From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Besuboru Guy—Keepin' Up

Click here for the "Celebrity Commentary" Resource Center—(all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Celebrity Commentary" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
***  *** 
On this day in Round and Square History 
11 September 2012—Middles: Calendars and Memory
11 September 2011—Middles: Commemoration

[a] Individual and Society RF
可飛ばせ, 川口!
Let 'er rip, Kawaguchi!  OR
Fly to base, Kawaguchi!
—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Kawaguchi is a common surname, like "Anderson")
And Japanese professional baseball players will let 'er rip (and fly to base) long after my time at Round and Square is up.

And that will be today—right now, even.

So how can you keep up with the most exciting baseball on the planet?
[b] Ongoing RF

Well, here are a few good places to start.


Japanese Baseball 1

Japanese Baseball 2

Japanese Baseball 3

And I won't be far away. I'll pop in every once in a while, along with my friends Liam, French Bulldog Pup, Roll Tide Guy, and Lederhosen Pug.

I am now a member of the RSQ Columnist-Emeritus community.

[If you don't read Japanese, but want to have some sense of the Japanese kana and kanji in these posts, just copy the phrases and paste them into translation software such as Babylon or Google Translate].
[c] Shrine ball RF
[Originally posted on August 31, 2014]

East Asian and Pacific History and Culture Source Letter (Autumn 2014)

On this date on Round and Square's History 

[a] Text and illustration RF
East Asian and Pacific History and Culture
HIST 210 / ANTH 275
Autumn 2014

Preliminary Writing Assignment 
Sources: The Letter
By choosing the letter format for your first writing assignment, I am asking you to build upon the skills you have already begun to develop in analyzing (and providing examples for) translated primary sources from East Asia.  You have already reached a point where you have some experience with “sources,” and your job will be to explain them to an intelligent non-specialist.

Teach them, really.
Letters from “the field” (or our modified “archive” of East Asian historical works) are a good way to refine your thoughts about ethnographic and historical study, and they are a useful medium for beginning the intellectual “framing process” that will accelerate as we move through the next two-thirds of the course. 

The letter writing exercise is especially useful while studying primary source materials, as we are doing right now. The nonfiction writer John McPhee explains to his students that a letter is often precisely the solution to problems of interpretation or clarity—when in doubt, write to mother, he says. In this case, it is not a plea of “send money” that the letter contains, but a reworking, rethinking, and contextualization of your work. You need not limit yourself to kinfolk, but you need to think about who the recipient will be (ideally someone who will welcome a letter about “studying sources”).

You owe it to yourself to listen to this long interview with McPhee. At the very least, listen to the first two minutes. It is the very purpose behind this assignment.


Now start writing. Toward that end, you should pay attention to the following issues.

[c] I said, "start writing" RF
1. The letter needs to be “long enough” to get you deeply into several issues regarding source materials, particular approaches to studying them, and a few examples.  There is no absolute upper limit, but I am going to make a lower limit of 3,000 words (about ten pages). Even if you are a very efficient writer, you will need this much “space” to give your reader a good picture of your work. 3,000 words is just about right. Include a word count at the end of your paper (e.g. “3,245 words” or Word Count: 3,245).

2. I am asking you to connect with a very specific reader, and to explain “sources” in a level of detail that she will find satisfying.  You are the expert, and your “audience” is the person who will be reading your letter (I will, of course, be reading over her shoulder).  I have found that this kind of assignment helps students to explain even abstruse matters, because the personal relationship they have with their readers demands an attention to patient explanation that is often lacking in more “academic” forms of writing, in which they assume that a professor already knows what they are writing about.

3. You will be reading a book this week devoted to letter writing in early medieval China. It should help you to think about letter writing and "sources" (letters are among the richest of historical sources). Our class discussions of this book should guide you in the letter writing process, as well.

4. You may approach your materials from any angle that you like, but you will need to “cover” at least the following items, no matter what order you choose.

          a. You must discuss the “what is a source?” question. Provide your reader with 
              at least a few ways of thinking about it, including a working definition (your
              own) of "primary" and "secondary" sources.

          b. Give your reader a sense of what you have learned up to this point about 
              how to use source materials in thinking about historical issues. Use 
              examples, either from the course or your own work.

          c. You must discuss the book (Letters & Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China)
               in at least a few paragraphs of your paper. It is filled with "source examples," so
               this should not be difficult.

          d. You must include at least one illustration in your letter. Think of the rhetorical role
               of illustrations in the New York Review of Books.
          e. Finally, give your reader some sense of what it is like to “learn through
              sources" by discussing the literary and historical dimensions of some of our
              texts. It might be useful to tell your reader about what you have learned about
              the kinds of themes you have studied in the deBary source reader.
4. The best way to approach the writing process is in three parts (this is a friendly suggestion). First, jot down some notes for each of the “sections” of your letter. Second, using those notes as a guide, write a rough draft of the whole letter. Third, revise, polish, and refine. 

Voilà you will have something not unlike what Alexis de Tocqueville might have written about understanding a complex, foreign culture that baffled and enticed him 180 years ago. While your letter won’t be as long as Democracy in America, it is likely—if it is done well—to be much like Tocqueville’s rich and evocative letters back to his family about encountering people, texts, and institutions in a strange land called the United States. 

You get the idea. If you don't, just raise your hand and ask me (or send me an e-mail message). I'll be happy to help.

Letters are due (in hard copy form) outside my door 
by 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 28.

Add the word count and your box number to all papers!
[e] And then you may rest RF

China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-31

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  
⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/6.........................................................................  ...........................................8/30

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.
Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left

日期星
Eighth Month, Thirty-First Day
Astral Period Sun
Sunday, August 31
———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 
(top to bottom, right to left)
陽歲
德德
Generational Virtue
Yang Virtue
—————————————————
Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left
申辰子
凶凶
酉己丑
中吉吉
戌午寅
凶凶
亥未卯
中吉吉
23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 Auspicious

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Inauspicious
13:00-15:00 Auspicious

15:00-17:00 In-Between
17:00-19:00 In-Between
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 In-Between

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.
————————————————— 
Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

行開
喪倉
Opening Granaries
Mourning Visits
—————————————————  
 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 


滿
Seventh Day Day (Eighth Lunar Month)
Cyclical day: jiaxu (11/60)
Phase (element): Fire
Constellation: Willow (25/28)
"Day Personality" Cycle: Fullness (3/12)
—————————————————  
Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

納會
財友
補裁
塞衣
栽理
種髮
牧開
養市

三火
喪星
————
Appropriate Activities
Meeting Friends
Cutting-out Clothing
Patterning Hair
Opening Markets
Cash Outflow
Patching and Plugging
Planting and Cultivating
Raising Livestock 

Water Scar

Baleful Astral Influences
Fire Star
Three Mournings

  Section Seven
Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
白 水
White, Water
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information

栖 碓
Gate
Perch, Pestle

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Besuboru Guy—Split Season History

Click here for the "Celebrity Commentary" Resource Center—(all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Celebrity Commentary" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
***  *** 
On this day in Round and Square History 
10 September 2012—The Cortex Chronicles: Contrapuntal
10 September 2011—Styling Culture: Using Chicago Style Citation

[a] Individual and Society RF
可飛ばせ, 川口!
Let 'er rip, Kawaguchi!  OR
Fly to base, Kawaguchi!
—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Kawaguchi is a common surname, like "Anderson")

And, for one brief stretch, Japanese players let 'er rip and flew to base with changing rewards.

For a decade-long period during the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Japanese baseball experimented with what is called a split season.


[b] Split RF
This kind of season remains quite common in various nooks-and-crannies of baseball all over the world. The basic idea is this. [1] Play hard for half a season, win the half-season title, and you have a place in the playoffs at the end of the full season. [2] Play hard and lose in the first half of the season...and you still have a chance. The winner of the second three-month half-season also gets a place in the playoffs.

It sounds compelling, doesn't it?

Well, most people who watch it (while seeing its potential)...agree that it just doesn't work.

And Japanese baseball got rid of it in 1982. Like their American professional peers, they learned that letting a full-season runner-up into the playoffs (we will call this "Wild Card") works much better, no matter what the purists say.

Split seasons. Split focus. Major (League) distraction.

[If you don't read Japanese, but want to have some sense of the Japanese kana and kanji in these posts, just copy the phrases and paste them into translation software such as Babylon or Google Translate].
[c] Linkage RF
[Originally posted on August 30, 2014]

Social and Cultural Theory Letter (Autumn 2014)

On this date on Round and Square's History 

[a] Text and illustration RF
Social and Cultural Theory 
Anthropology 206 
Autumn 2014

Preliminary Writing Assignment 
Theory: The Letter
By choosing the letter format for your first writing assignment, I am asking you to build upon the skills you have already begun to develop in analyzing (and providing examples for) theoretical constructions. You have already reached a point where you have some experience with “theory,” and your job will be to explain it to an intelligent non-specialist.
[b] Reaching, teaching RF

Teach it, really.

Letters from “the field” (or our modified “archive” of theoretical works in Moore) are a good way to refine your thoughts about ethnographic and historical study, and they are a useful medium for beginning the intellectual “framing process” that will accelerate as we move through the next two-thirds of the course. The letter writing exercise is especially useful while studying theoretical source materials. The nonfiction writer John McPhee explains to his students that a letter is often precisely the solution to problems of interpretation or clarity—when in doubt, write to mother, he says. In this case, it is not a plea of “send money” that the letter contains, but a reworking, rethinking, and contextualization of your work. You need not limit yourself to kinfolk, but you need to think about who the recipient will be (ideally someone who will welcome a letter about “doing theory”).

You owe it to yourself to listen to this long interview with McPhee. At the very least, listen to the first two minutes. It is the very purpose behind this assignment.


Now start writing. Toward that end, you should pay attention to the following issues.

1. The letter needs to be “long enough” to get you deeply into several issues regarding theory itself, particular approaches, and a few examples.  There is no absolute upper limit, but I am going to make a lower limit of 3,000 words (about ten pages). Even if you are a very efficient writer (3,000 words is barely adequate), you will need this much “space” to give your reader a good picture of your work. 3,000 words (or a few more) is just about right. Include a word count at the end of our paper (e.g. “3,245 words” or Word Count: 3,245).
2. I am asking you to connect with a very specific reader, and to explain “theory” in a level of detail that she will find satisfying.  You are the expert, and your “audience” is the person who will be reading your letter (I will, of course, be reading over her shoulder).  I have found that this kind of assignment helps students to explain even abstruse matters, because the personal relationship they have with their readers demands an attention to patient explanation that is often lacking in more “academic” forms of writing, in which they assume that a professor already knows what they are writing about.

Your reader doesn't. Make it make sense.

3. You may approach your materials from any angle that you like, but you will need to “cover” at least the following items, no matter what order you choose.

          a. You must discuss the “what is theory?” question. Provide your reader with 
              at least a few ways of thinking about it.

          b. Give your reader a sense of what you have learned up to this point about 
              how to “apply” theory. Use examples, either from the course or your own work.

          c. Finally, give your reader some sense of what it is like to “learn theory” by 
              discussing the literary and historical dimensions of some of our texts.  It 
              might be useful to think of the “pragmatic/historical” dimensions that are 
              explained on the syllabus.

          d. You must had at least one illustration. Think about "the rhetorical role of 
               illustrations" in the New York Review of Books.
4. The best way to approach the writing process is in three parts (this is a friendly suggestion). First, jot down some notes for each of the “sections” of your letter. Second, using those notes as a guide, write a rough draft of the whole letter. Third, revise, polish, and refine.  

Voilà you will have something not unlike what Alexis de Tocqueville might have written about understanding a complex, foreign culture that baffled and enticed him 180 years ago. While your letter won’t be as long as Democracy in America, it is likely—if it is done well—to be much like Tocqueville’s rich and evocative letters back to his family about encountering people, texts, and institutions in a strange land called the United States. 

You get the idea. If you don't, just raise your hand and ask me (or send me an e-mail message). I'll be happy to help.

Letters are due (in hard copy form) outside my door 
by 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 28

Add the word count and your box number to all papers!
[e] And then you may rest RF

China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-30

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  
⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/6.........................................................................  ...........................................8/30

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.
Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left

六期星
Eighth Month, Thirtieth Day
Astral Period Six
Saturday, August 30
———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 
(top to bottom, right to left)
不陰四天
將德相德
Heavenly Virtue
Four Facings
Yin Virtue
Not General
—————————————————
Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left
申辰子
吉吉
酉己丑
中吉吉
戌午寅
中中
亥未卯
凶凶
23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 Inauspicious

07:00-09:00 Auspicious
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 In-Between
13:00-15:00 Inauspicious

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 In-Between
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 In-Between

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.
————————————————— 
Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

作塞補詞
灶穴垣訟
Lawsuits and Litigation
Patching Embankments
Plugging Caves
Stove Work
—————————————————  
 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 



Sixth Day Day (Eighth Lunar Month)
Cyclical day: guiyou (10/60)
Phase (element): Metal
Constellation: Willow (24/28)
"Day Personality" Cycle: Discard (2/12)
—————————————————  
Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

倉動裁祭
出土衣祀
貨豎理祈
財柱髮福
納上掃訂
畜樑舍婚
安修修納
葬開造采
離五
元大大咸
武敗時池
————
Appropriate Activities
Venerating Ancestors
Inquiring-into Fortune
Marriage Engagements
Grain Payments
Cutting-out Clothing
Patterning Hair
Sweeping Rooms
Repairing and Constructing
Moving Soil
Erecting Pillars
Putting-up Beams
Repairing Granaries
Cash Outflow
Livestock Payments
Positioning Graves

Five Separations

Baleful Astral Influences
Widespread Pond
Great Temporality
Great Defeat
Primal Martiality

  Section Seven
Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
丫 人
Bifurcation, Person
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information
門 牀 房
Gate, Bed, Edifice