The Saunterer

Lesley Gore rebuts Allen Ginsberg

    Where are you in your personal relationships on the “ownership of another” scale that runs from Allen Ginsberg to Lesley Gore?
    Allen Ginsberg wrote:

We made a vow to each other that he could own me, my mind and everything I knew, and my body, and I could own him and all he knew and all his body; and that we would give each other ourselves, so that we possessed each other as property, to do everything we wanted to, sexually or intellectually, and in a sense explore each other until we reached the mystical “X” together, emerging two merged souls.

    (Quoted from page 106 of Arts and Letters, by Edmund White. Cleis Press, 2004.)

    Lesley Gore sings her position “You Don’t Own Me,” seen and heard by clicking here.
    For a brief biography of Lesley Gore, click here. For images of or relating to Lesley Gore, click here.
    For a brief work biography of Allen Ginsberg, click here. For images of or relating to Allen Ginsberg, click here.   
    For a brief biography of Edmund White, click here. For images of or relating to Edmund White, click here.

Henri Matisse on art and feeling

    What does art have to do with feeling? Henri Matisse thought this:

Feeling is self-contained. You don’t say to yourself: Look, today I am going to manufacture some feeling. No, it is a matter of something more authentic, more profound. Feeling is an enemy only when one doesn’t know how to express it. And it is necessary to express it entirely. If you don’t attempt to go to the limit, you only get approximations. An artist is an explorer. He should begin by seeking himself, seeing himself act. Then, not restraining himself. And above all, not being easily satisfied.

    (Quoted from the front matter of Henri Matisse, by Catherine Bock-Weiss. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Henri Matisse, click here. For images of or relating to Henri Matisse, click here.
    Catherine Bock-Weiss is Professor Emerita at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jim Marshall on photographs and music

    Jim Marshall cuts directly to the chase:

Too much bullshit is written about photographs and music. Let the music move you, whether to a frenzy or a peaceful place. . . . let the photograph be one you remember – not for its technique but for its soul. Let it be a part of your life – a part of your past to help shape your future. But most of all, let the music and the photograph be something you love and will always enjoy.

    (Quoted from page 3 of Who Shot Rock & Roll: A photographic history, 1955 to the present, by Gail Buckland. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Jim Marshall, click here. For images of or relating to Jim Marshall, click here.
    For a brief biography of Gail Buckland, click here. For images of or relating to Gail Buckland, click here.

Merritt Clifton on the link between killing animals and killing people

    It is hardly surprising that the Norwegian killer, Anders Behring Breivik, was a zealous hunter, a killer of animals.
    Merritt Clifton, writing in Animal People, discusses research linking the two perversions. An extract:

Fitzgerald, Kalof, and Dietz did a complex set of statistical comparisons of the demographic variables in 581 counties from 1994 to 2002, compared to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report database. “The findings,” they concluded, “indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a ‘Sinclair effect’ unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.”

Fitzgerald, Kalof, and Dietz used similar methods and some of the same raw demographic and crime data that ANIMAL PEOPLE used in a 1994-1995 set of comparisons of hunting license sales with child abuse convictions in the 232 counties of New York state, Ohio, and Michigan. The initial study, covering the 62 counties of New York state, found that in 21 of 22 direct comparisons between counties of almost identical population density, the county with the most hunters also had the most child molesting. Twenty-eight of the 32 New York counties with rates of child molesting above the state median also had more than the median rate of hunting. The second ANIMAL PEOPLE study demonstrated that among the 88 counties of Ohio, those with more than the median number of hunters per 100,000 residents had 51% more reported child abuse, including 15% more physical violence, 82% more neglect, 33% more sexual abuse, and 14% more emotional maltreatment.

The third ANIMAL PEOPLE study found that Michigan children were nearly three times as likely to be neglected and twice as likely to be physically abused or sexually assaulted if they lived in a county with either an above average or above median rate of hunting participation.

ANIMAL PEOPLE concluded that the parallels prevalent in all three states support a hypothesis that both hunting and child abuse reflect the degree to which a social characteristic called dominionism prevails in a particular community.  Stephen Kellert, in a 1980 study commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in part to discover effective defenses of hunting, defined dominionism as an attitude in which “primary satisfactions [are] derived from mastery or control over animals,” a definition which other investigators extended to include the exercise of “mastery or control” over women and children.

Kellert -- a hunter who for 30 years has struggled to deny the import of his findings -- reported that the degree of dominionism in the American public as a whole rated just 2.0 on a scale of 18. Humane society members rated only 0.9. Recreational hunters, however, rated from 3.8 to 4.1, while trappers scored 8.5.

Fitzgerald, Kalof, and Dietz found much the same tendencies in their study of slaughtering and crime, including “sexual attacks on males, incest, indecent exposure, statutory rape, and ‘crimes against nature,’” they reported. “Many of these offenses are perpetrated against those with less power,” Fitzgerald, Kalof, and Dietz noted. “We interpret this as evidence that the work done within slaughterhouses might spillover to violence against other less powerful groups, such as women and children."

    To read the full article on Animal People’s website, click here.
    For a brief biography of Merritt Clifton, click here. For images of or relating to Merritt Clifton, click here.