Esperanto as Religion

Keep it simple?

William J. Phoebus was an early advocate of Ido, and in support of that language, he sent several letters to the New York Sun (as well as other newspapers). During early 1909, there appeared in the Sun sort of a correspondence between Phoebus and an an advocate for Esperanto, William Parker Bonbright. I will have to cover his side of the conversation at some point, but for now, realize that the two were holding a back-and-forth in the pages of the Sun. At this point, I don’t think I’ve uncovered the extent of their correspondence.

Briefly, Phoebus was a forty-nine-year-old man living in Brooklyn. He had been active in the Esperanto movement only a few months earlier, but when he switched over to Ido, he did so with a vengeance. With the zealotry of a convert, he proceeded to attack the Esperanto movement. In 1909, Phoebus is describing the Esperantists as holding a religion, a (erroneous) view that still crops up, as I’ve seen it recently.

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Paris Police Learn Esperanto

We're ready.
Where are the Esperantists?

Large, unruly crowds of Esperantists, that’s what the Paris police were concerned about. Sure, they gave their reasons, but do we really take them seriously? In all seriousness, they very well may have been concealing their real reason. After all, there were concerns in 1914 about anarchists using Esperanto. Gavrilo Princip, the man whose actions set off World War I, was an anarchist, though probably not the Esperanto-speaking kind (despite that his name works beautifully in Esperanto).

And the Paris police had an ample reason to learn Esperanto. In 1914, the Esperanto movement was still in its franca periodo (French period), the era in which Paris was the center of the Esperanto movement (France still has a strong Esperanto movement). And the upcoming Universala Kongreso was scheduled to occur in Paris that year.

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A Woman. A Journalist. An Esperantist

Matheson, about 1897

Florence Matheson’s moment of fame had nothing to do with Esperanto. I researching her life, the only statement that she had anything to do with the Esperanto movement comes from the March 6, 1918 Washington Times, even though she was both a journalist and engaged in many social organizations. Her membership in the “Esperanto Society” isn’t particularly surprising, as much as mystifying. But a little research identified it.

The Times article is one of those period things, in which the travels of more (or less) prominent people ended up in the newspaper. Judith Martin in one of her Miss Manners column cited the old adage that a woman’s name properly appears in the newspapers only three times: when she is born, when she is married, and when she dies. Martin forgot to add “and whenever she travels.” The Times gives a brief biography of of their subject.

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Russian Censors Study Esperanto

Esperanto: A force for
free speech!

It’s not like they were seeking to bring the world together in unity and peace. They were more afraid of what the Esperantists might be writing. This was one of the worries that Marcus Zamenhof, Ludivick’s father, had about his son’s creation. New language: not going to go over well with the Czarist officials. It’s entirely possible that Marcus Zamenhof’s motivation for destroying the predecessor to Esperanto, lingwe uniwersala, was not so much “don’t waste your life on this crazy dream,” but “don’t jeopardize my job,” since the elder Zamenhof had become a censor.

Marcus Zamenhof was still alive when Esperanto came to the attention of the Russian censors. He couldn’t have been happy about it. The censor’s office probably wasn’t happy when the censor assigned to study the language “died within a couple of weeks of learning the language.” Least happy would be the poor man who died, though I don’t think we can implicate Esperanto in the matter.

The United States has a long-standing tradition of freedom of the press, and so there hasn’t been a need for censors. The Sedition Act of 1798 was a notable blot on this tradition, and ironic given the role of seditious newspapers in spurring the Revolution. Its successor, the Sedition Act of 1918 was upheld by the Supreme Court, but subsequent decisions would seem to make clear a constitutional right to criticize the government.

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Esperanto in Sweden

Can't print them fast enough!

For the readers of the Wilmar Tribune on March 4, 1908, the strength of the Esperanto movement in Sweden might have been news, or perhaps not. Minnesota has a concentration of American whose ancestors came from Sweden or other Scandinavian countries. The Wilmar Tribune had a column of Scandinavian News, with the subhead of “Principal Events Gathered in the Old Scandinavian Countries.” Those readers possibly knew just how strong the Esperanto movement was in early twentieth-century Sweden.

And it was strong. When Esperantists in Upsala, Sweden started an Esperanto club in 1891, not only were they founding the second Esperanto group, they were founding the first that wasn’t built on the bones of a Volapük society. The 1904 Jarlibro Esperantista has slightly more than seven pages of new Esperantists from Sweden, from Aborrträsk to Yxno (Upsala itself is responsible for about fifty names).

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An Esperantist at the White House

Roosevelt giving a speech.
Probably not in Esperanto.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have been the President. However, the newspapers of March 3, 1908 make it clear that, however briefly, and to what little effect, there was an Esperanto speaker in the White House on March 2, 1908.[1] In my earlier post, I noted some doubt, given the news reports, as to whether the meeting took place or not, but the later articles make it clear that the meeting did take place.

This much is also clear: Roosevelt did not promote Esperanto at any time. When Edmond Privat showed up, Roosevelt’s universally ignored presidential order that federal agencies use simplified spelling had resulted in just ridicule for the President. Even a bull moose was unlikely to tangle with that again. Plus, was in the last year of his presidency. He had probably already decided that he wasn’t going to run again, so why take on the advocacy of a cause like Esperanto?

Many newspapers covered Edmond Privat’s brief meeting with Roosevelt, and some of them even got the Esperantist’s name right. The New York Times, (“Edmond Privato”), the New York Sun, and the Stark County Democrat (“Edmond Privot”) were not among these. Privat was trying to encourage the study of Esperanto in public schools, an issue that just kept coming up.

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Photos, Fear, and OS X

Cool new icon!

It’s a no-brainer that iPhoto needed to be rewritten from the ground up, no matter what they called the end product. Over the last couple years, I’ve found my iPhoto library increasingly slow, wonky, and crash-prone (to the extent that I actually made a new version of my library). So, I’ve been looking forward to the arrival of Photos for OSX, which Apple graciously allowed for test driving today.

First: a niggling complaint. They seem to have named this with the idea of making Google searches difficult. Photos, because a more generic name wasn’t actually possible. While searching for “iPhoto” gives you some pretty specific results, “Photos” is just a disaster as a search term. I understand that Apple is dropping the whole i-thing (expect a future iMac to just be a Mac), but have you every tried searching for information about “Pages” or even worse, “Numbers”?

I’ve got about 74,000 photos in my iPhoto library. Just a few snaps, really. I also keep coming back to a project to scan, date, and geotag the photos I took on film (remember film?). My iPhoto database is a tidy 215 GB. Really, nothing. Why should this be a problem?

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