Tidying Up

Long as my last post was, there were still ideas I wanted to present, as well as items related to it that came up after I hit the "publish" button.

You may be relived to know the ideas that didn't make the final edit have now slipped my mind, but not the things that came up out of the blue.

The first was a query to Quora, the random question and answer website. The question that caught my eye, was whether Hitler could speak English: 

Here's part of the answer, emphasis mine: 

German was the only language he was fluent in. In a very typical Hitler manner, he refused to study any other languages. His excuse? He believed he would only butcher the language and embarrass himself. Maybe this is true. Maybe he would have sounded absolutely ridiculous trying to pronounce the word “squirrel” and nobody would have taken him seriously ever again. 

If you recall, my last post was inspired by the question: "why does the squirrel inspire such funny names that are hard to pronounce in so many languages?"

Of course, there is absolutely nothing funny about Hitler which is why this response is so amusing. Adolph Hitler bringing up an animal so innocent and amusing as an Eichhörnchen, not to mention him attempting to say it in a foreign language, is so out of character for him, that the idea alone is hilarious. And the thought of him butchering the word squirrel causing him to never again be taken seriously, and by extension causing the downfall of the Third Reich, is something straight out of Monty Python.

There in one sentence is proof that I was on to something.

Hitler may never have brought up a squirrel in any language including his own in public, but he certainly talked an awful lot about vermin, many of whom are related to the squirrel. In my piece, I also wrote quite a bit about the squirrel's close cousin, the rat.

On the day I published the piece, during an unexpected trip to visit my sick mother, (she's better, thanks), I turned on the car radio in the middle of an episode of the NPR series This American Life. The particular episode, all one hour of it, was devoted to the rat. The segment I came in on was about a guy who during the Pandemic, became obsessed with keeping rats as pets, and at one point I believe had sixteen of them roaming about his apartment at the same time. In part of that segment, the narrator described in detail, scientific studies of rat behavior and it turns out, as the Ancient Chinese could have told you, that rats are very smart. 

I haven't gotten the chance to hear the entire episode but plan to do so tomorrow on my New Years Day holiday.

But you can beat me to it by clicking this link. 

Something else I alluded to in the post, but really didn't discuss in any depth, was the subject of Artificial Intelligence. If you read the piece, you probably noticed that much of what I wrote referenced queries I made of ChatGPT and other AI tools. In fact, the very premise of the piece, how our common names of animals reflect the roles they play in our lives, was inspired by ChatGPT's response to a my specific question about why the cute furry tree dwelling rodent inspires such funny names in so many languages, including English.

You can read the post to see verbatim the chat bot's response.

I can imagine many of you might be put off by my reliance on AI in putting together that post. 

Frankly, that was my intent. 

Unlike the subject of rats and especially the subject of squirrels, after all the horrific wars and the impact of the new world order caused by the extreme shift to the right on the pendulum of public opinion, Artificial Intelligence has been the news topic du jour globally. And much of the reporting is about how AI is going to change the world, mostly for the worse.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece in this space called CheatGPT? As the title suggests, the piece questioned how much of the use of AI constitutes cheating, especially in the academic setting. 

There is of course no question that having ChatGPT write a term paper is cheating, but as I argued, the person doing this is only cheating him or herself, as the purpose of education is learning something, or isn't it? 

AI, I insisted, is a tool which like all groundbreaking innovations from time immemorial, could be put to either good or bad use. Like a hammer for example that can be used to build homes, or it could be used to bash in someone's skull.

But this is a very simplistic viewpoint as historian/philosopher Yuval Noah Harari asserts:

The most important thing to know about AI, is that it is not a tool, like all previous human inventions; it is an agent. And agent in the sense it can make decisions independently of us. It can invent new ideas, it can learn and change by itself.

Also cited by critics are AI's effect on the environment, (as AI systems require tremendous amount of energy and with that, natural resources), and the automation of jobs. 

Beyond these existential threats to society and life as we know it are what AI has the potential to do and in fact is already doing to us, especially to our minds. One of the criticisms I hear all the time is that AI is leading to the ultimate destruction of critical thinking. 

Along those lines, here's an article in the Atlantic I came across the other day. It's called:  Aphoristic Intelligence Beats Artificial Intelligence with the subtitle: It’s not just okay for some things in life to be hard—it’s essential.

The article was s adapted from James Geary’s book, The World in a Phrase. : A Brief History of the Aphorism.

Aphorisms are little statements of wisdom that have been handed down through the generations, or could very well be if they are written or uttered today.

A good aphorism requires thought and reflection, rather than being advice that states the obvious. They're calls to action, not feel good assurances that encourage passivity. Here's the money quote from the article:

In some ways, aphorisms are perfectly suited to our era of short-form communication. They’re concise, catchy, easily consumable. But so much of our discourse, online and IRL, is anti-aphoristic—rage bait, trash talk, knee-jerk toxicity, gauzy affirmations, hashtag claptrap. And now comes that upstart other AI, artificial intelligence, promising to reduce our cognitive loads to zero by proffering frictionless friendships and sycophantic agreeability, and doing all of our creative thinking for us.

Aphorisms are different. They are the antithesis of the half-baked hot take and nothing like the machine-made flattery that’s now permeating so many informational environments. A platitude is a placebo for the mind; an aphorism is a wake-up call. Aphorisms provoke debate; they don’t promote dogma. Though they’re short, aphorisms spur considered reflection, not Pavlovian partisanship. At a time when polarization is so amped up, aphorisms can serve as psychological circuit breakers, interrupting our comfortable assumptions and prodding us to open our minds, unclench our fists, and think for ourselves.

Ah yes that upstart other, AI. Much of what is said about it is true and we should heed the warnings from Harari and so many others about the dangers and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence. 

At the same time, maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that is, being so wrapped up in in our anti-AI dogma that we reject it outright. After all, where is the critical thinking in that?

In my book, the best way to prevent Artificial Intelligence from living up to all the dark predictions is this: treat it with critical thinking. That's what I tried to accomplish in my last post. 

Bringing it all full circle, the original, original inspiration of that last post is the German word for squirrel, Eichhörnchen. I already knew the word but it was recently brought to my attention this month in a little book called German Short Stories, written by Sven Sebastian. The book is intended for adult learners of the language and is according to its author, written in the B1, or early intermediate level, pretty much where I'm at. Originally, I thought this book was a little basic for my needs but eventually realized that it was perfect as I could understand virtually everything except for certain key phrases which were conveniently translated on the opposite page. 

The stories tend to be in the vein of children's stories as all of them feature animals and are told in a style similar to Aesop's fables. 

Nevertheless, it's a lovely book.

One of these stories naturally featured a squirrel and was titled Das vergessenes Eichhörnchen, (The Forgetful Squirrel) Aren't they all? Other stories include Die Marathon-Schnecke (The Marathon Snail), Der Wanderkaktus (The Wandering Cactus), and Die Stadt die Tiere, (The Animal City).

But hands down my favorite story in the book is called the Die poetische Brieftaube (The Poetic Mail Pigeon). The hero of this story is Paula, the pigeon of the title, who has a job working for a company that employs pigeons to deliver advertising flyers to people's homes. She hated the job but hey, a job's a job, even for a pigeon I guess.

One day Paula delivered one of her flyers to the home of a retired school teacher. When he got the ad for this or that, he looked at Paula with a sad face and said: "Oh little bird, you fly all over the city every day, couldn't you for once bring something that warms the heart?

Taking what he said to heart, the next day instead of heading to work to collect her leaflets, Paula flew to the public library. There she found a book of poetry. (This next part will be disturbing to all my librarian friends so continue reading at your own risk). She took the book off the shelf and ripped out some pages containing inspirational words to deliver to her clients. 

To the retired school teacher she delivered a page with this splendid aphorism:

"Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht."

"Paths are made by walking them."

Pretty good words to close out 2025 don't you think?

Happy New Year!

I Smell a Rat

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to minimize the number of posts devoted to politics. Looking through my archive on the right, I see I first broke that resolution on Inauguration Day, January 20. In fact, the first three posts last year were about politics. It seems I just can't help it, the current political situation in this country and the rest of the world these days is simply a subject too ripe with ideas for new posts. To put it mildly.

With that in mind, you may think given the title of this post, what follows is yet another screed against the current administration, but I assure you it is not. The rat in the title is not metaphorical but quite literal. Yes dear reader, this post is about rats and their rodent cousins.

But wait, before you stop reading, that's not all, it's also about other animals and their relationship to us, that is we animals of the species Homo sapiens.  

And what brings it all together is my favorite topic to write about these days, after baseball anyway, that is to say language, with a little stuff about AI thrown in.

Let's see if I can tie it all together.

To paraphrase Bette Davis from the classic 1950 film All About Eve:

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

OK here goes.

The inspiration for this post is the German word for one of the aforementioned cousins of the species Rattus norvegicus, see if you can guess which one, and extra points if you can pronounce the word.

Eichhörnchen

The German language gets a lot of grief. Someone I know recently declared that German just sounds angry to her. Of course, that's true if the only person you've ever heard speaking it is Hitler.

If you unfortunately are of that opinion, for a real eye opener please check this out, the opening scene from one of my favorite movies of all time *(1) featuring a poem by Peter Handke. 

Or this, in my opinion hands down the most beautiful Christmas carol ever set to music. *(2)

Merry Christmas by the way!

German is also known for its ridiculously long words like this one:

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften.

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften isn't the longest German word. But you won't find words like this in a dictionary, as they are combinations of words that describe a single entity. Where English describing the same thing would separate the words, in this case "insurance companies that provide legal protection", German eliminates the spaces between the words, which when you think of it, kind of makes sense as the term insurance companies that provide legal protection, does indeed constitute a single entity. On the other hand for me at least, it's easier to read the words separated by spaces instead of this: insurancecompaniesthatprovidelegalprotection,

But even German words that you do find in a dictionary can be impressive for their length. Consider the German word for speed limit: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.

OK that's really two words, but the German for those two words, Geschwindigkeit (speed) and begrenzung (limit) are by themselves formidable.

Like Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung, Eichhörnchen is a compound word. "Eich" on its own means oak, as in the tree. Without the umlaut, "Hörn" means the same thing in English, and "Chen" at the end of a word indicates a diminutive. So together they mean. "little oak horn".

Figured it out yet?

When all is said and done, Eichhörnchen is a silly word for a very common thing, even German people would concur as the multitude of YouTube videos made by Germans on the subject would attest.

But German isn't the only language with a silly, hard to pronounce word for this particular animal. 

The French word for Eichhörnchen is Ècureuil, which in my book is even harder to pronounce than Eichhörnchen, as are most French words.

But perhaps there is no sillier, harder-to-pronounce word describing this cousin of the rat than the English version.

That word?

Squirrel.

If your immediate response to that last statement is "what's so hard to pronounce about squirrel?", then English must be your mother tongue, and you've been saying the word all your life.

For people learning English as a second language on the other hand, the word squirrel is a minefield filled with foreign consonant clusters, unfamiliar vowels and excessive articulations all packed within two mere syllables, sometimes only one, (like the American version that rhymes with girl), which makes the successful pronunciation of squirrel, a feat of vocal gymnastics. 

It turns out that words across the spectrum for cute, furry tree dwelling rodents with bushy tails are fairly divergent from language to language, complex when compared to words describing other animals, and are often difficult to pronounce.

Why is that?

That's what I wondered the other day when I turned to the genie inside my pocket, ChatGPT, and asked the app why this particular animal inspires such strange words in different languages. Rather then telling me to "get a life" as some of my human acquaintances would, ChatGPT, in one of its typical obsequious responses began with: "Ahh--excellent question."

I always fall for that.

Then it gave me a list of reasons, some of which made sense, while some were a little dubious when digging a little deeper, But the first was particularly enlightening:

Squirrels weren't major cultural animals, therefore their names drifted freely.

ChatGPT goes on:

Animals that are culturally important get short, stable old words:

• English: cow, pig, dog, deer
• German:  Kuh, Schwein, Hund, Reh
• French: vache, porc, chien, cerf

But squirrels?

They were never domesticated, hunted much, used for transport or mythologically central. This means their names were:

• less stable
• more susceptible to sound changes
• more likely to drift, lengthen, or become cutesy/diminutive

Languages don't "protect" them from becoming phonetic messes. 

We humans love to classify things. One of the most brilliant classification systems ever devised was the one invented by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, the modern system of classifying all living organisms.

Linneaus' system classifies organisms biologically, based on shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships. The system is divided into categories ranging from broad, Kingdom (plants, animals, fungi, etc), to general, Class (mammal, bird, reptile, etc) to specific, Species (Sugar Maple, Shitake Mushroom, Human Being, etc.), 

Until this week however, I had never thought of a system that classified organisms based upon their "cultural importance." You learn something new every day.

What dawned on me, is that the difference between these two systems of classification define our naming systems for living things: the common names which vary from culture to culture, and the scientific names which are rigorously consistent as well as universally accepted. 

So the words:

• cow, 
• pig, 
• dog,
• deer, 
• and of course squirrel, 

the English common names for a handful of mammals, speak at least as much about our  relationship with these animals as the animals themselves. Consequently the names we give them vary from language to language.

Very messy.

While their scientific counterparts:

• Bos taurus, 
• Sus scrofra domesticus, 
• Canus lupis familiaris, 
• Odocoileus virginianus. 
• and Sciurus carolinensis,  *(3)

the naming convention invented by Carl Linneaus, (always italicized, Genus first, capitalized, followed by species in lower case, followed if necessary by a subspecies) point to specific animals in relationship to other animals, with little regard to our feelings for them. 

Most important, there is a unique scientific name for each species. 

Just the facts ma'am.

Much as biologists classify living organisms. linguists classify languages using similar hierarchies of categories, including the category Family. Linguists assume that members of the same family of languages are all descended from a single prototype language. The family to which English belongs is the Indo-European Family, which as the name implies, includes most of the languages of India as well as Europe, but not all. And the prototype language that these languages are likely descendants of has the tasty acronym PIE, for Prototype Indo European, which linguists think existed around 6,000 years ago. 

Just like the leftovers from this past Thanksgiving's dinner, there are no extant remnants of this PIE, as it existed about one millennium before the invention of writing. We know it through the comparison and reconstruction of roots of common words in the extant Indo European language family. Linguists believe that PIE evolved into Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin, which in turn evolved over time into the current language members of the IE family, diverging into various branches including the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Germanic, Slavic, Hellenic, and Romance languages, among others.

It turns out that the English word squirrel has ancient roots. According to the sources I found, it goes back at least to the ancient Greek word σκίουρος" (skiouros), which like Eichhörnchen, is a compound noun. Skiouros (for convenience sake I'll stick here to the Latin spelling) consists of the roots skia (tail) and ouros (shadow), describing the animal's most conspicuous feature. Then Latin borrowed  the word turning it into Scurius, the word Linnaeus used to define the genus to which the nearly 300 different species of squirrels belong.

The part of the linguistic family tree on which English sits is the Germanic branch. In reality however, about sixty percent of all English words come from French, which itself sits on the Romance branch. If you're not familiar with your British history, this is a result of the Norman Conquest of Britain which began in 1066. As the Francophone conquerors took over much of the country, so did their language and today if you're an English speaker without a trace of knowledge of French and German, you're likely to be able to recognize more words from a French text than from the same text in German. 

The German that does remain in English mostly consists of words for basic things like body parts such as Hand, Arm and Finger which are the same in both languages, although pronounced differently and capitalized as all nouns are in German. Some German body part words that come close enough to English to be understood are Fuß (pronounced foos), Schulter and Knie.

There are also German animal names you'd recognize despite the difference in spelling like Maus, Fisch, Elefant and Kamel. Probably close enough are Bär, Fuchs and Kuh, while Löwe (lion) may be a bit of a stretch, but is still related. English doesn't typically use Schwein and Hund for pig and dog respectively but their equivalent words do come up from time to time so we can probably figure out what they mean. 

But we don't use Eichhörnchen. 

While it may not be immediately apparent, the  English word Squirrel is related to that silly French word we learned a little while ago, Ècureuil, The relation is more apparent when you consider that Ècureuil itself evolved over the ages having dropped the "s" in Escurueil. Adapted into the Anglo-French language that would become the basis for Modern English, the word became Esquirel, before eventually dropping the first vowel.

It may occur to you as it did me that since the French language didn't come to Britain until the 11th century, there must have been esquirels in Britain before then, there were, so they had to have had a name for them, which they did. That name was Acweorna. You may wonder why the Brits substituted the French inspired esquirel for the Germanic acweorna. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

According to ChatGPT, the words for squirrel in the languages of Europe (this post is already too long so I'll limit this discussion to Europe), mostly come from four different origins, each with its own description of the animal. 

We've already seen "little oak horn" which is found in many of the Germanic languages, English being an exception. Incidentally, the horn part describes the ears of European squirrels, (see the photo below). 

In addition to Eichhörnchen in German:

• In Dutch it's Eekhoorn.
• In Swedish it's Ekorre.
• In Norwegian it's Ekorn.
• In Danish it's Egern

and so on...

And we've seen there's "shadow tail" which many Romance languages as well as English inherited from the Greek.

In addition to Ècureuil in French:

• In Italian it's Scoiattolo.
• In Catalan it's Esquirol.
• And of course in English it's Squirrel.

Interestingly enough, in Modern Greek, the word  σκίουρος still exists unchanged, exactly as it did in the ancient language, unusual for names of animals.

The three other major Romance languages go in different directions:

In Spanish, the word for squirrel is the relatively humble Ardilla, which comes not from Greek through Latin but from a word dating back to the pre-Roman conquest of Iberia. Portuguese follows suit with Ardiha.

Romanian goes in a completely different direction, choosing the third  major European category defining the animal which comes from the western Slavic languages. According to ChatGPT, rather than a visual description, the origin of the word with its repetition of the first two syllables is possibly a play on the chattering sound that squirrels make. However another theory has the root coming from the proto Slavic word for climb. Take your pick.

In Romanian, the word for squirrel is Veveriţă.

A Transylvanian Veveriţă
Photo by Laura Vălean

• In Czech it's Veverka.
• In Slovak it's Veverička
• In Polish it's Wiewiórka.
• In Belarussian it's Вавёрка (vaviorka)

and so on...

The fourth European category for describing squirrels comes from the Eastern Slavic languages whose words describe the white underbelly of the animal, consequently their words for squirrel are based upon the word white, белый (belki) in Russian.

The word for squirrel in Russian is Белка (belka).

• In Ukrainian it's Білка (Bilka).
• ChatGPT claimed the Belarusian word for squirrel was Белка, the same as the Russian, but other sources I found say otherwise, see above. So I corrected ChatGPT and it admitted the error of its ways. For a geeky blast of fun, if you have the app, ask it what's the Belarusian word for squirrel. If it answers "Вавёрка", you can thank me.

There are other European words for squirrel that don't neatly fit into any of these categories but I think I've already belabored the point and you get the idea.

So how do the naming conventions for squirrel differ from those of other common animals? And given its tendency to err, are the assumptions of ChatGPT correct?

To test it, I thought I'd select three very different animals with three very similar English names, the cat, the bat and as promised, the rat.

Sounds like a Dr. Seuss story, didn't he write a book called the Bat in the Hat? I think so. Or was it the Rat in the Hat?

Anyway, using ChatGPT's criteria for rating "animal cultural importance", the cat, unlike the squirrel, is an animal of tremendous cultural significance, just ask our cat Ziggy. 

Our relationship with cats began about 10,000 years ago some archeologists believe, around the dawn of agriculture. They say that humans didn't domesticate the cat, rather it domesticated itself, as the grain that humans cultivated attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats. The cats ate the rodents who were eating the grain, forming a symbiotic relationship between cats and humans, and the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

Cats were venerated by the Ancient Egyptians 3,000 years ago, and by crazy cat ladies today, checking off the status of "mythologically central" in ChatGPT's list of traits box marking cultural significance. Come to think of it, the only category on that list that doesn't apply to cats, is the part about being used for transportation.

Oh wait, I stand corrected: 

Therefore I propose that with the possible exception of dog, no animal has more "cultural significance" than the cat. Well maybe one other, continue reading.

And according to ChatGPT, animals with tremendous cultural significance get "short, stable names."

Let's see if that's true, using (for the reasons explained above) selected languages in the European branches of the IE tree:

Romance languages:

• French: Chat
• Italian: Gatto
• Potuguese: Gato
• Romanian: Pisică  (what the hell?)
• Spanish: Gato

Germanic Languages:

• Danish: Kat
• Dutch: Kat
• English: Cat
• German: Katze
• Swedish: Katt

Slavic Languages:

• Belorusian: кошка (Kochka)
• Bulgarian: котка (Kotka)
• Czech: Kočka (Kochka)
• Polish: Kot
• Russian: кот (Kot)

With the exception of one outlier, Romanian in this limited sample, there is a clear relationship between the common names for the species Felis cattus (and there it is in Latin), that transcends the IE language branches which is a very strong indication that the word has roots that go all the way back to PIE or even earlier.

And the fact that most cultures decided to keep the word underscores the significance of the animal to their cultures.

So far so good.

Now let's try Bat:

Romance languages:

French: Chauve-souris

Italian: Pipistrello

Potuguese: Morsego

Romanian: Liliac

Spanish: Murciélago

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Flagermus

Dutch: Vleermuis

English: Bat

German: Fledermaus

Swedish: Fladdermus

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: Кажан,(Kažan)

Bulgarian: Прилеп, (Prilep)
Czech: Netopýr
Polish: Nietoperz
Russian: Летучая мышь, (Letuchaya mysh')

Bat names on the other hand, with the exception of the Germanic branch are all over the place, even more than squirrel names. Does this mean bats are even less "culturally important" than squirrels? 

Like squirrels, bats don't make good pets, they're not very tasty (at least from what I hear), and don't provide much in the way of transportation, unless I suppose you're a flea.

But they more than make up for all that in terms of mythological centrality.

Consider the following, ripped off another AI source:

• Bats are often associated with darkness and the underworld in various cultures.
• In Chinese mythology, bats symbolize good fortune and happiness.
• Native American tribes view bats as symbols of transformation and rebirth.
• In European folklore, bats are linked to witchcraft and the supernatural.
• Some African myths depict bats as messengers between the living and the dead.
• In Mesoamerican cultures, bats are associated with fertility and the night.

Like squirrel names, bat names are largely compound words describing physical attributes of the animal. My second favorite of these is the wonderfully descriptive, if not biologically accurate German, Fledermaus, or in English, "fluttering mouse." Die Fledermaus is also the name of a famous opera by Johann Strauss Jr. As it's the holidays, here's a link to its jubilant overture.

The Slavic names listed above also play off the riff of flying mouse, culturally independent from each other. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising when you consider how unusual bats are in relation to other mammals. It's not hard to imagine the first human of every culture to lay eyes on one and saying to his partner, "Look Shiela, a flying mouse!"

The Spanish name for bat originally came from the Latin Mus caeculus meaning "little blind mouse." Over the centuries as Classical Latin spread throughout the Roman Empire, it was absorbed by the different populations and morphed into Vulgar Latin (or Latin of the people), which further morphed into what we now call the Romance languages. 

In the case of mus caeculus according to ChatGPT, "sounds shifted, vowels weakened, and the phrase became a single lexical unit." The shift was so radical that eventually Spanish speakers no longer heard the word as little blind mouse, but just plain Murciélago, for my money, the coolest bat name around.

Over in France, bats aren't blind, they're bald. Why bald? One theory for the French word for bat is that the word was originally Chouette-souris meaning owl mouse, which makes way more sense, although as my wife just pointed out, owls eat mice. Anyway, according to the theory, at some point Chouette was replaced, perhaps inadvertently with Chauve (bald) which is the moment when the French bats all lost their hair. 

And in Italy, Pipistrllo which certainly gives Murciélago a run for its money on the coolness scale, comes from the Classical Latin word for bat, Vespertillo, literally "evening bird". From there, courtesy of Google AI, Verpertillo evolved

through Old Italian vipistrello, with a possible influence from pipistrella (a small cape/overcoat), suggesting a "winged little creature" or "cloaked one" meaning.

Here's my rather uneducated take: perhaps because of their uniqueness, intriguing mysterious nature and mythological significance, bats capture the human imagination more than most other animals, which is why they inspire such cool names, just as squirrels, by comparison rather playful and silly animals, inspire playful, silly names.

It's just a thought.

OK the moment you've all been waiting for, on to Mr. Rat:

Romance languages:

French: Rat

Italian: Ratto

Potuguese: Rato

Romanian: Sobolan

Spanish: Rata

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Rotte

Dutch: Rat

English: Rat

German: Ratte

Swedish: Råtta

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: пацук (pacuk)

Bulgarian: плъх ,(plŭkh)
Czech: Krysa
Polish: Szczur
Russian: крыса (Krysa)

The etymology of the various words for rat is super interesting, as of course is the animal itself.

Seriously.

Given the information presented above, if you just consider the Romance and Germanic branch lists with their consistent names for the animal, (with the exception of the typically contrarian Romanian), you could reasonably assume that the word rat has roots going back to PIE. But when you look at the Slavic words, there is no relation at all.

So what gives?

It turns out that the Latin name Rattus, came on the scene relatively late, perhaps in the third or fourth Century CE (AD if you prefer). Before that, Latin didn't distinguish between mice and rats, their word Mus sufficed for both. All that changed as the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, originally native to the Indian subcontinent, began to appear in Europe as trade routes were established with Asia. Uninvited, the rats hitched rides aboard ships headed westward and planted stakes in Europe.

The Black rat quickly proved itself to be an unwelcome guest wherever it landed.

Here's a quote from a fascinating book I read several years ago called: Rats: Obeservations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan:

Rats generally wreak havoc on food supplies, destroying or contaminating crops and stored foods everywhere, Some estimates suggest that as much as one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats. 

I probably don't need to mention that serious as the problem rats caused the food supply, it got much worse. Again, quoting Robert Sullivan, rats...

carry diseases that we know of and they may carry diseases that we do not know of-in just the past century, rats have been responsible for the death of more than ten million people...

And that's just in the last century. In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague pandemic (the Black Death), caused by the Yersenia pestus bacterium transmitted by fleas who hitched rides (also uninvited) aboard the backs of rats, took perhaps 100 million human lives, over one third of the population of Europe, during the course of two years.

Small wonder they had to come up with a new word to distinguish these intruders from their meeker cousins. No one knows exactly where the name Rattus comes from, some speculate it was a slang term invented by sailors, just like aargh and shiver-me-timbers. And as the rat problem persisted throughout much of Europe, the name rat spread along with the animal.

It is speculated that the name rat didn't catch on in Eastern Europe however as there, local names already existed that separated mice from rats.

 
The Black rat was eventually displaced in Europe by the larger Brown Rat, Rattus norwegicus,*(4) originally native to China, which first arrived in Europe in the 18th Century. Ironically, the displacement by the larger rats coincided with the end of the major plague waves leading some researchers to believe that the two events were related as the Brown rats' preference for the subterranean life led to less exposure to humans meaning fewer transmissions of the disease. 

Other scientists however speculate that rats' contribution to the spread of the pandemic was vastly exaggerated in the first place. *(5)

Regardless, our relationship with the pesky rodent has been strained to say the least. It's probably safe to say that rats are among the most vilified animals in existence. On the other hand, unlike bats and squirrels, rats are domesticated both as pets (rat fanciers insist they make fantastic pets), and perhaps more significantly as laboratory animals.

So where do rats fall on the "cultural importance scale"? 

• Domesticated? yes.
• Hunted much? yes, in parts of Asia and Africa where eating the animal is not considered taboo.
• Used for transportation? well like bats, only for fleas so I'll have to give this one a no, at least for humans.
• Mythologically central? Absolutely. Just for starters, the first animal on the Chinese zodiac is the rat. *(6)

And while it might fall under the category domesticated, ChatGPT's cultural relevance scale doesn't really mention work animals like dogs, oxen, sheep and a whole slew of other animals whose services we have historically depended upon. As such, their service to us as research animals (ethically challenging as that may be), makes rats to this day invaluable to human beings. 

Considering these categories, I'd say that rats are indeed culturally important animals. And when you add into the equation the negative traits (which as we've seen may be a bit exaggerated) that have affected human civilization for millennia, I'd say that rats are off-the-chart culturally significant.

So take that, cats, who are nowhere to be found in the Chinese zodiac.

CODA

To be honest, while it is entirely relatable, I'm not crazy about ChatGPT's use of the term "cultural importance" when it comes to describing animals, because it seems to convey a value judgement. That is to say an animal that is not "culturally important" must therefore be unimportant. Of course this defines human relationships with animals from time immemorial, in other words, if we're able to exploit an animal for our needs, it must be important. 

On the other hand, it works both ways. As we've seen, it was the cats who originally exploited humans. While there was mutual benefit in the relationship, this article claims that humans didn't really see a need to exploit cats in kind until the Egyptians did it, some 7,000 years later. 

It could also be argued that human exploitation of animals works to the animals' benefit, at least in a Darwinian sense. It may not work out so well for the individual, such as animals raised for food, but the relationship with humans all but insures the survival of their species. That's the subject for another post, or perhaps an entire book.

But in the grand scheme of things, no animal is unimportant as each and every species plays a role in the ecology of the planet. Consider that every time you stand before a mighty oak tree in the forest and realize that tree is there because at some time maybe a couple hundred years ago, a squirrel forgot where he buried his prized acorn. 

Or consider when you're sitting outside enjoying a lovely summer evening, that a single brown bat can consume up to 1,000 mosquitos per hour..*(7)

And beyond their indisputably crucial role in the ecosystems in which they are native, (messed up only when humans get involved), if you or a loved one has ever been treated for a disease that may have otherwise had serious consequences, you can more than likely thank a lab rat for its contribution to finding a cure. 

In short, no animal, plant or any living thing for that matter, is insignificant, ever.

NOTES:

*(1) Himmel über Berlin, (Wings of Desire) directed by Wim Wenders.

*(2) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen set to music composed by Michael Preatorius.

*(3) Cow, the female gender of Bos taurus is a word often used in contemporary English to describe Cattle of both genders. Why that is, is probably a worthwhile subject for an entire post.

Sus scofra domesticus and Canus lupis familiaris as their names imply, are the domesticated cousins of  Sus scofra (the wild boar) and Canis lupis (the grey wolf) which have evolved enough through their domestication to be considered sub species of their natural, i.e.: untouched by human hands cousins in the wild.

The common name "deer" is very broad, encompassing about fifteen genera. Odocoileus virginianus is the scientific name for the most common deer found in the Americas, the White-tailed deer.

Squirrel is an even broader term encompassing over 50 genera. The common English name for the species Sciurus carolinensis, Eastern grey squirrel, one without the big horny ears, is the most common squirrel in the United States. 

*(4) The Brown rat, among other things, is often referred to as the Norwegian rat because it was originally assumed the species arrived in Great Britain aboard ships hauling lumber from Norway. The English naturalist John Berkenhout bought into this myth, thereby preserving it for the ages as he's the one who christened the species with its scientific (binomial) name, Rattus norwegicus. So my assumption that scientific names have nothing to do with human feelings about living organisms, is itself a fallacy.The scientists who gave them their scientific names, were only human after all.

*(5) It should be noted that rats also die from exposure to the Yersenia pestus bacteria. Typical outbreaks of Bubonic Plague were proceeded by the discovery of large die-offs of the rodent. With their hosts dead, the fleas carrying the bacterium search for other hosts including humans. There were no such notable recordings of rodent die-offs before the Black Death suggesting that the pandemic had sources other than rats. 

*(6) Here's an assessment of the rat from a website I found on Chinese astrology:

Ranking the first in the Chinese zodiac, rat represents wisdom. Personality traits for the people born in the year of the Rat are intelligent, charming, quick-witted, practical, ambitious, and good at economizing as well as social activities. The weaknesses are that the Rats are likely to be timid, stubborn, wordy, greedy, devious, too eager for power and love to gossip.

*(7) There's a killjoy in every room. This article claims to debunk the "myth" concerning bats and mosquitos. But the gist of the article is that mosquitos only account for a small amount a bat's diet, and that bats alone are not the "solution" to the mosquito problem.  What the article does not deny is the number of mosquitos consumed by bats, and it also fails to mention that without bats, there would certainly be far more mosquitos.

Brutal II

Several years ago a friend from Prague came to visit. He was living in Chicago when we first met and already familiar with the city. So upon his return I decided to take him to some places he hadn't been. One of these was the University of Chicago. I wanted to show him what I considered to be a lovely campus dominated by early twentieth century buildings built in the Neo-Gothic style.

He was appalled. My friend asked why they would build buildings in the twentieth century using a seven hundred year old architectural style?

Frankly I didn't have a good answer for him.

My friend's opinion made sense because Prague is old enough to have the real thing, that is, Gothic buildings built during the Gothic period. Prague has even older extant buildings. And most of the Czech capital's subsequent  buildings were built in architectural styles that were developed in the period in which they were built, including early twentieth century Cubism, an architectural style virtually unknown outside of Prague. The city is a wonderful mish-mash of divergent architectural styles (including this) making it a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the development of Western architecture over the past thousand years, give or take a century or two.

While you'll find examples of revival styles in Prague, those are the exception rather than the rule. 

So I imagine my Prague friend would be rather perplexed by the recent presidential executive order decreeing that all new American Federal buildings be built in a style (Classical, based on the architecture of Ancient Athens and Rome) that is more than one thousand years older than Gothic.

For another point of view, check out this video.

It seems these two could not be more pleased about the executive order. There are a few obvious problems with this piece, namely the participants don't know what they're talking about. 

In fact, they seem to be reveling in their lack of knowledge saying essentially: "I may not know the slightest thing about architecture but I do know what I like." Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but it seems rather odd to me for someone to go public flaunting their ignorance.

First of all, the presenters make references to some of our nation's most important buildings, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress Jefferson Building and the Lincoln Memorial, the best of the best examples of the "traditional" architecture the executive order is promoting. Why can't new buildings look like those? they seem to be saying.

The answer is because these are the centerpiece buildings of Washington D.C. whose architecture frankly takes a back seat to their importance, their particular history, and their status as national icons. As such, the comparison is setting an impossible standard for new architecture.

What this video doesn't show us are the scores of "traditional" style buildings in Washington that don't come close to these iconic buildings both in terms of excellence in design, or their history. It's not much of a stretch to be of the opinion that many of these buildings are undistinguished, uninspired and graceless, they do little to enhance the urban environment in which they inhabit, and are downright ugly, just like the non-traditional buildings these two lambast. "Throwing some columns or arches in front of them" as one of the commenters suggests, isn't going to change that.

The two people in the video decry the lack of "thought and effort" that has gone into the creation of the more contemporary buildings. This could not be farther from reality, as we'll see in a bit, the opposite may be true, that in fact too much thought went into the architecture of these buildings. 

Getting to the gist of the video: one of the commenters singles out the FBI and State Department buildings in Washington D.C. as being "crushingly ugly". Now that's her opinion and whether you agree with it or not, she has every right to express it. But here she expresses her opinion as if it were a fact, then goes on to say: "it's called Brutalism for a reason" implying at least to my ears, that the architecture is intended to by ugly. 

To be clear, Brutalism is an architectural style that came into being in Europe after World War II when the demand for new housing not surprisingly was enormous. The term comes from the French term for raw concrete, "beton brut", coined by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, to describe the materials he employed for his post-war housing developments or, Unité d'Habitation, the first of which was built in Marseille in 1952. 

As a building material, raw concrete has several advantages over masonry, stone and steel cladding. Beyond the obvious economic factors, concrete is plastic that is, it can molded into a nearly infinite array of shapes, allowing for the creation of non-traditional forms. It should be noted that the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, built nearly 2,000 years ago, in my book one of the greatest feats of engineering and most beautiful buildings I've ever experienced, is made entirely of unreinforced concrete.

Followers of Le Corbusier, the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" to describe their own use of unadorned raw concrete in their work, and "Brutalism" as best as I can tell came into the lexicon of official architectural terms through the architectural historian and critic Rayner Banham in his book: The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic, published in 1955.

Brutalism is the direct descendent of the International Style, or Modernism, whose development can be largely traced to the German design school Stattliches Bauhaus, or simply The Bauhaus. The Bauhaus existed in three entities in three separate cities and times, Weimar, Dessau and Berlin between 1919 and 1933.  The school  was a radical departure from the traditional art schools of the era, in part by bringing together artists and artisans of all stripes together under one roof, beginning their studies with a core program which emphasized craftsmanship and hands-on contact with materials placing a premium on experimentation with new forms . 

The Bauhaus embraced the Industrial Revolution, particularly mass production with the goal of harmonizing fine arts with industrial design. The school's guiding principle in regard to design was that "form follows function" meaning that the end result of a creator's work, whether it be a skyscraper or a toaster, should honestly reflect what that object is intended for, without unnecessary distractions. In that vein, the cladding of buildings most associated with the Bauhaus is steel and glass, i.e.: nothing to hide.

However, the concept of form following function when it comes to architecture did not begin at the Bauhaus but right here in Chicago two decades earlier. As radical an architect for his day as the Bauhaus (and later Chicago) architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was for his, Louis Sullivan in an article published in 1896 titled The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, wrote the following:

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open aple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Louis Sullivan was a passionate and uncompromising advocate of creating an architecture that was derived from nature and at the same time, an architecture that was uniquely American. Despite being inspired by architecture of the past, he had no regard for imitating the architectural styles of long lost civilizations. In his book Kindergarten Chats, published in 1901, regarding the common practice of the time of designing banks in the Classical Revival style, Sullivan quipped: 

I am going to insist that the banker wear a toga, sandals and conduct his business in the venerated Latin tongue -- oral and written.

Hmmm, not a bad idea come to think of it, that bank sounds a lot cooler than mine.

Sullivan's buildings and those of his fellow "Chicago School" architects stripped down the design elements of their buildings, thanks in large part to the technical development of the curtain wall, exterior walls that are suspended from the interior skeleton of the structure rather than self-supporting, a system also developed in Chicago. The curtain wall enabled piers to be kept to a minimum while opening up the windows significantly, which inspired the creation of the "Chicago Window" consisting of a large pane of glass flanked by two double hung windows, entirely filling a bay, the space between the columns that form the structure of the building. In addition to providing more light into the building's interior, this alternation of wide windows and narrow piers emphasized the building's internal structure, hence form following function.

The heyday of the Chicago School or Commercial Style as it was also called, was short lived. Sullivan's dream of a uniquely American architecture was supplanted by a resurgence of the Classical revival, a result of the tremendous success of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Ironically, working for the firm headed by Daniel H. Burnham, the chief architect of the Columbian Exposition, Charles B. Atwood, designed what for me is the most significant and beautiful Chicago Style building, the Reliance Building, which has the distinction of being the first skyscraper to have the majority of its surface area to be of plate glass. 

As such, the Reliance Building is the paradigm of what was to come twenty years later in Germany, one could say making it the first truly Modernist building. 

Depending upon your point of view, that could either be a good or a bad thing as Modernist architecture is not universally loved in our day.

That wasn't always the case.

Two posts ago, writing about the misguided idea of building a triumphal arch in Washington D.C., I made the comment that the experience of two World Wars in the twentieth century changed the world order in countless ways, including our built environment. Growing up in the sixties I remember distinctly the attitude most people had toward architecture which was this: the newer the better. 

People it seemed who lived through the World Wars and the Great Depression, couldn't get away fast enough from the past and looked forward to a bright new future which was in part symbolized by bright and shiny, brand spanking new Modernist buildings. When great Chicago School buildings such as Holabird and Roche's Republic Building on State Street, and Adler and Sullivan's Garrick Theater on Randolph went down in the early sixties, there was barely a peep from the general public, even though the two were deserving of landmark status (had such a thing existed at the time), and were replaced by vastly inferior buildings, in the latter's case a parking lot. 

The few voices of dissent such as those of photographer Richard Nickel, architect John Vinci and historian Tim Samuelson, were like voices crying out in the desert. And when the city bulldozed thousands of acres of homes bisecting long established neighborhoods in order to build massive expressways, most folks just shrugged their shoulders saying: "Oh well, that's progress."

The tide did seem to turn during the demolition of yet another Sullivan masterwork, The Stock Exchange Building in 1972. Richard Nickel was killed as part of the half-demolished building collapsed on him as he was trying to salvage ornament. The tragedy of Nickel's death gained the preservation movement some traction in the community as people started to realize that at the rate we were going, one day none of Chicago's great architectural legacy would be left standing.

At the same time, those bright, shiny Modernist boxes that were so loved a decade before, were starting to show their age. Even worse, masters of the style such as Mies van der Rohe who emigrated to Chicago after the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, started to die off and were replaced by practitioners who shared Mies' dogmatic approach to his art, but didn't have the old master's soul, his attention to detail, and most important, his design chops. 

The result was instead of "less being more" an old axiom adopted by Mies, less just became less. 

The same fate befell the city's brutalist architecture as its original practitioners, the equally dogmatic  Bertrand Goldberg, author of Marina City and the late, great Prentice Hospital, and Harry Weese the architect of the Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist in Chicago and Washington D.C.'s Metro system, passed from the scene leaving the torch for lesser architects to pick up. 

Again like Mies, the dogma remained but not necessarily the ability, or the will to design attractive buildings.

In the hands of lesser architects, their buildings, rather than being groundbreaking and daring, became tedious and dare I say, ugly. In my opinion of course.

Today it seems, at least if you believe the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society, we have come full circle in our taste for architecture, preferring the older, pre World War II styles to the post. 

Fair enough, the pendulum throughout history has been constantly swinging.

Does that mean we should relinquish the choice of how to build in our public buildings and monuments to public taste, which as we just saw changes over time, or worse, to the whims of the current occupant of the White House?

I believe that would be a terrible mistake. 

I'll give you two examples.

In the early eighties it was decided that to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War, a monument was to be built in Washington D.C. Here I'm quoting myself from a previous post:

Maya Lin was then an undergraduate student of architecture at Yale who entered a class assignment into the competition and gained instant notoriety when she was selected the winner. Her design was conceptual and minimal, two highly reflective polished black stone walls bearing the inscribed names of 58,175 American dead. The slabs were dug into the earth, as if a giant wound. Her creation which became known simply as The Wall, was a departure from the heroic designs of Washington's existing assortment of monuments. This was to be a statement about war, not merely a monument to those who participated.

There was immediate criticism of the design, much of it bombast from politicians who objected to the unconventional nature of proposed monument. In the midst of the feeding frenzy, there were some valid concerns. Some veterans felt that the monument only paid tribute to the dead, not to those who returned. Others objected to the fact that an American flag was not a part of the design. The debate about whether or not to build The Wall dragged on for several months.

I have little doubt that if it were left up to the public and the politicians, the Vietnam War Memorial as it exists today, one of our nation's capital's most beloved and visited sites, would never have been built. 

The other example is right here in Chicago. It's the sculpture that sits in Richard J. Daley Center in the heart of Chicago's Loop. It's untitled but ask any local "Where's the Picasso?" and they will know exactly what you mean. When it was officially unveiled in 1967, the five story work of Modern Art, was received with a smattering of applause by the crowd, but mostly silence. 

"What is it?" replied the crowd, some out loud, some to themselves. To many I'm sure, the rusty Cor-Ten steel structure resembled an old, broken down 1952 Plymouth that had been left out in the elements too long.

But the creators of the sculpture assured us that the rusty finish, along with that of the building it stood in front of, would eventually develop a lovely bronze patina. They were true to their word. Here's me again from a few years ago:

Just as most locals never set foot inside the Art Institute, Symphony Center, or other institutions of so called "high culture", I dare say that most Chicagoans deep down consider the Picasso if not beautiful, at least something to be immensely proud of. Just as those esteemed institutions, the Picasso has put this city on the map of respectability. After all, being regarded only as the city of hog butchering, Al Capone rat-a-tat-tat, and corrupt politicians, gets a little old.

Again, had it been up to the public and many of the politicians at the time, the Chicago Picasso would not have been built.

Fortunately, the politician who mattered the most, the mayor of Chicago at the time, Richard J. Daley threw all his considerable weight behind the project. Known more for his malaprops than for his profound utterances, Daley hit the mark at the dedication of the Picasso when he said this:

We dedicate this celebrated work this morning with the belief that what is strange to us today will be familiar tomorrow.

And he was right, the Chicago Picasso is today as much an iconic symbol of this city as is the Lakefront, the Water Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field Clocks and the Edward Kemeys Lions in front of the Art Institute. 

That said, the skepticism about Post WWII architecture is not all misplaced. Its champions and its practitioners alike reveled in being iconoclasts who were intent on changing the world in ways many people either find uncomfortable, or outright reject. 

Have a look at random quotes from the manifestos of some twentieth century artists, architects and planners taken off a blog that advocates traditional architecture:

“Not only is ornament produced by criminals but also a crime is committed through the fact that ornament inflicts serious injury on people’s health.” - Adolf Loos: Ornament and crime 1908

“Destruction of artistically valueless monuments as well as of all buildings whose artistic value is out of proportion to the value of their material which could be put to other uses.” - Demand #5 of the Work Council for Art: Under the wing of a great architecture 1919

“Smash the shell-lime Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns…to the garbage heap with all that junk!” - Bruno Taut: Down with seriousism! (sic) 1920

“In carrying out this industrialization, the social, technical, economic and also artistic problems will be readily solved.” - Mies van der Rohe: Industrialized Building 1924

“We can no longer derive any benefit from the literary and historical teaching given in schools.” - Le Corbusier: Five points towards a new architecture 1926

“All ‘individuals’ are an obstacle in the path of development, and in fact progress takes place in spite of them.” - Hugo Häring: The house as an organic structure 1932

“ART = net resultant of momentarily (time fix) dominant articulability of ego’s cosmic sense.” - Buckminster Fuller: Universal architecture 1932

“Creative art is unthinkable without a spiritual clash with tradition. In this clash existing form must be smashed in order to find the pure expression of one’s own time.” - Reinhard Gieselmann: Towards a new architecture 1960

“A new condition of human intimacy will exist. The inhabitants live naked. The former patriarchal family system will no longer exist. The community will be complete, free, individual, impersonal. The inhabitant’s main occupation: pleasure.” - Werner Ruhnau: Project for an aerial architecture 1960

“Architecture is not the satisfaction of the needs of the mediocre, is not an environment for the petty happiness of the masses. Architecture is made by those who stand at the highest level of culture and civilization, at peak of their epoch’s development. Architecture is an affair of the élite.” - Hans Hollein: Absolute architecture 1962

To say twentieth century architects were dogmatic is a gross understatement, but that goes for artists and architects from time immemorial. Some of these statements are iconoclastic, some are inscrutable, some are revolutionary, some are bombastic, others are outrageous, while some are pure nonsense, although I do kind of like the one about all of us living free and naked. 

No small amount of arrogance either in all the comments above which may account for the resistance to their work from those who are weary of the cultural elite. 

But in the end, architects like all artists must be judged by their work, not by what they said. The truth, and I believe this to be the truth, not just my opinion, is that there are not good or bad styles of architecture, just good and bad design.

Just as there are beautiful Classical Revival buildings, so too are there beautiful Modernist and Brutalist buildings. The same is true for the bad ones and the majority of the ones smack dab in the middle.

The progress of art and architecture, like a great river, is constantly moving and changing, never composed of the same water. That, as Louis Sullivan (as bombastic as they come), might say, is the law of nature.

Governmental mandates for the arts are like putting a damn on the river, leaving a big pool of stagnant water in its wake. 

On that note, I'll leave the last word for Hizzonor Mayor Daley who was asked about the politics of Pablo Picasso. He answered as only he could:

Leave the art to the artists, and the politics to the politicians.

Well said Mr. Mayor.

Brutal I

In my last post I alluded to the current president's executive order titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, which called for restricting the design of new federal buildings in the nation's capital to "traditional" styles of architecture, putting a special emphasis on the Classical Revival style.

The order, which was inspired by the National Civic Art Society * and presumably written at least in part by its president Justin Shubow,  refers to Classical Revival as promoted by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who:

sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.

The order goes on: 

Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — particularly traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.

It then defines Classical architecture:

“Classical architecture” means the architectural tradition derived from the forms, principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Rafael Carmoega, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. Classical architecture encompasses such styles as Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco.

It goes on to define "Traditional Architecture":

“Traditional architecture” includes classical architecture, as defined herein, and also includes the historic humanistic architecture such as Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and other Mediterranean styles of architecture historically rooted in various regions of America.

You don't need to be an architectural historian to realize this list of acceptable building types encompasses a wide range of architectural styles. 

So what kind of architecture is unacceptable according to the executive order?

In the 1960s, the Federal Government largely replaced traditional designs for new construction with modernist and brutalist ones. (emphasis mine) The Federal architecture that ensued, overseen by the General Services Administration (GSA), was often unpopular with Americans. The new buildings ranged from the undistinguished to designs even GSA now admits many in the public found unappealing. 

Later in the order Deconstructivist architecture is also mentioned. 

In other words, unacceptable architecture according to the executive order, is any architectural style, born and bred after World War I.

In the last paragraph I quoted, the author mentions that these styles of architecture not only don't live up to the lofty intentions of our Founding Fathers, but they are also unpopular with the general public. 

On the homepage of the National Civic Art Society, there is a link to this page publishing the results of a Harris Poll which takes the temperature of the preferences of the American public in regards to architecture, specifically that of federal buildings. 

The poll consisted of seven side-by-side pairs of photographs, each pair consisting of a photo of a federal building built in a "traditional" style and one in a "modern" style. Then the survey asked participants to select in each pair which building they preferred. The comparison photographs were chosen carefully, using similar camera angles and light situations, so as not to skew the results based upon the quality of the photographs rather than the design of the buildings. 

In every case, more respondents picked the "traditional" style building over  the "modern" style by an average margin of about three to one. 

It goes without saying that the one thing each group had in common is that the "traditional " style buildings were all built before World War II and the "modern" style buildings were built after.

The NCAS uses these findings to argue that as the public (at least according to this poll) prefers "traditional" architecture to more contemporary styles, employing the former in the design of government buildings that are paid for by the public through taxpayer dollars is more in keeping with our democratic values than the top-down approach currently used to determine the design of these buildings. 

I suppose on a very superficial level, they have a point.

For what its worth, going through these very limited comparisons myself, I have to say that I personally disagreed with the majority opinion in all but one of the cases. That's not at all to say that I have a general preference of post WWII architecture, I don't. It's just that I found the older buildings chosen for the survey with the exception of one, to be rather uninspiring, while most of the newer buildings, to my eye anyway, could be described at the very least as interesting.

That's my opinion, take it or leave it. I'm not by trade an architectural historian but I do have a passion for the subject and I care a great deal about our built environment which hopefully comes across in this blog. 

Given that, should my opinion on the matter have more weight than the opinion of someone who has little interest in the subject?

Obviously in a democracy, we don't give weight to individual votes based upon the political knowledge of the voter; every individual's vote gets the same weight and that's exactly as it should be. On the other hand, the republic part of a democratic republic means that we vote for individuals to represent us, people who presumably know a thing or two about how government works, and vote on the issues before them based upon that knowledge. Theoretically anyway.

In other words, in a democratic republic, we the people don't get to vote on every issue that comes up before Congress, our State Legislature or our City Council. Rather it is our democratically elected representatives who do that. And that's a good thing because these folks generally (not always) know a thing or two more about these subjects than the average citizen.

In that vein it seems a little preposterous to me to have a referendum on the architectural style of every public building that gets built. And it seems even more preposterous in a democracy to have an edict from the president determining which architectural styles are appropriate and which are not.

Nonetheless, public opinion on the subject as well as the merits of different architectural styles are worthwhile topics for debate. Presidential edicts regarding the same are another story.

I'll discuss all of that in my next post.

And you can find that here.

* The following is the mission statement of the National Civic Art Society:

Founded in 2002, the National Civic Art Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that educates and empowers civic leaders in the promotion of public art and architecture worthy of our great Republic. We do this by advancing the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism, and their allied arts. Through our programs and initiatives we guide government agencies and officials; assist practitioners; and educate students and the general public in the preservation and creation of beautiful, dignified public buildings, monuments, and spaces.

Arc de T-What ???

While I was driving to work with my wife a couple weeks ago, she showed me a picture on her phone of the president holding what appeared to my bad eyes to be two or three white Lego Blocks stuck together. The caption on the picture was "Arc de Trump?". 

On closer inspection, he was holding a teeny tiny model of what appeared to be some kind of arch, complete with an ever so adorable miniature sculpture on top. The caption mentioned that he wanted to build a monumental arch in Washington D.C.

You can see the photo in this New York Times article.

It immediately reminded me of the Stonehenge Scene from the farcical movie "This is Spinal Tap." If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can check it out here. 

Naturally I thought the whole thing was a joke, maybe something ripped from the pages of the satirical tabloid The Onion. 

But of course, it wasn't a joke, it turns out he really wants to build a triumphal arch in Washington.

This one would ostensibly commemorate the 250th anniversary, (or Semiquincentennial if you prefer) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will take place this coming July fourth. It's funny because I remember very well the Bicentennial which took place on July 4, 1976. Mostly I remember the anticipation of the event which lasted about two years. The actual day as I recall, was an awful letdown as one would expect after such a buildup.

The funny thing is that with all the hullabaloo about the 1976 Bicentennial, no one back then apparently thought to build an official monument to the event. In stark contrast, there's barely been a mention of the upcoming Semiquincentennial. One would think that a quarter of a millennium is at least as impressive as a fifth of a millennium. 

Maybe it's too hard to pronounce Semiquincentennial.

But the Semiquincentennial hasn't been lost on this president who plans to throw a big shindig topped off by a major Ultimate Fighting Championship event, perhaps on the White House lawn on the big day. 

That apparently is not a joke either.

Perhaps his big, beautiful ballroom will be ready by then, fingers crossed.

They say that the building of an arch, or anything for that matter in Washington has to go through a gauntlet of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo before being approved to proceed. 

"You have to look at the environmental impact of anything as well as all of these concerns about the aesthetics and the engineering so it usually takes several years to go through a process of designing a new memorial," said Dr Christine Henry, director of the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

According to an article from the BBC:

"New commemorations typically need congressional approval as part of a 24-step plan developed by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which approves designs along with the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). "

Well blah blah blah...

That won't be an obstacle for this president as his M.O. has always been it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Come to think of it, "sorry" is not a part of his vocabulary so he simply won't ask for permission, then leave out the asking for forgiveness part. 

The architectural firm Harrison Design is responsible for the preliminary design of the arch. A partner in the firm, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, posted online a watercolor rendering of the proposed arch and the site it is slated for while commenting: "America needs a triumphal arch!" 

Well, maybe Mr. Charbonneau doesn't get around much anymore, but America already has a number of triumphal arches. New York City alone has two. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, commemorates the veterans of the Civil War. Perhaps more famous, and definitely more restrained is the Washington Arch in Greenwich Village which stands at the foot of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That one was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the centennial of the inauguration of George Washington.

I don't have anything against monumental arches. These two which I'm intimately familiar with, are great works of art, well loved, iconic landmarks in their respective settings. And as all architectural landmarks, they speak volumes about the time in which they were created, not to mention the lives they've lived since.

Over the decades, I've thought a lot about monuments, what they mean, how they function, and how that function changes over the passage of time. I've written about that subject extensively in this blog.

I've also written specifically about the monuments of Washington D.C..

If you type "Monument" in the search field in the upper left corner of this page, many of those posts will come up. 

The current president has famously decreed through executive order that the design of Federal Architecture in the nation's capital should be restricted to "particularly traditional and classical architecture" with classical architecture, i.e.: reflecting that of Ancient Greece and Rome, being the preferred style. 

According to the order, it is those styles that "visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions", just as the Founding Fathers, namely Washington and Jefferson intended. 

But when you think of it, it's a tenuous connection at best. Yes, ancient Athens had its democracy, and ancient Rome had its republic, but both were supplanted, in Athens by foreign conquest, and in Rome, by the foundation of the Empire. But their architecture continued. Think about that for a second.

The buildings we associate most with Athens and Rome and have been emulated in our own buildings, namely the Parthenon in Athens (consider the Lincoln Memorial), and the Pantheon in Rome (consider the Jefferson Memorial), did not function as government buildings themselves but rather as religious temples. 

As such, this "connection" we have with the architecture, great as it is, and our system of government, is superficial. 

The triumphal arch has a far darker provenance. The Arch of Titus in Rome is said to be the paradigm for all such arches. It sits just outside of the Colosseum, another glorious monument with a hideous past. The Arch of Titus was built to celebrate the Roman Siege of Jerusalem in 69 CE, which marked the destruction of that city, and with it, the Second Temple, an event that continues to be mourned in our time on the solemn day of Tisha b'Av by the Jewish people.

We live in a magnificent 1928 apartment building built in the Spanish Baroque Revival style. Every year we participate in an event called "Open House Chicago" , where the public is invited to visit the interiors of buildings that are generally closed to the public. I often help give tours of our building. The highlight of the tour is our swimming pool, adorned by a beautiful tile floor which is original to the building. Scattered among the one-inch tiles of various warm colors are tiles containing ancient symbols such as crosses and medallions representing other traditions. Among those medallions, are swastikas. On every tour I make sure to point these out to our guests, so they don't stumble upon them on their own. I bring up the difficult subject by saying you can tell the floor is original to the 1928 building because you certainly wouldn't find a swastika as a decorative element much after that. 

That's of course because this ancient symbol of good fortune and other virtues that has existed in many different cultures for millennia, was appropriated by the Nazis sometime in the nineteen twenties as a symbol of their own movement, back when they were still a fringe group with little notoriety, at least here in the States.

Today that symbol has only one very powerful, very negative meaning to the majority of the world, and many of the folks visiting our building cannot accept its presence there, even though they seem to understand that the spirit of the symbol was radically altered since our building was built.

I bring that up because the trauma experienced by the entire planet directly caused by the events surrounding the two World Wars not to mention the wars themselves, changed virtually everything about the way we view our world, including our built environment. 

That's why we don't build triumphal arches anymore.

Just like trying to pull off the swastika as a symbol of anything other than hatred and racism, it's truly a hard sell in our day to claim that triumphal arches represent the virtues we hold dear like independence, liberty and democracy. Above all, they represent war. Even at their finest like the two New York examples I gave above, triumphal arches may not glorify war, but they certainly romanticize it. Romanticizing war was not out of the ordinary at the time these arches were created over one hundred years ago, look at the art and the literature from that period, but it certainly is today.

After two World Wars, the Holocaust, the deaths of up to one hundred million people (in both wars), most of them civilians, and the development and the implementation of a weapon that has the potential of wiping out life on our planet, most reasonable people today have no taste for romanticizing war, especially people who lived through it.

At best, wonderful as they may be, these arches speak to another era and as such, are wildly anachronistic in our day, much like the steam locomotive.

But for me, there is an even more salient reason why this idea of the president's is preposterous. 

The approximately one square mile which includes the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, connected by the Memorial Bridge spanning the Potomac River, comes as close to sacred ground as anything in our country.

Our nation does not have an official monument to our greatest tragedy, the Civil War, which claimed more American lives than any other war. We don't need one. That magnificent yet restrained bridge (the work of the estimable New York firm McKim, Mead and White) represents both literally and figuratively, the connection between the indelible symbols of both sides of that conflict, Washington D.C., the capital of the Union, and Virginia whose state capital Richmond, was the capital of the Confederacy. The Lincoln Memorial, our greatest national monument in honor of our greatest president stands on one side of the bridge. Just on the other side of the Potomac (a stone's throw if you're George Washington), standing atop a hill that is now part of Arlington National Cemetery, arguably our nation's most hallowed ground, is the former home of General Robert E. Lee, the overall Commander of the Confederate States Army.

On the wall of the Lincoln Memorial, to the right of the iconic Daniel Chester French sculpture of the slain president, are inscribed the words of his Second Inaugural Address, delivered on the eve of the end of that terrible conflict. In that speech, Abraham Lincoln did not stand on the steps of the Capitol Building and gloat about the imminent glorious victory of the side under his leadership. Instead, he concluded his speech with these words of healing: 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

That bridge connecting the North and the South, is perhaps our greatest unsung monument, an everlasting symbol of that healing, the revival of the "united" part of the United States of America.

Memorial Bridge from the Washington side, looking toward Virginia.

And this current president wants to slap his big, anachronistic pile right in front of it. 

It is perhaps fitting that as a man who prefers building walls to bridges, he wants to mess with our most important bridge.

Two weeks ago, in more than 2,500 events organized around the country, an estimated seven million American participated in "No Kings" marches, protesting what they see as this president's ever increasing autocratic tendencies. 

To the president's sycophantic supporters including his Press Secretary, these protestors, which included several folks from my mother's retirement home in Evanston, Illinois, were "America hating Hamas supporting, communist terrorists." I guess I'll need to be more careful when I'm around those septa, octa, and nonagenarian terrorist neighbors of my mom. 

These "communist terrorists" claim they are simply upholding the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which in no uncertain terms demanded that our destiny be in the hands of we the people, not a king.

The president himself was more reserved in his comments about the protests. He said that he was not a king, nor did he intend to be one. 

Unfortunately, his actions speak louder than his words.

Which I guess shouldn't be surprising for a man who to be generous, is often careless with the truth.

Yet at the event where he revealed his plans to build his arch, he said something that was probably the most honest thing he ever said in his life.

When asked by a reporter who this monumental arch was really for, our president responded simply:

"Me."