Book Review: Le Corbeau: Une histoire culturelle (The Raven: a cultural history) by Michel Pastoureau

 

Michel Pastoureau likes to write books about the (Western) cultural history of very specific things. He wrote a whole series of books about colors, for example: everything about blue, or red, or black. "Le Corbeau" (which in French means raven, but can also refer to crows or corvids more generally) is one of a series of books about specific animals and their significance in European culture.

Pastoureau shows us how Northern European pagan cultures in Scandinavia and Scotland gave much respect to the bird, who they correctly identified as being intelligent. But Christianity was less kind to the corvid. The trouble starts in the book of Genesis: we all know how Noah, after the great flood, sent out a dove to check for dry land, and how the bird returned with good news in the form of an olive branch. But what's less commonly known is that Noah had first released a crow, who had proved useless: instead of finding land, it feasted on the human corpses floating around. And thus, the crow's fate was sealed for centuries. Sure, there are a few anecdotes about saints having a friendlier relationship with the black bird, but he remained an ominous symbol for centuries.

And even when his reputation changed, it was only because the culture changed to align with him: the Romantics, who reveled in all things dark and lugubrious, enjoyed the odd crow in their gothic paintings, poems or plays (Edgar Allen Poe springs to mind). He's frequently depicted as hanging around cemeteries at night, even though he's not a nocturnal creature.

It's only very recently that crows are seen more favorably, mostly because scientific research has revealed them as the big brains in the world of birds, often giving even chimpanzees and small human children a run for their money. They're also silly and playful. But especially in the countryside, they're still seen as a big nuisance. More than a millennium's worth of mudslinging can't so easily be discarded. Pastoureau's book fights the good fight, while showing us beautiful works of art throughout the ages that feature crows and ravens.

Pescatarian paella

 

To create vegan paella, don't put the prawns on

I don't remember where I found this recipe for paella, but it worked fine for me. I started out buying for 2 but ended up cooking for 3-4. The ingredients almost overflowed my skillet.

Slice or rip 200g mixed mushrooms (it's nicer if it's not just cremini or button mushrooms). Halve and thinly slice a thick zucchini. Fry in 1 tbsp olive oil on a medium-high fire for 12 minutes in a large, fairly deep oven-safe skillet, stirring regularly. Then remove and put in a bowl.

Boil half a stock cube in 400 ml water.

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Chop an onion and fry 5 minutes in the same skillet in another tbsp olive oil.  Add 3 chopped cloves of garlic, a pinch of saffron and 1 tsp of smoked paprika. Stir, then add a can of chopped tomatoes and 150g of paella rice (or risotto rice if you can't get it). Stir again. Then add the veg you fried earlier, 150g peas, 100g roasted bell pepper (from a jar, chopped), and 65g spinach. Stir until the spinach wilts. Then add the stock and bring to a boil.

Top with about 165g of prawns and put the whole thing in the oven for 20 minutes. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley and with a lemon wedge on the side.

You know what sparks joy? People.

I've never considered myself a hoarder, and Swatra and I keep our apartment relatively tidy. But in the past week or so, we've systematically gone through every room and thrown away huge amounts of stuff. Knickknacks, kitchenware, clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, you name it. Here are seven things I've learned.

#1 Let go. If you find an object that triggers a fond memory, but you haven't touched or used it in years, and have even forgotten that you had it, chuck it out. The object is not the memory. It doesn't contain the memory. Your brain contains the memory. If you need the object to trigger the memory, take a picture of the object, then throw it away. Photographs and documents can be scanned. Books and movies can mostly be reacquired in digital form (but be sure to save the ones that can't).

#2 This is your stuff, nobody else's. The decision of whether to throw away an item should not depend on whether some friend might want it or need it. If they really wanted it or needed it, they would have taken it from your home and put it in theirs. They very probably don't even remember you have it.

#3 Trash hides treasure.Your home contains many beautiful, precious and display-worthy objects that you didn't know you had. Why? Because there's a pile of useless trash between you and it. Once you get rid of the trash, put your treasure proudly on display.

#4 More space equals more trash. I really thought that living in a spacious apartment would mean no more unnecessary stuff. The opposite is true. The space fills up automatically. I'll be very conscious of what I buy in the future, but I know we'll have to do a cleanup like this all over again in a few years.

#5 Resist the urge to think, "Someone else might want this." Of all the things we threw away, the only things we gave away was a bunch of cookbooks. We offered it to our neighbors, who took it off our hands. As for the rest, yes, it feels bad to throw things in the trash instead of checking if someone might want it. But here's the thing. Checking if someone might want it keeps the trash in your house.

#6 The regret you feel throwing stuff away now is the regret you should have felt when you bought it. If you feel a pang of regret throwing that pasta maker you never used in the bin, don't let it stop you from throwing it out. Instead, remember that feeling, and recall it when you're in the shop, about to buy another useless will-use-once-only kitchen implement.

#7 Keep the stuff you love. The whole purpose of this exercise is to hold on to what matters. For the most part, that's not material stuff, but people. And crows, obviously. But your home does contain things that matter deeply to you, and things that are unique and irreplaceable. Keep that stuff. When asked, Swatra estimated that this was about 10% of the stuff we went through. For me, it's more like 5%.

When Podcasts Collide

 I'm an avid listener of podcasts. Here are two that deserve more attention.

Humanist Trek (https://humanisttrek.com/)

Hosts Sarah Ray and Allie Ashmead offer a humanist and hilarious perspective on Star Trek. They've worked their way through The Original Series and are about to wrap up The Animated Series as well.

Logo of the Humanist Trek podcast

It's Probably (Not) Aliens (https://solo.to/probsnotaliens)

Logo of the It's Probably (Not) Aliens! podcast

Host Tristan Johnson educates co-host Scott Niswander about the often surprisingly racist truth behind "ancient aliens" conspiracy theories.

How they collide

These two podcasts crossed paths, in a way, in the latest Humanist Trek episode, "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth." Sarah and Allie review the ST:TAS episode of the same name. The Enterprise crew encounters an alien winged serpent with god-like superpowers. A conveniently available native American crew member, Walking Bear, tells us that this is Kukulkan, a Mayan deity. As the hosts note, this is straight-up "ancient aliens" lore, modeled after Erich von Däniken's batshit and offensive theories that ancient cultures must have had help from extraterrestrials because they were obviously not smart enough to build pyramids themselves. This is what It's Probably (Not) Aliens is all about.

Kukulkan in his bestiary

And as it turns out, Russell Bates, one of the writers, has this to say about that aspect of the show:

I always had been outraged that Europeans said the vast cities in Central and South America could not have been built by the 'savages,'" Bates commented. "They had to have had help: the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Phoenicians, or even the Atlanteans came, taught the poor Indians how to build their civilization, and that's how it all happened. Horse breath! So, the story about Kukulkan became that Kukulkan visited ALL races of mankind, taught them his knowledge, and then departed. Now the story said that NOBODY on Earth invented a damned thing! They all got their knowledge from somebody else!

 

How the sausage is made

 

Whenever I hear American politicians (especially Democrats) talk about "the middle class," I'm always a bit confused about who's included in that term. In the UK, the term is almost always contrasted and compared with "the upper class" and "the lower class" (or "the working class"). 

In the U.S., it seems a much vaguer term, meaning whatever the Dems want it to mean. As far as I can gather, from Clinton (times 2) to Harris, whoever the Democrats are reaching out to, that's supposed to be the middle class. Does that include blue-collar workers? Maybe. People in the food industry? Perhaps. High school graduates with no higher education? Who knows?

Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention that multiple media outlets described as a "barnburner." Funny how they all used that same word (although they disagreed on whether it needed to be hyphenated, written as one word, or have a space in between).

The New York Times portrayed it as a turning point for AOC, moving her away from her "leftist" past and into the heart of the Democratic establishment. Maybe the party is hoping that this would be her equivalent of the "Obama at the 2004 DNC" moment.

The attached clip, which I screencapped (and edited to remove the boring bits) today, shows what's interesting about this.

1. First you see my browser showing a Google results page with a link to a NYT article about the speech. Underneath the link, you can see that it shows a small fragment from the article: 'Cortez gave a forceful endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying Ms. Harris was "for the working class, because she's from the working class."'
2. I then click the article link and search in it for the words "working class." Strangely, the words are not found in the article.
3. I then go to the YouTube video of AOC's speech, and jump to where she says, "In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class. Because she is from the middle class."

Here's what I think happened.

1. Ahead of the Convention, the Democratic Party kindly provided the New York Times with a draft copy of the speech, and maybe strongly hinted that portraying AOC as the wayward socialist sheep who had finally joined the flock of the gentle liberals would make for a nice angle on the news story. Whether NYT already decided up front that it was going to be a "barnburner" is something I leave up to you to decide.

2. Next, some sharp-eyed campaign operative spotted the words "working class" in the text, was overcome by visions of hammers and sickles marching to the tune of the "Internationale," fell onto the fainting couch, was quickly revived with a few drops of cognac, and then edited the speech to remove the offending term.
   Not to mention that "she is from the working class" is kind of a strange thing to say about the daughter of a UC Berkeley biologist doing breast cancer research (mom) and the first Black scholar to hold tenure at the Dept. of Economics at Stanford (dad).

3. The New York Times were given season tickets to the Yankees for editing the sentence out of their copy, but unfortunately Google beat them to the punch and kept it in its cache long enough for me to spot it.

Politics is compromise, but usually you don't see this clearly how the sausage is made.

Tom Kha Gai

 

Here's a recipe for a vegan Tom Kha Gai from Instagram user nomeatdisco. I played with the recipe a bit.

First slice 250g button mushrooms (you can leave them whole if they're small). Mince 3 garlic cloves and shred an onion. Melt 1 tbsp coconut oil in a pot and add the mushrooms, garlic and onion. Stir and heat until the mushrooms get a bit of color of them, some 3-5 minutes. 

Add a tablespoon of red curry paste and some finely chopped lemongrass. Then add a can of coconut milk, bring it to the boil, add 2 teaspoons brown sugar, and bring it down to a simmer.

While that's going on, in a skillet, melt another tablespoon of coconut oil. Put two portobello mushrooms in, cap down, and place something heavy on them. Fry like that for a few minutes, then flip them around and fry for a few minutes more.

Meanwhile, mix the following: 1 tablespoon peanut butter, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon maple syrup, 2 tablespoons hot water, and 1 teaspoon garlic powder. Mix well (use a hand blender), then pour it over the portobellos. It will thicken in a few minutes. Put the portobellos, covered in sauce, on a chopping board and cut each into thin, long slices.

For garnish, chop some coriander leaves and some chives, and tear up a sheet of nori.

Pour the soup into two bowls or deep plates and top each with one sliced portobello, as well as with the toppings provided.

Oranje is the new Black

Frank Oranje

One reason I don't follow the news in my country, the Netherlands, is that more often than not it's dull as dishwater. The downside is that I sometimes miss out on a bombshell of a story. Like the one I'm going to tell you now.

Frank Oranje was a Dutch notary. But not just any Dutch notary: he worked at a law/notary firm called Pels Rijcken. This firm has handled the vast majority of legal and notarial affairs of the Dutch government, at the national, provincial and municipal level for decades. They're known as the landsadvocaat - the lawyers of the State.

As a notary, Oranje personally handled the private affairs of many members of multiple Dutch cabinets, advising them on how to separate themselves from their business interests in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

In the legal/notarial community, Oranje had the nickname "Mr Integrity." He had an image of incorruptibility, of scrupulous attention to detail, of lecturing his colleagues on how to be transparent and morally upright.

Oranje is so trusted, in fact, that he attains the highest position in Pels Rijcken: he's the head of the board of directors. Such a job usually goes to a lawyer, not to a notary. But he's so well-respected that he lands the job. And as a result, he is very well off. He owns a free-standing villa in The Hague; he sponsors the arts; and generally, he's a cultured, sophisticated and well-respected man.

All the more surprising, then, that the FIOD (the much-feared fiscal police of the Netherlands) knocks on the door of that villa one morning to tell him that he's the subject of a fraud investigation, and that if he doesn't tell Pels Rijcken within one week, FIOD will. Oranje does, and the firm, shocked by this development, suspends him.

You'll notice that I wrote "Frank Oranje was a Dutch notary." That's because he killed himself on 6 November 2020, shortly after receiving the news. The reason soon becomes clear: his fraud is not some small matter, the result of a momentary lapse of judgment. It's the result of eighteen years of non-stop embezzlement, to the tune of about eleven million euros --about twelve million dollars. It's the biggest legal fraud in Dutch history (and "legal" doesn't mean "lawful" in this case).

You see, as a notary, Oranje had access to numerous bank accounts containing incredible amounts of money. These are bank accounts in which money is held temporarily. For example, if you take out a mortgage on a house, the bank obviously pays for the house. But they don't actually pay into the seller's bank account --they pay into a special account held by the notary. The notary is obviously not supposed to access that account except to pay the seller. But Oranje did dip into such accounts --all the time, moving money around from one account to another to cover his tracks, like a Dutch Bernie Madoff. He also created dozens of foundations of which he himself was the owner, and parked money into the bank accounts of those foundations. He was stealing millions.

The first mystery is why. Why did a man who was living the good life, a husband with children, and no reason to commit any crime, least of all a financial one, risk his career, his freedom, his life to embezzle money he didn't need? There's no satisfying answer. There's nothing in his past that would indicate he would turn to a life of crime --quite the opposite. 

The second mystery is how. What kind of outfit was Pels Rijcken that it didn't have the proper checks and balances in place to figure this out at any point during those 18 years? Experts say that the fraud wasn't particularly sophisticated --it could have been discovered with a minimal amount of scrutiny. So how can this law firm (now just a law firm --it's dissolved its notary branch) continue to be the government's law firm even today?

The answers will be hard, maybe even impossible to find. But even what we know today is enough to teach us that blind trust in people in power, even in those who seem squeaky-clean, is always misplaced. Or as the Russians say, "Доверяй, но проверяй" - "Trust, but verify."