ROSALIND FRANKLIN'S QUIET PERFORMANCE

Is the writing of science an aspect of performance writing, or is it the performance of the research that leads to the writing? Whichever it is, the collating of separate elements of scientific research into a single thesis can perform beyond expectation. There is something of the prima donna in scientists. A scientific controversy over who did what when, can generate wonderful drama, and the producing of the molecular structure of DNA abounds with such diva performers.

The "Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" was an article published by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in the scientific journal Nature in its 171st volume on pages 737–738 (dated 25^th April 1953). It was the first publication which described Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery had a major impact on biology, particularly in the field of genetics.

Crick

Watson and Crick based their molecular model of the DNA double helix on data that had been collected by researchers in several other laboratories. Watson and Crick were the first to put together all of the scattered fragments of information that were required to produce a successful molecular model of DNA.

Watson

Wilkins

Much of the data that were used by Crick and Watson came from unpublished work by Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, A.R. Stokes and H.R. Wilson at Kings College London and University of London. Key data from Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson, and, separately, by Franklin and Raymond Gosling, were published in two separate additional articles in the same issue of Nature with the article by Watson and Crick. The article by Watson and Crick did acknowledge that they had been "stimulated" by experimental results from the King's College researchers, and a similar acknowledgment was published by M. H. F. Wilkins, A.R. Stokes, and H. R. Wilson in the following three-page article.

Franklin

Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded collectively the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Sadly, Rosalind Franklin, the person, whose discovery of the double helix that led to the prize and less of a seeker of the limelight, died of cancer on the 16^th April 1958, age 37. I regret that I did not mention her in the blog on that day. It was not until 1998, forty years after her death, that the National Portrait Gallery added her portrait next to those of Crick, Watson and Wilkins

LA MARSEILLAISE

On quite another note, on the 25^th April 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg requested his guest Rouget de Lisle compose a song "that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland that is under threat". That evening, Rouget de Lisle wrote Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin and dedicated the song to marshal Nicolas Luckner, a Bavarian in French service from Cham, Germany. The melody soon became the rallying call to the French Revolution and was adopted as La Marseillaise after the melody was first sung on the streets by volunteers (fédérés in French) from Marseille by the end of May.

Rouget de Lisle, composer of the Marseillaise,

sings it for the first time at the home of Dietrich,

Mayor of Strasbourg (Musée historique de

Strasbourg, published 1849, artist Isidore Pils)

PAPER, BOOKS AND WIRE + MORE PAPAL BULL

An assortment of events relating to writing occurred on the 24^th April.

First Issue

First published on 24^th April 1704, The Boston News-Letter is regarded as the first continuously published newspaper in British North America. It was heavily subsidized by the British government, with a limited circulation. The colonies’ first newspaper was Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, which published its first and only issue on 25^th September 1690. In 1726 the Boston Gazette began publishing with Bartholomew Green Jr. as printer.

The News-Letter’s first editor was John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston. It was originally issued weekly as a half sheet – a single page printed on both sides. During its early years it was filled primarily with news from London journals describing English politics and the details of European wars. As the only newspaper in the colonies at the time, it also reported on the sensational death of Blackbeard the pirate in hand-to-hand combat with Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy, on 22^nd November 1718.

Construction of the Thomas

Jefferson Building, from

8 July 1888 to 15 May 1894

The Library of Congress was established on 24^th April 1800, when President John Adams signed an Act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress...and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them...." Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new Capitol. The collection covered a variety of topics but the bulk of the materials were legal in nature, reflecting Congress' role as a maker of laws.

Thomas Jefferson played an important role in the Library's early formation, signing into law on January 26, 1802, the first law establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. The law established the presidentially appointed post of Librarian of Congress and a Joint Committee on the Library to regulate and oversee the Library, as well as giving the president and vice president the ability to borrow books.

Between 1865 and 1870, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building, placed all copyright registration and deposit activities under the Library's control, and restored the Library's international book exchange. The Library also acquired the vast libraries of both the Smithsonian and historian Peter Force, strengthening its scientific and Americana collections significantly. By 1876, the Library of Congress had 300,000 volumes and was tied with Boston Public Library as the nation's largest library. When the Library moved from the Capitol building to its new headquarters in 1897, it had over 840,000 volumes, 40% of which had been acquired through copyright deposit.

The Imperial Wireless Chain, also known as the Empire Wireless Chain, was a strategic international wireless telegraphy communications network, created to link the countries of the British Empire. Although the idea was conceived prior to World War I, Britain was the last of the world's Great Powers to implement an operational system. The first link in the chain, between Leafield in Oxfordshire and Cairo, Egypt, eventually opened on 24^th April 1922, with the final link, between Australia and Canada, opening on 16 June 1928.

Another ceremony took place on the 24th April 2005 in Rome. The inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI. The inauguration ceremony was over three hours. Here is a bit of video from Italian Television of the announcement of his election on the 19th April, which is shorter and more amusing.

SCHOOL, SCANDAL, SUFFRAGE

In looking onto an event which occurred 377 years ago today, I came upon an interesting tale of tabloid scandal involving a clergyman, his assistant, his assistant’s wife, and the first woman to run for president of the United States. 

The school today

The Boston Latin School is a public exam school founded on 23^rd April 1635 in Boston, Massachusetts. It is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The Public Latin School was a bastion for educating the sons of the Boston elite, resulting in the school claiming many prominent Bostonians as alumni. Its curriculum follows that of the 18th century Latin-school movement, which holds the classics to be the basis of an educated mind. Four years of Latin are mandatory for all pupils who enter the school in 7th grade, three years for those who enter in 9th. In 2007 the school was named one of the top twenty high schools in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. As of 2012, the school is listed under the gold medal list, ranking 38 out of the top 100 high schools in the United States (21,000 public high school from 48 states and the District of Columbia were analysed) by U.S. News & World Report.  The school was named a 2011 Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, the US Department of Education's highest award.

The school's first class included nine students; the school now has 2,400 pupils drawn from all parts of Boston. Its graduates have included four Harvard presidents, four Massachusetts governors, and five signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, as well as several preeminent architects, a leading art historian, a notable naturalist and the conductors of the New York Philharmonic and Boston Pops orchestras. There are also several notable non-graduate alumni, including Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Another non-graduate alumnus is Benjamin Franklin. Boston Latin admitted only male students at its founding in 1635. The school's first female student was admitted in the nineteenth century. In 1972, Boston Latin admitted its first co-educational class.

Statue of Henry Ward Beecher in

Downtown Brooklyn, New York

Henry Beecher

The list of graduates includes Cotton Mather, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Kennedy (father of John F. Kennedy) Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana, Theodore White, Leonard Bernstein, Nat Hentoff and Henry Ward Beecher.

Beecher was a clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist and speaker. He graduated from Boston Latin in 1826. He was one of the thirteen children of Lyman Beecher, a minister from New Haven, Connecticut. In 1799 Lyman Beecher married Roxana Foote, the daughter of Eli and Roxana (Ward) Foote. They had nine children: Catharine E., William, Edward, Mary, Tommy, George, Harriet Elizabeth, Henry Ward, and Charles. Roxana died on 13^th September 1816. The following year, he married Harriet Porter, and fathered four more children: Frederick C., Isabella Holmes, Thomas Kinnicut, and James Chaplin. After Harriet died on 7^th July 1835, he married Lydia Beals Johnson, but had no more children. His third wife pre-deceased him as well.  His daughter Harriet Elizabeth is better known as Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

As to Henry Ward Beecher, graduate of the Boston Latin School, Amherst College (1834) and the Lane Theological Seminary (1837) he was an advocate of Women’s suffrage, temperance and Darwin’s theory of evolution, and a foe of slavery and bigotry of all kinds (religious, racial and social). Beecher held that Christianity should adapt itself to the changing culture of the times. It was said that "His career took place during what one scholar has called the Protestant Century, when an eloquent preacher could be a celebrity, the leader of one or more reform movements and a popular philosopher — all at the same time." It is also said that he was close to a series of attractive young women, but his wife, Eunice, the mother of his 10 children, was "unloved."

In a highly publicised scandal known as the Beecher-Tilton Affair, he was tried on charges that he had committed adultery with a friend’s wife Elizabeth Tilton. In 1870, Elizabeth had confessed to her husband, Theodore Tilton, that she had had a relationship with Henry Ward Beecher. From 1860 to 1871, Tilton was the assistant of Beecher, and in 1874, he filed criminal charges against the clergyman for "criminal intimacy" with his wife. Following the apparent acquittal of Beecher in the trial (the public view was ambivalent to his acquittal), Tilton moved to Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. The charges became public when Theodore Tilton told Elizabeth Cady Stanton of his wife's confession.

Stanton

Woodhull

Stanton repeated the story to fellow women's rights leaders Victoria Woodhull and Isabella Beecher Hooker. Henry Ward Beecher had publicly denounced Woodhull's advocacy of free love. Woodhull hated hypocrisy. She published a story in her paper (Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly) on 2^nd November 1872, claiming that America's most renowned clergyman was secretly practicing the free-love doctrines which he denounced from the pulpit. The story created a national sensation. As a result, Woodhull was arrested in New York City and imprisoned for sending obscene material through the mail. The Plymouth Church held a board of inquiry and exonerated Beecher, but excommunicated Mr Tilton in 1873.

Tilton then sued Beecher: the trial began in January 1875, and ended in July when the jurors deliberated for six days but were unable to reach a verdict. His wife loyally supported him throughout the ordeal.

Strauss-Kahn

Beecher

A second board of enquiry was held at Plymouth Church and this body also exonerated Beecher. Two years later, Elizabeth Tilton once again confessed to the affair and the church excommunicated her. Despite this Beecher continued to be a popular national figure. However, the debacle split his family. While most of his siblings supported him, Isabella Beecher Hooker openly supported one of his accusers.

In 1871, Tilton had published Victoria Woodhull: A Biographical Sketch. In 1872 Victoria Woodhull was the first woman candidate for President of the United States (see previous blog – Women of 1838 published on 7/04/2011).

Woodhull wrote, inter alia, the following:

"To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold."

TRUTH, WHAT IS TRUTH?

A number of events affecting global communication occurred on the 22^nd April.

Spain and Portugal divided up the world. The Treaty of Zaragoza, also referred to as the capitulation of Zaragoza was a peace treaty between Spain and Portugal signed on 22^nd April 1529 by King John III and the Emperor Charles V, in the city of Zaragoza. The treaty defined the areas of Spanish and Portuguese influence in Asia to resolve the "Moluccas issue", when both kingdoms claimed those islands for themselves, considering it within their exploration area established by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The Treaty of Zaragoza stated the continuation of the meridian of Tordesillas in the opposite hemisphere, 297.5 marine leagues (about 1,487 kilometres / 892 miles) east of the Maluku. The Philippines stood on the Spanish side, while the Maluku Islands were provided by Spain to Portugal over the payment of 350,000 gold ducats. The treaty also had a safeguard stating that, if at any time the emperor wished to restore the deal, the sale would be undone and each "will have the right and the action as that is now." This never happened. Posterior measurements proved that, according to the exact anti-meridian of Tordesillas, the Maluku and also the Philippines were in the Portuguese hemisphere.

The first Earth Day was celebrated on the 22^nd April 1970. Earth Day is a day early each year on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth’s natural environment's. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year. In 2009, the United Nations designated 22^nd April International Mother Earth Day. Earth Day is planned for 22^nd April in all years at least through 2015. 

The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. Earth Day was first observed on 21^st March, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations where it is observed each year.

McConnell

Nelson

About the same time a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on 22^nd April 1970. While this Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.

In the United Kingdom, the Big Number Change, which took place on the 22^nd April 2000, was an update of telephone dialling codes in the UK in response to the rapid late-1990s growth of telecommunications and impending exhaustion of numbers. The change greatly expanded the pool of available numbers while helping to retain 'local dialling' (the ability to dial local numbers directly, without needing to dial an area code first). The change affected the dialling codes assigned to Cardiff. Coventry, London, Northern Ireland, Portsmouth and Southampton, culminating in a large switch on 22^nd April 2000. In addition to new area/city codes for many parts of the UK, the switch was also coupled with a move to eight-digit local numbers, the adjustment of all mobile phone numbers in the UK to the 07 prefix and the alteration of many non-geographic codes to the new 08 range.

The 100^th anniversary celebration, however, belongs to Правда. It was not without its problems in its early years.

The Pravda newspaper started on the 22^nd April 1912 in St. Petersburg. It was converted from a weekly Zvezda. It did not arrive in Moscow until 1918. During the Cold War, Pravda was well known in the West for its pronouncements as the official voice of Soviet Communism. (Similarly Izvestia was the official voice of the Soviet government.)

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) had split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, with the Bolsheviks eventually becoming the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

After the breakdown of the January 1910 compromise, the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP started publishing a Saint Petersburg-based legal weekly, Zvezda, in December 1910. When the Bolsheviks formally broke away from the other factions at their conference in Prague in January 1912, they also decided to convert Zvezda, which was by then published three times a week, into a daily.

The Bolsheviks finally realized their plan when the first issue of Pravda was published in Saint Petersburg on 22^nd April 1912. It continued publishing legally, although subject to government censorship, until it was shut down in July 1914 by the government at the beginning of World War I; however, the pure and simple truth is that due to police harassment, the newspaper had to change its name eight times in just two years.

▪   Рабочая правда (Rabochaya Pravda, Worker’s Truth)

▪   Северная правда (Severnaya Pravda Northern Truth)

▪   Правда Труда (Pravda Truda, Labor’s Truth)

▪   За правду (Za Pravdu, For Truth)

▪   Пролетарская правда (Proletarskaya Pravda, Proletarian Truth)

▪   Путь правды (Put' Pravdy, The Way of Truth)

▪   Рабочий (Rabochy, The Worker)

▪   Tрудовая правда (Trudovaya Pravda, Labor’s Truth)

The paper did survive until it was closed down in 1991 by decree of the then president Boris Yeltsin. Many of the staff founded a new paper with the same name, which is now a tabloid-style Russian news source. There is an unaffiliated Internet-based newspaper, Pravda Online, run by former Pravda newspaper employees. A number of other newspapers have also been called Pravda, most notably Komsomolskaya Pravda, formerly the official newspaper of the now defunct Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth) and currently the best-selling tabloid in Russia.

As Oscar Wilde reminded us earlier in 1895, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple”

This video shows a bit of the history over the last 100 years. The sound is a bit doggy at the beginning.

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ENCYCLICAL PERFORMANCE

As you know I have been promulgating the concept of  ‘performance writing’. In looking through various historical events, I have sought out texts that have in some way affected our lives. This is only one aspect of performance writing, but an important one. The readers of these texts have in some way been influenced by the words they read. The individuals understanding and interpretation of these texts is the concern of the writer. The texts are written for a purpose, and the writer hopes that the words will perform in the way he/she intends. Again, this is only one aspect of the concept. All propaganda has an agenda. However it is produced, the object is to disseminate information and ideas in order to persuade the reader/viewer to a course of action. The object of the exercise is for the text/script to perform, to make the intention apparent, to bring ‘it’ into being.

Leo XIII

There are various modes of writing these texts. They are contained in legislation, treaties, contracts, constitutions, advertising, etc. All these documents contain a preamble, introduction or epilogue declaring and defining the intention of the instrument. One of these modes of writing is the papal encyclical. Today, the 20^th April, marks the publishing of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Humanum Genus in 1884. In it he concerns himself with Freemasonry and its possible effect on the Catholic Church. This encyclical, promulgated on 20^th April 1884 and coming in the ascent of the industrial age and Marxism, posited that the late 19th Century was a dangerous era for Christians, and condemned Freemasonry as well as a number of beliefs and practices allegedly associated with Freemasonry, including naturalism, popular sovereignty which does not recognize God, and the idea that the state should be "without God". Some of the encyclical's strictures remain in force today.

I would ask you to read the opening paragraphs:

HUMANUM GENUS

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
 ON FREEMASONRY

To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and 
Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and 
Communion with the Apostolic See.

1. The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.

2. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: "Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one." At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardour and assault. At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Lamenting these evils, We are constrained by the charity which urges Our heart to cry out often to God: "For lo, Thy enemies have made a noise; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head. They have taken a malicious counsel against Thy people, and they have consulted against Thy saints. They have said, 'come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation.'

3. At so urgent a crisis, when so fierce and so pressing an onslaught is made upon the Christian name that those may not perish whose salvation is committed to Us, and that the kingdom of Jesus Christ entrusted to Our charge may not stand and remain whole, but may be enlarged by an ever-increasing growth throughout the world.

I find this text rather extraordinary. It smacks of the southern preacher extolling his congregation, his troops, and encouraging them to do battle with the enemy. It is hardly full of the Christian charity it claims. We are constrained by the charity which urges Our heart to cry out often to God: "For lo, Thy enemies have made a noise; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head. They have taken a malicious counsel against Thy people, and they have consulted against Thy saints. They have said, 'come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation.'[…] it is Our office to point out the danger, to mark who are the adversaries, and to the best of Our power to make head against their plans and devices…

Pope Leo XIII, it is suggested, “is know for intellectualism, the development of social teachings with his encyclical Rerum Novarum and his attempts to define the position of the Church with regard to modern thinking. He influenced Roman Catholic Mariology and promoted both the rosary and the scapular. He issued a record eleven encyclicals on the rosary, approved two new Marian scapulars and was the first Pope to fully embrace the concept of Mary as mediatrix.” Sorry, but I find it difficult to see any position in relation to modern thinking, other than, he’s against it.

von Ketteler

Manning

The Rerum Novarum is written in much the same vein. It is suggested that this encyclical addressed the condition of the working classes. ‘The encyclical is entitled: "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour". Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler and Cardinal Henry Edward Manning were influential in its composition. It had discussed the relationships and mutual duties between labour and obtaining capital, as well as government and its citizens. Of primary concern was the need for some amelioration for "The misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class. It supported the rights of labour to form unions, rejected communism and unrestricted capitalism, whilst affirming the right to private property.’

Here is the opening paragraph:

At the very beginning of Our pontificate, as the nature of Our apostolic office demanded, we hastened to point out in an encyclical letter addressed to you, venerable brethren, the deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibres of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction; at the same time We pointed out also the most effectual remedies by which society might be restored and might escape from the very serious dangers which threaten it. But the evils which We then deplored have so rapidly increased that We are again compelled to address you, as though we heard the voice of the prophet ringing in Our ears: "Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet." You understand, venerable brethren, that We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning - the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever.

“Various and almost barbarous names – socialists, communists, or nihilists.” What a phrase. And what about ‘deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibres of human society’ leading it to destruction. How does this square with the right to form unions? Why are ‘unrestricted capitalists’ not on the list of barbarous names? As a piece of performance writing, the encyclical raises many questions, but being addressed to  Our Venerable Brethren the Patriarchs,
 Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other ordinaries
of places having Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See it may perform beyond expectation.

Here is a you tube video about the continuing problems of the venerable Brethren in relation to Pope Leo XIII. How they do go on.