Two Orientations

The New York Times features an interview today with the president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. Mentioned in that article is a plaque on Morsi’s desk that says: “Be conscious of a day on which you return to God.”

The words derive from the second chapter of the Quran, The Cow, verse 281. “Fear the day when you shall all return to Allah; when every soul shall be requited according to its deserts. None shall be wronged” (N.J. Dawood translation). Another translations uses the word “fear” as well (‘Abdullah Yusu ‘Ali); two others use the words “guard yourselves” (M.H. Shakir and M.A. Haleem Eliasii). That “be conscious,” therefore, is a sort of modernization.

There is an orientation to the beyond and an orientation to the here-and-now. Call them other-worldly and this-worldly. Got to pondering that. Got to wondering about genuine change. The prevailing this-worldly view is that real change requires collective action; hence there is a continuous attempt to persuade the masses. The other-worldly view is that change comes about when an individual becomes aware of the greater whole, invisible from here. The two orientations also have a different time scale. The this-worldly is here-and-now; the other-worldly is mindful of the last minute of an individual life; it is more expansive. And real change, it seems to me, is when we move from one orientation to the other, either way, as individuals. The rest is just detail; it will take care of itself. Morsi’s stance, therefore, based on that plaque on his desk, appears to be other-worldly. Oh, my. 

Might Try Wearing a Sign

To Brandon’s brief mention of a man hit by a stray bullet right next to Brandon’s apartment building in Austin, TX (link), I would add a recent story published here. In broad daylight (11:30 am) a gun-wielding man pushed a teenage girl to the ground at the intersection of Charlesvoix and Lakeland in posh-posh Grosse Pointe, MI and took off with her cell phone. It happened last Sunday.

I was on my walk yesterday some brief time after school let out—nice sunny day. The incident was far, far from my mind. I came up to an intersection just as a teen-age girl was crossing at right angles to me. She was picking some music on her smartphone and then, listening to it, passed on. Then I recalled the incident and looked to see where I was. I was at the intersection of Charlesvoix and Lakeland. Please note, editors of the Grosse Point News: the young do not read papers. I continued on, reminding myself to “Stay Positive.” Therefore I was trying to discover ways of preventing such holdups. The thought occurred that someone should be selling large signs you can pin to chest or back. It should say: “I’m Not Carrying an iPhone.” Here is an opportunity for our go-get-’em private enterprise. Where are those signs? Better yet, where are those jackets, overalls, elegant tops, and baseball caps—with the message front and back as such caps are often worn wrong-way ’round by young males…

Hibernating?

Learned today that Black Swallowtails do not migrate to warmer climes as the Monarchs do. They over-winter as chrysalides instead—and much more rarely as caterpillars.

The butterfly in chrysalis stage can evidently detects the season from a combination of the temperature and the length of the daylight; it then knows what is coming and begins to prepare. In that process it generates a kind of anti-freeze; the chemical protects it for the duration. If it is still a caterpillar, one source informs me, it will burrow a deep hole and, within that, wrap itself into a leaf. I think we witnessed such a case late last fall when a fairly large caterpillar simply disappeared; but we knew too little. Its feeding plants were then in a large pot full of earth, and it may have buried itself. That pot went outdoors for the winter.

Two quite cold nights—with our furnace coming on—sent me on this investigation. We have two candidates for over-wintering. Brigitte has named them Castor and Pollux (although they might well be Castoria and Polluxina). They formed their chrysalides on September 14 and 16 respectively. We shall see. For starters, I took their container out into the cold this morning lest they be deceived.

Any Day Now

I pity the poor immigrant

Who wishes he would’ve stayed home

Who uses all his power to do evil

But in the end is always left so alone.

That man who with his fingers cheats,

And who lies with every breath

Who passionately hates his life,

And likewise fears his death.

    [Bob Dylan]

A comment from Monique brought strong memories of a famous Joan Baez album, Any Day Now—and of a particularly meaningful song within it, “I Pity the Poor Immigrant.” As immigrants ourselves, the title intrigued us—and even more so after we grasped the more cosmic meaning of the song. The Genius and the Angel. They’ve left a deep impression on our lives, our memories of the 1960s, and beyond. Here is Baez singing it.

When his gladness comes to pass…

She Also Knew Her Horace

Herewith another quote—with a nod to a fellow blogger—from Angela Thirkell’s 1961 novel, Three Score and Ten.

    “Only an old Roman poet,” said Lord Stoke. “And now I come to think of it, it isn’t particularly applicable [the quote he just made]. Quotations mostly aren’t. My dear mother used to keep a book of quotations, one for every day in the year. A biggish book it was with violets or something sticking up on the cover.”

     Mrs. Morland said Perhaps embossed.

     “I daresay, I daresay,” said Lord Stoke. “Words are queer things. My mother had north-country blood and she used to put two pieces of thin bread and butter together with hundreds and thousands between them and called it Matrimony. I daresay there aren’t any hundreds and thousands now,” but Mrs. Morland indignantly opposed, saying that the children at the village school bought them regularly.

     “Not what they were in My young days,” said Lord Stoke, determined to be a laudator temporis acti.

So whence comes that phrase? It comes from Horace, Ars Poetica, line 173, and here it is in Latin and then in three different translations into English.

Multa senem circumueniunt incommoda, uel quod
quaerit et inuentis miser abstinet ac timet uti,         
uel quod res omnis timide gelideque ministrat,
dilator, spe longus, iners auidusque futuri,
difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti
se puero, castigator censorque minorum.

     [Horace, Ars Poetica]

Many troubles surround the aged man, because he

Seeks savings, yet sadly won’t touch them, fears their use,

And because in all he does he’s cold and timid,

Dilatory, short on hope, sluggish, greedy for life,

Surly, a moaner, given to praising the years when

He was a boy, chiding and criticising the young.

     [Translated by A.S. Kline (link)]

Many troubles assail an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then wretchedly abstains from what he possesses and is afraid to use it, or because he attends to all his affairs feebly and timidly; a procrastinator, he is apathetic in his hopes and expectations, sluggish and fearful of the future, obstinate, always complaining; he devotes himself to praising times past, when he was a boy, and to being the castigator and moral censor of the young.

     [Translated by Leon Golden (link)]

A thousand ills the aged world surround,
Anxious in search of wealth, and when ‘tis found,
Fearful to use what they with fear possess,
While doubt and dread their faculties depress. 
          Fond of delay, they trust in hope no more,
Listless, and fearful of th’ approaching hour;
Morose, complaining, and with tedious praise
Telling the manners of their youthful days;
Severe to censure; earnest to advise,
And with old saws the present age chastise.

     [Translated by someone labeled Francis (link)]

The word “curmudgeon” does not appear above, but comes to mind—not least when we contemplate that old charmer, Thirkell’s Lord Stoke.

Stormy Weather

It’s just an anecdotal thing—in contrast to a vast, exhaustive survey—but as I scan expressions of public critique of everything (excepting only certain sacred subjects) I am always reminded of reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a respected German daily back in the 1960s.  Just for the record, the FAZ has also changed; I’m not hoisting up some icon. But my memories are of lengthy analytical articles looking at current events and developments, written with huge care and empty of the emotions, clever flourishes, and ink-on-paper eruptions of outrage that now are pretty much routine.

Got to thinking, looked up the word “jeremiad,” reviewed the career-path of Savanarola (1452-1498), noted with pleasure that he burned objects like mirrors, cosmetics, playing cards, and fine dresses in what came to be known as bonfires of vanity, on which fascinating subject Tom Wolfe (he who also wrote The Right Stuff) fashioned a novel in 1987. Just in time, one might say, honoring the Japanese.

Got to wondering if this whole nexus of public speech ever resulted in appropriate reform? My guess is that it never did—or does. By the time the hell-fire preachers arise, secular or religious, the game is always over. The preaching is a symptom of its times. The preachers, to be sure, always find huge audiences. They’re entertaining. The times, at such times, have the character of vast storms. Huge masses of people are swayed this way, that way. All coherence disappears as baby carriages get magically embedded in the trunks of mighty trees. And above it all is a demonic howl—and that howl is then the public speech.

What helps small minorities of people then—and it is only small minorities that remain unaffected—is the still, small voice of reason, but it must also be publicly audible. It helps remind the members of the minority that they are not entirely alone. The proof that only minute groups retain some sanity is brought by the tiny circulation of a handful of periodicals one opens with pleasure when they arrive and, taking a glad breath, sits down to share with someone near.

Red September

This post to match an earlier one titled Red March. The geranium set the theme for our rowdy internal plantation this year. The March picture was taken about a week into Spring, the September one about a week until Fall.

Göppingen

The city is located in the south-western corner of Germany, in Baden-Württemberg. These days the town has just shy of 58,000 inhabitants. It’s current claim to fame in Germany is Frisch Auf Göppingen, the handball team—a sport we watched avidly during the Olympics. Its more venerable fame derives from Mount Hohenstaufen, in its vicinity—indeed within Göppingen’s borders. Only the ruins of a castle survive atop Hohenstaufen, but there, for a while the most famous of Kaisers, Friedrich Barbarossa, once spent some time.

I got to know this place because Cook Barracks were part of the town, an American military facility, and in my days (1956) briefly the headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division. I’d only spent a year there before our division moved to Bad Kreuznach (Rhineland-Palatinate). In succession, Cooke Barracks was the home of the 4th Armored Division, later renamed 1st Armored Division, then the 1st Infantry Division, which came to be deactivated in 1991—and Cook Barracks returned to the Germans the following year. It began as a civilian airfield, later became a Luftwaffe site called Fliegerhorst Kaserne, and also served to house DPs and refugees (1945-1949). We were not among them, but we had once been DPs. The acronym stood for “displaced persons” in those days—maybe still does.

The first image I show here with thanks to Landkreis Goeppingen (the county, link). Beneath it is the city’s coat-of-arms, depicting the antlers of a deer. The large image is an aerial photo of the post itself. It is a happy image because it shows, about in the middle, a low red building that used to be my own rather exclusive barracks; three of us (rather than twenty) shared a room. A close examination of the airport itself reveals that it was (perhaps still is) used as a golf course. One of my very best friends ever, Stanislav Opalka, worked there as a groundskeeper. Stan was, like me, an immigrant. He originated in Poland but had reached the United States the round-about way—by way of India, South America, and then the United States. We knew each other only briefly, but it was an amazing friendship. Let me illustrate. One day, having had a late Saturday lunch, I entered the hallway leading to my room. On the top bunk of an adjacent, and more crowded room, a man was sitting reading a book—aloud! But he was all alone—and, judging by his accent, probably practicing his English. The book he was reading was An Historian’s Approach to Religion. Even the brief passage I overheard was enough to put me on high alert. We got to talking. I’d never heard of the author before, Arnold Toynbee. It was, that meeting, the beginning of many, many things.

Not that I haven’t tried, but I’ve never been able to locate Stan. Shortly after his appearance, he was reassigned. And the authorities, knowing that he would be, gave him that temporary but very cushy job of taking care of the Göppingen golf course.

The immediate motivation for this post? I got another comment from a lady who had been born at Neubrücke military hospital, Monique’s cradle, as it were. The post on that subject has, over time, become the most read posting on this blog. Vast numbers pass through the military. And as they age, the mind remembers more. So why not remember Göppingen too… 

Erntedankfest

The population just isn’t “in the mood”—to shop ’til you drop, that is—and merchants are going crazy. That must be the reason why, on our last shopping trip, we saw three different “early Christmas” displays. They simply ignored Grandparents Day (September 9), Halloween (October 31), and Thanksgiving (November 22) and are already jingling the bells.

With that in mind I feel entirely justified in heralding the Erntedankfest, German, literally, for the Harvest-Thank-Fest. That takes place on October 7 this year. The word came floating into my mind on a recent walk. I usually wander without a bill-fold, but this time I had an urge to take some money—thinking of children selling lemonade at the curb. That turned out to be a guiding intuition.

My first destination was one of the Grosse Pointe’s oldest cemeteries—where many gravestones and crosses have sunk deep into the ground over time and where you can move from family group to family group and reading the last names think that you’re looking at a street map. Here lie the ancestors after whom major arteries are named. This time I discovered Frazho, a street that just happens to cause Brigitte and me frequent laughter when we’re lost. And there it is, again, Frazho!, and we are delighted and always laugh. But why? You figure it out. We haven’t.

The cemetery more or less marks the farthest line I reach in my walks—and all that time not one lemonade-selling youngster. I figured that my hunch had been off target. Then, continuing on my way back along Moross, a major artery, going west I espied a stand. Two mothers and a clutch of children were madly waving at the passing cars. Alas! I sighed inwardly, glad that I’m still “in the zone” of unfailing intuition. But when I got nearer, I had a surprise. They were selling—

cucumbers. The picture you see is the one I purchased. The spoon is there for scale.

Good Lord. I’d never seen such a mass of gigantic cucumbers—or a little boy so wildly excited. He was literally jumping up and down hoping to get me to let him show me the Pumpkins. His mother, at last, judging me the right sort, agreed. She told me that they had had an overwhelming harvest of both. I followed the little boy to the backyard where he showed me dozens of pumpkins, still on the vine, hidden by huge leaves. It was a wonder. Erntedankfest! And the little people competing avidly with the grocery store in selling their surplus.

This morning, nudged perhaps by jealousy, I went out and counted the still-to-be-harvested small tomatoes on just one of our seven plants. Mind you, we have been harvesting them for about two and a half months already. On this plant I counted thirty-six—and the other plants are larger. Something to be thankful for. Meanwhile, starvation drives our merchants mad. We expect soon to learn that Valentine’s Day is only 155 days away. Better start buying that precious present while the sale lasts.

Overpopulation

Herewith a bit about “the birds and the bees” for booklovers who may have been wondering, innocently, why it is that every free square foot is eventually piled high:

It is well known that it is not safe to have books in the house as they marry and have children, so producing over-populated neighborhoods; but attics are just as bad.

     Angela Thirkell in Three Score and Ten

Predators Beget Editors

The now still explosive clash between Secular and Muslim culture—arising from a predatory sort of film or trailer attacking the Prophet Muhammed—once more shows that freedom is a coin with a flipside; the flipside is responsibility. If you do not control yourself, sooner or later somebody will control you—hence my title. This case is as good as any to highlight the fact that a so-called progress founded on the expansion of “rights” is by definition self-limiting. If the granting of every new right were accompanied by the energetic enforcement of the responsibility that accompanies it, the agitation for new rights would greatly diminish. The model that pictures humans as kind of perfect and innocent “in the state of Nature,” read allowed to do anything and everything, produces monstrosities at the margin. The grim view of a humanity subject to original sin, while not exactly cheering, produces much better social results. Sooner or later editorial functions will evolve on the Internet beyond those already present and used, very reluctantly. It will, of course, eventually hobble or inconvenience lots of people who use the current freedom responsibly.

Redlining

Brigitte posed the question this morning: Why such a lot of hullabaloo about Iran and nuclear arms—when lots of other countries in earlier times acquired them without a corresponding global upheaval? Good question. Here is this long-toothed, blood-dripping, utterly aggressive nation—Whoa! Hold it! Not so. The last time Iran/Persia attempted to conquer another country was…? Well, it was 492 BC. And Persia failed. Since then? Well, helped by a BBC timeline (link), I note that Alexander the Great invaded Persia (330 BC), the Arabs invaded it (636 AD) to institute Islamic rule, Genghis Khan’s Mongols invaded (1220), Russia and the Ottomans invaded (1722); the last in a series of Russo-Persian wars ended  in 1828; Anglo-Russian forces invaded (1941), and Iraq invaded Iran (1980).

My untutored guess is that the current hullabaloo has much to do with something simple or something more complexly cultural. The simple is Israel’s fear, what with Iran in close proximity to its east. The complex answer is that Iran is the first theocracy to go nuclear, and therefore, not being safely secular and therefore predictable, brings shudders of incomprehension. Seems to me that if Saudi-Arabia planned to have nukes, no problem. Their rulers are safely rich and hedonistic; the worry would be if the royal family fell. China a ways back? Too big to tackle. How about Pakistan? Well, no hue and cry about that. Pakistan was part of India once, familiar territory. A Muslim country yes, but only, you know, so so. First, no year goes by without some Muslim-on-Muslim massacre livening up its internal affairs—and at the top safely secular rich families rule or it’s the military. Would anyone get worried about Indonesia? The world’s largest Muslim realm? No. Why? Well, they’re Muslim in a different way, don’t you know. As for Iran, well, it was once a great power, even if we have to go back to 500-plus years BC. But now a cleric runs it who can put fatwas on such lovable figures as Salman Rushdie. As Netanyahu said recently, one has to draw a red line somewhere.

Hylephila Phyleus

Fall set in early, but when I wondered here whether or not the butterfly season was over, I was wrong. We are now raising Number 10 and 11 of our year’s flock of Black Swallowtail butterflies. And others are still very active in our yard.

Today I want to introduce a member of yet another Superfamily of the Lepidoptera, the Fiery Skipper. It belongs to the superfamily Hesperiodidea (a great word for practicing skill in keying). It consists of eight families, of which our little yellow creature is a member of one. Of the three superfamilies, we have now seen representatives of two. For an overview, herewith a tabulation:

The Butterfly Big Picture
Superfamily/Family	Names	In Our Yard
Hedyloidea	Moths	Maybe
Hesperiodidea	Skippers	Yes
Hesperiinae	Grass Skippers	Fiery Skipper
7 other families		No
Papilionoidea	Butterflies	Yes
Lycaenidae	Brush-footed	No
Nymphalidae	Four-footed	Common Buckeye,       Mourning Cloak
		Monarch
		Painted Lady
		Red Admiral
Papilionidae	Swallowtails	Black Swallowtail
Pieridae	Whites	Small Cabbage
Riodinidae	Metalmarks	No

The fiery skipper is a quite small and a very quick-moving insect, especially as it hops around from bloom to bloom on our mint plants. It reveals itself as a butterfly only when it flies some distances, and then it looks like a miniature butterfly. The first picture I show, as close to a close-up as I’ve yet managed, reveals a creature I first took to be a bee with very big and colored wings. The Fiery Skipper actually has two sets of wings, nicely visible here.

There seem to be the same class distinctions between insects as there are in our society: the hoity-toity upper layers and then the massive humbler classes. The Fiery Skipper belongs to the latter group. In their world decorum, especially in public, is less cultivated—so that Brigitte observed a public mating no sooner than I’d learned to spell Skipper. She called me in excitement from the basement—and I rushed to take the second picture. In my haste, the focus is bad, but our testimony is true. You can also see how the Fiery Skipper looks from the side, its wings folded up. The wings are held like that for all serious activity—thus for eating and for mating.

The Freedom to Yell Fire

Free speech, rightly valued, has its limits. Of late several stories across the world have thrown light on that—in the United States constitutionally protected—right. Last month came the trial of members of a punk band for attacking the Putin regime from the altar of an Orthodox church. Yesterday came stories, repeated today, that next-in-line leader Xi Jinping hasn’t been seen in days, but China’s authorities are absolutely mum. Today comes an escalation of the 2005 Muhammed cartoon controversy: a film attacking the Prophet of Islam as a fraud. Ah, the Internet. Riots came at once in Libya and Egypt (one American died). In the realm we now inhabit excess of good produces the bad, excess of bad produces the good. In both cases the innocent are hurt—but then, who is really innocent? Paradoxical but true.

Public Fisticuffs

Sometimes mornings, taking stock, I come across mildly interesting stuff, interesting to peruse until I see it properly. An example this morning was another of those public fisticuffs that break out between opposing parties, this time a Christian Apologist and his would be Atheist Opponent.  The first look tells me that I’m seeing round eighteen, and the bout will never end. Behind each combatant a large fan base cheers, its members uninterested in real thought but enjoying the fray and eager to scribble endless comments. Nor will a winner ever emerge. After each round the fan base on either side cheers; in commentary each fighter portrays the same blows as superb punches that landed—but on the opponent’s chin. The subject here is unimportant. It could be anything at all: politics, water rights, foreign policy, Euro zone. If the aim would be to find the truth, the methods employed will never work—nor can it be discovered in such settings. Nobody loses—by design. Spectator sport with fuzzy scoring. As for the detached viewer some distance from the cheering, jeering crowds—he is tempted to fetch a dustpan and a broom.

The Origins of Aschenputtel

A pot of beans that ended on the kitchen floor—on the way to being soaked for some hours—caused a discussion of that, you know, that fairy tale, the girl who had to count beans or peas or something. Can you think of the name of that? Snow White it certainly was not, nor Sleeping Beauty, nor Little Red Riding Hood. At last it came to us—but in its German version, which was done by the Brothers Grimm: Aschenputtel. Cinderella.

When it comes to fairy tales, the original author is usually lost in the mists of time. So with our Aschenputtel. The second part, puttel, is not present in German, but some scholars think that it comes from buddeln, to dig, thus “ash digger.” But since there is a German word for a lowly servant, a scullion or kitchen helper, called Aschenbrödel, it might be safer to assume that the Grimm brothers formed that ending to suit themselves. The word is treated as a masculine noun, hence one experiences the fascinating linguistic phenomenon, reading the German version, of having our Cinderella referred to as “he” in contexts where that name appears. But for the German-speaker that produces no dissonance at all.

Now there are clear differences between cinders and ashes, so why do the Germans use ash? Cinder is hard slag, ashes are dusty. The German for it is Sinter. The reason for the usage is because the Grimms translated Cendrillon (that’s our Cinderella), and the word for ashes in French is cendre.

The story appears to originate in China circa 850 AD (Online Etymology Dictionary). Its “recent” history begins in 1634 when it appeared in a collection of stories written by Giambattista Basile in Italian; there she is called “Cenerentola.” Next came the French version by Charles Perrault, “Cendrillon.” The Grimm’s version appeared in 1812.

Well worth reading the story using grown-up eyes (link). Like all such tales, it has endless levels of meaning. In the modern day it mirrors the experience of children who undergo the traumas of divorce.

The man [Aschenputtel’s father] had taken another wife. The woman had brought with her into the house two daughters, who were beautiful and fair of face, but vile and black of heart…

In Parentheses

Back in the long ago, probably in the 1950s, I read a strange book entitled In Parenthesis. It was written by David Jones, published in 1937, but it dealt with Jones’ experience of World War I, a period of such collective horror and disorder for participants that Jones thought of it as a suspended period of his existence, between parentheses. Jones was a painter and engraver not a writer, hence perhaps his use of the singular. But it’s obvious how he used the word. I didn’t know his background at the time of reading—nor did I have sufficient background to understand his mythic or literary allusions. What struck me then was the reality of war—and the originality of Jones’ conception—that isolation of something unspeakable, its separation by parentheses from the rest of experience.

Sometimes only the “idea” of a work remains in my memory—but is deeply embedded there and surfaces like a reminder. For the participants, wars belong there. A while back now I mentioned W.G. Sebald’s book, Air War and Literature (link); in that book he attempts to answer critics of German post-war literature who berate the Germans for not writing about the war. Sebald’s book itself provides the reason why; the more remembered, the more repressed. Placed between parentheses.

Now of course it is almost ridiculous to liken great violent upheavals like world wars to the recurring phenomenon of national elections; the more fitting reference in the latter case is to circuses. But yet for me the phrase, in parentheses, recurs right on time every election year, just about this time in the cycle; it comes in the form of a reminder: put all this aside, ignore it. It is a kind of collective madness, really. And if it has the smell of war and of insanity, it is because elections are exactly that: wars. They are sublimated wars—but real; why else would I recall In Parenthesis each time, and each time with a little shudder.

Getting Real

One of my etymological reflexes—and it arises particularly when a term is philosophical—is to ask myself: “What is the German word for it?” That’s usually enlightening because in German the commonly used word is usually still rooted in Old Germanic; the Latin word we use is present too, but is not the dominant word. Sometimes the roots of the two are different. Take the word real. I’m on this subject because a sentence in the paper once more repeated that tired old “in the real world…” An interesting phrase. The intention is to point to conflict. In the dream world or in the imagination, anything is possible, not so in the real world. In the real world you will be up against it—people, matter, etc. Now that word, used in so many different ways, derives ultimately from the Latin res for thing or matter. The real world is the world of things. So what is the German word for it?

The German for reality is Wirklichkeit. It is rooted in the verb wirken, derived from the same roots as our “work,” but wirken has a slightly more expansive meaning, including to invent and to discover. Wirklichkeit has a more dynamic flavor because the verb is to the fore: That-which-has-been-wrought. It corresponds much better to our actuality, although at least my sense is that we don’t think of acts when we speak of actuality. The reason for that, according to Online Etymology Dictionary, is because we took it from the French actualité, which the French use to indicate the “now existing, up to date.” The older root is the Latin actualis, viewed as a Latin loan-translation of the Greek energeia. The Romans meant by it “active, pertaining to action.” That’s dynamic, but that meaning in the word has faded. It is still present in German.

Things and action. Matter and energy. Our “reality” is a little hollow. What lies behind Reality is something alive and energetic. And the “real world,” therefore, is a great deal more than the endless battle for survival and success in the realm of matter.

Trianon Ignored—Again!

It gave me a heart-felt shock to note that the Democratic Party Platform (and, for that matter, the Republican Party Platform too) once again simply ignored Hungary’s right of access to the Adriatic—which that country had possessed until 1918. The Treaty of Trianon stripped the country of my birth of territory, mercilessly—especially lands where Hungarians were in a minority. The framers of the treaty wrong-headedly assumed that the mere speaking of a language should entitle a population to possess land—ignoring the time-honored right of conquest. Come to think of it, things do get confusing. Sometimes lands can be carved out of others by energetic immigrants—provided they have the backing of the United States and of world public opinion. At least one such comes to mind. If Hungary is lagging in its reconquista, it is due to lazy lobbying.

The map shows what we call Nagy Magyarország (Greater Hungary). The light green shows what remained. Note the tiny “separated territory” of Fiume in the lower left corner; it is also colored dark green; it had been governed by Hungary until 1918. The intervening larger region became the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs; it is colored grey to make Fiume stand out.

Alas. Our port then was Fiume, since then awkwardly renamed Rijek. Fiume on the Adriatic! It’s time to get back to lobbying; the 2016 election is just around the corner. As we say in Hungary, hold on to your gold korona, Greater Hungary will rise again.

Oklahoma: Smart People

It surprised me to learn today that only 29 of the 50 states in our United States have officially designated butterflies, indeed only 43 of 50 have officially designated insects—and Michigan is not on either list (ht Brigitte). Well, turns out, that Michigan is trying. An Oakland County web site tells us that the state insect is the Green Darner Dragon Fly, but that’s only unofficially. Now in our opinion any legislature so focused on tax cutting and levying fees that it has no time to designate a State Insect by majority vote needs drumming out of office. Around this household we know what is important!

We salute the smart people of Oklahoma for selecting the Black Swallowtail Butterfly, the star of Rancho Mariposa, as its state butterfly—and the European Honey Bee as its state insect. Not all participating states do—but some have both. Oklahoma has gone the whole nine yards.

Got to wondering about places where places where we have lived. Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, Minnesota, and now Michigan. Missouri and Kansas both have state insects, the European Honey Bee. Virginia, another smart state, has a Swallowtail too, but it is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Minnesota opts for the Monarch. The Monarch, incidentally, rules! It is the state butterfly of Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia. The hands-down winner among the insects? The European Honey Bee: Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming: The United States of Honey Bee!

Can’t this man get off this fluttering subject already? Impossible, dear friends. We have lots of butterflies now. Two Monarchs came to the Rancho just yesterday to partake of the nectar of our Japanese Knotweed, a kind of bamboo—not counting dozens of Fiery Skippers and our regulars, the Small White Cabbage. The knotweed is now in full bloom, and its high branches and white blooms were aswarm with the winners of this morning’s state competition: Monarchs and Bees.

And then, last night, my eyes just casually brushing some small fennel plants, I detected our tenth caterpillar of the year astride one of its slender green stems. It looks like another Swallowtail hoping to be born here so that it can flutter off to where it really belongs—Oklahoma. Unless our efforts here result in the designation of the Black Swallowtail as the official Michigan State Butterfly. Dream on. Dream on.

The images in sequence: the European Honey Bee, state insect of seventeen states; the Monarch Butterfly, state butterfly of eight states; Oklahoma's Black Swallowtail; Virginia's Tiger Swallowtail; and Michigan's "unofficial" state insect, the Green Darner Dragon Fly. Here some links: State insect web site, State butterfly web site; and Michigan State symbols. The images shown were taken from these.