Are Museums Laughingstocks?

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.

― Thoreau

A new study by the American Association for State and Local History suggests public interest in museums might have hit a brick wall.

Museum attendance declined 70% last year, the study finds. 

Casual observers blame the pandemic, of course; but museum executives are worried. Last year's falloff caps 40 years of decline. (Museum-going had already fallen by 50% between 1980 and 2020.)

The pandemic simply could be the proverbial "last nail" in the coffin.

Just ask any teen: museums are out of fashion, laughingstocks among the new generations. (I'm not sure Boomers and their parents cared for them all that much, either.)

Museum is a 17th-century word borrowed directly from the Latin for "library." Latin borrowed museum from the Greek mouseion, literally a "temple of the Muses."

The decline in museum attendance might signal that the Muses have abandoned us; that today's Americans are content to be a stupid and sluggish herd—a mediocracy.

Or it could mean museums are simply no match for amusements (a 15th-century word borrowed from the Greek amousos, meaning "Muse-less" or "uneducated").

That's more likely the case. 

In the words of media critic Neil Postman, we're "amusing ourselves to death."

Thank goodness at least some museum executives are responding to the crisis.

My wife and I recently visited The Concord Museum in Massachusetts, only two weeks after it had finished a $16 million renovation.

From beginning to end, the experience was a marvel—as engaging as any Disney destination, but with the content unsanitized (as it should be).

Brand-new galleries in the museum feature artifacts from the Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau; from hometown writer Louisa May Alcott; from local Abolitionists like Mary Brooks; from the African Americans who lived in Concord since its founding in 1635: and from the Nipmuc tribe that lived there long before.

Topping these rooms is the gallery devoted to the Battle of Concord, the dustup that ignited the American Revolution. In addition to militaria (including Paul Revere's lantern), it features a remarkable digital display—for narrative drive and subtle drama, far and away the best animation of its kind you'll ever see.

The Concord Museum's grip on innovation is firm, and, for that institution, could be the magic bullet needed to reverse audience decline.

But there's a roadblock to innovation like this: politics.

Politics—as they do many Americans—stymy museum executives, because politics dictate what gets displayed and what doesn't. They also define which museums get funding, and which are starved. Politics even define what a museum is—either a "permanent institution" (the right's definition) or a "democratizing space" (the left's).

Museum executive Thomas Hoving once said, "It's hard to be a revolutionary in the deadly museum business."

He's right. 

It might be asking too much of hidebound museum executives to become revolutionaries, although that is what they need to be, if museums aren't to remain laughingstocks forever.

Above: Thoreau's Desk at The Concord Museum.

Alone. Unread. And Ready to Die.

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.

— Kofi Annan

This week, CNBC reporter Donie O'Sullivan conducted a brief interview with a Trump supporter—and a true American nihilist. 

O'Sullivan asked if the man whether he planned to get vaccinated.

"Our days are numbered," he said. "It don't matter."

A cohort of killjoys like this man walks among us.

Perhaps Covid-19 is a divine instrument that will rid us of all the nihilists like him; I often wonder.

In any event, I place the blame for rampant nihilism in America today not on globalization, urbanization, or declining church attendance, but on the source of so many social woes: illiteracy.

When people read, they take hope—hope in progress, hope in their fellows, hope in their leaders, hope in themselves. They "read to know they're not alone," as writer William Nicholson says.

Today there's a hope gap among America's illiterate. 

They're alone, unread, and ready to die.

"It don't matter" is their worldview, and on that ground they can justify anything: shooting their enemies; trafficking in drugs; swindling their customers; trafficking in teenage girls; spreading Covid-19; you name it. 

"It don't matter."

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, one-fifth of the US population is functionally illiterate. And they're not all immigrant peasants, as conservatives insist. Among the 43 million illiterates in the US, 15.5 million are White (14.5 million are Latino; and 13 million are Black or "other").

Illiteracy affects our entire society:

• Illiterates are sickies. The Milken Institute reports that illiteracy results in $238 billion in excess healthcare costs every year, a dollar amount equaling the annual healthcare costs for 47 million Americans.
  
  
• Illiterates are sponges. The National Council for Adult Learning reports that illiteracy costs $225 billion in crime, joblessness, and loss of tax revenue due to joblessness, every year. Add that to the healthcare costs and we're wasting over half a trillion dollars annually on them.
  
  
• Illiterates are criminals. In addition, the US Department of Justice reports that 75% of prison inmates are illiterate. (Criminals can't read, so we throw the book at 'em.)

And then there's politics.

How many right-wing nihilists are nihilists because they're illiterate?

No study exists to answer the question. 

But studies do exist that show that right wing people are out of touch with factual reality:

• Four in 10 Republicans believe the flu is more deadly than Covid-19, although Covid-19 is over 11 times more deadly (Brookings).

• Six in 10 Republicans believe Biden "stole" the presidential election (Reuters).

• Three in 10 Republicans believe Qanon's conspiracy theories (Survey Center on American Life).

Are these right-wingers out of touch because they don't or won't or can't read? 

I think so. 

They're alone, unread and ready to die, because "it don't matter."

When people read, they find hope.

When they don't, they are hopeless—in both senses of the word.

NOTE: Embedded links in my posts lead to sources and other good stuff.

Learning to Walk

You don't learn to walk by following rules. 

You learn by doing, and by falling over. 

— Richard Branson

I'm halfway through three months of physical therapy after shattering an ankle. I'm learning to walk again.

The therapists pester me constantly to walk, walk, walk, in order to speed my recovery. Willpower and workouts alone won't cut it, they insist. I have to "learn by doing."

Meantime, I'm tutoring an eighth grader in writing and asking the same of him.

Applying William Faulkner's advice to would-be writers—read, read, read—I've assigned him a small mountain of prose: pieces by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Friedrich Nietzsche, E.B. White, Hunter S. Thompson, John D. MacDonald, George Plimpton, Martin Luther King, and a pack of lesser-knowns. I've also introduced him to speed reading and have asked him to write chapter summaries of How to Read a Book every week through July.

All this for a boy who, before we met, only read an occasional gaming magazine and hardly wrote anything at all (his public school really let him down). But I want to make the most of our tutoring sessions. If he falls over once in a while, so be it; at least he won't shatter an ankle.

POSTSCRIPT: Want to help a good cause? Go to Mighty Writers to learn more.

Unbodied by Books

I am unbodied by thy books, and thee, and in thy papers find my ecstasy.

— Henry Cornelius Agrippa

Your worldview—your set of beliefs and assumptions about reality—is bred in your teens, according to psychologists.

Mine were filled with the usual distractions—schoolwork, buddies, rock music, substances, girls, urban adventures—and books.

The four that more than any other formed my worldview were all written by men, and all in the 20th century. I can't say precisely why they made such a mark on me, but I'll describe the mark they made.

Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969). I was born in Newark, New Jersey (the novel's setting), so I just had to read what The New Yorker was labeling in 1969 "one of the dirtiest books ever published." Roth blew my 16-year-old mind. I learned from the novel the adult world wasn't too different than my own. Everyone felt childish. Everyone felt inadequate. Everyone felt guilty. Everyone felt trapped. If he didn't, he was a schmuck.

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961). A high-school English teacher assigned this novel. I still remember he called it "an existential picaresque." The novel showed me the system was a racket run by preening half-wits; the rules were cruel and absurd and made up by self-serving hustlers; and the good died young. I was 17, a year from the draft and a possible tour in Vietnam.

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, 1929). Another English teacher assigned Faulkner's family saga, considered by the author his personal favorite and by many other writers as the best American novel of the 20th century. The Sound and the Fury showed me at age 18 that myths, secrets and "family politics" can condemn you.

Being and Time (Martin Heidegger, 1927). I encountered Heidegger's masterwork in college. From it I learned in painstaking detail why we're so crazy, fragile and nervous: we're all bozos on this bus, and it's heading for a cliff. Being is time and time is finite, Heidegger makes clear. Or, as Samuel Beckett wrote, "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

Which books formed your worldview?

Reading is Fungible

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. 

— Benjamin Franklin

According to Pew Research Center, 47% of adult Americans read every day keep up with current events; 35%, for pleasure; 31%, for work or school; and 29%, to research topics.

The majority who don't read every day—for whatever reason—represent tomorrow's economic losers.

When their jobs are automated, they'll be tossed out on the street, unable to compete even for scut work against their robotic replacements.

It's a simple fact: most highly compensated people read—many for hours at a sitting (Warren Buffet reads five hours a day). They know knowledge—not effort—is the world's new currency.

Not many years from now, knowledge will be the human's value; effort, the robot's. 

People will be paid for their grasp of reality, their foresight, their vocabularies, and their empathy, while robots produce all the products, stock all the shelves, drive all the vehicles, and serve all the coffee. Their effort will be demonetized.

If you want to help someone this holiday season, give him a book. If you're at a loss for titles, check out these bookworms' picks:

• Maria Popova
• Oprah Winfrey
• Barack Obama
• Bill Gates
• Stephen King
• Phillip Roth
• Don Draper

Iconicity

Names should be as much like things as possible.

— Socrates

Corporate logos and road signs often demonstrate iconicity. But words?

A new study suggests they do.

While linguists like Noam Chomsky insist any link between a word and its meaning is a man-made convention, two research scientists, Nora Turoman and Susy Styles, say the link may be a natural occurrence.

That link may be iconic. An iconic word would be one whose form resembles its meaning.

Turoman and Styles found that ordinary speakers, when presented with pairs of ancient glyphs, can correctly guess which letter was used to represent the sound "oo" (as in "shoe") and which was used to represent the sound "ee" (as in "feet").

Their experiments further suggest some glyphs better represent the sound "oo," and some better represent "ee"—regardless of where or when they originated.

The glyphs that represent "oo" are more likely to be complex (i.e., use more ink); the ones that represent "ee," more likely to be simple (i.e., use less ink). The "guess-ability" of a glyph is higher for those that use more ink to represent "oo" and less ink to represent "ee."

But what's the link to nature?

Turoman and Styles claim it's acoustics.

The sounds "oo" and "ee" differ in their acoustic frequencies (we pronounce "oo" at a lower frequency than "ee"). So "oo" fits with big, inky glyphs for the same reason low-frequency sounds are produced by big bells; and "ee" fits with less small, less inky glyphs, for the same reason high-frequency sounds are produced by small bells.

Young at Heart

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you're young at heart.

— Carolyn Leigh

A former association executive's dream comes true this week when the American Writers Museum opens in Chicago.

The museum is the brainchild of Malcolm O’Hagan, who ran NEMA—the National Electrical Manufacturers Association—from 1991 to 2005.

The museum treats visiting littérateurs to a smorgasboard of great American writers, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harper Lee, Mark Twain to Maya Angelou, Billy Wilder to Bob Dylan.

O’Hagan undertook the project eight years ago, after a trip to the Dublin Writers Museum.

He left the Dublin museum wondering why there was no equivalent among the 17,500 museums in America.

Within a year, he started a nonprofit, whose board would eventually raise $10 million to found one.

Raising that amount was no cakewalk.

During the seven years required, O'Hagan sent over 39,000 emails to donors.

"When I embarked upon this mission I made a ten year commitment," O'Hagan says in an interview with Tin House.

"Nothing worth doing is easy if you want to do it right."

Garbage In, Garbage Out

New research appearing in the International Journal of Business Administration suggests junk content consumption lowers the quality of your writing.

Sixty-five adults participated in the study.

They provided the researchers writing samples and reports of the time spent reading various books, newspapers and websites.

Using an algorithmic tool, the researchers compared the quality of participants' writing samples to samples taken from the books, newspapers and websites the participants most read.

The comparisons show a strong correlation between reading and writing skills: people who read more complex stories have more complex writing, and vice versa.

The researchers blamed junk peddlers like Reddit and Tumblr for participants' worst writing habits.

Consumption of content rife with jargon, slang and shorthand threatens an adult's ability to compose complex sentences.

Neuroanatomy is also to blame.

"Neuroanatomy may predispose even adults to mimicry and synchrony with the language they routinely encounter in their reading, directly impacting their writing," the researchers say.

Or as Ludwig Feuerbach once said, "You are what you eat."

The researchers prescribe heavy doses of literary fiction and academic journals to counteract the effects of emojis, memes, tweets and listicles on writing skill.

Mankell's Last Post

Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander crime stories and the masterful novel Italian Shoes, died of cancer last October.

Before he died, he wrote a series of articles for The Guardian about dealing with the disease.

The last of these, "Eventually, the Day Comes When We All Have to Go," appeared the week of his death.

The 67-year-old wrote with candor about his chemotherapy and his third year with an "incurable companion."

"How has my life changed?" Mankell asked. 

"Despite being spared most of the side-effects, except for the ever-present fatigue that reduces my energy to about half of what it used to be, I usually don’t notice the tumour I’m carrying in my left lung. At the moment, it is neither growing nor shrinking. I’ve had times of feeling short of breath but not any more. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m afflicted with cancer, as it doesn’t make itself known."

Mankell in fact believed he could stave off death, and that gave him some hope.

"There are, of course, dark times. A deep darkness of worry, loneliness, fear. Nights when I wake up and cold winds sweep in. I know I share this with everybody who is affected by severe illness."

His final words were stoic, just like his characters.

"Eventually, of course, the day comes when we all have to go. Then we need to remember the words of the author Per Olov Enquist: “One day we shall die. But all the other days we shall be alive."

If you've never had the pleasure, read one of his novels.

Trivial Pursuits

The CEO of a large corporation sought to parade his gravitas on LinkedIn this week by posting a lovely bromide.

Before deleting it, he inspired the multitudes to mockery.

But who, really, cares nowadays about spelling and grammar?

Truly, spelling and grammar are trivial.

Trivial comes from the Latin word trivium, "a place where three roads cross." In short, a "commonplace."

Medieval scholars borrowed the trivium to describe the first three liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric and logic. They thought grammar, rhetoric and logic were the very core of all learning.

What did they know?

The liberal in liberal arts, by the way, comes from the Latin word liberalis, "worthy of a free person" (as opposed to an ignorant slave).

Why trouble yourself with trivia, when you're busy being a thought leader?

Show your thankful.

Hero by Mistake

"The real hero is always a hero by mistake," Umberto Eco said. "He dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else."

Medievalist Raymond Klibansky was one of those heroes.

A German Jew, Klibansky worked as a philosophy professor at the University of Heidelberg in the early 1930s.

He was an expert in Nicholas of Cusa, another German philosopher who, 500 years before, had fathered "modernism" by arguing that science is superior to superstition.

Nazi ideologues drove Klibansky to England, where he found other teaching jobs. When England declared war on Germany in 1939, Klibansky took a government job in intelligence.

He used his intelligence job to warn every British and American air force officer he could reach that there was a target inside Germany they must not bomb: St. Nicholas Hospital, in the town of Bernkastel-Kues.

The hospital had been founded by Nicholas of Cusa, and housed his 500-year-old manuscripts—irreplaceable codebooks to the medieval mind.

Thanks to Klibansky's pleas, the Allies spared the building.

When the philosopher visited the town after the armistice in 1945, Bernkastel-Kues' citizens threw a party and gave Klibansky a hero's welcome.

The philosopher moved to Canada the following year, where he taught at McGill for the next 30 years, and lived and wrote to the venerable age of 100.

Edward Bellamy's Incredible Crystal Ball

“Marty McFly Day” is as good a day as any to look back at another time-travel entertainment—one that electrified our grandparents' grandparents.

Published at the height of the Gilded Age, Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward became the Number 1 best-seller of its time.

It tells the story of a Boston Brahmin who time-travels to the year 2000 and discovers that life in the future is pretty comfortable:

• War, waste, global warming, crime, unemployment, income inequality, gender differences, advertising and political parties have disappeared.

• Everyone is at least bi-lingual. People speak a native language and the universal language.

• The only form of money is the debit card. People use it to shop at vast warehouse clubs like Costco, but act with civility towards one another, because everyone's well educated. All purchases are delivered to shoppers' homes, via pneumatic tubes.

• Employee engagement approaches 100% and job promotions are based solely on merit. People who refuse to work are imprisoned, and receive only bread and water.

• People retire in comfort at age 45.

• Housework is fully automated.

• Congress meets only once every five years.

Bellamy sold more than a half million copies of Looking Backward. His blueprint for the year 2000 was so talked-about, over 160 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up across the US.

Forty-seven years after the novel's appearance, Columbia University named it the most important book by a 19th century American.

3 Easy Hacks to Make You a Great Writer

Imagine earning $1 for each encounter you have with some grifter hawking simple hacks for turning your mediocre copy into gold.

You'd soon be another Warren Buffet.

But life's just not that easy… until now.

You've reached Mecca on your journey to $1 million every month.

That's because I'm pulling back the curtain to reveal the three most awesome writing hacks ever offered:

1. Read. 

2. Read. 

3. Read.

These three magic bullets come endorsed by a NOBEL PRIZE WINNER.

On April 16, 1947, novelist William Faulkner led a Q & A session in the English department's creative writing course at Ole Miss.

During the session, a student asked him, "What is the best training for writing?"

Faulkner advised, “Read, read, read! Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad; see how they do it. When a carpenter learns his trade, he does so by observing. Read! You’ll absorb it. Write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”

So that's it. Read, read, read. 

Killer!

Wait, there's more in my pipeline!

In my next post, I'll share the greatest hack in the history of modern media.

For now, here's a teaser.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

Warning: 70% of your content contains grammatical errors that could be harmful to your brand.

Software provider Acrolinx analyzed content on the websites of 340 global companies and found that 7 in 10 sentences evidence faulty grammar.

Acrolinx scored the content against "best practices for standard grammar" and determined the percentage of boo-boos per 1,000 words, Amy Gesenhues reports in Marketing Land.

Marketers in the US received the lowest scores worldwide; and, while they may not, some people care.

A survey conducted in 2013 by UK-based Global Lingo reported that 74% of customers spot faulty grammar on company websites; and that 59% wouldn't buy from a company that uses faulty grammar.

Say it ain't so!

Well, it is—and it gets worse.

Search engines, according to Bing's webmaster, won't display pages of content riddled with grammatical errors.

Picture This!

Emerson once wrote in his Journals, "In good writing, words become one with things."

It turns out to be true of all writing.

Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have discovered that, when you read, a tiny portion of your brain behind your left ear sees the words not as strings of letters or symbols, but as pictures.

The neurons in that part of your brain store words in their entirety, as if there were a little dictionary inside your skull.

When you look at a word you know, your brain instantly sees a picture.

Your spongy little dictionary (called the "visual word form area") works precisely like the miniature photo album located in the opposite side of your brain, behind your right ear. 

In that part of your brain (called the "fusiform face area"), pictures of people's faces are stored.

The researchers also discovered that students with reading disabilities can improve their skill by learning words as visual objects, instead of struggling with phonics and spelling.

Vintage Verbs: Attinge

Part 1 of a 5-part series on forgotten verbs

English comprises more than half a million words. 

Many are undeservedly forgotten.

Attinge means to touch or influence.

You might say, "Chad's post about great customer service attinged thousands of users."

We preserve the verb's Latin root whenever we use the word tangent.

Did You Know F. Scott Fitzgerald was Once a Copywriter?

Part 5 of a 5-part series

The year was 1918. The Great War had ended. And 22-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted nothing more than to marry the belle of Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda Sayre.

But, as Sayre made clear, there'd be no union until he could support them.

So the Princeton-educated Fitzgerald moved to New York, to try out journalism.

The venture came to little.

At a friend's urging, Fitzgerald took a $35-per-week job as a copywriter at the ad agency Barron Collier.

Things began to look up. Fitzgerald received a $5-per-week raise, when he wrote a client-pleasing slogan for the Muscatine, Iowa-based Muscatine Steam Laundry Company, "We keep you clean in Muscatine."

"'It's perhaps a bit imaginative," the agency head told him. "But still it's plain that there's a future for you in this business."

But copywriting didn't earn Fitzgerald enough to satisfy Sayre.

He quit the job and moved back into his parents' home in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Two more years and the appearance of his first best-seller would pass before the couple wed.

Did You Know Danielle Steel was Once a Copywriter?

Part 4 of a 5-part series

In 1972, while researching an article about conscientious objectors imprisoned during the Vietnam War, freelance writer and millionaire heiress Danielle Steel met inmate Danny Zugelder in a California penitentiary.

Zugelder, serving time for bank robbery, became instantly smitten with the high-born Steel. Within months, Steel moved from New York to San Francisco, so she could visit Zugelder every week. The couple would have lengthy picnics on the prison lawn and liaisons in a bathroom in the visitors' center.

Zugelder moved in with Steel after his parole the following year. To support their new household, Steel took as job as a copywriter for Grey Advertising, while working nights on a novel.

The couple's bliss lasted less than a year. In 1974, Zugelder was convicted of robbing and sexually assaulting a woman, and sentenced to seven years in a state prison.

In 1975, Steel married Zugelder in the prison’s canteen. But the marriage lasted only two years.

Zugelder later reflected that Steel had been using him as grist for her novel, which depicted the romance between a socialite writer and a poor ex-con.

Where Did We Get the Phrase "Don't Miss the Deadline?"

Part 5 of a 5-part series on the origin of popular phrases

When your boss insists you finish a project on time, she says, "Don't miss the deadline."

The phrase originated in Civil War prison camps.

The camps were often makeshift, without fences or walls. So to define a camp's boundaries, the commander would surround it with wooden rails laid on the ground.

If a prisoner of war stepped past the rails, he would be shot on sight.

The rails became known as the "deadline."

The phrase "Don't miss the deadline" was adopted after the war by American newspaper publishers; in the 20th century, by all business people.

Where Did We Get the Phrase "Push the Envelope"

Part 4 of a 5-part series on the origin of popular phrases

When you're innovative, we say you're trying to "push the envelope."

The phrase originates from the go-go days of aviation.

The "flight envelope" is a math formula that describes the upper and lower limits of the factors affecting safe flight, such as a plane's speed and altitude.

Daredevil pilots spoke of their urge to "push the envelope" by testing those limits.

The phrase moved into popular use after novelist Tom Wolfe included it in his 1979 book, The Right Stuff.