uncomelyandbroken

Me to Everyone (11:58 AM)

GHOSTS OF LONE ROCK

Chris McDonough

University of the South

Sewanee, TN

cmcdonou@sewanee.edu

Stephen Garrett

Stephen@slgarrett.com

Mine 21

https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/mine-21

Steven Hoelscher to Everyone (11:58 AM)

Wow! Amazing!

Shun Foreman to Everyone (11:59 AM)

It started with an exceptional statement.

Michael Hardy to Everyone (11:59 AM)

Powerful documentary!

reign clark to Everyone (11:59 AM)

Very powerful and unfortunately extremely familiar to our research in Texas.

Chassidy Olainu-Alade to Everyone (11:59 AM)

Very powerful

Hanna Kim to Everyone (12:00 PM)

Thank you for that film. I got chills all the way through!

Marilyn Moore to Everyone (12:01 PM)

Indescribable! A picture speaks a thousand words!

Shun Foreman to Everyone (12:01 PM)

So much power. Compact, but so thoughtful in humanizing everyone.

Lora Wildenthal to Everyone (12:01 PM)

I was curious about the interviewee’s father.

Hanna Kim to Everyone (12:02 PM)

Can’t wait to watch the full feature!

Emily Lampert to Everyone (12:02 PM)

The film was fantastic, extremely captivating – particularly the shot of the police car and the Confederate flag, followed by the analysis of the power dynamic in the stockade photo.

reign clark to Everyone (12:04 PM)

I thought the score was very effective.

Alex Lichtenstein, Indiana Univ. to Everyone (12:08 PM)

I do wonder if we can know, for sure, that the prisoner at the stockade was about to be punished. Could he have been a trusty, for instance?

Chassidy Olainu-Alade to Everyone (12:15 PM)

Have you considered augmented reality?

Virginia Thomas to Everyone (12:17 PM)

https://southerndocumentaryfund.org/ –you might be aware of this, but here is a resource that may be useful to you.

Camille Westmont to Everyone (12:22 PM)

Hi! We are definitely considering augmented reality at Lone Rock. I am currently working on other types of remote sensing which will hopefully take place this winter. Right now we need a better view of the landscape as a whole (eg guard towers, auxiliary structures) before we apply for funding for that

This is an arcane matter (I use the adjective advisedly), but I am wondering about the etymology in English of the word “ark,” as in Noah’s. It is an odd word, used only of this particular ship and not of any other. It seems clear that there is a connection to the Ark of the Covenant. My consideration concerns a far less clear connection.

So, at Genesis 6:14, we read “”Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” (KJV– I’m using this translation on purpose). The texts beneath it are: 

• Hebrew:  ‏עֲשֵׂ֤ה לְךָ֙ תֵּבַ֣ת עֲצֵי־גֹ֔פֶר קִנִּ֖ים תַּֽעֲשֶׂ֣ה אֶת־הַתֵּבָ֑ה וְכָֽפַרְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛הּ מִבַּ֥יִת וּמִח֖וּץ בַּכֹּֽפֶר׃
• Septuagint:  ποίησον οὖν σεαυτῷ κιβωτὸν ἐκ ξύλων τετραγώνων νοσσιὰς ποιήσεις τὴν κιβωτὸν καὶ ἀσφαλτώσεις αὐτὴν ἔσωθεν καὶ ἔξωθεν τῇ ἀσφάλτῳ
• Vulgate:  Fac tibi arcam de lignis lævigatis; mansiunculas in arca facies, et bitumine linies intrinsecus et extrinsecus.

You can see that KJV’ s”ark” seems to derive from Jerome’s”arca” in the Vulgate not the Greek kibotos or Hebew taybah.

Now, at Gen 9:13, we read “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth” (KJV).The texts beneath that are: 

• Hebrew: ‏אֶת־קַשְׁתִּ֕י נָתַ֖תִּי בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וְהָֽיְתָה֙ לְא֣וֹת בְּרִ֔ית בֵּינִ֖י וּבֵ֥ין הָאָֽרֶץ׃
• Septuagint:  τὸ τόξον μου τίθημι ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ καὶ ἔσται εἰς σημεῖον διαθήκης ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς
• Vulgate:  arcum meum ponam in nubibus, et erit signum fœderis inter me et inter terram.

For rainbow, Jerome uses the standard Latin word “arcus,” bow or arch.

OK,what I am wondering is this: Could it be that our odd English word “ark” ultimately derives from a sort of word-play on Jerome’s part to align the means of salvation (arca) with the token of the covenant (arcus)? 

Arcane, no?

It’s been icy, snowy, rainy, and all kinds of wet around Sewanee lately, so unsurprisingly, the ground has disgorged a number of unusual items, one of which I came across as I was walking the dogs the other day.

Google was no help– what search terms does one use? “Weird looking stone”? So I wrote my friend Bran Potter, Emeritus Professor of Geology here in Sewanee. His reply below:

    “I think the rock, with those lava-like folds along the surface and the large number of pores, is a piece of slag from the old ironworks in Cowan. If you drive past the Fiesta Grill on that side street and continue towards the limestone quarry, you cross a stream. A walk along the stream  will reveal that the steep slope in the woods is made of many tons of this once – molten waste rock. Sometimes the texture is like coarse glass with holes. Our kids used to scour the field above the woods for artifacts – there were some amazing finds in that area – but sadly they no longer plow the field.       

In the days when the dirt roads of Sewanee often turned into quagmires in the rain, wagon loads of slag were brought up the mountain to spread out on our streets. The slag is reasonably widespread on the Domain but typical pieces are smaller than the one you found. A lot of the slag looks like volcanic cinders.”

One of the things we study at Riggs is the intergenerational transmission of trauma and the weight of history in producing various symptoms.  Of course, as psychoanalysts we traffic in attempting to study the unconscious, so much of what is transmitted between generations does not necessarily happen in language but in signs that emerge in the silences.  These signs are registered by some unconsciously or incoherently and may lead the recipient on an errand to retrieve the lost history in order to restore the “social link” to the history of a place, person, family member, national story has been lost.  My colleague Francoise Davoine, PhD, a psychoanalyst in Paris refers to this as “the cut-out history” which often follows some sort of social catastrophe.

Mine 21 is a great example of this.  Kelsey doesn’t know the story until she becomes a young adult, yet the story has been in the home, her caregivers, and the atmosphere of the community her entire life.  The best people in psychoanalytic thinking about these phenomena are:

1. Francoise Davoine and Jean Max Gaudellier.  Their book “History Beyond Trauma” is a Lacanian (thus difficult to read) text about trauma and the unconscious.  The subtitle of the book includes a quote from Wittgenstein’s closing words of the Tractatus:  “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one cannot stay silent.”  This quote suggests that what is unspeakable comes out in various symptoms—usually somatic.  This was also the basis of Freud’s 1895 version of hysteria—the repressed may also be the unspeakable, and the result is a symptom in the body expressed as a conversion disorder (limb paralysis, hysterical blindness, or other less dramatic symptoms).

2.  Vamik Volkan writes a lot about traumatized communities and societies.  Almost everytime he has a thought he seems to write a book!  I recommend his 1981 book Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena.

3.  I also recommend a paper by Maurice Apprey (a Dean of Students at UVa and a psychoanalyst).  This article is rather difficult but has some gems of thinking in it.  It was in Free Associations in 2014 and is titled ” A Pluperfect Errand.”

I hope these resources provide some avenue for exploration.  

Letter from Jane Tillman to me, January 27, 2020