August 2014 – Page 3 – purple motes

Smithsonian Museum: the matter of history

relics of George Washington's Mount Vernon

The public meaning of history, like the public meaning of news, is easiest to understand functionally. News is what major news sources choose to report. History is what gets published in books successfully promoted as history books, and what gets taught to students in history classes. History and news are only tenuously related to the fullness of reality.

Many persons crave a more essential sense of historical reality. For example, Plymouth Rock has traditionally been thought to be the location of English settlers’ first landing in American. In the early 1800s, tourists visiting Plymouth Rock were provided with a hammer to acquire a piece of the rock. Lewis Bradford at 4:15 pm on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 1830, chipped a piece off the “Mother Rock” of Plymouth Rock. That piece, with those identifying details painted onto it, has been preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It’s a tangible understanding of national history and personal history.

Lewis Bradford’s piece of Plymouth Rock indicates common human behavior. The physical form of communicative representations (“content“) is significant to many humans. The Smithsonian Museum of American History holds a piece of unfinished wood from the Connecticut Charter Oak, a piece of George Washington’s mahogany coffin, a piece of wood cut from old ivy growing at Mount Vernon, a brick from George Washington’s boyhood home, a collection of pieces of hair from the first 14 U.S. presidents, and many other similar pieces associated with history. Many of these pieces are now collected together and on display in the Smithsonian’s wonderful Souvenir Nation exhibit. With its idiosyncratic content, that exhibit profoundly educates about the fundamental human propensity to seek physical objects for a sense of history.

Physical objects remain enmeshed in the complexities of meaning. Theodore Belote, a senior Smithsonian curator with advanced degrees in history from Harvard and two German universities, advocated in the 1920s that the Smithsonian take a scientific approach to history. That meant history documenting the progress of civilization, a scholarly approach prominent in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany. Belote evidently lacked appreciation for bureaucracy in the progress of civilization. After World War II, probably in the 1950s:

Belote, dispirited by the chronic lack of resources {in the Smithsonian’s historical division}, brushed “historic dust” from certain of the relics in his care, putting it into small envelopes that he labeled and left with the collection. The envelopes read “dust from G. Washington relics,” “dust from Jefferson relics,” and so on. [1]

In 1982, the Washington Post ran a story on the conservation of the Star Spangled Banner Flag. That story declared:

{in 1907} the flag’s conservation was the charge of Theodore Belote, an assistant curator of history, remembered at the Smithsonian for such attention to duty that he saved packets labeled “dust from G. Washington relics,” “dust from Jefferson relics,” and so on. [2]

Those packets of dust aren’t best understood as representing earnest attention to duty. They are better understood as “a biting comment on the dilapidated condition of the scientific-historical museum whose cause he {Belote} had championed.”[3] They are best understood as representing belief in the progress of civilization, turned to dust.

We humans are flesh-and-blood creatures living in a world that we cannot fashion to be as we wish. Yet we can make new meanings with words and things.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Bird (2013) p. 43. Belote was born in 1882. On Belote’s biography, id. p. 40. The date of Belote’s dust collecting was after WWII and apparently before a culling of miscellany in 1962. Id pp. 41-3.

[2] Thomson (1982). Bird (2013), p. 43, notes that the dust packets “were misinterpreted as earnestly preserved reliquarian curiosities.”

[3] Bird (2013) p. 43.

[image] Douglas Galbi’s photograph at the Smithsonian Castle, Washington, DC.

References:

Bird, William L. 2013. Souvenir nation: relics, keepsakes, and curios from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. New York: Princeton Architectural Press in association with Smithsonian Museum of American History (U.S.).

Thomson, Peggy. 1982. “The Dust-Strangled Banner.” The Washington Post {Washington, D.C} 18 June 1982: W37.

mocking stork gesture in Persius & Comoedia Lydiae (Lidia)

In his first, programmatic satire, the Roman poet Persius addressed the relationship between writer and patron. Acclaimed by the patron with “Bravo!” and “Lovely!”, the writer imagines saying to the patron:

You know how to serve up hot tripe, you know how to give some poor shivering fellow writer a worn-out cloak, and then you say, “I love the truth. Tell me the truth about myself.” How, actually? Do you really want me to? You’re a fool, baldy, your fat paunch sticking out with an overhang of a foot and half. Lucky Janus, never banged from behind by a stork or by waggling hands imitating a donkey’s white ears or by a tongue as long as a thirsty Apulian dog’s. You, of patrician blood, who have to live without eyes in the back of your head, turn around and face the backdoor sneer!

{ … calidum scis ponere sumen,
scis comitem horridulum trita donare lacerna,
“verum” inquis “amo, verum mihi dicite de me.”
qui pote? vis dicam? nugaris, cum tibi, calve,
pinguis aqualiculus propenso sesquipede extet.
o Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit
nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas
nec linguae quantum sitiat canis Apula tantum.
vos, o patricius sanguis, quos vivere fas est
occipiti caeco, posticae occurrite sannae. }[1]

The patron rewards the writer with neither meaningful appreciation for his work (only “Bravo” and “Lovely”) nor sufficient material support (only a “worn-out cloak”). The patron only pretends to want to know the truth. The writer imagines telling the patron the truth: the patron is old, fat, and a fool. Then the writer describes three mocking gestures that are being made at the patron behind his back. Waggling hands imitating a donkey’s ears is easy to understand as mocking the patron as an ass. The mocking stork gesture hasn’t even been clearly understood formally. The long-tongued, thirsty-dog gesture hasn’t been understood meaningfully.[2]

Comoedia Lydiae, a late twelfth-century Latin elegiac comedy, provides key context to understand the mocking stork gesture. In this tale, Lidia, the wife of the duke Decius, is deeply in love with the knight Pearus.[3] To demonstrate the depth of her love for Pearus, Lidia wrings the neck of Decius’ prized falcon in front of Decius and guests, plucks hairs out of his beard, and yanks out one of his healthy teeth.

To further display her mastery of her husband, Lidia arranges to have sex with Pearus while Decius watches. While Lidia is going with Decius and Pearus to the garden to perform that feat of cuckoldry, the servant-woman Lusca follows them. She is in on the cuckolding scheme: “mouth agape, she trails along behind, making at Decius the gesture of the stork {rictibus ora trahit decioque ciconiat usu}.”[4] Lusca means in Latin “one-eyed.” That name playfully contrasts with Persius’ Janus, a two-faced god who has eyes in the front and back of his head. Lusca’s mocking of Decius behind his back in Comoedia Lydiae evokes the mocking of the patron behind his back in Persius’ satire. The context in Comoedia Lydiae suggests that the stork gesture ridicules male heterosexual failure.[5] Decius failed to fulfill his wife’s sexual desire and was thus cuckolded.

A gesture plausibly similar to the stork gesture has endured through millennia. Near Boston in the late 1980s, a young man of first-generation Italian-American heritage and of strong, independent heterosexual desire would regularly make to his male friends a gesture plausibly similar to the stork gesture. He would point an index finger straightly erect, and then droop it into a curved position. That gesture declared a perceived lack of heterosexual vigor in the guy to whom it was directed.

finger in mocking stork gesture

The three mocking gestures in Persius have subtle complexity. In the focal passage from Persius, I translated the Latin verbal form pinsit as “banged from behind.” The most recent, authoritative academic translation of Persius translated pinsit as “pummeled from behind.” The verb pinsit is difficult:

pinsit, ‘strikes’, an extension based on the analogy of the partial synonym tundit, pinso usually means “crushes, grinds, pounds”, but {Persius} seems to have none of these senses in mind. pinsit, rather than say, ludit, is of course prompted by what the gesture represents. [6]

However, the stork gesture occurs in Jerome without any verb like pinsit:

Do not believe your flatterers, or rather do not lend an ear too readily to mockers. They will fawn upon you with fulsome praise and do their best to blind your judgment. However, if you suddenly look behind you, you will find that they are making gestures of derision with their hands, either a stork’s curved neck or the flapping ears of a donkey or a thirsty dog’s protruding tongue.

{ Ne credas laudatoribus tuis, immo inrisoribus aurem ne libenter adcommodes, qui cum te adulationibus foverint et quodam modo inpotem mentis effecerint, si subito respexeris, aut ciconiarum deprehendas post te colla curvari aut manu auriculas agitari asini aut aestuantem canis protendi linguam. }[7]

Moreover, the verb pinsit grammatically applies to the other two gestures:

The lines involve a zeugma. From pinsit (58), the idea of ‘mock’ has to be supplied. [8]

With the stork gesture interpreted as mimesis of male erectile dysfunction, pinsit works as verbal irony. A penis in the condition of the stork gesture is incapable of pinsit, meaning heterosexual intercourse of reproductive type. Flapping could evoke lack of testicular tension as well as being an ass. The thirsty dog’s protruding tongue adds a concluding note of male sexual frustration. Rather than being crudely transparent, Persius’ three mocking gestures are highly literary.

Centuries of male scholars scrutinizing Persius’ satire failed to generate appreciation and insight into the mocking stork gesture. Male scholars haven’t been reading texts with sufficient male consciousness.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Persius, Satires 1.53-62, Latin text and English trans. from Braund (2004) p. 53. I’ve replaced “pummeled from behind” by “banged from behind” for reasons subsequently explained above. I’ve also replaced “client” with “fellow writer” for clarity. The underlying Latin word is “comitem.” Gildersleeve (1875) provides an online version of the Latin text. A.S. Kline has generously provided an online translation into English.

[2] “The exact nature of this ‘stork’ gesture is not discoverable.” Harvey (1981), p. 33. “Perhaps symbolising cacophony,” according to Bramble (1974) p. 116. Id. notes that a sign of a thirsty dog, an ass, and a parrot occurs in Callimachus’ second Iambus. How that recognition helps to read Persius isn’t clear. In ancient Sanskrit literature, a parrot is linked with intended cuckoldry. A recent scholarly work, “drawing upon recent scholarship in gender studies and Lacanian film theory,” interprets the mocking gestures in Persius as evoking elite male anxiety about anal penetration. King (2006) p. 74, p. 249 n. 18.

[3] Elliott (1984), pp. 126-46, provides an English translation of Comoedia Lydiae / Lidia, with some translation notes. The poem is attributed to Arnulf of Orléans. Boccaccio adapted Lidia in Decameron 7.9.

[4] My English translation. Elliott (1984), p. 141, has the translation:

Her lips curve up into a smile, and at Decius
she makes the gesture of the crane

That seems to me less exact. The full Latin text is available online in Du Méril (1854). See esp. id. p. 371. Boccaccio’s version of Lidia, Decameron 7.9, doesn’t include the mocking stork gesture. The prologue to Lidia refers to a parrot imitating human speech. A parrot imitating human speech also figures in the prologue to Persius’ satires.

[5] Crawford translated the relevant passage in Lidia as “Wrinkling her nose, Lusca makes the ritual gesture of the cuckold behind Decius.” He noted that this is “a proverb, probably medieval” indicating a gesture of contempt. Crawford (1975) p. 87.

[6] Harvey (1981) p. 33. Gildersleeve (1875) notes for Persius, Satires 1.58:

ciconia pinsit = pinsendo ludit. The fingers of the mocker imitate the clapping of the stork’s bill. Pinsit, ‘pounds,’ because the ciconia levat ac deprimit rostrum dum clangit, Isidor., Orig., 20, 15, 3. ‘Pecks at’ is not correct; ‘claps’ is nearer. What seems to be meant is mock applause.

[7] Jerome, Letter 125 (To Rusticus, dated 411) s.18, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Freemantle (1892) p. 597. I’ve inserted “curved” within “stork’s neck.”

[8] Harvey (1981) p. 33.

[images] Ciconia, photographed in Mannheim (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). Detail from photograph thanks to 4028mdk09 and Wikimedia Commons. Finger gesture. Douglas Galbi’s photograph.

References:

Bramble, J. C. 1974. Persius and the programmatic satire: a study in form and imagery. Cambridge: University Press.

Braund, Susanna Morton, trans. 2004. Juvenal and Persius. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Crawford, James Martin. 1977. The Secular Latin Comedies of Twelfth Century France. Ph. D. Thesis. Indiana University, USA.

Du Méril, Édélestand. 1854. Poésies inédites du moyen âge, précédées d’une histoire de la fable ésopique. Paris: Franck.

Elliott, Alison Goddard, ed. and trans. 1984. Seven medieval Latin comedies. New York: Garland.

Freemantle, William Henry, trans. 1892. The Principal Works of St. Jerome. Philip Schaff, ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 6. Oxford: Parker.

Gildersleeve, Basil L. 1875. The satires of A. Persius Flaccus. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Harvey, R. A. 1981. A commentary on Persius. Leiden: Brill.

King, Richard Jackson. 2006. Desiring Rome: male subjectivity and reading Ovid’s Fasti. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Wednesday's flowers

red flowers in rich foliage

Decameron X.3: horrible generosity of Nathan and Mithridanes

The price of material goods relative to self-esteem and social status has fundamental economic importance. That price structures the macroeconomics of persons’ self-interest. In Decameron X.3, Boccaccio imagined a society in which material goods were cheap, while self-esteem and social status were dear. Competition in generosity reached a horribly high level. This story provides a critical perspective on the Arabic tradition of hospitality, the Christian understanding of salvation, and the role of media, particular social media, in serving self-esteem and social status.

Boccaccio ironically distanced Decameron X.3 to the realm of fantasy. The story’s narrator presented it as being from a far-away land:

It is beyond doubt, if the reports of various men from Genoa and elsewhere who have been to those parts may be trusted, that in the region of Cathay there once lived a man of noble lineage named Nathan who was rich beyond compare. [1]

Cathay is northern China, far from Boccacio’s Florence. Travelers’ reports commonly contain stories of wondrous sights, beasts, and events. The clause “it is beyond doubt” is immediately qualified with reason for doubt. It should be interpreted ironically. The two main characters in the story are named Nathan and Mithridanes. Nathan is a Jewish name. Christians in medieval Europe stereotyped Jews as being ungenerous.[2] Mithridanes is a name associated with pre-Christian Roman cultic belief.[3] Christian nobles and merchants in fourteenth-century Florence would understand Decameron X.3 to be fantastical.

In Decameron X.3, Mithridanes sought to surpass Nathan’s fame for generosity. Nathan lived in a huge, luxurious palace next to a main thoroughfare. For many years, everyone who passed by Nathan hosted “in a most agreeable and festive manner.” Nathan thus acted as the proprietor of a bizarre combination of a motel and a country estate. Nathan’s renown spread throughout the East and the West. Mithridanes, another rich man who lived near Nathan, grew envious:

he resolved that through an even greater display of liberality he would either obliterate the old man’s renown or overshadow it. And so, after having had a palace built similar to Nathan’s, he began to bestow the most extravagant courtesy ever seen on everyone who passed by, going in either direction, and there is no doubt that in a short time he became very famous.

One day, a little, old, poor woman begging for alms from Mithridanes happened to remark that Nathan was more generous than he. Her remark ignited Mithridanes to raging fury:

How can I ever match Nathan’s greatest acts of generosity, let alone surpass him as I’ve sought to do, when I can’t come close to him in the smallest things? All my efforts will truly be in vain unless I wipe him off the face of the earth, and since old age isn’t carrying him away all by itself, I’ll have to do the job with my own hands, and that without delay.

Competition in generosity thus led to intent to murder.

Nathan subsequently offered Mithridanes horrible generosity. Traveling to Nathan’s palace to fulfill his plan to murder him, Mithridanes encountered an old man. Mithridanes asked the old man for directions to Nathan’s palace. Mithridanes also requested that, “if possible, he did not want Nathan to see him or to know that he was there.” The old man was actually Nathan. He cheerfully and deceptively agreed to Mithridanes request. Claiming to be one of Nathan’s menial servants, Nathan led Mithridanes to the palace. There Nathan arranged with his servants not to reveal his identify. Acting as a menial servant, he won the confidence of Mithridanes. Mithridanes then told him of his plan to murder Nathan and sought his help. Nathan agreed to help to arrange for his own murder.

With this horrible generosity, Nathan prevailed over Mithridanes. Nathan strolled by himself in the woods. That was the opportunity that Nathan had offered to Mithridanes to murder him. Mithridanes jumped him, seized him by the turban, and exclaimed, “Old man, you’re as good as dead.” In a parody upon a parody of Christian self-abnegation, Nathan responded only, “Then I must deserve it.” Immediately events turned in a different direction:

Upon hearing his voice and looking him in the face, Mithridanes instantly recognized him as the man who had received him with such kindness, had kept him company like a friend, and had advised him so faithfully. Consequently, his fury immediately subsided, and his anger was transformed into shame. Hurling away the sword, which he had already drawn out in order to strike his adversary, he dismounted and flung himself down in tears at Nathan’s feet.

Nathan absolved Mithridanes of any wrong-doing in pursuing his murderous scheme:

call it evil or not as you will, there’s no need to ask for my forgiveness or for me to grant it, because you didn’t pursue it out of hatred, but in order to be held in greater esteem. … you have dedicated yourself not to the amassing of wealth, which is what misers do, but to spending what you have accumulated.

That’s a ridiculous justification, made from the perspective of nobles and courtiers looking down on merchants. With further sarcasm, Boccaccio has Nathan expand upon this justification:

In order to increase their realms, and thus their fame, the most illustrious of emperors and the greatest of kings have practiced almost no art other than killing, not just one man as you wanted to do, but an infinite number of them, as well as putting entire countries to the torch and razing cities to the ground. And so, if, to achieve renown, I was the only person you wanted to kill, you were not doing anything extraordinary or unusual, but something actually quite commonplace.

Citing his desire to preserve his unblemished record for generosity, Nathan then implored Mithridanes to kill him. Mithridanes refused. Nathan’s concern to be generous generated his grotesque devaluation of his own life. Only Mithridanes lack of generosity saved Nathan’s life.

Nathan further underscored the perversity of social status-seeking. In gratitude to Nathan for not condemning his evil intent, Mithridanes offered the platitude that he would like to give years of his life to Nathan. Nathan, greedy to add to his public record of generous acts, proposed a mechanism to effect that gift. Nathan proposed that Mithridanes subsequently pretend to be Nathan, and Nathan pretend to be Mithridanes. The young man Mithridanes could then deceptively add many more years of deeds of generosity to Nathan’s public record. Mithridanes refused that absurd scheme only out of appreciation for his own inferiority in generosity:

If I knew how to comport myself as well as you do now, and as you’ve always done, I”d take your offer without giving it a second thought, but because I feel quite certain that my actions would only serve to diminish Nathan’s fame, and because I have no intention of marring in another what I cannot make perfect in myself, I won’t accept it.

This isn’t just a story of two gentlemen donkeys stuck at a door, insistently saying to each other, “No, please, you first.” The story of Nathan and Mithridanes describes perverse effects of social status being much more dear than material goods.[5]

Arabic culture has a deep tradition of hospitality as measure of social status. Hatim Tai, a Christian Arab who lived in the sixth century, became a focal point for stories about generosity in Arabic culture. In a book by Saadi, a major Persian poet writing in the thirteenth century, Hatim Tai is the renowned generous person in a story much like that of Decameron X.3.[4] Another story about Hatim Tai is preserved in Arabic in the 1001 Nights. That story places Hatim Tai’s generosity squarely within pre-Islamic Arabic culture. Travelers at the top of a mountain came across Hatim Tai’s grave. One traveler said mockingly, “We are your guests tonight, Hatim, and we are hungry.” After falling asleep for the night, the traveler had a dream:

I saw Hatim approaching me with a sword. “You have come to me,” he said, “but I have no provisions.” He then struck my camel with his sword [6]

The traveler’s own camel thus provided the meat that the host offered. Slaughtering a camel for a shared meal is a typical feature of a pre-Islamic ode.[7] Hatim Tai’s slaughter of the traveler’s camel, like Decameron X.3, shows a perverse effect of intense concern for maintaining social status of generosity.[8]

In the Gospel of John, Jesus teaches extreme generosity. Jesus declares:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [9]

From a Christian perspective, Jesus realized God, love, and salvation for humanity by allowing himself to be crucified. Jesus’ words “love one another as I have loved you” mean love one another with complete self-giving, even to the point of death:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. [10]

Like the Decameron’s story of Frate Alberto, Decameron X.3 superficially looks like a parody of Christian scripture. But Christian extreme generosity isn’t about social status. Jesus was the son of a carpenter from a provincial town of Judea. Crucifixion was a degrading means of execution. Jesus frequently disparaged prayers and pious acts intended to garner social acclaim.[11] The distinction between outer and inner generosity is crucial in Christian understanding. That distinction is also crucial for fully understanding Decameron X.3.

Accumulating material wealth, dissipating human sense of divine favor, and powerful new communication technologies are increasing the price of self-esteem and social status relative to material goods. The dehumanization of materialism and consumerism is becoming less of a personal risk. The social position of nobles and courtiers is being democratized. Competition for social status encourages disconnection between the outer and inner person. Decameron X.3 provides a critical perspective on new personal risks in the Facebook-Twitter-smartphone social economy.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 10, Story 3 (story of Nathan and Mithridanes), from Italian trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 763. The narrator is Filostrato. In Boccaccio’s text, Mitridanes represents Mithridanes. All subsequent quotes are from id., unless otherwise noted.

[2] The southwestern Eurasian tribal value of generosity is not surprisingly an aspect of Jewish tradition. The prophet Isaiah in Hebrew scripture expressed that value:

All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat;
Come, without paying and without cost,
drink wine and milk!

Isaiah 55:1. The underlying idea is that the Lord is a good (generous) host.

[3] The Roman deity Mithras was the focus of a popular Roman cult.

[4] Saadi Shirazi, Bustan, ll. 306-342, from Persian trans. Clarke (1879) in Crane (1921) pp. 212-14, and Edwards (1911) Ch. II (Concerning Benevolence), “Story of Hatim and the Messenger Sent to Kill Him.” Hatim Tai is more properly transliterated as Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī. It is found variously transliterated as Chatemthai, Chatemtai, and Hatam Taei. Hatim was of the Tayy tribe of Arabia.

[5] Readers can easily interpret this story superficially. Crane (1921) called it a “noble story.” F.W.V. Schmidt, writing in Berlin in 1818, declared:

The sentiment in this divine story so far exceeds all the bounds of the most daring fancy of our ancient and modern times, that one cannot help thinking that this work of fiction had its source in the sunny plains of the Orient, and was the offspring of a bright and peaceful mind.

Cited in id. pp. 196-7.

[6] 1001 Nights, Night 271, from Arabic trans Lyons (2008) vol, 1, p. 885. The text is Calcutta 1839-42 (Calcutta II, also called Macnaghten). According to Geert Jan van Gelder, earlier versions of the story are found in Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889), al-Shi`r wa-l-shu`ara’ (ed. Shakir, 249), in al-Mas`udi (d. 956), Muruj al-dhahab (ed. Charles Pellat, ii, 298-99 = para. 1213-14), and a little later, with two versions, in Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani, al-Aghani (ed.Cairo) xvii, 374-75, 392.

[7] Examples of pre-Islamic odes (qasā’id) that describe killing a camel and sharing a meal of its meat are the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab.

[8] Abū l-Ḥakam al-Maghribī, Maʿarrat al-bayt (The Domestic Scandal), written in twelfth-century Damascus, provides a light-hearted view of the hardships of a hospitable host. In the penultimate line, the host concludes:

At other people’s places drinking
Is better, in my way of thinking.

From Arabic trans. van Gelder (forthcoming).

[9] John 15:12.

[10] John 15:13.

[11] E.g. Matthew 6:1-18, Mark 12:40.

[image] Portrait of a Bolognese Gentleman in a Fur-lined Coat, c. 1523-25, by Giuliano Bugiardini (Italian, 1475-1554). The Walters Art Museum, 37.1101. Special thanks to the Walters for their leadership in making art accessible worldwide on the Internet.

References:

Crane, Thomas Frederick. 1921. “The Sources of Boccaccio’s Novella of Mitridanes and Natan (Decameron X, 3).” The Romanic Review 12(3): 193-215.

Edwards, A. Hart, trans. 1911. The Bustān of Sadi. London: J. Murray.

Gelder, Geert Jan van. “Abū l-Ḥakam al-Maghribī, Maʿarrat al-bayt (‘The Domestic Scandal’).” Forthcoming in A Literary History of Medicine: “The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians” by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270). University of Oxford & University of Warwick.

Lyons, Malcolm C. 2008. The Arabian nights: tales of 1001 nights. vols. 1-3. London: Penguin.

Rebhorn, Wayne A., trans. 2013. Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

COB-97: training essential for bureaucracy

The machinery of bureaucracy depends on a trained workforce. Modern societies have thus established special educational institutions. In these institutions, uneducated young persons are grouped together so that they can better learn from each other. The young persons are separated from the workforce so as to avoid real-world distractions. They are then passed through courses and requirements. That makes them certified as educated throughout their subsequent working lives. While traditional educational institutions have considerable bureaucratic merit, they no longer suffice for the needs of today’s bureaucracies.

Today’s bureaucracy must be a learning organization. Learning must be added to the job description of every person in the bureaucracy. Every document created within the bureaucracy, including substantive emails copied to more than five persons, must have a separate learning section describing the learning associated with the document. Highlighting the importance of learning, many organizations are establishing Chief Learning Officers to supervise and coordinate learning.

In today’s online, digital world, learning is necessary to maintain business advantage. Consider DAFTA’s implementation of online timekeeping for its employees. DAFTA (Document Assembly/Fastenings Trade Association) is the leading Washington-based trade association for the manufacturers of document clasps, paper clips, staples, and related office document technologies. Until last year, DAFTA employees had punched-hole timecards. They also wrote out on paper requests for sick time and vacation time. After being informed of the advent of the new online, digital world, DAFTA’s leadership decided to implement an online, digital timekeeping system.

DAFTA’s implementation of online timekeeping nearly failed from lack of attention to learning. Employees struggled to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system. That raised the question of the proper time code to use to record time spent trying to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system. No one knew. Several meetings about the issue raised the question of how to record time spent trying to figure out how to record time spent trying to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system.

With the situation threatening to spiral out of control, the Chief Learning Officer stepped in and pointed out the need for training. She established a new, online training course on how to use the new timekeeping system. The training course had a special training module addressing how to record time spent discussing how to record time spent trying to figure out to use the new timekeeping system. Employees, however, couldn’t figure out how to register for the new online training course.

Emphasizing the importance of training, the Chief Learning Officer set up a new training course on how to register for training courses. Colleges champion “learning how to learn,” she declared, “we will train how to train.” The Chief Learning Officer coordinated with the Chief Data Officer to establish a schema for collecting data on registrations for the training course on how to register for training courses. The DAFTA Head, recognizing the importance of big data and being a data-driven organization, agreed to allow one year for data to accumulate on registrations for the training course on how to register for training courses. She also allowed employees to use the old punchcard and paper timekeeping system in the interim. The Chief Learning Officer thus transformed DAFTA into a learning organization. You can do the same for your organization!

That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.