Some more 'froufrou' for those who have an interest in it - or who don't mind it.... I've finished reading The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England and An Analytical Inquiry Into the Principles of Taste. Neither had much direct relevance to gardening but did connect to the Hogarth book I read. The Chinese Taste book was largely about the process/stages/impact of how exposure to a different culture affects the first culture. What I 'took away' from the book was as follows: The initial reaction to Chinese porcelain imports into 18th century England was very positive - a widespead fascination with the beautiful porcelain and the culture that produced it. Later, there was a negative reaction against it, mainly led by those with an aesthetic philosophy bent. Later still, certain aspects of it became adopted as part of English culture and identification (think - afternoon tea....) Aesthetic philosophies of the time were heavily based on the 'authority' of the 'ancients' (mainly Roman, Greek, and - to a lesser extent - Egyptian civilizations). So the initial exposure to an even more ancient, and obviously highly civilized and enduring, civilization was one of fascinated admiration. However, as they learned more about Chinese culture, it became evident that the Chinese aesthetic was entirely different than the western one. Given that 'ancients' were considered authoritative, that posed a dilemma/threat to western aesthetics because here was an even more ancient civilization who had an entirely different aesthetic approach! So the backlash against the Chinese imported articles/cultural ideas seemed to be in large part motivated by a desire to 'protect' the western aesthetic framework. This description of some of the differences in appoaches to landscape painting seems to be a good summary of the different aesthetics: " One of the central organizing principles in early modern Chinese landscape painting and gardening is the balance of tension between eternally opposed forces, yin and yang, water and rock, earth and sky. Human figures, like pine trees, typically represent a merely transient, intermediate state between these poles, rather than the fully consummate pinacle of devine creation." Women became the major purchasers/collectors of Chinese porcelain. The author - and others he refers to - speculate that a large part of the attraction was that the portrayal of women on Chinese porcelain seemed to depict them as having more autonomy and dignity than in Western classical art (where women often nude and/or the object of - often violent or coarse - male desire). Nudes were absent in the Chinese depictions of women. So, the presentation of women in Chinese art seemed compatible with emerging trends of women actively seeking greater autonomy and control in 18th century England. (Of course, women's place in Chinese society was not as rosy as it appeared on the Chinawares....) Chinese porcelain became a symbol in the art of Hogarth and his contemporaries of rebellious women challenging/undermining male authority. Hogarth did not like Chinese porcelain - it had none of his lines of beauty or grace. The author of this book clearly did not like Hogarth! The impression you get is that he thought Hogarth was a sexist lech! (He probably was - but so were most 18th century men...) In summary, the book was interesting but I didn't learn much about Chinese gardens or where serpentines might fit into the picture. It did leave me wanting to know more about Chinese gardening traditions so I will look for a good book on that once I finish some other (non-gardening) books. Moving on to the Analytical Inquiry Into The Principles of Taste.... I confess - I didn't finish this one! At about the 75% complete point he was talking about architectural styles and referring to his house. I went on-line (good old Wikipedia...) to see what his house looked like - and found the bio summary on him. His first book was The Worship of Priapus - which apparently sought to recover the importance of ancient phallic cults! Sheesh...! That destroyed his credibility as an arbiter of taste IMO!! I was finding the book a struggle to read anyway. It's one of those where you read something and say 'that makes sense', but each piece doesn't make a strong narrative that hangs together in a memorable way, so you keep losing the point.... I would be hard put to try to clearly state what his principles af taste actually were! He didn't approve of Hogarth's lines of beauty and grace because he didn't like rule-based approaches to art and consideration of beauty. One of the interesting things about the book was that it really hits you over the head that a classical education at the time involved 'reading the classics' (i.e. Latin and Greek writers - in Latin and Greek). Many of his footnotes are in Latin or Greek (with the Greek ones in the Greek alphabet). I now thoroughly understand why when something completely baffles you, you say 'It's all Greek to me..."! The INKognito effect can lead you down some interesting - and a bit strange - roads... :-)

Here are two pictures that I took. The first one is using an auto setting on the camera. When you use an auto setting the camera looks at all the colors and averages all of them to a gray setting. This picture is very gray. The next picture was taken with the camera on the snow setting. This allows more light into the camera and basically overexposes the picture but in doing so, the snow is actually now a white not gray in color. Brenda

Nice eggs and on blue willow too! Ian

So I went and read the article... then I read the comments that the editor had received both against and in favor of the no 0 policy. The people who commented in favor of the policy had a good reason, up to a point. Basically, they said that giving the 0 says ok, you got a 0 so you don't have to do the work. They said that instead of giving a 0 the student should be required to complete the work. I'm not a teacher, but I do know that the authority of teachers any more is way to limited and much of the time they do not receive the support they need from the school or from the parents. Here's my question. How in the world is the teacher to 'require' the student complete the work? Apparently they can't use loss of grades (getting the 0) as incentive. They certainly can't physically force the student (potential child abuse issue - and I do agree that teachers shouldn't use physical force on students). Many of the parents aren't going to back them up. How is the school going to back them up? I'm seriously interested in some thoughts on this. Can they make the students stay in the school enough extra hours that the student does the work just to get out of the building? Can they refuse diplomas (might work on Seniors, but I doubt underclassmen are thinking far enough ahead to consider this a real thread)? What are the options to require the students to do the work?