16 thoughts on “♫ Isn’t She Lovely ♫”

1. So nice to get some more puns and jokes about Lettuce in UK politics, which are always a mix of alarming and entertaining. As here. And lovely to hear Stevie Wonder’s song and see that he pronounces the Arabic letter 3ain correctly when he tells us, correctly, that Aayisha means Life. This will help my Arabic students. But what is really nice in the Kurt Vonnegut sense of “if that ain’t nice, I don’t know what is” is that I arrived at your Filosofa’s Word while tryning to find an almost out of print novel called Filosofa’s Republic, reviewed below in an entertaining blog that i also discovered. If you are interested, I can recommend a brilliant blog from Daressalam Tanzania (linking up nicely again to Filosofa republics and words. The author of that blog “The Mikocheni Report” is also entertaining exchanges on lettuce.

   Here you go, then, everything you may want to know about Filosofa’s Republic short of buying it for $150 from Abe’s Books:

   http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/work/filosofas-republic/
   In 1989, Anthony Daniels published a satire called Filosofa’s Republic under the name Thursday Msigwa, described on the book jacket as “the pen-name of who says in a letter to the publisher that ‘biographical details interfere with the proper estimate of an author’s work,’ and added that disclosure was in any case impolitic for him in his present country of residence.” Yes, that is a blank where the name “Anthony Daniels” should be. At the time of the book’s publication, Daniels was still covering African politics for the Spectator under another pseudonym, Edward Theberton, and all of this mystery was necessitated by Daniels’ criticisms, both in this book and in the Spectator, of African political leaders who did not receive criticism warmly.
   The “filosofa” in question here is “His Excellency The Brother-President of The United Democratic Human Mutualist Republic of Ngombia Filosofa Dr. Cicero B. Nyayaya”, clearly a satire on Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanzania during much of the time that Daniels lived there and who referred to himself as mwalimu or teacher. Where Nyerere had his Arusha Declaration, Nyayaya has his Harisha Declaration. Like Nyerere, Filosofa implements a rigid political structure designed to provide control at the most granular level possible. He calls it “The Law of Eights”, and it requires that “every eighth household should be represented [meaning, monitored] by a Party member”, eight of whom report to a higher-ranking Party member, and so on. Also like Nyerere, Filosofa promotes a political theory (“Human Mutualism”) that, while claiming to be “neither communist nor anticommunist, but simply the expression in the African context of the highest ideals of Man”, nevertheless embraces all the hallmarks of communism: collectivized farming, forced equality and one-party rule.
   If the internal contradictions inherent in Filosofa’s ridiculously long title haven’t already betrayed any claim of devotion to equality, then surely the nature of his political hierarchy does so. But while Filosofa’s politics might suggest menace and hardship, what actually results is irrelevance and futility. Daniels divides the book into chapters that begin with one of Filosofa’s maxims and end with a vignette from daily life in fictional Ngombia (based on Daniels’ own experiences in Tanzania) that shows that maxim to be completely ineffectual against the tide of local culture. Filosofa’s promises of justice are juxtaposed with scenes of backroom judicial corruption, and his calls for “a new kind of Man” are shown to be helpless against normal human vice. But Daniels isn’t criticising communism alone. He also demonstrates the inability of religious missionaries (both African and European) to change people’s behavior, and he therefore seems to suggest that foreign ideas of all kinds find it hard to take root in African soil.
   His argument is serious, but his heart is light. Daniels clearly has great fondness for the people he met in Africa and enjoys telling these stories. Although this is officially a work of fictional storytelling (his only one), it reads much like his travel books, and to an avid reader of his work, Anthony Daniels the sincere travel writer sometimes seems to poke through the satire. This complicates the work’s already complex provenance. The story is told in the first-person by a narrator who is a white, English accountant, but Daniels chose an African pseudonym. The book jacket says “Thursday Msigwa… [writes] through the eyes of a white visitor to Ngombia”, so is Anthony Daniels writing as an African who is writing a fictional satire as a white Englishman?
   It doesn’t matter. The characters are too likeable, the stories too charming and the point made too well for the reader to care.

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2. Hello! so nice to see more of the lettuce saga so I can contribute jokes and puns from Maine to the twittersphere in East Africa that I plug into to learn Swahili…And thanks for the lovely Stevie Wonder song – I never knew there was a mention of an Aisha in it. Now I know how to teach my beginning Arabic students how to pronounce the letter 3ain which he does very well in singing “Aayeesha’, which does indeed mean life in the language. Lastly thank you for diverting me from my search online for this novel called Filosofa’s Republic, which brought me here to your Filosofa’s Word (BabuLayla aka Michaelthescot):

   http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/work/filosofas-republic/
   In 1989, Anthony Daniels published a satire called Filosofa’s Republic under the name Thursday Msigwa, described on the book jacket as “the pen-name of who says in a letter to the publisher that ‘biographical details interfere with the proper estimate of an author’s work,’ and added that disclosure was in any case impolitic for him in his present country of residence.” Yes, that is a blank where the name “Anthony Daniels” should be. At the time of the book’s publication, Daniels was still covering African politics for the Spectator under another pseudonym, Edward Theberton, and all of this mystery was necessitated by Daniels’ criticisms, both in this book and in the Spectator, of African political leaders who did not receive criticism warmly.
   The “filosofa” in question here is “His Excellency The Brother-President of The United Democratic Human Mutualist Republic of Ngombia Filosofa Dr. Cicero B. Nyayaya”, clearly a satire on Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanzania during much of the time that Daniels lived there and who referred to himself as mwalimu or teacher. Where Nyerere had his Arusha Declaration, Nyayaya has his Harisha Declaration. Like Nyerere, Filosofa implements a rigid political structure designed to provide control at the most granular level possible. He calls it “The Law of Eights”, and it requires that “every eighth household should be represented [meaning, monitored] by a Party member”, eight of whom report to a higher-ranking Party member, and so on. Also like Nyerere, Filosofa promotes a political theory (“Human Mutualism”) that, while claiming to be “neither communist nor anticommunist, but simply the expression in the African context of the highest ideals of Man”, nevertheless embraces all the hallmarks of communism: collectivized farming, forced equality and one-party rule.
   If the internal contradictions inherent in Filosofa’s ridiculously long title haven’t already betrayed any claim of devotion to equality, then surely the nature of his political hierarchy does so. But while Filosofa’s politics might suggest menace and hardship, what actually results is irrelevance and futility. Daniels divides the book into chapters that begin with one of Filosofa’s maxims and end with a vignette from daily life in fictional Ngombia (based on Daniels’ own experiences in Tanzania) that shows that maxim to be completely ineffectual against the tide of local culture. Filosofa’s promises of justice are juxtaposed with scenes of backroom judicial corruption, and his calls for “a new kind of Man” are shown to be helpless against normal human vice. But Daniels isn’t criticising communism alone. He also demonstrates the inability of religious missionaries (both African and European) to change people’s behavior, and he therefore seems to suggest that foreign ideas of all kinds find it hard to take root in African soil.
   His argument is serious, but his heart is light. Daniels clearly has great fondness for the people he met in Africa and enjoys telling these stories. Although this is officially a work of fictional storytelling (his only one), it reads much like his travel books, and to an avid reader of his work, Anthony Daniels the sincere travel writer sometimes seems to poke through the satire. This complicates the work’s already complex provenance. The story is told in the first-person by a narrator who is a white, English accountant, but Daniels chose an African pseudonym. The book jacket says “Thursday Msigwa… [writes] through the eyes of a white visitor to Ngombia”, so is Anthony Daniels writing as an African who is writing a fictional satire as a white Englishman?
   It doesn’t matter. The characters are too likeable, the stories too charming and the point made too well for the reader to care.

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3. A lovely song for his daughter. Get well soon 🤞

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   • Not really ill, my friend, just the same ol’ issues with the heart that doesn’t want to play nice some days. Thanks …

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     • Glad it was nothing new!

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4. Pingback: Isn’t She Lovely. |jilldennison.com | Ramblings of an Occupy Liberal

5. Will be thinking of you Jill, and sending vibes for you to feel better.
   🌸🏵🌹🌺🌻🌼🌷🐺🐺🐺🐺

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   • Awwww … thanks my friend! I woke this morning with a rare burst of energy … it lasted for about an hour until I was completely done-in. Sigh.

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     • Oooh pace yourself Jill.
       Jolly, Joyful, keep Gwannie on a slender, tender leash.

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       • Hi Uncle Woger … it’s me, Jolly! Joyful’s not here, ’cause Gwammie sended her to check on you and Ms. Sheila, but I’ll twy to put a leash on Gwammie … you know how stubborn she is though!

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         • Good luck with that Jolly 😄

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           • I know, Uncle Woger … it ain’t easy 🙄

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             • 😄

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6. An experience I never had. Sounds like a good one.

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7. Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.

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   • Thank you, Ned!!!

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