Chronocosm

"The protected, and usually large, physical spaces that creative individuals demand for their work — studios, libraries, laboratories — are matched by the protected expanses of time that they stake out, day after day, across their careers. These regularly repeated periods, often whole mornings or afternoons, are so massive that they become quasi-physical presences whose substance can be sculpted into regular achievement. I call these expanses of time 'chronocosms' (time worlds): periods that set up their own unique time dynamics, develop an integrity all their own. People unaquainted with such time worlds have little chance to experience creative insight."

Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990),p. 83-84.

Or as Rousseau wrote in Émile, to teach a child (or anyone for that matter) we must lose the time in order to save it. That includes teaching ourselves.

"Intellectual Property"

"Intellectual property" names
the deed by which the mind is bought
and sold, the world enslaved.

"Some Further Words" by Wendell Berry, American Poetry Review, May/Jun 2002

Read the entire poem "Some Further Words". It contains much good philosophy for living, such as these lines: "I don't want to live on mortal terms forever, or survive an hour as a cooling stew of pieces of other people. I don't believe that life or knowledge can be given by machines."

And

                                            I know
a "fetus" is a human child.
I loved my children from the time
they were conceived, having loved
their mother, who loved them
from the time they were conceived
and before. Who are we to say
the world did not begin in love?

"Some Further Words"

The Lost Silver Mine of Kentucky

AQQ

John Swift is the true forefather of our history here . . .

One of the oldest and most persistent legends of the white man's occupation of Kentucky is that of John Swift's silver. Swift was a silver miner who is supposed to have wandered in the Kentucky mountains in about 1760. He left a journal describing his adventures, paramount among which was the discovery of a marvelously rich lode of silver. The journal contained directions for finding this wealth and also a map, but because of Swift's poor knowledge of the country and its landmarks both directions and map have proved meaningless.

And that very meaninglessness has assured the survival and the dispersal of the legend, and of the indefatigable dream that the legend represents. Today, according to Thomas D. Clark, there are still people in the Kentucky mountains 'who had rather seek fortune by searching for nebulous silver than by plowing corn.' And that region is said to be littered with vaguely defined sites where maybe John Swift found and then lost his silver mine. One of those places is the Red River Gorge, and a tributary of the Red is named in commemoration of Swift's passage through that country: Swift Camp Creek.

There could be no better parable of the white man's entrance into Kentucky. For John Swift is the true forefather of our history here, and his progeny have been numerous. The have descended upon this land from the eastward passes and from their mother's wombs with their minds set on the dream of quick riches to be had, if not from a vein of precious metal, then from coal or from logs. Or from the land itself, for those who preferred to plow rather than hunt silver have all too often followed the agricultural method known as 'mining,' by which the growth is taken from the land and nothing given back, until the fields are exhausted like a mined-out seam of coal.

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971), p. 13-14.

This is an Archival Quality Quotation

Here is a version, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kywolfe/swift.htm, that claims the story began in 1755, the year Mary Ingles was captured and brought to the Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. If Swift had simply "followed the rivers", like Mary and her companion, he could have found his way out, and back again. Here is the link to an article that gives the story a masonic twist: Joe Nickell, "The Secrets of Oak Island" Skeptical Inquirer, March, 2000. The paragraph on Swift's mine is on page 4 of the internet version. Nickell wrote an article on the subject for the Filson Club Historical Quarterly 54 (Oct 1980): 324-345, and the entry in the Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992), p. 863-864.

Thoreau on Local History

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An Archival Quality Quotation

Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

I remember talking a few years ago with a young man who had undertaken to write the history of his native town, a wild and mountainous town far up-country, whose very name suggested a hundred things to me, and I almost wished I had the task to do myself, so few of the original settlers had been driven out, and not a single clerk of the exchequer buried in it. But to my chagrin I found that the author was complaining of want of materials, and that the crowning fact of his story was that the town had been the residence of General C— and the family mansion was still standing. Around this all the materials of this history were to arrange themselves.

You can't read any genuine history, as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede, without perceiving that our interest depends on the subject but on the man — on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius — a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world. Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript, Bradley P. Dean, ed. (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 234-235.

Notes on a Museum at Big Bone Lick

This evening I crashed a "by invitation only" party of the Friends of Big Bone, and was asked not to say anything. That was a good thing, because it is always tempting to say what needs to be said, even if it doesn't do any good.

The question at stake was this: Since there is never going to be a Museum at Big Bone, what do we do instead?

Now that is not really a very good question. Rather, a better question is "What do you mean by Museum?" or "Do we really have anything to do at Big Bone Lick?" or even better "If something needs to be done at Big Bone Lick, are we the people to do it?"

I think the answer to the first is: "A building with exhibits that tells about the history and natural history of the Lick."

The answer to the second is: "Maybe we will have something to do if we can get the right people involved."

The answer to the third is: "No 'we' are not the right people to do this, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be done."

What needs to happen at Big Bone is for someone (me) to publish a history of the area. I am working towards that, and hope to finish before too long. I have some done already, and more in the planning stages. I am also collecting and editing the original documents from which this must be done.

The problem with the people who want to "do something" about Big Bone Lick, is that it is not "their" history. They see it as something interesting, something to be exploited, either personally, or for the community. They do not know enough about the history of the area to truly appreciate it as a place. They see it as a footnote to science: The birth-place of "inveterate" paleontology. That is not the way I see it at all. The local people have always appreciated Big Bone as a unique geographical place. It was an integral part of the community long before it became a park. There have been numerous attempts to make it into an attraction like other natural wonders, but all of the major attempts failed for some reason or other. It has always aroused fascination, but it has never been quite attractive enough to become a commercial attraction. Its history has never been written. How do you write the history of a Lick? You write the history of the people who thought about it, worked at it, were influenced by it in any way.

It is a history of salt — sweat and tears. It is a history of exploitation. It is a history of fame, near fame, and obscure fame. It is both more and less than its promise. It will never be Niagara, or the Grand Canyon, or even Natural Bridge. It is not that spectacular. Not even when there were bones on the ground. It was more subtle in its influence and required more appreciation than those places required. It was such that people could use the bones for everyday purposes. They could use the springs for domestic and commercial purposes; not until Niagara was harnessed for electricity could the same be said for any of the other attractions I have named. Big Bone Lick was like a vast hoard of treasure that is carried away a little at a time, till at last there is nothing but the name; even the springs have gone into abeyance, and are at a very low ebb. Knowledge about the area's past trickles out into the world at about the same rate.

Anyone who is truly interested in Big Bone will be more interested in the history of the area than any other aspect of it. That history cannot be just the study of some old bones. A museum must be more than just a collection of old bones and teeth. Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem. What is needed is a living history museum. What was taken in the past is basically worthless for research purposes in any case. I think Adrienne Mayor is on the right track when she writes: "Both scientists and traditional Indians agree that context is crucial in reading the messages of past life-forms, that something important is lost when creatures of the deep past are torn from their matrix. Johnson Holy Rock, Lakota elder, explained it to me this way: 'To take fossils out of the ground snaps the line of knowledge.' Later at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas, I mentioned this to paleontologist Greg Liggert. He nodded, 'Excavation is information destruction.' " (Fossil Legends of the First Americans, Princeton, 2005, p. 321.) Most of the finds of the past are now virtually worthless.

The past is what is left to us. This we can understand, if we approach it the right way. Fustel de Coulanges, one of the great early historians, said "Fortunately, the past never dies for man. Man may forget it, but he always preserves it within him." ( The Ancient City, 1864; Anchor ed., p. 14) Since this is true we can be sure the true significance of Big Bone will never be lost.

James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Big Bone, Kentucky
2008

Falling Through Space

 

AQQ

"The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos. Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in. Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself. Still, each piece contains the whole. Tell one story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do."

Falling Through Space: The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 128.