The trials of winter are melting off. The cold that kept the world looking pure and clear in brilliant contrast, but punished it in darkness and drove life to ground has lost its grip. Green has again risen and draped the city in mercy. My window no longer looks out to empty dirty walls and sticks. Now a soft and soporific verdure spreads itself further everyday, relaxing its way out and down and settling. The parks are carpeted and cushioned and canopied. The leaves have burned from pale yellow dusting to a full even hue, pulling in rain and breeze. Pulling creatures out and up.
The city is again full of people. So full it makes one wonder where they have been. To walk through the old town on a sunny afternoon is to see the city by its face and not its facade. Shoppers, ice cream eaters, people watchers, peddlers, dog walkers. Old women in high heels and cheap shimmery tops that seem to defy categorization with glittering gold lipstick sip coffee in the middle of the pedestrian section. Flocks of school children dressed in neon clothing made for people three times their size blur around and through the crowds like swifts around chimneys. Old men in lederhosen with hats and canes carefully rummage through the town, watching the young sharp lined business men stride by seeing nothing and arguing into a cell phone.
Pears swell where two weeks ago blossoms sang next to the southwest walls. A soft rain tints the mountains a deep indigo and pearly clouds tear off the slopes in downy filigrees. Every where the promises of summer are visible. Promises I will not be here to enjoy, for my promises lie elsewhere.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Föhn
Innsbruck is an old city. Buildings in the old town bear cornerstone inscriptions of 1524, 1487, 1348. A bridge has spanned the river Inn since Roman times, when this was the eastern edge of the province of Noricum, a way station on the salt road winding north to the border forts on the Rhine. And so the people here are old in a way Americans find easy to dismiss. Old and superstitious, old and arcane, old and full of awareness out of step with modernity. They possess an affinity with intuition, a catalogue of inherited tales, and a folksy suspicion of the efficacy of modern methods of all flavors. Like their capital in Vienna, Austrians, I dare say even Europeans are a people of the past. Their moment in world history may have slipped past and now they argue and bicker and worry about how best to preserve the things they think define them, but they also have more unashamed access to tradition without self-consciousness.
I could take as an example of this some ancient pagan festival, and have before in other posts; I could critique the spittle and velvet glove populism of the xenophobic right and nanny state regulatory politics of the self satisfied left; I could point to the enduring localization of foods and dialects. But I won’t. What is more interesting are the differences so deeply anchored in the Austrian mentality that the Austrians aren’t even able to see them. Their understanding of the world, their clarifications and reasons and sense making, their myths.
I don’t mean myths as coherent stories with beginnings and ends and heros. I don’t even mean they are wrong. I just mean the network of more or less unquestioned thought processes that I have slowly come to find amusing, infuriating, and fascinating by turns.
One myth I have witnessed in action, and even have to respect, centers on the Föhn. The Föhn is a wind. In fact, in Innsbruck Föhn is almost synonymous with wind. If it’s blustery, its föhn-y. The Föhn is more than just a wind however. In modern scientific terms it is an adiabatically warmed wind, blowing down the lee side of a mountain range. That is to say that it is a mass of air that moved up the far side of the mountain range, lost its moisture due to cooling at higher altitude, then warming again at a faster rate than it cooled as it is drying on the way down. It is the Alpine version of a Chinook or a Santa Ana. It is also plays havoc with the inhabitants.
The Föhn has obviously turbulent effects on the physical world. Leaves, dust, papers and other garbage go flying. People must hold onto their hats and lean into the wind. Flags snap and the windows and doors bang. Snow melts at amazing rates. Even the clouds take on a unique shape, turning into long pulled lozenges parked on the main ridge of the Alps, looking like they are traveling at a hundred miles an hour (which they might well be in windspeed terms). It also gets blamed for almost any sort of turbulence with the folks in town:
“I have a such a headache today.”
“What do you expect, we’ve got Föhn today.”
or
“The boss is awful crabby this morning,”
“Yeah... Föhn-y afterall.”
or
“Today drivers are recommended to avoid the autobahn, as the Föhn may cause loss of attentiveness.”
It seems unlikely, that something as apparently external and physical as a wind can cause headaches, mood swings, and confusion. It seems unlikely, but I have noticed the pattern in myself. And others. And animals, who aren’t in on the blame shifting. We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed sometimes, but when a whole town wakes up on the wrong side of the bed on the same day, and a wind is blowing, it doesn’t take a large leap to the conclusion. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the logical conclusion, because I still think there is some mythical thinking going on here, but still, it is mythical thinking that seems to bear out.
There have even been a few scientific attempts to correlate the psychology of the city and the wind. In Munich I remember hearing of a study that linked minor spikes in suicides to the Föhn. But really the myth rests on personal and anecdotal evidence. But then, who says it shouldn’t? No one really thinks entirely analytically or reasonably. And it is reasonable to think that the wind could have an effect on the body, the physical brain, and therefore the mental state, right? The Innsbruckers don’t pause to question their little leap of folk medicine, they just grumble, have an excuse to be grumpy, and wait enjoy the sunny weather that usually comes with the Föhn.
This isn’t the only time such folk knowledge goes unquestioned. One can also get a prescription for an herbal tea from a doctor, to be purchased in a pharmacy. Remedies involving foodstuffs and household supplies are commonplace (see U.S. gold medalist Lindsay Vonn smearing Austrian topfen or curd cheese on her bruised shin). They have a beer named after the local hero Paracelsus, a fellow whose given name, “Bombastus,” gave us the word bombastic and who believed that the proper mixture of salt, mercury, and sulphur could pretty much cure you of what ails you (luckily those ingredients aren’t to be found in the herbal teas at the pharmacy these days).
It may well be that skeptics are the ones who drive progress. Those who are never satisfied with the first answer, those who are a bit incredulous of the tall tales, those who try to get to the bottom of things. But still, I sometimes wonder if in all our migrations and rootlessness as Americans, we aren’t missing out on some of these local myths. Do the inversions in Boise have physiological repercussions? Is sage brush good for improving concentration? In our rush to be, well, Americans, we have sort of shut out the old wood lore and wives tales that once enriched our culture. Those funny quirks of our grandparents, of the ranchers, of the Shoshone folk wisdom--maybe they have little something yet to be proven. After all, Americans are just an old a people as the Austrians, because we are Austrians (and Shoshone, and Chinese, and Iranian, &c. &c.). And those old traditions might as well play skeptic to the skeptics now and then, because, after all, I get headaches on days when we have the Föhn.
I could take as an example of this some ancient pagan festival, and have before in other posts; I could critique the spittle and velvet glove populism of the xenophobic right and nanny state regulatory politics of the self satisfied left; I could point to the enduring localization of foods and dialects. But I won’t. What is more interesting are the differences so deeply anchored in the Austrian mentality that the Austrians aren’t even able to see them. Their understanding of the world, their clarifications and reasons and sense making, their myths.
I don’t mean myths as coherent stories with beginnings and ends and heros. I don’t even mean they are wrong. I just mean the network of more or less unquestioned thought processes that I have slowly come to find amusing, infuriating, and fascinating by turns.
One myth I have witnessed in action, and even have to respect, centers on the Föhn. The Föhn is a wind. In fact, in Innsbruck Föhn is almost synonymous with wind. If it’s blustery, its föhn-y. The Föhn is more than just a wind however. In modern scientific terms it is an adiabatically warmed wind, blowing down the lee side of a mountain range. That is to say that it is a mass of air that moved up the far side of the mountain range, lost its moisture due to cooling at higher altitude, then warming again at a faster rate than it cooled as it is drying on the way down. It is the Alpine version of a Chinook or a Santa Ana. It is also plays havoc with the inhabitants.
The Föhn has obviously turbulent effects on the physical world. Leaves, dust, papers and other garbage go flying. People must hold onto their hats and lean into the wind. Flags snap and the windows and doors bang. Snow melts at amazing rates. Even the clouds take on a unique shape, turning into long pulled lozenges parked on the main ridge of the Alps, looking like they are traveling at a hundred miles an hour (which they might well be in windspeed terms). It also gets blamed for almost any sort of turbulence with the folks in town:
“I have a such a headache today.”
“What do you expect, we’ve got Föhn today.”
or
“The boss is awful crabby this morning,”
“Yeah... Föhn-y afterall.”
or
“Today drivers are recommended to avoid the autobahn, as the Föhn may cause loss of attentiveness.”
It seems unlikely, that something as apparently external and physical as a wind can cause headaches, mood swings, and confusion. It seems unlikely, but I have noticed the pattern in myself. And others. And animals, who aren’t in on the blame shifting. We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed sometimes, but when a whole town wakes up on the wrong side of the bed on the same day, and a wind is blowing, it doesn’t take a large leap to the conclusion. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the logical conclusion, because I still think there is some mythical thinking going on here, but still, it is mythical thinking that seems to bear out.
There have even been a few scientific attempts to correlate the psychology of the city and the wind. In Munich I remember hearing of a study that linked minor spikes in suicides to the Föhn. But really the myth rests on personal and anecdotal evidence. But then, who says it shouldn’t? No one really thinks entirely analytically or reasonably. And it is reasonable to think that the wind could have an effect on the body, the physical brain, and therefore the mental state, right? The Innsbruckers don’t pause to question their little leap of folk medicine, they just grumble, have an excuse to be grumpy, and wait enjoy the sunny weather that usually comes with the Föhn.
This isn’t the only time such folk knowledge goes unquestioned. One can also get a prescription for an herbal tea from a doctor, to be purchased in a pharmacy. Remedies involving foodstuffs and household supplies are commonplace (see U.S. gold medalist Lindsay Vonn smearing Austrian topfen or curd cheese on her bruised shin). They have a beer named after the local hero Paracelsus, a fellow whose given name, “Bombastus,” gave us the word bombastic and who believed that the proper mixture of salt, mercury, and sulphur could pretty much cure you of what ails you (luckily those ingredients aren’t to be found in the herbal teas at the pharmacy these days).
It may well be that skeptics are the ones who drive progress. Those who are never satisfied with the first answer, those who are a bit incredulous of the tall tales, those who try to get to the bottom of things. But still, I sometimes wonder if in all our migrations and rootlessness as Americans, we aren’t missing out on some of these local myths. Do the inversions in Boise have physiological repercussions? Is sage brush good for improving concentration? In our rush to be, well, Americans, we have sort of shut out the old wood lore and wives tales that once enriched our culture. Those funny quirks of our grandparents, of the ranchers, of the Shoshone folk wisdom--maybe they have little something yet to be proven. After all, Americans are just an old a people as the Austrians, because we are Austrians (and Shoshone, and Chinese, and Iranian, &c. &c.). And those old traditions might as well play skeptic to the skeptics now and then, because, after all, I get headaches on days when we have the Föhn.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Butcher
The butcher at the school where I teach is a very tall man. He is certainly at least six foot four. I expect he may be taller. He fills rooms. He is also by no means a slight fellow. He is a tree of a man. His name is Herr Schwaiger, and I have never heard anyone use his first name, though with most teachers the first name is the only one I knew all of last year. Nonetheless, he is one of the warmest people at the school. He always has a smile and a hearty greeting for me. For everyone.
I once met him in town while he was bicycling. I was waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change. He dwarfed his bicycle. He stopped, smiled, gave me a handshake and a hello. His hand enveloped mine, and his grip had a strength so sure of itself that it need not be strong. He was not in a hurry.
A week or two later, I attended his class. I came late, not able to make it until my own teaching duties were fulfilled. I found a white jacket and a pair of rubber galoshes so as not to contaminate the sterility of the workroom. Entering, he looked up at me, and not missing a beat said, “Welcome Daniel! Come to cut up pigs?” I had to laugh. His own mirth was so catching.
The students love him. He has a way with them, the other teachers say. He does. He has a way with life. I watched him slice cutlets from a pork shoulder. The knife was a good two feet long, sharp enough to require chainmail vests and gloves on the part of the students. He set the blade firmly fractions of an inch from where his hand held the meat. In one smooth motion he cut down to within half an inch of the cutting board, and with a deft twist opened and smoothed the flap. With another, swifter motion he made another slice next to his hand. A perfectly butterflied weinerschnitzel. He handed me the knife. “Cut, don’t press” were his instructions. I was surprised to feel how much resistance there was, even with so sharp a knife. And how difficult it was to hold the meat still. Still in a couple saws I had a cutlet. “Not bad” was his evaluation. He was being generous, though his cutlet next to mine was honest to anyone with eyes.
He knows, Herr Schwaiger. He knows how to do something, and masterfully. He has no doubts. He is completely assured of his craft. His trade. Benjamin Franklin, in his “Autobiography”, talks about being “brought up to a trade.” This isn’t something we give much respect these days, the trades. In fact, the very idea of sureness doesn’t get much credence. I don’t often give it much credence. Question everything. But perhaps that includes even the asking of questions?
But here is Herr Schwaiger. He knows what he is, and what he does. He knows how to do it. He needn’t improve, he is a part of an art so ancient that it is spread over the world. It is not a science with a frontier of knowledge; there are not more parts of a pig yet to be discovered. Yet we cannot mechanize his art. It must be learned, studied, passed on. The old binding agreement of apprenticeship still rules. The apprentice must learn with the master. He must practice, learn by doing, witness his master’s foibles and faults, his scruples and values. He must decide what he will leave and what he will take. But he learns the ins and outs.
Of course, we would argue with the freedom of this. Personal choice seems restricted. In tying ourselves to learning only one trade aren’t we closing off doors that would otherwise remain open to us? Yes, perhaps. But if we are forever leaving all doors open, we will never be able to go through any of them, into the wider world.
So perhaps we shouldn’t all become butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. But then, we should also not forget the confidence with which the butcher strides into the room. He has a mind free from crippling doubt, from modernity’s love affair with Hamlet. He is vigorous and decisive. We could learn from that, couldn’t we?
I once met him in town while he was bicycling. I was waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change. He dwarfed his bicycle. He stopped, smiled, gave me a handshake and a hello. His hand enveloped mine, and his grip had a strength so sure of itself that it need not be strong. He was not in a hurry.
A week or two later, I attended his class. I came late, not able to make it until my own teaching duties were fulfilled. I found a white jacket and a pair of rubber galoshes so as not to contaminate the sterility of the workroom. Entering, he looked up at me, and not missing a beat said, “Welcome Daniel! Come to cut up pigs?” I had to laugh. His own mirth was so catching.
The students love him. He has a way with them, the other teachers say. He does. He has a way with life. I watched him slice cutlets from a pork shoulder. The knife was a good two feet long, sharp enough to require chainmail vests and gloves on the part of the students. He set the blade firmly fractions of an inch from where his hand held the meat. In one smooth motion he cut down to within half an inch of the cutting board, and with a deft twist opened and smoothed the flap. With another, swifter motion he made another slice next to his hand. A perfectly butterflied weinerschnitzel. He handed me the knife. “Cut, don’t press” were his instructions. I was surprised to feel how much resistance there was, even with so sharp a knife. And how difficult it was to hold the meat still. Still in a couple saws I had a cutlet. “Not bad” was his evaluation. He was being generous, though his cutlet next to mine was honest to anyone with eyes.
He knows, Herr Schwaiger. He knows how to do something, and masterfully. He has no doubts. He is completely assured of his craft. His trade. Benjamin Franklin, in his “Autobiography”, talks about being “brought up to a trade.” This isn’t something we give much respect these days, the trades. In fact, the very idea of sureness doesn’t get much credence. I don’t often give it much credence. Question everything. But perhaps that includes even the asking of questions?
But here is Herr Schwaiger. He knows what he is, and what he does. He knows how to do it. He needn’t improve, he is a part of an art so ancient that it is spread over the world. It is not a science with a frontier of knowledge; there are not more parts of a pig yet to be discovered. Yet we cannot mechanize his art. It must be learned, studied, passed on. The old binding agreement of apprenticeship still rules. The apprentice must learn with the master. He must practice, learn by doing, witness his master’s foibles and faults, his scruples and values. He must decide what he will leave and what he will take. But he learns the ins and outs.
Of course, we would argue with the freedom of this. Personal choice seems restricted. In tying ourselves to learning only one trade aren’t we closing off doors that would otherwise remain open to us? Yes, perhaps. But if we are forever leaving all doors open, we will never be able to go through any of them, into the wider world.
So perhaps we shouldn’t all become butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. But then, we should also not forget the confidence with which the butcher strides into the room. He has a mind free from crippling doubt, from modernity’s love affair with Hamlet. He is vigorous and decisive. We could learn from that, couldn’t we?
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