James Hall Research Articles

Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation (review)

Reviewed by: Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation Robert C. Deal (bio) Keywords Hugh Glass, Frontier, Environment, American West Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation. By Jon T. Coleman. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012. Pp. 252. $28.00.) Jon T. Coleman’s Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation traces, dissects, and deconstructs one of the most enduring stories of survival in the American West. Hugh Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear while part of a commercial hunting expedition in the Rocky Mountains during the summer of 1823. Left for dead by his companions, Glass survived his horrific injuries and managed to crawl and then walk more than two hundred miles over thirty-eight days to confront those who had abandoned him. The incredible saga of Glass’s survival and ultimate forbearance in exacting a measure of physical revenge has served as fodder for countless storytellers, writers, poets, and, more recently, filmmakers. Glass has been cast and recast by his many chroniclers as a preeminent example of what Coleman terms environmental Americanism. [End Page 174] Although Coleman, a cultural and environmental historian best known for his justly celebrated book Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, never provides a single, neat explanation of what he means by environmental Americanism, readers will certainly recognize the interpretive framework that Coleman complicates and inverts to great effect. Glass is the American frontiersmen whose encounter with the dangers and hardships of the cruel American environment breaks him physically and emotionally so that he can be forged into a new sort of man. Like Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontiersmen, he is reborn in the wilderness as the uniquely democratic American prototype, part of the familiar story about the birth of American nationalism and exceptionalism. Here Lies Hugh Glass is not a biography. Glass left behind a single letter and is largely absent from the documents upon which historians normally depend. Even the earliest written accounts based allegedly on Glass’s own oral narrative of his survival are second- or third-hand recreations of questionable reliability. The many gaps and holes in the story have, Coleman suggests, proved more boon than hindrance to those who have sought to explain the creation of the American nation through the broken body of Glass. That Glass is a blank slate is clearly part of his appeal to Coleman. Coleman uses the many stories of Hugh Glass to reexamine the myth of the environmental American and then, taking his own turn at resurrecting the hunter’s gnawed corpse, offers a new reading. If the old story of the frontier and environmental Americanism in the hands of Turner, James Hall, and numerous Glass interpreters recounts the building of something noble through the elision of uncomfortable issues like race and the softening of the rough types who did the work of the frontier, Coleman returns many of the grubby particulars to the tale. Coleman explains how the stories of people like Glass were used to produce an American nationalism built upon an idealized version of the western experience and the people who lived and worked on the frontier. Storytellers and nation builders wanted heroes and so slaves, servants, Indians, and disreputable men like Glass and his fellow hunters were pushed aside and made to vanish once their work was done. Yet, as Coleman notes with great pleasure, Glass has a way of sticking around in all of his ornery, grizzled glory to afflict those figures of authority that profited from his labor and appropriated his experiences for their own ideological purposes. Coleman attributes much of this endurance to the way in which Glass crafted the tale of his mauling as a satire on the [End Page 175] anitized story of America being drafted even as the hunter plied his trade in the 1820s. While Coleman argues that Glass was a self-aware cultural critic consciously telling his story as a challenge to a West made safe for polite society, there is no real evidence to support this romanticized vision of Glass turning...

Camerate and disparid crinoids from the late Kinderhookian Meadville Shale, Cuyahoga Formation of Ohio

Crinoids were first reported from the Cuyahoga Formation in northeastern Ohio by James Hall in 1863. However, these crinoids have not been re-examined in detail since the late nineteenth century. With the restudy of classical and more recent collections, ten (nine camerate and one disparid) species-level taxa are recognized from the late Kinderhookian Meadville Shale Member, Cuyahoga Formation, including the camerates Amphoracrinus viminalis (Hall, 1863); Aorocrinus helice Hall, 1863; Aorocrinus meyeri n. sp.; Aryballocrinus martini n. sp.; Cusacrinus daphne (Hall, 1863); Platycrinites s.l. contritus (Hall, 1863); Platycrinites s.l. graphicus (Hall, 1863); Platycrinites s.l. lodensis (Hall and Whitfield, 1875); and Platycrinites s.l. burkei n. sp. In addition, Halysiocrinus sp. is the first disparid reported from this fauna. Platycrinites s.l. bedfordensis (Hall and Whitfield, 1875) is designated a nomen dubium. Growth is evaluated for Aorocrinus helice and Cusacrinus daphne, which had contrasting development. The growth of the Aorocrinus helice calyx was largely not allometric but that of the primaxil plate was, suggesting the arms may have grown allometrically. In contrast, much of the calyx of Cusacrinus daphne displayed allometric growth.

Contemporary Audiologic Assessment for Auditory Dys-Synchrony

Contemporary Audiologic Assessment for Auditory Dys-Synchrony

Play It Again, Sam Weller: New Digital Audiobooks and Old Ways of Reading

Play It Again, Sam Weller:New Digital Audiobooks and Old Ways of Reading Matthew Rubery (bio) Ahem. The speaker is about to read aloud Nancy's murder, a brutal tableau from Oliver Twist (1837–39) ritually performed before the public since Dickens' first recitation of this scene at St. James's Hall as part of a Farewell Tour in 1869. The 'Murder', as the author preferred to call it, would soon become part of Dickens lore for the violence with which it ended the life not only of the novel's heroine but also of the novelist himself.1 The 'Sikes and Nancy' episode begins with the narrator's voice as one of the boy thieves is instructed to 'dodge' a young woman through the streets of London. The ensuing voices are those of Fagin ('my dear'), Bolter ('Oh Lor!'), and Sikes ('Wot now?'), whose Cockney accents are performed in markedly different registers from that of the preceding narrator.2 In fact, each of the characters is set apart by a distinct sound to ensure that audiences can tell who is speaking without access to the written script. The prompt copy used by Dickens for this scene signals the building momentum toward Sikes' terrible act of violence with the marginal stage direction 'XX Murder coming XX'.3 This is the moment during the recitation when Dickens was said by spectators to have flung aside the script in order to perform the scene from memory.4 The audience for the performance has little choice but to sit back and wait for the impending murder since the pace of narration is controlled entirely by the speaker, not the auditor. It is a tense wait. The recitation of a scene that takes a mere ten minutes to read silently to one's self can take upwards of forty minutes when read aloud before an audience. Although both experiences might make the flesh creep, reading the novel in silence is a very different experience from that of listening to Nancy's murder. Now that Nancy's murder has caught your ear, let me assure you that this is not another account from an ear-witness to one of the nearly 500 public readings given by Dickens to audiences across England and America.5 There is no lectern, maroon backcloth, or blaze of gaslamps [End Page 58] set up for this reading; no magisterial bearded figure in evening dress; and certainly no mesmerising eye contact between orator and audience. Instead, this is an account of listening to one of a dozen recordings of Dickens' novel readily available to twenty-first-century audiences in the form of digital audiobooks – online 'talking books'. At no point in history has it been so easy to listen to the reading aloud of Victorian literature. The reader for this particular performance is not Dickens but one of those inspired by him, from amateur enthusiasts to professional actors: Martin Jarvis, Anton Lesser, Alex Jennings, Nadia May, Fabio Camero, Miriam Margolyes, Flo Gibson, the St. Charles Players, and many other first-time readers. Whereas the majority of audio books marketed today continue to rely on promotional tools designed for print, the publisher's blurb for this recording emphasises what is most distinctive about the audiobook format: 'Hear Dickens' gift for social commentary in this classic story of the poor orphan, Oliver'.6 This is a double invitation – 'Hear Dickens' gift' – to listen to the tale being read aloud as well as to the latent aurality of a literary narrative itself designed as much for the ear as the eye. The growing popularity of audiobooks over the last decade means that literary critics may no longer be able to turn a blind eye – or a deaf ear, in this case – to the ways in which oral delivery influences the reception of literature. Digital audio may compel those of us accustomed to silent reading to heed recent calls to refine our skills in 'close listening'.7 The following discussion will consider the potential impact new digital audio technology is having over the way we think about literature and its reception. To do so, this piece will introduce the latest audio innovations in as straightforward...

In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1860 (review)

Reviewed by: In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1860 Timothy Sweet (bio) In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1860 Edward Watts Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006284 pp. The legacy of French colonization has received a great deal of attention from historians following studies such as Patricia Nelson Limerick's [End Page 237] The Legacy of Conquest (1987) and especially Richard White's The Middle Ground (1991), which replaced or at least supplemented Turnerian teolology with descriptions of "the racial, political, economic, and ethnic complexity of the frontier" (Watts 220). This terrain has been of less interest to literary scholars, however, with the rare exception of Gordon Sayre's comparative study, Les Sauvages Américains (1997). The undergraduate literary canon, even in the wake of the Heath anthology's multiculturalist revisions, has similarly minimized the French past, especially in contrast to the Spanish. The fifth edition of the Heath gives us only three French selections in volume A (to 1800) as compared with a dozen Spanish. The "Spanish America" section of volume B (1800–1865) contains several Anglophone selections, as well as Spanish writings in translation. The Norton, evidently returning to an Anglo orientation with the seventh edition after a foray into multiculturalism, has excised the French altogether (represented in the sixth edition by Champlain), while retaining at least recognition of Hispanic origins in selections from Columbus, Casas, and Cabeza de Vaca. The anthologies represent largely presentist responses to the legacy of imperial success: the persistence of the Spanish and the decline, after 1763 and 1803, of the French. The French decline is the foreground of Edward Watts's In This Remote Country. Watts investigates how the Anglo-American empire understood what it replaced in the "middle ground" that flourished prior to the War of 1812: the French and Métis culture of voyageurs (rivermen), coureurs de bois (fur traders), habitants (peasant farmers), associated Native Americans, and a few acculturated Anglos. Watts argues that Anglo-American writers found in the French colonial past grounds on which to debate the future of the United States: "Could it learn to live in peace with itself, its neighbors, and the rest of the world, happy on the margins of world power rather than at its center?" (5). It was still quite possible to entertain an optimistic answer to this question during the antebellum era, as dissident writers drew from a nostalgic French past a vision of a culture "less greedy, less racist, less aggressive" than America was turning out to be (4). This book continues Watts's ongoing project of bringing the Old Northwest into the early and antebellum American literary canon. In An American Colony (2002), Watts traced the development of a distinct literary culture in the Old Northwest, arguing that the region is best understood as an internal colony of the United States. Watts and David Rachels made [End Page 238] a wealth of documents from this literary culture (as well as from the Old Southwest) newly available in a classroom anthology, The First West: Writing from the American Frontier, 1776–1860 (2002) (reviewed in EAL 2003). In In This Remote Country, Watts gives us a means of approach and an argument for canonical recognition of commentators on colonial French and Métis culture such as Henry Marie Brackenridge, James Hall, Juliette Kinzie, and William Whipple Warren. None of these writers is anthologized today, except in Watts and Rachels's The First West. Hall is familiar (though seldom read) as Melville's source for the story of Colonel Moredock in the "Indian-hating" chapters of The Confidence Man. The others are virtually unknown, even though, as Watts demonstrates, they share our current disciplinary preoccupations with nation, race, class, and gender, seeing in the French and Métis past an alternative narrative of American origins and a critique of Anglo imperialism, racism, acquisitiveness, and patriarchy. Watts shows how some of Hall's stories, for example "A Legend of Carondolet" from Legends of the West (1832), would pair nicely with Irving's "Sleepy Hollow" or "Rip Van Winkle," both pitting Yankee culture against a prior, less acquisitive...

Hedonic Damages – One More Time: A Symposium

On January 5, 2008, the National Association of Forensic Economics (NAFE) sponsored its third symposium on “hedonic damages,” this time entitled “Hedonic Damages – One More Time.” The first symposium on hedonic damages was presented at the December 1989 Allied Social Sciences meetings in Atlanta, Georgia with the title “Hedonic Damages and the Value of Life.” Papers from that session by W. Kip Viscusi, Ted R. Miller, Stan V. Smith, and William T. Dickens were published in Volume 3, No. 3 of this journal (1990). The second symposium on hedonic damages was presented at the January 2000 Allied Social Sciences meetings in Boston, Massachusetts with the title “Hedonic Damages Ten Years Later.” Papers from that session by W. Kip Viscusi, J. Paul Leigh and Jorge A. Garcia, Ted R. Miller, Stan V. Smith and Thomas R. Ireland, along with an introduction by Peter Marks and Thomas R. Ireland were published in Volume 13, No. 2 of this journal (2000). W. Kip Viscusi and Ted R. Miller returned as presenters for a third time at the January, 2008 symposium, along with Brian McDonald and John O. Ward. Thomas Ireland acted as the organizer of the 2008 symposium and Peter Marks served as its chair. The term “hedonic damages” first entered general public consciousness on December 12, 1988 with a front page story in the Wall Street Journal by Paul M Barrett on “The Price of Pleasure,” featuring Stan V. Smith and his successful presentation of hedonic damages testimony in the case of Sherrod v. Berry (1985, 1987, and 1988). Two federal judges in Illinois had commented favorably about Smith’s testimony in the original opinion and one of the appeals decisions before the case was reversed on other grounds in 1988. The NAFE symposium in December of 1989 was designed to explore this interesting new development in the field of forensic economics. As of the 2000 symposium hedonic damages testimony had enjoyed several successes in individual states, but had been rejected by the courts in a number of reported decisions, particularly at the federal level. The threat of Daubert and Frye standards for admission of expert testimony being applied negatively to hedonic damage testimony had become one of the central features in the debate over this concept. As of 2008 hedonic damages testimony had become much more specialized. Because hedonic damages testimony had been rejected in a number of legal decisions, fewer and fewer forensic economists were involved, but Stan Smith, Robert Johnson, Brian McDonald, as well as several other economic experts

Introduction to Minerals, Inclusions and Volcanic Processes

Minerals are intrinsically resistant to the processes that homogenize silicate liquids—their compositions thus yield an archive of volcanic and magmatic processes that are invisible at the whole rock scale. Minerals and their inclusions record diverse magma compositions, the depths and temperatures of magma storage, the nature of open system processes, and the rates at which magmas ascend. The potential for understanding volcanic systems through minerals and their inclusions has long been recognized (Sorby 1858). Sorby’s (1863) study of James Hall’s reversal experiments helped resolve the “basalt controversy” in favor of a volcanic origin, while Zirkel’s (1863) discovery of quartz within a volcanic rock helped tip the balance in favor of a magmatic origin for granite (Young 2003). Studies of phenocrysts have also long illustrated the importance of wall rock assimilation and magma mixing (e.g., Fenner 1926; Finch and Anderson 1930; Larson et al. 1938), and the potential for geothermometry (Barth 1934). Darwin’s (1844) mineralogical field-studies in the Galapagos archipelago, followed by King’s (1878) studies at Hawaii, also inaugurated the establishment of fractional crystallization as an important evolutionary process (Becker 1897; Bowen 1915). Recent advances in micro-analytical techniques open a new realm of detail, building upon a long history of mineralogical research; this volume summarizes some of this progress. Our summary focuses on volcanologic and magmatic processes, but the methods reviewed here extend well beyond terrestrial applications. Samples from the Stardust return mission, for example, show that olivine, plagioclase and pyroxene pervade the solar system (Brownlee et al. 2006)—while the topics covered here surely apply to all terrestrial-like planetary bodies, relevance may extend to a cosmic scale. Our more modest hope is that this volume will aid the study of disparate fields of terrestrial igneous systems, and perhaps provide a catalyst for new collaborations and integrated studies. …

A Scottish Literati in Paris: The Case of Sir James Hall

A Scottish Literati in Paris: The Case of Sir James Hall

31 Days: Gerald Ford, the Nixon Pardon, and a Government in Crisis by Barry Werth

164 Michigan Historical Review Many readers will be familiar with the stereotypes of backward, racially corrupt, and passive Frenchmen that appeared in texts by nationalist writers such as Francis Parkman, George Bancroft, and Lyman Beecher. But while Watts interprets these writers in fresh ways, his great contribution is his discussion of authors who constructed very different images of a French past in their works. Writers such as Henry Marie Brackenridge, Margaret Fuller, and James Hall imagined the French in a positive light, portraying them as classless, communal, egalitarian, inclusive, free, and generous. Their positive images of the French, Watts illustrates, were used "to tell a different American story . . . [and] to remind American readers of a set of values the French had embodied and the Anglos had displaced, values that were more enlightened on subjects such as land, race, gender, religion, and nation" (p. 6). In This Remote Country adds to our understanding of how nineteenth century Americans constructed and debated a national identity, and it is a pleasure to read. Historians might worry that this study of an imagined French past occasionally seems to make assertions about the historical French who, it must be said, were not generally openminded protomulticulturalists practicing an anticapitalist and antihierarchical version of colonialism. As a study of nineteenth-century representations, however, this book is a remarkable contribution. It deserves a wide readership among scholars of nineteenth-century literature and historians. Robert Morrissey University of Tennessee, Knoxville Barry Werth. 31 Days: Gerald Ford, theNixon Pardon, and a Government in Crisis. New York: Anchor, 2007. Pp. 348. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Paper, $15.95. This interesting book chronicles the first thirty-one days of Gerald Ford's presidency, a term of office that lasted only thirty months. Ford took the oath of office at a unique time in the history of the United States. On August 9, 1974, Ford's predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, became the first president to resign. The previous autumn Nixon had nominated and Congress had confirmed the appointment of Ford as vice president, following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Ford, therefore, became the first American president who had never run for office nationwide. Book Reviews 165 The book's subtitle outlines the major subjects that the author weaves through the narrative from day one to day thirty-one. Werth skillfully shifts from the media image of the new president; to theWhite House where Ford was establishing his own team while simultaneously dealing with his presidential duties; to Nixon's state of mind, health, attitudes, and actions; and finally to depicting the gradual process by which Ford decided to grant a pardon to the former president. On day thirty-one of his presidency, Ford granted Nixon "a full, free, and absolute pardon ... for all offenses" that he "committed or may have committed or taken part inwhile president" (p. 321). Ford's basic political and personal instincts served him well, according to Werth. Most members of the press saw Ford as a refreshing, drastic change from Nixon. For his press secretary Ford chose Jerald ter Horst, who had been a friend since childhood and was also a respected journalist. Ford nominated New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president and then relied on him and on Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as his chief policymakers. Werth opines that with Ford's reliance on these two men he "had opted for the strongest possible partners" (p. 113). In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars Ford proposed a limited amnesty for Vietnam draft exiles. In two areas Werth portrays Ford as less than praiseworthy. The first concerns his handling of the ownership and control of the tapes and records of the Nixon presidency. The second was Ford's failure to elicit from Nixon any admission of illegal activities, only his acknowledgment of "mistakes and misjudgments" (p. 322). The Nixon pardon dissipated the widespread popularity Ford had enjoyed during his first thirty days in office. In his subsequent letter of resignation, ter Horst explained he could not "credibly defend" the pardon without a full pardon to "the young men who evaded military service as amatter of conscience" (p. 318) or pardons for former Nixon aides...

In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780-1860 (review)

Reviewed by: In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1860 by Edward Watts Michael A. McDonnell In This Remote Country: French Colonial Culture in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1860. By Edward Watts. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. The message is slowly getting through that the American “west” (stretching, at any given moment, from Virginia to California) was not a virgin land. Schoolchildren now routinely learn that diverse and numerous groups of Native Americans inhabited that land, even if they are not always taught the full and bloody history of the conquest of those peoples and the part this played in creating a continental empire. Some lucky students are now even learning that the Spanish had trod many of the paths created by Native Americans long before Americans stumbled across them. But Edward Watts here reminds us that another important group has to be taken into consideration when considering the origins of the American nation. Indeed, long before late-twentieth-century American historians began widening their horizons, many nineteenth-century writers were plainly aware of the crucial role the French played in the early history of North America. Long established, a constant thorn in the side of the English settlements, and seemingly more adept at creating alliances with native groups, the French were well known to colonial and Revolutionary generations of Anglo-Americans. Indeed, the American republic was borne, in part, over conflicts with the French over claims to the Ohio Valley and beyond. Tens of thousands of French settlers remained behind after 1763, too, spread across an arc reaching from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. Thus it should come as no surprise — yet it does, somehow — that images of French settlers saturated nearly every text concerned with the west and American expansion in the nineteenth-century. Upon reflection, some of these representations are familiar, of course. Watts notes that important Anglo writers, from George Rogers Clark to James Fenimore Cooper, from Lyman Beecher to Francis Parkman often mentioned the French, but only to quickly denigrate them as slovenly and degraded, something less than white, and destined to “vanish” along with the Indians in the face of the expanding American republic/empire. Representations of the French as backwards by these imperialist writers were most often used to erase a pre-Anglo French presence in places such as Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. The triumph of the Anglo empire builders in the nineteenth-century helped ensure that these views became dominant. Watts is well aware of these representations, and notes that they played a significant role in developing the identity of the new nation. But the true genius of Watts’ book consists of his presentation of alternative images of French, Métis, and Indian communities by equally important writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Hall, Henry Marie Brackenridge and Margaret Fuller. These and many other — often unpublished — writers also used images of French colonial culture, but to critique many of the less savoury values of the burgeoning American empire. Thus, as Watt persuasively argues, representations of eighteenth-century French colonists in nineteenth-century American narratives revealed the existence of multiple — and alternative - models of nation- and empire-building in the new republic. Such alternatives were raised to ask readers to imagine that the nation had options other than imperial, insular, aggressive, and racist masculine conquest. In a series of delightful chapters, Watts teases out these alternative ideas from writers great and small, ranging across representations of French colonial land tenure, labour, family, and religion. And throughout, he pays careful attention to the ways in which these issues cut across dominant and hardening lines of race, class and gender in the new republic. I can hardly do justice to the subtleties of Watts’ arguments in such a short review. But I can say that Watts’ clear mastery of a tremendous range of sources shows a mature writer clearly steeped in the literature of antebellum America, and refreshingly, of the Great Lakes and the Old Northwest. Who would have thought to juxtapose Francis Parkman and Métis historian William Warren in a fascinating look at...

Ebenezer Emmons (1799-1863), Founder of American Paleozoic Stratigraphy: Hero of the Taconic Controversy, one of the Most Celebrated Geological Disputes in North America

One of the most important and distinguished geologists in the history of the earth sciences was Ebenezer Emmons Sr., father of the Taconic System. The overthrust which places Lower Cambrian rocks in contact with Middle Ordovician rocks, known as Emmons' Line, formerly Logan's Line, is a segment that extends from Canada through New York, and as far south as Alabama. Emmons, a graduate of Rensselaer in the first class of 1826, was inspired by Amos Eaton. Emmons became junior professor at Rensselaer in 1830, a position he held for ten years, and while serving there, was appointed State (Chief) Geologist of the northern Geological District of the New York State Geological Survey in 1836. He named the Adirondack Mountains (1838), and the Taconic Mountains (1844, 1846) and acquainted the public with these regions. Emmons had noted the presence of a group of rocks between the Potsdam Sandstone, the oldest of the then recognized sedimentary formations in New York, and what was called then the Primitive Rocks of Central Vermont. Emmons inferred that the deformed rocks in Washington County, New York, north of Troy, New York, were older than any fossiliferous rocks then known. For these oldest fossil-bearing rocks he coined the name Taconic System. Emmons later became state geologist of North Carolina, spreading the influence of Rensselaer, and promoted his ideas of the Taconic System.Emmons' student at Rensselaer, James Hall became the chief American paleontologist of his era and one of the greatest American scientists of the 19th century. Emmons and Hall ‘dueled’ over the age of the Taconic rocks, a disagreement that became known as the Taconic controversy. Hall said they were younger, whereas Emmons claimed them to be older. This division led to suit and counter suit, and ultimately Emmons was forced to leave New York as a result of a court decision favoring Hall. Emmons and Hall are buried next to each other at the Albany Rural Cemetery in Albany, New York. The argument over the Taconic fossils raged for many years, and ultimately Emmons was vindicated, for Joachim Barrande, the chief student of European Paleozoic faunas, agreed with Emmons. The Taconic rocks of Troy, New York, are comparable in age and lithology to the rocks of the district near Prague which have been named Barrandian after Barrande. The American Museum of Natural History in New York honors "Scientists Who Have Served the State of New York and the Nation"; this list includes four geologists, three of whom are from Rensselaer. The first listed is Eaton, founder of Rensselaer, and last is Ebenezer Emmons.

Reception of the Young Ernő Dohnányi: The Background of His Successes During His First Tours to England and America

This article reveals the background of the young Ernő Dohnányi's successes as a pianist and a composer, through the investigation of all available press articles, concert programs, letters and other contemporary documents, to make a step to create an authentic image of Dohnányi. October 24, 1898, the day of Dohnányi's debut in London, marked a decisive turn in the artist's career. After concerts in Hungary, Vienna and Germany he came into the focus of attention of wide audiences by playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto in G major at the London St James's Hall. The warm reception and the sensational news in the press launched a chain reaction of invitations and Dohnányi's international career. His first England tour (October-December 1898) was followed by two further tours within a year (January-March and October-December 1899, respectively) and his series of successes was crowned by these two tours of America (March-April 1900, November 1900 - March 1901). In the meantime he acquired fame as a composer as well: with his Piano Concerto in E minor (op. 5b) he won the Bösendorfer Competition in Vienna in March 1899 and the three-movement version of the work (op. 5) was performed several times in Hungary, England, Germany and the United States. His String Quartet (op.7) was performed in London, his Sonata for Violoncello (op. 8) in London and New York. His piano pieces (op. 2, 4, 6) - just as the piano parts of his Quintet (op. 1) and Concerto - were played by him several times. The promising, yet unknown youth at the beginning of his career turned into an internationally acknowledged and appreciated artist within three years.

Den skæggede eskimo

Den skæggede eskimo

Edwin Bradford Hall: Devonian Sponge Collector Extraordinaire

James Hall (1811-1898), second State Paleontologist of New York, is considered by many to be the "Father of American Paleontology." However, Hall could never have achieved this stature without his legion of amateurs. Among the most dedicated and prolific of these was Edwin Bradford Hall (1825-1908). His collection of 5,500 Devonian glass sponges, the largest collection in the world, provided James Hall with the material to write his massive 1898 monograph on these problematical fossils.

PRESENTATION OF THE CHARLES SCHUCHERT AWARD OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO LOREN E. BABCOCK

Madam President, Members of The Paleontological Society Council, Society Members, and Guests; it is my distinct honor to present Dr. Loren E. Babcock, recipient of the Charles Schuchert Award for 2001. These presentations tend toward hyperbole; however, it is often difficult distinguishing between extravagant exaggeration and realistic statement of accomplishments when describing remarkable people. Loren is remarkable! Therefore, taking his place among the previous recipients of this award is richly deserved. Loren was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. His father was a high school science teacher who had a keen interest in geology and books. The family must have spent many weekends collecting in the classic western New York Devonian sections first monographed by James Hall—their house was full of fossils! Loren not only took to the hobby of fossil collecting but did so in the intense, systematic way that characterizes his career today. He had read the classic literature of James Hall, John Clarke, Amadeus Grabau, Charles Schuchert, and others before finishing high school, and became hooked on what has become a lifelong passion. Thus, it was quite logical that Loren was motivated to obtain a degree in geology. He …

Experimental tectonics: from Sir James Hall to the present

The subject of experimental tectonics is the study of geodynamic processes by means of laboratory scale models. The first roughly scaled experiments were performed by Sir James Hall about two centuries ago, in the intellectual atmosphere generated by the appearance of Hutton's Theory of the Earth (Hutton, J., 1795. Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations, Vols. I & II. Cadell & Davies, Edinburgh). Their aim was to test the hypothesis that the folding of originally horizontal strata is the result of lateral compression. The idea to test hypotheses by laboratory experiments had already been applied by Hall to petrological problems (crystallization and melting) not involving scaling. Interestingly, however, he constructed a scale model of a Gothic cathedral, using a line of reasoning parallel to that used in his tectonic experiments. From these beginnings, the theory and practice of scale models have grown to become an important part of an integrated approach to the study of geodynamics. One topic which is at present the focus of much attention is the choice of model materials correctly scaling the temperature dependence of lithospheric materials. As an example, a brief discussion is offered of two geodynamic problems where the application of scale models is proving very fruitful: the initiation and time-history of subduction of oceanic and continental lithosphere, and the tectonic evolution of orogenic wedges.

What Sculptors Did Next

Books reviewed in this article: James Hall The World as Sculpture Penelope Curtis Sculpture 1900–1945

Ben Marcus, 'The Age of Wire and String'

Abstract This article aims to show that Ben Marcus's first novel The Age of Wire and String is a formal experiment in language. The relationship with the outside world is changed in a radical way and the text can be seen as a book of instructions for life: a grammar of emotion, instinct, and pain. The lyrical prose makes extreme demands on the reader to perform a decoding exercise, but he is blocked by the constant redefinitions of concepts, relationships, and places. In creating the world of an imaginary American society, Marcus perceives everything outside as animate, and gives a voice to its loss. First published in America in 1995 (Knopf) and reissued in England by Flamingo in 1997, The Age of Wire and String is one of the most extraordinary texts to have emerged from America in the last twenty years. For once one can agree with a jacket blurb, where we find Robert Coover writing that this text 'marks the arrival of a unique new talent in American letters'. At University Marcus studied philosophy, particularly that of Wittgenstein, though he now teaches creative writing at Brown University and an interest in both philosophy and innovation are apparent in the text. One cannot avoid the word 'text' in speaking of Marcus's work since this is certainly not a novel in the usual sense of the word. The dust-jacket, but not the title-page, describes the work as 'Fictions' might lead the reader to expect something along the lines of Borges, and there are certainly elements of Borges's writing in the hermeneutic work imposed on the reader and determined by the text. 'There is no larger task than that of cataloging a culture, particularly when that culture has remained willfully hidden to the routine in-gazing practiced by professional disclosers' (p. 3). However, finally I do not feel that Marcus's experiments are of the same nature as Borges's; the 'Fictions' are disconcerting, not in a metafictional sense, but rather because the reality, the space, time, family characters, and objects are all recontextualized as other. It is as though Marcus refuses a metaphorical approach and insists on the metonymic -- the images, one feels, all have a solid attribution in reality, though that reality is one of terrible pain and loss. The tone is in some ways that of a child trying to come to terms with the outside world, defining that world for the first time, and at the same time discovering pain. At times one is tempted to connect the writing to the ambitions of the Surrealists or the Martian Poets. For example, Marcus writes: 'Electricity mourns the absence of the energy form (wife) within the household's walls by stalling its flow to the outlets' (p. 7). Or, again, 'Snoring, language disturbance caused by accidental sleeping, in a person speaks in compressed syllables and bulleted syntax, often stacking several words over one another in a distemporal deliverance of a sentence' (p. 8). In these early, and quite simple examples one can easily find connections with some of Francis Ponge's poems, for example, 'The Candle': Night sometimes brings to life an unusual plant whose gleam Decomposes furnished rooms into clumps of shadow. Its gold leaf, held by a very black pedicel, stands unmoved in the Hollow of a slender alabaster column.[1] In both Ponge and Marcus one finds dislocations in the usual order of logic; cause and effect seem reversed. However valid this connection may be, I think that finally Marcus is cutting deeper than Ponge, and in fact, at times, he is closer to Rilke. James Hall makes a very good point about Rilke and the child's relationship with things, I believe can be applied pertinently to Marcus's work. 'For Rilke', Hall writes, 'adults are alienated from things. We live in an age which possesses no things, no houses, no external objects. By things Rilke means objects such as childhood possessions -- small pieces of wood, vessels and utensils -- to the child has extraordinarily close and deep attachment'. …

EXTERNAL MORPHOLOGY AND PALEOBIOLOGY OFHELIOPHYLLUM HALLI(ZOANTHARIA, RUGOSA), FROM THE MIDDLE DEVONIAN HAMILTON GROUP OF NEW YORK STATE

Heliophyllum halli contains highly variable, mostly solitary rugose corals. Specimens reported here come from shaly beds of the Middle Devonian Hamilton Group in New York State. Early recognition of morphotype variation led James Hall to establish numerous species in the H. halli group that were later interpreted by John Wells in terms of varying life history. Life on unstable and/or soft substrates was facilitated for these corals by talons, root-like structures that allowed larval settling and post-larval development on hard particles such as echinoderm or shell debris. Variation in subsequent growth history is reflected in corallum shape and change in diameter. Straight growth axes reflect partial burial accompanied by vertical growth, while growth axis curvature resulted from unequal settling into substrate or alternatively, life at the surface of substrate, with sharp bends (geniculations) reflecting major changes in growth orientation. Decrease in diameter resulted from environmental stress, with greatest effects on the peripheral portion of the calice. Other major reactions to increased burial rate (through sinking or increased sedimentation) are epithecal secretion to form an outer wall for isolation of itself from surrounding sediment or decrease in polyp size as shown by terminal shrinking of the corallum diameter, at times nearly to zero. Yonge's (1940) summary of observations on living coral polyps suggests that the living H. halli was nonzooxanthellate, with an efficient system of feeding that utilized its multitude of tentacles without the help of cilia, which thus were able to generate currents to promote efficient sediment cleansing. Sediment shedding would also have been aided by polypal distension (swelling) above a reflexed calical margin.

External morphology and paleobiology of Heliophyllum halli (Zoantharia, Rugosa), from the Middle Devonian Hamilton Group of New York State

Heliophyllum halli contains highly variable, mostly solitary rugose corals. Specimens reported here come from shaly beds of the Middle Devonian Hamilton Group in New York State. Early recognition of morphotype variation led James Hall to establish numerous species in the H. halli group that were later interpreted by John Wells in terms of varying life history. Life on unstable and/or soft substrates was facilitated for these corals by talons, root-like structures that allowed larval settling and post-larval development on hard particles such as echinoderm or shell debris. Variation in subsequent growth history is reflected in corallum shape and change in diameter. Straight growth axes reflect partial burial accompanied by vertical growth, while growth axis curvature resulted from unequal settling into substrate or alternatively, life at the surface of substrate, with sharp bends (geniculations) reflecting major changes in growth orientation. Decrease in diameter resulted from environmental stress, with greatest effects on the peripheral portion of the calice. Other major reactions to increased burial rate (through sinking or increased sedimentation) are epithecal secretion to form an outer wall for isolation of itself from surrounding sediment or decrease in polyp size as shown by terminal shrinking of the corallum diameter, at times nearly to zero. Yonge's (1940) summary of observations on living coral polyps suggests that the living H. halli was nonzooxanthellate, with an efficient system of feeding that utilized its multitude of tentacles without the help of cilia, which thus were able to generate currents to promote efficient sediment cleansing. Sediment shedding would also have been aided by polypal distension (swelling) above a reflexed calical margin.