The Monks of the Thebaid

A Thebaid: Monks and Hermits in a Landscapeabout 1505
Lorenzo Costa (Italian, about 1460 - 1535)

The Commondore by Patrick O'Brian. On page 266 we find the doctor sitting down to breakfast:

". . . being no more particular about washing, shaving and brushing than the monks of the Thebaid."

Thebaid? Getty Museum gives us this explanation of the above image, though it doesn't say anything about their personal grooming habits:

Using only pen and ink, Lorenzo Costa portrayed the cradle of Christian monasticism, the Thebaid, a Roman division of the upper Nile River valley. Beginning with Saint Paul of Thebes and Saint Anthony of Egypt in the 200s, Christian monks retreated to this region, to live a solitary life of ascetism and prayer. Over time, these monks, also known as "desert fathers," organized into communities.

Costa's scratchy, energetic draftmanship created a bustling composition filled with monks and a landscape riddled with the grottoes, huts, and caves they used for prayer and shelter. He portrayed an imaginary scene, incorporating a variety of monastic saints and spanning different periods. In the upper left background, Saints Paul and Anthony are shown seated, receiving bread from a raven through which God provided nourishment. Mary Magdalene, who supposedly lived her later years alone in the desert, stands near the river to the right. The landscape itself appears more European than Egyptian, perhaps reflecting Costa's native countryside around Bologna, Italy, rather than the real Thebaid.

A thousand years later there was also a Northern Thebaid in Russia. Now I wonder which one Stephen was referring to. Personal preference says the Egyptian ones as they were in the domain of the known world. Russia was like beyond the pale.

P. S. In the book, Thebaid has two dots over the i, not one, but every reference I saw on the net has just one.

The Outsider | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

Watched this last night when I couldn't sleep. It's kind of an understated Japanese gangster movie. Set in 1954, it opens with an American in a Japanese prison with a bunch of Yakuza. He helps one guy out and that gets him out of prison and into a job working for the gang. There is very little dialog and no explanation of how we got here. I don't think Jared utters more than a couple dozen lines. The atmosphere is a little tense. Things are mostly quiet but occasionally we get brief bits of violence, but those come out of the blue. Two guys will be having a discussion and then boom, one of them is dead. I can only attribute this to the Japanese being inscrutable. Someone more in tune with Yakuza sensibilities might be able to make some sense of these incidents.

My Operating Theory for the Day

The Scratching Post has a post up about 'Merica today. It opens with this:

Maybe It's All True

I've read several different takes on the latest Trump indictments, the ones dealing with his efforts to overturn the results of the election. Such luminaries as Ben Shapiro and the guys over at PowerLine assert that the indictment is trash. Others give it plenty of respect. I took the time to read part of it and I don't think it's trash at all.

On the other hand, it's all trash.

Everything is true and no one and nothing can be trusted.

It's pretty great. Go read the whole thing.

 

Tart Mobile

 

1960 Imperial LeBaron

I started watching The Outsider this evening. This car shows up early on and it's the perfect gangster mobile. The show is set in Osaka Japan in 1954, so the car is a little ahead of its time, but its so outlandish, you just gotta let it go.

Slave Coast

A 1729 map showing the Slave Coast

The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian (Wikipedia Link)

Do ever come across something awful and then you go on for a bit and you find that whatever you found awful a minute ago pales in comparison to what you see now?

Chapter 5. Captain Lucky Jack Aubrey has been given command of a fleet (!) of British war ships along with orders to do something about the slave trade. Self-righteous Englishmen had abolished the slave trade in 1833 and everybody else better toe the mark. In Mr. Whewell they have an old, intelligent hand, who has worked on slave ships and is a wealth in information about the trade on the slave coast. They capture a slave ship and are taking the slaves to Freetown (approximately in the middle of the red coast along the left hand side of the map.) where the ship will be condemned (a legal nicety that will keep it from being used. What? This needs more research.) and the slaves will presumably be turned loose.

The Doctor (Aubrey's particular friend) and Mr. Whewell are taking a break from their recent activity and on page 192 we get this:

'From your experience, would you say that this vessel was in a very bad condition? He asked.'

Oh no, not at all, " said Whewell." For a ship 14 days out of whydah, I should say she was doing rather well. No. It is ugly of course. And I believe the Commodore was sadly shocked; but there was little dysentery, and that in an early stage and it can be far, far worse. Perhaps the ugliest ever saw was a brig called the Gongora when that we chased for 3 days, off the coast. All that time the slaves were of course kept below - no food, precious little air with her running before the wind and went at last we took her and opened the hatches there were 200 dead below: dysentery, starvation, suffocation, misery, and above all fighting before they grew too weak to beat one another to death with their irons. The wretched brig carried almost equal numbers of Fantis and Ashantis, mortal enemies who had been at war, each side selling prisoners in the same market and they crammed in together. "

P. S. More research:

From the American Dictionary of the English Language we have the last definition of condemn:

6. To judge or pronounce to be unfit for use or service; as, the ship was condemned as not sea-worthy. To judge or pronounce to be forfeited; as, the ship and her cargo were condemned. 

Forfeit, that's the term we want.

Let's Go Brandon

BBC: 

The US government's credit rating has been downgraded following concerns over the state of the country's finances and its debt burden.

Fitch, one of three major independent agencies that assess creditworthiness, cut the rating from the top level of AAA to a notch lower at AA+.

Fitch said it had noted a "steady deterioration" in governance over the last 20 years.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

The Nice Guys - Main Trailer [HD]

A very fun show. Michael Kleen provides us with a succinct summary:

Nice Guys is funny, clever, and expertly manages a purposely convoluted and over-the-top plot ala The Big Lebowski (1998) and Fargo (1996). Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling perfectly play off each other’s strengths, and bring a sense of ironic humor and style to an otherwise bleak and cynical world.

Underlying the whole plot is a conspiracy by the Big Three auto manufacturers to prevent adoption of catalytic converters: Was there really such conspiracy? Yes, yes there was. Here is an excerpt from:

Automakers and their Dark, Deadly Conspiracies by Yves Engler October 28, 2015

In a much bigger scandal, a half century ago information surfaced implicating auto companies in a conspiracy to keep the population in a toxic haze. The “smog conspiracy” was revealed in 1968 when the US Department of Justice filed an anti-trust case against the Big Three. They were accused of colluding to withhold the installation of catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce pollution. “Beginning at least as early as 1953, and continuing thereafter,” alleged the Department of Justice, “the defendants and co-conspirators have been engaged in a combination and conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of the aforesaid interstate trade and commerce in motor vehicle air pollution control equipment.”

In the early 1950s smog became increasingly common. Los Angeles (the car capital of the world) became the centre of the pollution debate. In a bid to quell mounting criticism of car generated air pollution, GM, Ford, Chrysler and the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) agreed in 1953 to collectively research pollution-reducing technologies. The automotive manufacturers claimed their alliance was driven by a concern for public health. It was not. As time passed evidence emerged that the Big Three had in fact united to block the installment of anti-pollution devices. Their agreement stipulated they would wait for unanimous agreement to move forward on smog-busting technologies. In Taken for a Ride, Jack Doyle writes that “the automobile manufacturers, through AMA, conspired not to compete in research, development, manufacture and installation of [pollution] control devices and collectively did all in their power to delay such research, development, manufacturing and installation.” The public had been hoodwinked.