Miskatonic University Press

Recently I was looking at the flag of the Supreme Court of Canada and was struck by its formal description in The Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada:

Gules on a Canadian pale Argent a lozenge lozengy Gules and Argent charged with maple leaves alternately Or and Gules.

Yes, it says “a lozenge lozengy.”

I mentioned this on Mastodon and it led to a fun exchange. In particular, Stephen Childs pointed out a 2019 PyCon talk by Lady Red / Christopher Beacham: A Medieval DSL? Parsing Heraldic Blazons with Python! It’s very entertaining and extremely informative about both blazons and parsing structured text into data structures with the programming language Python.

This led me, as usual, to Wikipedia, for example to its article on tinctures, which explains the special names used in heraldry for colours: it’s not blue, it’s azure; it’s not red, it’s gules; it’s not gold, it’s or or Or (which isn’t a colour, it’s a metal). The shapes—crosses and lines and such—are ordinaries. There is an article on heraldic lozenges.

For some Canadian examples the arms of the governors-general are worth a look, for example Vincent Massey.

[Note: What follows may contain many mistakes. If you’re an expert, don’t flame me.]

This is:

Argent on a chevron between three lozenges Sable each charged with a fleur-de-lis Argent, three stags’ heads erased Or, a canton Azure charged with the Crest of the Royal Arms of Canada (on a wreath Argent and Gules a lion passant guardant Or wearing the Royal Crown proper and holding in the dexter paw a maple leaf Gules).

On first reading, indeed possibly on second or tenth, this is cryptic, but picking apart the elements shows what’s going on:

First, start with Argent (the white background) and then on a chevron between three lozenges (the chevron is inside the three rhombi, though as we’ll soon learn you can’t really see one of them) Sable (the rhombi are black) each charged with a fleur-de-lis Argent (each black rhombus has a white fleur-de-lis on it) are three stags’ heads (we’re back in the chevron now) erased (their necks have ragged ends: see Wikipedia on heads in heraldry) Or (the heads are gold in colour). (I’m not sure how the chevron gets to be black.)

Now the description comes back up from one descent into detail and starts over with a canton Azure (the blue square in the upper left) on which there is a crest (the animal at the top) of the coat of arms of Canada, which is helpfully described in parentheses. I won’t pull out the details of that but you can see the mention of a lion wearing a crown and holding a maple leaf.

Massey’s entry in the Register describes the symbolism: “The white field, black chevron and lozenges, as well as the fleurs-de-lis are common charges found in other Massey or Massy coats of arms. The stags’ heads are likely a reference to Mr. Massey’s father, Hart Almerrin Massey, as the word ‘hart’ is a synonym for stag. The blue canton charged with the crest of the Royal Arms of Canada is an Honourable Augmentation granted to Mr. Massey by Her Majesty The Queen to honour his service as Governor General of Canada.”

And it has an illustration of Massey’s crest, from which I’ve picked out the shield. Notice that all the same elements are there but it is different from the one in Wikipedia. A blazon can be drawn in different ways.

Lady Red talks about this in the PyCon talk, and it’s covered in the Wikimedia Commons page for the escutcheon: “This coat of arms was drawn based on its blazon which – being a written description – is free from copyright. Any illustration conforming with the blazon of the arms is considered to be heraldically correct. Thus several different artistic interpretations of the same coat of arms can exist.” This was unknown and unexpected to me, and strangely delightful.

Those arms were awarded in 1963, but Massey had first received heraldry in 1920, when the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto moved to 14 Elm Street. Massey was the president at the time. To celebrate, J.E.H. MacDonald made punning shields for the executive and the past presidents; they were hung in the Great Hall and have been there ever since. I see them often because I’m a member.

Here we have an azure (blue) background on which is a sheaf of wheat tied with a ribbon that says “Blest be the tie that binds.” This I take to be about both the friendly comradeship at the club and the farm equipment made by Massey-Harris, the company that made the Masseys rich. Around it are stags—also known as harts, as the Register said, a reference to Massey’s father Hart Massey and Massey’s creation of Hart House at the University of Toronto.

I bet the harts done humorously in 1920 led directly to the harts done armigerously in 1963. J.E.H. never expected that!

One last thing about blazons and how the specialized language they use is parsed, as Lady Red talked about. “Heraldry and Blazon: A Graphic-Based Information Language” by Harold E. Thiele Jr., from Library Trends (Spring 1990), is working on the very same lines. The abstract says in part:

Examination of the various descriptive conventions used by heralds over the last 700 years to blazon armorial devices reveals several patterns that can be adapted to form a generalized algorithm to describe trademarks, logos, and other types of graphic designs. The key assumption used in the algorithm is that the graphic design is to be treated as a glyph that is to be painted onto a surface with some form of opaque media. The different design elements of the glyph are described in the order in which they are applied to the surface as one works from the background to the foreground.

Thiele turns “Azure, a bell with a pull argent” into: F\\h half-round shield # \ (:\ .\ ,\h azure)PC\\ (:\p centered .\p a bell with two rope pulls ,\h argent) PO\\ (:\p centered on bell .\h cross fleuretty ,\h argent [:\p centered on cross fleuretty .\h cross fillet ,\h sable]) SC \ \ (: \ .\ ,\) SO \ (:\ ,\ ,\) E\\ (:\ .\ ,\). I don’t know how successful this approach turned out to be, but it seems to me clearly influenced by the International Standard Bibliographic Description, the rules used to describe books for old-fashioned library catalogue cards. (Rules which haunt the libraries still, decades later.) Two people, same interests, same purpose, different fields, different decades, different results.

Harriet the Spy (1964) by Louise Fitzhugh is a masterpiece I have gone back to many times, but it was only on rereading it last week that I noticed that two of the greatest characters in fiction express themselves in small caps.

The first is Harriet M. Welsch, who does it when she writes in her notebook. This is the end of the first section of the book, after Harriet’s nanny Ole Golly has left to get married and Harriet is very alone.

i feel all the same things when i do things alone as when ole golly was here. the bath feels hot, the bed feels soft, but i feel like there’s a funny little hole in me that wasn’t there before, like a splinter in your finger, but this is somewhere above my stomach.

The other is Death in the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. This is an exchange with Rincewind in The Last Continent (1998):

“Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?”

yes.

“Ghastly thought, really.” Rincewind shuddered. “Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?”

i think perhaps you do not understand. people’s whole lives do pass in front of their eyes before they die. the process is called “living.”

Two interpretations of Terry Riley’s In C added to my list of Bandcamp recordings:

• Node Music, In C (2024, 60:31 and 71:51)
• Ouroboros is Broken, In C (2020, 67:27)

I saw Gertrude Stein quoted in the TLS: “There is no such thing as repetition.” Searching this online turns up a lot of misquotes, so here’s where it comes from:

Is there repetition or is there insistence. I am inclined to believe there is no such thing as repetition.

Here it is with some context. This is from the second paragraph of “Portraits and Repetition” in Lectures in America (originally published by Random House in 1935; the Internet Archive has a few copies you can check out):

Then also there is the important question of repetition and is there any such thing. Is there repetition or is there insistence. I am inclined to believe there is no such thing as repetition. And really how can there be. This is a thing about which I want you to think before I go on telling about portraits of anything. Think about all the detective stories everybody reads. The kind of crime is the same, and the idea of the story is very often the same, take for example a man like Wallace, he always has the same theme, take a man like Fletcher he always has the same theme, take any American ones, they too always have the scene, the same scene, the kind of invention that is necessary to make a general scheme is very limited in everybody’s experience, every time one of the hundreds of times a newspaper man makes fun of my writing and of my repetition he always has the same theme, always having the same theme, that is, if you like, repetition, that is if you like the repeating that is the same thing, but once started expressing this thing, expressing any thing there can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis. And so let us think seriously of the difference between repetition and insistence.

(That’s Edgar Wallace and J.S. Fletcher.)

A few pages later she repeats the phrase:

When I first began writing portraits of any one I was not so sure, not so certain of this thing that there is no difference between clarity and confusion. I was however almost certain then when I began writing portraits that if anything is alive there is no such thing as repetition. I do not know that I have ever changed my mind about that.

I’ll also quote from “Repetition” by the Fall, from their 1978 debut Bingo-Master’s Break-Out! (fan site source, lyrics are by Mark E. Smith):

This is the three Rs

The three Rs:

Repetition, repetition, repetition

And also from Prince’s “Joy in Repetition” from Graffiti Bridge (1990):

There’s joy in repetition

There’s joy in repetition

There’s joy in repetition

There’s joy in repetition

From the new Mick Herron novel, Clown Town:

The sky was as blue as an egg, provided the egg was blue. The fields were as yellow as cars.

And later, when Louisa is driving and talking on the phone to Jackson Lamb:

“I’ll let him know. Yellow car.”

“What now?”

“Nothing.”

See also: Yellow Car in London Rules, Yellow Car in Joe Country and Yellow Car again again.

A Fall Day for Bear, illustrated by my mother Kady MacDonald Denton and written by Bonny Becker, is now out!

So far it’s had a good review in Kirkus Reviews (“Denton’s greatly entertaining art shows Bear enduring a spectacular tumble into the mud”) and a starred review in Booklist (“Denton’s wonderfully expressive artwork, created with ink, watercolor, and gouache, captures the characters’ emotions as well as the humor of the narrative, the beauty of the season, and the double meaning of fall”).

I remember reading the manuscript for the first Bear and Mouse book, A Visitor for Bear (2008), and thinking it was perfect. It was immediately clear Bonny Becker had written a classic. I felt the same reading each subsequent one, but Fall Day has a sadness and a poignancy that make it especially good, particularly for grown-up readers who have perhaps wondered what will happen when Bear outlives Mouse. This book is not about that, but it is about seasons changing and leaves falling and time passing.

“I don’t like it when things go away,” Mouse said quietly.

It’s also about pickles and about friends. It’s great.

Six interpretations of Terry Riley’s In C added to my list of Bandcamp recordings:

• Castle in Time Orchestra, In C — Terry Riley (2025, 71:26)
• FELDGRAU_MUSIC, RILEY IN C (2025, five variations)
• Istvan Peter B’Racz, “In C” by Terry Riley: Performed by Istvan Peter B’Racz (2024, 51:55)
• ieat31415, In C (2024, 23:00)
• Orchestre Nihilistica, “Terry Riley’s In C” (2021, 08:03)
• Tony Orzano, In C by Terry Riley- Live at The Next Chapter (2024, 27:46)

A quote from Wilfred Thesiger to remember and use whenever one does something that is at the moment difficult even if others would not think it is: “I daresay, not much of a challenge; but a challenge all the same.”

I came across it years ago in a review or excerpt and never forgot it. A few days ago I found the source thanks to the Internet Archive (check it out). It’s from the end of Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer by Alexander Maitland (London: Harper, 2004). Note that in June 2003 Thesiger turned 93.

Towards the end of April 2003, Thesiger began to look very frail indeed. For the first week of May he was confined to bed: On 16 May, after a fall, he was X-rayed at St Helier Hospital for a suspected hip fracture. He had no broken bones, but suffered much pain for several days, and after that continued to have difficulty in walking even aided by one of his heavy African walking sticks. For some time he had needed help with dressing, and it was becoming evident that he could no longer fend for himself in other ways. On 11 August he was moved to the Selkirk Nursing Wing, adjoining Woodcote Grove House, where he had a room on the ground floor with a view of the garden. He still preferred, however, to walk (with assistance) the short distance to the main house and have lunch and supper with the other residents. Even this he viewed courageously, and without resignation, as a challenge: “I daresay, not much of a challenge; but a challenge all the same.”

I daresay, not much of a challenge; but a challenge all the same.

Flipping through the first edition of Against Method by Paul Feyerabend that’s in the collection of the library where I work, I came across this page. I was happy to see a mention of Hans Richter, whose book Dada: Art and Anti-Art is a classic. “Miss Koertge” is Noretta Koertge. But what about the handwritten text? That’s not the usual annotation we see, where some student disagrees with the text or makes a note to themself of a key point to make in an essay (“IMPORTANT”).

No, it’s a quote from the lyrics of “Boys Cry Tough,” a song by Bad Company on their 1990 album Holy Water.

Bobby’s going out tonight, looking for trouble

Everybody likes to fight sometimes

Boys love to fight, boys are [taught?]!

Life is [rough? naught?]

Well, the first two lines are from the song; the third isn’t and I’m not completely sure what was written; the fourth is perhaps close to “life gets rough” from the song.

Who was it who was reading anarchist philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend and then struck so profoundly by the lyrics of a song by a past-its-prime English rock band that they were moved to write some lines in a library book? What a night that must have been.

Last month I quoted Ian Hacking saying Paul Feyerabend “wrote wonderful indexes to his books; indeed there are completely different indexes to the first and third editions of Against Method, each reflecting what he wanted the reader to know.” I found a copy of the first edition in the library, and the index is not by Feyerabend! It’s credited to Alex Bellamy. There’s more about it in “Unplaying an Unreview of Critical Play” by Cynthia Haynes (2010):

In 1975, for example, Alex Bellamy created the index for the first edition of Paul Feyerabend’s book, Against Method. Ironically, Bellamy was working at the time for/with Imre Lakatos, to whom Feyerabend had “playfully” dedicated his book (although the two scholars were locked in an infamous and protracted debate about the philosophy of science and research methodologies). Lakatos’ assistant, Bellamy, was not amused and decided to play an “anti-Paul” joke on Feyerabend in the index entry for “rhetoric,” which directs readers to pages 1–309. Subsequent editions of the book contained a completely different index, sans “rhetoric 1–309.”

It’ll be a little while before I can look at the third or fourth edition, but here is the A section of the index (without page references) from the first edition (New Left Books, 1975), by Alex Bellamy. He did a name index and a subject index, but I’ve merged them here.

• Abbé, E.
• Abraham, M,
• Achinstein, P.
• action; see under ideas; standards
• acupuncture; see also Chinese communism and medicine
• ad hoc hypotheses: and critical rationalism; and incommensurability; and myth; presence in modern science; progressive role in science
• Aenesidemus
• Aeschylus
• Agatharchos
• aim of science
• Akiba, Rabbi
• al-Farghani
• Alhazen
• alienation
• Althusser, L.
• Ames, A.
• anamensis
• anarchism: epistemological; political; religious; see also dadaism
• Anaximander
• Anaximenes
• anthropology; the anthropological method and incommensurability; of science and cosmology; see also field study
• anything goes, principle of
• appearances; in ancient Greek cosmology; reality or fallacy of; see also natural interpretations; vs. reality
• Aquinas, St. Thomas
• argument: and cosmology; vs. emotions; and epistemological anarchism; as a hindrance to progress; and incommensurability; the limited value of; and logicians; as a method of indoctrination; and the methodology of scientific research programmes; from observation and natural interpretations; and scientific chauvinism
• Aristarchus
• Aristotelianism; basic value judgments; vs. Copernicanism; dynamics and theory of motion; empiricism, scientific method, and theory of knowledge and perception; form of life; philosophical system and cosmology; science; theory of space
• Aristotle
• Aristotle’s theories, astronomy; theory of the continuum
• Armitage, A.
• Armstrong, D.
• art; archaic style; and science
• Ashmole, B.
• astrology
• astronomy; ancient Greek; Babylonian and Egyptian; medieval; palaeolithic and stone age; Ptolemaic; and science; see also Copernicanism
• atomism
• Augustine, St.
• Austin, J.L.
• authority
• Autolycus
• auxiliary theories and sciences; see also secondary elaborations
• axiomatics
• Ayer, A.J.

From the revised edition (Verso, 1988), with no credited indexer, so presumably by Feyerabend himself (also with page references left out):

• anamensis
• anarchism; anything goes; epistemological; methodology and; naive; political
• Anaximander
• Anscombe, Elizabeth
• anthropology; case study of quantum tribe
• anything goes; see anarchism
• appearances; see also natural interpretations
• argument; emotions and; incommensurability and; value of; see also anarchism; incommensurability
• Aristotle; biology; Copernican theory and; cosmology; dynamics and motion; intuitive view of humans; knowledge and perception; poetics; scientific method; archaic style and perception; perspective
• The Assayer (Galileo)
• astronomy; ancient; Ptolemaic; medieval; see also Copernicus; Galileo; Newton; telescope
• auxiliary sciences

In the second one, under astronomy, medieval follows Ptolemaic in the index even though it comes before it alphabetically and in the book. Feyerabend’s indexing will receive further investigation soon, I hope.