Word With A Past: Vaudeville
In 1648, revolution broke out in the streets of Paris. Known at the time as the Fronde ,* it was in many ways a rehearsal for the French Revolution(s) that would follow. Barricades went up in the streets. Aristocrats were pulled out of their carriages and shot at. Militias paraded in the public squares. There were threats of pulling down the Bastille.
More important for the purposes of this blog post, the Fronde was fought in the media as well as in the streets. Printed placards were put up in public places and distributed door-to-door. Small notices, called billets (tickets), were strewn around the city streets. Peddlers sold political pamphlets on street corners like newspapers.** And satirical political songs, known as vaudevilles, became popular.
A contraction of the the phrase voix de ville (the voice of the town), vaudevilles were well named. Writers took popular tunes and wrote new lyrics to them about current events. Singers were paid to roam the streets and sing the latest tunes. Rich and poor alike would hum them as they went about their day. The songs became so popular that collections of greatest hits were compiled.
In eighteenth century France, vaudevilles became a way to get around restrictions on the theater. Theaters presented vaudevilles in conjunction with pantomime and comic sketches. Tap shoes optional.
* Slingshot, a name with a David and Goliath feel appropriate for a revolution that was, at base, about privilege.
** Almost a historical reference in its own right.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Climate Change
Earlier this week I stood in a line that moved very slowly. As we waited, people began to tell weather stories--the natural consequence of five weeks of alternating snow and deep freeze. At first the stories focused on the efforts individuals had made to be in that line when the ticket office opened for a once a year event: digging out cars, walking through two feet of snow on un-shovelled sidewalks, etc. Then people moved on to tales of their experiences of the Big Chicago Snowstorm in 1967, or 1979, or 1999.
Just as I got to the head of the line, the snow began to fall again. A collective grumbling broke out. Then a voice from the back of the line said, "You know, winter used to always be like this."
Whether that's true depends on how you define "always".
Over the life of our planet, glaciers have expanded and contracted more than twenty times at intervals of roughly a hundred thousand years, caused by tiny changes in the way the earth moves. "Brief" periods of interglacial warming* were followed by long periods of cold when ice covered the planet. Even those periods of warmth aren't stable. In the most recent warm spell, following the Great Ice Age, we've experienced a number of dramatic climate changes, including:
The Medieval Warming Period
From roughly 800 to 1200 CE, Europeans enjoyed mild winters, long summers and good harvests. Warm centuries in Europe brought problems in other regions. Higher temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns created extended periods of drought in Central America, Central Asia, and South East Asia.
Cultural changes followed climate change. On the plus side: more stable food supplies help Europe take the first steps out of the "dark ages",** favorable ice conditions allowed the Norse to travel pretty much everywhere, and reduced grazing land helped Genghis Khan to pull the Mongolian tribes together into an empire. On the down side: drought contributed to the end of the Chaco Canyon culture of modern New Mexico and Angkor Wat, favorable ice conditions allowed the Norse to travel pretty much everywhere, and reduced grazing land helped Genghis Khan to pull the Mongolian tribes together into an empire.***
Just to put things in context: the Medieval Warming Period was several degrees cooler than the recorded mean temperature since 1971.
The Little Ice Age
Between 1500 and 1850 CE (give or take 50 or 100 years) , things cooled off--at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Glaciers wiped out villages in the Alps. Rivers in Britain and the Netherlands froze deeply enough to support winter festivals. Even more amazing, in 1658, a Swedish army invaded Denmark by marching across the frozen Great Belt.
"Eighteen hundred and froze to death"
A violent volcano eruption in Indonesia on April 5, 1815, disrupted weather across the planet: more than twelve months of heavy rains in Europe, drought in North America and unseasonable cold everywhere.
I don't know about you, but I suddenly feel a lot warmer.
* Brief in this case meaning 10,000 years or so.
**Short-hand for a more complicated discussion.
***Proving once again that plus or minus depends on where you stand.
Video of the Chicago Blizzard of 1967 courtesy of the Chicago Fire Department
Samurai: The Last Warrior
John Man combines travelogue, history and social commentary n Samurai: The Last Warrior, using the story of Saigo Takamori, popularly known as the "last samurai", as his central focus.
In 1877, Saigo led a hopeless rebellion against the Japanese government. Six hundred samurai armed with traditional sword and bow fought the government's newly trained modern army in an effort to reverse the westernizing changes of the Meiji Restoration. When all was lost, Saigo committed ritual suicide; the institution of the samurai died with him. Three years after Saigo's death, the government against which he rebelled erected a monument honoring him as a great patriot.
Man uses Saigo's story as a lens through which to consider the history of the samurai, Japan's rapid transformation from a feudal society to a modern one, and the ways in which samurai culture colors Japanese society today. He offers detailed explanations of both familiar elements of samurai culture, such as ritual suicide, and less familiar subjects, such as formalized sexual relationships between men. Man himself is never far from the page, whether comparing traditional samurai education with that of a British public schoolboy, visiting a class where a toned-down version of samurai-style sword fighting is taught, discussing the samurai in the context of other "honor cultures" (think street gangs), or explaining Darth Vader's samurai roots.
Samurai is an engaging look at the final days of a military elite: a great choice if you're interested in the the story of the last samurai (minus Tom Cruise) or the lasting influence of these warriors on Japanese culture.
A version of this review appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.