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.

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?? 

Gothic Alphabet, Religion, and Record Keeping

During the time in which the Battle of Adrianople was in full swing, the Gothic people were being converted to Arian Christianity by the half-gothic missionary, Wulfila, who developed a Gothic alphabet to translate the Bible. Before the development of the new Gothic alphabet, Goths wrote their language using their adaptation of the Futhark (Dr. Peterson mentioned this in class) alphabet—but it was considered to be of pagan origin. Wulfila combined the Greek, Latin, and Futhark alphabets to create a new Gothic language.

It is interesting to note that the Gothic written language (or alphabet I guess) was written as a result of the conversion to Christianity. Also, the only surviving documents that are written in Gothic are called the Codex Argenteus, Codex Ambrosianus, and Codex Gissensis, Codex Carolinus, and Codex Vaticanus Latinus, all written scripture.

Illustration of the Gothic people.

One of the reasons for the decline of the Gothic language is when it lost its function as a church language when the Visigoths (Capital One commercial) converted to Catholicism. Religion seems to have played a major role in the adoption and decline of the Gothic language (both written and spoken). Faith and religion tend to influence the majority of what was originally written down. The Christian religion was important to the Gothic people, and that is what they wrote down. Perhaps this is why there is not as much of information on the culture and customs of the Gothic people—as that was not something that they probably felt was important to write down.

This reminds me of an aspect of the LDS church that is embraced—record keeping through journaling. In my own journaling—I write down what is important to me—such as significant events (graduating high school, starting college, patriarchal blessing, etc…) but do I record things, even seemingly mundane things that could be a benefit to those who follow me? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what our great-great-great grandparents did for fun? Or to learn about how different their education was from ours? Or how they first met their spouse? I think it would be very insightful. Written language/knowledge is the ultimate preservation of knowledge—however inconvenient to accomplish—it is the way in which we are able to recreate past events through words.

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!

Canned Goods

On average, I wouldn’t say this is something I think about a ton, but i’m sure that due to moving away from home and being on my own again, it has been brought to the forefront of my mind. What might that be? Well, it’s my mother’s cooking :) and something in particular that I wanted to focus on, is a knowledge that I feel is pretty common amongst members

of the church (that may be a sheltered view, but it’s how I feel)...and that would be canning or bottled goods.

The time of canned goods dates way back into the 18th century and was inspired, we could say, by the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. He didn’t come up with the idea, but he put the word out that something needed to change in the aspect of food and war. The actual driving force of canning goods came about as a military strategy of all things. The French were in great need of a better way to increase and also maintain a regular food supply which was not an easy task...especially for large armies. Hence why a reward of 12,000 francs (a lot of money) was offered for whomever could achieve such a task. It wasn’t until about 15 years later that Nicholas Appert formulated the idea of preserving food in bottles. From that time on, it was adopted by many other countries and continued to develop and remain in high demand in countless wars around the world. In fact, it wasn’t until many, many years later that the act of canning or bottling goods actually became a common household activity.

Now I don’t profess myself to be a canning enthusiast, but it is something that I have learned over time as i have spent time around my Mom and helped out with the task.

Undoubtedly, i am extremely grateful for this knowledge and especially the instant access to canned beans, pickles, salsa, peaches, and many other homemade items. These are some things I really do enjoy about home! Now I have not yet had to try it out by myself, but for 3 of my siblings who now have families of their own, canning goods is an annual event that they participate in...thanks to the the knowledge that they acquired through my mom and other canning buffs in the area and of course, through practice and hard work.

Although we didn’t have to can food for an army, sometimes it would seem that way when there is not a inch of kitchen countertop insight due to the lavish amounts of jars EVERYWHERE. What once was a tactic to winning a war, now has become an essential aspect of a lifestyle and health for my family and many others around the world.