The Earlier Satanic Mill

What with the elevation of Hildegard of Bingen to the status of a Doctor of the Church, I was looking back to the times when she lived, the twelfth century. And it was a very interesting time. Some of the big names of that time, arranged here by year-of-birth, were Omar Khayyam, Hildegard, Thomas Becket, Frederick Barbarossa, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Maimonides, Saladin, Genghis Khan, Ibn el Arabi, and Francis of Assisi. In perusing these patterns, I also stumbled upon something striking. It was the “birth date,” so to say, of a precursor of industrialization. The Arsenal of Venice was founded in 1104. It was still around and thriving when Dante wrote his Inferno, and the following quote (from Canto XXI, Sayers translation) ranks it squarely among the satanic mills:

For as at Venice, in the Arsenal

In winter-time, they boil the gummy pitch

To caulk such ships as need an overhaul,

Now that they cannot sail—instead of which

One builds him a new boat, one toils to plug

Seams strained by many a voyage, others stitch

Canvas to patch a tattered jib or lug,

Hammer at the prow, hammer at the stern, or twine

Ropes, or shave oars, refit and make all snug —

So, not by fire, but by the art divine

A thick pitch boiled down there [in hell], spattering the brink

With vicious glue; I saw this, but therein

Nothing; only great bubbles black as ink

Would rise and burst there; or the seething tide

Heave up all over, and settle again, and sink.

The Arsenal was something quite unbelievable for its time. It could assemble a complete sailing ship in the space of a day—from uniformly fabricated components made in other parts of the facility in what amounted to an assembly-line manner. In that time, elsewhere, such ships took months to build. Up to 100 ships were at various stages of completion in the shipyard. The factory occupied more than 100 acres, was surrounded by a thick wall, and employed 1,600 people. It was also used for refurbishing old ships, as Dante indicates. It got its name from also manufacturing munitions. Come to think of it, shipbuilding at such a scale was next accomplished by the U.S.A. during World War II.

I note here that Venice was a Republic then. Its governance took that form in 697—and ended with Napoleon’s conquest of Venice in 1797. On that same date, the Arsenal of Venice also ceased to function. Republics and satanic mills? Do they go together? William Blake’s formulation of that label (in his poem, Jerusalem) dated to a time when London had been shrouded in smoke and pollution as the capital of the nascent Industrial Revolution. As for us, today, we mourn the passing of those mills but under the milder name of manufacturing. There they stand, those mills, abandoned; and the wind blows litter and plastic bags over vacant lots. Such is human fate. Love it and lose it. Wish it, get it, curse it, and mourn the idyllic past—but when it threatens to return, mourn that return in turn.

---------------

As an addendum here, let me note that the average life span of the famous people named above was 67 years; the thinkers lived longer; the warriors passed earlier; the martyr, Becket, died at 52; perhaps the most intense of them all, Francis, only lived to be 45.  The three with the longest lives were Khayyam (83), Hildegard (81), and Ibn el Arabi (75).

The Elephant—Again!

Last year this time I noted with pleasure that the Detroit Tigers had faced the Elephant of Baseball in the American League Division Series and emerged victorious over the Yankees— and that had felt good. The Tigers were then Texas-bound but succumbed to the Texas Rangers in the AL Championship Series. The Rangers in turn battled St. Louis in the World Series, the team that ranked second in WS wins then—and St. Louis won again.

This year, and you might say miraculously, the Tigers overcame Oakland (baseball’s third-ranked team in WS wins) in the ALDS but now face the Yankees in the ALCS. We’re working our way up Baseball Mountain, you might say. Is the air a little thin on oxygen this high? Yes! To get a sense of how far up up is, I suggest a look at the baseball rankings I put up last year (link). The chart has been updated to show last year’s dire outcome. And if the tiger manages to fell the elephant, what then looms ahead? The next opponent will either be second-ranked St. Louis or sixth-ranked San Francisco. That tempts me, prospectively, to hum a [modified] song by Tony Bennet. Here’s how it starts:

The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay

The glory that was Rome is of another day

I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan

So I’m going to hit home runs in the city by the bay!
I left my bat ... in San Francisco...

Masterpiece Theater Coinage

When the charming teenaged Demelza offers her body to Captain Poldark at their initial meeting for a shilling, you know several things. You know you’re watching Masterpiece Theater, that this is some twentieth century author’s fantasy of what Old England was all about, and that Demelza will become a formidable character if we just keep on watching. But what you do not know is the actual value of a shilling. You infer that it must not be much because Demelza is a slum-kid; that fact is signaled by her ragged clothing and dirt smudges on her face. Indeed all of the lower classes must have smudgy faces, and if they are males, staggering drunkenness is presumed. But let me not stray from my subject. You know that a guinea is worth something—because the rich and evilly scheming Warleggans hate even to spend a single one, and they are always (presumably) sweating under wondrous wigs. You know that a half-crown is less than a crown and both are more than a shilling, because a half-crown is the typical tip, given by someone dressed well to someone dressed coarsely and therefore having charge of the horses and such. You expect that penny is less then a shilling and that the farthing is the dismal bottom of all coinage because the phrase, “Not worth a farthing” must be uttered in a tone of contempt. Now you know, by context, that this is the England of the eighteenth century. Over in France the great Sun of Liberty, Democracy, and Freedom is about to rise, foreshadowing such future wonders as vice presidential debates even in the lost Colonies. But where, in all this, is the British pound? You never hear it mentioned. Well, Ghulf Genes to the rescue. But, based on past experience, what I learned today I’ll probably forget tomorrow and have to do all over again. Therefore this post is worth about 3s. 6d.

Let me begin with the here and now. The British coinage here and now, and in place since the 1971 decimalization took place, consists of the pound (also known as the pound sterling, symbol £); it is divided into 100 pence. None of the other coins is any longer in use. As of this morning, £1 was worth $1.61. Until 1971, £1 divided into 20 shillings, each shilling into 12 pence. After that date the shilling disappeared, of course, but it is worth 5 pence if converted. Therefore, in today’s U.S. purchasing power, a shilling is worth 8 cents. Poldark refused Demelza’s generous offer, thereby proving himself to be “a gentleman.”

Now let’s expand this view. The pound predates the guinea, but as a concept, not as a coin, and it goes all the way back to the reign of Charlemagne (742-814).  The Great Carolus defined a monetary value as the value of a pound of silver, named after the Latin libra, a unit of weight, in French livre. That word was abbreviated lb, hence that symbol stands for a pound to this day. The Brits took over the concept and its valuation. The shilling was a silver coin; twenty of them weighed a pound. The smaller coins that divided a shilling were modeled on Charlemagne’s denarius; for this reason (maddeningly), in written notation pence are written as d, therefore, above, 3s. 6d. means three shilling six pence. More maddeningly still, the s for shilling actually came from solidus, a very small Roman coin, not from the s in shilling. Solidus had survived for the same low-level coinage in France…

Now, oddly, the pound, referring to silver, was never actually a coin until modern times. It’s value was first physically represented by the guinea, a gold coin introduced in 1663 and worth 1 pound of silver. Under economic pressures, however, silver lost while gold retained its value, hence the value of a guinea fluctuated from its official definition as being worth 20 shillings. Later, in 1717, it was officially fixed at having a value of 21 shillings—illustrating that humans are not rational animals. In 1816 the sovereign, another gold coin, replaced the guinea, but by then, and already in Poldark’s times, £1 and £2 paper banknotes were in circulation owing to a shortage of gold.

Fortunately for fans of Masterpiece Theater, authors shy from really heavy historical labors and therefore crowns (worth 5s), half-crowns (2s 6d, also 2/6) are rarely mentioned. You hear people talking about a bob (another name for shilling). The farthing is never spelled out as one fourth of a penny, although its name suggests the word “fourth” being pronounced by someone with smudges on his face. Here’s also the ha’penny (½d), the tanner (6d), the florin (two bob), and the quid (£1); that last is thought to come from quid pro quo. Is there more? I wouldn’t doubt it. When totally confused, I retreat to my blessedly simple childhood memories. We had the pengö then, dividing into 100 fillér, and the 20-fillér coin had a hole in the middle. Where that was? Why in Magyaroszág.

The Menningers of Kansas

Happenstance caused me to pull a volume from a shelf, a book I must have obtained in the 1960s but had but briefly skimmed then. Some vague memories remained, but the volume still had its dust jacket; dust jackets routinely come off when I read a book with care, hence I hadn’t. The book was Karl A. Menninger’s The Vital Balance: The Life Process in Mental Health and Illness. This time I read the book. In that process I discovered the reason why, nearly 50 years ago, I had put it aside, and also why I shouldn’t have. Every sincere and learned effort has value, and Menninger, one of the apostles of Freudian psychology, was a man of merit and worth.

Living in Kansas City from the early 1950s to about 1970 with some interruptions, we were quite aware of the Menninger Clinic in nearby Topeka, Kansas (in Houston since 2005), an institution that ranks up there with the Mayo. Learning more now, I discovered, for instance, that Charles F. Menninger, Karl’s father, together with William W. Mayo, have a day dedicated to them (March 6) in the Episcopal Church (USA)’s liturgical calendar! The Wikipedia page that told me this is also labeled Saints portal—which tells the astute reader a good many interesting things about cultural fusions and such in these Latter Days. In any case, the Menninger Clinic was founded by C.F. Menninger and his sons Karl A. and William C., all three psychiatrists. The third and middle son, Edwin A. Menninger, became a journalist, the founder of a paper in Florida, and a great promoter of flowering trees, which is not a bad divergence from the family profession if diverge you must. Edwin also wrote a book called Fantastic Trees.

The most famous Menninger was Karl (1893-1990), principally owing to his writings. Best known of these are The Human Mind, his first, Man Against Himself, and The Vital Balance. While Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is permanently linked to the concept of sex, the libido, the life drive, Karl Menninger’s work is centered on Freud’s lesser-known death drive that others, later, labeled Thanatos, after the Greek personification of death. Human existence is the battle between life and death, played out in each individual, both being drives, a favorite Freudian concept (in German Trieb). Menninger’s Man Against Himself, is a detailed analysis of this darker drive, which manifests as aggression and destruction. And his The Vital Balance is an attempt to show in fine detail how the right balancing of these two drives produces the fully-developed human being.

It is undoubtedly useful to see reality, occasionally, through lenses quite differently fashioned than my own, and reading Menninger is an example. Does modernity also have its own projection of a Fallen World? Oh, yes. It does when it is serious—and Menninger was serious above all. Also an eloquent writer on the most arcane and difficult subject, the human soul, albeit that word, when used at all by him, gets quotes around it. Something in that Freudian lens, however, blocks out some of the light. When Menninger refers to transcendence, he uses that word to mean a better adaptation; to use his own phrasing, when you transcend the destructive and the libidinal drives, you are “weller than well.” And, in the end, Thanatos has the last word after all…

---------------

The flowering tree shown is the Tabebuia, courtesy of Mary616 (link), which also has more information on Edwin A. Menninger.

The Rise of the Arch

The virtue of the true arch, whether used for an opening into or a hollow space within a structure, is that in ages before steel came into use as a weight-bearing member, the arch could make a wider opening and/or a greater hollow than any other form of support, be that columns holding the horizontal lintel of a gate or supporting a roof. And the secret the ancients discovered was that stone is easily cracked and broken when weight above it causes it to stretch (tensile force) but resists weight much more effectively if the weight causes it to compress instead (compressive force). For this reason, before the discovery of the arch, huge temples were forests of tall columns, not much more than 10 feet apart—although nicely aligned.

The earliest arches, known also as false arches, emerged as far back as the second millennium BC. They attempted to reduce the tensile stress on bearing members by extending the supporting columns stepwise into the opening, as shown by the illustration of this early kind of arch, known as a corbel. Corbelled arches predate the true arch by two thousand years and are found all over the world, including ancient South America.

The Etruscans invented the true arch, also shown as a diagram. By using wedge-shaped stones, they converted tensile stresses on the stone from above into compressive stress, so that the force exerted on the stone is transferred laterally to the columns—as shown in the illustration. The Romans learned the art, perfected it, and then applied it with enormous exuberance to every kind of building, including enormous aqueducts. The true arch was solidly in place by the second century BC. The later flying buttress (mentioned on this blog here) is an extension of the principle that manifests in the arch.

In contrast to stone or brick steel stretches easily under weight while retaining its integrity. When steel beams began to be deployed as weight-bearing members in the nineteenth century, the functional role of the stone arch was diminished. Not that such did not continue to be built—indeed they still are. The massive deployment of steel in buildings is, of course, the consequence of plentiful supplies of cheap fossil fuels. As these sources of energy are exhausted, the arch, no doubt, will once more become an important technology—the enabler of generous interior space.

I bring this post today by way of illustrating a point I made yesterday about technology. Technology cumulates even as large social structures decay, die, and others are then born in turn. The corbelled arch survived the decline and fall of Sumer and Akkad; the Roman arch survived the decline and fall of Rome and may rise in the future. How the old is passed on to the present is illustrated neatly in two YouTube videos. The first is titled “How I Build Stone Arches,” by Mike Haduck (link). It’s hands on. Amusingly, it illustrates how modern and ancient technologies cooperate—when Haduck uses an electric saw to shape his stones…and then consults an old book that illustrates arch-building early in the twentieth century. The second, “History of Visual Technology: Stone Construction and the Arch,” presents an excellent tutorial on the fundamentals involved in this art—and how it has evolved over time (link). The arches closest to our house? Why, they are part of our house (built 1929). We walk beneath them each time we go somewhere.

The stresses in matter can, by careful observation, be made to harmonize beautifully. The stresses in large aggregates of people—not quite so effectively. But the human experience is highly layered. As we leave the upper levels where the compressive stress of union and the tensile stress of freedom are most visibly in conflict, great constructs eventually give way—while at lower levels useful tooling is never quite lost even if knowledge about it thins out and has to be recovered from old books using Xerox machines.

To this, as a card-carrying word-maven, I need to add a caution. Architecture does not have its roots in “the arch.” In that word the root is archon, the Greek for “master” or “chief”—chief builder. The arch has its root in the Latin arcus; it stands for the “bow.”
---------------
Images from Wikipedia link for the corbel and link for the true arch.

From the Edge

Reading the papers this morning, I have the feeling of looking at the world from the edge of eternity. Observable is the age-old tug and pull of conflict. If I were transported in time to any earlier period, I would soon see it again if only I had the same lens modernity’s media have fashioned in our times. And it is certain that transported into a very far future, my report would not change, not in essence.

People who unrealistically long for the return of some Golden Age have essentially the same stance as those who believe in Progress. They’re living in the now and project some hoped-for resolution on the horizontal plane of time: the past shall return; the breakthrough is in the future. Our lives, however, are always in the Age of Iron—no matter what the cultural stage: growing, declining, transitional, or static.

One of the curious aspects of change over long periods of time is the contrast between culture and technology. By technology here I simply mean “tooling.” Cultures cycle. Technology cumulates. The discovery of steam-power and fossil fuels gave the last two centuries a sudden and enormous increase in tooling—but the improvements have been there, at the level of tooling—not at the level of core human behavior. That genuine improvement has produced the illusion of some kind of radical change in humanity. To be sure fossil fuels will be exhausted, but using energy in new ways will remain a permanent acquisition. The next Dark Age will have quite different features than the last; we’ll have plenty of solar panels, windmills, fancy explosives to help us get to geothermal sources, and so on. To be sure, also, the loss of wealth from heaven (or from the deep) that coal, oil, and gas represent will produce significant disorder; during such times innovation grows dormant, except in the military sphere, but knowledge is never entirely lost. Technology, therefore, will continue to cumulate.

Hard-nosed realism, curiously, requires a transcendental view. It rests on the fusion of comprehensive observations both of what lies within us, not least our hopes for a “millennium,” and what we see around us. This suggests a “fallen world” and also a “world beyond.”

Lifelong Learning?

Most of life’s learning serves adaptation in the sense that its subject is the world. In a real way even such arcane studies as astronomy help us in a practical way; they provide an important grounding for our stance and action: orientation. The knowledge of history belongs in this bin too; we can no more meaningfully shape history by individual action that we can steer the stars, but knowing great patterns of collective behavior and their cyclings makes us more sober and therefore detached observers of that which unfolds about us on quite another time scale than our own brief life.

The adaptive urge has been a great teacher for me. Amusingly the very subjects I dismissed in youth because they didn’t draw me became central to my work-life: mathematics and chemistry. These were among “required” courses, but C- was good enough for me. Then, under the prod of necessity I later learned them on my own; the difference both in the feel of these subjects and the experience of learning was enormous. What matters is the inner self wanting to learn something. Without that we get, ah, what goes by the name of education. There is also a lucky part to this, at least for me. I can’t abide understanding something “just enough” to get some job accomplished. Once I’m into a subject, I can’t rest until I’ve grasped its entire inner pattern. This does not mean academic level command of the subject—but it means penetrating to its essence, at least so far as this is possible. And since that essence is elusive, it leads to a lifelong interest.

There are two kinds of forced learning: the first is delivered by collective social pressure; the second is delivered by the will of the individual. The first is easily resisted, finessed, satisfied. The second is horribly demanding, irresistible; it arises from desire. In my case the image of the junk yard dog always arises. I’ll be damned if you resist me! Let’s call that the response if the subject appears as an obdurate enemy. But the mystery of the subject may appear in feminine guise as well, in which case what drives one on is total love.

So where in all this, one might wonder, is the quest for truth? Curious business that. The Truth seems at first to be wrapped in the garments of the world. Slowly, slowly, as these are examined, understood, and removed, more and more of the real Truth emerges to view. Then, in advanced years, the world itself becomes more and more transparent, manner of speaking. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings more merriment than awe. That is because something has begun to shine beyond such petty matters and the Real is finally emergent.

Doctor of the Church

Vatican Radio confirmed the news this morning. St. Hildegard of Bingen is now a Doctor of the Church. She was officially canonized in May of this year, putting the Pope’s seal on a sainthood bestowed by popular acclamation centuries ago. A link here to an earlier post about her follows (link). She was a multifaceted person of genius who lived at the peak of Christianity’s efflorescence, born 1098, died 1179. She was a visionary, composer, poet, mystic, playwright, writer, preacher, founder of houses, and administrator. She also created a new alphabet. The Vatican today brought an image of her I’d never seen before. It is tiny; no higher resolution is available; but what it shows is that Hildegard also seems to have done the humbler work of bringing home the wheat at harvest time. 

The Middle Way

Polarized situations, such as the one now striving for a resolution in our politics, always remind me that “yellow is the color of the middle way.” That comes from China. In Confucius (551-479 BC) it is the Great Mean or the Doctrine of the Mean, derived from Analects 6:26 which says: “The virtue embodied in the doctrine of the Mean is of the highest order. But it has long been rare among people.” You don’t say! The formulation needs unpacking, something Confucius did not but others who followed him did. It appears to refer to an “unwobbling pivot,” thus a kind of hinge from which one can go this way and that. Confucius’ contemporary, Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC), spoke of the Middle Path; he described it as some point where the self is neither attached to the senses nor addicted to self-mortification—the two extremes of sensate and religious cultures. We find it echoed in the I Ching during a later, troubled time in China, the I Ching, 2 K’un, The Receptive, moving line five:  “A yellow lower garment brings supreme good fortune.” The I Ching dates back at least to the Warring States Period in China (475-221 BC). In the West we have the Golden Mean—and there is that yellow coloration again.

One could speculate at length about the nature of that pivot. I take it to mean the human self detached from passions in either direction and harmoniously poised, anchored in its sovereign transcendence. How to apply that to the current polarization…? Well, for the Buddha, the Middle Path was emptiness. Which is, largely, what we see as we stare down the yellow brick road that leads to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Caucus Club

All things pass, but some will be fondly remembered. News comes today that The Caucus Club is closing in the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit. The 47-story Penobscot building is one of the tallest and finest in Detroit, and this restaurant (not really a club), tucked into a relatively small space next to the Congress Street entrance, one of its quiet jewels. Many of us occupants came and went by that entrance daily; the parking lots lay in that direction. Most of us, of course, regularly ate our lunch at the Epicurean Café in the basement, another great old venue. It also passed into memory (in June 2006)—but by that time it had been acquired by a new owner who seemingly didn’t have what it takes. The Caucus Club (sixty at its passing) was for special lunches or for drinks after work on celebratory occasions. My memories are of dark spaces but artfully lit; it had privacy, atmosphere, table-cloths for dinner, alcoholic beverages, and a great selection of fine cigars as you came and went.  

Back when we took up our “residence” in the Penobscot—Brigitte leading the way, as Editor of Gale’s most prestigious title, Encyclopedia of Associations—she had her offices on the 13th floor. Of course! A year or so later I followed—and had my first tiny suite on the 13th floor too. Later we (Editorial Code and Data, Inc.) moved up to the 31st, eventually occupying almost the entire floor, before “publishing” departed for the suburbs. In those days the largest single occupant was Gale Research. Many of the other residents were prestigious law firms, associations, corporate headquarters, and such. We’re now talking about the 1980s. When Gale left a decade later, temporary jails had been put in place in the Penobscot’s basement and the building was beginning to serve as an overflow for the city and state governments’ judicial branches.

Strange how memory transforms the tense, gritty day-to-day. Only warm feelings remain for our old Penob today—and especially warm memories of laughing groups, down in the Caucus Club, unwinding after special days, celebrating the publication of tough, hard-fought directories, seasonal episodes, and just meeting friends. The Caucus Club’s interior by night was, even then, lit in sepia tones. With time that color has taken on a deeper hue. The troubles and crises we lived through can, of course, still be recalled, but the overall effect of looking back brings nostalgia for something lost. Farewell, Caucus Club. We thank you for the memories.
---------------
Image sources: Penobscot, Wikipedia (link); Caucus Club, Dining in Detroit (link).

Another Glance Back

A propos Tuesday’s post on looking back, and yesterday evening’s debate, a good way of comparing two different “times” is to review the Lincoln-Douglas debates. That last debate was followed by an awesome civil war. The cheery thought is that yesterday’s performance will have nothing like the same effect.

A Farrago of Terms

People readily believe that others in their circle also know what they do. This arises, seems to me, because they’ve forgotten the price they paid for knowledge. Hence that damnable word palimpsest keeps surfacing in antiquarian discussions. It’s a mongrel of a word; I regard all words that contain a ps- beginning as such, a Greek favorite, as in psyche and the derived psychiatrist. The p is #@!& silent, so why print it. Coming to America and learning English, the Ogre was th. The absolutely simplest word in English was a bear to those who hadn’t just grown up with it. That damnable ps- belongs there with the the. Palimpsest comes apart, you see. Palim is “again” and psest is “rubbed,” deriving from psen, “to rub smooth.”  So what is it, finally? Well, a palimpsest is a piece of parchment bearing writing—but one from which the writing has been scraped off so that it can be used again—or it is the same parchment that has already been used again following a vigorous scraping. Why not just say “scraped parchment”? Well, you have to fit in. You have to stay on the reservation. You learned it as palimpsest—it was an achievement. A tiny little pride took root with that effort. The first independent use of that word gave you a little tremulous satisfaction. Therefore, never mind the ordinary ignorant reader out there. Learn it, dammit. I had to…

Parchment is another great word—and has nothing to do with the state of being thirsty. But back when we wrote on the skin of unfortunate beasts, that skin had to be dried. Or so you would think, wouldn’t you? Wrong. The word comes from (1) the name of a city then called Pergamon,  these days called Bergama (in Asia Minor) which evidently introduced leather in competition with papyrus; or (2) the Parthian region of ancient Persian from which the Romans obtained parthica pellis (Parthian leather), and in the repeated use of that phrase they dropped the leather part—much as the drinkable port began as vinho do Porto, a product of Portugal. Sometimes we lose the beginning, sometimes the end.

So what is a farrago? It is a medley, a mixture. I came across it yesterday in a book written in the late 1920. Google’s Ngram facility, which tracks the frequency of word usage way back, shows that for some reason, probably untraceable, the word had a sudden lurch of popularity from 1890 through 1920 roughly; before and after that period, the word lived and lives in the same obscure communities which serve up the palimpsest. The word comes from a mixture of grains, the Latin far, and was coined by the Romans. Barley is a cognate of far. Cognate? It comes from “together” and “born.” Born together, placed in the same cradle, as it were, often meaning that the same word was pronounced differently by different populations. All was well until the dictionary-makers rose to power and started writing down the careless mumbling of the people just out there guiding the plows….

The Dusty Rearview Mirror

Yesterday’s post reminded me. The old always bemoan the present. It’s always been so, hasn’t it? O tempora! O mores! The question here is whether that moaning is an indicator of real change or whether it is the consequence, strictly, of aging. If times fall into decadence, other more promising times rise from the shambles; people live through those times too, grow old while the culture is growing, not decaying. Do they still bemoan the present—which then, clearly, is an improvement over the past? I am sure that they do. So whence comes this dark view of the present?

The answer here is probably much more complex than pop-psychology might find. It tends to judge all things by viewing through a lens of egotism. The old are losing energy and wish to be “active” still—a ridiculous simplification much used by advertisers who picturing the aging still kicking ass. The old are by definition have-beens, sidelined, and ignored. They wish to be at the center still; they are not; therefore they view the times when they were as much better. Things change, but people get attached to things, and when they pass, they mourn. Ah, the good-old days when Sears was still Sears. Ssssigh. Hey! Haven’t you been to Costco lately? That sort of thing. And yes. Such things no doubt contribute to that moaning.

Also present here, however, is an objective level. Things do change, of course, but not always uniformly for the better. The physical environment may improve, but values may be lost. In the sacred past the passing of which is now bemoaned, physical conditions may have been a lot worse, but the values were more honored. The paradox is that they were honored because the physical was much more difficult. Alternatively, the physical situation has deteriorated; and in response values are now being cultivated. And the old person is reacting to the stresses of the physical. This tends to be the case in times of cultural growth. The decay of values is the worse of the two, but careful distinctions between the two are not always evident in the moaning.

Lastly—but to understand this you have to be genuinely old yourself—knowledge has slowly accumulated to show, rather clearly, exactly what kind of realm we inhabit in what the old, certainly, always think of as the valley of the shadow of death. For them that shadow has grown looong. That sort of thought is not exactly common-place, but may be intuitively felt. And the moaning then is a kind of projection to the present. To test it, close, detailed study of those glorious by-gone times we of the doddering generation like to sigh over is highly recommended. On such close inspection they turn out to be just as awful as the present. No wonder grandpa was always on and on and on…

The Waters of Madness

Today’s post on Laudator, “Flight,” and an earlier post called “Escape” referenced there (link), brought to my mind a Sufi story published by Idries Shah in Tales of the Dervishes called “When the Waters Were Changed” (E.P. Dutton paperback, 1970, p. 21). The brief tale is presented on the web (here). I will just give you the first paragraph:

Once upon a time Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.

Brigitte and I talk almost daily of “things in the air.” Of course we’re not alone. At one level one hears echoes of Tom Lehrer: “Just two things of which you must beware: Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.” At another the air also carries the guiding suggestion to take flight, to seek escape.

Green September

Two earlier years have set a pattern I would today honor by repetition—the end of an unofficial competition for the title of Most Notable Plant in our garden this season. Last year we featured twin tomato plants, the year before a pumpkin that chose to grow out of our compost heap. The decision this year was rather difficult. Our seven tomato plants did wonderfully well; they produced a huge harvest but, having been arranged in a decentralized manner, they did not produce last year’s tomato “cloud” that won the prize. The competition this year was—at least in my own mind—between a rather fantastic geranium of high old age Brigitte has seasoned over several seasons now…and a sweet potato vine. Having such vines points to another tradition, the Mother’s Day plant-buying trip we have each year, sponsored by Monique and John. Brigitte tells me that we’ve had these vines for two or even three years now—but not until this year did their placement next to the geraniums, and eventually spilling over into the pot of a tomato plant, produce the vivid color-contrast that met me each time I came home. A second such plant lives suspended from a fabric “pot” hung from one open wing of a huge wooden gate that encloses out inner courtyard, but is never closed. The brand is Wollypot, but Brigitte calls ours Wally in honor of the supporting surface. The picture shows the sweet potato, the geranium behind it, and in place of runner-up honor two of our seven tomato plants.

The Taxi Mom

Peggy and Baldy, on a recent trip to Europe, rounded out their trip with a visit to Baden Baden, our last residence in Germany before we went (as I then naively imagined) to the Land of the Cowboys. They observed, among many other things, grade-school children going home—and not a Mom in sight. Okay. Check. That hasn’t changed. Indeed in the Land of the Cowboys it was pretty much the same when we arrived—except that we saw a huge amount of neon but no cowboys at all. In 1951 the past-3:00 p.m. traffic jams (middle schools let out at 3:17, elementary at 3:38) were still in the future; suburbia still in the womb. Now that school has started here, its time to re-adapt. Congestion of certain busy arteries is now in force as the latest in fancy SUVs stand in endlessly long rows—so that children actually must walk, sometimes a whole (shudder) block, to find Mom staring at her smartphone behind the wheel. The curious thing is that quite a few children still do walk, both to and also from school. Significant distances. I know. I’ve observed them. Have not yet changed the times of my walks—which give me views of about six schools of various gradation. And some may also be found waiting for the bus, believe it or not, the Municipal, not the Yellow kind. “Soccer Mom” has gone out of style; I don’t hear the phrase used nowadays. It needs a replacement. “Taxi Mom,” however, is sort of a perennial.

Peggy and Baldy? Peggy Jenkins married Boldizsár (Balthazar) Darnay, my brother. And in the Land of the Cowboys this man, with plenty of healthy hair all over his head, got renamed gradually. Balthazar was too difficult for the products of our vaunted educational system. It didn’t help exactly that we in the family, products of the vaunted European educational system, had trouble enough with Boldizsár ourselves so that we called him Boldi long before we arrived. Baldy and I both have odd first names. Arsen? The name was far too long for one of our friends going back a ways. She always called me Arse.

Esperanto Studied Here

One of my esteemed colleagues quite a number of years ago gave me a little book entitled Esperanto. It is by J. Cresswell and J. Hartley and issued by Teach Yourself Books. It’s not the kind of book you read, but one that produces delight at intervals. For that reason it occupies a “busy” shelf I tend to look at two, three times a week.

Perhaps the most wonderful creations in life are those that requires enormous, complex, and transcending efforts that—viewed from an ordinary, main-street, realistic view—are entirely unlikely to reach their goal. Esperanto was the creation of a Polish eye-doctor, Dr. L.L. Zamenhof (1859-1917). He felt that before humanity was ready to tackle the grave problems that confront it, the “language problem” had to be overcome—and so he set to work. Ah, the psychic airs of the nineteenth century West. Zamenhof was “one who hopes”—the name of his language in English. Now, of course, this creative tour de force didn’t entirely vanish. Books have been written in it. It is the native language of 1,000 people; 10,000 speak it fluently; and I am one of 10 million who have studied it “to some extent at some time.” These are the sorts of minorities to which I tend to belong—never more than, at best, 10 million. Zamenhof died as World War I was raging. The first grammar of the language had been published in 1887—not time enough, evidently, to conquer the globe. Ho ve! Meaning “Alas!” in Esperanto. The roots of that? Probably the Yiddish Oy vey. Word-roots in Esperanto derive from Western languages. Asia did not as yet throw the sort of shadow over the world that it does today.

A man much better known as a creator of so-called constructed languages is J.R.R. Tolkien. He created more than  twenty Elvish languages; the full list is still being counted as his unpublished papers are studied. With Tolkien we’re yet another step upward, as it were, in the transcending direction, because his linguistic creations served art. And such efforts also have their parallels in other fields. In the realm of architecture, the monuments I admire most are the Watts Towers constructed by Sabato Rodia. The image I show is from Wikipedia (link).

Sometimes when I pass that shelf and see my copy of Esperanto, I’ve just been reading the news or, as happened yesterday, anticipated a medical day that came today—one of the less pleasant kind. Then my mind tends to produce the word Desperanto—the language I ought to learn instead. Original with me, that word—but I discovered today that others have used it too. There is even a song by that title, written by Marianne Faithful. It’s opening lines:

Desperanto spoken here, today I hear it everywhere
It is the language of despair, it's in your nails and it's in your hair
It's in your mouth instead of air, it's in your house, it's in your heart
It's in your mind, it's everywhere, it's in your heart, it's in your heart.

And then there are days that begin in Desperanto but, after the bad thing is over, my mind has switched to Esperanto again—and I am filled with energy enough to start my own Watts Towers.

How Close Are We to the End Times?

A piece on the future as it gradually unwraps for our view on truthdig.com, “Growth is the Problem,” by Chris Hedges (link), prompted Brigitte to wonder what the social conditions were like in Rome just before the Roman Empire collapsed. Good question—but really a trick question. Arguably we have not yet reached that stage in civilization matching the end of Rome. That began around about the time of Diocletian (244-311 AD) when that emperor partitioned the Roman Empire in 295 AD. In our times, in the United States, we’re still waiting, as it were, for that decisive marker, the crossing of the Rubicon (49 BC)—the first clear sign that the end of the Republic has arrived. But let us take a look at what led up to that.

In 494 BC the Roman Republic was just 15 years old when a general strike, as we would call it today—they called it the Secession of the Plebs—signaled a period known as the Conflict of the Orders, thus between the Patricians (call them the oligarchy of the wealthy) and the Plebeians (call them the common people, more recently the 99%, more recently yet, the 47%). The first consul of the republic, one Appius Claudius Sabinus Inregillensis, behaved so harshly that the common people left the city en masse and repaired to one of the hills of Rome (Mons Sacer), and effectively shut down the economy. This resulted in the creation of the representatives (tribunes) of the people. The first Secession of the Plebs was followed by others in 449, 445, 342, and 287 BC. Hence the Conflict of the Orders was said to extend 494-287, a period of 207 years. But, in fact, that conflict never really ended until the Roman Empire dawned  with Octavian’s ascension to the throne in 27 BC.

The formation of the Plebeian Council, which elected tribunes, became functionally similar to a lower house. In fact it was more powerful, eventually, than the Senate of Rome. It came to represent what today we’d call the Left—and its principal strategy was income redistribution, its secondary but closely related strategy was distribution of power—to its own members and to the lesser nobility, the equites or knights. Income in the Roman context was land. Land to be distributed was land conquered by Roman armies.

Concerning land, it was the emblem of the franchise itself. Land-owning plebeians were entitled to vote—and also obliged to serve in the military. The Romans were straightforward realists. Material power was political power. The abstract notion of individual liberty had not yet dawned. We have to thank Christianity for that.

The end-times of the Republic really began in the second century BC when the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius Gracchus (162-133 BC) and Gaius Graccchus (154-121 BC) both tribunes, passed laws distributing land to the plebs; both were murdered in the convulsions that resulted. Despite such setbacks in detail—and the Senate was oblige to accept some of the reforms voted into place to avoid massive conflagrations—the Plebs gradually gained more and more power in Rome. Its tribunes would eventually hold the Consulship and the Censorship and acquired seats in the Senate itself.

At the same time—and such is real life—periods of crack-down appeared, most notably during the right-wing dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BC). But the impulse set in motion by the first Secession of the Plebs continued right on after Sulla’s death and produced, first, Caesar and then the caesars.

The historical path described here is one beginning with the dictatorial monarch, in this case Lucius Lavinius Superbus (535-496 BC), to the arising of Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD). Augustus, known as Octavian before he took power, hailed from the equestrian branch of a plebeian family—but he had been raised to patrician rank by adoption by Julius Caesar. (That, by the way, tells you how the poor (plebeian), grown wealthy (equestrian), could be enlisted in the ranks of the nobility (patrician) by adoption. In our pre-democratic times the method was to marry a wealthy daughter into the nobility.) Between those two monarchs lay a period of 482 years during which an oligarchy ruled, was gradually weakened, and totalitarianism became possible again.

Now for those who dream of reestablishing the old-fashioned patrician rule over the masses, all I can say is—dream on. And those who dream of the ultimate victory of the 99 percent, they’re also just dreaming. When the left finally wins, what follows then is military rule. Want to secure your long term future? Join the Army. If we follow anything like the Roman pattern, we are now still in the midst of the battle between the patricians and the plebs. We’ve clocked 236 years from the establishment of our own republic. If the same pattern holds, the crossing of the Rubicon will take place circa 2236—and then roughly another 300++ years of empire are waiting before the end times even begin. Now, of course, the two situations have major dissimilarities. For instance. We’ll have run out of fossil fuels when the next century begins. And that may speed things up a little…

---------------

My illustrative emblem, the icon of the Roman Empire, comes from Wikipedia (link). The acronym stands for Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (“The Senate and People of Rome”).

The Age of Aquarius

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

The Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

   James Rado, Gerome Ragni

   In “The Age of Aquarius”

That age, or rather its dawning, may still have some resonance in pop culture—if you’re old enough—and that’s because before we started having “bad hair days” we had Hair, the musical, and it introduced the notion of that age in its most celebrated song, “The Age of Aquarius.” Now the notion that we have celestial or astrological ages derives from the precession of the equinoxes, discussed in my last post. This is an add-on to complete the picture. Yesterday I pointed out that a mismatch has developed between the dates on which astrological “months” begin and the actual constellation showing in the sky on those dates. Thus, yesterday, began the period of Libra, but the sun actually rose in Virgo. The reason for this is because precession has caused the seasons to begin earlier and earlier—but we still observe an astrological year fixed far back in time. The astrological age, however, is determined by actual astronomical observation.

The “age” in which we live, at any one time, is determined by the constellation in the sky as the sun rises on the day of the vernal equinox. This year that took place on March 20, and the sun rose in constellation of Pisces. Therefore, these days, we are in the Age of Pisces. So why is Aquarius dawning? And when will its Aquarian sun actually rise?

Well, our current calendar conveniently begins with the first year of the Age of Pisces. Some put that at year 0, others at January 1, 1 AD. Each age lasts 2,160 years. And while the regions actually covered by the 12 houses of the zodiac are of varying width, by convention they are of the same size, each describing 30 degrees of a circle. Therefore the Age of Aquarius will begin with the vernal equinox of 2160—or if you insist on observing a Year 0,  2161. Now for the math.

The Great Age, meaning the time it takes for our poles to point to the same points in the never-changing sky, lasts for 25,920 years. If we divided that number by 12, we get the time during which each house “rules”—2,160 years. Since each such period covers 30 degrees of the sky, the precession of the equinoxes moves 1 degree every 72 years.

The illustration shows Pisces in the center and part of Aquarius in the lower right corner. I've inserted a little orange sun to inicate where the sun rises these days on the vernal equinox. The movement of the sun, over extended ages, on that date, is from left to right, appearing ever more to the right—but it takes a lifetime for it to cover a single degree of the circle—not perceivable through 76-year-old eyes. The image is from Wikipedia (link).

A geometrically more pleasing presentation comes from Roy Taylor’s “Precession of the Equinoxes” (link). It shows the movement of the Spring and Autumn equinoxes over time on a circle of the sky rendered into equal 30 degree segments, each owned by a house. The first shows the Equinoxes after the Age of Pisces just began thus around 2000 BC, the other the situation around 2005 AD. Are we at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius? Roy Taylor thinks so, and the astronomers bear him out.

Food for poetic contemplation, this. The fish-symbolism is intimately linked to Christianity. When I think of Hair, I think of the New Age. But then, when  I contemplate the precession of the equinoxes, I think to myself: What goes around comes around.

The Seventh House

When the Moon is in the seventh house

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars.

   James Rado, Gerome Ragni

   In “The Age of Aquarius”

Among the constellations of the zodiac, the seventh house is Libra, the scales. Those born between September 24 and October 23 are born in Libra, but (and don’t be surprised) the sun doesn’t rise in Libra at that time of year. Astrology is, as it were, behind the times. The actual, you might say physical, period of Libra’s rule arrives on November 6 and lasts until November 20. There was a time, of course, when the sun, rising at dawn—and not yet shining brightly enough to obscure the sky immediately above it—would be rising in the seventh house. But that was a long, long time ago. The culprit here? It is the precession of the equinoxes.

Now that’s a subject for the geometrically challenged (turns out) and also for the linguistically lazy. Precession? Well it means “coming before.” But what is it that “comes before”? Well the phrase tells us. The equinoxes come before. But before what? It drives you crazy all this techno-jargon. The answer is that every year, the equinoxes arrive 20 minutes before they…ought to—that is to say if we measure time not by our experience of the sun, thus locally, but in reference to the stars. Junk yard dog that I am, today I discovered that there is a so-called sidereal year and also a tropical year. The first comes from the Latin sidereus, “starry,” the second from tropicus, “related to a turning,” thus of the seasons. The first of these is the time it takes for the sun, as seen from the earth, to be in the same place against the fixed stars, thus in the House of Libra, for example. That time is 365.25636 days. Remember. We’re measuring by the stars. The tropical year is the time it takes the equinoxes to return; days and nights are of equal length.  That year takes 365.2421988 days. The difference here is 20.4 minutes. Thus the end of the year, as measured by seasons, comes 20.4 minutes before it should, looking at the fixed stars.

But this, of course, presents a logical problem. What causes this 20 minute difference? The answer is that the earth has two different kinds of rotation. The whole of the earth rotates around its axis—once every twenty-four hours. But the axis itself also rotates—describing a circle, if viewed against the fixed stars, every 25,920 years. It’s movement is tiny—but it results in a slight change in the seasons if their beginning is measured against the fixed stars. Therefore Polaris is only our North Star temporarily—and by 4100 it will point at the Constellation Cepheus, where that constellation’s bright Alderamin will have become the “pole star.” To explain the “wobble” of the axis most people refer to the behavior of gyroscopes or to the wobble of a spinning top. Those examples illustrate axial wobble—but in our case the time scale is so great, speaking of a wobble suggests more motion than is perceivable. We’ve known about this wobble, however, since the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (circa 190-120 BC) discovered it.

There is, therefore, no logical problem. The fixed stars are a great clock—and measure time unerringly. But in their case it really matters from where you’re looking as you are consulting the clock. That wobble moves us ever so little every year, hence we must correct for that movement every time. When we do, those twenty minutes of discord disappear; they are just apparently present because of our change in position relative to the  sidereal clock.

The moon is in the seventh house? Yes. Every night for a while. When Jupiter aligns with Mars? That means that one is above the other in a vertical direction. That happens every twenty-seven months. The Age of Aquarius? It has everything to do with the precession of the equinoxes, to be sure, but let’s do that tomorrow. Today our condolences to every Libra—or Leo, or Aquarius, for that matter. If constellations are responsible for our characters, we’d better talk seriously to our astrologer.
---------------
Image credits: Libra: Skywatching, Daviod H. Levy, Time/Life Books, 1994, p. 183. Top: Wikipedia (link). On that site you can see it spinning—but keep in mind that the bottom of the axis also describes a circle in the case of the earth.

I found the site Astroplot (link) helpful in sorting actual versus astrological dates. And Precession of the Equinoxes, by Roy Taylor (link) is a very good all-around explanation.