Unlighting Old Joe and Seeking the Tao

Curmie comes by his soubriquet honestly.  Most of what he writes about falls under the category “Can you believe this shit?”.  He’s got a half dozen topics he’s thinking about discussing on this blog, including two partially-written essays: all are about incredible stupidity, criminality, or intentional cruelty on the part of politicians, education administrators, lawyers, and similar malefactors.  Today, though, he’s celebrating something good.  Make a note, Gentle Reader, this doesn’t happen very often.

The campus of the University of Birmingham in the UK, where Curmie received his MA forty-something years ago, is in the Edgbaston area of the city.  If you were just plonked down there and didn’t know you were in an industrial city with a population of well over a million people, you might reasonably believe that you were in a suburban environment.  Curmie will describe the relevance of this observation in a moment.

Many college and university campuses have one iconic structure that generations of students will immediately recognize.  Even a photograph will inspire in alumni at least a twinge, if not indeed a wave, of nostalgia.  At Curmie’s undergrad school, Dartmouth College, that building is Baker Library.  When the University of Birmingham razed the library that Curmie had used there, he shrugged.  It was an excellent library, but as a building it was damned ugly (not as ugly as the new one, but that’s another matter). 

But even consider messing with Old Joe, and Curmie’s on the next plane to join the protest.  “Old Joe,” of course, does not refer to our immediate past President, but to the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower.  (Yes, Curmie had to look up its official title.  He may have forgotten it, but frankly it’s more likely he never knew it.  Old Joe was Old Joe.)

It is an impressive edifice; Wikipedia declares it the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world even today, over a century after its construction in the first decade of the twentieth century.  (And, hey, if you can’t trust Wikipedia…)  Back in Curmie’s time in Brum, Old Joe was visible for miles around; apparently that’s still true today.

Photos of Old Joe, one suspects, appear more often in the university’s marketing than those of all the other campus buildings combined.  Old Joe and the University of Birmingham are inseparable.  It’s no surprise, then, that the university wanted to incorporate the clock tower into its celebration of its 125^th anniversary.  There have recently been light shows on Old Joe, as you can see in the photograph above.  But, according to a post on the university’s Facebook page, last night’s show was the last until autumn.

Why?  Because the lights would interfere with the nesting season of the university’s resident peregrine falcons!  See why the fact that the campus may be in a big city but not really urban matters?

Curmie absolutely loves this.  Yes, we’re going to celebrate our anniversary, but we’re not going to mess with our friends to do so.  It is a small gesture, to be sure.  This isn’t going to end the war in Ukraine, solve racism or unemployment, or prevent TFG from destroying the hitherto close relationship between the US and UK. 

But it matters.  It is definition by example of locating ourselves within a larger environment, one where we are defined not only by what we do, but often by what we don’t.  Back in the days when Curmie was teaching Eastern Civilizations, or, more recently, Asian Theatre, he’d show images of Chinese scrolls, many of which were landscapes.  There were people there, but you had to look for them.  (An example is linked here.)  We matter in the universe, but we are not the universe.

In its decision to respect its avian residents, the U of B has taken a small but significant step towards following the Tao.