Further Thoughts on Online Education

Some follow-up thoughts...

Neil Postman wrote an essay entitled, "The Educationist as Painkiller," and taking a cue from Sigmund Freud, we might characterize education as a "talking cure".  Would psychological therapy be enhanced by a move from a face-to-face situation to an online environment?  While therapy and teaching are not quite the same thing, they can be understood as a part of a continuum.  In the autism community, children go to school where the teachers typically employ applied behavioral analysis, which can be understood as a form of therapy.  The ABA method originates with Helen Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, and the behavioral therapy is often referred to as a "learning" theory.  All kinds of therapy involve learning how to avoid dysfunctional behaviors and to engage in positive behaviors.  Occupational therapy is about learning how to improve the use of one's motor skills, senses, body.  Of course, learning can take place with or without a teacher, so the question is, under what conditions are teachers best able to conduct therapy and facilitate learning?

Joseph Weizenbaum famously created the AI program Eliza, which simulated the very basic responses of a Rogerian psychotherapist.  Writing about this in Computer Power and Human Reason, he related that he was surprised at how attached people in his office became to Eliza, taking it seriously despite knowing that it was just a program, and shocked that psychotherapists saw this as a serious possibility for making therapy available to the masses.  Following the lead of Jacques Ellul, Weizenbaum concluded that there are many things we may be capable of doing with our technologies, but we need to consider that there are some things we *ought* not to do.

The asynchronous characteristic of online communication is most certainly one of its great strengths.  But there is a downside that we ought at least to acknowledge, and hopefully consider, as it undermines the concepts of schedules and boundaries, and the discipline that they comes with such practices.  It may well be that the trade-off is worth it in this instance, but we should not be fooled into thinking that innovation provides us with a free lunch.  And if we're aware of the cost, we might have a better chance of compensating for what is lost.  The loss of boundaries in general has long been associated with the electronic media, we do have some qualms about blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction, news and advertising, education and entertainment, and public and private.  If nothing else, we need to think about what the technology is undoing in order to cope with the fallout and blowback.

Marshall McLuhan, along with Eric McLuhan, wrote abut the city and the world as classroom.  In other words, their answer to the limitations of the classroom, highly structured by print as it is, was to get out into the physical environment, engage with the world.  They did not advocate moving into the even more highly mediated environment that new media represent.

Digital media have amplified concerns about plagiarism in written work beyond anything that existed previously.  What happens, then, when the student's entire presence in a course is in the form of written work?  Will an instructor teaching the same course over and over again resort to self-plagiarism, copying and pasting text from previous semesters, rather than writing things out anew?  And look to the future one step further, and the entire course can be programmed (this has already happened in regard to big lecture courses).  Essentially, the line is blurred between online education and programmed instruction, which amounts to an interactive textbook.

I'm all for making education more affordable through online alternatives, and I also embrace the possibilities of bringing education outside of the ivory tower and institutional boundaries through new media.  But what happens to the gatekeeping function, to standards, and again, to boundaries, under these conditions (a concern shared by other sectors, e.g., journalism).  With the trend in higher education towards employing greater numbers of adjuncts and moving away from the tenure system, will education be reduced to another form of customer service to be outsourced, a kind of reverse brain drain?  Put into broader terms, new media environments will disrupt institutions built on the basis of older media environments.  We can't just add the new media and keep everything else the same.  So, how do we deal with the disruptions to edcuational institutions that will inevitably occur?

When you look at how Postman and McLuhan actually taught, it was through talking.  Getting a group together in one place and bouncing ideas off of one another.  There's a reason for that, I believe, and while I'm willing to work with alternatives, to me, my ideal will always be Postman and Nystrom's doctoral seminars, and going out for a bite and a drink afterwards.

Reflective and Critical Thoughts on Online Education

So, I got into a bit of a controversial discussion over on the Media Ecology Association listserv, on the subject of online education.  It all started innocently enough, when I put up a post that the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University was looking for an adjunct instructor to teach a course on Social Media for the spring semester.  The course is taught in our department's Walsh Media Lab up in the Bronx, but one list member started arguing that teaching social media through an online course would be superior.  My former student Nick Leshi, who taught our course on Writing for Online Media last spring, rose to our defense in a manner that Neil Postman would approve.

A bit later, I entered into the discussion, and here's what I had to say, pulling out some of the specific address to particular individuals.

The argument for teaching about the new languages of new media through online educaton amounts to a kind of immersion method.  There are certainly advantages to doing this.  On the other hand, from Postman's perspective, face-to-face communication between teacher and student is exactly the kind of counterenvironment we need in response to the new media.  It is needed for education in general certainly, but I think it also extends to the teaching of new media, as it allows us to step outside of the system, so to speak.  It is perhaps the difference between teaching for proficiency vs. teaching to instill a reflective and critical approach.

I am not opposed to online education, the world is full of trade-offs, but we have to recognize that there is something lost as well as something gained.  Ignoring that fact is not what I would think of as employing a reflective and critical approach.

Postman's criticism of information technology was directed at the boosterism that surrounds it, the utopian claims, the lack of historical outlook, the failure to pay attention to the costs of innovation, what a new technology will undo.  He compared online education to a Big Brother program set up for children who have lost their fathers:  it may be necessary to compensate for what is missing (in the case on online education, for distance, disability, or lack of finances), but it is still sad that we have to do this, not something we should celebrate.

Peter Fallon put it very nicely, echoing the old Bell Telephone slogan--it's the next best thing to being there.  Not the best thing, but a substitute that is second best.

Years ago, at a New York State Communication Association conference, I was sitting with Postman during lunch, and there was a speaker who was a public school principal or superintendent from Brooklyn, and he was talking about their innovative program using computers to teach writing to kids from low income backgrounds.  And he was going on and on about how the kids can write something, and if they don't like what they've written, they can delete it, edit it, etc.  So Neil asked the question, "Why can't you do that with a paper and pencil?"  Now, there may well be an argument to be made about what working with computers will do that could never be done before, but the point was that this fellow could not answer the question.  He was just uncritically, unreflectively presenting the technology as an advance in pedagogy, a phenomenon all too common in education.

By the way,  great guide to the history of utopian claims about education technology can be found in Margaret Cassidy's book, Bookends, based on a dissertation completed under Neil's direction.

And a great reality check is to ask yourself, what do rich people do?  Given no limit on resources, do they opt for online education?  Or do they favor face-to-face interaction with teachers, with small class sizes, and one-on-one tutorials?  In a situation where there are few is any limitations, what is the preferred mode of education?

Now, I am not saying that it is impossible to instill a reflective and critical approach though online education.  I was commenting on the differences between the two modes, where online education is an immersive experience that does not provide a counterenvironment, and therefore is not the best environment for doing so.  Of course, the teacher makes a difference, the curriculum makes a difference, etc.  But all things being equal, you lose a major resource by going to online education, and that ought to be considered in making a decision of how to teach the class.

Edmund Carpenter says that Marshall McLuhan got the idea for "the medium is the message" from Ashley Montagu's statement, "In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message...  the drawing out, not the pumping in.”  It is the relationship between teachers and students that is the message.  To say that the interposition of technology does not change that relationship is absurd.  To say that the interposition of technology only improves upon the relationship is myopic.  And to say that the interposition of technology can only detract from the relationship is also shortsighted.  The point is not to deny the benefits, only to ask if they're worth the cost, and to ask under what conditions is it appropriate and advantageous to use the technology, and under what conditions is it not.

A point was made about celebrating the fact that individuals with hearing impairment can participate on an equal footing in the online environment, and I agree that that is worthy of celebration.  However, they do so at the cost of silencing the voices of others, and that at least is worthy of note.  If we don't want to consider whether this serves the greater good, we should at least acknowledge that some sacrifice is being made to achieve the goal of inclusion.

As the parent of a child with a disability, I'm well aware of the debates concerning inclusion, and while it is a goal for many parents, and often a matter of economy for schools, it is more beneficial for students to receive education tailored to their individual needs (IEP), and federal law in the US mandates that every child receive an "appropriate" education.

Some argue that online education is more efficient than the traditional classroom, in terms of time and productivity, and Jacques Ellul would certainly see this as a matter of employing technical means to solve technical problems.  But in contrast to training, education is not a matter of technique, or at least it ought not to be. 

I should add that at Fordham, almost all of our classes are small, typically capped at 35 students, and our media lab classes at 18.  There is a big difference between that sort of classroom experience and the large lecture class, which I would consider the first form of distance education.   So when I'm talking about face-to-face, I'm talking about the seminar as an ideal form, and yes, you can do an online seminar, but there are trade-offs.  You can do an online lecture class too, and maybe the trade-offs there are not so costly.

I don't consider the medieval university to be ideal.  I guess it's a cultural thing, but I favor Talmudic scholarship myself, and I don't see anything wrong with debating Midrash (unlike some who use that phrase pejoratively).  Walter Ong does make the point that the introduction of printing led to new approaches to education, notably Ramism, which shifted emphasis from dialogue to the text, from the oral-aural world to visualism, from knowledge coming out of debate and disputation to knowledge as facts laid out in a book. The new method had advantages and disadvantages.  But it set in motion a trend towards the technologization of education that was accelerated by 19th century industrialism, for example with the emphasis on grading and competition in schooling.  Whether online education continues the tendency towards teaching as a technological activity remains to be seen, but arguments suggesting it is a more efficient, productive method should certainly give us pause.

Postman argued that schools provide a balance between orality and literacy, talking and the book.  Titles such as Rabbi and Guru refer to individuals who interpret texts, make them speak again, allow them to respond to questions and provide explanation and elaboration.  He believed that we had achieved a balance between the oral and the literate, one that was hard to achieve, hard to maintain, often precarious, and too often messed with, and he asked whether it's a good idea to upset that balance quite so much as the celebrants of new media are suggesting that we do?

And I think that he would say, well maybe it is a good idea, but at least, we're entitled to ask the question.

Postman also pointed out that teaching is one of the hardest things anyone can do, that it is very difficult to create real, significant, deep and longlasting change in the hearts and minds of others, which is what teachers try to do.  So, as teachers, we're always failing, and when someone comes along with a new method or medium, new technique or technology, teachers often embrace it out of desperation.

I don't doubt that online education will be an increasingly more attractive alternative to traditional higher education, for reasons of time and money.  I don't doubt that there will be some things that online education will do better than traditional education.  I also don't doubt that there will be something very important lost in the exchange.

The bottom line is, let's keep asking questions.  That more than anything, is what education is all about.

The McLuhan Century

So, today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan, and the temptation is to say, Happy Birthday Marshall as if he were still alive, but that seems a bit odd to me in some ways, although it is certainly true that his ideas are very much alive, and well, and in some ways doing better than ever.  Maybe not in regard to fame, he reached his peak around 1967 or so, the year he came to New York City, media capital of the world, for a one-year stint as Fordham University's Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, and the year his bestseller, The Medium is the Massage, was published.

So, Marshall the man isn't as well known today as he was some 45 years ago, but his ideas are better understood now than ever before, and better respected, with neurological studies of brain structure and function finally supporting the claims he made by way of pure intuition, and with the continuing series of innovations in communication keeping our awareness of media as media, as opposed to media content, fairly high.

His prescience, seemingly, concerning the evolution and impact of new media is easy enough to explain.  He was studying, analyzing, and discussing the electronic media in general, based on the characteristics of electricity and electric technologies, and extrapolating from the basic characteristics to specific manifestations.  So, for example, electrification meant that power need no longer be obtained from a central source, but could be distributed far and wide, and that was true as well of communications.  Look closely at Morse's telegraph and Marconi's wireless and you can see all of the potential for today's world of wired connections and mobile devices.  McLuhan saw it when most could not, and would not.

When he wrote about television as an electronic medium, many of the characteristics he attributed to the medium were still only beginning to manifest, or existing only in potential, and so many people had trouble understanding what he was talking about.  So, for example, they saw television programs as still emanating from a centralized source, and said that McLuhan didn't know what he was talking about.  They missed the point that the TV program was actually produced, as a product, on each person's TV set, locally, rather than a newspaper, magazine, or book being produced in a centralized factory, and then having to be distributed physically from there.  And they missed the point that television would continue to evolve through the development of cable and satellite technology, and the convergence with telephony and computer networks.  There is a direct evolutionary link between the broadcast and Google.

It is only in the 21st century that the world has finally caught up to McLuhan.  So, while we are celebrating the centenary of his birth, we perhaps ought to be celebrating not the end of the first hundred years of Marshall McLuhan, but the beginning of what ought to be considered as The McLuhan Century, the next 100 years.

Happy Birthday, Happy day of birth!

Making Sense of the Census

So, I was doubly honored to be called upon to serve as lay leader for the second week in a row this past Friday at Congregation Adas Emuno, and it seems only fitting to add my accounting of this service as well.  This week, after beginning as we always do with the candle lighting, I noted how in these very hot and humid days of July sometimes people sing Christmas songs to try to cool off, and along the same lines, we could start by reading the lyrics of a Chanukah song.  The song I chose was written by Peter Yarrow, and originally sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary, called Light One Candle, and it goes like this:

Light One Candle
Peter Yarrow

Light one candle for the Maccabee children

With thanks that their light didn't die

Light one candle for the pain they endured

When their right to exist was denied

Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
But light one candle for the wisdom to know

When the peacemaker's time is at hand




Don't let the light go out!

It's lasted for so many years!
Don't let the light go out!
Let it shine through our love and our tears.




Light one candle for the strength that we need

To never become our own foe

And light one candle for those who are suffering

Pain we learned so long ago
Light one candle for all we believe in

That anger not tear us apart
And light one candle to find us together

With peace as the song in our hearts




Don't let the light go out!

It's lasted for so many years!

Don't let the light go out!

Let it shine through our love and our tears.




What is the memory that's valued so highly

That we keep it alive in that flame?

What's the commitment to those who have died

That we cry out they've not died in vain?

We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail

This is the burden, this is the promise

This is why we will not fail!




Don't let the light go out!

It's lasted for so many years!

Don't let the light go out!
Let it shine through our love and our tears.


Don't let the light go out!
Don't let the light go out!

Don't let the light go out!

In case you're not familiar with the tune, here's a YouTube video recording of Peter Yarrow performing the song live:

We can apply the spirit of the song equally to the tradition of lighting the Sabbath lights, and answer the call to justice as we answer the call to worship.  From this point, the service proceeded as usual, leading up to the Dvar Torah (word of Torah).  I started by saying that in leading services two weeks in a row, I was able to say, as you remember from last week...


And in this case, the portion or parsha, this one called Parsha Pinchas, really does pick up right where the other left off, with Pinchas the priest's zealous action in killing the sinners, the Israelite chieftain and Midianite princess who were engaged in relations in public, which in turn put an end to the sinful behavior of the Israelites with the Midianite women who had come to seduce them and turn God against them.  (See the previous post, Sounds of Silence and Talking Donkeys, for more on this.)  So now, at the start of the new parsha, God tells Moses that because of this, he won't punish the Israelites, and that he will reward Pinchas and his descendents. 


But this parsha has much more to it than this brief epilogue to the story of Pinchas.  It goes on to relate that God then commands Moses and Eleazar, the father of Pinchas and the son of Aaron, to take a census, saying:  "Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel from twenty years old and upwards, following their fathers' houses, all that are fit to go out to war in Israel" (Numbers 26:2).  The results of the census are then reported in great detail which I won't go into, but here's a summary, broken down by tribe:

• 43,730 from Reuben;
• 22,200 from Simeon;
• 40,500 from Gad;
• 76,500 from Judah;
• 64,300 from Issachar;
• 60,500 from Zebulun;
• 52,700 from Manasseh;
• 32,500 from Ephraim;
• 45,600 from Benjamin;
• 64,400 from Dan;
• 53,400 from Asher;
• 45,400 from Naphtali;

This section concludes with, "these are those counted of the children of Israel: six hundred and one thousand and seven hundred and thirty."  How that final tally was obtained is beyond me, and beside the point.  The question we might well ask is why do the results of this census, which are described in painstaking detail in this Torah portion, included at all?  Surely, the numbers change with time, so that the specific information has no particular utility.


One immediate answer is that the results are used to explain and justify the ways in which the Holy Land is subdivided among the tribes, so that, as it says immediately afterward: "You shall apportion the Land among these as an inheritance, in accordance with the number of names. To the large [tribe] you shall give a larger inheritance and to a smaller tribe you shall give a smaller inheritance, each person shall be given an inheritance according to his number" (Num. 26:53-54).  

After this, the Levites, who were not allowed to own land, but were considered a holy tribe and source of the priesthood, are counted as well, tallying in at 23,000.


But there is more to the census than property rights.  At the outset, the census is meant to count "all that are fit to go out to war in Israel," so it is also about organization for defense as the Israelites move through hostile territory in the Sinai desert, and prepare to return to the land of Canaan.  But even more than that specific function, this recounting of the census provides a model for how a people can organize themselves.  That's why governments today routinely take a census of their populations.  When the Israelites left Egypt, they left as slaves in great numbers, essentially a mob, a crowd, a mass, and the only social structure they had was a tribal system that worked fine for a household of a few dozen, maybe a few hundred, but could not effectively govern a population of hundreds of thousands.  That's why we see in the Torah the working out of new leadership structures, new forms of organization, a new model that the founding fathers of the United States looked to, and drew upon, when they endeavored to form a more perfect union.


We should also acknowledge that in order to take a census, you had to have a means of keeping track of numbers, a system of notation, of writing.  The first writing system was developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, and it was developed by accountants to keep inventory, so writing began with numbers, or rather numerals.  The Sumerians were invaded and conquered by Semitic peoples that we call the Babylonians, and the first system of law, codifed law, written law, came from the Babylonian king known as Hammurabi--Moses is credited with the second such system.  We also believe that some of our stories in Genesis originated with the Babylonians, such as the Tower of Babel (that name's a dead give away),  the Flood, and maybe the Garden of Eden.  And one of the great cities of Mesopotamia was Ur, out of which came Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people, and the Arabic people as well.


But it was in the Sinai desert that the first alphabet appeared, developed by Semitic peoples, and adapted from Egypt's hieroglyphics, the second oldest writing system.  This coincides more or less with the time period reflected in the story of Moses and the Exodus.  And in Semitic writing, in the Hebrew aleph-bet for example, numbers are represented by letters.  This means that every word has a numerical value, which is why the Hebrew word for life, chai, is associated with the number 18, and why when we write checks for bar mitzvahs, weddings, and synagogue donations, we often make the amount out to be multiples of 18.  The mystical practice of numerology has its roots in Semitic numerals, and the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, and specifically the method known as Gematria, includes the idea of searching for hidden meanings in the Torah and elsewhere by translating its words into their numerical equivalents.


So the Israelites in the Sinai had the advantage of both letters and numbers, literacy and numeracy, and this forms the basis for the Jewish cultural facility for arithmetic and mathematics, and later on, for finance.  We didn't invent money, or taxation, or interest rates, or accounting, or banking, but we had the literacy, numeracy, and abstract thinking to work in those areas when all else was closed off to us, and to work in those areas when others could not.  And those who were not literate or numerate, and limited to concrete thinking, could not understand how something like charging interest on loans works, and instead charged us with usury, reinforcing anti-Semitism. But it was the rulers, the nobility of European lands, who invited and encouraged us to do this work, in order to develop and fuel their economies, taking advantage of these skills in order to modernize their economies.


But to return to the ancient world, the census that is reported in this Torah portion is the second census that was conducted, the first having been done soon after the exodus from Egypt.  And the results of this second census reveal that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, and of course Moses, no one from the original exodus was still alive.  They had wandered the desert for forty years so that the generation that was born to slavery, and proven unfaithful at Mount Sinai, would die off, and a new generation born into freedom, and born into the new society governed by God's Law, by the Torah, could take their place.  

I think it is also true that what we call wandering was in no way aimless, but rather was a circling around, a cyclical movement, which is characteristic of the nomadic way of life.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were essentially nomads, and in this way the Israelites could return to that original lifestyle after being captives in Egypt. They could reenact and recapitulate the lives of their ancestors as a prelude to reclaiming the land of their ancestors, Canaan.  And while today we no longer live as nomads, we too makes the rounds, year after year, as we move through the Torah portions, parsha by parsha.


This parsha also establishes the laws of inheritance, and in response to a claim made by the daughters of a man who had no sons, God rules in favor of the women, a highly unusual demonstration of progressive thinking in those ancient days:  "Speak to the children of Israel saying: If a man dies and has no son, you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter" (Num. 27:8).  It is an incredibly rich and diverse section, one that also includes Joshua's selection to succeed Moses and lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, and various directives about ritual offerings are also listed.  

And this parsha says, "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, [you shall offer up] a Passover offering to the Lord. On the fifteenth day of this month, a festival [begins]; you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days" (Num. 28:16-17).  Note that the first month is the month of Passover, the month of Nisan.  In other words, the new year begins in the spring, not the end of summer, as it does for us now.  This makes perfect sense, because Passover is the defining moment for our people,  the birth of a nation, so to speak, the exodus from Egypt is our Independence Day, and receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai 40 days later is our Constitution Day.  And a little later, it states, " On the day of the first fruits, when you offer up a new meal offering to the Lord, on your festival of Weeks; it shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall not perform any mundane work " (Num. 28:26).  The festival of Weeks is Shavuot, when we commemorate God giving us the Ten Commandments and the other 603 that constitute the Law, the Torah.


Later on, it says, "And in the seventh month, on the first day, there shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall not perform any mundane work. It shall be a day of shofar sounding for you" (Num. 29:1).  Although not identified by name, this is Rosh Hashanah, at this time not the head (rosh) of the year (shanah), not the new year, but a special day nonetheless.  It was not until after the Babylonian exile that Rosh Hashanah became the New Year's Day for the Hebrew calendar.  And a little later, "And on the tenth day of this seventh month, there shall be a holy convocation for you, and you shall afflict your souls. You shall not perform any work" (Num. 29:7).  This is the basis of Yom Kippur.  And a little further on we find, "And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, there shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall not perform any mundane work, and you shall celebrate a festival to the Lord for seven days" (Num. 29:12).  And this is the festival of Sukkot, a harvest festival where we also commemorate the nomadic lifestyle of our ancestors.


So we find in this parsha the beginnings of our cycle of festivals and holy days which, like the cycle of Torah readings, is a way in which we reenact the wanderings in the desert, which were not wanderings without purpose, but natural cycles and rituals of purification and spiritual communion.  Our Parsha comes from what is called the Book of Numbers, but the message is not about numbers, not about doing things by the numbers, for the original, Hebrew name of the fourth book of the Torah is Bamidbar, In the Desert.  And so, in the many deserts that we wander today, may we find justice and redemption, spiritual purification and communion, continuity with a  living tradition and a covenant with a power greater than ourselves.


At this point, we continued with the service, and in lieu of a closing hymn, we sang the song written and originally performed by Bob Dylan, Blowing in the Wind--here are the lyrics:

Blowing In The Wind
Bob Dylan

How many roads must a man walk down,

before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove fly,

before she sleeps in the sand?
And how many times must a cannon ball fly,

before they're forever banned?




The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,

the answer is blowing in the wind.




How many years can a mountain exist,
before it is washed to the sea?

How many years can some people exist,
before they're allowed to be free?
And how many times can a man turn his head,
and pretend that he just doesn't see?


The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.




How many times must a man look up,

before he sees the sky?

And how many ears must one man have,

before he can hear people cry?

And how many deaths will it take till we know,
that too many people have died?


The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,

the answer is blowing in the wind.

And while I have nothing against Bob Dylan's rendition, why don't we return to Peter, Paul, and Mary to get a sense of the simple spiritual beauty of this song:

In Hebrew, the word for wind, and breath as well, ruach, also means spirit, and in this sense we can understand the prayerful intent of this song.  And with that, the service was concluded.

Sounds of Silence and Talking Donkeys

Last Friday, I was honored to be the lay leader again for Shabbat services at Congregation Adas Emuno, and I thought I'd share with you some of that experience.

First, we opened by reading together the lyrics written by Paul Simon from the Simon and Garfunkel song, Sounds of Silence.  Here they are:

The Sounds of Silence
Paul Simon


Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains

Within the sound of silence




In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night
And touched the sound of silence


And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence


"Fools", said I, "You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you"

But my words, like silent raindrops fell

And echoed

In the wells of silence




And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming

And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"

And whispered in the sounds of silence

I believe that the song is familiar to most, it was a big hit back in the 60s, but half a century later, you just never know, so here's a video from YouTube that plays the song while displaying the lyrics:

Paul Simon's lyrics draws on the Biblical polemic against graven images and idol worship, but brings a modern sensibility to it, and an insistence on social justice that has its roots in the Nevi'im, the books of the prophets, who truly came from the margins of ancient society, not the centers of power such as court or Temple.  There is also an echo of the commandment to not stand idly by while another is being harmed here, in the insistence that we not remain silent in the face of injustice.  It is a reminder of the silence that greeted the Holocaust, a protest against contemporary evils, and a call to action.

We then proceeded with the service, and later, before we reached the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing, we read together the lyrics from the Leonard Cohen song, If It Be Your Will:

If It Be Your Will
Leonard Cohen


If it be your will
That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will


If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you

From this broken hill

All your praises
They shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing


If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill

Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill

On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will

To make us well




And draw us near

And bind us tight

All your children here
In their rags of light

In our rags of light

All dressed to kill

And end this night

If it be your will


This is a song about pain and suffering, about going through hell physically, and/or emotionally, and praying for healing.  Here is another YouTube video with a recording of Leonard Cohen:

After completing the healing prayer, it was time for the Dvar Torah, literally, a word of Torah, and the parsha or Torah portion for last week was Parsha Balak, Balak being the name of the king of Moab who figures prominently in the story being told in that section.  It's actually a rather unique section of the Torah, because the focus is not on the Jewish people or any individual member thereof.  After all, once we get past the preliminaries, Genesis is about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons, and then the other four books are about Moses mainly, and sometimes about Aaron and his sons and grandsons, and Miriam, but mainly its Moses, and the Israelites collectively. 

But in this story, the focus is on Balaam, who is a sorcerer and also a prophet of God, but not one of the Israelites.  Balaam is a Midianite.  And this is an important point, in my opinion.  What this indicates is that you do not have to be Jewish, or an Israelite, or Hebrew, to worship God, or even be a prophet. You can trace this understanding back to the story of Noah, where a basic religion and ethical code for all the peoples of the world is presented. And so there are priests, shamans, and prophets who come from other peoples, and the outlook is that each people forges their own relationship with God. It has to be done as a community, the individual is not enough, the group must take responsibility for itself and its conduct. And every community, every people, has to make its own deal with God, to create their own just society. In the Torah, the Jewish people were chosen, and chose to accept a special covenant, special responsibilities, and special hardships. But there are as many relationships with God, pathways to God, as there are communities.  This stands in contrast to later, universalist religions where there is only one path to God that all must follow, and where the emphasis is on the individual relationship to the divine, rather than on the community.

So, the story begins with King Balak of Moab, who viewed the Israelites wandering through the desert as enemies, and is not willing to give them safe passage.  So he sends messengers to the Land of Midian, to speak with Balaam, and ask Balaam to come with them to Moab and to put a curse on the Israelites. But God appears to Balaam and tells him not to go, saying, "You shall not curse the people because they are blessed!" So he refuses, but King Balak sends more prestigious messengers, offering to reward Balaam with great riches, and this time God tells Balaam he can go, but he must only speak the words that God tells him to.
  Here's an excerpt, in English translation of course, from Numbers 22:

21. In the morning Balaam arose, saddled his she-donkey and went with the Moabite dignitaries.

22. God's wrath flared because he was going, and an angel of the Lord stationed himself on the road to thwart him, and he was riding on his she-donkey, and his two servants were with him.

23. The she-donkey saw the angel of the Lord stationed on the road with his sword drawn in his hand; so the she-donkey turned aside from the road and went into a field. Balaam beat the she-donkey to get it back onto the road.

24. The angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, with a fence on this side and a fence on that side.

25. The she-donkey saw the angel of the Lord, and she was pressed against the wall. She pressed Balaam's leg against the wall, and he beat her again.

26. The angel of the Lord continued going ahead, and he stood in a narrow place, where there was no room to turn right or left.
27. The she-donkey saw the angel of the Lord, and it crouched down under Balaam. Balaam's anger flared, and he beat the she-donkey with a stick.
28. The Lord opened the mouth of the she-donkey, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?"
29. Balaam said to the she-donkey, "For you have humiliated me; if I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."
30. The she-donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your she-donkey on which you have ridden since you first started until now? Have I been accustomed to do this to you?" He said, "No."

31. The Lord opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a sword drawn in his hand. He bowed and prostrated himself on his face.

32. The angel of the Lord said to him, "Why have you beaten your she-donkey these three times? Behold, I have came out to thwart you, for the one embarking on the journey has hastened against me.

33. When the she-donkey saw me, it turned aside these three times. Had she not turned aside before me, now also I would also have killed you and spared her [the she-donkey]."

34. Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, "I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing on the road before me. Now, if it displeases you, I will return."

35. The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, "Go with these men, but the word I will speak to you-that you shall speak." So Balaam went with Balak's dignitaries.

Now, this too is quite unusual.  Where else in the Hebrew Bible do we find a talking animal?  That's a motif that comes up commonly in myths, folktales, and nowadays in cartoons (can you imagine Eddie Murphy as the donkey?).  And the angel as well is much more conversational and personal than the typical supernatural messengers that appear in the sacred text.  All in all, the story of a talking donkey is a comedy, and a bit of a farce, and it may well be that this was a folktale that originated among the Midianites or Moabites, and not the Israelites, and then later became incorporated into the Torah.  It certainly has elements that indicate it is more like oral tradition than written scripture.  For that alone, I think this is a wonderful section of the Five Books of Moses.

After this encounter, Balaam arrives in Moab, and tells Balak to build seven altars, and offer sacrifices to God, which he does. And then Balaam blesses instead of curses the Israelites, saying, "How can I curse whom God has not cursed, and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered?" King Balak is angry, takes Balaam to a second location, builds altars and offers sacrifices, and again Balaam has no choice but to bless the Jewish people. King Balak then tries a third location, with the same result. This illustrates a difference in mode of thinking, with the nonliterate, oral mindset of Balak, who thinks in concrete terms, and imagines the divine to be local, immanent, tied to a particular place.  In contrast, the story shows that for the monotheism of the Israelites, God is omnipresent (a similar theme is found in the book of Jonah, where it is shown that it is impossible to run away and escape from God).  This conception requires an abstract mode of thought that is all but impossible without literacy, and the religion of Moses is quite clearly a religion based on the sacred text received at Mount Sinai, a religion rooted in the written word.

So, Balaam makes with a blessing, the beginning of which is part of Jewish liturgy, but which then goes into a brutal, agonistic mode (this from Numbers 24):

5. How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!
6. They extend like streams, like gardens by the river, like aloes which the Lord planted, like cedars by the water. 

7. Water will flow from his wells, and his seed shall have abundant water; his king shall be raised over Agag, and his kingship exalted.

8. God, Who has brought them out of Egypt with the strength of His loftiness He shall consume the nations which are his adversaries, bare their bones and dip His arrows [into their blood].

9. He crouches and lies like a lion and like a lioness; who will dare rouse him? Those who bless you shall be blessed, and those who curse you shall be cursed.

And then Balaam concludes with a prophecy about the end days and redemption, when the evil of Assyria, Esau, and the Amalek will be defeated. This is the first apocalyptic vision of armageddon that appears in the Bible.  The word armageddon comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddo, Har meaning mountain, so it literally is a geographical location, Mount Megiddo.  But for those interested in the so-called end days, this is where it all begins.

The parsha concludes with a second story, where the enemies of the Israelites try a new tactic, getting the Israelites to sin and thereby lose God's favor, and they do so by sending in Moabite and Midianite women to seduce the men.  God's anger at this immorality is reflected in the outbreak of disease in the Israelite camp, but we perhaps can understand it in contemporary terms as an outbreak of STDs, and it might even be that this was an early form of biological warfare (perhaps comparable to the early settlers in the New World giving the Native Americans diseased blankets?).  The response is quite extreme in this story, as God tells Moses to execute the guilty ones.  But what happens is that one of the leaders of the Israelites is cavorting in public with a Midianite princess, until Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron and therefore a priest, kills them both with his spear. Not only is this violent, but also phallic, as the way, I believe, the story is understood is that the couple are caught in the act, speared together in a manner that Sigmund Freud would certainly have much to say about.  It's brutal, but again these are ancient times, and the Israelites were not that much more advanced over their neighbors back then, it was a constant struggle according to the stories in the Bible.  But in this instance, the ritual sacrifice ends the plague, which perhaps can be understood as the threat of execution put the fear of God into the men, and put an end to the promiscuous behavior that spread the disease.

The point, I believe, is not to sanitize these stories, but to understand them, not necessarily taking them literally, but as a reflection of a struggle to emerge out of the oral, tribal, agonistic mode of life, and evolve into something new, and better, a people governed by law and justice, ethics and rationality. It was a long and difficult struggle, but the Israelites were engaged in it long before others were.  And we understood that you don't make progress by forgetting your history, and editing out all of your mistakes and failures and wrongdoings, but by remembering them, and striving not to repeat them, and to make things better.


The progress can be seen in the concluding lines of the Haftarah accompanying this Torah portion, taken from the Prophet Micah (6: 7-8), which comes after another apocalyptic vision:

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

For me, those this sums up better than anything what the Torah tries to teach us, what is the basis of our religion.

The service then proceeded as usual, but before the Mourner's Kaddish, I read a poem by Solomon ben Judah Gabirol, one of the Hebrew Poets of Medieval Spain, translated into English by the 19th century Jewish American poet, Emma Lazarus:

Almighty! what is man?

But flesh and blood.

Like shadows flee his days,

He marks not how they vanish from his gaze,
Suddenly, he must die-
He droppeth. stunned, into nonentity.

Almighty! what is man?

A body frail and weak.

Full of deceit and lies,

Of vile hypocrisies.
Now like a flower blowing,

Now scorched by sunbeams glowing.

And wilt thou of his trespasses inquire?

How may he ever bear
Thine anger just, thy vengeance dire?
Punish him not, but spare,

For he is void of power and strength!




Almighty! what is man?
By filthy lust possessed,

Whirled in a round of lies,

Fond frenzy swells his breast.

The pure man sinks in mire and slime,

The noble shrinketh not from crime,

Wilt thou resent on him the charms of sin?

Like fading grass,

So shall he pass.
Like chaff that blows
Where the wind goes.

Then spare him, be thou merciful, O King,

Upon the dreaded day of reckoning!




Almighty! what is man?

The haughty son of time

Drinks deep of sin,

And feeds on crime

Seething like, waves that roll,

Hot as a glowing coal.

And wilt thou punish him for sins inborn?

Lost and forlorn,

Then like the weakling he must fall,

Who some great hero strives withal.

Oh, spare him, therefore! let him win

Grace for his sin!


Almighty! what is man?

Spotted in guilty wise,

A stranger unto faith,

Whose tongue is stained with lies,

And shalt thou count his sins so is he lost,

Uprooted by thy breath.
Like to a stream by tempest tossed.

His life falls from him like a cloak,

He passes into nothingness, like smoke.

Then spare him, punish not, be kind, I pray,

To him who dwelleth in the dust, an image wrought in clay!




Almighty! what is man?

A withered bough!
When he is awestruck by approaching doom.

Like a dried blade of grass, so weak, so low

The pleasure of his life is changed to gloom.

He crumbles like a garment spoiled with moth;
According to his sins wilt thou be wroth?

He melts like wax before the candle s breath,

Yea, like thin water, so he vanisheth,

Oh, spare him therefore, for thy gracious name,

And be not too severe upon his shame!


Almighty! what is man?

A faded leaf!

If thou dost weigh him in the balance lo!

He disappears a breath that thou dost blow.

His heart is ever filled
With lust of lies unstilled.

Wilt bear in mind his crime
Unto all time?

He fades away like clouds sun-kissed,

Dissolves like mist.

Then spare him! let him love and mercy win,

According to thy grace, and not according to his sin!

The medieval mentality is also different from our own, less comforting and gentle, but it too is part of our long history, a tradition that encompasses the ancient and medieval as well as the modern and contemporary, a tradition of balance and harmony, orality and literacy, and a tradition of freedom, justice, and memory.

Edmund Carpenter 1922-2011

The passing of Edmund Carpenter on July 2nd is a loss for the field of media ecology, for anthropology, and for scholarship is general.  Ted Carpenter's contributions were not always well acknowledged, but certainly of great significance to us all.

It is especially sad that he passed away during the Marshall McLuhan Centenary, as he was McLuhan's closest collaborator and greatest influence during the years that McLuhan formulated his most seminal work that led to the publication of The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media.   As McLuhan's colleague at the University of Toronto from the late 40s to the late 50s, Carpenter might well be considered an important member of what has been termed the Toronto School, but unlike McLuhan, he was not a Canadian, but rather was born in Rochester, New York (the site of the 5th annual MEA meeting), lived for many years in California, and most recently resided in New York City and the Hamptons out on Long Island.

Carpenter worked with McLuhan in Toronto as part of the interdisciplinary Explorations group, obtaining a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1952 that, among other things, funded the creation of a journal called Explorations (after which the MEA's Explorations in Media Ecology was named), which Carpenter edited.  This was the moment when media ecology as a unified field, rather than as separate strands of intellectual inquiry, first coalesced.  Although only 9 issues were published, Explorations had a significant impact on a select and fortunate network of intellectuals during the 1950s, creating in its readership the beginnings of a community and invisible college of what we would call media ecologists.

An anthology consisting of selected articles from Explorations was published in 1960, under the title of Explorations in Communication, edited by Carpenter and McLuhan.  It is sadly out of print, but truly a major work in the media ecology literature.  Christine Nystrom once remarked to me that most of the main ideas that made McLuhan famous in the 1960s can be found there.  Certainly, the "Acoustic Space" chapter co-authored by Carpenter and McLuhan, represents one of the key insights about sensory biases as they relate to media, and Carpenter's piece, "The New Languages," was frequently reprinted, and enormously influential and in the field of communication, especially mass communication, and what would become known as media studies; also, it is a pioneering work in what would become known as media literacy. 

As an anthropologist, Carpenter played a role in the adoption of the anthropological concept of culture into McLuhan's work, as opposed to the more literary view of the popular arts that can be seen in McLuhan's first book, The Mechanical Bride.  And especially, Carpenter was interested in language, and the differences between different languages, in vocabulary, grammar, and worldview.  He was a proponent of what is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, otherwise referred to as linguistic relativism, that languages play a central role in thought, perception, and culture, a view that was attacked and repressed by Chomsky and his followers, and is only recently being retrieved and resurrected.  And Carpenter identified the anthropologist Dorothy Lee as a major influence on himself and McLuhan, although the influence on McLuhan may have been indirectly, through Carpenter. 

Lee is the only author to contribute more than one piece to Explorations in Communication, aside from McLuhan and Carpenter themselves, and while she did not publish extensively otherwise, and has been largely forgotten outside of media ecology circles, she was known as a stronger advocate of linguistic relativism than even Benjamin Lee Whorf, so that some feel it only appropriate to refer to the Sapir-Whorf-Lee Hypothesis.  Her position is articulated in "Linguistic Reflection of Wintu Thought," but it is in the chapter entitled, "Lineal and Non-Lineal Codifications of Reality" that Lee's contribution becomes abundantly clear, as she provides the basis for the key insight about nonlinearity which McLuhan associated with electronic media.  Both articles were also included in her own book, Freedom and Culture, another important work in the media ecology intellectual tradition that is sadly out of print; I know from correspondence with Walter Ong that he thought very highly of that book, which begins to bridge the gap between linguistic anthropology and orality-literacy studies.

Explorations in Communication also included 4 contributions by McLuhan, "Classroom without Walls," "The Effect of the Printed Book on Language in the 16th Century," "Media Log," and "Five Sovereign Fingers Taxed the Breath," and some of the other chapters are "Tactile Communication" by Lawrence Frank, "Time and Tense in Spanish Epic Poetry" by Stephen Gilman, "Buddhist Symbolism" by Daisetz Suzuki, "The Language of Poetry" by Northrup Frye, "Kinesics and Communication" by Ray Bridwhistell, "Space Conception in Prehistoric Art" by Sigfried Giedion, "The Moving Eye" by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, "Pure Color" by Fernand Léger, "The Oral and Written Traditions" by David Riesman, "Reading and Writing" by H. J. Chaytor, "Channel Cat in the Middle Distance" by Jean Shepherd, "Joyce's Wake" by W. R. Rodgers, and "Communications Revolution" by Gilbert Seldes.  Truly fertile soil for McLuhan's media ecology.

Carpenter, along with Harold Innis, also helped to shift McLuhan's attention towards the concept of media, and Carpenter himself was a pioneer in using the media, having his own radio and television program for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, so in this as well he set an example for McLuhan to follow (and of course vastly exceed).  And working with and in different media led him to think about their differences, to argue that each medium is a language with its own grammar and worldview, thereby broadening the Sapir-Whorf-Lee Hypothesis (Louis Forsdale later suggested that McLuhan's perspective on media was an extension of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis).  Carpenter also stated that languages are media, an argument that many traditionalists in communication had trouble with, but that makes perfect sense from a media ecology approach.

Carpenter is considered a pioneer in visual anthropology, as Harald Prins, John Bishop, and Michael Wesch have made clear, and the work he did founding and leading an interdisciplinary program in Anthropology and Art at San Fernando Valley State College (today known as California State University-Northridge) from 1959-1967 was simply amazing, as can be seen in the documentary, Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me! By Bishop and Prins.  We were fortunate to have been treated to a preview screening of the film at the 4th annual MEA meeting at Hofstra University on Long Island, and I've used it many times in classes.  It is incredibly rich in ideas about language, art, culture, and media, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in media ecology. 

Unlike most documentaries of that sort, this one is quite affordable, only $24.95 direct from the filmmaker, via Media-Generation.  Here's a preview:



McLuhan brought Carpenter with him to Fordham University when McLuhan was given the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities during the 1967-1968 school year, and Carpenter had an important impact on what might be called the New York School of media ecology (in later years, he would teach courses at various schools in the metropolitan area, including New York University, the New School, and Adelphi University).  He also held the Carnegie Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz for a year, and had a position at the University of Papua, New Guinea, where he conducted anthropological research that was captured on film, and included in the Bishop and Prins documentary. 

Carpenter was condemned by his colleagues for experimenting on the tribal peoples that he visited in Papua, capturing their first reactions to media such as photographs, sound recording, radio, and film.  He himself seemed ambivalent about the fact that he had interfered with these cultures, but in the film you can see them using a steel, mass produced razor blade to perform the ritual scarification that figured in their rites of passage, so they were not exactly pristine.  You can also see them attending Roman Catholic mass, and the church is well known for its effort to change tribal cultures, so again, they were not free from foreign influences, and some tribesmen also wore articles of "civilized" clothing.  Moreover, the New Guinea government was mounting efforts to reach the tribal populations through education, exposing them to movies, radio, and literacy. 

Here's another excerpt from the Bishop and Prins documentary:




And of course the very presence of an anthropologist taking notes changes things, as the documentary also shows us, by way of a tribe member who had "invented" his own form of "writing" which just amounted to making marks on paper, but this already deviates from what Ong termed primary orality, where the members of the culture do not even know of writing.  It was only a matter of time before the tribe members were introduced to these other media, an event that would otherwise occur without anyone observing and analyzing, so there is ample justification for what Carpenter did.

Carpenter's conclusions are quite clear, and essential for the field of media ecology:  that media swallow cultures rather than the other way around, that culture does not have a significant effect on the way that individuals use or relate to different media, but that media have significant effects on cultures, on thought, feeling, worldview, and ways of life.

The title of the Biship and Prins documentary is taken from the title of Carpenter's most important and popular book in media ecology, Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me, published in 1972. 

The title is an allusion to Don Quixote, and his encounter with the windmill, and the book was Carpenter's follow-up to McLuhan's Understanding Media, which Carpenter stated that he made unacknowledged contributions to. Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me begins with the words,


"Electricity has made angels of us all. Not angels in the Sunday school sense of being good or having wings, but spirit, freed from flesh, capable of instant transportation anywhere. The moment we pick up a phone, we’re nowhere in space—everywhere in spirit.  That is Saint Augustine’s definition of God: a being whose center is everywhere, whose borders are nowhere." 

This is another book that is sadly out of print, but available electronically in various ways, including in hypertextual format online, courtesy of Mike Wesch, at .   This work was preceded by They Became What They Beheld in 1970, with Ken Heyman given co-authorship credit having done for this book what Quentin Fiore did for McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage, as an experimental, visually oriented publication.  Other major works by Carpenter include Eskimo (1959), Eskimo Realities (1973), Patterns That Connect (completing the work of anthropologist Carl Schuster, in 1996), and Two Essays: Chief and Greed (2005).

Carpenter's relationship with McLuhan after the Fordham year became somewhat strained, which Carpenter attributed in part to McLuhan's illness, and the after effects of the major brain surgery he had that year, and this is reflected in the essay that he wrote, "Remembering Explorations," published in the spring 1992 issues of Canadian Notes and Queries, and in abridged form as an appendix in Donald Theall's 2001 book, The Virtual Marshall McLuhan.  But he also was quite generous in taking care of McLuhan in the Hamptons after McLuhan had his debilitating stroke.

I've heard that Carlos Castaneda of New Age fame was one of Carpenter's students, and he also was a mentor to one of McLuhan's daughters, Teri, who published a number of books about Native Americans as T.C. McLuhan.  I've also heard that he was quite the ladies' man in his time, which is perhaps reflected in the fact that he was twice divorced.  

But it seems he found his soul mate in Adelaide DeMenil, who was also very much his collaborator, doing the camerawork in New Guinea, working with him on many research projects (I recall him mentioning about frequently visiting a dig in Siberia near the arctic circle, where some of the oldest human remains were found), and in curating museum exhibits.

We were fortunate indeed to have Ted Carpenter as a featured speaker at the MEA's 6th Annual Meeting held at Fordham, and it was a great honor to meet him, and Adelaide, and then to be able to publish his talk about McLuhan, simply entitled "Marshall," in Explorations in Media Ecology (5:3, 2006).  That brief essay is an altogether brilliant bit of writing.

Ted Carpenter was truly one of the great ones, in media ecology, and in scholarship and the arts in general, and he will most certainly be missed, and remembered.