Final Blog Post

       Folk knowledge is characterized as practical knowledge or survival skills for living within a society. Sharing folk knowledge is the least formal of all knowledge types, making it the easiest to break down learning or interpersonal barriers and form bonds through sharing it. Sharing folk knowledge is not the only way or even the best way to learn and work together, though. Despite claims that other forms of knowledge are less bonding, folk knowledge does not accommodate collaboration and building community more than other types of knowledge, it simply takes less effort to form a community around sharing folk knowledge because folk knowledge involves the lowest common denominator and thereby attracts the largest number of people.

Salon Notes: Preliminary Blog

	Unit 1: Folk Knowledge	Unit 2: Oral Knowledge	Unit 3: Written Knowledge	Unit 4: Print Knowledge
Self-directed learning	Midwifery--maybe one of the first times I just picked a topic from the list of options on the seed post. Midwifery could never move from the realm of folk knowledge to any other realm because it is so dependent upon hands-on experience. You can't learn to deliver a baby effectively from a book. Researching for this blog helped me understand folk knowledge better because I realized that even today professionals field rely almost entirely upon shared folk knowledge (again, no doctor gets his expertise from reading a bunch of manuals or going to a bunch of speakers).	My post on The Origin of Language was almost entirely based on the book referenced by Dr. Petersen in her seed post on oral knowledge. Just as teaching something helps you understand it, writing a blog about a topic really does too. Trying to understand Mark Turner's theory on the origin of language gave me better understanding about how we bring story and parable to create grammar--the system of language.	Researching for my post on the letter "C" and how it came to be a part of our alphabet was really interesting and it helped me understand the process of creating a written alphabet from a spoken language which facilitated my learning through this unit.	Researching for The Printing Press and Reading really helped me recognize that the emergence of the printing press brought with it huge changes, changes which you would not expect. The printing press had a huge influence on our culture today and writing this post really helped me see that.
Others' blogging	Kody's post on Prayer really helped me understand folk knowledge. Because a lot of our posts before that were about hygiene (Shuan's post on Showering was one I patterned a lot of my blogs off of, even my midwifery blog was semi-health related) or dating, I think my understanding of folk knowledge was limited. This post helped me look beyond those two categories and really grasp all the things that folk knowledge encompassed	Kody's post "Written vs Oral-the Hittites" was a favorite in this unit. He was so explicit in laying out the function and systems of language in the Hittite culture. Plus, it helped me recognize the importance of precision in preserving a language. He also talked about how emotion is best communicated through oral knowledge than by any other means of communicating.	Ted's post on Greek language was really memorable, and it really highlighted the strengths of written knowledge. Dr. Burton's post on Written knowledge  was really helpful in my learning process because it defined and discussed writing-dependent institutions.	Diane's post on the history of Dictionaries was really interesting. The printing press played a really big role in the emergence of dictionaries because it kind of created the need for them. Very interesting, definitely facilitated my learning and taught me a lot not only about the history of dictionaries but really the reason we have them at all.
Collaborative learning	Teaching my room mate to do French Manicures facilitated my understanding of folk knowledge in a new way: sharing folk knowledge, being that primary source for a skill for someone else, is really a wonderful thing. Folk knowledge has a special value because of the inter-personal aspect it carries that other forms of knowledge simply do not include.	We talked in class about how it's harder to meet with a professor if you email him rather than go directly to him or call him on the phone. This discussion helped me really see the role oral knowledge still plays in my life, and how it is still very important. Oral knowledge was "realler" to me after that lecture. King Benjamin's speech was also great in helping me understand the power that oral knowledge has.	Going to Special Collections in the Library was definitely a highlight in this unit because the lady there really emphasized the role that writing played in a lot of cultures. The tiny tablet she showed us that had a business record on in in cuneiform was so cool, and it really helped me understand that once writing came on the scene a lot of other institutions emerged or became more efficient.	Reading Walter Ong's "Print, Space, and Closure" really helped me see the way print has evolved and the importance of it taking on some of the roles of written knowledge. I don't know why we didn't talk more about "Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" but that also gave me a historical context, it was easier for me to see the importance of a more-accessible Bible through the printing press in the Protestant reformation
Projects / Activities	The project/ activity for this blog was teaching and learning folk knowledge. I learned about how to make a tattoo. Maybe this is not the most valuable skill I could obtain, learning about the history and art of tattooing helped me understand folk knowledge in a new way because tattooing is almost entirely reliant upon folk knowledge-- in fact, in many situations it is passed down among family members.	For this blog we had a videoed discussion--we had a dress rehearsal and then two days later we tried again. This exercise helped me as I prepared understand the difference between oral knowledge systems and written knowledge systems. For example, you use a lot more self-referencing pronouns when speaking than you would in writing. It is a lot more informal.	The Rosetta Stone project. I have a lot more sympathy for scribes because of that project. Not only was it difficult to copy a text but to translate was really difficult, too. After Kody's post on Scribes, I had this attitude that scribes received more than they deserved. The Rosetta Stone project set me right!	Because the written paper was probably the most formal proof-of-intellectual-growth we have had to provide this semester, I felt like this project really showed that each medium of knowledge transmission we have studied this semester is slightly more formal than the last. This project gave me an added appreciation for typography and the blackletter font.

MY THESIS

Ok, I went through Better Thesis Statements and here is my thesis (tell me what you think):

Although the Gothic, Blackletter font Textura is now considered "illegible"; cultural, political, and religious reasons behind its development should be taken into account in assessing its value.

THE PRINTING PRESS AND READING

"Using a book, not reading it, makes us wise."

-Geffrey Whitney (1586)

Two men demonstrating new ways of using a book:

One actively reading, engaged with the text (look, his hand is on it!) 

and the other standing, ready to act on the gained knowledge.

      As we've discussed in class, medieval reading was communal, out-loud, dogmatic.... very different from the silent reading we're used to today. The printing press had a big impact on reading, according to A History of Reading by Steven Roger Fischer. "With Gutenberg's inaugural tug on the screw press, reading's material, matter, language and practice began to change." Yes, the printing press changed a lot of things in European society, but I want to focus on the impact the printing press had on reading.

Bibliography: Fonts and Typefaces (between 1450-1700)

Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed. London Writers Ltd., 1985. Burke describes the life of Gutenberg and his printing press then the development of standardized print type that followed. The humanist influences on style are described and the creation of "italic." I found this book in the bibliography of the Wikipedia article History of Western Typography.

Thank you, Dr. Ricks!

   Thanks to this man, the Roman group was able to translate their scroll. This Blog is dedicated to him because if it weren't for him, we would have never figured this thing out.
    I went to the JFSB knocking on every Hebrew or Arabic professor's door because, well.... I'm embarrassed to say they wouldn't answer my desperate emails.... So I became frantic. But thanks to this man, who graciously opened his door and let me into his office, our group has a translation! He said the Arabic was illegible... but he Hebrew he read just fine! He insisted that the direct translation was this: "When his Lord hear the words of his wife saying something like 'make me your servant or slave' he became angry." As I was writing his translation down I asked, "Something like?" and he said "Yes. Something like." So I wrote that down! Straight from the authority himself!
     Now, all that needs to be done is to carve it into our wax tablet! You'll see the final product tomorrow!

Happy 400th, KJB!

    Let me tell you about my experience at The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible exhibit in the HBLL!



Latin Bible (Vulgate).

Vellum manuscript from France, 13th century

     Can I just say that of ALL the ways you can use a book, perhaps the oddest is to put it on display? I like art museums, but art is specifically designed to be viewed. Looking at paintings and sculptures isn't weird to me, but as we begin our study of print knowledge and as I thought about books and went to this exhibit, I thought about how funny it was to look at an exhibit of books. Libraries facilitate the discovery of books by making them available to the public, but sometimes when I'm in the HBLL I see some books that make me wonder if anyone has even opened them before! Putting books on display certainly makes them visible, but the book also becomes inaccessible to someone who may want to reference it. After all, you can only open up a book so  that two pages are displayed (when they are in their original form, of course). The "interactive tool" we talk about in lecture that is a book becomes a piece of sculpture when you put it on diplay like that!
       So I guess I want to address the value of putting books on display, especially these ones. A library would have to have good reason to take books out of circulation and exhibit them (though I doubt these books have been accessible to the public for a long time, if they ever were.)

Hand me a Q-Tip, We're making Diptychs!

  
diptych:  device with two flat plates attached at a hinge
Plus, let me explain my awesome joke in the title:  Q-tips....ear wax... wax tablets.... 

A Riddle

   "Of honey-laden bees I first was born,  
     But in the forest grew my outer coat;  
     My shoes from tough hides came.  An iron point   
     In artful windings cuts a fair design, 
     And leaves long, twisted furrows, like a plow...." 
                    (Riddle 32:  Pitman 18-19)

The Greatest Treasure

      The TV show Meet the Anscestors had a special episode (yah, it was on BBC Television... a favorite cable channel of mine...) called "Our Top Ten Treasures"--British experts voted on the most important treasures found in Britain. Among the top ten treasures  was a chess set from around 1150 A.D., a solid ceremonial gold cape from 1900-1600 B.C., and a gold cup from about 1700-1500 B.C. 



 Some of the Vindolanda Tablets--Britain's Greatest Treasure

   
    The Greatest treasure, however, was the Vindolanda Tablets--they are estimated to have been written in the late first century A.D. They are considered the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are wooden tablets with ink on them. They were made from birch, alder, and oak--there are nearly 500 of these, though most of them are broken and somewhat indecipherable.

      So, basically, I just want to highlight some of the most interesting tablets found in the Vindalonda Tablets and what we learn from them.

Why did Plato write??

Medieval portrayal of Socrates and his greatest pupil, Plato.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them."

A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p.39

    If you think about philosophy, it's about as dependent on writing as math. Formulating thoughts in the air is nearly impossible for me, and certainly impossible  for anyone else to understand (just think of how much harder it is to spell a word out loud than to write it down-- in a spelling bee I'd be thinking,"I could do this if i had a pen and paper..")

      However, we do know that Socrates didn't write a line of his thoughts, and he's considered the father of Greek philosophy and modern thought! We only know the things he said indirectly, kind of like how we have the teachings of Jesus Christ though we don't have his direct account--in this way the two have often been compared, because it has only been through the records of others that we know anything of them.  

     The written word, to Socrates, was as a child without a father: unable to protect itself. He said that writing is deceptive like a painting-- paintings portray things that are falsely living and can't answer questions, just as books can indicate things but cannot give further explanation or answers to questions. Once a man writes down his thoughts, he loses control of them, soon his words become a toy for everyone to play with--written words are vulnerable to having their true meaning lost to them. Socrates had no school, no books, he preferred to a "living" philosophy made of conversation with people he met on the streets. Philosophy was to be made in common with others, the research was made orally. So, even though in our minds philosophy is often represented by great literary works (Kant, Hegel, Descartes...), philosophy is not so clearly related to literacy.

     If Socrates was so opposed to writing, as we talked about in class, and he indoctrinated that belief into his greatest pupil, Plato, why, then, did Plato write?? 

The Roman Calendar

Epigraphy: the study of inscriptions, found on buildings, altars, bricks, plaques or tablets of various materials, tiles, mosaics, pottery--anything you can think of that people write on

From the first three centuries of the Roman Republic (500-200 B.C.), relatively few inscriptions survive. There is no way of knowing what type of role and how big writing/inscribing things played in Romans' lives at that time, but we can assume that what we do have only represents a small fraction of what they used. Ancient literature we have today refers to other works of literature and inscriptions that no longer exist, so it's easy to imagine that we have a limited portion of what ancient people had.

"An impressive variety of texts," however, has survived from the centuries that followed (200-100 B.C.)1 . We have many more inscriptions from this particular time period in the Roman Republic, including calendars!

My Interview with a Library Scientist

     This week I interviewed Donna Cardon at the Provo City Library. Donna got her Master's degree in Library Sciences in 2005. And no, she and I are not related.

The Roman Writing System

(as a note before you begin, know that when I use "//" to set apart a letter or two letters, I'm using those slashes to indicate that you make the sound within the slashes: Don't say the name of the letter inside them. For example, when you see /ks/ think of  the ksssss sound that x makes , don't say "kay. esss." to yourself.)

 

  No offense to the letter C but.... I've always had a certain amount of disdain for it. Yah I respect it for what it does for my last name, I mean without it I'd be Alyssa Ardon, which is no where near as cute as Alyssa Cardon, but I could just as easily be Alyssa Kardon and I think the kuteness would be fairly komparable.  I guess my problem with the letter C stems from the fakt that we kould easily live without it and have a 25 letter alphabet rather than a 26 letter one-- who wouldn't go for that??? In all seriousness, though: C steals the sound from S and K and really the only new thing it kontributes to our writing system is the "CH" sound in "churro" and quite honestly I think that sounds a lot like a J anyway so I honestly don't know why we don't jhange it.

Origin of Language

"The dominant contemporary theory of the origin of language proposes that genetic change produced genetic instructions for building a special module for grammar in the human brain. Before genetic specialization for grammar, people had no grammar at all: no grammatical speech, no parsing for grammar, no concept of grammar. To be sure, they communicated (birds and bees communicate) but their communication was totally ungrammatical. It was not language." 

Mark Turner, The Literary Mind (140)

   

    In The Literary Mind, Mark Turner explains a theory held by many scholars (including Noam Chomsky and Paul Bloom) that the development of language is genetic. The idea is that each child is born with special instructions in their genes that code for an autonomous grammar module. When a baby is learning language, then, it is really just learning which parts of its language module to leave on and which parts to turn off. 

Mark Turner comes right out and says "I think this theory of the historical origin of language is wrong."

Dr. Petersen brought up Turner's proposal in the seed post about language, that language came about as a result of story. I was looking at what he had to say and I think it's kind of interesting!

Ovid, Metamorphoses, and High School Musical

Ovid nomen meum!  My name is Ovid!

      The Roman Republic was on it's last leg when Ovid, creator of the epic poem Metamorphoses, was born. One year before Ovid's birth, Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate as problems withe the now 500-year-old Roman Republic were coming to a head. An intense struggle for the control of Rome between Julius Caesar's former friend/supporter Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's grandnephew/heir Octavian began, eventually ending with Octavian taking power, becoming Rome's first emperor-- Octavian would rule for almost all of Ovid's life. 

       Ancient Rome, as most ancient cultures, revolved around oral tradition. ("Hey Ovid, wanna memorize and recite some Homeric epics with me??" "Curabitur ut tortor dude!") Unfortunately, Ovid wasn't as good at oratory as was his older brother. Like most younger siblings who simply choose to explore another skill rather than live in the shadow of their stellar older brother/sister, Ovid developed a love for poetry.....

          Ovid joined a circle of poets, working with the best of the best in Rome. He attended poetry readings by Propertius and Macer, reported that the group was enthralled by Horace, and said he even saw Virgil once. He read his own poems in public by the time he was eighteen, and was soon recognized as a rising star. 

             Metamorphoses is Ovid's best known work, a twelve-thousand-line poem divided into 15 books. This Latin epic draws on Greek Mythology and Roman legend, telling of "transformations" from the creation of the world to the time of Octavian. At the end of his poem, Ovid prophecies that "I shall be the one whom people hear and read. And if poets truly can foretell, in all centuries to come, I shall live." Considering the survival and widespread popularity of his work throughout the ages, Ovid's right!

Preview of the Roman Republic

"The Roman Republic" existed from 508 BC when the Romans overthrew their monarchy and 27 BC, when Octavious became "Imperator Ceasar"-- the first Roman emperor in the Roman Empire.

      This civilization thrived under their Republic. Rome expanded and became the unquestioned master of Italy by 201 BC--shown in the map by the  green area. In just 100 years the Roman Republic expanded even further, shown by the orange area.

     Part of the legacy set forth by the Roman Republic was their government. The Monarchy was replaced by two "Consuls"--magistrates who were elected by the people and advised by the Senate. Checks and balances, anyone? This new form of government gave more power to the people to be involved. In theory, Roman citizens were sovereign,  but as the Senate wielded more and more power, the flaws of this new system of government became apparent.

  Our government today reflects the legacy of the Roman Republic with the idea of separate branches and civic duty, but Roman language could be considered as having had more effect on the rest of the world than did their government. Latin was their language, which evolved into the Romance languages (including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and others) "Romance" comes from Roman! Maybe I'm the only one who didn't connect those two...

    Ovid's Metamorphoses, written originally in Latin, was not completed until A.D. 8. In it, Ovid traces the history of the world from its creation to the Deification of Julius Caesar using 15 stories of transformation. Written in dactylic hexameter, the meter of the epic, Ovid invited comparison between his work and Virgil's The Aeneid. Beginning with the ritualistic "invocation of the Muse," Metamorphoses tells transformation tale after transformation tale, each story connected by the theme of metamorphosis and love. Ovid's work was apparently very popular--over 400 original manuscripts have survived up to today. A lot of Ovid's stories are borrowed from Greek Mythology, which supports many scholars' belief that there is no such thing as "Roman mythology", only Greek mythology with a Roman flair.

   Metamorphosis was preserved by manuscript, but the stories and morals themselves existed for centuries via oral tradition. Epic poems are better preserved on manuscript because unlike counting-out rhymes (which are highly stable forms of oral tradition and can be passed on for centuries without alteration), exact words were not always remembered perfectly. Plot, character and place description, usually remain pretty stable, but exact words did not.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Midwifery

My first home! Davis County Hospital!

       Last weekend I returned to Davis County Hospital in Layton, Utah-- the hospital I was born in!  It was pure accident, I was driving back to Provo from Salt Lake and I got really lost, but I recognized the name from my birth certificate and said to myself "Hey! That's where I was born!" So I had to stop in and pay a visit.

Provo Ink

Me before my tattoo training-- for your eyes only!

Timeless Image Tattoo...
aka the only place in Provo to get ink'd. Properly.
   
     I began my apprenticeship at Timeless Image yesterday afternoon with Luis and Randal . "Could you tell me everything there is to know about giving someone a tattoo?" I asked Luis at the front desk when I arrived. After one long, awkward stare, Luis, confused, asked "Like an apprenticeship?" "Yes," I said, "A one hour apprenticeship." He laughed a little, agreed, and took me to the back room. This is an account of my experience at Timeless Image Tattoo.

      Randal was in the back room in the process of giving a girl a tattoo on her back. Luis told him I was there to watch and learn the process of giving someone a tattoo. Randal said that was fine as long as I got my own tattoo at the end of my tour. Haha.....

Randal letting me watch

   Randal asked me what I knew about tattooing, I told him I didn't know very much. "Tattoos have been around forever," he told me, ten years ago archeologists found a cave man covered in tattoos.

     When I got home I looked up what Randal was talking about. "Ötzi the Iceman" was discovered in 1991,  his body is dated around 3300 B.C. Ötzi had over 57 carbon tattoos on his body, little dots and lines. Clearly, the history of the tattoo is long, and as diverse as the people who get them.

   

Randal's cave man

    Randal was using a tattoo gun to cut into his client's skin to inject the ink. "Your skin has seven layers, but to give a tattoo the deepest we go is the third layer." Ancient tattoo artists used sharp bone needles to pierce the skin and inject pigment, according to archeological finds in Europe. Some Indian cultures of North and South America simply scratched the skin and introduced ink to the wounds. In New Zealand, ancient people used wood carving tools to cut the skin. 

Ancient tattoo tools. A visual history of tattoo tools here!

  
 I asked Randal how long it took him to get trained as a tattoo artist. "Six months of formal training and a lifetime of doodling." Luis told me if I practiced my drawing I could apply for a formal apprenticeship and start tattooing by next year. "Drawing ability is an important part of tattoo design, but you don't have to be able to draw well to get into tatooing." Randal showed me the transfer they used on their client to put the design on her back. "It's like carbon paper, or a stencil." Luis told me. Even though you really just follow the lines of the transfer on your client's skin, you still need a lot of practice. 

    To practice tattooing you have two options: practice on your own skin or go to the butcher and buy pig skin to practice on. I asked Randal if I could try on his client, he said no. I asked Luis if he had any pig skin, he said no. Both men told me the only way I could touch the gun was if I was going to try it on myself. Good joke, guys. 

Randal dipping his tattoo gun into the ink well

     Randal and Luis proceeded to show me the tattoos they had given themselves in training. Luis had a spider on his wrist and a Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike on his calf.  Randal had an 8x13 inch cross on his thigh.  I told them there was still no way I was gonna give myself a tattoo. Ever.

   Luis showed me the design gallery where clients picked out what tattoo they wanted, if they didn't come with their own idea. Ancient tattoos found on the mummified remains of Scythian people depicted game animals and totem. Tattoos in ancient China, however, were first used to mark criminals. 

All the different colors Randal showed me!

   Tattoos or "dermal pigmentations" are a type of body modification.  In ancient cultures as well as today, they are used either as a decoration or as a way of branding. Because I believe, as a Latter-Day- Saint, that my body is a gift and not a medium of expression, I don't support the tattooing industry. My informal training in modern-day tattooing, however, was an interesting experience from a learning-about-folk-knowledge point of view. The history of tattoos is much too vast for me to cover in this blog, but I do hope I highlighted the fact that tattooing in ancient cultures isn't much different than it is today. People today are as interested in expressing themselves in nonverbal ways as they were in ancient Scandinavia, China, Japan, etc. To see how all cultures have a history with tattoos look here.  Or here. I think it's evidence of the fact that we share more in common with our ancestors than we realize. 

Zee French Manicure

    Combien Beau! Zee French Manicure :)  For non-nail painters (Don't feel like I'm alienating you, I used to ignore my nail beds too...) the French Manicure is a nail design that mocks unpainted nails, glamorizing the natural look of a fingernail. The nail tip is painted white while the rest is painted a pink or shade of nude, making your fingernail look whiter, shinier, and cleaner than humanly possible!

      Yes, I admit that I have always found French tips to be a bit ridiculous (are we in denial that dirt gets under our fingernails? We can't come to grips with the fact that our nails are naturally off-white and dull?) but they can be no more ridiculous than mascara or high heels or lipstick or any of those wonderful things! So, despite the fact that French tips are totally unconvincing, I have completely converted to the French way of thinking :)

Medicine

The emergence of the Indo-European peoples (mainly Greece and India) began a new era in the history of medicine. Yes, these civilizations had their archaic magic and weird rituals for "healing" people, but what separated these cultures from the more barbaric Thracian, Illyrian, and Scythian cultures (having relatively low levels of civilization from what I understand) of the time was their use of the scientific method--they used experimentation to look for "universal laws" when they treated sick people.