Classical, OAE/Fischer, The Anvil, Basingstoke

Much about Mozarts final trilogy of symphonies remains shrouded in mystery, but we do know that they were composed in a concentrated, six-week burst of creativity in summer 1788. Although he could not have known these that these sublime masterpieces would be his farewell to symphonic form, the coda to the last of them, the Jupiter, does have a feeling of last words, its counterpoint functioning a little like the fugue in Verdis operatic swansong, Falstaff.

Conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Ivn Fischer had a point, then, when he invited the audience to think of these symphonies not as three works of four movements each, but as one canvas divided into 12 movements. Putting the evenings interval in the middle of the Symphony No. 40 in G minor might almost have worked, but only if Fischer hadnt diluted musical tension by encouraging the audience also to applaud each of the twelve movements separately. How many times in one evening should a conductor turn around to grin at the listeners?

The concert started well with the Symphony No 39 in E flat major, the least often heard of the three. Sharing a warmth with other Mozart works in the same key, and its richness enhanced by prominent clarinets, it swept along spaciously. The OAEs natural horns and trumpets had bite, and in the excellent acoustics of The Anvil in Basingstoke just three double basses underpinned everything with a firmly present bass line.

Read more:
An idiosyncractic approach to Mozart from Ivn Fischer and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Telegraph.co.uk

Does a practical joke differ from a hoax? It could be a matter of scale. Anyone can deploy a whoopee cushion, but it takes rather more as Virginia Woolf and others did, long before Ali G to kit oneself out as Abyssinian royalty for a 1910 state visit by train to the deck of a dreadnought in Weymouth harbour. There was nothing in it for them, but that hoax brought questions in the Commons. Monetary gain, as with the Hitler Diaries, certainly sours claims for hoaxes as a pure art form.

Where does this leave the humble,twentysomething mother-of-three Mary Toft, and those around her? The question is raised by Karen Harveys brief but amply detailed study of a woman who, in 1726, brought the Surrey market town of Godalming publicity it had not known before. Her story occasioned numerous contemporary publications, several unflinching engravings by Hogarth, a ballad by Alexander Pope and even aroused the curiosity of George I. Yet nowadays most are unfamiliar with the case. The details invariably bring a horrified yelp.

Put simply, Mary, a field labourer, gave birth to rabbits 17 times. Naturally, none survived. Word spread locally. A doctor, John Howard, witnessed and even induced some of these extraordinary productions, and attested to their monstrous veracity. The Royal Households surgeon visited, as did the Prince of Waless secretary. The King requested Mary be brought to London, where she was installed at a bagnio in Leicester Fields (as was). There, recumbent, she was studied sedulously by eminent doctors. Pamphlets and articles proliferated; of rabbits there were no more.

With Marys humiliating installation at the bagnio, the scandal really blew up. The publicity helped the owner with his cash-flow problem, while the city was torn by faction, and the press thousands of newspapers across England seethed with speculation and vituperation.

That December she confessed to concealing parts of various animals (including a hogshead) about her person before heaving them into the world. For this she was sent to the Bridewell and, pending trial, suffered hard toil and grim health before release without charge, return to Godal-ming and obscurity. This books title is the parish registers entry when she died in 1763. She had not committed a criminal act. But that anybody should have believed her story at all is extraordinary. Still, as Popes ballad put it: Eer since Days of Eve,/ The weakest Woman sometimes may/ The wisest Man deceive.

Harvey fills out the case fascinatingly, to create a view of the country and city in a shifting era. The local scene entails such matters as the decline in clothing work, the siting of the town clock to ensure that workers were not late, and the sandy soils being ideal for rabbits, a creature no longer considered wild but part of a landowners property, which here included commercial warrens. The consequence of this change in rules on rabbit ownership was bad feeling and court cases.

Everything took place against fears for the social order, and the Whigs and Tories would wrestle each other for control of the constituency for decades. Was Mary subverting the natural order? Was she perpetuating witchcraft in the face of the Enlightenment? Tall orders for somebody described by one doctor as of a very stupid and sullen temper. Pope claimed of one rabbit that a surgeon slyly thrust it up. Harvey convincingly portrays Marys mother-in-law as a main player in the hoax.

Mary had suffered a miscarriage shortly before the rabbit brouhaha, so her lactating breasts gave the hoax plausibility. And this was when the 18th-century body whether male or female, young or old did not give up its truths easily. The internal workings of the live human body were impossible to observe. Many still believed a pregnant womans wild imaginings could become imprinted upon her foetus.

Harveys prose is dry, but so is a good martini; and her extraordinary narrative will surely be savoured by a wide audience.

Originally posted here:
How could enlightened 18th-century Britain have believed that a woman could give birth to rabbits? - Spectator.co.uk

Forget reappearances from the Master, the Cybermen and Captain Jack the latest episode of Doctor Who opted for a more deep-cut reference to the long-running shows past.

Can You Hear Me? by showrunner Chris Chibnall and a writer new to the series Charlene James saw the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and friends lured into a trap by Zellin (Ian Gelder), an immortal god who was haunting the dreams of humans, all to feed his beloved Rakaya (Clare-Hope Ashitey).

The Doctor remarks that Zellin isa mythical name, [from] way beyond this universe, with Gelders villain confirming that he and Rakaya are both all-powerful, ever-living beings, pitting two planets against each other purely to pass the time.

We immortals need our games, Doctor, Zellin says. Eternity is long and we are cursed to see it all.

He continued: The Eternals have their games, the Guardians have their power struggles. For me this dimension is a beautiful board for a game the Toymaker would approve.

Confused? If those references to Doctor Who history are lost on you, heres a handy explainer

Doctor Who Enlightenment BBC

Making their debut in the 1983 story Enlightenment, the Eternals are a race of elemental beings of immense power, capable of manipulating matter and creating objects out of thin air.

These amoral creatures, like Zellin, act purely for their own amusement, manipulating Ephemerals (read: mortal beings) for fun.

Though their origins are uncertain, the Eternals are said to live outside of time, in the realm of eternity and, in their first Doctor Who appearance, they participated in a race through space arranged by the Guardians of Time (more on them below).

The prize would be enlightenment the granting of their hearts desire brought to life, symbolised by a crystal. The Eternals copied ships from Earth history, fitted them with ion drives and sails to catch solar winds and used kidnapped humans to crew the crafts.

Though Eternals cannot be destroyed, the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and his companion Turlough (Mark Strickson) were able to defeat Captain Wrack (Lynda Baron), an Eternal in league with the Black Guardian, by throwing her overboard into space.

Though they didnt appear in Doctor Who again, the tenth Doctor (David Tennant) referenced the Eternals in 2006s Army of Ghosts, while the witch-like aliens the Carrionites mentioned how the Eternals had banished them into deep darkness soon after the dawn of the universe in 2007s The Shakespeare Code.

The aforementioned Guardians first appeared in Doctor Whos 16th season in 1978, a series of interlinked stories which saw the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) on a quest to find the legendary Key to Time.

Transcendental beings who embodied aspects of the universe, immortal and indestructible, we met the White Guardian (Cyril Luckham) who represented light, order and structure and his eternal opponent the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall) the personification of darkness, entropy and chaos.

The White Guardian sent the Doctor and his companion Romana on a mission to find the Key to Time, its pieces disguised and scattered across the universe, warning them that the Black Guardian planned to use the key as a weapon. Though the Doctor was able to reassemble the key, he eventually scattered the pieces back through time in order to prevent it falling into the Black Guardians clutches.

The Black Guardian sought revenge five years later (our time), recruiting the exiled alien Turlough to kill the Doctor in 1983s Mawdryn Undead. Turlough began travelling with the Time Lord and grew fond of him, turning against his master. He threw the enlightenment crystal at the Black Guardian, who vanished in a burst of flame, though the White Guardian warned that his nemesis could never be truly killed.

So how does the Toymaker fit into all this? Well, retroactively

Before Doctor Who canon was all that convoluted, the first Doctor (William Hartnell) encountered the Celestial Toymaker (Michael Gough) in a 1966 story bearing the villains name.

Here, the Doctor and his companions arrive in an otherworldly domain overseen by the Toymaker another immortal entity, who forces them to play a series of games, with the outcome deciding whether they will remain his playthings for all eternity.

The Doctor was of course able to outwit the Toymaker and escape, with the character never making an encore plans for a comeback in the 1980s fell by the wayside when Doctor Who was put on hiatus by the BBC during the Colin Baker era.

The Toymakers origins were never explained then-Doctor Who script editor Donald Tosh later revealed that, years before the Time Lords were established in canon, the Toymaker was supposed to be a member of the Doctors own race.

2001 spin-off novel The Quantum Archangel suggests that he is instead another Guardian a la White and Black the Crystal Guardian. This has never been verified on television, though Zellins comments in Can You Hear Me? do appear to confirm a link of some kind between all three beings

Doctor Who continues on BBC One at 7:10pm on Sundays

Read more:
Doctor Who: Who are the Eternals, the Guardians and the Toymaker? - RadioTimes

An intricately inlaid table made for Madame Infante, the daughter of Louis XV for the ducal Palace at Colorno will be offered for between US$100,000 and US$200,000 Courtesy of Christie's

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In April, Christies will host a sale of more than 250 pieces from a collection of Dalva Brothers, a New York-based art dealer that has been the go-to source for 18th-century French furniture and decorative arts for 87 years. The dealer is closing shop.

The sale, including European furniture, Svres porcelain, Chinese works of art, clocks, and sculpture, is expected to fetch approximately US$5 million.

The sale, titled Dalva Brothers: Parisian Taste In New York, has a strong representation of works of royal and aristocratic provenance, led by a Svres porcelain gold-ground teapot and cover (thire bouillotte) circa 1779, likely made for Marie Antoinette or Louis XV I. It has an estimate of between US$30,000 and US$50,000.

Additionally, an intricately inlaid table made for Madame Infante, the daughter of Louis XV for the ducal Palace at Colorno will be offered for between US$100,000 and US$200,000, as will a Consulat ormolu-mounted mahogany and Angoulme porcelain clock, circa 1800, supplied to the Chteau de Saint-Leu for Napoleons brother, Louis Bonaparte and his wife Hortense de Beauharnais, later the King and Queen of the Netherlands. It is estimated to fetch between US$60,000 and US$100,000.

Highlighting the 18th-century French furniture from the collection is a Louis XVI pietra dura and ormolu-mounted ebony secrtaire en cabinet by Adam Weisweiler and supplied by Dominique Daguerre, circa 1785-90. The cabinet has a presale estimate of between US$600,000 and US$1 million.

For the past eight decades, Dalva Brothers has worked with such institutions as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Palace of Versailles, and the Louvre. Private clients included Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and John Dorrance, the former president of Campbells Soup.

While my family has been privileged to work with these objects from the Age of Enlightenment, this auction heralds a new chapter for Dalva Brothers, Leon Dalva, whose parents founded the business in 1933, said in a statement. It is our wish that these works of art will bring happiness to their new owners just as they have to my family and our clients over the years.

The family is closing the dealing business due to a variety of reasons, according to Jody Wilkie, co-chairman of decorative art at Christies New York.

Although the Dalva Brothers gallery in a six-story townhouse on East 77th Street is a warm, fascinating place to showcase their collection of antiques, the world in which they are operating has changed a great deal, Wilkie says.

Dalva Brothers used to be located on East 57th Street in Manhattan at a strip of major antiques stores, many of which already went out of business. The closing of the great treasure house is very much a New York story, Wilkie adds.

Highlights of the sale will be open to public view at Christies Rockefeller Galleries in New York starting on March 27 until the auction day, April 2. A second sale of the Dalva Brothers collection will take place at Christies Paris in November.

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Christies to Offer 18th-Century French Decorative Arts From Dalva Brothers - Barron's

One normally wouldnt consider North York a place where riches lie beneath the ground, but David Birnbaums basement tells another story.

Neatly arrayed, floor-to-ceiling, in crammed bookcases, filing cabinets, metal shelves, bankers boxes, document cases and bulging manila envelopes is a veritable treasure trove that libraries around the world would love to get their hands on.

Theres an Indiana Jones-ish vibe to pulling a dusty tome from a shelf, its leather binding cracked and decaying, or peering at fragments of a centuries-old Hebrew manuscript in a dim light.

Its hard and seems crass to put a dollar value on a collection this remarkable. Its worth millions, Birnbaum told The CJN. Were looking for a good home where it will be properly catalogued and digitized.

Thats easier said than done given the collections sheer size. But of late, two local scholars have embarked on a campaign to convince the University of Torontos Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library to acquire the storied Birnbaum Archives.

The collection centres almost wholly on two giants of 20th century Jewish thought and scholarship: Nathan Birnbaum (Davids grandfather), a hugely influential figure in European Jewry who died in 1937, and Solomon Birnbaum (Nathans son and Davids father), a world-renowned scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew who died in 1989 in Toronto at age 98.

The archives also hold the writings and artworks of two more of Nathan Birnbaums sons: Menachem, an artist who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944, and Uriel, a writer and artist who died in 1956.

A stones throw from David Birnbaums house lie the papers and vast writings of his late brother Eleazar Birnbaum, an expert in Arabic, Persian and Turkish who taught at the University of Toronto and died last October at the age of 89.

Theres more: Eleazars and Davids brother, Jacob, was a key founder of the movement struggling on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1960s.

By any measure, this was a productive family.

Yes, they were all very prolific, understated David, who trained as an architect and worked as an environmental planner for the Ontario government. Hes curated the archives for 31 years, and now, at age 86, agrees its time for a permanent home where their contents could be preserved and studied.

Asked the size of the archive, which is spread out on two floors of his unassuming house, David sits back in his kitchen chair and thinks. It amounts, he said, to 5,200 letters, between 50,000 and 60,000 papers, documents and manuscripts, and some 3,000 books, which have been meticulously catalogued by whether they are by Nathan, Solomon, Uriel or Menachem, about them, or mention them.

A further 2,000 scholarly books, some of them rare, are in Solomons library.

Among the letters are 18 carefully preserved, handwritten missives from Theodor Herzl to Nathan Birnbaum (the two would have a falling out), and an invitation to speak co-signed by Albert Einstein. The correspondence alone represents a whos who of 20th century Jewish history: Letters to Birnbaum from Sholem Aleichem, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Max Nordau, Martin Buber, and I.L. Peretz, to name a few.

Scribblings, photographs, newspaper clippings, poems, personal notes, its all here.

The material would interest scholars for years to come, wrote Prof. Naomi Seidman, of U of Ts religion department, to the Fisher Library recently. We would love to see the Birnbaum Archive housed on the University of Toronto campus, not only for our own research, but also for the opportunities it presents to showcase the remarkable lives of this singular family.

Remarkable barely begins to describe Nathan Birnbaum. Born in Vienna in 1864, he championed a spectrum of radically opposed movements, according to Kalman Weiser, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at York University.

Birnbaums life was a series of progressions some might say a trajectory first, as a leading figure in the Zionist movement well before Herzl (Birnbaum is credited with coining the term Zionism), then as an architect of Yiddish-based cultural autonomy for Eastern European Jews (he organized the landmark 1908 Yiddish language conference in Czernowitz, modern day Chernivtsi, now in Ukraine), and finally, as a leader in the staunchly anti-secular, anti-Zionist Agudath Israel party. He died in Holland.

Nathan Birnbaum was a pivotal figure in Jewish nationalist thought and Orthodoxy, whose chameleon-like transformations mirrored European Jewrys responses to the challenges posed by post-Enlightenment forces, noted Weiser.

His whole life consisted of what a Jew was, David Birnbaum said.

Solomon Birnbaum was also a maverick intellectual: An Orthodox Jew who authored the first modern grammar of Yiddish, written in the trenches of the First World War, and who devised an ingenious Yiddish spelling system that was introduced in Orthodox schools in Poland in the 1930s.

After fleeing to England in 1933, he became an expert in Hebrew paleography (the study of ancient writing systems and deciphering historical manuscripts) and epigraphy (the study and interpretation of ancient inscriptions.)

In 1947, he was able to date the Dead Sea Scrolls accurately by studying their scripts well before radiocarbon dating.

He came to Toronto to join his sons in 1970 and spent his remaining decades continuing his research into the evolution of the Hebrew alphabet, and lesser-known Jewish languages, such as Ladino, Bukharic (spoken in central Asia) and Yevanic (in Greece).

The output of father and son was staggering; it seems as though they saved every scrap of paper in their lives. How it all survived the Holocaust is another conversation.

The depth and importance of this archive cannot be easily exaggerated, noted the American scholar Jess Olson in his 2013 biography of Nathan Birnbaum.

The archives are indeed a big deal, said Weiser, who also favours their acquisition by U of Ts Fisher Library. Its the ideal place.

But essentially, it all comes down to money. A benefactor is needed to purchase the collection and donate it.

For Birnbaum, the treasure obviously strikes close to home. Rather than a dry impersonal historical record of well over 100 years of European Jewish history, he said, the archive reflects the experiences of those who actually lived that history.

Read more here:
A treasure trove of Jewish history is sitting in a North York basement - Canadian Jewish News

Beethovens music has a knack for embedding itself in our DNA. If the human brain came hardwired with a pre-set music library, his greatest hits likely loom atop that short list. With a limitless legacy and a persona bolstered by melodic achievements of legends echelons, it makes sense why the University of Houston is observing the 250th anniversary of the composers birth. Set to begin on February 17, UHs Moores School of Music will welcome internationally acclaimed guest artists, scholars, and panelists to Beethoven 250 UH 2020, a two week long festival devoted to Beethovens sestercentennial.

I think these moments give us a chance to come together as a community and to celebrate the greatness of human achievements, says Dr. Courtney Crappell, Director of the Moores School and Associate Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at UH.

For the Houston community, we want people to be on our campus to experience it with us. Of course at [Moores] we are focused on our students experience. So for us to put this together on our campus, especially for the students who are with us right now at this moment in history...it gives us a chance to curate an experience for our students thats going to change them forever, says Crappell.

The festival will house residencies from the internationally heralded ensemble Formosa Quartet, and Hungarian violinist Kristf Barti, whose performances of Beethovens Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 61, in which he simultaneously plays the piece while conducting the orchestra from his violin (a feat he will repeat at his February 29 UH concert appearance) have garnered critical praise. Each week-long residency will include open rehearsals, masterclasses, and concerts open to both Moores students and the general public.

Im working to bring top musicians from all over the world to the school of music anytime we can do it, and every time we have the opportunity to do it, says Dr. Andrew Davis, Founding Dean of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts (home to the Moores School). He says that when he reached out to these artists, it was with only the festivals concept; the artists, in turn, chose the pieces to be programmed at the event, a decision Davis says helped maintain a collaborative spirit.

Im kind of a fan of letting the artist be the artist and not totally dictating what theyre going to do. So I give them the concept and let them go to work and theyve been really responsive. I think they put together a super exciting series of programs, says Davis of the performance calendar stacked with sonatas, chamber music, and the composers third symphony, the Eroica. Its enough to make any Houstonians Beethoven-loving heart skip a beat.

In curating the festivals lineup of guest artists, Davis prioritized the students musical needs, stressing the importance of these artists interacting with some of UHs most musically inclined Coogs.

We would not bring them to the school if we weren't confident that they would impact the students in a positive way. We're not going to bring people to the school who just have no interest in teaching and no interest in interacting with students and making an impact. We're going to invite people we know love students and love the teaching aspect of what they do. These big events are an opportunity to bring people like that to the school of music and simultaneously make a wider impact in the community because there's something here for everyone whether you're a scholar, a musician, a professional, an amateur, or just a fan of the music of Beethoven, it'll be a great two weeks for every one of those audiences, says Davis.

As UH maintains its influence as a research university, Davis wanted to add dimensions of history, philosophy, scholarship, and humanities to the festival - something, he says, he deeply values.

I'm really interested in working across disciplines and I really believe that its not all about the music; it's about the study of the music, the interpretation of the music, and all of the ways that you can connect the music to the other disciplines in the university.

Beethoven 250 UH 2020 welcomes Formosa Quartet to the Moores School of Music for a week long residency open to students and the public beginning February 17.

Photo by Sam Zauscher

Beethoven 250 UH 2020 will host some of the worlds top Beethoven scholars, including UCLAs William Kinderman, in a series of academic conferences and lectures designed to appeal to both scholarly audiences and the wider public. Guest speaker Kinderman will be speaking about the political aspects of Beethoven.

Beethoven was struggling politically in a way that resonates not only in our era, but you can probably find resonance in any era politically about the freedom of the individual, and how does the individual express oneself with freedom of speech, the freedom of emotion, and the freedom to be who you are?, says Davis.

I think there's a lot of resonance and a lot that we can take from Beethoven and his struggles as an artist and his solution to these struggles as an artist. I think there's a lot we can take from that that's informative for the way we live our lives, the way we deal with politics, and these issues today. Honestly, that's why I think we all study history, that's why we all go to the university - so you can get an education. You don't study history because its some artifact. You study it because it's real, it repeats itself, it goes in cycles, you learn from it, and it influences the way you make decisions. That's why you're studying this stuff; that's why we're doing that at the teachers level; that's why we bring Beethoven back and we really study him hard, says Davis, noting the composers status as a great intellectual figure in the history of the Western world.

Hes the first one that interrogates it really hard and goes beyond the 18th century Enlightenment to explore what's inside of you. What's going on with all these inner voices inside your head? What's going on on an emotional level, or a psychological level, and how do I express that in music? The enlightenment is all about ration, reason, and logic; if you can't explain it, then you don't need to be talking about it. Well, Beethoven is interested in [that]. Everything that happens on a real, human, emotional psychological level - how do I get at that in music? He's really the first one in music, I think, who really systematically explores that at a really deep level. That's what makes him the first romantic, and I think that's the essence of what makes him important.

Dr. Courtney Crappell echoes Davis perspective.

There are some figures in human history that loom large, and Beethoven's one of them. I know that sounds very grandiose but I don't think it is too much when we talk about Beethoven. You think of how significant his works are, and you think of even the most popular piece, maybe the most recognized piece in the world - the 5th Symphony. You can sit and listen to that work over and over. Every time you hear it, youre changed. You think about what humanity has accomplished together, and that's a signal that you've got a great piece of art. Something that can be revisited over a lifetime without growing stale, says Crappell, calling Beethovens music a touchstone.

If you're looking at something that explores beyond or breaks boundaries, well, you need a reference point to see how they're doing that. Beethoven provides that for us.

Crappell shines light on Beethovens cross generational influence, informing genres like musical theater and musicians such as Billy Joel and Elton John.

The musical aesthetics of Beethoven are present in all of them. You think about the core aesthetics he plays with, whether that's metric placements, the rhythmic syncopation, the longer durations of harmonies, or the harmonic progressions themselves; you can look at a piece of modern music and almost compare it directly to the music of Beethoven and find sometimes, you just change the piano - you can just change the left hand accompaniment patterns - and it sounds like Beethoven instead of Journey.

Dont stop believing in Beethoven at Beethoven 250 UH 2020. The festival runs from February 17 through February 29. For a full calendar of events visit uh.edu/kgmca/events/beethoven-250/.

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UH To Honor Beethoven with Two Week Music Festival - Houston Press

Im suspicious of histories that attribute 21st Century DSM 5 diagnoses to characters who lived long before such conditions were ever identified. But then again, manic depression certainly existed before it was named by Emil Kraepelin in the late 19th century, and major depression, once called melancholia, has always been with us.

I also have a fascination with explanations in literature of mental illness written before Freud. Freud left such an indelible mark on the treatment of diseases of the mind, and the language used to describe them, that its almost unthinkable that these diseases were both described and treated without his influence.

The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, a book by Leo Damrosch, is full of such stories.

The Club tells of a group of key figures of the enlightenment who met weekly in a pub in late 18th century London to discuss and debate issues and ideas. The books main characters, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, were troubled by what we would certainly call mental illness today.

Johnson wrote criticism and poetry, but is best known for compiling what became the most complete dictionary of the English language, first published in 1755. Boswell, a landed lawyer from Scotland, was Johnsons friend and biographer.

Johnson led a life worth writing about. In and out of poverty, he lived with cast-offs from London society but remained a frequent dinner guest of influential members of parliament and ground-breaking lights in the arts. He suffered from terrible bouts of depression that kept him sick physically and mentally and kept his literary output low. He even ended up addicted to opium.

Through all of this he cultivated great friendships with people ranging from Adam Smith and Edmund Burke to George III, and he influenced some of the greatest minds of the west.

Johnsons trials with what was called melancholy were documented by Boswell in what is considered one of the greatest biographies ever written, The Life of Johnson. Boswell himself had periods of melancholy interspersed with times of high-energy and irresponsibility filled with trysts with prostitutes, lost money and drunken stupors.

Boswells grandiosity and impetuousness mixed with dark periods of guilt into behavior that would surely be called manic depression if he lived 100 years later.

Damrosch fills The Club with excerpts from the mens and their friends writing about flights of the mind and how personality and character are both developed and dismantled. While not ostensibly about mental illness, enough of the men and women featured in The Club suffered from poor mental health that the book serves as a great introduction to how psychiatry was first developed (much like the book Rush, which I reviewed here).

The 18th century was a time when diseases of the mind were still treated exclusively as physical diseases. Then science and philosophy set a very bright light on the notion and definition of the self. This is the point when mind/body unity was just beginning to break apart in western medicine and philosophy, and mental illness was soon seen as having causes and treatments that were not entirely physical.

Reading the thoughts and practices of the period covered in The Club tips us off to the fact that Freud and his theories were inevitable.

Damrosch has written an intellectual history of the sort that makes clearer where we are today, and how we got here. As the enlightenment elevated the individual and argued for rights independent of any state or church, the individual was left, in the case of morals and agency, to fend for themselves.

A new class of illness, that of the psyche separate from the body, was borne. As we place more emphasis today on mind/body medicine and seek to rejoin the individual mind to its physical space, its crucial to know how we got here, and what we learned along the way.

A history as well researched and written as The Club enables us to do just that.

APA Reference Hofmann, G. (2020). Mental Illness in the Enlightenment. Psych Central. Retrieved on January 22, 2020, from https://blogs.psychcentral.com/older-bipolar/2020/01/mental-illness-in-the-enlightenment/

See the rest here:
Mental Illness in the Enlightenment - PsychCentral.com

Countries that reject enlightened immigration policies are bound to miss out on the global tech boom, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg.

Nadella expressed his views on foreign policies and their effect on the tech boom in an interview with Bloomberg during the World Economic Forums The Year Ahead event in Davos.

Bloombergs official twitter account (@business) had also shared a clipping of the interview where Nadella is seen talking about immigration policies and its effect on the technology industry with the caption, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells us countries that reject "enlightened immigration" policies will be the biggest losers when it comes to the global tech boom #wef20.

Nadella talked about US immigration policies and the potential of immigrants in contributing to a countrys growth.

To me even when I look at the contribution the immigrants even going forward can make is something that I think the United States should absolutely be tapping into, he said.

Talking about the recent developments in immigration policies of nations, Nadella said in the Bloomberg interview, Every country is rethinking what is in their national interest, borders are real, countries are thinking about immigration policies that help. But even in there they have to maintain that modicum of enlightenment and not think about it very narrowly.

Nadella had earlier expressed his concern about Indias Citizenship Amendment Act, calling it sad. The act that allows six persecuted minorities, except Muslims, to fast-track Indian citizenship has been dubbed discriminatory by many leading to anti-CAA protests across the nation with the Supreme Court of India reviewing more than 140 petitions filed against the Act.

Nadellas remarks had sparked furious debates across social media leading to an official statement being released by Microsoft on his behalf. Nadella had also expressed his hopes for a better state of immigration policies and more opportunities in India for immigrants in the statement.

My hope is for an India where an immigrant can aspire to found a prosperous start-up or lead a multinational corporation benefiting Indian society and its economy at large, Nadella had said.

More:
Countries failing to form enlightened immigration policies to miss out on the tech boom, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella - BusinessLine

Its not just us saying it. Heather Cox Richardson is a respected political historian. Here is her bio:

Heather Cox Richardson is a political historian who uses facts and history to make observations about contemporary American politics. She is the author, most recently, of To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party.

Biography Im from rural Maine, was educated at Exeter and Harvard, and am now a professor of history at Boston College. I write books about the American past, and write articles about modern politics. The past informs my work on the present, not the other way around.

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Until the rise of talk radio in 1987 and the establishment of the Fox News Channel in 1996, we honored the Enlightenment values on which our government was founded: politicians had to attract voters with fact-based arguments or be voted out of office. But talk radio and FNC pushed a fictional narrative that captivated viewers who felt dispossessed after 1954, as women and people of color began to approach having an equal voice in society. That narrativeof a heroic white man under siege by a government that wants to give his hard-earned money to black and brown people and grasping womenhas led us back to where we started in 1776: a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism.

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Respected Political Historian Cites Conservative Talk Radio, Fox News As The Downfall Of Americas Enlightenment Values - Blog for Iowa

Race! Its a sticky topic that many want to shy away from. Systematic racism is just as American as apple pie. It has been engravedinto the very founding of this countryand while weve overcome and overturned a lot of things, we still have far to go.

Unraveling Racism: Seeing Whiteness is the latest exhibition to open at the Norwest Gallery of Art on Grand River. Curated by Laura Earle, the gallery features 20 local artists, bothBlack and white. Earle was moved to create this project after seeing a large racial slur plastered on an Eastern Michigan University building outside of her studio window. I thought we were all over this, she said.

Thats when she decided to take a deep dive into exploring whiteness as it relates to systematic oppression and start a conversation between artists. A friend of hers said she should listen to the Scene on the Radio podcast from Duke University. She used the series entitled Seeing Whiteness as the foundation for the art exhibit. Her initial reaction to the podcast was devastating.

I had to take a break for several months because it hurt so much, she said as she fought back tears. It hurt to know I was complicit and I couldnt undo it. Its so hard to shake it all off.

The exhibit is set up as a journey through the conversations between the artists. Earle says in the beginning, it was hard and awkward to talk through the issues because the artists werent familiar with each other. One of the very first pieces in the gallery is a flag created by eggshells.

I felt the need to try to push through some of the separation and to try to build meaningful connections and relationships, Earle said.

One of the artists featured in the gallery is Donna Jackson. She has three pieces in the show exploring how whiteness envelopes the daily lives of Black people, the dueling identities of being American with African roots and the beauty of Blackness.

Like Earle, Jacksons initial reaction to the podcast was anger, but she also felt enlightenment.Enlightenment isnt always this ahhh moment, she said. Enlightenment is knowing and then what are you going to do with knowing. Theres racism all around the world but American racismthey did top notch work on that.

Jackson explained that she was excited to do the work and have the conversations about how racismaffected her life but was shocked when she learned the origins of racism and whiteness.

Someone somewhere made a decision that because of what I look like, where I came from that I was less than! Thentheycreated a whole institution, structure and system to keep me in place so that they can have a life that they wanted, she said.

Throughout the process, Earle and Jackson both stated that the artists leaned on each other for support and that it shows as you move through the exhibit.

You can tell someone is learning compared to someone feeling and the difference is seen in work, Jackson said.

Norwest owner Asia Hamilton was more than excited to help Earle bring her vision to Detroit. I was like YEAH lets talk about this because you have a lot of things on your heart and this is an opportunity to tell white people what you really feel, Hamilton said.

As one of the onlyBlack people in her photography courses, Hamilton didnt even notice how race wasaffecting her career decisions. This is an opportunity to discuss race in-depth, Hamilton stated. She is glad the show is during the month of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s birthday an honor tothelegacy of uniting people of all backgrounds.

Whiteness is not about your skin color. Its about this experience that has been developed to keep people in very horrible situations, Jackson said.

Unraveling Racism: Seeing Whiteness is on display now at Norwest Gallery of Art (19556 Grand River Ave.) until Feb. 2. Visitors will get a chance to get inside the minds of the artists during panel discussions on Jan. 19 and Jan. 20. For more information on the exhibition, visitwww.norwestgallery.com

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Seeing White - The Neighborhoods