Academic literature on the topic 'Why are my airpods cutting in and out'

By researching writing interventions, we may learn more about the art of writing, its history, and the most successful teaching strategies. Unfortunately, Graham and his colleagues discovered that a lot of previously completed writing intervention studies had a poor degree of scientific rigor in various meta-analyses, despite the importance of this area of research (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, & Harris, 2012; Graham & Perin, 2007; Rogers & Graham, 2008). In the context of this article, we offer twelve recommendations for doing intervention research successfully. These suggestions are based on my ta-analyses, past research (Pressley & Harris, 1994a, 1994b) on raising the caliber of intervention research, and our unique experiences as authors of intervention research and editors of publications that do so, including the Journal of Writing Research. I sincerely hope you will find these suggestions useful. The ideas encompass all aspects of planning, conducting, and reporting the findings of such research, as well as the issues and steps involved. This article lists the best procedures for planning, carrying out, and presenting writing interventions-based research. We believe this type of research is crucial for achieving substantial advancements in theory and practice, and as a result, we view this as a serious issue (more about this later). Moreover, we have committed a considerable amount of our academic careers to conducting research of this sort and evaluating and synthesizing the current research on writing interventions, so it is important to us personally and professionally (see Graham & Harris, 2009, 2012). (Graham, Harris, and Chambers are now working on a publication, for instance.) Not only do we like what we do, but we also feel that we require experience. Thus we entered this area of work. Having previously worked as general and education professors, we were dissatisfied with the "pied-piper" approach employed to educate in schools (where instructional practices are promoted and sold with passion and articulate rhetoric but with little or no evidence of effectiveness). We were curious to learn more about alternative techniques that may help aspiring writers hone their craft (e.g., Harris & Graham, 1996). The suggestions made in this post were created using our former experiences as a guide. Our meta-analyses of writing intervention research's findings have taught us a lot about the benefits and drawbacks of this body of information (e.g., Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, & Harris, 2012; Graham & Perin, 2007; Rogers & Graham, 2008). We are well aware of the many obstacles that must be overcome to conduct studies of this kind since we have prior experience working in writing intervention research. We have a wealth of experience between us as editors of five publications focused on intervention research, and as a result, we are frequently given a chance to compare cutting-edge and established techniques used in intervention research (Journal of Writing Research, Exceptional Children, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Archives of Scientific Psychology - Section for Educational and School Psychology, and Journal of Educational Psychology). The earlier study on improving educational intervention research by Pressley and Harris (1994a, 1994b) and Pressley, Graham, and Harris (2005) offers a framework for considering how to improve intervention research in writing more specifically. We first discuss the relevance of this study before outlining our suggestions for planning, conducting, and reporting better writing intervention research. Before we go any further, you must be made aware that the author's research largely backs some of the claims mentioned in this article. This article is not intended to downplay the important contribution made by other writers' research scholars. Instead, it uses the elements that we are most comfortable with to help us support and build upon our main beliefs. Why Is It Important to Carry Out High-Quality Research on Writing Interventions?

My appreciation of textual criticism – a nowadays somewhat marginalized subdiscipline that continues nevertheless to provide the foundation of our subject – has been vastly enhanced by Richard Tarrant's new book on the subject. I read it from cover to cover with great pleasure and satisfaction (several times laughing out loud, which doesn't happen often with works of scholarship), with great interest, and with dismay at my own ignorance, and I came away determined to be a better Classicist. This little volume is the fourteenth ‘suggestive essay’ published in CUP's Roman Literature and its Contexts series (established in 1990 by Denis Feeney and Stephen Hinds), but it does not – sadly – mark a revival of this excellent series, but rather a late addition. (There cannot be many Latinists of my generation who did not, as young scholars, aspire one day to be the author of one of these elegantly concise yet ground-breaking volumes.) On the face of it this volume is rather different from its predecessors, which usually engaged with cutting-edge theory from a Classical perspective; instead, Texts, Editors and Readers opens up to non-initiates such as myself a whole world of existing scholarship into which many literary scholars seldom venture, inhabited not only by the towering ‘heroic editors’ of the past (Chapter 1) but also by colourful characters such as ‘interpolation hunters’ (86), freewheeling neo-sceptics (77), elegant minimalists, and unrestrained maximalists. With a combination of vivid characterization, lucid explanation, and delicious detail, Tarrant outlines the challenges of establishing a decent text, and the techniques involved; in Chapters 3 to 5 we learn about recension, conjecture, interpolation, collaboration, and intertextuality. He also makes exceptionally clear the issues that are at stake in editing a text, and the tensions with which the discipline is charged. At every stage of the process, from the selection of manuscripts for scrutiny to the display of information in the final edition, choices need to be made that are bound to provoke dissent. The twin aims of providing a legible text and legible apparatus are often in conflict with one another. Eventually, to establish a readable text, an editor needs to choose a single solution and put all alternatives in the apparatus, which must then record the evidence and the decision process as far as possible. Done well, it allows us to understand the process by which the text of the edition has been established, and the contributions made by scholars over the years. But within Classics there is no agreement about precisely how this should be achieved, as Tarrant points out. As he makes clear with his comparison of two reviews of the same edition, one reviewer's ‘accuracy’ and ‘methodological rigor’ is another's ‘frivolous superfluities’ (25–6). Tarrant comments that one would hardly believe these evaluations pertained to the same edition of Lucan, but in fact the picture is consistent and the divergence of opinion is telling; what comes across strongly is that these two reviewers want something very different from their editions. The disagreement here is between a scholar who wants progress towards a better text, amending scribal errors and providing confident, robust conjectures, and another who is glad to find a text relatively untouched, but in the apparatus all the material that enables a reader to come to their own decisions about the variants to be preferred. The merits of both are clear; the tensions are between the aspiration for a readable, usable text and the desire to be transparent about the difficulties involved in establishing that text. A decisive reading may obscure ambiguities; excessive hedging muddies the reading. Every choice involves compromise: minimalists may omit important information that might allow the reader to draw different conclusions; maximalists risk cluttering up the page and seeming undiscriminating. Tarrant (a self-confessed minimalist) alarms us on pages 130–1 with the sight of the monstrous apparatus produced by an unrestrained maximalist. Meanwhile, while conservative critics are averse to new conjectures and stick as close to the manuscript reading as possible, conjecture emerges as a creative art form, where natural talent is enhanced by intimate appreciation of Latin literature and style (73); it can attract great admiration. I now aspire to be able someday to compile, as Tarrant does, my own list of favourite conjectures – a bit like a montage of favourite sporting moments, as one revels in the pleasure of seeing the execution of skilful manoeuvres. Chapter 6 brings our attention to a representative case where textual tradition and literary interpretation cannot be disentangled: is Propertius a ‘difficult’ poet, prone to elliptical writing, or is he an elegant writer whose text has been unfortunately mangled in transmission? In other words, where the text is hard to understand, do we spend our energies reading his poetry as if he were a modernist poet, teasing out cryptic meaning, or do we channel our energies into amending the text to something more easily comprehensible? One's prejudice about the nature of Propertius’ poetry inevitably shapes one's approach to editing the text. The question is insoluble, but the debates thereby evoked are illuminating. As Chapter 2 makes clear, this is a discipline that relies on persuasion and is characterized by strong rhetoric; the contempt and disgust that are directed at fellow scholars and inferior manuscripts are remarkable. Language is often emotive and moralizing; the bracketing of problematic lines described as ‘a coward's remedy’ (86, n. 2). Tarrant himself, who takes a light and genial tone throughout, doesn't shy away from describing a certain practice of citing scholars in the apparatus criticus as ‘an abomination’ (161). One of many evocative details is the idea of Housman storing up denunciations of editorial vices without a particular target yet in mind (68). Traditionally, self-belief and decisive authority have been the hallmarks of the ‘heroic’ style of editing, and these qualities are especially unfashionable in our own era, which prizes the acknowledgement of ambiguity and hermeneutic openness. Tarrant encourages us to accept that the notions of the ‘recoverable original’ or the ‘definitive edition’ are myths, but at the same time to acknowledge that they are necessary myths (40) for this ‘doomed yet noble’ endeavour (156). A critical edition is no more nor less than a provisional ‘working hypothesis’ which invites continued and continual engagement. As Tarrant puts it: ‘any edition, to the degree that it stimulates thinking about the text, begins the process that will lead to its being succeeded by another edition’ (147). Textual criticism should be, therefore, a collaborative endeavour to be marked by humility and an acceptance of the open-endedness of interpretation, of the hermeneutic work that an editor needs to undertake, and also of the overlap between the roles of editor and reader. It is easy to perceive textual criticism – with its heyday in the nineteenth century – as constituting the dry and dusty past of Classics, and indeed Tarrant treats us to a most entertaining account of its Heroic Age, when Housman et al. lashed one another with cruel wit and erudite put-downs. However, Tarrant also makes an irrefutable case for the continued relevance, and indeed the exciting future, of textual criticism – despite the fact that it has lost its position at the centre of our discipline, and so many of us are untrained and unable to appreciate its value. Tarrant's depiction of the discipline brings home the lesson – which we already knew, but now really get – that all classical scholars ought accordingly to be aware of these general issues and to have some grasp of the specific routes by which the text they are reading has been reached, the problematic aspects of that text, and the issues involved in attempting to resolve its problems. Such is the information that an apparatus criticus attempts to convey, and it may therefore be judged on how effectively and efficiently it does so. Having made all of this so clear and in such an engaging fashion, Tarrant concludes by providing as an appendix a helpful guide for the inexperienced to reading a critical apparatus. The final chapters explore two questions in particular: what can technological advances contribute (for instance in access to and presentation of manuscripts), and is the current model of the apparatus criticus fit for purpose? On the latter issue, Tarrant would like to see, at the very least, more scope for providing in the notes nuanced indication of the editor's feelings about the choices he or she has made. He proposes the wider use of phrases that allude to the internal struggles behind a rejected variant, for instance (such as utinam recte or aegre reieco) or the introduction of new symbols for the apparatus that would signal degrees of suspicion – although he doesn't go quite so far as to second Donaldson's suggestion for a pictorial symbol of ‘a small ostrich, with head in the sand’ to denote occasions where an editor follows a manuscript out of despair of making actual sense of the text (58, n. 25). Early in his essay, Tarrant expresses regret that new editions are less likely to be reviewed than other forms of scholarship, and, with the decline in the requisite editorial knowhow, it easy to see why: reviewing a new edition of a text is not a job that can be undertaken with confidence by most scholars of Latin literature. How can one pass judgement on an editor's decisions without a very sound knowledge not only of the work but also of the manuscripts available, of the relationships between them, and of the subsequent critical tradition? How can one comment on individual amendments or conjectures without an understanding of the entire interpretative framework which the critic has brought to bear? One of the many valuable things I have learned from Tarrant's book is that it not always necessary to comment on individual cruces; equally useful can be an evaluation of the general approach and principles upon which an edition is both established and communicated.

Sacrificial Tradition and Religion during the Early Iron Age in South Scandinavia – with Special Reference to Settlement SacrificesSacrificial customs and religion during the Early Iron Age (500 BC–400 AD) has occupied archaeologists from the infancy of archaeology. Most would probably agree that the religion was primarily fertility related, originating as it was in the existing peasant society. The literature does not reflect any disagreement about the religion of the Early Iron Age being polytheistic and consequently concerned a variety of gods. However, it is still unknown how the religion was integrated in the everyday life, and under which conditions it was practiced.The research interest and the overall synthesis framework have especially addressed sacrifices in bogs and wetlands (for instance weapon sacrifices, bog bodies, deposited earthenware, anthropomorphic wooden figures, domestic animals, cauldrons, ring sacrifices, etc.). Strongly simplified, the existing consensus may be expressed in one single sentence: The overall society-related sacrificial traditions develop from being almost exclusively connected with wetland areas during the Early Iron Age (until c.400 AD) to being primarily connected with dry land after this time, cf. Fig. 1.The question is whether – based on the intense data collection over the recent decades – archaeology can or should maintain this very simple picture of the development of the sacrificial traditions and the religions during the Iron Age? Is it possible that we – rooted in for instance narrow definitions of sacrificial finds, habitual thinking, and a “delusion” consisting of the numerous well-preserved, well-documented, spectacular, and impressive finds of bog sacrifices – fail to see numerous forms of deposits, which (as opposed to the impressive finds of sacrifices in bogs) are hidden in the archaeological material?The settlements of the Iron Age have been excavated in large numbers over the recent decades, and it is the ritual finds from these localities that provide the background for this article.The ritual deposits from the settlements can be divided into two superior groups distinguished by the physical context. One comprises sacrifices made to constructions, which are characterized by being directly connected to a specific structure; the other encompasses settlement sacrifices that are to a higher degree characterized by an overriding affiliation to the settlement. The establishment of a sacrifice definition suitable for scanning the archaeological material for relevant finds is of vital importance. As the definition should not beforehand restrict the search through the material, it is important not to narrow the basis by concentrating only on the physical characteristics of the individual artefacts. The general idea behind the present presentation is that the different ritual dimensions of a society are internally connected as they function within the same overall conventions and, as a consequence, make up parts of a general mental structure, which can leave physically recognizable traces across the different ritual dimensions, cf. Fig. 2. This principal viewpoint creates a theoretical starting point for my work and the established definition of sacrificial finds: All intentionally deposited objects, which analytically show significant similarities as regards their physical appearance and/or their deposition context with other recognized ritual objects/contexts, and which are closely connected to these in time and space, should, when analysed, be considered sacrificial finds.The British religious historian, Ninian Smart, describes religion as consisting of seven thematically describing situations, which – albeit not completely unconnected – may be described individually:1) A dogmatic and philosophical dimension, comprising doctrine systems.2) A mythical and narrative dimension, comprising tales of the deities, of the creation, etc.3) An ethical and judicial dimension, comprising the consequences of the religion in relation to the shaping of the life of the individual.4) A social and institutional dimension comprising organisations and institutions that tie together the individual religious society.5) An empirical and emotional dimension comprising the individual’s experience of god and the divine.6) A ritual and practical dimension comprising prayer, sacrifices, worship, etc.7) A materiel dimension comprising architecture, art, sacred places, buildings, and iconography.As archaeologists, we have a very limited possibility of investigating the very thoughts behind the practiced religion. It is therefore natural to concentrate to a higher extent on the overall setting for it – the ritual dimension and the materiel dimension respectively. The ritual dimension and in particular its sacrificial aspect is traditionally divided into groups characterised by their significance level within the religion as such.1) The first and most “important” group consists of cult rituals. These are characterized by being calendar rites based on the myths of the religion or the history of the people, and by playing a part in the events of the year.2) The next group comprises transition rites (rite de passage), which follow the life cycle of the individual.3) The last group comprises rites of crises, which serve the purpose of averting danger, illness, etc.It is important to realize that the two first ritual groups are predictable cyclic rituals addressing the gods, the myths, and/or the people/the individual respectively. Only the third and least central group of rituals is determined by non-predictable and “not-always” occurring incidences. On this background, it becomes central to analyse, which category one is facing when one wants to assess its importance for the religion as such, in order to evaluate the primary character of the religion.In an attempt to understand the overall importance of a specific ritual practice, one cannot ignore a very complicated problem, which is to evaluate whether the sacrifices were practiced by single individuals or by a larger group of people as part of more common and society-supporting rituals. The issue of the relation between different sacrifice types and the groups causing these has been addressed repeatedly. Often, narrow physical interpretation frames as to who sacrificed what are advanced (i.e. Fig. 3). However, the question is how suitable are these very narrow and rigid interpretation models? As mentioned above, a sacrifice is defined by the intention (context) that caused it rather than by the specific physical form of the object!The above mentioned methodical and theoretical issues provide the background for the author’s investigation of the archaeological sources, in which he focused especially on the relationship between ritual actions as they are expressed in bog deposits and in burial grounds and measured them against the contemporary finds from the settle­ments.The analysis of the archaeological material is based on those find groups (sacrifices of cauldrons, magnificent chariots, humans, animals, metals, and weapons), which have traditionally been presented as a proof that society supporting and more community influenced ritual sacrifices were carried out beside the bogs.The examination of the material supports that sacrifices of cauldrons, magnificent chariots, humans, animals, and earthenware are found in both settlements and wetlands (Figs. 4-12), and that the deposits seem to follow superior ritual conventions, i.e. Fig. 2. The sacrifices were not made in fixed sacred places but in a momentary sacred context, which returns to its daily secular sphere once the rituals have been carried out. Often, the ceremony consists of a ritual cutting up of the sacrificed object, and the pars pro toto principle occurs completely integrated in connection with both burial customs, wetland sacrifice customs, and settlement sacrifice customs. Sacrifices often occur as an expression of a rite de passage connected to the structures, fields, or infrastructure of the village. However, the repeated finds of earthenware vessels, humans, and animals in both wetland areas and in the villages indicates that fertility sacrifices were made regularly as part of the cyclic agricultural world. This places the find groups in a central position when it comes to understanding the religious landscape of the Early Iron Age. In a lot of respects, the settlement finds appear as direct parallel material to the contemporary wetland-related sacrificial custom and so one must assume that major religious events also took place in the settlements, for instance when a human or a cauldron was handed over to the next world. Both the selection of sacrificial objects, the form of depositing, and the preceding ceremonial treatment seem to follow superior ritual structures applying to both funerary rites and wetland sacrifices in Iron Age society.Often, the individual settlement-related sacrificial find seems to be explained by everyday doings, as largely all sacrifice-related objects of the Early Iron Age have a natural affiliation with the settlement and the daily housekeeping. However, it is clear that if the overwhelming amount of data is made subject to a comprehensive and detailed contextual analysis, settlement related find groups and attached action patterns appear, which have direct parallels in the ritual interpretation platform of the bog context. These parallels cannot be explained by pure practical or coincidence-related explanation models!As opposed to ploughed-up Stone Age axe deposits or impressive bronze depots from the Bronze Age and gold depots from the Late Iron Age, a ploughed-up collection of either earthenware, bones, human parts, etc. are not easily explained as sacrificial deposits. However, much indicates that the sacrificial settlement deposits of the Iron Age were not placed very deeply, and so they occur in the arable soil of later times. We must therefore assume that these very settlement-related sacrificial deposits from the Early Iron Age are extremely underrepresented in the available archaeological material. In order to clarify the sacrifice traditions in the Early Iron Age settlements, it is therefore necessary to have localities, which comply with a very rarely occurring find situation. The sites must have fine preservation conditions for bone material and, equally important, thick, continuously accumulated deposits of culture layers, as these preserve the usually shallowly deposited sacrifices. Further, it would be a great advantage if the site has a high degree of settlement continuity, as under optimal conditions, the investigation should comprise the activities of several centuries on the same spot.The Aalborg area holds Early Iron Age localities, which meet all of the above-mentioned conditions – for instance the settlement mound of Nr. Tranders, from which a few results will be pointed out. Time wise, the locality covers all of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and the fist part of the Early Roman Iron Age. Around ten farm units have been excavated from the settlement, each of which can be traced across a period of several hundred years. The houses were constructed with chalk floors (cf. Fig. 13), which give optimal preservation conditions for bone material, and the culture deposits assumed a thickness of up to 2 metres. Around 150 houses were excavated at this site (cf. Fig. 14). The author systematically checked the comprehensive find material, and starting from the theoretical and methodical approach presented in this article, was able to isolate 393 sacrificial deposits – a very comprehensive material in comparison with the sacrificial wetland sites!In 279 cases, it was possible to isolate sacrifices in connection with constructions. These comprised such different items as Stone Age axes, fossils, dress pins, a bronze fibula, iron knives, iron arrowheads, a bronze ring, an iron axe, various pottery sacrifices, amber, bone stilettos, bone spearheads, a bone arrowhead, complete animal skeletons, animal skulls and jaws, various animal bones, an infant, humane skull fragments, etc. (cf. Fig. 15). Just as the sacrificed objects themselves vary, so does the sacrifice intensity in the different constructions. Thus, houses without any registered construction sacrifices occur, whereas other constructions showed up to 5-15 sacrifices. These intense sacrifice activities are mainly connected with the later settlement phases from the Late Pre-Roman and the Early Roman Iron Age.The most ordinary find groups are different animal bones, pottery, Stone Age axes, fossils, and various pointed or edged tools. It is a characteristic of the construction sacrifices that they almost never show any signs of having been burnt prior to the depositing. The fact that all finds are not comparable merely because they are related to a construction is obvious, as the find group comprises as different objects as a sea urchin and an infant! Whereas the first should probably be considered an amulet, human sacrifices are traditionally considered a far more radical and ultimate act, and thus a sacrifice concerning a wider circle than the individual household. The highly varied sacrifice material causes the traditional link between construction sacrifices and an extremely narrow celebrant group to be reassessed. The excavations at Nr. Tranders also stress the fact that the amount of registered construction sacrifices are highly dependant on the preservation conditions and context registration as well as an open mind towards ritual interpretations in a traditionally secular research setting.In 114 cases, it was possible to determine settlement sacrifices at Nr. Tranders (cf. Fig. 16). The variation between the sacrificed objects closely follows the above described construction sacrifice and bog sacrifice traditions – both as regards temporary intensity in the centuries around the birth of Christ and which objects were deposited. From a superior view, the settlement sacrifices are characterized by often having been deposited in small, independent sacrificial pits, which were merely dug down a few centimetres from the surface level of the time, and rarely more than 25 cm. This very limited deposition depth emphasizes the enormous problems and distorting factors, which are probably the reason why the settlement sacrifices are so anonymous in most Iron Age settlements. They were simply ploughed away! The dominating sacrificial animal in the settlements was the sheep, often a lamb. However, the dog, the horse, and the cow also occur frequently in the material, whereas the pig is rarely included in the finds. To judge from both settlement and structure sacrifices, the distribution of sacrificial animals seem to be a direct mirror image of the life basis of the Early Iron Age society in the Aalborg area.One ritual element in particular, however, fundamentally separates the group of settlement sacrifices from those connected to structures, namely fire. Whereas fire does not seem to be part of the ritual make-up concerning structure sacrifices, both burnt and unburnt sacrifices appear in the settlement sacrifice material (cf. Fig. 17 & 18). This condition is especially obvious when examining the deposited animal and human bones. The two maps on Fig. 19 show the finds of burnt and unburnt bone deposits respectively. On the background of these two plots (x, y, and z coordinates) the following analysis has been made: (interpolation “unburnt”)-(interpolation “burnt”), cf. Fig. 20. The analysis clearly points out that the relation between burnt and unburnt bone deposits is time related: the burnt deposits were made in the time before the birth of Christ, whereas the unburnt deposits were made during the following centuries. If this is related to the contemporary development of the grave custom in North Jutland, it is noteworthy that we can establish an obvious parallel development. Thus, the burial custom also changes around the beginning of the birth of Christ from a cremation grave custom to an inhumation grave custom. This coincidence probably indicates that within the two different religious and ritual contexts, the “ritual language” is to some degree identical when it comes to passing on humans and sacrificial animals.Irrespective of the superior sacrificial context – a bog, a lake, a field, a meadow, a structure, or a settlement – both the sacrifice intensity and the sacrificed objects seem to be based on objects from the daily household. As shown in the case of Nr. Tranders, the sacrifices occur in such large numbers on settlements with optimal preservation conditions that it is impossible to maintain the thesis that the Iron Age people had an especially one-sided preference for performing the sacrificial rituals in connection with wetland areas.As a supplement to the archaeological evidence, archaeologists have often sought support in historical accounts written by Romans in the centuries around the birth of Christ. The Roman historian Tacitus’ description of the religious activities of the Teutons is particularly describing and geographically differentiated. He mentions some general features such as the Teutons mainly worshipping Mercury (Mercury is the god of fertility, shepherds, etc.) and that they consider it a sacred duty even to bring him a human sacrifice on fixed days (i.e. a sacrifice cycle). Hercules and Mars (gods of strength and war) can only be reconciled with the allowed animal sacrifices. Besides, the Teutons consider it incompatible with the grandness of the heavenly powers to close them in behind walls and give them human features (cf. the lacking iconography). Tacitus´ overall description of the religion of the Teutons is thus primarily dealing with fertility sacrifices in relation to Mercury and the sacrifice of humans on certain days, i.e. a sacrifice cycle.More specifically, Tacitus describes the religious practice performed by tribes in South Scandinavia and North Germany at the time immediately succeeding the birth of Christ:“Nor in one of these nations does aught remarkable occur, only that they universally join in the worship of Nerthus; that is to say, the Mother Earth [Nerthus is phonetically concordant with the name Njord, a fertility goddess known from Norse mythology]. Her they believe to interpose in the affairs of man, and to visit countries. In an island of the ocean stands the wood Castum: in it is a chariot dedicated to the Goddess, covered over with a curtain, and permitted to be touched by none but the Priest. Whenever the Goddess enters this her holy vehicle, he perceives her; and with profound veneration attends the motion of the chariot, which is always drawn by yoked cows. Then it is that days of rejoicing always ensue, and in all places whatsoever which she descends to honour with a visit and her company, feasts and recreation abound. They go not to war; they touch no arms; fast laid up is every hostile weapon; peace and repose are then only known, then only beloved, till to the temple the same priest reconducts the Goddess when well tired with the conversation of mortal beings. Anon the chariot is washed and purified in a secret lake, as also the curtains; nay, the Deity herself too, if you choose to believe it. In this office it is slaves who minister, and they are forthwith doomed to be swallowed up in the same lake. Hence all men are possessed with mysterious terror; as well as with a holy ignorance what that must be, which none see but such as are immediately to perish.”Traditionally, the text is solely related to the numerous bog finds from the period. The question is, however, whether this is appropriate? Even a very limited analysis of the content of the text clearly reveals that the described religious exertion and the traces it must have left in the archaeological material can only be partly described from the numerous sacrificial bogs. The account of Nerthus may be split into two separate parts. One part that describes the common religious actions and another part comprising rituals carried out by a narrower group of people. The ritual mentioned with a severely limited circle (priest and slaves) comprises the washing of the goddess’ chariot by a lake and the succeeding sacrifice of the slaves chosen for the task. Far larger does the participant group appear throughout the rest of the Nerthus story. At first, there is a short mentioning of Nerthus driving about to the different tribes! This may be interpreted in such a way that the rituals described comprise actions, which take place where people are primarily moving about, i.e. in the villages! Perhaps the larger settlements of the Early Iron Age play a central part in relation to such common society-supporting ritual traditions. Tacitus decribes the physical context to be able to change its rules and norms at this sudden religious activity (cf. “They go not to war; they touch no arms.”) and in this way change sphere from an everyday, secular context to a religious context – a sacrosanct condition arises. The settlement thus enters different spheres at different times! Tacitus´ account of the execution of and the setting for the practiced ritual structure thus closely follows the structure known from archaeological excavations of bogs and settlements.How, then, does the religious practice of the Early Iron Age – and its sacrificial part in particular – appear on the background of the analyses above? (Fig. 22). May the sacrificial activity in actual fact be divided into two overriding groups, as was previously the tradition – individual structure sacrifices on settlements and both common and individual sacrifices in wetland areas – or is it necessary to revise and differentiate this view of Early Iron Age religion and the sacrificial customs in particular?The very unbalanced picture of the ritual displays of the society, involving chosen bogs as an almost “church-like” forum, is neither expressed in the archaeological material nor in the few written sources. On the contrary, the sacrificial activity appears as a very complex area, completely connected to the time and the regional development of the society of which it was part. Sacrificial objects primarily comprising everyday objects in the form of food, earthenware, animals, and humans did not differ from the secular culture until the actual ritual act took place.Considering the fact that the sacrificial objects comprised a wide range of everyday items, it is perhaps not so strange that the context in which the objects were sacrificed also varied considerably. It thus seems as if the conventional sacrificial customs were attached to the complete active resource area of the settlements, both in the form of wetland areas, and to the same degree of settlements. The conditions concerning burial sites, field systems, grazing areas, border markings, etc. still appear unclear, although it can be established that here, too, ritual activities took place according to the same conventions.The exertion of the rituals constituted a just as varied picture during the Early Iron Age as did the choice of sacrificial objects and place of sacrifice. Thus, we see objects deposited intact, as pars pro toto, smashed, burnt, etc. In spite of this very complex picture, patterns do seem to occur. There are thus strong indications that the rituals connected to settlement sacrifices of humans and animals during the Early Iron Age are closely connected with the rituals attached to the burial custom, and as such mirror a conventional communication form between humans and gods. Conversely, it seems as if structure sacrifices through all of the Early Iron Age primarily occur unburnt and that the ritual make-up connected to the finds of structure sacrifices is thus detached from the previously mentioned types of sacrifice, whereas the actual selection of the sacrificial objects seem to follow the same pattern.It is a characteristic of the ritual environments of the Early Iron Age that they appear momentary and as part of the daily life in the peasant community. Much thus indicates that permanent sacred environments and buildings did not exist to any particularly large degree. This does not imply that people would not return to the same sacred sacrificial places but rather that in between the sacrifices, these places formed part of the daily life, just as all the other parts of the cultural landscape.The examination of both published and unpublished material shows that the settlements were parallel contexts to the wetland areas and that these two contexts probably supplemented each other within the religious landscape of the Early Iron Age. In the light of the sacrificial find material there is no need to make a strong distinction between the religious societal roles of the settlements as opposed to the wetlands. The context (wetland and settlement) cannot in itself be understood as a useful parameter for determining whether we are dealing with large collective society-supporting ritual sites or sites connected to a minor village community. The question is whether the variation of sacrificial contexts should be related to different deities and myths, i.e. the mythical and narrative dimension of the religion, rather than to the size of the group of participants. On a few settlements, metal vessels, chariots, and humans were sacrificed – find types that are traditionally associated with the bogs and with groups of participants from a larger area than the individual settlement. This interpretation should also be applied to the settlements.In spite of the fact that from an overall perspective, the practiced religion in South Scandinavia seems homogenous, there is neither archaeological nor historical evidence for the presence of real ritual and religious units comprising large areas, such as complete provinces. However, we must assume that sacrifices of for instance humans, chariots, cauldrons, and the large weapon accumulations were made by groups of people exceeding the number of inhabitants in a single settlement. We thus have no reason for questioning the traditional concept that chosen wetland areas functioned as sacred places from time to time to major sections of the population – whether the sacrifices were brought about by for instance acts of war or as part of a cyclic ritual. The question is whether the large settlements of the Early Iron Age did not play a similar part to a hinterland consisting of a number of minor settlements, as the comprehensive finds from for instance the settlement mounds near Aalborg seem to indicate.During the Late Roman Iron Age and Early Germanic Iron Age, the previously so comprehensive sacrificial activity connected to the wetlands declined considerably. Parallel to this, the frequent settlement-related fertility sacrifices of bones and earthenware vessels in the Early Iron Age recede into the background in favour of knives, lances, craftsmen’s tools, and prestigious items representing the changed society of these centuries. During the Late Iron Age, the iconographic imagery, after having been throttled down for almost a millennia, regains a central role within the religion. This happens by virtue of a varied imagery on prestigious items such as bracteates and “guldgubber,” cf. Fig. 21. Seen as a whole, it seems as if – parallel to the development of the society during the Late Roman Iron Age and the Early Germanic Iron Age – there is a dimension displacement within the ritual and religious world, which manifests itself in an increased focus on the material dimension. The question is whether this very dimension displacement is not reflecting the religious development from the fertility-related Vanir faith to the more elitist Æsir faith.Jesper HansenOdense Bys Museer Translated by Annette Lerche Trolle

Abstract UK financial regulators are experimenting with the conversion of rulebook content into machine-readable and executable code. A major driver of these initiatives is the belief that the use of algorithms will eliminate the need for human interpretation as a deliberative process, and that this would be a welcome development because it will improve effectiveness while cutting time and costs for regulators and the industry alike. In this article, I set out to explain why human interpretation should be preserved and further harnessed if data-driven governance is to work at all. To support my thesis, I bring attention to the limited translatability of rulebook content into code, and to the difficulties for machines to engage with the full spectrum of tasks of analogical reasoning. I further contend that it would be desirable to preserve human interpretation on procedural grounds pertaining to the legitimacy of financial regulators. I conclude with recommendations about the future design of the financial rulebooks.

There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisements (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale & Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. & A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.

Wallack, Max, and Carolyn Given. Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear In The Refrigerator?: An Explanation Of Alzheimer's Disease For Children. n.p.: [United States] : Puzzles To Remember, Inc., 2013. Print.This book is a must read for any family affected by Alzheimer’s with elementary school- aged children. Co-author Max Wallack has the right credentials for this project both personally and professionally. At the time the book was published, Max was a 17 year old junior and researcher in the Molecular Psychiatry in Aging Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine. He was also caregiver to his great grandmother who had Alzheimer's disease and foundedwww.PuzzlesToRemember.org.The book is told from the point of view of 7 year old Julie, who recounts her experiences over the past three years of living with her grandmother who has Alzheimer's. It conveys several important and complex themes in crayon-like drawings and simple text that would appeal to children. Some of the images also appear to be a combination of drawing and somewhat pixelated computer generated images. However, on the whole it fits with the child’s perspective. In addition, it states in the inside flap that 50% of the proceeds from the book will support Alzheimer’s research and the care of Alzheimer’s patients.When Grandma first comes to live with them she and Julie are very close and do lots of activities together. As the disease progresses, Grandma is able to do less but Julie finds new ways of maintaining their relationship such as: taking walks outside, telling her Grandma happy stories when she becomes confused or afraid, getting her a special red plate and cutting her food to help her remember to eat, and colouring or drawing together.The stressful and embarrassing situations presented in the book would be particularly useful in helping children to understand what can happen, why and ways to address these types of issues. When grandma leaves the house by herself in the middle of the night without her coat and is brought home by the police, Julie’s mother explains: “Grandma is probably having beautiful memories of her childhood and she wanted to find the place where she used to live so she could enjoy more of those happy, wonderful times.” The family then installs a bell on the door so they always know when someone is going in or out. Through Julie, the authors acknowledge that it is normal for children to feel worried, embarrassed and upset in these types of situations. Grandma is so terrified of Julie’s Halloween costume that she begins to cry. Julie has to remove it and cannot go trick or treating. Julie’s reaction is honest: “I was really angry at Grandma...the next day I felt sorry...I know it’s not her fault...but I’m also sad that my Halloween was spoiled”.The authors use kid-friendly metaphors to explain how the disease affects the brain. For example, one illustration depicts the transmission of messages across brain cells as a baseball being pitched and caught. In the cells affected by Alzheimer’s the pitcher drops the ball.The authors also highlight the humorous side of things such as when Grandma puts her underwear in the refrigerator or a toothbrush in the toaster. The book concludes with a brief section about the role of medicine, scientists and research studies.On a personal note, as someone who has also been a caregiver for a grandmother with Alzheimer's disease, the most touching aspect is that it teaches children how to maintain a close bond with a loved one in spite of the many challenges they will face together.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Kim FrailKim is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. Children’s literature is a big part of her world at work and at home. She also enjoys gardening, renovating and keeping up with her kids.

Introduction Cookbooks are more than recipes. They are valuable historical artifacts containing information about the food, culture and society that produced and used them (Driver, Theophano, Wheaton). This story is based on my first and failed attempt at using an old recipe to make a cheddar cheese. It examines the effect of changed technology on artisanal cooking practices (Supski, Giard) and how recipe writing has had to adapt to changed culinary technology. In the absence of the generational—mother to daughter—handing down of cooking practices, and an inherited understanding of traditional cooking techniques gained through practice over time, today’s recipes rely on clear written instructions, illustrations and demonstration for their success. Luce Giard’s discussion of women’s domestic work, and what she refers to as “memory of apprenticeship” (157), and the technological changes that interrupted artisanal food making, underpin the story. Using creative nonfiction this story invites the reader to appreciate how food and cooking are connected to our lives—from the local to the global, connecting food to remembering (Berzok), nostalgia (Duruz), and family relationships (Giard, Supski).My Cheddar CheeseWith their high degree of ritualization and their strong affective investment, culinary activities are for many women of all ages a place of happiness pleasure and discovery. Such life activities demand as much intelligence, imagination and memory as those traditionally held as superior, such as music and weaving (Giard 151). My first attempt at making a cheddar cheese started out as a culinary adventure—part nostalgia, part challenge and part boast. I had in mind the cloth wrapped cheddar cheese of my childhood. We called it mouse’s cheese, as even the mice preferred it to the Kraft cheddar cheese that came wrapped in foil and packaged in a box. My father would peel the cloth away from the round of cheese before cutting out a wedge from it. Then he would slice it, and lay it on buttered toast and grill it until it melted. Bubbles of cheesy oil slid off the sides of the toast, onto the bottom of the grill pan, where cold and crisp afterwards, I would pick them off and eat them. I think that it was this memory that drove my anticipation of the joy of actually making a cheese. The process not only connected me to this memory but also would give me the satisfaction of saying, “I made it myself.” Giard understood this pleasure, connecting it to the lives we lead today:when for so many people nothing remains at the end of the day except for the bitter wear and tear of so many dull hours, the preparation of a meal furnishes that rare joy of producing something oneself, of fashioning a ferment of reality, of knowing the joys of demiurgic miniaturization, all the while securing the gratitude of those who will consume it by way of pleasant and innocent seductions (158). The recipe came from a Country Women’s Association (CWA) cookbook first published in 1936 but republished with minor changes in 1982. It looked simple enough, and the fact that it was there, in amongst recipes for fresh cheeses and butter, gave me the confidence to simply follow the recipe. I would include it in a blog I had started about cooking from old recipe books. Making a cheese gave me the perfect opportunity to follow one recipe and report on its development over its six-week maturation. My followers, I thought, could come on this culinary journey with me. Day One: The Boast I am making a cheddar cheese from a CWA (Country Women’s Association) cookbook. This book, first published in 1936 has chapters on invalid cooking, household hints and a section called ‘Hints to Temper the Temper’. In the butter and cheese making section there is a recipe for a cheddar cheese. It looks so easy. Just a few ingredients: milk, rennet, salt and food colouring, and a few lines of instruction. A friend has fashioned a sort of cheese press for me—based on a picture of one we found on the internet. Yesterday I bought eight litres of organic milk and set to. The recipe is very simple: 1) Heat the milk to blood temperature, add nine rennet tablets and a teaspoon of cheese colouring. Leave it to set and harden and once that is done cut it into the curd and drain the whey off. 2) Once it is dry, add salt and turn it into a cheese press—lined with muslin—to start pressing all the excess moisture out by applying a bit more pressure each day. 3) Once all the moisture is pressed out it wrap it in waxed cheese cloth, set it in a cool place and turn it each day for six weeks.I am at the first stage and the whey is draining away. I think it will be another couple of days before I can start pressing it.In six weeks, I will have a cheese (Adams).Mary Shearer wrote in the foreword of this new 1982 edition of the original text, that the needs of the community had changed in fifty years of CWA service and this included a significant change to meet these needs, namely, a conversion of the recipes from imperial measurements to the metric system. But she expressed confidence that, with the tried recipes of many country women, “the universal appeal enjoyed since the first edition will be retained” (Foreword). Marjorie Maughan, who also wrote a message in the foreword, felt that “with the adaptability of women, the use of metric measures will be accomplished with ease and this edition will be as popular as ever.”Until I started, I had not considered failure. The recipe was included in a reliable cookery book that promised to have universal appeal and where the only possible challenge for cooks of its day would be its metric, rather than imperial, measurements. I was familiar with both metric and imperial—the only challenge mentioned in the foreword—and seduced by the simplicity of both the instructions and the ingredient list. I was soon to discover that my CWA recipe was full of omissions, assumptions, and errors.Cheese was traditionally made in many country kitchens as a way of preserving milk. The skill needed to make it was acquired through years of watching and learning. A written recipe was more of an aide memoire consisting of a list of ingredients and a few lines of simple instruction. To write recipes for today’s cooks, recipe writers usually work from test-kitchens and must include precise detail: their words are tested and edited until they are foolproof. Old recipes are full of assumed knowledge. They often lack details, leave out ingredients, do not provide measurements (or use measurements that are no longer in common usage, like a peck), and use equipment and ingredients that are no longer available or now have a different name. But as Giard writes, women are practiced at dealing with culinary challenges, “each meal demands the invention of an alternative mini-strategy when one ingredient or the appropriate utensil is lacking” (158). I soon found problems with the recipe. It called for eight litres (two gallons) new milk, a two and a half kilogram (five pound) jam tin (which would hold the cheese from six gallons of milk), salt, a teaspoon of cheese colouring, and one dessertspoon of rennet (or nine rennet tablets). What was new milk? What is cheese colouring? Where can I get rennet tablets? The recipe was imprecise: two and a half kilograms does not equate to five pounds. Where do I get a jam tin? I remember big tins of jam from my childhood but I was not sure jam was even packaged in tins these days. Why did I need a tin that would hold six gallons of milk when I only needed two gallons for this cheese? Yellow food colouring would be fine—perhaps with a drop of red to give a more orange tint to the finished cheese—and I found rennet tablets in the supermarket, but I was still unsure about the quantity of salt needed. My previously-quite-simple-recipe now had layers of complexity. There was no one I could ask, and I did not have Giard’s “memory of apprenticeship”:Yet, from the minute one becomes interested in the process of culinary production, one notices that it requires a multiple memory: a memory of apprenticeship, of witnessed gestures, and of consistencies, in order, for example, to identify the exact moment when the custard has begun to coat the back of a spoon and thus must be taken off the stove to prevent it from separating (157–58). I reasoned that if I just did exactly what the instructions said, it had to work: Warm the cheese to blood heat, add the cheese colouring and rennet and stir well. Cover with a cloth to keep in the heat. When the curd is set and firm, cut through and through with a large knife to release the whey. Dip the whey off with a saucer, pressing the curd while doing so. Drain off all the whey and when fairly dry crumble the curd and add salt to taste—about 2 teaspoons should be about sufficient (CWA 342).How hot is blood heat and do I need a thermometer? How much cheese colouring do I need? How firm is firm? How many “through and through” cuts should I make? How dry is “fairly dry”? With my cheese now doomed to fail, I searched for The Australian Dairy Board on the Internet looking for some answers. In a modern cheese factory, to ensure the cheese composition is uniform, milk is standardised: stripped then re-made with all its fats and proteins adjusted to the right proportion, although some small cheese makers do not standardise their milk. Then this milk is pasteurised to destroy all disease making micro-organisms, make the cheese safe to eat, and improve its quality. Cheese starter cultures are used (there was no mention of these in my CWA recipe) and once the milk coagulates and is cut to release the whey, it has to be stirred to release more whey. The length of time the curds are stirred is important in the process as it influences the type of cheese that was made.The women who followed my CWA recipe would have dipped a finger into the milk to test its temperature, tasted the curds for salt, and known when the colour was right. They would have just known when the cheese was pressed enough to wrap in the waxed cloth. They would have covered their day clothes with an apron—protecting their clothes from spills—rather than protecting the cheese from contamination. There would be no sterile gloves, white coats, hairnets, or thermometers in their kitchens. If I had been able to ask them questions their answer would have been, “it is done this way because it has always been done more or less like that” (Giard 171).My cheese was both lacking in salt and very pale. Perhaps, I thought, the flavour would intensify and it would darken during the maturation process. If it stayed this colour it would be the same creamy white as an English Wensleydale cheddar rather than the eggnog-coloured mouse cheeses of my childhood. The cheese press was my inspired “mini-strategy” and one step away from being experimental. It was made from 1) the back of a plastic clipboard with holes drilled into it, 2) a piece of agricultural pipe, 3) a flat circular disk of metal the same diameter as the inside of the agricultural pipe attached to a long screw, to add pressure to the cheese and, 4) a handle which allowed me to screw the piece of metal onto the top of the cheese to apply pressure and weight. I was excited to try it and I pushed on: "Line a cheese press with the cheesecloth, pack the curd into it and fold the cloth over the top. Put on a lid—a saucer that will fit in the tin will do very well—place a 3 kg (6 lb.) weight on top and press for 12 hours" (CWA: 343).I had more questions. Should I put the weighted cheese in the refrigerator for the twelve hours whilst it drained or would it be fine on the bench overnight? Three kilograms does not equal six pounds but this probably didn’t matter as I was using a press and not weights. Somewhat intuitively, I decided to leave it overnight on the bench. It was winter after all and the house would be cold once the heating went off automatically at 10.00 pm. I crossed my fingers, wrote about it in my blog and posted some pictures.Day Three: Emerging DoubtsI have just salted the cheese and put it into the press for seven days. Each day I have to increase the weight and change the cheesecloth. It’s a bit smelly …I sourced wax for the next stage and it arrived in the post today. I will keep rewrapping and pressing until the weekend then I will wax it and put it away until it matures.I am a little worried that I did not salt it enough. The recipe said two teaspoons and I wonder if it meant tablespoons. Time will tell (Adams). At this point things started to go very wrong. The cheese smelled off. Perhaps I had ruined my cheese right at the start when I left it out on the bench for its first overnight pressing. Maybe it should have been in the refrigerator. I should have added more salt. There was nothing to do but to keep going and see what happened. I could learn from mistakes, reflect on the process, and try again if it did not work. There was still the possibility that it would work; although the smell in the ’fridge suggested otherwise. Once it was coated in wax, I reasoned, it could not smell.After seven days of pressing, the cheese was now ready to be wiped well, dried, wrapped in buttered muslin, and stored in a cool place for two weeks, and turned every day. I used cheese wax instead of buttered muslin and put it in the refrigerator.The final words from CWA were: "The cheese will be ready in about six weeks, but is better if kept for three months. (A press may be made out of [the] jam tin. The bottom must be punctured, and holes punched around the tin). A wooden press is best" (342).My final words were, "Day-Seven: Failure" (Adams).I was a tad impatient and very concerned about the smell so I waxed the cheese a couple of days early and it is now stashed away in the fridge. (Sealing it in wax should stop it stinking out the fridge!) I have to turn it each day for two weeks then leave it for six. My cheese is either slowly maturing or rotting. The wax has sprung leaks and the clear liquid coming out does not smell good … but I will keep turning it daily for another four weeks (Adams).The Dairy Board instructions dictated that maturation takes place in temperature controlled cool rooms and that cheddar requires a temperature of between 8 and 10˚C for three to twenty-four months. During maturation the enzymes in the cheese break down the fats and proteins allowing the textural and flavour characteristics of the cheese to develop. My cheese sat in the refrigerator (I have no idea what the temperature is set at), where I duly turned it every day. After five weeks the stench in the refrigerator was no longer bearable as the smelly liquid had started to ooze out of the wax. I took it out and cut into it. Beneath its wax-coating my cheese had matured into a stinking mass of soft, oyster-coloured crumbly curds. I binned it, without so much as a taste. Final Post: Know Your Limitations I did make a little goat cheese and that was pretty delicious. I used the same method but I pressed it lightly for a day then wrapped it in greaseproof paper and left it in the fridge. We ate it fresh the next day (Adams).This experiment helped me realise that today’s recipe books contain detailed instructions because the knowledge of cookbook writers, including how to utilise the available technology, has to be conveyed to the reader following their recipes. Such clear instructions are necessary now, whereas in the past, cooks were drawing on skills and knowledge they either had, or could draw on other knowledge sources and networks to gain. I have not given up on making cheddar cheese. I still have the cheese press and some wax, and the cheesecloth I used is washed and folded in the cupboard. Before I do try again, however, I will consult a modern cookbook or book myself into a cheesemaking course and learn from someone who has the skills I need.References Adams. Jill. First Catch a Chicken. 2011. 1 May 2013 ‹http://firstcatchachicken.wordpress.com›.Berzok, Linda Murray. Storied Dishes: What Our Family Recipes Tell Us About Who We Are and Where We’ve Been. Oxford: Praeger, 2011.Country Women’s Association Western Australia Inc. The C.W.A. Cookery Book and Household Hints. 36th ed. Perth: Wigg, 1982.Dairy Australia. “Cheesmaking.” 2013. 20 Jan. 2013 ‹http://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/Dairy-food-and-recipes/Dairy-Products/Cheese/Cheesemaking.aspx›.De Certeau, Giard, Luce, and Mayol, Pierre. The Practice of Everyday Life Vol. 2: Living and Cooking. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998.Driver, Elizabeth. “Cookbooks as Primary Sources for Writing History.” Food, Culture & Society 12.3 (2009): 257–74.Duruz, Jean. “Food as Nostalgia: Eating in the Fifties and Sixties.” Australian Historical Studies 113 (1999): 231–50.Supski, Sian. “‘We still mourn that book’: Cookbooks, Recipes and Foodmaking Knowledge in 1950’s Australia.” Journal of Australian Studies 28.84 (2005): 85–94.Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave, 2002.Wheaton, Barbara. Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789. New York: Touchstone / Simon and Schuster, 1983.

Introduction "Doesn't that wreck your records?" This is one of the first things I generally get asked when someone watches me at work in my home or while spinning at a party. It reminds me of a different but related question I once asked someone who worked at Rotate This!, a particularly popular Toronto DJ refuge, a few days after I had bought my first turntable: DJO: "How do you stop that popping and crackling sound your record gets when you scratch back and forth on the same spot for a while?" CLERK: "You buy two copies of everything, one you keep at home all wrapped-up nice and never use, and the other you mess with." My last $150 had just managed to pay for an old Dual direct drive record player. The precious few recently-released records I had were gifts. I nodded my head and made my way over to the rows of disks which I flipped through to make it look like I was maybe going to buy something. Lp cover after lp cover stared back at me all with names I had absolutely never heard of before, organised according to a hyper- hybridised classification scheme that completely escaped my dictionary-honed alphabetic expectations. Worst of all, there seemed to be only single copies of everything left! A sort of outsider's vertigo washed over me, and 3 minutes after walking into unfamiliar territory, I zipped back out onto the street. Thus was to begin my love/hate relationship with the source of all DJ sounds, surliness and misinformation--the independent record shop. My query had (without my planning) boldly pronounced my neophyte status. The response it solicited challenged my seriousness. How much was I willing to invest in order to ride "the wheels of steel"? Sequence 1 Will Straw describes the meteoric rise to prominence of the CD format, If the compact disk has emerged as one of the most dazzlingly effective of commodity forms, this has little to do with its technical superiority to the vinyl record (which we no longer remember to notice). Rather, the effectiveness has to do with its status as the perfect crossover consumer object. As a cutting-edge audiophile invention, it seduced the technophilic, connoisseurist males who typically buy new sound equipment and quickly build collections of recordings. At the same time, its visual refinement and high price rapidly rendered it legitimate as a gift. In this, the CD has found a wide audience among the population of casual record buyers.(61) Straw's point has to do with the fate of musical recordings within contemporary commodity culture. In the wake of a late 70's record industry slump, music labels turned their attention toward the recapturing of casual record sales (read: aging baby boomers). The general shape of this attempt revolved around a re-configuring of the record- shopping experience dedicated towards reducing "the intimidation seen as endemic to the environment of the record store."(59) The CD format, along with the development of super-sized, general interest (all-genre) record outlets has worked (according to Straw) to streamline record sales towards more-predictable patterns, all the while causing less "selection stress."(59) Re-issues and compilations, special-series trademarks, push-button listening stations, and maze-like display layouts, combined with department store-style service ("Can I help you find anything?") all work towards eliminating the need for familiarity with particular music "scenes" in order to make personally gratifying (and profit engendering) musical choices. Straw's analysis is exemplary in its dissatisfaction with treating the arena of personal musical choice as unaffected by any constraints apart from subjective matters of taste. Straw's evaluation also isolates the vinyl record as an object eminently ready (post-digital revolution) for subcultural appropriation. Its displacement by the CD as the dominant medium for collecting recorded music involved the recasting of the turntable as outdated and inferior, thereby relegating it to the dusty attic, basement or pawn shop (along with crates upon crates upon crates of records). These events set the stage for vinyl's spectacular rise from the ashes. The most prominent feature of this re-emergence has to do not simply with possession of the right kind of stuff (the cachet of having a music collection difficult for others to borrow aside), but with what vinyl and turntable technology can do. Bridge In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige claims that subcultures are, cultures of conspicuous consumption...and it is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its "secret identity" and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is basically the way in which commodities are used in subculture which mark the subculture off from more orthodox cultural formations.(103 Hebdige borrows the notion of bricolage from Levi Strauss in order to describe the particular kind of use subcultures make of the commodities they appropriate. Relationships of identity, difference and order are developed from out of the minds of those who make use of the objects in question and are not necessarily determined by particular qualities inherent to the objects themselves. Henceforth a safety pin more often used for purposes like replacing missing buttons or temporarily joining pieces of fabric can become a punk fashion statement once placed through the nose, ear or torn Sex Pistols tee-shirt. In the case of DJ culture, it is the practice of mixing which most obviously presents itself as definitive of subcultural participation. The objects of conspicuous consumption in this case--record tracks. If mixing can be understood as bricolage, then attempts "to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code"(18) by such a practice are not in vain. Granting mixing the power of meaning sets a formidable (semiotic) framework in place for investigating the practice's outwardly visible (spectacular) form and structure. Hebdige's description of bricolage as a particularly conspicuous and codified type of using, however, runs the risk of privileging an account of record collecting and mixing which interprets it entirely on the model of subjective expression.(1.) What is necessary is a means of access to the dialogue which takes place between a DJ and her records as such. The contents of a DJ's record bag (like Straw's CD shopping bag) are influenced by more that just her imagination, pocket book and exposure to different kinds of music. They are also determined in an important way by each other. Audio mixing is not one practice, it is many, and the choice to develop or use one sort of skill over another is intimately tied up with the type and nature of track one is working with. Sequence 2 The raw practice of DJing relies heavily on a slider integral to DJ mixers known as the _cross-fader_(ital). With the standard DJ set up, when the cross-fader is all the way to the left, the left turntable track plays through the system; vice versa when the fader is all the way to the right. In between is the "open" position which allows both inputs to be heard simultaneously. The most straightforward mixing technique, "cutting," involves using this toggle to quickly switch from one source to another--resulting in the abrupt end of one sound- flow followed by its instantaneous replacement. This technique can be used to achieve a variety of different effects--from the rather straightforward stringing together of the final beat of a four bar sequence from one track with a strong downbeat from something new in order to provide continuous, but sequential musical output, to the thoroughly difficult practice of "beat juggling," where short excerpts of otherwise self-contained tracks ("breaks") are isolated and then extended indefinitely through the use of two copies of the same record (while one record plays, the DJ spins the other back to the downbeat of the break in question, which is then released in rhythm). In both cases timing and rhythm are key. These features of the practice help to explain DJ predilections for tracks which make heavy, predictable use of their rhythm sections. "Blending" is a second technique which uses the open position on the cross-fader to mix two inputs into a live sonic collage. Tempo, rhythm and "density" of source material have an enormous impact on the end result. While any two tracks can be layered in this way, beats that are not synchronized are quick to create cacophony, and vocals also tend to clash dramatically. Melodic lines in general pose certain challenges here since these are in particular keys and have obvious starts and finishes. This is one reason why tracks produced specifically for DJing often have such long, minimal intros and exits. This makes it much easier to create "natural" sounding blends. Atmospheric sounds, low-frequency hums, speech samples and repetitive loops with indeterminate rhythm structures are often used for these segments in order to allow drawn-out, subtle transitions when moving between tracks. If an intro contains a fixed beat (as is the case often with genres constructed specifically for non-stop dancing like house, techno and to some extent drum and bass), then those who want seamless blends need to "beat match" if they want to maintain a dancer's groove. The roots of this technique go back to disco and demand fairly strict genre loyalty in order to insure that a set's worth of tracks all hover around the same tempo, defined in beats-per- minute, or BPMs. The basic procedure involves finding the downbeat of the track one wishes to mix through a set of headphones, releasing that beat in time with the other record while making fine tempo- adjustments via the turntable's pitch control to the point where the track coming through the earphones and the track being played over the system are in synch. The next step is "back-spinning" or "needle dropping" to the start of the track to be mixed, then releasing it again, this time with the cross-fader open. Volume levels can then be adjusted in order to allow the new track to slowly take prominence (the initial track being close to its end at this point) before the cross-fader is closed into the new position and the entire procedure is repeated. Scratching is perhaps the most notorious mixing technique and involves the most different types of manipulations. The practice is most highly developed in hip hop (and related genres like drum and bass) and is used both as an advanced cutting technique for moving between tracks as well as a sonic end-in-itself. It's genesis is attributed to a South Bronx DJ known as Grand Wizard Theodore who was the first (1977) to try to make creative use of the sound associated with moving a record needle back and forth over the same drumbeat, a phenomena familiar to DJs used to cueing-up downbeats through headphones. This trick is now referred to as the "baby scratch," and it along with an ever-increasing host of mutations and hybrids make- up the skills that pay the bills for hip hop DJs. In the case of many of these techniques, the cross-fader is once again used heavily in order to remove unwanted elements of particular scratches from the mix, as well as adding certain staccato and volume-fading effects. Isolated, "pure" sounds are easiest to scratch with and are therefore highly sought after by this sort of DJ--a pastime affectionately referred to as "digging in the crates." Sources of such sounds are extremely diverse, but inevitably revolve around genre's which use minimal orchestration (like movie-soundtracks), accentuated rhythms with frequent breakdowns (like funk or jazz), or which eschew musical form all together (like sound-effects, comedy and children's records). Exit To answer the question which started this investigation, in the end, how wrecked my records get depends a lot on what I'm using them for. To be sure, super-fast scratching patterns and tricks that use lots of back-spinning like beat-juggling will eventually "burn" static into spots on one's records. But with used records costing as little as $1 for three, and battle records (2.) widely available, the effect of this feature of the technology on the actual pursuit of the practice is negligible. And most techniques don't noticeably burn records at all, especially if a DJ's touch is light enough to allow for minimal tone-arm weight (a parameter which controls a turntable's groove-tracking ability). This is the kind of knowledge which comes from interaction with objects. It is also the source of a great part of the subcultural bricoleur's stylistic savvy. Herein lies the essence of the intimidating power of the indie record shop--its display of intimate, physical familiarity with the hidden particularities of the new vinyl experience. Investigators confronted with such familiarity need to find ways to go beyond analyses which stop at the level of acknowledgment of the visible logic displayed by spectacular subcultural practices if they wish to develop nuanced accounts of subcultural life. Such plumbing of the depths often requires listening in the place of observing--whether to first-hand accounts collected through ethnography or to the subtle voice of the objects themselves. (1.) An example of such an account: "DJ-ing is evangelism; a desire to share songs. A key skill is obviously not just to drop the popular, well-known songs at the right part of the night, but to pick the right new releases, track down the obscurer tunes and newest imports, get hold of next month's big tune this month; you gather this pile, this tinder, together, then you work the records, mix them, drop them, cut them, scratch them, melt them, beat them all together until they unite. Voilà; disco inferno." Dave Haslam, "DJ Culture," p. 169. (2.) Records specifically designed by and for scratch DJs and which consist of long strings of scratchable sounds. References Haslam, David. "DJ Culture." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997 Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Melvin and Co. Ltd.. 1979 Straw, Will. "Organized Disorder: The Changing Space of the Record Shop." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997

IntroductionIn March 2015, I visited the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (established 1967) in the “cherry capital of Australia”, the town of Young, New South Wales, in preparation for a student excursion. Like other Australian folk museums, this museum focuses on the ordinary and the everyday of rural life, and is heavily reliant on local history, local historians, volunteers, and donated objects for the collection. It may not sound as though the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (LFFM) holds much potential for a fashion curator, as fashion exhibitions have become high points of innovation in exhibition design. It is quite a jolt to return to old style folk museums, when travelling shows such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 – V&A Museum 2015) or The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (V&A Museum 2011­ – NGV 2014) are popping up around the globe. The contrast stimulated this author to think on the role and the power of curators. This paper will show that the potential for fashion as a vehicle for demonstrating ideas other than through rubrics of design or history has been growing. We all wear dress. We express identity, politics, status, age, gender, social values, and mental state through the way we dress each and every day. These key issues are also explored in many museum exhibitions.Small museums often have an abundance of clothing. For them, it is a case of not only managing and caring for growing collections but also curating objects in a way that communicates regional and often national identity, as well as narrating stories in meaningful ways to audiences. This paper argues that the way in which dress is curated can greatly enhance temporary and permanent exhibitions. Fashion curation is on the rise (Riegels Melchior). This paper looks at why this is so, the potential for this specialisation in curation, the research required, and the sensitivity needed in communicating ideas in exhibitions. It also suggests how fashion curation skills may facilitate an increasing demand.Caring for the AudienceThe paper draws on a case study of how Chinese people at the LFFM are portrayed. The Chinese came to the Young district during the 1860s gold rush. While many people often think the Chinese were sojourners (Rolls), that is, they found gold and returned to China, many actually settled in regional Australia (McGowan; Couchman; Frost). At Young there were riots against the Chinese miners, and this narrative is illustrated at the museum.In examining the LFFM, this paper points to the importance of caring for the audience as well as objects, knowing and acknowledging the current and potential audiences. Caring for how the objects are received and perceived is vital to the work of curators. At this museum, the stereotypic portrayal of Chinese people, through a “coolie” hat, a fan, and two dolls dressed in costume, reminds us of the increased professionalisation of the museum sector in the last 20 years. It also reminds us of the need for good communication through both the objects and texts. Audiences have become more sophisticated, and their expectations have increased. Displays and accompanying texts that do not reflect in depth research, knowledge, and sensitivities can result in viewers losing interest quickly. Not long into my visit I began thinking of the potential reaction by the Chinese graduate students. In a tripartite model called the “museum experience”, Falk and Dierking argue that the social context, personal context, and physical context affect the visitor’s experience (5). The social context of who we visit with influences enjoyment. Placing myself in the students’ shoes sharpened reactions to some of the displays. Curators need to be mindful of a wide range of audiences. The excursion was to be not so much a history learning activity, but a way for students to develop a personal interest in museology and to learn the role museums can play in society in general, as well as in small communities. In this case the personal context was also a professional context. What message would they get?Communication in MuseumsStudies by Falk et al. indicate that museum visitors only view an exhibition for 30 minutes before “museum fatigue” sets in (249–257). The physicality of being in a museum can affect the museum experience. Hence, many institutions responded to these studies by placing the key information and objects in the introductory areas of an exhibition, before the visitor gets bored. As Stephen Bitgood argues, this can become self-fulfilling, as the reaction by the exhibition designers can then be to place all the most interesting material early in the path of the audience, leaving the remainder as mundane displays (196). Bitgood argues there is no museum fatigue. He suggests that there are other things at play which curators need to heed, such as giving visitors choice and opportunities for interaction, and avoiding overloading the audience with information and designing poorly laid-out exhibitions that have no breaks or resting points. All these factors contribute to viewers becoming both mentally and physically tired. Rather than placing the onus on the visitor, he contends there are controllable factors the museum can attend to. One of his recommendations is to be provocative in communication. Stimulating exhibitions are more likely to engage the visitor, minimising boredom and tiredness (197). Xerxes Mazda recommends treating an exhibition like a good story, with a beginning, a dark moment, a climax, and an ending. The LFFM certainly has those elements, but they are not translated into curation that gives a compelling narration that holds the visitors’ attention. Object labels give only rudimentary information, such as: “Wooden Horse collar/very rare/donated by Mr Allan Gordon.” Without accompanying context and engaging language, many visitors could find it difficult to relate to, and actively reflect on, the social narrative that the museum’s objects could reflect.Text plays an important role in museums, particularly this museum. Communication skills of the label writers are vital to enhancing the museum visit. Louise Ravelli, in writing on museum texts, states that “communication needs to be more explicit and more reflexive—to bring implicit assumptions to the surface” (3). This is particularly so for the LFFM. Posing questions and using an active voice can provoke the viewer. The power of text can be seen in one particular museum object. In the first gallery is a banner that contains blatant racist text. Bringing racism to the surface through reflexive labelling can be powerful. So for this museum communication needs to be sensitive and informative, as well as pragmatic. It is not just a case of being reminded that Australia has a long history of racism towards non-Anglo Saxon migrants. A sensitive approach in label-writing could ask visitors to reflect on Australia’s long and continued history of racism and relate it to the contemporary migration debate, thereby connecting the present day to dark historical events. A question such as, “How does Australia deal with racism towards migrants today?” brings issues to the surface. Or, more provocatively, “How would I deal with such racism?” takes the issue to a personal level, rather than using language to distance the issue of racism to a national issue. Museums are more than repositories of objects. Even a small underfunded museum can have great impact on the viewer through the language they use to make meaning of their display. The Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner at the LFFMThe “destination” object of the museum in Young is the Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner. Those with a keen interest in Australian history and politics come to view this large sheet of canvas that elicits part of the narrative of the Lambing Flat Riots, which are claimed to be germane to the White Australia Policy (one of the very first pieces of legislation after the Federation of Australia was The Immigration Restriction Act 1901).On 30 June 1861 a violent anti-Chinese riot occurred on the goldfields of Lambing Flat (now known as Young). It was the culmination of eight months of growing conflict between European and Chinese miners. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Europeans lived and worked in these goldfields, with little government authority overseeing the mining regulations. Earlier, in November 1860, a group of disgruntled European miners marched behind a German brass band, chasing off 500 Chinese from the field and destroying their tents. Tensions rose and fell until the following June, when the large banner was painted and paraded to gather up supporters: “…two of their leaders carrying in advance a magnificent flag, on which was written in gold letters – NO CHINESE! ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ...” (qtd. in Coates 40). Terrified, over 1,270 Chinese took refuge 20 kilometres away on James Roberts’s property, “Currawong”. The National Museum of Australia commissioned an animation of the event, The Harvest of Endurance. It may seem obvious, but the animators indicated the difference between the Chinese and the Europeans through dress, regardless that the Chinese wore western dress on the goldfields once the clothing they brought with them wore out (McGregor and McGregor 32). Nonetheless, Chinese expressions of masculinity differed. Their pigtails, their shoes, and their hats were used as shorthand in cartoons of the day to express the anxiety felt by many European settlers. A more active demonstration was reported in The Argus: “ … one man … returned with eight pigtails attached to a flag, glorifying in the work that had been done” (6). We can only imagine this trophy and the de-masculinisation it caused.The 1,200 x 1,200 mm banner now lays flat in a purpose-built display unit. Viewers can see that it was not a hastily constructed work. The careful drafting of original pencil marks can be seen around the circus styled font: red and blue, with the now yellow shadowing. The banner was tied with red and green ribbon of which small remnants remain attached.The McCarthy family had held the banner for 100 years, from the riots until it was loaned to the Royal Australian Historical Society in November 1961. It was given to the LFFM when it opened six years later. The banner is given key positioning in the museum, indicating its importance to the community and its place in the region’s memory. Just whose memory is narrated becomes apparent in the displays. The voice of the Chinese is missing.Memory and Museums Museums are interested in memory. When visitors come to museums, the work they do is to claim, discover, and sometimes rekindle memory (Smith; Crane; Williams)—-and even to reshape memory (Davidson). Fashion constantly plays with memory: styles, themes, textiles, and colours are repeated and recycled. “Cutting and pasting” presents a new context from one season to the next. What better avenue to arouse memory in museums than fashion curation? This paper argues that fashion exhibitions fit within the museum as a “theatre of memory”, where social memory, commemoration, heritage, myth, fantasy, and desire are played out (Samuels). In the past, institutions and fashion curators often had to construct academic frameworks of “history” or “design” in order to legitimise fashion exhibitions as a serious pursuit. Exhibitions such as Fashion and Politics (New York 2009), Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism (Oslo 2014) and Fashion as Social Energy (Milan 2015) show that fashion can explore deeper social concerns and political issues.The Rise of Fashion CuratorsThe fashion curator is a relative newcomer. What would become the modern fashion curator made inroads into museums through ethnographic and anthropological collections early in the 20th century. Fashion as “history” soon followed into history and social museums. Until the 1990s, the fashion curator in a museum was seen as, and closely associated with, the fashion historian or craft curator. It could be said that James Laver (1899–1975) or Stella Mary Newton (1901–2001) were the earliest modern fashion curators in museums. They were also fashion historians. However, the role of fashion curator as we now know it came into its own right in the 1970s. Nadia Buick asserts that the first fashion exhibition, Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curated by the famous fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. He was not a museum employee, a trained curator, or even a historian (15). The museum did not even collect contemporary fashion—it was a new idea put forward by Beaton. He amassed hundreds of pieces of fashion items from his friends of elite society to complement his work.Radical changes in museums since the 1970s have been driven by social change, new expectations and new technologies. Political and economic pressures have forced museum professionals to shift their attention from their collections towards their visitors. There has been not only a growing number of diverse museums but also a wider range of exhibitions, fashion exhibitions included. However, as museums and the exhibitions they mount have become more socially inclusive, this has been somewhat slow to filter through to the fashion exhibitions. I assert that the shift in fashion exhibitions came as an outcome of new writing on fashion as a social and political entity through Jennifer Craik’s The Face of Fashion. This book has had an influence, beyond academic fashion theorists, on the way in which fashion exhibitions are curated. Since 1997, Judith Clark has curated landmark exhibitions, such as Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back (Antwerp 2004), which examine the idea of what fashion is rather than documenting fashion’s historical evolution. Dress is recognised as a vehicle for complex issues. It is even used to communicate a city’s cultural capital and its metropolitan modernity as “fashion capitals” (Breward and Gilbert). Hence the reluctant but growing willingness for dress to be used in museums to critically interrogate, beyond the celebratory designer retrospectives. Fashion CurationFashion curators need to be “brilliant scavengers” (Peoples). Curators such as Clark pick over what others consider as remains—the neglected, the dissonant—bringing to the fore what is forgotten, where items retrieved from all kinds of spheres are used to fashion exhibitions that reflect the complex mix of the tangible and intangible that is present in fashion. Allowing the brilliant scavengers to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life can make for exciting exhibitions. Clothing of the everyday can be used to narrate complex stories. We only need think of the black layette worn by Baby Azaria Chamberlain—or the shoe left on the tarmac at Darwin Airport, having fallen off the foot of Mrs Petrov, wife of the Russian diplomat, as she was forced onto a plane. The ordinary remnants of the Chinese miners do not appear to have been kept. Often, objects can be transformed by subsequent significant events.Museums can be sites of transformation for its audiences. Since the late 1980s, through the concept of the New Museum (Vergo), fashion as an exhibition theme has been used to draw in wider museum audiences and to increase visitor numbers. The clothing of Vivienne Westwood, (34 Years in Fashion 2005, NGA) Kylie Minogue (Kylie: An Exhibition 2004­–2005, Powerhouse Museum), or Princess Grace (Princess Grace: Style Icon 2012, Bendigo Art Gallery) drew in the crowds, quantifying the relevance of museums to funding bodies. As Marie Riegels Melchior notes, fashion is fashionable in museums. What is interesting is that the New Museum’s refrain of social inclusion (Sandell) has yet to be wholly embraced by art museums. There is tension between the fashion and museum worlds: a “collision of the fashion and art worlds” (Batersby). Exhibitions of elite designer clothing worn by celebrities have been seen as very commercial operations, tainting the intellectual and academic reputations of cultural institutions. What does fashion curation have to do with the banner mentioned previously? It would be miraculous for authentic clothing worn by Chinese miners to surface now. In revising the history of Lambing Flat, fashion curators need to employ methodologies of absence. As Clynk and Peoples have shown, by examining archives, newspaper advertisements, merchants’ account books, and other material that incidentally describes the business of clothing, absence can become present. While the later technology of photography often shows “Sunday best” fashions, it also illustrates the ordinary and everyday dress of Chinese men carrying out business transactions (MacGowan; Couchman). The images of these men bring to mind the question: were these the children of men, or indeed the men themselves, who had their pigtails violently cut off years earlier? The banner was also used to show that there are quite detailed accounts of events from local and national newspapers of the day. These are accessible online. Accounts of the Chinese experience may have been written up in Chinese newspapers of the day. Access to these would be limited, if they still exist. Historian Karen Schamberger reminds us of the truism: “history is written by the victors” in her observations of a re-enactment of the riots at the Lambing Flat Festival in 2014. The Chinese actors did not have speaking parts. She notes: The brutal actions of the European miners were not explained which made it easier for audience members to distance themselves from [the Chinese] and be comforted by the actions of a ‘white hero’ James Roberts who… sheltered the Chinese miners at the end of the re-enactment. (9)Elsewhere, just out of town at the Chinese Tribute Garden (created in 1996), there is evidence of presence. Plaques indicating donors to the garden carry names such as Judy Chan, Mrs King Chou, and Mr and Mrs King Lam. The musically illustrious five siblings of the Wong family, who live near Young, were photographed in the Discover Central NSW tourist newspaper in 2015 as a drawcard for the Lambing Flat Festival. There is “endurance”, as the title of NMA animation scroll highlights. Conclusion Absence can be turned around to indicate presence. The “presence of absence” (Meyer and Woodthorpe) can be a powerful tool. Seeing is the pre-eminent sense used in museums, and objects are given priority; there are ways of representing evidence and narratives, and describing relationships, other than fashion presence. This is why I argue that dress has an important role to play in museums. Dress is so specific to time and location. It marks specific occasions, particularly at times of social transitions: christening gowns, bar mitzvah shawls, graduation gowns, wedding dresses, funerary shrouds. Dress can also demonstrate the physicality of a specific body: in the extreme, jeans show the physicality of presence when the body is removed. The fashion displays in the museum tell part of the region’s history, but the distraction of the poor display of the dressed mannequins in the LFFM gets in the way of a “good story”.While rioting against the Chinese miners may cause shame and embarrassment, in Australia we need to accept that this was not an isolated event. More formal, less violent, and regulated mechanisms of entry to Australia were put in place, and continue to this day. It may be that a fashion curator, a brilliant scavenger, may unpick the prey for viewers, placing and spacing objects and the visitor, designing in a way to enchant or horrify the audience, and keeping interest alive throughout the exhibition, allowing spaces for thinking and memories. Drawing in those who have not been the audience, working on the absence through participatory modes of activities, can be powerful for a community. Fashion curators—working with the body, stimulating ethical and conscious behaviours, and constructing dialogues—can undoubtedly act as a vehicle for dynamism, for both the museum and its audiences. As the number of museums grow, so should the number of fashion curators.ReferencesArgus. 10 July 1861. 20 June 2015 ‹http://trove.nla.gov.au/›.Batersby, Selena. “Icons of Fashion.” 2014. 6 June 2015 ‹http://adelaidereview.com.au/features/icons-of-fashion/›.Bitgood, Stephen. “When Is 'Museum Fatigue' Not Fatigue?” Curator: The Museum Journal 2009. 12 Apr. 2015 ‹http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2009.tb00344.x/abstract›. Breward, Christopher, and David Gilbert, eds. Fashion’s World Cities. Oxford: Berg Publications, 2006.Buick, Nadia. “Up Close and Personal: Art and Fashion in the Museum.” Art Monthly Australia Aug. (2011): 242.Clynk, J., and S. Peoples. “All Out in the Wash.” Developing Dress History: New Directions in Method and Practice. Eds. Annabella Pollen and Charlotte Nicklas C. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming Sep. 2015. Couchman, Sophia. “Making the ‘Last Chinaman’: Photography and Chinese as a ‘Vanishing’ People in Australia’s Rural Local Histories.” Australian Historical Studies 42.1 (2011): 78–91.Coates, Ian. “The Lambing Flat Riots.” Gold and Civilisation. Canberra: The National Museum of Australia, 2011.Clark, Judith. Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. London: V&A Publications, 2006.Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion. Oxon: Routledge, 1994.Crane, Susan. “The Distortion of Memory.” History and Theory 36.4 (1997): 44–63.Davidson, Patricia. “Museums and the Shaping of Memory.” Heritage Museum and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. Ed. Gerard Corsane. Oxon: Routledge, 2005.Discover Central NSW. Milthorpe: BMCW, Mar. 2015.Dethridge, Anna. Fashion as Social Energy Milan: Connecting Cultures, 2005.Falk, John, and Lyn Dierking. The Museum Experience. Washington: Whaleback Books, 1992.———, John Koran, Lyn Dierking, and Lewis Dreblow. “Predicting Visitor Behaviour.” Curator: The Museum Journal 28.4 (1985): 249–57.Fashion and Politics. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.fitnyc.edu/5103.asp›.Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.tereza-kuldova.com/#!Fashion-India-Spectacular-Capitalism-Exhibition/cd23/85BBF50C-6CB9-4EE5-94BC-DAFDE56ADA96›.Frost, Warwick. “Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Gold Rushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 11.3 (2005): 235-250.Mansel, Philip. Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costumes from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.Mazda, Xerxes. “Exhibitions and the Power of Narrative.” Museums Australia National Conference. Sydney, Australia. 23 May 2015. Opening speech.McGowan, Barry. Tracking the Dragon: A History of the Chinese in the Riverina. Wagga Wagga: Museum of the Riverina, 2010.Meyer, Morgan, and Kate Woodthorpe. “The Material Presence of Absence: A Dialogue between Museums and Cemeteries.” Sociological Research Online (2008). 6 July 2015 ‹http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/5/1.html›.National Museum of Australia. “Harvest of Endurance.” 20 July 2015 ‹http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/collection_interactives/endurance_scroll/harvest_of_endurance_html_version/home›. Peoples, Sharon. “Cinderella and the Brilliant Scavengers.” Paper presented at the Fashion Tales 2015 Conference, Milan, June 2015. Ravelli, Louise. Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Riegels Melchior, Marie. “Fashion Museology: Identifying and Contesting Fashion in Museums.” Paper presented at Exploring Critical Issues, Mansfield College, Oxford, 22–25 Sep. 2011. Rolls, Eric. Sojourners: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1992.Samuels, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 2012.Sandell, Richard. “Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectorial Change.” Museum and Society 1.1 (2003): 45–62.Schamberger, Karen. “An Inconvenient Myth—the Lambing Flat Riots and Birth of a Nation.” Paper presented at Foundational Histories Australian Historical Conference, University of Sydney, 6–10 July 2015. Smith, Laurajane. The Users of Heritage. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Vergo, Peter. New Museology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007.

Film directors in American cinema have used the artist (painter, singer, thespian, writer, etc.) as a vehicle for auteurist identification in feature bio-pics for decades. The portrayal of the protagonists in these films usually falls victim to the "Van Gogh" syndrome, that is, the insistance on the creative inner turmoil, the solitary, misunderstood genius, and brave rebellion of its central character. This approach, however, breaks down completely when confronted with the void that is the historical figure known as "Andy Warhol." The popular image of Warhol, his studied superficiality, unapologetic commercialism, and outright catatonic demeanour, is completely disruptive to the traditional humanist artist biography. It is unsurprising, then, that recent film protagonists within the more traditional bio-pic framework found Warhol a figure that needed to be contained, neutralised, discredited, and even shot. Mainstream cinematic narrative has added little to the conventions of the artist biography since the Renaissance. Renaissance painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari appropriated the Petrarchian edifying "Great Lives" model to ennoble and sanitise the often problematic and distasteful personalities who populated the Italian art world. This approach prevailed over the next several hundred years, and was expanded upon by the intellectual figures of the Romantic period (who were very aware of Vasari's work). The Romantics contributed to the profile of a proper artist the following traits: misunderstood intellectual fury, dark psychological depths, and flouting of social convention. The bio-pic genre, especially as it relates to biographies of artists, also lauds humanistic "greatness" as its standard of significance. The bio-pic absolutely relies on a strong central figure, who can be shown in about two hours to have some substantial educational value, worthy of the expense of the film-makers and the attention of the viewer. In the mid-1990s, not long after his unexpected death in 1987, a character called "Andy Warhol" appeared in supporting roles in a number of feature films. The Doors (1991), Basquiat (1996), and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) all feature an Andy Warhol character grounded squarely in various popular myths. All of the three 90s feature films which include Warhol in a substantial speaking role explicitly contrast him against another artist-figure. This other artist is presented as somehow preferable to Warhol, whether in conviction, authenticity, or validity of vision. The artist in question, Basquiat/Morrison/Solanas, predictably serves as the film-makers' lens through which the past is refracted (though more problematically in the case of Solanas). Warhol is outward sign of Basquiat's slide, the danger of fame-mongering for Morrison, and Valerie Solanas's misogynist nemesis. In each case, the more valorised figure is at first twinned with Warhol when drawn into his orbit. Eventually, the film's narrative contrasts the main subject against what the diegetic Warhol represents. In each case, Warhol becomes a metonymic representation of a larger organising factor: the economic/personality-driven entertainment industry, phallocentric hegemony, art's dead end, etc. The demonisation of Warhol in recent bio-pics is a good starting point for examining how his image is being interpreted by the mainstream media. It is clear that in this particular forum, Warhol's impact is understood only negatively. The purpose of this study will be to demonstrate how uncomfortable the creative arts world in general, and narrative film-making in particular, is with the "empty" legacy of Warhol and his Factory, and how the reactions against it illustrate a fear of Warhol's anti-humanist, subject-less project. It is fascinating that in the feature films, Warhol appears solely as a character in other people's stories rather than as the focus of biographical treatment. Warhol's very conscious emptying-out project has made nearly impossible any effort to deal with him and his legacy in any traditional narrative manner. Warhol's public persona -- simple, boring, derivative, and unheroic -- is directly at odds with the conventional "artist-hero" subjects necessary to the bio pic genre. This type is seen most typically in the old potboilers The Agony and the Extasy, about Michelangelo, and Lust for Life, about Van Gogh, as well as the more recent Artemisia about Artemisia Gentileschi. The very fact of Andy's posthumous film career fits neatly into his performative œuvre as a whole, and is easily interpreted as an extension of his life-long project. Warhol's entire self-imaging stratagem steadfastly affirmed that there is no center to illuminate -- no "real" Andy Warhol behind the persona. Warhol constantly disavowed any "meaning" beyond the surface of his art works, and ascribed it no value beyond market price. He preferred methods and forms (advertising, silk-screening, and film-making) that were easy for his Factory workers to execute and endlessly duplicate after his vague orders. Further, he ascribed no importance to his own bodily shell as "artist Andy Warhol". In an act of supreme self-branding, Warhol sent actors to impersonate him at lectures (most famously at University of Utah, who demanded he return the lecture fee), since he was only a packaged, reproducible product himself. In Warhol's art, there is no hand-made integrity, no originality, no agonised genius in a garret. He displays none of the traits that traditionally have allowed artists to be called geniuses. Warhol's studio's automation, the laying bare of the cheapest and slickest aspects of the culture industry, has long been the most feared facet of Warhol's artistic legacy. It is beside the point to argue that Warhol's meaninglessness is thematised to the degree that it has meaning. Warhol's erasure of all humanistic "aura" clearly remains threatening to a great number of artists, who rely heavily on such artistic stereotypes. Basquiat In 1996's Basquiat, painter/director Julian Schnabel used the dead painter as a proxy for telling his "I was there" version of the 80s New York art scene. In Schnabel's rather heavy-handed morality tale, young African-American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat's meteoric burn-out career is treated as a metaphor for the 80s art world as a whole. Schnabel clearly knows his Vasari. His film's scenario is a barely modified adaptation of humanist/romantic artist mythology. Traces of Vasari's tale of Cimabue's discovery of Giotto, as well as Van Gogh's various misunderstood artist scenarios are laboriously played out. In fact, the first words in the film invoke the Van Gogh cliché, foregrounding Schnabel's myth-making impulse. They are art critic Rene Ricard's, speaking over Basquiat waking up in a cardboard box in Central Park: "everyone wants to get on the Van Gogh boat. ... No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another Van Gogh, ... When you first see a new picture, you have to be very careful. You might be staring at Van Gogh's ear." This quote sets the tone for Basquiat's art world experience narrative, trotting out every single Van Gogh-inspired legend (with heroin abuse standing in for the cut-off ear) to apply to Basquiat. In fact, the film veritably thematises Romantic cliché. The film's main project is the mythologisation of Jean-Michel and by extension Schnabel. However, by foregrounding the Van Gogh/Basquiat connection in such self-conscious terms, it seems the viewer is supposed to find it "ironic". (The irony is really that this po-mo window dressing is otherwise deeply at odds with the rest of the film's message.) The film suggests that Basquiat is both worthy of the allusion to the great humanistic tradition, and that his special case ("the first great black painter") changes all the rules and makes all clichés inapplicable. Schnabel's art, which is usually described as "Neo-Abstract Expressionist", and particularly his market value, relies heavily on the aura created by previous artists in the macho heroic mold. His paintings take up Pollock's "all over" effect but with de Kooning's jauntier color. He also fastens found objects, most famously broken plates, in a pastiche of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Like Warhol, Schnabel often borrows recognisable motifs. However, instead of advertising and popular culture, Schnabel's come from a more elevated tradition; Old Master paintings appropriated from "legitimate" art history. Needless to say, Julian Schnabel himself has much invested in reaffirming the artist-genius myth that is threatening to be deconstructed by a good number of art critics and historians. Schnabel's agenda is specifically art historical, though no less political. Schnabel, through Basquiat, restores the artist to his proper place as individual creator challenging the outmoded conventions of established art. Warhol, portrayed as the quintessential post-modern artist, represents all that has gone wrong in the art world: superficiality, mass production, commodification, popular culture influence, and the erasure of art history and deep significance. In spite of the film's self-consciousness about the phoniness of the gallery scene, Basquiat's lionisation by it validates a retrograde concept of "pure" artist's vision. Schnabel is attacking what he sees as the deadening effect of post-modernism that threatens Schnabel's own place in art history. Basquiat's escalating drug problem and alliance late in the film with Warhol signals that he has followed the wrong direction, that he is hitting a dead end. The character Milo (Gary Oldman), the Schnabel manqué, sets up the contrast to illustrate Basquiat's slide. Milo is aligned with all that is exemplary in establishment virtues of hearth and home (doting fatherhood, settled domesticity, good living). The wholesome hand-made integrity of Milo/Schnabel's art, in line with traditional definitions of artistic greatness, is deeply at odds with the affected commercialism of Warhol's work. Schnabel's artistic influences show up clearly in his very marked progressive view of art history and clearly named privileged pantheon. In the film, Schnabel is at pains to insert Basquiat and himself into this tradition. The very first scene of the film sees Jean-Michel as a child with his mother at the MOMA, where she is in tears in front of Picasso's Guernica. In the narrative, this is quickly followed by Ricard's Van Gogh quote above. As an adult, Jean-Michel enacts Rauschenberg's edict, to "narrow the gap between art and life". This is illustrated by Jean-Michel not restricting his artistic output to work on canvas in a studio. He graffitis walls, signs table tops à la Rauschenberg, and makes designs on a diner countertop in maple syrup. Later, Jean-Michel is shown painting in his studio walking around the canvas on the floor, in an all-over technique, mirroring the familiar Hans Namuth film of Jackson Pollock. Aligning Jean-Michel with the pre-Warhol, and especially Abstract Expressionist artists, positions Basquiat and Schnabel together against the "dead end" of Warhol's version of Pop. Basquiat and the director have inherited the "right" kind of art, and will be the progenitors of the next generation. Warhol as a "dead end" leads to a discussion of the relationship between artists' procreative sexuality and their art. In the film, Warhol is assumed to be asexual (rather than homosexual), and this lack of virility is clearly linked to the sterility, transitoriness, and barrenness of his art. Schnabel/Milo and Basquiat, in their marked heterosexuality, are the "fathers" of the next generation. In Basquiat's collaboration with Warhol, even Andy understands his own impotence. Warhol says, "I can't teach you anything, you're a natural, are you kidding me?", and most importantly, "you paint out everything I do, Jean-Michel". By privileging Jean-Michel's art (and his own) over Warhol's, Schnabel is clearly trying to paint out the mutation of the Warholisation of art, and paint in his own art historical eugenics. The Doors In a less substantial role but in a similar vein, Warhol also appears briefly in Oliver Stone's 1991 The Doors, as part of a brief "rising fame" montage of New York incidents. Like Schnabel, Stone has a lot to lose from investment in Warhol's spiritual and aesthetic emptiness. Though brief, Warhol's appearance in the film, like in Basquiat, serves as a cautionary tale for its hero. The contrast made between the vacuous Factory crowd and the "authentic" Doors presages the dominant trope for the Warhol character that Schnabel would expand upon later. The Factory sequence dramatises the glamour and seductiveness of the hollow side of fame that may lead Morrison off his spiritual-quest path. The Native American shaman who Jim sees at pivotal points in his life appears at the Factory, warning him not to take the wrong path represented by Warhol. The Doors are at a pivotal moment, the onset of fame, and must act carefully or risk ending up as meaningless as Warhol. Stone's chronicling of the 60s relies heavily on what could be called the humanist ideal of the power of the individual to effect change, raise consciousness, and open minds. Via Stone's simple reductiveness, Warhol represents here the wrong kind of counter-culture, the anti-hippie. By emulating Warhol, the Doors follow the wrong shaman. To Stone, Warhol's superficiality represents all that is dangerous about celebrity and entertainment: the empty, mind-destroying cocaine high of the masses. I Shot Andy Warhol The film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) problematises the idea put forth in the other films of Warhol as artistic anti-Christ, simply because the film's subject is much more difficult to heroise, and like Warhol does not fit snugly into bio-pic conventions. Like Basquiat, the film also takes the point of view of a protagonist at the edge of Warhol's sphere of influence, here radical feminist and S.C.U.M. (the Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto scribe Valerie Solanas, in order to criticise what Warhol represents. Unlike the previous films, here Warhol's character is central to the narrative. Although Warhol clearly represents something very negative to the Solanas character, the film never fully endorses its subject's point of view. That Warhol deserved and needed to be shot for any reason beyond Solanas's personal demons is never established. Perhaps this ambivalence is a flaw of the film, but it is also telling about the problematic legacies of feminism and Pop, two movements that have led to challenges of the hero-artist ideal. In this film, the relationship between Warhol and the main protagonist is extremely complex. Andy and his crowd are presented as clearly odious. Though Valerie comes off as more interesting and sympathetic, she is also still clearly an unhinged oddball spewing specious ideology. Within the film, Valerie's attraction to the Factory scene seems to stem from something her friend, transvestite Candy Darling, says: "if anyone can make you a star, Andy Warhol can". Valerie desperately wants attention for her radicalism (and likely for other psychological reasons, which make radicalism attractive to her, as well), and sees Andy's power for "star-making", especially among the more marginal of society, as something from which she can profit. Valerie's mistake seems to be in confusing the artistic avant-garde with the politically radical. Valerie finds kinship in Warhol's androgyny and lack of enthusiasm for sex, but does not realise immediately that Andy is interested in her play Up Your Ass primarily for its titillation and shock value, and is entirely uninterested in it from a content standpoint. The content/emptiness conflict in Valerie and Andy's "artistic visions" becomes one of the major thematics in the film. Though like Solanas, he finds community with margin-dwellers, Andy is portrayed as far too implicated in and dependent on the so-called culture industry in order to be "Andy Warhol -- Superstar". Andy's interest in the low-life that Valerie represents is, of course, wholly superficial, which enrages her. She sees no worthy theoretical position in the banal contentlessness of Andy's circle. Valerie's manifesto and dramatic works have almost an excess of content. They work to kick people in the balls to get them to open their eyes and see the appalling conditions around them. The Warhol here, like in The Doors, wants people to see empty banality, but has no interest in effecting change. Valerie's play, as read simultaneously in the lesbian coffee shop and at Andy's studio, dramatises this divergence. When Warhol and crowd read the script with dull inflection, inert on the couch, one can imagine the very words being put to use in a Warhol film. When Valerie and friends perform those same words, the passionate engagement and deep meaningfulness -- at least to Valerie -- capture her urgent commitment to her ideas. As Valerie gets more desperate to disseminate her ideas, and thus begins to further alienate the Factory crowd, she starts to see Andy as in fact the bodily symbol of the "man" she wants cut up. Not only does he represent the patriarch of the art world who has dismissed her and has invalidated her vision, but also more broadly the hierarchy and deep structure of Andy's world parallels the consumeristic and image-driven society at large. If Valerie wants to live with integrity within her own code, the "man" must be deposed. On top of the personal gratification she would receive in this act, Solanas would also finally find a world-wide audience for her views. Now we can understand why, when asked by the press why she shot Andy, Valerie tells them "he had too much control over my life." Unhappily, instead of women rising up against their male oppressors to take up their rightful place of superiority, Solanas gets labeled a "lunatic" by the same media and larger establishment which (in this film) proclaim Warhol a genius. Solanas dissolves into a bit-player in the Andy Warhol story. One of the major interests of this film is that it excerpts a player from the limits of that "master narrative" story and allows them their own subjecthood. I Shot Andy Warhol, with its assertive quotational title, seems to want to reinscribe subjecthood to one of the most truly radical of Andy's superstars, reclaiming the value of Valerie's polemics from the emptiness of her anecdotal role in Warhol's biography. Though Valerie clearly sees Andy as her nemesis, the film constructs him as a boring, ineffectual, self-absorbed effete. The great weakness of the film is that their conflict begins to look like a midget wrestling contest. Since both are competing for higher freakdom, the broader implications of either of their projects are only rarely glimpsed. It should be clear by now that for so many, fictional Warhol is not just a problematic figure, but nearly a monstrous one. The film-makers clearly show what elements of Warhol's representative strategy they find so threatening. Schnabel and Stone have the most to lose in the replacement of their value systems (genius investment and 60s macho spirituality) by what they perceive as postmodern de-centredness, and therefore need to attack that threat the most forcefully. Less conservatively, for Harron, Warhol's Pop objectification of everyone, including women, seems to threaten women's hard-won subjectivity through feminism. Warhol, Morrison, Basquiat and Solanas were all artists who played heavily on their roles as outsiders to mainstream society. These films build the film-makers' soapbox on the "right" way to be alienated, bourgeois-hating, and rebellious, and the films assume a sympathetic viewing audience. Even though the interest in Warhol and his flashy milieu probably got at least two of these films made in the first place, it seems clear that even the more independently-minded film establishment would rather align themselves with the romanticised artist bio-pic subject than the black hole they fear Warhol personifies. Perhaps the character Andy Warhol is put to most appropriate use when he is only glimpsed, such as in the films Death Becomes Her, where he appears as one of the party guests for people who have taken the magic potion to live forever, and as part of the 70s glam wallpaper in 54. This kind of "product placement" use of Warhol most succinctly encapsulates the vacant banality he espoused. In these films, Warhol is unburdened by other artists' attempts to fill him up with meaning. Warhol is taken at his word. His easily recognisable and reproducible bodily shell is hollow and superficial, just as he said it was. Warhol, Morrison, Basquiat and Solanas were all artists who played heavily on their roles as outsiders to mainstream society. These films build the film-makers' soapbox on the "right" way to be alienated, bourgeois-hating, and rebellious, and the films assume a sympathetic viewing audience. Even though the interest in Warhol and his flashy milieu probably got at least two of these films made in the first place, it seems clear that even the more independently-minded film establishment would rather align themselves with the romanticised artist bio-pic subject than the black hole they fear Warhol personifies. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Julie Turnock. "Painting Out Pop: "Andy Warhol" as a Character in 90s Films." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php>. Chicago style: Julie Turnock, "Painting Out Pop: "Andy Warhol" as a Character in 90s Films," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Julie Turnock. (1999) Painting out pop: "Andy Warhol" as a character in 90s films. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php> ([your date of access]).