People

My wife and I are subscribers to the Canadian Stage Company and tonight we will have the unique pleasure of hearing a woman purposely sing off-key. The play is called Glorious! and it chronicles the unique singing career of Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944), a wealthy Philadelphia socialite who, despite having no singing ability at all, managed to fund her own rise to a certain kind of fame.

Staunchly convinced of her talent, she began to give recitals in 1912. Many people attended her performances for the sheer amusement of hearing her butcher classic pieces by Verdi and Mozart. Her performing career culminated in a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1944. The 76-year-old Jenkins died a month later.

A record was released after her death, cheekily entitled “The Glory (????) of the Human Voice” which is now, understandably, a collector’s item. The liner notes make it clear that despite receiving no support at all from her parents or husband, and often being subject to derision and laughter during her performances, Florence was nevertheless happy making her own kind of music.

As an example of “outsider art” (modern-day equivalents might be American Idol hopeful William Hung, and homeless schizophrenic songwriter Wesley Willis), she can easily be viewed as a subject for mockery, but there is something noble in her complete self-belief, not to mention the longevity of her career. She had a dream and she went for it. And she wasn’t completely ignorant of what people were saying about her. As she once observed, “People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.” Bravo, Florence! Glorious!

by Stefan Geens

In the 18th-century exploration business, like in any other pursuit, there were winners and there were losers. Philip Carteret was definitely the latter. In 1766, as an ambitious young British Navy Officer, he was given a shoddy ship, no support, and ordered into the Pacific. He managed to sail straight across it, prevailing over scurvy, thirst, and attacks by locals. He put a good number of islands on the map, and charted new routes that would later be used by British ships sailing for Australia and China.

So why isn’t he famous? Because of James Cook. Cook found Australia and New Zealand just as Carteret’s expedition was limping home. Cook would go on to become a British hero; Carteret managed to name a minuscule atoll after himself and was then laid off, soon to be forgotten.

I learned all this after chancing upon a back issue of New Scientist magazine while staying at a friend’s place. (2006-02-11, readable online, £2.95.) The punchline that forms the premise of the article is that after 350 years, Carteret is about to be forgotten all over again. The atoll he named after himself, now part of Papua New Guinea, is about to disappear, washed away by a rising ocean. Its 1,000 inhabitants wil be relocated to nearby Bougainville Island by 2015, when Carteret Atoll is expected to be submerged completely.

News of these “first climate change refugees” has been covered by the press for a while. A 2001 Straits Times article calls the disappearing atoll a “dress rehearsal for global warming.” A Guardian article from November 2005 documents the plight of the islanders, and the decision to move them.

I read the New Scientist article yesterday in the wake of last week’s massive Google Earth dataset update, and wondered if the atoll might not now be having one final high-resolution curtain call before being swallowed up whole by the sea.

I first had to find Carteret Atoll. Wikipedia helped immediately: There are two articles (Carteret Islands, and Carteret Atoll), the first with coordinates. A visual check on OceanDots.com confirmed that the atoll at that location is indeed Carteret’s discovery.

Image credit: DigitalGlobe in Google Earth

Luckily for this blog post, the latest update reveals the atoll in glorious high resolution. In fact, the resolution is so good that you can make out individual palm fronds. There are six inhabited islands dotted along a ringlike coral reef — only the largest settlement is named in Google Earth: Weiteli, on Han Island. (The Guardian reports that Han was completely indundated by a storm surge in 1995. Another island broke into two.)

Is climate change the cause of Carteret Atoll’s disappearing act? Probably yes, though Wikipedia lists two alternate theories: overfishing with dynamite, and tectonic plate shifts in a region where the Earth’s crust is disappearing.

Here is a KML file with the islands. Here is the same KML file in Google Maps, because we can It also shows you what the dataset was like before last Thursday. Bonus: A portfolio of B&W photos taken on the Carteret Atoll in 1960, from the National Library of Australia.

Reposted with permission. Original post appeared Tuesday June 13, 2006 on Stefan Geens’ excellent Ogle Earth, a blog about Google Earth

Editor’s Note: It’s also interesting to note that Carteret was the discoverer of Pitcairn Island, which has had a troubled history of its own. It’s also in the process of being depopulated, though for reasons having nothing to do with climate change. My friend Josh Benton wrote a series of articles for the Toledo Blade back in 2001 that are essential reading.

Strata is a web-based magazine that has a mission statement that resonates strongly with Runner-Up:

As “the common man’s fifteen minutes,” Strata Magazine is a voice to those who are often overlooked by traditional media.

They appear to be coming back after a hiatus and could use some contributions. So, please, by all means, check them out, and in the spirit of participation, send them your story ideas. But not before you send some our way!

I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s latest book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, and I’ve just read a chapter about the amazing David Roche. David was born with a large benign tumour on the lower left side of his face. Surgery to remove it removed his lower lip as well, and intensive radiation therapy has left him with many burns and scars. David had to grow up with this very severe facial deformity and I’m certain it left scars inside as well.

But a funny thing happened. David has turned his experiences into a career as, of all things, a humourist and motivational speaker. You see, as David sees it, he was blessed to have his “shadow side” on the outside, where he has been forced to deal with it. And he believes that his experiences are universal, that everyone struggles with feeling “deformed” and that our responses to his face are really about our own fears.

Anne Lamott says:

“There is no physical church but his own life: Both his performances and his work teaching people to tell their stories, their marvelous, screwed-up and often hilarious resurrection stories. Voilà: a church.

‘We in the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity do not believe in miracles,’ he said. ‘But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen. When God opens the door, you’ve got to put your foot in it.’

‘Look, 80 percent sincerity is about as good as it’s going to get. So is 80 percent compassion. 80 percent celibacy. So 20 percent of the time, you just get to be yourself.’

God, it’s such subversive material, so contrary to everything society leads us to believe–that if you look good, you’ll be happy, and have it all together, and then you’ll be successful and nothing will go wrong and you won’t have to die, and the rot can’t get in.”

Amen!