms, which I enjoyed reading on my return flight today from San Francisco. I can confirm that there isn’t even the tiniest of errors in your account of Univ, which gives me complete confidence that your entries for all the other colleges are reliably informative. I imagine it was a labour of love to produce this fine book.

Since I have been in Washington working for the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress in 2019, I haven't had much opportunity to travel to Oxford branches to talk about the book, but I did give one slide show presentation in 2019 to the Oxford University Society of Washington, D.C., following the talks I gave in London, Oxford and New York City the previous year.

 

How to Order the Book. I have recently been asked how to order a copy of the book. I just type "Oxford College Arms" in my browser and it takes me straight to the Amazon landing pages for my book. Or click on the short web site address here: https://amzn.to/34h6ksd.

If you want to keep bookstores thriving by giving them your business, they can order the book for you through Ingram. All you need is the ISBN Number, which is 978-0-9845232-3-8 (the ISBN number is also on the Amazon site). As of today, Amazon says they will deliver books by Christmas, but that window is closing.

More about the book here: https://boissevainbooksllc.blogspot.com/2018/11/boissevain-books-gift-ideas.html

MOUNT INEZ | Name Change Is Official

The new official map of Lewis, showing Mount Inez. Photo by
Duffy Campbell, used here by permission.

Mount Discovery, it used to be. 

In 1916, after the death of Inez Milholland Boissevain, the Town of Lewis, N.Y., decided to honor their prominent citizen, Inez.

They renamed Mt. Discovery after Inez, i.e., Mt. Inez. However, the maps themselves never were changed.

Now Nancy Duff ("Duffy") Campbell, an attorney in Lewis, has done something about it. She noted that for official maps to change, action needs to be taken in Washington, DC. 

She pursued the matter. She got the Town Board to vote on it, since the last vote was in 1916. The authorities in Washington care about these things. I posted about this earlier when the Board was considering the matter:
https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2019/10/mount-inez-100-years-later-lewis-makes.html

Now, Duffy has been successful. Here is the news story:
https://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/the-sun/mount-inez-official/

Inez has her due! Thank you Duffy and Town of Lewis!