Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 August 25

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August 25

First Nations and Native American men and long hair

I have read several of the articles here and may just have not seen the answer. My query is with respect to First Nations and Native American men having long hair. I know this is culturally important, but am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me as to the cultural significance? Thanks. 50.101.202.203 (talk) 00:43, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Interesting question! For starters, you can see the Wikipedia article on long hair. There is a brief paragraph or two, under the heading "Native Americans". Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It is a start. I will do some more googling and perhaps will be able to add to the reference above. 50.101.202.203 (talk) 22:16, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• There is not one answer, as there are over 500 different tribes, just in the U.S. Some have long hair, some do not. Some tribes favored scalplock or roach style. Some had free-flowing long hair, some braids. There is no single style. GregJackP Boomer! 23:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

It's the very first item on TVTropes' Hollywood Indian Dress Code. This has been the rule since before many Natives today were alive, and old Hollywood is the leading source for images of "traditional". Notwithstanding those who do it for other reasons, many are just trying to "keep it real". They're not black enough for dreadlocks, white enough for crewcuts or brownish-yellow enough for bowlcuts. According to Hollywood, not me.

Part of the reason longhaired Hollywood Indians took over is long hair flows dramatically in the wind, bounces dramatically on a horse and whips back dramatically when a cowboy shoots them. Works for pro wrestlers, too, of any race. If you're a Hollywood Indian Princess, you get more flowers per square inch and it can hang over your nipples for a PG rating (or many moons ago, to appease the thunder gods). InedibleHulk (talk) 02:51, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Whole Earth Catalog copyright

I'm attempting to review an image from Commons, File:Whole Earth Catalog (1975) - Picture fuddling by computer (15418025739).jpg, but I'm missing some relevant copyright information. The Flickr source has a clear cc-by license tag, but that doesn't address everything: this is a photo of a page from the 1975 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog. Has anyone a copy of this work that's available to check? If the publisher included a copyright statement, the work is still under copyright, but if not, it's in the public domain. Nyttend (talk) 05:34, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

My copy is in deep storage, but surely still copyright by the Portola Institute, the Point Foundation &/or Penguin Books (distributor in 1975) or Random House (publisher in later years). Perhaps an email to Online Archive of California - Guide to the Whole Earth Catalog Records, 1969-1986? -- Paulscrawl (talk) 05:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

WorldCat record for The (Updated) last whole earth catalog : access to tools - 16th. ed, 1975. Publisher: Point (Foundation) [San Francisco]; Distributor: Penguin. ISBN 9780140035445 - OCLC 1890408 -- Paulscrawl (talk) 06:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Did the Whole Earth Catalog reprint content from other publications? That's not my recollection, but I never looked at it much. Look at the right-hand side of the image: this is obviously a letter to the editor of a magazine, and the magazine in question is presumably the one named above the letter: Popular Mechanics. The letter itself mentions Popular Science magazine. I tried a Google Books search for the first 10 words of the short article (as a phrase), and did find it in a magazine. But, curiously, this was Popular Science magazine (specifically, page 56 of the April 1971 issue, as part of Arthur Fisher's "Science Newsfront" column) and not Popular Mechanics, it was at the bottom and not the top of the page, and there wasn't a letter to the editor beside it. Still, it's typographically identical to the one attributed to the Whole Earth Catalog, so presumably the same identical item was published in more than one magazine. To determine whether there was a copyright notice, you'd need to find the first publication. --65.94.50.17 (talk) 06:45, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

(ec)

WEC usage may fall under fair use, as it added editorial comment and reviews to short extracts, but that does not apply to taking their gleanings of copyright material out of WEC's fair use context. An independent case for fair use would need to be made.

Most likely all editorial content copyright the Point Foundation, at least as of 1985, when the online community The WELL was founded. From p. 142 of Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. 2006.

"Whatever profits the system made would be split fifty-fifty with the Point Foundation, non-profit owner of the Whole Earth publications. Brand accepted the financial arrangement and took day-to-day responsibility for the system."

I spent an otherwise academically abortive freshman college year pretending to work in the campus library while systematically browsing the library's holdings described in this very edition of The Whole Earth Catalog - a great liberal and liberating education in itself. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 06:57, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Both my copy of the The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971) and my cherished beat up copy of The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1980) have copyright notices. -Modocc (talk) 11:48, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

In any case you still need to find the first publication of the content. --65.94.50.17 (talk) 16:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

The content on the left about picture fuddling is from Popular Science and the content on the right is a letter to the catalog from the editor of Popular Mechanics about Popular Science and Popular Mechanics as to which is better. Both of these also appear on page 127 of my 1971 edition. Thus it's a copy violation to photocopy this without permission or fair use rationale even if the originals were free (which these are clearly not) since it is an original composite. --Modocc (talk) 17:14, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Importance of the United States cabinet

I have a question about the importance of the cabinet in US politics compared to parliamentary systems like the UK or Australia (where I am). The question is inspired by the aging show the West Wing--that show has (according to wiki) been lauded as fairly realistic (at least in terms of the depiction of US politics and institutions, if not the pure motives of the characters). Anyway, it seems in the show that the cabinet play a very small role in decision-making. Is this accurate? In one episode, President Bartlet says of a cabinet meeting 'Actually, I find these meeting to be a fairly mind-numbing experience, but Leo [chief of staff] assures me that they are Constitutionally required, so let's get it over with'. Is this kind of attitude realistic? I have found some sites describing the US cabinet as having an advisory role, where ultimately the power is with the president and he can pretty much ignore them. Is this true even of the high profile positions, i.e. secretary of state? Thanks. 129.96.81.98 (talk) 08:32, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

We have an article on the Cabinet of the United States. There is no constitutional requirement for the President to ever meet with his cabinet, though it would be unusual for him not to. Each cabinet member is typically the head of a major federal department and exerts significant control in their respective areas, basically serving as a vessel for the President's authority since he cannot do everything at once. However, they are also entirely under the President's authority, so he may choose to dismiss, override or ignore them at will if he so chooses. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

The main difference with a parliamentary system is that, in the United States, Cabinet as a whole does not really have any specific powers. There is not Prime Minister, so all Secretaries report directly to the President, and there is no provision for decisions to be taken by the Cabinet collectively. There are of course meetings of small groups of Cabinet-members that make critical decisions (think of the members involved in national security issues), but there is nothing similar on a whole-of-cabinet level. Any meetings tend to be symbolic ("I'm convening the whole cabinet to discuss this because it's so important") although the issues are decided elsewhere. This is nicely satirized by Kurt Vonnegut in the novel Jailbird, whose main protagonist is a junior Cabinet member who gets to meet President Richard Nixon exactly once, at such a meeting convened entirely for public relations purposes. --Xuxl (talk) 09:09, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

There is one very important yet never-used Cabinet power: 25th Amendment, section 4. Neutrality^talk 23:31, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• I'm going to disagree with some of the sentiments that the Cabinet has no authority or power. Policy runs both ways through the Cabinet in the U.S. On the one hand, the Cabinet members meet regularly with the President (as noted, by tradition rather than statute, but that doesn't make it unimportant or illusory. The entire British political system is also built on tradition rather than a written Constitution, and it isn't like power doesn't exist there!) and in those meetings, advise the President on how policy should be shaped in their own areas, as well as general and frank discussions of various issues. People who have the President's ear in that way are very important. Secondly, policy also goes in the other direction. Each Cabinent member is the director of one of the United States federal executive departments, and as such, have a LOT of power in the work those departments do, from implementing policy, to personnel decisions, etc. etc. --Jayron32 09:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• As Someguy1221 notes, President Bartlett is quite wrong. The original text of the Constitution doesn't even mention a Cabinet or the heads of the executive departments (or executive departments at all), aside from one spot in Article II providing that the President "may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices". So obviously the executive departments were envisioned, but their heads weren't expected to exercise significant influence. As far as I remember, the executive departments also aren't mentioned in any amendments to the Constitution, aside from Article XXV, which provides for the temporary removal of the President "Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide", a provision that's meant for when the President's been physically disabled; this provision was intended for situations like the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, which happened fourteen years after the amendment took effect, but it's never been used. Nyttend (talk) 12:29, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Oh, the confusion caused by our language. One very important thing to remember, and one that often gets missed in these sort of discussions, is the different meanings of the word "constitution". In the basic understanding, the constitution of a national government is its operating principles. Every government on earth, from the UN and national governments, on down to student councils and clubs and the like, has a constitution. If it exists and it has rules on how it operates, and it governs something, it has a constitution. There also exists, sometimes, a document with the title "The Constitution", like the United States Constitution, which is a document which, in one location, spells out most of the really important rules. We can think of these concepts as the "little-c constitution" and the "Big-C Constitution". The important thing about drawing this distinction is that a) You don't need a Big-C Constitution to run a country (the UK has done without one for most of its history, TYVM) and b) even if you have a Big-C Constitution, you don't need to (and it would be quite impossible to) list every single, little rule for how the Government is supposed to work. Even in the U.S., for example, which is in love with writing everything down, there are lots of "constitutional principles" which are not explicit within the Constitution, but are nonetheless important rules for how the nation should be run. Famously, things like judicial review and right to privacy are not in the text, but still are considered constitutional principles. There are, of course, critics adhere to original intent and strict textualism, though of course there will be questions of how to deal with issues that did not exists when the text was written down. What does that mean for us? It means that even though something isn't written down in the Big-C Constitution doesn't mean it isn't a constitutional (little c) issue. --Jayron32 14:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• Also, it's at least not entirely true that the British constitution is unwritten. Constitution of the United Kingdom#History lists dozens of constitutional documents. —Tamfang (talk) 04:24, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• It is all written down, in the sense that every constitutional principle someone has written on a paper somewhere. After all, it isn't passed down through oral tradition, is it? There aren't bards wandering around preserving laws solely through their song? There is no single document titled The Constitution of the UK, so it has no big-C "Constitution". Like every country, it has a little-c constitution, and like all laws and statutes, they're all written down somewhere. --Jayron32 14:06, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• We haven't excluded the possibility that some of what is written down is records of existing practices whose origin is lost in time. If judges rely on such indirect evidence or scholarly summaries in the absence of legislation, do such writings become law? —Tamfang (talk) 06:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• As individuals, the various Cabinet members (the Secretaries of the various Cabinet level Departments) have a lot of administrative authority and power... as a body, "the Cabinet" is purely an advisory council for the President. Of course, a wise President will seek that advice and follow it ... but nothing requires him to do so. So... I would put it this way: "the Cabinet" as a body, has no designated powers ... but it does have a lot of influence on the decision making of the executive branch (and influence is a form of "power" in itself). Blueboar (talk) 14:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• We have to remember that the Australian constitution (relevant because the question was asked by an Australian) is far more similar to the US constitution than are the constitutions of other Commonwealth realms. The issues Jayron raises are comparable to uncodified concepts like the necessity of the government to maintain the confidence of the House of Representatives, but unlike in Australia, pretty much all of the ordinary procedural situations are either written out or considered "optional", i.e. people don't object on constitutional grounds when normal operating procedures aren't followed. For example, if the Senate were to reject a money bill passed by the House of Representatives, difficulty might happen because federal spending would potentially not happen for a while (the term is "government shutdown"), and people would criticise the Senate because the poor federal employees have to wait a little while for a paycheck, but unlike in 1975 in Australia, nobody would object that the Senate's action was fundamentally unconstitutional. Nyttend (talk) 15:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• I don't quite follow this. You say (as I understand it) that Australians generally don't consider a procedural move unconstitutional unless it violates the written constitution, but as I understand it, Malcolm Fraser and his party did adhere to the terms of the written constitution in 1975. --Trovatore (talk) 03:46, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Nobody ever took them to the High Court of Australia to argue otherwise. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Hypothetically, if such a challenge had been made, what issues were there to raise? Reading the story from an outsider's perspective, it appears to me that, while Kerr may have acted deceptively so that Whitlam wouldn't have him removed before he could remove Whitlam, everything was pretty much done according to the letter of the law. I note in passing that any criticism on the basis that Whitlam's removal was "undemocratic" will have to contend with the fact that Labor lost the resulting election fairly decisively. (Not, certainly, that that is the only possible criticism that could be rendered.) --Trovatore (talk) 05:30, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

A big issue was the Governor General's unprecedented use of the reserve power of dismissing the Prime Minister without advice. As noted in the Advice (constitutional) article, "the convention that the head of state accept ministerial advice is so strong that in ordinary circumstances, refusal to do so would almost certainly provoke a constitutional crisis", and taking such a significant action without advice is also likely to lead to controversy. Nyttend (talk) 03:31, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Conventionally, the only person able to advise the G-G to take such a significant step as dismissing the Prime Minister, is the Prime Minister himself. This happens whenever a general election is won by the Opposition. The Opposition Leader becomes PM, but not until such time as the incumbent PM advises the G-G to terminate his commission, and to commission the OL in his place. In 1975, however, an election was not part of the equation. Kerr dismissed Whitlam without seeking advice. Not from Whitlam, anyway; he would obviously never have advised such a course of action. Kerr had previously sought Whitlam's approval to take advice from the Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick, and that approval was denied, but Kerr went ahead and approached Barwick anyway. Barwick, while now officially neutral, was a former Liberal politician and Attorney-General. He advised Kerr that he had the power to dismiss the PM if he could not obtain supply. I'm not enough of a constitutional lawyer to be able to say whether dismissal of a PM in these circumstances is covered by the written constitution (I suspect not), but it's easy to spot the potential COI problem if anyone had taken a case to the High Court. The Chief Justice would have been sitting in judgment on an action he personally had advised the G-G was within his powers. Or perhaps he would have had to recuse himself, and leave it to his brother justices to cast judgment on their boss's advice. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. But is it not also conventional that a PM who cannot obtain supply is expected to resign? So arguably Whitlam was the first to break convention. --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know that much about the Australian conventions but AFAIK it's within the conventions for the PM to call for fresh elections, although what form these should take I'm not sure. In any case, in the specific example of 1975, it's not so simple. Whitlam never really lost supply, Senate deferred the bill rather than defeating it. (And they did so not because they disagreed with the bill, but wanted to force a dissolution.) So if you want to go to a case of who's first to break convention, it would probably be the Senate majority following the advice of Fraser, which isn't to say anyone comes out perfect in the mess. In fact, I'm not even sure whether there is even any convention that a Prime Minister has to either call for fresh elections or resign if they lose supply due to Senate action. While Senate have the power to reject supply bills, it's generally accepted that only the house of representatives can forcefully bring down the government, hence why only they can vote in motions of no/confidence. On possibility is for the government try and use other means to ensure supply [1]. In truth, I think Australia is somewhat rare in modern Westminster style governments in having an upper house capable of completely blocking supply, so there's no simple convention on how to handle it when it happens, but I think it's quite commonly suggested however it should be handled, it's not how it was in 1975, in particular not Kerr's actions (including hiding his plans from Whitlam). Nil Einne (talk) 06:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Trovatore, as Nil Einne says, Supply was never denied, just postponed. Fraser kept insisting Whitlam had to either call a general election or resign, but Whitlam countered that he had the confidence of the lower house, and that an election was for the PM alone to call at a time of his own choosing, and he would not be railroaded into calling one just because the Opposition demanded one. So, no, Whitlam had no duty to resign. If the deadlock had just gone on indefinitely, a time would have come when the government would run out of money. Whitlam could see this looming, and he was starting to have discussions with the banks to finance government operations until Supply could be obtained. It never got to that point, but some say that this apparent plan to govern without Supply was itself reprehensible enough to warrant the governor-general sacking him. Well, Kerr did sack him, but not on that basis. An hour after the dismissal, Supply was granted to the new Fraser government, although most of the Labor senators who voted for Supply had no idea Whitlam was gone and Fraser was now in power. Whitlam didn't tell them (an oversight he lived to regret) and Fraser certainly wasn't going to tell them. He didn't even formally advise the Parliament that he'd been sworn in as PM, until after Supply had been granted. So, there were reprehensible circumstances on both sides. The House immediately passed a motion of no confidence in Fraser, and the Speaker went to the G-G to advise him of this to secure the termination of Fraser's commission, but was kept waiting for a couple of hours while Kerr was having the papers drawn up to have the parliament dissolved. By the time the Speaker was finally ushered into Kerr's office, the Parliament had been dissolved and an election called, and there was no longer any reason for Fraser to resign. So, reprehensible circumstances were not exactly in short supply in those heady days. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:17, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Colonies with political representation in the mother country

Are there examples of colonies that has fair political representation in the mother country? As in, citizens of the colony could vote in the same general election as the citizens of the mother country.

Just to clarify, I'm not asking about Home rule, where colonials have political representation within their own colony. My other car is a cadr (talk) 12:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Sort of... France has what they call a "département d’outre-mer" (see: Overseas department. An example is the island of Réunion. They also have smaller overseas collectivities (collectivité d'outre-mer) (such as Saint Pierre and Miquelon) which send senators and deputies to the National Assembly. These are former French colonies, that are now considered fully part of the nation of France. Blueboar (talk) 13:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Another "sort of" example, French again, was French Algeria, where locals could choose to become fully French citizens if they renounced their coranic ruling. Akseli9 (talk) 13:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. If I understand correctly, Réunion ceased to be a colony in 1946 and became an Overseas Department. So did Réunion resident/citizens have the right to vote in French elections before 1946? My other car is a cadr (talk) 14:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

One-word loose answer would be: yes. But the real answer is not that simple. Firstly, Réunion was never a colony in the sense that this island was not populated and was firstly discovered by some Europeans and some Arabs during Middle Age. They started to populate the island, and they were landlords under the rule of the Kings of France. Then they brought in slaves from Africa just like the US did and also the French West Indies islands and the British Caribbean too. Then during French revolution and during the Napoleon era and what followed, some other people were called in, again for working and for running businesses, this time not slaves from Africa but free immigrants from China and India. During all this time from Middle Age to 1946, one could say in a word that Réunion was fully part of France in the sense that its landlords were dying for France in European wars etc, then when France became a republic they still were representing France and are still feeling fully French until now. Akseli9 (talk) 15:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• A tangential reading related to this topic is one of Virtual representation, which is a philosophy of parliamentary representation which holds that, while representatives are elected from specific geographic districts, once elected they are supposed to represent the interests of the whole nation. Under that doctrine, for example, the Parliament of the UK claimed to represent all British subjects equally, even those which did not vote for them directly, such as colonists. --Jayron32 13:49, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

One example that almost happened is Taiwan and Korea during WWII: House_of_Representatives_(Japan)#The_House_of_Representatives_as_part_of_the_Imperial_Diet_1890.E2.80.931947. My other car is a cadr (talk) 14:08, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if the case of Ireland while it was still a part of Great Britain counts here, where they had MPs and peers sitting in Parliament. (I guess not because it had the sasme status as Scotland and England and Wales, but it's an interesting case.)--TammyMoet (talk) 18:02, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Although the Kingdom of Ireland before 1800 might have been effectively a colony, it was legally a Personal union. Alansplodge (talk) 21:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Ireland has never been part of Great Britain - you mean (some version of) the United Kingdom. (Even today, Irish citizens resident in the UK can vote in UK elections). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:31, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Before 1800, Ireland was not part of a United Kingdom, but was under the control of Great Britain because the King of Great Britain was also the King of Ireland. See Acts of Union 1800. Alansplodge (talk) 19:45, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Until the demise of the fascist government in 1974 Portugal's overseas possessions were considered an integral part of the country. They were officially provincias - nobody used the term colonias (you had to be careful what you said in those days and if you stepped out of line Salazar's dreaded secret police would soon put you right). In practice they were referred to as ultramar (beyond the seas). The secret police went by the name of Direccao-Geral de Seguranca (General Directorate of Security) otherwise referred to by the name of Policia International from their original title Policia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (International State Defence Police) popularly known by the acronym PIDE. After the revolution the Pides (secret policemen) were the object of some violence by the citizens of Lisbon. Those were the days when tanks sat in the street surrounded by crowds of happy Lisboetans and the soldiers sported carnations in their rifle barrels. There was only one casualty - a Pide took aim from the window of the secret police headquarters, killing a demonstrator in the square outside.

In the immediate aftermath of the revolution a process of saneamento (cleansing) took hold and some people took exception to the use of provincias in the independence debate saying they should be called colonias "because that is what they really are". 80.43.176.34 (talk) 12:38, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The answer is actually just no, since if a territory gets representation like that, it is not defined as a colony anymore. Instead, it will be called a province, a department, a state or similar. 83.251.77.222 (talk) 17:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I puzzled over this one overnight, since France and Germany, for example are states but they are distinct. Now I get it. An example would be Alaska, and possibly Hawaii, but not yet Porto Rico. Across the pond, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland up to 1922.

The very near ones get different treatment. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have their own legislatures but the citizens have access to full British passports, the National Health Service and favourable tax regimes. Some of these places are seized to acquire fishing rights to the seas round them or undersea minerals. Rockall has been incorporated into the appropriate Scottish county, and a county boundary used to run through the Isle of Lewis (maybe it still does). The Scilly Isles are a parish within the county of Cornwall. 89.240.30.153 (talk) 10:08, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Is Evensong part of high-church Anglicanism or low-church Anglicanism?

Is Evensong part of high-church Anglicanism or low-church Anglicanism? In terms of high-church and low-church, what in the world is a middle-to-low church? I think Evensong is a high-church ritual, because it implies that the organization celebrates an evening liturgy full of song. Do Anglicans have a fancy term for some kind of morning service or hold a service in the morning? 140.254.136.157 (talk) 13:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

There are not governing bodies which decide these things, it would be better to think of Anglicanism as a continuum between "high-church" (very Catholic-like) to "low-church" (very Protestant-like), with all churches lying somewhere in between those extremes rather than at one of them exclusively. The distinction is one of liturgy and style-of-worship rather than theology. That is, in a broad sense, all churches that are part of the Anglican Communion profess to the same basic understanding of their faith, in terms of what they believe and what their relationship with God is. Now, a completely different question is what it looks like when you sit through a worship service, or how one's belief should inform their actions, and things like that. The continuum between "Catholic" and "Protestant" determines what that looks like. If someone described a particular congregation as "middle-to-low church", that would mean to me that they were pretty close to the protestant end of the spectrum, while retaining some catholic elements. --Jayron32 14:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

And to answer the OP's last question: see our article Morning Prayer (Anglican). Between that and Evensong (repeated to link for convenience), most of the OP's quandries should be met. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:09, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Having been raised in an Anglican church, I would say that the very term "Evensong" implies a high church, since it implies a musical service, almost certainly with a choir. If a low church were to have an evening service, they would call it "Evening Prayer", and any music would be limited to the congregation singing from a hymnal, perhaps with a piano accompaniment.

While Jayron is right in very general terms that high churches have a style of worship that is more "Catholic" than low churches, I'm not sure that really captures the distinction, since worship at most Roman Catholic churches is probably plainer than worship at really high Anglican churches. High church involves the use of colorful vestments by priests and other officiants, the presence of a choir, altar boy, and other assistants around the altar, each with a colorful vestment, a rich musical program involving the choir, certainly a pipe organ, and liberal use of incense. In a low church, the priest or other officiant will typically wear much simpler vestments, with black and white the dominant hues, any other people assisting around the altar will wear ordinary street clothes (such as a dress for women or a jacket and tie for men, or even more casual clothes), music will be limited to hymns sung by the congregation, perhaps with piano accompaniment, and there will be no incense. Also, high churches typically refer to their clergy as priests, and low churches refer to the clergy as ministers.

Jayron is right that there is a continuum. Churches don't decide to be either high or low, with no options in between. For example, a middle-to-low church might have most of the features of a low church, but maybe with the addition of a pipe organ and the use of more colorful vestments for holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Marco polo (talk) 14:58, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

To be fair, there's a wide range of liturgical styles even within Roman Catholicism; there are Traditionalist Catholic congregations which still follow pre-Vatican II styles, and there are Catholic churches with acoustic guitars and tamborines which meet in sanctuaries which look much more like protestant churches. --Jayron32 16:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I would only add (besides a link to BBC broadcasts in the Evensong article - check out their extensive archives!) that High Church / Low Church is a very dated and culture-bound distinction of little contemporary use by scholars of the contemporary communion. Consider:

"It has been claimed over and over that the response to the question of what Anglican believe is lex orandi, lex credendi, that is: “if you want to know what we believe, come and pray with us.”

In just a single city in the United Kingdom, however, we could attend numerous examples of Anglican churches that all pray in very different ways. There is a church that proclaims it is Bible-based and relies on the preaching of God’s word to feed the congregation; nearby we could go to a church where the emphasis is on the present experience of the Holy Spirit and gifts and ministres are exercised during worship. Close to that church is another Anglican congregation where ritual and ceremony are practiced meticulously and seem a little different from the local Roman Catholic Church.

There is also a “family-friendly” church where liturgy is very low-key and the atmosphere is informal to the point of chaotic, while down the road is an Anglican church offering the beauty of holiness through liturgy and stillness. And there is more, for further on is an Anglican church where issues of the day are wrestled with in an atmosphere of inquiry, and the prayer book firmly adhered to. Other churches offer a varied menu that might be Common Worship one week and Book of Common Prayer the next, with Taize services and Celtic liturgies in between.

How can all these be Anglican? If we were to widen the picture to take in the world-wide Anglican Communion, we would soon discover that these distinctive types of spirituality would increase in number in some places, while in others they would seem meaningless."

Hoare, Elizabeth (2013). "The Spirituality of the Anglican Communion". In Marckham, Ian S.; J. Barney, Hawkins IV; Justyn, Terry; et al. (eds.). The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 714–15. ISBN 978-0-470-65634-1. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 16:43, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

That said, as Marco Polo noted, Evensong is perhaps the quintessence of High Church in the English tradition. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 16:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

While agreeing with the above, I have seen services advertised as "Sung Evensong" which implies that there is a said evensong too! --TammyMoet (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard that too, but I think it's a tautology; spoken Evensong is Evening Prayer. The term "Choral Evensong" implies (as in a cathedral) that the choir does the singing and the congregation listens. I'm not sure that I agree about the correlation between High Church and Evensong; back half a century when there was still a distinct High / Low polarisation, Evensong was one of the services that would be similar in either style of worship, the big difference would be in the Communion service. Certainly my own parish would have identified itself as on the Low side in the 1960s, but still had Evensong with a chanted psalm, Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, hymns, and outside of Lent and Advent, an anthem. Over the years, as we moved up the scale towards Anglo-Catholicism, Mattins and Evensong were gradually abandoned. Alansplodge (talk) 21:06, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

The pipe - organ is an integral feature of an Anglican church (like the bells) so its use shouldn't be a determiner of how high or low church the minister is. The Anglican church is all things to all people - it's not the evangelical/high church dualism we should worry about but the growth of the so - called "broad church". Some Anglican churches are so high it is very difficult to distinguish them from Catholic. You can go in and they will be using the Roman service, the priest will be "father" and the Communion will be "mass". However, Anglican churches do not have as many masses on a Sunday as do Roman ones, and sometimes doubt when looking at the noticeboard can be dispelled by finding the word "Churchwarden" in the list of officers. Catholic churches don't have wardens. In my local Catholic church the main entrance is on the east side, so they don't appear to observe the rule about positioning the altar on that side.

Coincidentally I attended Parish Communion at my local Anglican church for the first time on Sunday morning and I was bemused by what I saw. The rector was wearing traditional robes and delivered the bread but a woman dressed in white (and described in the service sheet as a "Communion assistant" along with another woman) participated in the service and delivered the wine. Just before Communion ended two men dressed in ordinary clothes left their seats in the pews and delivered the wine to some parishioners who had been waiting in a separate group since the Communion started. Under the old order you knew what was what - the priests and deacons were all male and the women in robes were members of a separate lay order of deaconesses. Nowadays it's difficult to determine who is ordained and who is just "helping out". 80.43.176.34 (talk) 12:03, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The details of how lay people can be licensed to assist with Communion are here. Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 29 August 2015 (UTC)