the meme of seven interests

[calimac]

sturgeonslawyer picked these, but I think he said he was going away for the weekend, so I wait till now to reply.

Classification: I'm a library cataloger, and classification of books - the job of finding a single path through the web of knowledge, and of finding a concise notation scheme to express it - is for me the most fascinating part. Both Dewey and LC have their deficiencies, especially rather skewed pathways through that web, and I classify my nonfiction at home by a much more logically progressive system, a slightly modified version of this.

David Lodge: One day in grad school I was walking through the modern English literature stacks when my eye was caught by a title: The British Museum Is Falling Down. Intrigued, I looked at the book and found a very funny novel about an, ahem, grad student - though he was in literature rather than librarianship, and had the problem of fitting in his rapidly growing family with the Catholic prohibition of birth control. Then I read Changing Places and Small World and established Lodge as my favorite comic academic writer.

High Fantasy: Even back before the Big Fantasy Pat Boom, I found it perplexing to figure out what I liked and didn't. Friends who knew my love for Tolkien pointed me to Dunsany, Peake, Le Guin, and they were also excellent; but they also pointed me towards adventure fantasy by Howard and Leiber, which did nothing for me. Eventually I figured out that terms like "heroic fantasy" and "sword and sorcery" were leading me in the wrong direction. Robert Boyer and Kenneth Zahorski popularized the term "high fantasy" which had a much closer correleation to what I liked.

Hovhaness: My quest for composers who wrote symphonies soon came across Alan Hovhaness, who'd written over 20. (By the time of his death it was over 60.) I listened to some, and was enchanged by this intense but often serene, powerfully spiritual music. Hovhaness held to Wilde's dictum that the artist is the maker of beautiful things, and this may be why his name was absent from the severe guides to modern music I was reading at the time. He was prominent in the record catalogs, though, and this is how I learned to trust the catalogs as the best guide to good modern composers.

Symphonies: My seminal music-listening experience was my first encounter with the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth. The way he builds the entire movement out of that tiny motto theme just amazed me: up till then, I'd had no idea that music could do something like that. I was soon converted into a listener of the heavy classics, and quickly found that the composers I liked the best were often those who'd written the most symphonies, and those were liable to be my favorites of their works. So I made that a guidepost to my collecting. I now have recordings of 912 different symphonies, a number I can state with authority because I've cataloged them all.

U.S. History: History is my discipline; I think of things historically, and the history (particularly political and geographical) of my own country has always interested me. I majored in it in college, and among my odder talents is the ability to recite the names of the US Presidents, in order, in thirty seconds.

Vaughan Williams: Another composer of symphonies, less obscure than Hovhaness. Ralph Vaughan Williams was a Londoner by habitat, but much of his early music, with titles like The Lark Ascending or Norfolk Rhapsody, evokes the English countryside. (But he also wrote a beautifully evocative city portrait in A London Symphony.) Later his music grew tougher, and his central symphonic trilogy - the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth - are his masterwork; the Sixth, sometimes thought to depict an atomic war, has a quiet and eerie ending unlike anything else in music up to that time.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

So how does it work, the memester sends you seven interests, or you, meme-o-rama-like, go eeny memememe miney mo, or do you delve for the most ineluctable seven you can find?

I use to be able to rattle off all the presidents in order, but then I let too many years go by without practicing, so that more recently, the once every few years it comes up, it's taken me several minutes to get through the list, and I think the last time I failed -- I always have the hardest time getting from Tyler to Buchanan. But I just reviewed the list, and am confident I could get through that list in 60 seconds flat, if not 45. Of course, I like to intone the names a bit (why bother otherwise?) so we'll just pretend that's the reason why you'll always beat me in President-recitation contests. But do you name Cleveland twice? Or if only once, is it before or after Benjamin Harrison?

Of course, if we really wanted to be perverse (as if we need any help in that area), we'd memorize the list of Vice Presidents and rattle them off almost as fast. Amazing how many 19th century veeps keeled over during their terms. And the two who served under different presidents! Or (but then we get into secret history, ooops) the first gay vice president, who was both the lover of, and served under the predecessor of, the first gay president -- and who (no doubt unbenownst to them) lent their names to two adjoining counties in Washington State!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Somehow this got started, and I commented on sturgeonlawyer's post of this kind, and according to the rules of this meme, that gave him the right to pick from mine.

I find there's a definite rhythm to "Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan", so I have no trouble with those obscure guys. Intoned patterns like that explain my speed. Sure I can name the VPs also, but it takes longer because I have to process it as I go along.

My first published letter to the editor - I was maybe 12 - corrected a statement that McKinley had dumped Garret Hobart when he ran for re-election. Nope: Hobart was one of those VPs who'd keeled over.

No, that President-VP pair knew of their counties. They were named just after the election. (And Denali was named Mount McKinley just after his election.) Can you imagine such namings after sitting officials today? Mount Bush. Cheney County. Ugh!

I remain agnostic on the question of whether that pair of office-holders were actually a gay couple. Sure, it was rumored even at the time, but that doesn't prove anything. (False rumors about hidden sexual habits are as common as true ones.) Still, it's good to shock the staid by pointing out that it could well have been.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Ah ha! The secret of your 30-second recitation is that you only say their surnames, whereas I recite their names entire, and no doubt would take, even under the best of circumstances, more than twice as long.

It turns out my antecedents were not properly lined up at the tail end of my sentence about our gay executives. President Franklin Pierce (to whom George W. is related) and Vice President William King indeed lent their names to Washington State counties, but there's never been any rumors about them being lovers -- Pierce was almost certainly straight. It was James Buchanan, Pierce's successor, who was almost certainly gay, and it appears very likely that Buchanan and King were long-time lovers, though that relationship had likely ended by the time Buchanan became president. A 20+ year correspondence survives between the two, upon which the supposition is largely based.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, I knew who you were talking about, and I didn't find your antecedents mixed. It was clear you were talking about two different Presidents. The relationship, if any, better well have ended before Buchanan became President, unless Buchanan was a necrophiliac.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

. . . unless Buchanan was a necrophiliac.

Well, he does regularly appear near the bottom of rankings of presidential greatness, which is almost as bad.

You gave me a good laugh though -- forgot King's early death, but once reminded much of it came rushing back -- the act of Congress, the Cuban inaugural, the early death from (I think) t.b. Funny how the mind works.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Sure I only say the surnames if I'm doing the 30-second version. (And yes, Cleveland gets named twice.) I can also give, without reference, their full legal names, years of office, states of residence, principal election opponents, and in most cases life dates, as well, but not in 30 seconds.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Never could do those things, and never will. Some people.