Showing posts from: October 2021
Woman Behaving Outrageously: Bea Miles, Sydney Larrikin and Eccentric Sui Generis
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)You’d be hard pressed to come up with a personality that epitomised Sydney eccentricity more than the legendary Bea Miles who died in 1973. When the subject arises even today, so many Sydneysiders of a certain vintage have a Bea Miles anecdote to tell. Either it’s a chance (and sometimes disconcerting) encounter they had as a school kid–usually on inner Sydney public transport–with the larger (and louder) than life character herself, or one recounted to them by their mother or father. Such was her profile in this city that newspapers in the Forties and Fifties claimed that Bea (or ‘Bee’ as she later insisted it be spelt) was “more widely known than the prime minister” of the day. Bea’s popularity was rooted in that honoured tradition of Australian larrikinism, the unusual thing about this was that she was female※.
Born into a wealthy merchant family, young Beatrice Miles was already exhibiting the rebellious nature that made her buck against the straitjacketed proprieties of conservative Sydney (and specifically North Shore) society, when the illness befell her that would profoundly change her forever. Contracting Encephalitis Lethargica at 21, Bea over time changed physically from a tall, trim and athletic young woman to a seriously overweight, matronly-looking woman.
Going rogue More immediately and crucially, Bea underwent a complete personality change, becoming totally disruptive, hyper-kinetic, manic and basically uncontrollable§. When her father couldn’t cope any more with her behaviour he had her committed to an asylum, she was shuffled around between psyche facilities in Gladesville, Kenmore (Goulburn) and Callan Park. After her last escape attempt a Sydney tabloid, Smith’s Weekly, ran a story which exposed Bea’s dire plight in the psychiatric gulag of Callan Park (with sensationalised headline “Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl”) which helped secure her release.
No fixed address Unable to return to the family home in St Ives, Bea had a sojourn in Sydney’s Kings Cross where she mixed happily with the locale’s Bohemian artists and writers. After this she lived rough in Sydney, finding shelter where she could – a Rushcutters Bay stormwater drain, a cave above a Sydney beach, a park bench opposite Central Station, the steps of a church rectory, etc. Ratbags author Keith Dunstan called her “very nearly the first drop-out, the first hippie”.
Bea with men of the press, circa 1946Enemy of authority, laws and law-enforcers, habitually disruptive public presence Bea revelled in being controversial and confrontational, especially towards political and social authorities…abusing police, doctors and magistrates came instinctually to her, and she certainly had plenty of practice at it! By her own (not necessarily reliable) count she was “falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times”…Bea defiantly refused to pay for public transport or to enter cinemas. Other offences earning her the ire of the law included swearing in public and vagrancy.
Bea’s recital services boardBea Miles, literary orator Bea loved pulling stunts and making a spectacle of herself, some she did for the heck of it—like riding a man’s push bike through the streets while wearing a formal evening dress—other stunts were to earn money after her grandmother’s inheritance allowance dried up – on the street she would hold a sign up to passing punters advertising her declamatory services, for a set “schedule of fees” she would verbatim quote passages from Shakespeare.
Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr) Rogue scholar
Under the rough edges of Bea’s (very) public persona, was a formidable intellect. She had excelled at school (Abbotsleigh Girls) and gained admission to medicine at Sydney University. In her post-illness nomadic years, the “wayward waif” as one article called her, never held a formal job and generally gave her occupation as ‘student’. Bea was a habitué of public libraries, especially the State Library in Macquarie Street¶…a life-long voracious reader and produced her own collection of writings, such as “Dictionary by a Bitch”φ.
Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)Scourge of taxis The stunts Bea is best remembered and most notorious for involved her with taxis and their drivers. Her propensity for refusing to pay for taxi trips and commandeering taxis to demand that they take her to vastly distant locations has gone into folklore. Legendary instances of this were the 19-day taxi trip she took to Perth (fortunately for the female cabbie involved Bea paid her £600 for the assignment), as well as trips to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide). As is the way with legendary public figures, some of her outrageous taxi exploits were more urban myths than actual events, like the tale that used to circulate of Bea taking a taxi to Broken Hill and then on approaching the outskirts of the town she was supposed to have done a runner leaving the poor hapless driver fleeced of his massive fare. Bea’s most dramatic encounter with a cab, one that did happen, saw her respond to the driver’s refusal to take her by wrenching the door completely off the taxi’s hinges (she was a big woman!). This legendary “Bea-act” landed her in Long Bay Gaol for a spell (and a rest).
“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)Terror of trams Tram drivers didn’t escape the attentions of Bea either…the popular press labelled her the “Terror of Trams” and on at least one occasion her antics flirted with real danger as one tram driver who refused to move until Bea paid the fare discovered. Bea, never one to back down, hijacked the tram, seizing its controls and piloted it to Bondi, even stopping to pick up passengers on route.
The Bea Miles “signature look”: The original “bag lady” apparel Bea’s unorthodox ways made her a Sydney institution and an unmissable sight. Her irregular and unkempt mode of dress made her readily recognisable wherever she went…Bea’s regular ‘outfit’ described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a “down-at-heel uniform” of tennis shoes, white (or was it green) tennis sun visor and ever more scruffy overcoat. Always pinned to the overcoat’s lapel was a £5 note (Bea’s idea of countering any notion the police might get about arresting her for vagrancy).
Years of homeless living, sleeping rough, took their toll on Bea and in 1964 she was taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Randwick. Those last nine years of her life allowed Bea a clean, dry bed and gave the inveterate bookworm that she was joyous access to another library (borrowing an average of 14 books a week from the Randwick branch library).
(Sydney Morning Herald)
Footnote: Deviating from the mainstream, inheriting some of her father’s idiosyncrasies Despite the love-hate conflict with her father and his eventual disowning of her, Bea gained quite a number of her radical and non-conformist predispositions and beliefs from him. In his own right, wealthy businessman William J Miles was also an individualist and an eccentric. Miles was a rationalist and a secularist (Bea herself was a staunchly committed atheist❡)… from him she also got her love of Shakespeare and her anti-British imperialist/strident Australian patriotism). In the late 1930s Miles’ odd brand of political extremism found its voice in The Publicist. Funded and edited by Miles, the journal advocated fascism (curiously in tandem with Aboriginal rights), wholeheartedly embracing German Nazism and anti-Semitism
𝄢. Bea endorsed his pro-Aboriginal and anti-British stand but never enunciated far-right or racist sentiments during her life, although at the end she did express some views that inferred the supremacy of the “white race”.
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※ one of precious few non-male Aussie public larrikins, Dawn Fraser also comes to mind
§ though she still retained her sharpness of intellect afterwards
¶ until she was barred from the library in the late 1950s for being a nuisance (What, Bea?!? Never!)
φ example of an entry, “Duty: an excuse for showing unwarranted interference in somebody else’s business”
❡ there’s some dispute over whether her deathbed conversion to Catholicism was genuine or merely Bea’s way of thanking the church for taking her in off the streets in her twilight years
𝄢 it was a forerunner of the Australia First Movement. William’s dalliance with fascism prompted Cunneen’s assessment that, “with dangerous obsessions and money to spend, Miles represented an unstable element in Australian society”
ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ
Articles and websites consulted:
Chris Cunneen, ‘Miles, William John (1871–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-john-7576/text13225, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Judith Allen, ‘Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573/text13219, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Pip Wilson, ‘Bee Miles One of Sydney’s favourite individualists’, Wilson’s Almanac, 18-Feb-2012, web.archive.org
Robert Kaplan, ‘Miles From Her Father’, Quadrant, 07-Aug-2016, http://quadrant.org.au
Imperial Games of Cricket and War: South Africa v England, 1901
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Between 1899 and 1902 Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were locked in conflict in the Second South African War, more commonly known as the Boer War (or more accurately the Second Anglo-Boer War). With the overconfident British failing to secure the expected quick victory over the Boers’ “citizen army”, the war dragged on into a long guerrilla engagement. In 1901, in the middle of the conflict in South Africa, of all things a cricket team from South Africa visited England and Ireland to take part in a series of international matches. How did this sporting incongruity take place while the two countries were engaged in a controversial, bitterly fought and increasingly divisive war?
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Making it happen: JD Logan, the “Squire of the Southern Karoo” In fact, the tour of Britain had been originally meant to occur in 1900ⓐ, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of hostilities, understandably enough. At this point in stepped Cape Province-based expat entrepreneur and cricket patron James Douglas Logan with his (long-cherished) plan to organise a new tour. Logan negotiated with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) through the highly influential Lord Hawke, who managed to persuade the MCC to give the tour the green light. Despite the war still very much raging and the outcome far from decided, it was rescheduled for the following year. The announcement for the tour to take place in 1901 unleased opposition and misgivings from within both countries.
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The South African press lambasted the team chosen–a mix of “socialite-gentleman” cricketers (including Logan’s own son who had never played first-class cricket!) and more skilful players—for being overall well below par. Moreover, the press criticised the private venture by the “Laird of Matjiesfontein” as being not legitimate because the touring players predominantly from the Cape Colony had not been officially selected by the South African Cricket Union (which had suspended the Currie Cup and disbanded with the onset of war) {Sport Past and Present in South Africa: Trans(forming) the Nation, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grindingh (Eds.), (contributor Dean Allen) 2013; Peter Wynn Thomas, The Complete History of Cricket Tours At Home and Abroad, 1989}.
Sherlock’s creator: make war, not cricket From the host country, probably the most vociferous critic was world renowned author (and cricket fan and amateur player) Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, in the forefront of countering the anti-war propaganda within the British homeland with his own pro-war propaganda, was incensed that a team of predominantly English-speaking cricketers should be coming to Britain to play when they should be stay in South Africa and fight the Boers. The vexed author of Sherlock Holmes called it “a stain on their manhood” (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
Despite the dissenting voices, what ultimately clinched it for Logan’s private tour was the MCC and the major English county clubs’ agreeing to give the tour matches first-class status. Even then there were second thoughts on the South Africa side and a suggestion made that the tour should not go ahead…this was scotched by the MCC who insisted it proceed to prevent the dislocation of the 1901 English season (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
The cricket tour 🏏 Logan’s 14-man team was predominantly Uitlanders (‘foreigners’, immigrants, mainly British in composition but from other countries as well)…it included one Afrikaner cricketer Johannes Kotze who proved one of the more accomplished performers. The South Africans’ ‘gun’ batsman coming in to the tour was JH Sinclair, however his batting never really got going on the tour (unlike his bowling which was quite effective). Sinclair had been captured by the Boers but escaped in time to make the trip to Britain. Maitland Hathorn was the most successful “willow-wielder” on the tour (827 runs, average 35.95). Overall the team performed moderately though it did beat five of the major counties and tied one. Financially, Logan lost a substantial sum on the venture.
Cricket’s special role serving the Empire To the English, cricket, the game they invented, was the quintessential sport, and an essential companion of empire building. This was the “golden age“ of cricket (1895-1914) with WG Grace’s shadow still very much dominating the sportⓑ. The Victorians revered cricket as an established institution, it was integral to the ethos of the English gentleman and a sign of his cultural supremacy. Moreover cricket was considered educative, part of an Englishman’s training. Spreading the game to the Empire, to Australasia, the West Indies, the Indian Sub-continent and Southern Africa, symbolised the “civilising mission of the Englishman abroad”. Participation in cricket was equated with the civility of English Victorian society and an endorsement of Anglo-Saxon values. Cricket tours by the MCC, the sport’s governing body in England, stimulated the colonies‘ interest in the English game, but its deeper purpose was to “promote imperial ideology”, extolling the virtues of allegiance to Britain, Empire and patriotic duty {Dean Allen, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, Logan of Matjiesfontein, 2015}. Allen’s thesis is that cricket was injected by the English ruling classes into South Africa “as much for political and propagandistic reasons as for sporting ones”
War an instrument of empire with cricket the mentor The late Victorians affirmed that “manly games” were integral to training for life. Above all the ‘school’ of cricket taught lessons of “discipline, self-abnegation, a sense of fair play and team-work”, it built character. Britain’s willingness to engage in the 1899 War to enlarge the Empire—the scramble for colonies in Africa in competition with Germany and France—brought the cricketing fraternity squarely into the frame. Cricketers, to the English mind, were “made of the right stuff” for mortal combat, they were up for martial challenges (Donaldson, Peter (2017) ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899-1902. War in History, 25(1). ISSN 0968-3445). Many cricketers enlisted in the South African War (some former teammates found themselves on opposing sides), and there were cricketing casualties in the conflict {Dean Allen (2005) ‘Bats and Bayonets’: Cricket and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902, Sport in History, 25:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/17460260500073033}, including some fine players of the day like Anglo-Australian test bowling ace JJ Ferris.
Endnote: Pioneering South African XI on the Sub-continent An unintended co-occurrence of the Boer War was that it led to the staging of the first cricket match between South Africans and local cricketers on Sub-continent soil, 90 years before Apartheid sport ended in South Africa. ‘Representing’ South Africa were Afrikaner POWs incarcerated in Ceylon…Diyatalawa Camp v Colts XI, Nondescripts Club ground, Colombo 1901. The local XI won! {‘The First South Africa. side to play in the sub-continent: Boer Prisoners of War in 1901’, CricketMash, 4-Jul-2020, www.cricmash.com}.
Postscript: 1899 South African War, cricket as antidote to physical and moral degeneration The poor health of many Boer War recruits and Britain’s early reversals in the war added weight to prevailing concerns about national and ‘racial’ degeneration {Robb, George. “The Way of All Flesh: Degeneration, Eugenics, and the Gospel of Free Love.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 4, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 589–603, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617222.} Some commentators of the day, bemoaning the ”neglect of an active athleticism“, called for more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen” {Anthony Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture: Symbolising the Nation, Destabilising Empire, 2016}.
𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽
ⓐ the English MCC side had just concluded their own tour of South Africa in April 1899, just six months before the war commenced ⓑ Dr Grace loomed larger than life in cricket during this period as the sport’s first genuine superstar
Lakewood Park, Ca Housing Development, the West Coast Answer to Levittown
In 2018 I posted up the two blogs linked below on the topic of Levittown, the postwar mass housing construction phenomena in the east of the United States. https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2018/10/11/levittown-the-attainment-of-an-affordable-upwardly-mobile-home-and-lifestyle-for-some-part-i/
https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2018/10/13/levittown-the-attainment-of-an-affordable-socially-upwardly-mobile-home-and-lifestyle-for-some-part-ii/
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In the late 1940s Bill Levitt’s New York company started constructing a series of new housing estates in the Atlantic seaboard states, succeeding in building affordable houses in double-quick time and on a mega-scale. Not long after Levittown showed the way, a triad of developers in California started planning their own gigantic scale home building project in Lakewood, Los Angeles County, to reap the rewards. The three ’amigos’, Ben Weingart, S Mark Taper and Lou Boyar, formed the Lakewood Park Company (LPC) and bought close on 3,500 acres from the Montana Land Co (previously sugar beet and lima bean fields adjacent to the city of Long Beach)¹. With Weingart’s extensive connexions in LA financing circles, the LPC got backing to the tune of $8.8 million from the Prudential Insurance Co, and were cleverly able to exploit a legal anomaly, leveraging a stack of federal finance to pay the large part of the private project’s expenditure [Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963, (2011)].
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A frenetic work schedule
The LPC utilised the same approach to construction as the Levittown developers. Every aspect was coordinated, synchronised like clockwork, the 4,000-strong work force was divided into 30 separate teams each with their own specialised task. Rapidity of construction was achieved by adopting the production efficiency methods learnt during WWII, foundations were laid post-haste (15 minutes to dig the hole by machine and not much more to fill it with concrete). Output was phenomenal, they were building around 40 to 60 new houses a day² (even managing in a single day to reach a record tally 110!).
Selling the American Dream
When Lakewood Park’s subdivision of model homes—complete with a “Tile Pullman lavatory” and a built-in ‘Pulverizer’ garbage disposal unit in the kitchen—was opened up to the public, the sales office was inundated with aspiring home-owners all seeking their piece of the “Father Knows Best’ fantasy lifestyle. One salesman sold 107 of the homes in a single hour [‘A New Kind of City…Lakewood’, Los Angeles Almanac, www.laalmanac.com]. Many were “sold off the plan” at a time before that term was in vogue. The cost for a Lakewood ‘model’ mostly ranged from $7,500 to $9,500. Like Levittown, Lakewood Park particularly appealed to WWII veterans who under the GI Bill were guaranteed advantageous terms, no down payment and 4% interest over 30 years. Lakewood’s population exploded – what was a small unincorporated village in 1950 became a ‘city’ with in excess of 70,000 inhabitants by 1953.
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We’re all white thanks!: ‘Paradise’ homes for the white middle class Again as with Levittown the ugly spectre of racism raised its head in the Fifties Lakewood Park ‘model’ lifestyle. One former sales manager for the LPC explained that his part of his role involved guided homogeneity, dissuading black (and Latino) families from buying into the estate on the grounds that the overwhelmingly white neighbours would object to their presence on the same block. This was part of a wider practice of “steering buyers into racially defined neighbourhoods” which persisted into the 1960s…the developers’ rationale being “that racially mixed communities (they believed) would not retain their resale value” [‘Suburban pioneers’, Lakewood City, www.lakewoodcity.org].
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Developers with “laugh-lines around their pockets” A Senate hearing in 1954 troubled by the development’s ramifications concluded that the bulk of the profits from Lakewood Park‘s land sales and retail development ended up in the pockets of the LPC syndicate…finding that Weingart, Boyar and Taper in fact risked very little of their own money on the venture (about $15,000 altogether) by being able to (legally) rely on the accessible federal financing. Against their meagre personal outlays, newspapers estimated that the triumvirate made nearly a cool $12 million each from the deal (‘Lakewood California History’).
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Footnote: The Lakewood Plan, “Contract City“ Lakewood became an incorporated city in 1954—following a divisive community campaign and an attempt by larger neighbour Long Beach to absorb it—but of a unique kind. Foundation attorney John Todd and the developers opted to contract out the new city’s essential municipal services to LA County (police force, fire brigade, sanitation services, etc), an innovation (Lakewoodisation’) later copied widely in California and in other states (‘A New Kind of City…Lakewood’). The stated reason for going the “minimal city” route was financial efficiencies, but Gary Miller argues that self-advantage was the real purpose, allowing the wealthy to “insulate (their properties) from the burden of supporting public services…(thus) zoning out service-demanding low-income and renting populations”, “fueling white flight from Los Angeles” [quoted in Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, 1990]
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¹ the farming enterprise was known as the “Montana Ranch”…ironically, the land Weingart, Boyar and Taper bought included village housing estates which under Montana Land’s restrictive races covenant they as Jews would be barred from living in [‘The Lakewood Plan: Homeownership, Taxes, and Diversity in Postwar Suburbia’, Ryan Reft, Kcet, 16-Jan-2015, www.kcet.org]
² a house completed every 7½ minutes!
³ enticing the retail department giant the May Company as the mall’s flagship store
⁴ which had led to Levittown residents when returning home at night mistaking other houses for theirs’
“Drunk History” TV: Removing the “Dryness” from History?
Last year the US cable channel Comedy Central cancelled its totally left-field “educational comedy” program Drunk History after six seasons. On the surface it might seem improbable that a program with such a flimsy premise would have had such a good run in the cut-throat world of American TV. When the show started in 2013 I wouldn’t have put the ancestral home, or even the rustic “lean-to”, on its chances of surviving into a second season. My initial impressions—apparently mistaken (see below)—were that the actors were pretending, not very convincingly and in fact somewhat ham-fistedly, to be drunk.
ˢᵏᵉʷᵉᵈ ﹠ ⁱⁿᵉᵇʳⁱᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᵒᶻ ʰⁱˢᵗᵒʳʸ࿏࿏࿏
It’s relative longevity aside, another thing that surprises me about Drunk History was that the show didn’t really attract much knee-jerk flak from the Temperance Society, AA, fundamentalists of the Religious Right, the Puritan elders or other moral crusaders for its portrayal of people in states of intoxication bordering on the point of being ‘legless’. In the Australian version of ‘Drunk History’ there were some mild rebukes in the media, mostly a bit of tut-tutting from viewers about the dangers of “glamorising excessive binge drinking” in a country with an extensive history of problems with the Demon drink§(David Knox, TV Tonight, 2019).
ᵈᵉʳᵉᵏ ʷᵃᵗᵉʳˢ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ﹕ ᶜˢᵗ ᵒⁿˡⁱⁿᵉ⁾ The germ of the idea for Drunk History came from, of all things, a late night drinking session its co-creator Derek Waters had with a fellow actor (who’d have guessed!) It premiered under the name Funny or Die as a web series in 2008, the debut webisode featured a liberty-taking retelling of the famous Hamilton-Burr duel in 1804. From an unorthodox educational point of view Drunk History is a kind of adult version soulmate of the British children’s comedy series Horrible Histories, a similar serving of factually-based, humorously told anecdotes for junior viewers, which itself is a quantum leap forward pedagogically from 1950s children television fare of this ilk, eg, Peabody’s Improbable History, which consisted of an anthropomorphic cartoon dog who time travels with a naive and extremely annoying boy companion to earlier epochs to do a bit of history mangling.
The format’s opening gambit presents Waters in relaxed drinking mode with guest storyteller…with very little coaxing from Waters the narrator in no time descends into a boozy state and starts to unfurl a rambling, episodic, partially incoherent account of some historical event (the majority but not all from the pages of American history)…then it segues into a scene where actors in appropriate period costume act out the story while lip-synching the narrator‘s words with hilarious results. The narrators are usually stand-up comedians…possessors of the right skillsets for rambunctious story telling of course! Who better to do it than the dudes for whom off-the-lease manic ranting in booze-soaked establishments is second nature?
¹⁸⁰⁰ ᵖʳᵉᶻ ᵉˡᵉᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ﹕ ᵖⁱⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗ⁾
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Given the cavalier narration and fabricated and anachronistic dialogue littered with liberal snatches of “hipster-speak” and “dude-speak”, you might suspect Drunk History to be sloppy as to historical accuracy. The producers however went to some pains to be accurate with dates and names and what actually happened in the stories. This can be put down to the efforts of hired UCLA PhD students who did the research heavy lifting to keep the history on the tracks. Special care was also taken with the narrators, tasked with getting sufficiently inebriated to capture the desired mood. As host Waters plies them with drink medics are on hand during the shooting—which took place within the familiar and safe milieu of the narrators’ own homes—just in case the alcohol was getting the upper hand over the comics (apparently this was the case on more than one occasion!) (Justin Monroe, ‘The Sober Reality of Drunk History’, Complex, 01-Sep-2015, www.complex.com).
ⁱⁿᵛᵉⁿᵗⁱⁿᵍ ᶜᵒᶜᵃ⁻ᶜᵒˡᵃ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ﹕ ⁱᵐᵈᵇ⁾࿏࿏࿏
But from being initially sceptical about Drunk History, my opinion mellowed (perhaps helped by imbibing a snifter or two myself during viewing) and I slowly warmed to the series. Ultimately I came to appreciate the novel things it brought… introducing me to hitherto low-profile, perhaps minor historical figures and little known events from the past, eg, invention of Coca-Cola, the birth of Hip Hop, Nikola Tesla’s breakthroughs, Tunnel 57 (1964 Berlin Wall incident), “Dr Feelgood”, Lawnchair Larry flight, Typhoid Mary, “Night Witches” (German WWII military aviatrixes)✪. The storytellers raise a glass or three to forgotten women chauvinistically airbrushed from history, one such ‘minor’ figure unearthed in an episode was 16-year-old Sybil Ludington who made an heroic night-time dash by horse to alert New York citizens of the impending threat from the British forces during the American War of Independence (sound familiar?), and alerting us to the fact of how very differently history remembers Sybil and other females (or doesn’t remember!), compared to the immortal glory and reverence heaped on Paul Revere for his famous ride. Another female heroine getting her due recognition in history from Drunk History is Rose Valland, a Parisian art curator in WWII who thwarted the occupying Nazis’ heist of a huge haul of priceless first rank artworks.
ˢʸᵇⁱˡ’ˢ ʳⁱᵈᵉ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ﹕ ⁱᵐᵈᵇ⁾࿏࿏࿏
Giving an extra layer of lustre to the series are the various celebrities appearing in episodes of Drunk History – including “Weird Al” Yankovic as Adolf Hitler, Laura Dern as Nellie Bly, Jack Black as Elvis Presley, Will Ferrell as Abe Lincoln and Ben Folds as Nathan Cherry.
“ʷᵉⁱʳᵈ ᵃˡ ʰⁱᵗˡᵉʳ” ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᶜᵒᵐᵉᵈʸ ᶜᵉⁿᵗʳᵃˡ⁾Postscript: Drunk History International The runaway success of the US prototype has spawned a number of international versions, at last count the franchise has extended to the UK, México, Hungary, Brazil, Poland, Argentina and Australia.
🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃 🥃
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§ ʷʰⁱᶜʰ ᵖᵉʳʰᵃᵖˢ ᵖʳᵒᵐᵖᵗᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖʳᵒᵈᵘᶜᵉʳˢ ᵗᵒ ᵉⁿᵗʳᵉᵃᵗ ᵛⁱᵉʷᵉʳˢ ᵗᵒ “ᵈʳⁱⁿᵏ ʳᵉˢᵖᵒⁿˢⁱᵇˡʸ” ʷʰⁱᶜʰ ᵃᵖᵖᵉᵃʳˢ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜˡᵒˢⁱⁿᵍ ᶜʳᵉᵈⁱᵗˢ
✪ ˢᵖᵘʳʳⁱⁿᵍ ᵐᵉ ᵗᵒ ʳᵉˢᵉᵃʳᶜʰ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶠᵃᶜᵗᶜʰᵉᶜᵏ ᵗʰᵉ ʰⁱᵗʰᵉʳᵗᵒ ᵘⁿᶠᵃᵐⁱˡⁱᵃʳ ᵉᵖⁱˢᵒᵈᵉˢ ᵒᶠ ʰⁱˢᵗᵒʳʸ ⁱ ᵉⁿᶜᵒᵘⁿᵗᵉʳᵉᵈ ⁻
Common Prosperity Redux: Socialism “with Chinese Characteristics” Xi-Style
Deng prosperity (Wikiwand)The latest buzz phrases in economic policy in PRC under Xi Jinping are “common prosperity” and “dual circulation” (see Postscript). Actually, common prosperity (Gongtong fuyu) is not new at all to communist China, there has had two previous iterations, the expression originating with Chairman Mao as far back as 1953. Then in the late 1970s leader Deng Xiaoping co-opted the term, flipping it to help spearhead an economic reorientation from the ideologically adherent socialism of Mao to an opening towards market capitalism and private enterprise. Deng proposed a different route to common prosperity, one that allowed some peasants to get rich, which would provide the catalyst to drag the others towards the stated objective.
(Source: addicted2success.com)First generation billionaires and millionaires; social cohesion imperilled
Beijing tell us the purpose of the Xi-led common prosperity initiative is to reverse the growing trend of the wealth gap which has dramatically increased since Deng’s day. China’s rapid economic growth made it possible to lift millions of Chinese out of poverty, but has also led to a situation where the top 1% holding 30.6% of the country’s wealth. Estimates put the number of Chinese (USD) billionaires as high as 1.1 million (second to the US) (East Asia Forum 20-Sep-2021)⁼ᵃ⁼. According to Elizabeth Economy, China’s Gini coefficient ranks it in the camp of the world’s most unequal states (quoted in Andrew Collier, ’China’s ‘Common Prosperity Campaign Is Going to Be Tough’, The Diplomat, 18-Sep-2021, www.thediplomat.com). Many middle class Chinese citizens are flaunting thbeir nouvelles richesses with luxury acquisitions, which doesn’t go unnoticed by those lower down the socio-economic strata.
Xi in Mao’s shadow? (Photo: denverpost.com)A pivot to the left? The Asia Society’s Kevin Rudd described common prosperity as a strategy to re-establish the prominence of the state and the party over the market. Many China-watchers don’t necessarily attribute the new move by the Xi government to the communist party having suddenly rediscovered its 1949 socialist roots. With the situation calling for change, Xi is acting also with an eye to bolstering up his leadership and legitimacy to secure a third term as president next year.
Jack Ma (Source: las2orillas.co)Cracking down on Alibaba and Tencent Xi and the party looked round for targets, pressure has been exerted on China’s high profile business elite, mega-billionaires such as Jack Ma and Pony Ma. In genuflect-like fashion their respective companies Alibaba and Tencent quickly came forward to pledge billions of dollars to charities (‘Chinese tech giants pledge billions to support President Xi Jinping’s ‘ common prosperity goal’, Dong Xing, ABC News, 07-Sep-2021, www.abc.net.au). Others to find themselves in the cross-hairs of the new reform agenda include private tutoring, online gaming and the entertainment industry. Critics say that leaning on big tech companies and taxing high and ‘unreasonable’ incomes won’t fix China’s structural inequality in income. What is required is a fundamental change in tax structure and state system which addresses the core problem of a lack of tax revenue. China’s share of revenue is 28.% of GDP cf. 40.3% for OECD countries, its personal income taxes loiter at just 1.2% of GDP cf. the OECD’s 8.2%. PRC’s “Achilles Heel” in tax is the paucity of its compliance, the present system results in a low number of personal tax payers in China relative to workforce size (Collier).
(Source: Brunswick Group)No “Robin Hood” scenario at work The Chinese government has moved quickly to reassure concerned business heavyweights (and international investors) about its motives…senior economic official Han Wenxiu’s pitch: common prosperity was “not about killing the rich to help the poor”, rather, he said, it is geared to “doing a proper job of expanding the pie and dividing the pie” (‘Assessing China’s “common prosperity” campaign’, Ryan Haas, Brookings, 09-Sep-2021, www.brookings.edu).
The outcome of such a transformation as the reforms may bring about, some fear may be a “top down Utopian China” with, as K Rudd suggested earlier, even more power and control devolving to the party (‘Changing China: How Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ may impact the world’, Kaishma Vaswani, BBC News, 07-Oct-2021, www.bbc.com).
Little appetite for property and inheritance taxes One source of redistributing wealth on a national level is taxation on property and inheritance (and a more progressive income tax). But there appears little enthusiasm to upturn this apple cart as it steps uncomfortably on the toes of communist party elites and their vested interests (Haas).
Image: radiichina.comEndnote: Millennial “have-nots“, in dire need of a share of the common prosperity The effects of the free market’s dislocation of Chinese society in the early 21st century falls heaviest on the young. Young Chinese face enormous pressures on the highly competitive road to success, starting with the pressure cooker of trying to excel in the gaokao (higher education entrance exam). Even with tertiary qualifications under their belt, so many find themselves chasing the same plum jobs. with nine million-a-year university graduates, with the exception of a fortunate few “a whole generation” miss out on the Chinese good life promised by the capitalist success story (‘China’s ‘common prosperity’ goal won’t mean Robin Hood style redistribution’, Andrew Leung, South China Morning Post, 23–Sep-2021, www.scmp.com). Signs of growing millennial dissatisfaction with the uber-demanding drudgery of the “996”⁼
ᵇ⁼ work culture in large Chinese companies manifest themselves—largely via Weibo the Chinese social media network—in the “lying flat” movement (píng tâng) … more twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings opting to drop-out of the competitive rat race, thus earning the state‘s opprobrium (‘The buzzwords reflecting the frustration of China’s young generation’, Fan Wang & Yitsing Wang, BBC, 14-Jun-2021, www.bbc.com). Then there’s the elusive dream of home ownership, wealthy property investors and speculators have pushed the cost of owning a home out of the reach of many millennials…squeezed out of the property market, feeling burn-out from “996”, more young Chinese are forgoing (or at least postponing) starting a family.
(Photo.thestar.com.my)Postscript: A new economic model to narrow the income gap “Dual circulation” dovetails neatly into the objective of common prosperity. Beijing has signalled its intent to re-gig the economic model, moving away from over-dependence on exports and capital investment favouring large enterprises, and tapping into the potential of its huge domestic market. This could lead to a refocus on services, domestic consumption and the environment, and a reliance on “indigenous innovation to fuel growth” (Leung; ‘What is China’s dual circulation economic strategy and why is it important?’, Frank Tang, South China Morning Post, 19-Nov-2020, www.scmp.com).
𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪 𝄪
⁼ᵃ⁼ conversely some 600 million workers live on the equivalent of US$154 or less a month (East Asia Forum)
⁼ᵇ⁼ 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week
Living on the Pointy End: Pole-Sitting and its Ancient Antecedent the Stylites
The first two decades of the 21st century have been witness to a raft of passing fads and rages, we’ve seen the likes of Planking, Twerking and Tebowing, etc ad nauseam, it makes me wonder whatever happened to the, by definition, sedentary craze of pole-sitting? Like most crazes, I guess, it is of its time and the shelf life is never infinite. It’s day, or its heyday, was in the 1920s up to around the early 1930s when the peak of the craze subsided.
Pole-sitting The initial exponent of pole-sitting or specifically flagpole-sitting, so far as we know, was New Yorker Alvin ‘Shipwreck’ Kelly. Prior to his preoccupation with pole-sitting, Kelly was a jack-of-all-trades, trying his hand as a steelworker, steeplejack⋖a⋗, high diver, boxer and movie double. He also was a naval ensign during WWI and held a pilot’s licence and performed aerial stunt flights. Opinions differ on how ‘Shipwreck’ got into the business of pole-sitting, one view goes that the habit came early, scrambling up a pole at the tender age of seven, others attribute it to a dare or to a publicity stunt for a Philadelphia department store [‘Body of ‘Shipwreck’ Kelly Lies Unclaimed in Morgue’, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 13-Oct-1952, (Google News Archive)]. In January 1924 his ‘career’ took off with a record-setting sit atop a pole for 13 hours and 13 minutes to help promote a Hollywood film. Kelly’s best-ever effort was 49 days and one hour, Atlantic City 1930.
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At the height of his popularity Kelly was earning $500 a day, coming from charging money to people to watch his feats of endurance, from books about his life, from endorsements and personal appearances. His fame also led to a 28-day tour of the United States, sitting on poles in a different city on each day of the tour. But the glory days did not last, the onset of the Great Depression saw his popularity plummet rapidly, Americans quickly lost interest in spending precious money watching men sit on poles with more serious and urgent concerns taking centre stage in their lives (Saratosa Tribune).
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Pole-sitting became competitive with Richard ‘Dixie’ Blandy challenging and even besting Kelly’s 49-day record. Brandy’s accomplishment, 77 days, was the stuff of legend, sustained as it was on a diet of bottles of whiskey and three packs of cigarettes a day [‘The Mad 1920s: Fad of Pole-Sitting’, Messynessy, 25-Sep-2020, www.chic.com]. Interestingly, prior to being bitten by the pole-sitting bug Blandy, like Kelly, tried an assortment of jobs including circus worker, boxer, house painter, steeplejack, riveter, merchant marine, salesman and (wait for it) flagpole painter. Unlike Kelly though, the Louisiana-born Blandy didn’t become inactive because of the Depression, continuing the activity and even breaking his 1933 record twice more, the second time in Stockholm, Sweden, added to Dixie’s legend – a sit of 125 days in a chair affixed to a pole 200-feet above the ground, while consuming 92 bottles of whiskey and his customary diurnal 3 packs of cigs⋖b⋗.[‘Richard Ernest “Dixie” Blandy’, Findagrave, www.findagrave.com]. Blandy actually died on the job, killed in 1974 when the flagpole supporting him collapsed.
Publicity shot: Dixie was popular with the ladies, married 6 times (all his wives met him via the phone at his pole-sitting events) (Source: Dayton Daily News)
Blandy notwithstanding, the fad had seen its day after the Depression bit hard. Since then there have been attempts from time to time to revive the pole-sitting caper. In the Netherlands for example pole-sitting became a competitive sport In the 1970s – the Dutch call it Paalzitten (literally “sit tight”). This is a world away from the pursuit that made Alvin and Dixie famous, the poles in the Netherland sit above not solid ground but water and nose-bleeds are uncommon as Dutch derrières are perched barely two arm lengths from the level of the water…“a tourist attraction more than a spectator sport”. [‘Paalzitten Is A Dutch Competitive Sport Where You Have To Sit On A Pole For Hours’, The Engineer, www.wonderfulengineering.com].
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Stylites The fad of Pole-sitting originated in the 1920s as we have seen, but there are historical precedents for this curious pastime. In the early Christian period certain ascetic monks of a particularly fanatical bent practiced something broadly analogous to pole-sitting. These holy men of Late Antiquity were called ‘Stylites’ (from Greek stylos, ‘pillar’). Stylites were “pillar-dwellers” not pole-sitters, and their motivation was spiritual salvation rather than money and fame which spurred on ‘Shipwreck’ Kelly and his ilk. Stylites’ also differed from the pole-sitters in modus operandi, standing on the pillars was their preferred position. Sitting was something they tended to resort to only when overcome by fatigue or perhaps sleep.
The ‘poles’ in question were in fact narrow columns or towers atop which were small platforms which housed the Stylite. The platform were usually encircled by a railing of sorts to prevent the hermit-preacher from falling off. The most famous of the practitioners—the ur-Stylite—was Simeon Stylites the Elder whose early zeal for Christianity led him to ascend a pillar in Syria in AD 423. Later he relocated to a second, nearby pillar more than 15 metres above the ground, apparently staying in it till his death 37 years later⋖c⋗.
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Simeon’s devotion to the practice made him quite a celebrity in the Christian world, he corresponded with the high and mighty including the Eastern emperors Theodosius II and Leo I, even exerting some influence on ecclesiastical matters, such was his standing. Visitors flocked to observe him praying, preaching and fasting on his high platform. Pilgrims and sightseers sought spiritual counselling, healing for the sick, intervention on behalf of the oppressed, etc. Simeon was too popular, a double wall had to be constructed around his pillar to keep the thronging multitudes from getting too close and disturbing his prayer sessions [‘St. Simeon Stylites’, Britannica, www.britannica.com].
Luke the Stylite❕
The pre-Medieval Christian lifestyle caught on among the more ascetically inclined of the early Byzantine clergy (including women) with many following the prototypical Stylite, some even adopting his name. The more notable of these include St Daniel of Constantinople, St Simeon Stylites the Younger (Antioch), St Alypius of Paphlagonia (north-central Anatolia) and St Simeon Stylites (III) of Lesbos. As this list shows, prominence in the Stylite calling was a passport to sainthood. The Stylites needed to be a stoical lot as they were exposed to all kinds of weather at the top (although some were fortunate enough to be furnished with a small hut to escape into in time of severe inclemency).
Georgian hermit headquarters (Source: Vintage News)Footnote: If you think the Stylites were confined to the so-called “Dark Ages”, think again! The practice has not entirely been extinguished in the 21st century. A monk in Georgia (Maxime Qavtaradze) in 2013 celebrated 20 years of lofty solitude as a ascetic hermit atop a mountain pillar a la the Stylites⋖d⋗. The original Stylites however would not recognise their barest of existences in the Georgian pillar set-up…Maxime lives in a small cosy cottage with adjoining church house on the top of his pillar, and the monk descends twice a week to the village below to say prayers with his parishioners [‘Georgian Monk Renews Tradition, Lives Atop Pillar’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11-Sep-2013, www.rferl.org].
⋖a⋗ perhaps serving as a kind of altitude training for his later pole-sitting marathons
⋖b⋗ to avoid a calamitous outcome in marathon stints, the pole-sitters tied their legs to the vertical structure when wanting to sleep
⋖c⋗ meagre parcels of food were fetched to Simeon by his disciples
⋖d⋗ in this case a limestone rock pillar