text:
With apologies to any of you who might believe that the Almighty created the human being Perfect, I have to report that THERE IS A SERIOUS DESIGN FAULT IN THE HUMAN BACK.
Last weekend, in a flurry of 'Beloved Clara' anxiety, I spent three happy hours gardening. Monday morning I woke up and could hardly move. I've done nothing useful this week except lie on my back in 'Alexander Technique' pose trying to straighten out my spine, which isn't broken but feels as if it is. Back pain is vile. It not only scuppers you physically, but also mentally. I've written nothing (except Dulwich blog entry, pretending all was well!), read nothing, listened to nothing, been no further from the house than Waitrose (3 mins gentle stroll) and only watched one French film (Jean de Florette, which I've seen 5 times already).
When things get you down this way, you can become 'half in love with easeful death' - at least with the notion of an anaesthetic to knock you out for a few weeks. But there is one thing to live for. Music, of course.
I've spent two hours this afternoon gritting my teeth and playing the piano. I've played through the Franck violin sonata to make sure I can still play it (yes!), brushing up the Debussy 'Clair de lune' (my party piece since 1981) and reading through some of my beloved Faure's abominably tricky nocturnes. Even if my back isn't better, my soul is on the mend. As long as there is music of such overwhelming beauty in the world, it's worth being here.
Having nothing better to do, besides practising, than surf the internet, I've just come across a blog by Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, which is excellent - link under Music Friends. Alex, sorry you knew about my blog before I knew about yours, but better late than never!
Of course, one of the other things worth living for is good food. I've had some major successes with Nigella Lawson's recipes, especially the ones from 'Forever Summer'.
Actually, there's plenty to live for, isn't there!
Matzo pudding competition winner
Looks like nobody else knows how to make a matzo pudding any more than I do. But the prize goes to Marion Gedney of New York City, who e-mailed me to say that although she doesn't have a recipe, she thinks she knows what my father meant and hopes that it was supposed to be funny.
Marion is a clinical psychologist...
Marion, e-mail me your postal address and a CD will be on its way to you shortly!
Glyndebourne, plus newsy bits
Dress rehearsal of Pelleas et Melisande at Glyndebourne yesterday. One of those rare occasions when the first trip down of the summer is on the sort of cloudless, hot day on which the place is basically paradise. The leaves are bright May green, the hawthorn flowers are out, there are sheep in the field on the hillside. In the interval the lawns are so covered with the company friends and relations picnicking that it's like a scene from Renoir. This is my seventh year of hanging out there with Tom and I still have to pinch myself to make sure it's real. I love the dress rehearsals because the family atmosphere is so excellent. Yesterday I was in the front row of the stalls right next to the violins - had to resist the temptation to pull silly faces at Tom and to throw his colleagues sweets over the railing. Not a good idea.
Pelleas is a revival of a stunning Graham Vick production, with gold panelled walls, a floor of flowers and an incredibly claustrophic atmosphere. John Tomlinson as Golaud is the central figure and his charisma makes the story work much better than usual. Marie Arnet is a gorgeous, delicate Melisande and the lovely Louis Langree takes a robust approach to the score which I like very much. I don't believe Debussy (or Faure, for that matter) should be all elusive and floaty. This stuff comes right from the gut. Highly recommended.
BOOKS AND CDS UPDATE
Tasmin Little has recorded the Karlowicz Violin Concerto on Hyperion and if you don't know the piece, you should get a copy right away. Karlowicz was a Polish composer of the early 20th century who died terribly young and has only recently attracted much attention. About 13 years ago, I visited Krystian Zimerman in Switzerland and he played me an old Polish recording of this concerto; I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever heard. Marvellous that it's now new-minted on a mainstream label. Bravo, Taz.
Marc-Andre Hamelin's new Kapustin disc is a complete delight from start to finish. Kapustin is a rather retiring Russian who prolifically composes piano music in traditional classical forms but fills them with an astonishing, idiosyncratic, energetic jazz idiom. Charming, dizzying and virtuosic, it shows off super-cool Marc to the manner born. Also on Hyperion.
Susan Tomes has written a book called 'Beyond The Notes' about life as a travelling chamber music player. Insights into what Domus was all about and why it had to give up its dome - that was the early 80s - can you imagine anyone daring to leave a concert dome unattended overnight in the Pavilion Gardens in 2004?! Susan's a deep thinker and her philosophical reflections about the nature of musical communication and relationships in a chamber group are fascinating. From Boydell Press.
You can get all of these from Amazon via the link box on the left.
MYSTERY VIEWER IN FRANCE - WHO ARE YOU???
Dear readers, my web-counter doesn't tell me who you are but does give me a rough idea of where you might be. One reader particularly intrigues me. You've been checking in roughly twice a day. You are in France. You are logging on from UNAPEC, which Google tells me is a university. Please, whoever you are: if you can bear to, write a comment box and identify yourself! S'IL VOUS PLAIT, ECRIVEZ-MOI! The suspense is killing me!
Labels: Opera, pianists, Tasmin Little
If you were...
In cover features for PIANIST magazine, I have to ask my interviewees a particular set of questions. 'If you were....... - what would you be?' I get some interesting responses - it can be surprisingly illuminating. So I thought I'd have a go at it myself. Here's the result
A HISTORICAL OR FICTIONAL CHARACTER - WHO WOULD YOU BE?
Franz Liszt. I think he had fun. I do NOT want to have been any of those patient, long-suffering women who struggled all their lives to be creative, like Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn or Charlotte Bronte! (Emma Bardac is a better option, as she sang well, hosted a progressive Parisian artistic salon and slept with both Faure and Debussy...but even that had its drawbacks...)
'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith. My favourite book. I've read it about 350 times and never get tired of it. (Available via Amazon, link on left.)
A FILM?
'Les enfants du paradis' - French masterpiece from the 1940s starring Jean-Louis Barrault and Arletty. Now available in snazzy DVD (see Amazon).
A PIECE OF MUSIC?
Unfair!! But - on balance - Faure's Piano Quartet No.1 in C minor
A TYPE OF FOOD?
Chocolate - preferably Green & Black's Organic, absolute minimum 70% cocoa solids
A WINE?
An excessively fine 1976 red Bordeaux
A QUALITY?
A FAULT?
Over-enthusiasm
What about you? Try it and put the results in a comment box!
A certain air of smugness prevails in the Duchen-Eisner household this morning - and it's not just Solti the cat.
The concert went fine. Lovely atmosphere, gorgeous church with warm, pleasing acoustic, small but terrifyingly knowledgeable audience and on the whole we played pretty well.
Odd difference between how things feel and how they sound. The second movement of the Franck felt about half the speed that it actually went, to my astonishment, and the whole concert had a nice 'seat-of-the-pants' feel to it. Tom sounds gorgeous in the chuch acoustic, the balance seems to have been just right, the heating was on, the piano stayed in tune and everyone hugged us at the end.
Strange, too, to remember that I've not done anything remotely comparable to this since 1988. When Tom started doing little recitals three or four years ago, I was too scared even to attempt to play things like the slow movement of the Grieg C minor Sonata and the Dvorak Sonatine. I don't know quite what happened in the interim. But it certainly feels like progress. Perhaps there's something to be said for walking up those mountains...
And no hangover this morning - simply the need to sleep for a week. Which we can't...because Tom is rehearsing Pelleas et Melisande for 6 hours today and I have 3 features to finish by next weekend. Back to real life!
Climb ev'ry mountain...in south London
When we go on holiday, we usually head for Swiss mountains, which Tom immediately wants to go up. I love mountains. I love the air, the atmosphere & the views. I don't much like having to walk up such steep slopes, though, often in intense summer heat, for hours on end. Somehow it's always the same: Tom striding on ahead in his Thomas-of-Arabia anti-sun headgear, with me gasping along behind, trying to keep up and stopping for water every 10 minutes. And the question hangs in the air: why walk when you can take the cable car?
Playing the Franck sonata feels somewhat the same. This afternoon, with just three and a half hours to go before Our Concert Begins, I'm wondering who is the bigger sadist: Cesar Franck or my husband? Why am I doing this when I could sit back and listen to someone else instead? Why did I let him cajole me into this in the first place?
Seriously, guys, how do you do it? How do you COPE? My shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my hands hurt and a good night's sleep without waking up at 5am thinking 'Oh My God, Franck!' would be very welcome indeed. I'm behind on my feature-writing and keep telling various e-mail correspondents that I'll get back to them after 8 May when I can think straight again. There are musicians out there who play 80 concerts a year - some do more - and to have to feel this way one day out of every 4, on average, would be my idea of living hell. Perhaps you get used to it if you do it all the time? Or perhaps you simply have to be the sort of person who enjoys it. The sort of person who will always walk up a mountain instead of taking the cable car, however hard it feels at the time, for the sheer thrill of Knowing You've Done It.
The things you have to contend with and remember to do...Making sure the heating is ON in the church (it may be May but it's all of 12 degrees out there today, and raining), taking in lamps, an adapter and an extension lead, trying to get the most out of what is really a very nice, rather elderly Bluthner without making the poor thing collapse, attempting to rehearse Franck while the church flower ladies do their stuff with cellophane and bubble-wrap and their children run athletics races unchecked among the pews. Making sure your brother, his heavily pregnant girlfriend, his 11-year-old son, his new Italian mother-in-law who speaks no English and the honorary auntie who introduced you to your husband leave Hampstead together in plenty of time to get to Clapham (to Hampstead dwellers, Clapham=ends of earth). Wondering how you can even go to a piano, let alone touch it, when the audience contains at least three concert pianists and the editor of Classic FM Magazine. Remembering to pack chocolate, bananas, spare tights, a cardy and a portable blowy heater.
Never mind. It'll all be over soon. Except...Tom wants to do Faure next.
Oh my God. Faure...
Winners and losers?
To the Dorchester last night for the Royal Philharmonic Awards. Each year the ceremony is held there, along with a rather fine black tie dinner. The glitterati of the London musical world mostly show up, even if the musicians who win the prizes are generally busy giving concerts somewhere else. It's always fun to bump into your ex-bosses, meet people you've known by sight or repute for years, and some who you haven't, and discover that you're wearing the same dress (if in a different colour) as the 'acting editor' of BBC Music Magazine.
The line-up of prizewinners this year was relatively inspiring. Among them, the late Susan Chilcott won the singer's award - she died about six months ago of breast cancer, only in her early 40s, leaving behind a small son and some stunning recordings. Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra took the large ensemble prize, and so it should have; an Israeli pianist and Palestinian violinist stood side by side on the platform to accept the award and got a tremendous ovation. Lump in throat time.
I'm on the chamber music panel. Our winner, the Belcea Quartet, was taking the prize for the second time, but it's well-deserved: they're an extraordinary young group, each one sensitive and intelligent yet together somehow greater than four individuals. I'm not sure what happened to our citation, however. The speeches may have been truncated for the benefit of Radio 3 (the awards will be broadcast tonight), but on reflection it would have been nice to point out that the Belceas got the prize not only because they do education work and commission new music. They won also because they are bloody marvellous musicians who inspire everyone who hears them.
There's political correctness and political correctness, of course. This was a mild case. But the thing that really got up my nose was something that the excellent LSO Animateur said, accepting his Honorary Membership of the RPS. Apparently it's a wonderful thing that the LSO has put its finances into appalling shape by building St Luke's, its new educational/rehearsal centre in the City.
I don't think that's a wonderful thing at all: I think it's shameful that a great orchestra is forced to spend its money in this way. Such facilities should be the right of every orchestra - and the government should be paying. In fact, the government should be providing proper, consistent, across-the-board musical education in schools in the first place - instead of forcing musical organisations to put their energies (and money they can't afford) into work that can only reach a few kids for a limited time. The much-vaunted education and outreach trend is little more than an apology for the lack of good musical education in this country. It's trying to fill a round hole with a square plug; even if it inspires the few it reaches, for a short time, it can't do the job that's really needed.
I shall get on the subject of English Amateurism, Lousy Music Courses and the rest of it - not to mention cowboy building contractors - another time. But while we're on awards, I should report that little Benjamin didn't win Young Musician of the Year the other day. The prize went to a gorgeous 16-year-old violinist, Nicola Benedetti, who played Szymanowski exceeedingly beautifully, performs like a seasoned professional and is absolutely ready for a career. General consensus seems to be that they made the right choice. Benjamin got the necessary exposure but won't be subjected to undue pressures of prizewinning too early. Who knows, perhaps he'll come back and win the next one.
Matzo pudding competition!
One or two of you have asked 'What on earth is a matzo pudding?' and - other than the obvious Fuss Over Franck - I have to admit I've never tried one. SO: the person who posts on the blog the best-ever Matzo Pudding Recipe will receive a free surprise CD from me! Closing date: 21 May 2004.
Cesar Franck and the matzo pudding
Is giving a concert simply all in a day's work to most pros? For those of us who do a handful of concerts a year and really ought to be doing something else, it sure isn't. Our Clapham gig is next Saturday and I do find myself wishing that I could fast-forward through to Sunday morning (well, maybe Monday, to avoid hangover) - to have the satisfaction of having done the concert without having to experience the excruciating mental pain of sitting at a piano in front of an audience, being obliged to play the Cesar Franck Violin Sonata straight through, up to tempo, without too many wrong notes...
Last week, the pianist Paul Hamburger died; he was one of the great accompanists. His obituary in The Guardian quoted him as having said that the hardest thing he ever had to play was the opening of the Franck's second movement. So there we are, it's not just me creating what my father would have called (bless him) 'a matzo pudding'.
Yesterday, however, produced something intriguing. We watched a programme on TV about the BBC Young Musician of the Year - a sort of condensed version of the semi-finals, showing the winners of each section and filming them at home, etc etc. There was little Benjamin, practising his Ravel G major concerto with a metronome and looking completely calm. Next, just as the percussion was coming on, the phone rang: it was Daniel Hope, who I'd been trying to get hold of for an interview earlier on. I talked to him for a while and got some amazing stories of the things he has to deal with on a day-to-day basis - among them, replacing the Berg Violin Concerto with a Brahms sonata at the last moment because an orchestra in South America had copied out its own parts for the concerto and the publisher was threatening to sue for music piracy...Blimey, as if playing the violin isn't tough enough in the first place! Evidently he has never a dull moment - indeed, perhaps he thrives on the adrenalin. It's all about attitude in the end, isn't it?
When I'd finished talking to Daniel, Tom was practising. He declared he'd been inspired by the kids on TV and wanted to play the beginning of the Franck again. We started with the intention of playing 2 pages, but before we knew it we'd gone through the entire thing and played it better than ever before. At the end, Tom said: 'It's amazing how much you can learn from watching an 11-year-old!'
SAD NEWS - an e-mail yesterday from pianist Lars Vogt telling me of the death of Boris Pergamenschikow, the Russian cellist. Quite a shock - Boris was 55 and had been very much in the thick of musical events, tremendously sought after as soloist, chamber music player and teacher. He had had cancer for two years. Another lesson in attitude. Don't go around making 'matzo puddings', because you are wasting energy you could be putting into achieving all the things you want to achieve in what is necessarily limited time.


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Over the past week, the Royals went through a stretch that saw them win three out of four games.
For this year's team, that's momentous.
They've seen a few things settle down as the year has gone on. The bullpen is a little more stable, the starting pitching has been mostly good still, and the offense is slowly waking up.
Unless you're Jorge Soler, who is just tearing it up right now. He's on pace for an immense year and has an opportunity to be the breakout star of the 2018 Royals. After his 2017 and his 0-11 start in 2018, that's more than welcome. Also, fellow outfielder Alex Gordon is showing signs of his former self since his return from a hip injury. Can he continue and provide some value the rest of the year? Or the rest of his contract?


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A computerized technique is presented whereby the output of a continuous conceptual hydrologic model is adjusted in real time to agree with the observations of discharge. Since the discharge generated by the model in response to a moisture input is dependent upon the current values of the state variables of the model, the procedure also adjusts the state variables to correspond to the output. The technique is applicable to outflow from headwater catchments during runoff events that result from liquid precipitation. Its approach is to make adjustments, iteratively and simultaneously, to the precipitation and the shape of the unit graph until the model produces a simulation that agrees, within reasonable limits, with the discharge observations. Examples of the performance of the procedure under a variety of hydrologic conditions are included.


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text:
Q: What feature space is used in transformer networks for machine translation? Title is the question.
The papers I've read, e.g. "Attention is All You Need" fail to specify exactly what word embeddings are used in these machine translation networks.   In most cases they'll mention the dimensionality,e.g. 512, but don't specify exactly how tokens are mapped into input vectors.
Note: I'm not asking about the general features of constructing a word embedding, I'm asking which specific word embedding is used in this paper, or subsequent ones that refine the approach.

A: The embeddings are trained jointly with the rest of the network. In the beginning, the embeddings are initialized randomly and the error gets back-propagated through the entire network down to the embeddings.
When you train the embeddings jointly with the rest of the model, the problem often is that embeddings of the rare words only get updated once in a while a get sort of out of the sync with the rest of the model. Transformer tries to avoid this problem by:

*

*Using not really large sub-word-based vocabulary where infrequent words split into smaller units that appear frequently enough.

*Sharing the embedding between the encoder and the decoder.

*Resuing the embeddings as parameters of the final output layer (i.e., the classification can be then interpreted as a sort of measuring dot-product similarity between the output state and the embeddings).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Sara Nowinski
Metabolism expert Dr. Sara Nowinski joins Van Andel Institute
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (July 8, 2021) — VAI's newest scientific recruit wants to rewrite the story of mitochondria, the cellular machinery that produces and manages the body's energy supply.
Sara Nowinski, Ph.D.
Sara Nowinski, Ph.D., joined the Institute's Department of Metabolism and Nutritional Programming as an assistant professor this week. She comes to Grand Rapids after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in University of Utah's prestigious Rutter Lab.
"Mitochondria are well known for their role in energy production as the 'powerhouses of the cell,' but there is still so much we don't know about how cells control and fine tune their activity in different situations," Nowinski said. "I'm incredibly excited to join the Department of Metabolism and Nutritional Programming at VAI and look forward to the discoveries we will make together."
In her new lab at VAI, Nowinski seeks to understand how mitochondria convert fats and other nutrients from the food we eat into energy, how they help the body sense and adapt to changing energy requirements, and how these processes can go awry.
Numerous disorders, including cancer, Parkinson's and diabetes, have been linked to metabolism and, specifically, to mitochondria. By understanding how mitochondria and the body's other metabolic processes work together to meet to the body's energy needs, Nowinski hopes to lay the foundation for new ways to enhance health and combat disease.
"Dr. Nowinski is an exceptional scientist whose early work has completely revitalized a dormant branch of the field and, in doing so, has shed new light on the critical role of mitochondria in metabolic adaptation," said Russell Jones, Ph.D., chair of VAI's Department of Metabolism and Nutritional Programming. "We are thrilled to have Dr. Nowinski on our team and look forward to her future successes."
VAI established its metabolism and nutrition research group in 2018, with the goal of developing scientifically driven strategies for promoting health, and preventing and treating diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and diabetes.
ABOUT VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE
Van Andel Institute (VAI) is committed to improving the health and enhancing the lives of current and future generations through cutting edge biomedical research and innovative educational offerings. Established in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1996 by the Van Andel family, VAI is now home to more than 400 scientists, educators and support staff, who work with a growing number of national and international collaborators to foster discovery. The Institute's scientists study the origins of cancer, Parkinson's and other diseases and translate their findings into breakthrough prevention and treatment strategies. Our educators develop inquiry-based approaches for K-12 education to help students and teachers prepare the next generation of problem-solvers, while our Graduate School offers a rigorous, research-intensive Ph.D. program in molecular and cellular biology. Learn more at vai.org.
Beth Hinshaw Hall
Van Andel Institute
Beth.HinshawHall@vai.org

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


TV show Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah recently earned the ire of the Sikh community for allegedly depicting a living character of tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, which was "against the Sikh tenets". The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) demanded a ban on the show for hurting the sentiments of the community by portraying 'blasphemous acts'.
Now, the makers of Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah have put out a statement where they say that they never intended to hurt sentiments, and that they respect Sikhism.
"Roshan Singh Sodhi was shown as Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji Ka Khalsa, which has been justified through the dialogues & his performance. We have always believed in equality of all the religions & have never intended to hurt the sentiments of anyone. Our show consists of people from varied religions and cultures who worship each God and celebrate each and every festival with equal respect & happiness. We are aware & respect that in Sikh religion nobody can show or portray themselves as Guru Gobind Singh Ji. We request our viewers not to misinterpret it any other context," said Asit Kumarr Modi, the producer and creator of the show, as quoted by The Quint.
Additionally, they also put out a tweet asking people not to misinterpret the scenes in question.
Previously, the SGPC chief Kirpal Singh Badungar had said, "No actor or any character can equate himself with the tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh. Such an act is unpardonable."


How to remove all posts / threads from specific user in specific forum(s)?
The first one will delete all posts by that user, and all posts by any other user in any threads the user created, in the specified forums. The second one will delete any threads the user created in the specified forums.
Change X to the ID of the user, and the 1,2,3 to the IDs of the forums you want this to affect.
Then, run the recount and rebuild tools in the Admin CP.
However, if you're dealing with that many posts, I highly recommend you install a test forum, backup your forum's database, and import it to the test forum's database, and run this on there first, just to check it works. At the very least, close your forum and backup your database before doing it.


text:
Q: Problem with modifying the digits in tbl_summary I have a problem adjusting the digits for tbl_summary(). Here is my code:
library(flextable)
library(dplyr)
library(officer)
library(gtsummary)
library(janitor)

### Effect size
my_ES_test <- function(data, variable, by, ...) {
  aovmod = aov(data[[variable]] ~ data[[by]])
  lsr::etaSquared(aovmod)[1,1]
}

### Standard Error Mean
sem <- function(x){
  sqrt(var(x, na.rm=TRUE)/sum(!is.na(x)))
}

### Pooled Standard Error
PSE <- function(data, variable, by,...) {
  s <- data %>%
    group_by(!!sym(by)) %>%
    summarise(s = var(!!sym(variable)),
              n = n()) %>%
    mutate(num = s*(n-1))
  psd <- sqrt(sum(s$num)/(sum(s$n) - nrow(s)))
  psd*sqrt(sum(1/s$n))
}

### gtsummary
Iris_data <- iris %>%
  select(names(iris))%>%
  tbl_summary(
    by = Species,
    digits = all_continuous() ~ c(2,2),
    type = list(everything() ~ "continuous"),
    statistic = all_continuous() ~ "{mean} ± {sem}",
    label = list(Sepal.Length = "Sepal Length",
                 Sepal.Width = "Sepal Width",
                 Petal.Length = "Petal Length",
                 Petal.Width = "Petal Width")
  ) %>%
  add_stat(fns = all_continuous() ~ PSE) %>%
  add_stat(fns = all_continuous() ~ my_ES_test) %>%
  add_p(
    test = all_continuous() ~ "aov", pvalue_fun = function(x) style_pvalue(x, digits = 3)
  ) %>%
  modify_header(label = "**Size**", p.value = "**p-value**", add_stat_1 = "**PSE**", add_stat_2 = "**\U03B7\U00B2**") %>%
  modify_footnote(add_stat_1 = "Pooled Standard Error", abbreviation = FALSE) %>%
  bold_levels() %>%
  bold_labels() %>%
  as_flex_table()

In general the table works perfectly fine. However, if I moved the p-value above add_stat(fns = all_continuous() ~ PSE) then the p-value digits will change back to it's original format without three digits. Is it a way to fix this? Also, I cannot adjust the digits for the PSE for some reasons using the purrr::partial(style_ratio, digits = 3). Trying over and over but still cannot solve the problem.
Thank you.

A: You can use the modify_fmt_fun() function to modify the function that format/style the columns. Is this what you're asking?
library(dplyr, warn.conflicts = FALSE)
library(officer)
library(gtsummary)
#> #BlackLivesMatter

### Effect size
my_ES_test <- function(data, variable, by, ...) {
  aovmod = aov(data[[variable]] ~ data[[by]])
  lsr::etaSquared(aovmod)[1,1]
}

### Standard Error Mean
sem <- function(x){
  sqrt(var(x, na.rm=TRUE)/sum(!is.na(x)))
}

### Pooled Standard Error
PSE <- function(data, variable, by,...) {
  s <- data %>%
    group_by(!!sym(by)) %>%
    summarise(s = var(!!sym(variable)),
              n = n()) %>%
    mutate(num = s*(n-1))
  psd <- sqrt(sum(s$num)/(sum(s$n) - nrow(s)))
  psd*sqrt(sum(1/s$n))
}

### gtsummary
iris %>%
  select(names(iris))%>%
  tbl_summary(
    by = Species,
    statistic = all_continuous() ~ "{mean} ± {sem}"
  ) %>%
  add_p(
    test = all_continuous() ~ "aov",
    pvalue_fun = function(x) style_pvalue(x, digits = 3)
  ) %>%
  add_stat(fns = all_continuous() ~ PSE) %>%
  add_stat(fns = all_continuous() ~ my_ES_test)  %>%
  modify_header(label = "**Size**", p.value = "**p-value**", add_stat_1 = "**PSE**", add_stat_2 = "**\U03B7\U00B2**") %>%
  modify_footnote(add_stat_1 = "Pooled Standard Error", abbreviation = FALSE) %>%
  modify_fmt_fun( c(add_stat_1, add_stat_2) ~ purrr::partial(style_sigfig, digits = 5)) %>%
  as_kable()

Size
setosa, N = 50
versicolor, N = 50
virginica, N = 50
p-value
PSE
η²

Sepal.Length
5.01 ± 0.05
5.94 ± 0.07
6.59 ± 0.09
<0.001
0.12610
0.61871

Sepal.Width
3.43 ± 0.05
2.77 ± 0.04
2.97 ± 0.05
<0.001
0.08321
0.40078

Petal.Length
1.46 ± 0.02
4.26 ± 0.07
5.55 ± 0.08
<0.001
0.10541
0.94137

Petal.Width
0.25 ± 0.01
1.33 ± 0.03
2.03 ± 0.04
<0.001
0.05013
0.92888

Created on 2022-04-24 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)


text:
Category: Content
Content, Storytelling
Too much content. Too few storytellers.
The internet and social media disrupt the relationship between story and how we understand the world around us.
The other day I wrote this about storytelling and content strategy in a project brief for a potential client:
The candidate (or party, group, movement, government) who controls the narrative has an inside track on guiding people's hearts, minds and passions. Even when people, on the whole, don't believe in the narrative they often go along with what's dominant and speaks to their basic needs.
Content strategy is simply the combination of actions that identify, deliver, market, test and measure narrative to achieve an impact on (or by) people in the audience. In a campaign, content strategy is woven together with communications, data, fundraising, events, storytelling and (most of all) organizing to connect people with powerful narratives and each other.
Simply having a compelling message is a necessary but insufficient condition for winning a campaign or sustaining a movement. Crafting a narrative with stories, data, and actions gives people hooks that connect a theory of change to their own experience. The narrative creates a route map. Like handholds and cracks on a climbing wall, we reach for stories to make sense the path forward (or up, if you like the climbing metaphor).
Content strategy is what ties it all together. It bolts stories to the narrative. It helps you give stories shape and color so that people can see stories, ask questions, connect stories to their own experience and connect your theory of change to their own needs.
But does storytelling and content strategy matter now?
The value of story in advocacy, politics and social change is in question. That may be difficult to imagine, even debatable, given that digital tools, social networks, and online media give us countless venues for finding, creating, sharing and immersing ourselves in stories.
Stories also seem central to the drumbeat of advocacy and news. We can find stories of immigrants traveling through Mexico, children separated from their parents in Texas, families losing their homes to fires in California and refugees of war stranded in North Africa. We see a thousand more stories each day in viral Facebook photos, memes on Twitter, messages passed through WhatsApp groups and email lists.
Stories that connect people to the politics of the day are in high demand. And the supply has never been greater. People are, generally speaking, confused by the chaos. Humans look to stories to make sense of the world because in story we find themes, morals, heroes with which we identify. We use language and symbols to organize data and facts into a new story about our day, community, and the time we're living in.
Yet no story lingers in the public consciousness for more than a few days. Politicians and governments use constant storytelling and content to muddy the dominant narrative. When no story lasts more than a few day (or hours) one might even muddy their own narrative to control attention and sow confusion.
How can a story be valuable when our story supply and our story source are seemingly endless?
Maybe in our search for ever more stories we're missing out on the role of interaction between storyteller and listener. (To be clear, I'm talking broadly about the act of storytelling and not referring to just oral, written, video or any other media. Today, and in the past, stories/content/information passes through many channels.)
Marshall Ganz wrote that one way storytelling contributes to movements is by helping people shape their identity. Storytelling gives us the tools to recognize our community and the work needed to support it. This happens, Ganz writes, through culture forging, a process of "constructing shared understandings of how to manage the risks of uncertainty, anomaly, and unpredictability grounded in recollection of how we dealt with past challenges."
Before print, before radio and television, and certainly before the internet we used storytelling to learn from elders, parents, community leaders and others in positions of trust. Stories shared patterns that helped us learn about values, community norms, why the sun rose and set when it did, when to plant crops and how to find water. In other words, storytelling set up a culture. It also contributed to adaptations, new ways of thinking, even revolutions.
People, not words, are how stories shape culture
Today, we spend a far smaller proportion of our story telling and listening time in conversation. Social media, video, and other digitally mediated storytelling delivers us wave after wave of longreads, opinion pieces, and stories packaged as a few words above or under a photo. Pussy hats and Pepe memes are themselves elements of political storytelling.
The evolution of storytelling – as teller and receiver – is constantly evolving. We had thousands of years of oral storytelling, a few hundred years of print, and five or six decades of one to three television channels. We now have 25 years, give or take, of the public internet, including a decade of social media.
Stories about culture, norms, politics and social expectations are no longer delivered by a few familiar, trusted sources. And we no longer tell stories to family, friends and neighbors. We've opened ourselves to everyone on the planet.
It's not just the nature of stories that has rapidly changed, it's who we share them with. This has quickly blown up the role of storytelling and I don't think we, as cultures, governments and community advocates, have recognized the speed of change.
In the same 2001 essay, Ganz wrote about how the people with whom we share stories shapes identity. Note this was written in 2001, not before the internet but before social media and YouTube:
Our individual identities are thus linked with those with whom we share stories – our families, communities, colleagues, faith traditions, nationalities – and with whom we enact them at our family dinners, worship services, holidays, and other cultural celebrations that institutionalize – or transform – their retelling
If storytelling – or, more simply, people's stories – are to play an effective part in connecting people in support of movements we need to understand the role of storytellers and listeners, ritual and trust in storytelling.
I'd like to say we should (and could) get rid of 24 hour news channels and social media. I'm not sure humans have adapted to either. But going backwards isn't a realistic option and regulating or recommending content changes to either opens the door to government-controlled news and storytelling.
Instead, we should look for ways to help change makers, storytellers, organizations and supporters better mediate storytelling. We should actively direct storytelling and content strategy for their power to forge and shape culture. Some ideas:
Teach storytelling. Teach listening. Show people the mechanics and the value of story and content. Show people the value of authenticity.
Help people tell stories about change and better futures. Develop storytellers who can be trusted by friends, family, and coworkers. Create scripts, help people generate ideas, highlight examples of powerful stories – and empowering stories that give people agency.
Stop asking people to share their stories with you. These projects are weird for people, generate half-hearted stories, and rely on you/your org sharing stories. You become middleman, not a trusted storyteller. Instead, guide them in crafting their story and sharing it with their community.
Diminish the value of "viral" content. Social media can be gamed. The algorithms maximize for attention. These are narratives that support movements. They aren't event stories. They're bits of story that cause anger, fury, momentary hope.
Create communities built around trust in our work and organizations. Help people meet and learn from one another.
Community and political leaders are usually viewed as great storytellers. But it's not the just the story, it's the trust they develop telling the story. People become symbols for cultural understanding through their storytelling. Leaders understand this.
Organizations and campaigns can support their leaders through storytelling and content strategy. But they can also work to build up the craft of positive storytelling across their networks. In so doing, we return the power of people and relationships to storytelling.
March 4, 2019 March 4, 2019 content strategyLeave a comment
Content, Measuring Impact
Content is a forest. Don't just count the trees.
One piece of content strategy is knowing why, when, how (and if) you need to post your content in multiple places. That seems like a lot of extra work. A version of this topic about this popped up last week in a Slack community for nonprofit/NGO folks with which I'm involved. Someone posted this question:
Does anyone have any useful insight for blogging? I'm specifically looking at posting to our native website and cross-posting to other sites – Medium, Linkedin, WordPress, etc. Obviously each has their own strengths but it feels like overkill to post to all.
I love this. Where to put content, when, why, and what it should look like come up in every comms and digital program – regardless of whether or not there's a clear content strategy. Every organization sorts this out. And the good ones ask the question over and over again. Talking through it presents a great opportunity to dig into about content strategy, staffing, planning, editorial style, marketing and more.
Isn't putting our content in more than one place just extra work?
Pushing content into multiple channels is probably already happening. Your blog posts, articles, reports, and action alerts are all finding their way into social media posts.
A blog post you write today probably also has an accompanying Facebook post with a headline, text and photo optimized for Facebook engagement. It has a 200 or so character tweet and photo. Maybe it also has a one minute video – an interview with a staff member about the story that can go on YouTube or Instagram.
Doing this much is almost taken for granted. You want to raise awareness of the post, drive clicks to your site and so you create little versions of the story that entice people to click through to find out more.
Measure the forest, not just the trees.
Most of us focus on one featured piece of content – usually a blog post or other page on a website. We're constantly planting new trees in our content forest. We care for each tree – at least for a day or two – by telling everyone "hey, go look at the tree." We measure page views and Facebook likes, Instagram followers and retweets.
We're often answering the "should I also put our content over there" using a cost-benefit equation that can't be defined. Of course, we're going to create the main post or piece of content. We have to do that. (You have to have at least one tree, right?)
How do we know if a tree on the website, on Medium, or on LinkedIn is worth it?
What if we could measure the value of the forest instead of each tree? We know a healthy forest needs different kinds of trees. Some live. Some don't.
Some trees serve as home for squirrels and birds. Others produce twigs eaten by deer. Some create shade the keeps things cool and others drop leaves that replenish the forest floor.
Each person interacting with a story or piece of content (a tree) is getting something special from it. We just don't have great ways of measuring individual value. But if someone important to us gets all their value from a Facebook tree then we better make sure that all the content they need is on Facebook. Other people might be email newsletter and Facebook consumers. Others get their nutrition from Medium. And maybe a little ego-soothing LinkedIn first thing in the morning.
A thriving forest is alive, evolving and growing. So is your content.
There's no one way to care for a healthy forest. And what works today may not be worth doing a year from now. Know how people engage with content. Don't just optimize the website for stickiness or assume you can create great Facebook posts that get people to go read the full article. Consider the people who spend most of their time in Facebook and make sure they get what you need them to get while there. If you can show that your people are on Medium then don't look that as extra work, look at it as necessary and do it well.
Review your approach regularly. Don't be afraid to shift gears, test, put more time into one part of the forest for a while.
Measuring the forest.
Figure out how to measure for the forest, not the individual trees. Don't rely on page views, clicks, opens and raw audience size. That's all great stuff. Do measure it. But don't base your decisions about how to spend your time on it.
Here's an idea: ask people qualitative questions about your content and it's impact on their work, conversations with family or friends, their ability to take meaningful action. Ask them in January. Then ask those same people again in May and October. Do they recall content? Do they remember where they found it? Did they take an action or make a donation as a result? Did they change their own economic or political behavior? Did they send it to someone? How and why?
Many of these actions don't happen at grandiose scales. The numbers may not wow you but tangible measures of action, empathy and engagement can be the difference between content that's distributed and content that has impact. And that's a helpful number to pin down when trying to define the difference between content strategy and content production.
January 14, 2019 February 28, 2019 blogging, Facebook, instagramLeave a comment
Content, Engagement, Membership, Social Media and Networking, Storytelling, Strategy
Bright Ideas: O Facebook What Art Thou?
Here's the latest edition of Bright Ideas where we take a look at changing Facebook relevance may mean to content, storytelling and marketing. Also, why is BuzzFeed doing tote bags? And new jobs for great people. Subscribe here:
Bright Ideas is a biweekly(ish) newsletter sharing ideas and updates on content strategy and storytelling for advocacy and social good.
O Facebook, What Art Thou? I'm not going to make the case that Facebook is going away. At least not anytime soon. But the obstacles it faces, largely challenges of its own making, should be of enormous concern to any nonprofit campaigner, fundraiser or leader. (And present exciting opportunities for positive change, I hope.)
First, let's look at how anti-user Facebook's core product, the ad manager (ha, I mean the news feed), has become. Despite Facebook's self-proclaimed return to being a place for friends in 2018, it's pretty much a visual (and targeted) classified ads platform. Example: at 4 pm last Wednesday I pulled up my Facebook feed and scrolled through the first 25 posts. Twelve were from pages I've followed at one time or another. Five were ads. Eight were from people I know. Five of those were straight up reshares of page content with no context.
So much for friends.
Second, the world that analyzes these things is full of stories about declining Facebook use among people under 25 and Europeans, among others. This parallels data about falling interest in the US. Meanwhile, Facebook does seem to have followed through on its promise to deprioritize news by sending less traffic to media sites – a hit to online publishers that's unlikely, in the short term, to do anything about public trust in media.
Where does that leave us? In the short term, probably in the same place we've been for a couple years now. Facebook is huge and any organization willing to put real resources behind the creation and advertising of engaging content that can help bring people (and their data) to Facebook is going to be okay.
But can nonprofits as well as media orgs (including nonprofit journalism) continue to rely on social media to drive growth and visits to their websites? And can nonprofits (and even the consultants surrounding them) continue relying on a platform that seems okay absolving itself of political, social and human collateral damage?
Hey, I'm on Facebook. It's complicated. But somehow I think we need to aim for more human-scale relationship building that don't outsource targeting of lookalike audiences to an unregulated corporation.
That means, I think, more tools people can use to create news and fewer platforms for sharing news. More members and fewer audiences. More teaching people to tell stories and less talking about storytelling.
If you think this edition of Bright Ideas is interesting (dare we say useful?), please forward it along or share it on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. You could share it on Instgram but that would be weird. Get this from a friend? Want to subscribe? Head over here.
Just say no to Trumpian Drift. How advocates, journalists, leaders tell stories of migrants and refugees says a lot about how society views citizenship and basic human rights. Masha Gessen urges journalists to choose their words and stories with more care because the scale of problems facing us requires smarter – and more scaled – reporting. She points this out in the quote below and it's important for advocates to be aware of this, hold media to account, and to also be very conscious of how every story is framed in their own communications:
"Like most coverage, but perhaps more than most coverage, the writing about immigration has been suffering from what I think of as Trumpian drift. Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers—when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry. Journalists increasingly buy into the framing of immigration policy as a strategy for preventing people from entering the United States. And then there is the conspicuous use of the words caravan and migrant to refer to people fleeing for safety.
– Masha Gessen
Adding value by adding values. This is a headline I can get behind because I see nonprofits, unintentionally in most cases, making pitches for financial support and action that reflect the righteousness of their work as though it's assumed every member or reader had a hand in creating their theory of change. Ben Terrett writes about how successful product design does a great job solving user problems but often shows no regard for public values (using the apropos and timely example of scooters littering most major cities).
Nonprofits and civil society are – or should be – modeling inclusive behavior that helps all consider the impact our work has on the whole community: the powerless, not just members, wealthy donors or the loudest voices. Thanks to Paul de Gregorio for sharing this one.
The constant pressure of tracking everything is burning out journalists. And I know that many activists and campaigners feel the same way as reporters John Crowley spoke to for this piece at Nieman Lab. A few things: (1) Stop reporting on Trump's tweets. They exist only to overwhelm media bandwidth and make everything about him. (2) We hear a lot about tech solutions to info overload, turning off notifications, and self-care. All good (phone notifications are truly evil). But, as Crowley points out, much of this is driven by management and leaders who support systems that place professional and personal value on constant work.
Does climate fiction lead to climate action? Only if readers are also accessing cultural messages that effective action is possible. Researcher Matthew Schneider-Mayerson surveyed US readers of 19 works "cli-fi" to understand how climate storytelling may help shape advocacy and opinions on climate change.
So…who actually does what in high-performing digital comms team? Every organization is churning out content. Very few are well-staffed for it. The good folks at Contentius put together this smart field guide to content roles.
Get your BuzzFeed tote bag now. It's free when you make your $100 membership payment. Pretty cynical tone to this piece by Christine Schmidt for NiemanLab but it seems meaningful that a private media company with a household name is scrambling to try every membership experiment it can. Curious how membership as a BuzzWord hooks on here but I'm rooting for the great writers there.
This great little piece from Transparency International shares five ways to help people engage in campaigns. It's insights that go beyond anti-corruption activism to support most any issue and the communications around it. All orgs could benefit from a user-centered focus on accessibility, safety, relevance, credibility and responsiveness.
Anyone going to (or involved in) the #Reframe Conference on Mental Health and the Media? Looks interesting!
Do good work
A few great roles at the intersection of digital, content, creative and campaigning. Have one to share? Click reply and let me know. Have an idea of your next perfect role but not finding it? Send me a note.
Chicago-based Hearken helps newsrooms listen to and engage the public on the way to building public trust and stronger stories. They're hiring US-based engagement consultants to work with their 150 (and growing) clients. Engagement consultants should have newsroom experience but, as the description says, "please don't be discouraged if your title doesn't include engagement-related words."
Free Press has several campaigning/organizing roles open: Campaign Manager, Online Community Manager and Digital Manager. Free Press is leading the fight for net neutrality in the US by, in part, engaging tens of thousands of volunteer activists. The team is based in western Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and remote locations around the US.
New Citizenship Project is doing smart work helping orgs and campaigns engage people in more meaningful and powerful ways. The London-based group is bringing on a Strategist. Check it out if you're over that way.
United for Iran is hiring a Civic Technology Program Director based in Berkeley. Great group and should be a wonderful opportunity to do innovative work. Note: must be fluent in Farsi.
I don't know much about Communitas America but this Program Manager role that will run coworking and a social venture accelerator looks super interesting. Based in the Bronx.
Greenpeace is filling two Media and Digital Analyst roles to guide the global organization's tracking and learning from social media, news, and all the other bits that fly around the internets. Flexible location.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is hiring a DC-based Digital Director.
Campaign Legal Center in Washington, DC, is hiring a Multimedia Strategist.
The BlueGreen Alliance is hiring a Denver-based Colorado State Coordinator to grow and run the Alliance's work there.
Here's a google spreadsheet full of job lists, email groups and online job boards where you'll find roles like these posted. It's editable (for now) so feel free to comment or add a resource.
What's on your "you should read this" list?
Here's a short version of mine. Read either of these? Have anything to add? Hit reply and share what you're digging into (or at least hoping to with any theoretical extra time).
The Art of Gathering: How we meet and why it matters by Priya Parker. Social media means we're constantly interacting with one another but I don't think we know how to really come together in beneficial ways.
Selfie: How we became so self-obsessed and what it's doing to us by Will Stoor. A tour through the history and science of the idea of self and how that's playing out in a world that seems to value narcissism over community (which, ironically, is the opposite of centuries of human culture and storytelling).
Question? Idea to share? Let's talk. Reply or email ted@brightplus3.com.
Don't hesitate to forward this to others or pass along the subscribe page link.
December 11, 2018 February 28, 2019 Bright IdeasLeave a comment
Content, Kicking Ass, Measuring Impact
Do you create content, measure it and still have no idea if content matters?
You are not alone if you answered yes (or even maybe/I'm not sure) to the question in the headline above. There is a disconnect along the creation, measurement, impact and learning path when it comes to content.
We set up The Content Survey to help you better understand how to develop and measure content that drives social change. Here are some preliminary results (and check out the slides below, too).
Who Took the Content Survey
67 organizations participated in the survey. Of that group…
30 are small groups with under 20 staff.
9 are mid-sized organizations with 20 – 50 staff members.
11 are large groups of 51 – 100 staff.
17 are very large organizations with over 100 staff.
The leading ways in which individuals saw their organization achieving its mission were direct advocacy and education. Groups also use research, community organizing, policy making and community service to achieve their mission.
There's no clear correlation between organization size and having a written content strategy. Twenty-three percent of small groups have a content strategy — same as large organizations.
Overall, only one in four groups report having a content strategy.
Does Content Strategy = More Powerful Content?
Continue reading "Do you create content, measure it and still have no idea if content matters?" →
March 11, 2015 February 28, 2019 content strategy, content survey1 Comment
Take The Content Survey
Chances are, if you're working in a nonprofit or campaign you're spending a good chunk of time writing, editing, shooting photos and video, or maybe commenting on ad copy or Facebook post language. Maybe you're putting together language for the next email newsletter, activist alert or infographic for that new report your research team put together.
Click to take The Content Survey.
All that content we're putting out in the world are the atoms of advocacy — they're the bits and pieces that form the dots, build the networks and create change.
from Bright+3 and Echo & Co.
But are we able to make sense of how all the blog posts, reports, emails, videos, infographics and (of course) clever animated gifs are advancing our work? That's a question we're continually wrestling with in our research and client work.
We wanted to dig a little deeper and last month released a small query for the community — The (mini) Content Survey. It was a (very) brief questionnaire to get a sense of how effective people felt their content was and how they assess that effectiveness. The most valuable information came as open-ended responses to the question "What's the one thing you wish you knew about your content (but don't)?"
Are we smart enough about psychology to have the right context when creating content?
And another:
The extent to which people are learning from content. It's hard to measure the impact of "educational" content.
Most boiled down to how we know if content is motivating action:
What is the reader's emotional reaction and what does that move them to do?
These are difficult metrics to gather and evaluate (but it can be done). The question is – do these metrics help (and do we have the resources to learn and act on them)?
Now we're taking The Content Survey a step further. We teamed up with Echo & Co. to launch and analyze a more complete set of questions – though just 10 questions in all. Next month, we'll begin reporting back on our findings to the community at NTC in Austin (and for anyone who asks and wants to learn more).
To be clear, we're looking for feedback from anyone involved in the content creation process so if you're a digital strategist, fundraiser, organizer or leader, please take a few minutes to take the survey here: http://thecontentsurvey.com/
We'd love it if you would take The Content Survey. Ten questions. Thanks!
February 18, 2015 February 28, 2019 SurveyLeave a comment
Content, Measuring Impact, Strategy
What DO you know about your content?
Content is everywhere. For starters: blog and Facebook posts, tweets and webinars, infographics and Slideshare presentations, online and print advertisements, email newsletters, action alerts and fundraising appeals, photo galleries and research reports, annual reports, magazines and books. That's just a start.
And let's not forget the dozens or hundreds (or sometimes thousands) more web pages that tell people who you are, how you work, why you do what you do and (super important!) why the reader should support you with their own time and money.
Meanwhile, these readers (donors, supporters, activists, media, legislators and others), are (we hope) relentlessly reading, sharing and taking action with through constant connections to smartphones and tablets.
What's missing? A clear sense of what works, when, why and a plan for how to move to that spot. When we talk with executive directors, fundraisers, communicators and digital strategists, all report that their organizations are spending more time and money than ever on content. They wonder if they're doing the right thing (and how to tell).
What works and why? We're finding out, starting with the (mini) content survey.
Take it now.
What Works and Why?
It's time to start answering that question. We're starting with a survey (two surveys, really) that brings together data from across the nonprofit sector about content spending, staffing, strategy as well as goals, methods and metrics. We'll also be talking with leaders and practitioners to collect stories that give context to the data. When we find patterns in the data that helps explain success (or failure) we'll dive deeper and hear from people doing the work.
Wait. Two surveys? Sure. The first is a mini-survey. Just three questions to help scratch the surface and identify some key questions YOU (not just us) have.
A survey, after all, should be about what the user needs. Just like great content.
Take the (mini) content survey now. Thanks!
January 22, 2015 February 28, 2019 Leave a comment


Link Chain Photo Frame Silver Coloured Finish, a stylish way to display you favourite photo! Photo Frame with lovely Chain detail from Tozai.
A beautiful and stylish 6″ x 4″ photo frame which comes nicely presented in a stylish box, ideal for gifting.
Great gift to suit any home. Why not pop your favourite photo of friend or family inside for best effect?
Metal with silvered finish and wooden stand.
Size: 15cm x 10cm photo size, 17 x 12cm frame.


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text:
[LATOUR Louis Bertrand de] [1701 - 1780]& DE LAVAL, Bishop [1623 - 1708]
Mémoires Sur La Vie De M. De Laval, Premier Évêque De Québec.
Place Published: A Cologne
Publisher: Chez Jean Frédéric Motiens
A RARE AND IMPORTANT BOOK ON EARLY QUEBEC RELIGION
First edition. 12mo (164 x 100 mm). vii, [1]-2l5pp. Newer modern rich burgundy leather, new end papers, with title in gilt stamped on black leather label and 1761 date in gilt stamped at bottom of spine. Inside page are pleasantly age toned evenly throughout. Attractive book in fine condition. French text.
This rare biography of François Xavier de Laval de Montigny [1623-1708], the first Bishop of Quebec (1623-1708) contains much useful information about the late 17th century history of the region. Although the terminal leaf indicates this to be the end of the first volume, only one was published.
The earliest biography of François Xavier de Laval de Montigny [1623-1708], first bishop of Quebec (1674-88) and one of the most powerful and influential figures in seventeenth century New France.
Although Sabin cites the first edition of this work, Paris, 1761, as existing in two volumes, only one volume is all that was published.
A scarce little book that Winsor says "is worth looking into, though not with the object of accepting all its statements. Frontenac is bitterly attacked, his faults magnified, and many serious charges preferred against him."
Streeter Sale 129. Sabin 39216; Dionne 653
Fine. Item #2245
See all items in Canadiana, Quebec, Religion
See all items by LATOUR Louis Bertrand de, Bishop DE LAVAL, 1701 - 1780, 1623 - 1708