Milkweeds and Monarchs

We moved to our current location (west side of Metro Detroit) from our decades-long residence on the east side around in late summer of 2014. That also turned out to be a move from a tiny but very active backyard, garden, and Swallowtail butterfly ranch to a huge yard with much grass, a pear tree, and a grand rectangle all around it of bushes and trees grand trees.

Back in the old country, to call it something memorable, anxious then to diversify our Swallowtail population by adding Monarchs, we planted a milkweed bush bought at a garden store. Pictures of that plant back in 2013 are shown here.

After settling here, we discovered milkweed growing wildly off an almost daily-taken road called Ladd. We dug up a couple and planted them in our new huge yard. They multiplied. We now have what amounts to a milkweed forest. It looks like this:

Indeed there are more plants than shown here; the largest are to the right. As these plants took hold, our new terrain became a kind of Mecca for Monarchs. Every day this summer at least one Monarch took a leisurely but intense inspection of our forest. We even raised a few—but nothing like the number of Swallowtails we used to raise; by the end of our stay, that activity had become something of a job. The reason for this difference is that Monarchs are more difficult to find (in their bug form) and to keep alive indoors as caterpillars; partly our fault: we’ve grown more forgetful and careless. Thanks to chance (is there such a thing?), we settled next door to Pat (for Patricia), who turns out herself to be a Grand Mistress of Monarch Raising. With her help we’ve managed to raise about three or four—and to release them to the Wild (read our backyard). To our delight, we’ve seen that both Swallowtails and Monarch all take off in the same direction when released, flying generally to the northwest, much as they did back in the “old country” we left behind.

What’s a blog without a mention of our closest friends and the plants they eat. Here, to be complete, I must mention that with zero effort, lots of Cotton Whites also inhabit our paradise. They live in the grass, we think; it is never too closely cut by the myself, the Mower of the Grass.

Kimbern und Teutonen

In conversation today, somehow, the Teutons entered our talk. This triggered in Brigitte’s memory the phrase “Die Kimbern und Teutonen.” She asked me if the phrase meant something to me. “Yes,” I said. “The Teutons naturally do. That great victory in the Teuton Forest in which Herman beat the Roman legions.” Brigitte said “yes, yes,” but still wanted to know about the Kimbern, a peoples I’d never heard off. Next thing I know, she is handing me my Amazon tablet by way of saying that a look-up is necessary. (We fetch, in roughly the same order, coffee, bread, peanut butter, the ears, the telephone, and the Amazon tablet before we begin our mornings. The ears, of course, are tiny devices to let us hear better.)

My look-up made it plain to me that a very cold climate began to spread in the last millennium of the BC age. It played havoc with agriculture. And by the year 120 BC, some very large Germanic tribes inhabiting what is now the Danish peninsula, began to move south. The biggest among them were the Kimbern; they were joined by Teutons and others. In Latin (and in English to this day) they are known as the Cimbri. And the Cimbrian Wars are, you might say, the first of multiple folk migrations that accompanied the Decline of the West.

By the time the Kimbern reached the Alps (around 113 BC), the Age of Global Cooling was beginning to end and a period in climate later known as the Late Roman Warming had begun. Mass movements of humanity—as of temperatures, be it up or down—seem to go together.

I wonder if in some very distant time, when this Our Time will be as ancient to the living as the “late Roman” is to us, somebody will be looking for a famous tribe called the Hispanics—and have problems knowing who they were…

Paradoxical Detachment

Let me start with paradox. The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that the word comes from the Greek and is made up of para- meaning “contrary” and doxa meaning “opinion”; The OED then provides a meaning which seems to have been framed in the 1560s. It is a “statement that is seemingly self-contradictory yet not illogical or obviously untrue.”

I apply that word in adjectival form to detachment. Appropriately, I believe. When we detach, we detach from something. In an ordinary situation, we get exercised about something ridiculous in the news. Our mind is so on-and-on-and-on about it that, finally, we say: “I’ve got to get detached from this.” One of the paradoxes of detachment, for me, anyway, is that taking up my diary and then meticulously recording the irritation, in every conceivable form, sooner or later (usually after writing about three-quarters of a page), the emotional turmoil has diminished. The attachment to my description of it has caused a distance to develop. And from the distance the whole thing has lost its hold on me. And this is so even if the ultimate pain comes from a source we can rarely shake, e.g. noting that I owe a huge sum of money for something I was unaware of and, having examined the circumstances, I see that I’ll have to pay it. Detachment eventually comes when I shrug, at last, and think to myself: “It’s only money.” This though indicates that I’ve reached a point of awareness in which I’ve managed to detach even from the value of money. It won’t last, of course, but for a meaningfully sufficient moment I’ve achieved freedom.

The paradox is that genuine detachment means the embrace of nothingness. That statement is seemingly self-contradictory; but the way it feels is both logical and obviously true.” Another name for it might be religion (another paradoxical word).

I say that because, in a really meaningful way, especially in a time like our own which is utterly attached to sensory reality and its extensions into abstractions like money, a time eventually comes when the world’s madness has reached what seem like maxima; life seems to have lost all value and meaning; everything is going into the bottomless pit. At such a time, in a seemingly self-contradictory way, parts of humanity embrace belief in the unbelievable, a reality beyond the one available for examination. They form or join religions. In effect they detach from the madness all around. And, paradoxically, the continued practice of this detachment creates a reality in which, if you have social patience enough, life resumes again. And the madness then seems to have passed.

Time's Flavor

I’ve spent 64 years of my life in the 20th century. The time just ahead of mine was my mother’s and father’s. When visiting with my grandmother, on the paternal side, she whose hair went all the way to the floor when she combed it in the mornings, I was with someone who had seen the light of day in the 19th and, for many years, when she said “Today,” it was another time than mine, a time with another flavor. A very thin, very unsteady, very withered ancient old lady lived with my grandmother—her own mother. A year or two after we children met her, she passed away. She’d spent most of her years (probably more than my 64) in the 19th, the century that ushered in the two World Wars with its passing…probably unaware what she was causing. The 19th was an odd time, a kind of renaissance of something that will eventually develop fully in my own future time: another time, another season.

Time has a flavor. Of course it’s constructed of memories. And children’s are more sunny than those of octogenarians. The late 1930s therefore were more bright and shiny than the 2019s will be for me: miry jungle, too much dark. I make this note because a few days ago someone young referred back to the twentieth in tones that I recognized as being similar to mine when thinking of the 19th. Already! The 21st has barely begun—but it is already labeling the 20th as “the past.” And so it is. So it is. Never mind the monstrosities and glories that it showed a stumbling humanity on its way to Eternity. Yes; one wonders about Eternity’s flavor in one’s eighties.

Modern Extremes

Two stories featured on the WSJ front page today (lower right corner) deal with extremes. One covers very expensive Japanese whiskeys; another deals with new drugs, sold at astronomical prices, to treat rare diseases.

The Japanese whiskeys range in over-the-bar prices of $100 to $529 per shot. People aiming to display their wealth drink these and then announce the fact on social media. The expensive drugs are in support of gene therapies and range from $850,000 to $2.1 million per treatment regime. The story on drugs tells of schemes insurance companies are trying out to help employers pay for such treatments; the schemes involve collecting small sums monthly from all employees to accumulate totals that will be spent on the rare few. Such approaches, of course, leave people who are not insured under corporate health plans to their own devices.

As at the bottom, so at the top. I’ve never liked the taste of whisky; down a glass, make a face. Ugh. The effect that comes later is equally available drinking cognac or vodka. So the first group is drinking less for the effect and more for the status of being able to pay the price. But one has to announce that on Facebook, etc.

At the top another issue is involved. The general belief seems to be that life on earth, in these our bodies, is the absolute value second to none; hence millions of dollars are well worth a few months or years. Our own culture began with a much more sophisticated theory—namely that life on earth does not end with death; has that old theory really been disproved effectively? If yes, by all means labor hard to build up a few million in case your genes need therapy. If not, the answer to dire diagnosis is to shrug—and get on with making sure the will is written and the funeral paid for in advance. Wisdom seems easier. And a trip to the bar to get a $15 shot of U.S. whisky—while handing an $85 roll of bills to some homeless wretch sitting half a block away under a wall—may also be kinder.

Institutionalization and Reform

Most innovations probably arise from intuitions; the intuitions are triggered by external observations of reality or changes in society. How did calculus come to be invented at roughly the same time by Newton (b. 1643) and by Leibnitz (b. 1646); the occasion was a desire to predict mathematically points on a geometrical curve. It’s easy to predict the location of a point on a line; but when the damned thing is sloping away from you in an ark, not easy. The desire in both cases was powerful, the need to get good answers pressing. The new math worked! In due time we’ve come to formalize its procedures into calculus. And now it is institutionalized; it is taught in school. The reason why most people frown, their features signaling unease, when calculus is mentioned is because the method has become institutionalized. People taking calculus don’t have the burning need to understand curves in order, say, to understand the orbits of planets. Institutionalization makes it relatively easy to learn an art; no invention is necessary, no repetitive testing, frustration, torn up sheets, and back to the start. At the same time, if the art is a difficult one—and is taught because it’s part of some grand scheme (you want to graduate in some science eventually); it is rarely taught in answer to a burning urge.

Looking around I can at least imagine some time in the future when much of what we now experience as twenty-first century culture may have been largely lost, especially the complicated parts. Then some people in the future may meet the problem of the curve again. Those experiencing the difficulties will once more be powerfully motivated to find the math to help them. Imagine such a group when one of its members bursts into a laboring group; he’s  holding some ancient book. “It’s been done before,” he cries. “And it’s all in here. A little hard to understand, but it’s the answer.” The mood in the room can almost be felt. And it represents what I’d call Reform: the renewal of an art that began as an intuition, got institutionalized, and now will be reformed. The reform will be present because this new group will make additional innovations to the math while trying to understand that ancient text.

This subject is of value in the context of my current ponderings. Everything we live now was once an innovation; many things have become ritualized so they no longer live in us as driving needs. And institutionalization is followed by decay. Reform, however, has no doubt already begun—even if we don’t fully see it yet.

One Forgets

During my time of rarely violated absenteeism from blogging, I’d quite forgotten how much labor goes into this activity. Now memory is itself a vast subject. One of its mysteries is that we often forget something; that “something” can be quite trivial or complex; the truth is that we often simply don’t remember... Then, some short period after, our better half (usually), says something like “I’ve got it!” and she (or he) then produces a name or an account. Our mind then immediately knows that it also know—and can meaningful make additions to the partner’s first mention. In other words, we know that we remember before we actually know. So it was with the matter of forgetting the effort that blogging constitutes. The memories were instantly back when I settled before this machine to do today’s little chore. But no chore in blogging is ever “little.”

One thought I had some time after writing the last posting was that the decay of a civilization is marked by many events indicative of decay which seem to be far and few but definitely cumulating in “slow motion”; but so do many events that ultimately signal something positive—the slow appearance of a new order of thought and feeling which in their turn set the stage for the birth of another culture somewhen in the far future, i.e., also in slow motion. “I’ll write about that tomorrow,” I said to myself while reaching for the lights-out switch.

When we are no longer accustomed to put our thoughts on paper (figuratively, these days), we forget that notions that seem self-evident to us are not so obvious at all. They need illustration and presentation backed by lucid argument. And half the time the intuition is correct but to flesh it out is labor.

Therefore, a mere note today to hint at future content. Let me simply say that the nineteenth century already showed, in many developments that surfaced then (e.g., in psychology and in religion to name two subjects) that the Age of Reason began, having reached its peak in the eighteenth, to build a new way of thought even as rationalism was just beginning to decay into what we now label materialism (to pick a single word). More anon.

Decline in Slow Motion

Back when I began this blog, in February 2009, thus more than a decade ago, I kicked things off by introducing one of the main interests in my life, cyclic history (that post is here). Now I’m urged to resume making entries to this blog by a person who cannot be denied. And what with having watched CNN and MSNBC all these months (rather than posting blog entries), I am keenly aware just how accurate my cyclic historians have been. Hence this post too will deal with cultural decline; indeed, if I wished to reflect the decline I see in the title of this post, I’d call it Decline in SloMo. That phrase is much more up-to-date with the linguistic trends. After all, as yesterday’s New York Times reported, our President is either quite unaware of the difference between there and their, or he does not give a damn. Now to explain “slow motion”…

Long ago and far away, back when I first became aware of the cyclic nature of cultures and civilizations, the world looked much more rational than it does today. I was then reading books about the societal collapse of Rome; and, looking around, etc., I wondered how it might have manifested in ordinary life. A clue was present in the very few fictional works that have survived from roughly the fourth through twelfth centuries of Europe. In those no one held forth about the Decline of Rome. The stories may have been about disorders, military or otherwise, but the landscapes were still green, the forests still dark, and the rivers just kept running on. They’re still running on today.

The facts is that every culture/civilization exists in a different time zone than ordinary human life. It often take a culture 500 years to reach adulthood and once again as long to reach senescence. If we are living eighty-some-odd years of one of those periods, developments marking growth or the decline of these gigantic and seemingly organic structures will not show, in detail, changes that, in cumulation, produce new societal patterns that, in their turn, will be called cultures. One of my gurus, the German historian, Oswald Spengler—he who argued most convincingly that cultures/civilizations are organic—used the words “culture” for the youthful and “civilization” for the adult phase of these structures. In the late stages of civilizations, absurd and often irrational events sometimes multiply so that even the half-asleep among us begin to shake their head. Such a time is with us now, are, indeed, displayed across the world. Then, looking around, some days, one can’t help but see that the old historians, who saw all this coming back in the 1930s, had glimpsed something real in the future. Events still proceed in slow motion; hence we still maintain hopes that normalcy will once again return; and return it will, eventually; but in SloMo that might take another 500 years.

With that cheerful thought, my resumption of blogging has begun this Labor Day 2019.

*That* Day in February

It may seem very odd indeed to make a post about that day in February on the 19th -- a day that this year was on the 18th and originally (in 1732) on the 22nd. My own interest in that day came about because I entered the U.S. Army on February 21, 1956; and the next day was a day off. The next day, of course, was Washington's Birthday; it had been made an National Holiday in 1885. Then, in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act; it became effective in 1971. Since that Act Washington's birthday is celebrated on the third Monday of February every year; that gives the nation three days off in February. The third Monday this year fell on the 18th. The same day also celebrates Abe Lincoln's birthday, which actually took place February 12, 1809.

All those who dislike the study of history do so because too many dates compete for our attention -- with little reward for the actual knowledge. This post illustrates the reason why. Presidents' Day. Okay. It's on the calendar. As for the rest, what difference does it make?

Snow

It took a while this winter. The first big snow came yesterday. All earlier attempts by our local Winter Fairy to produce the first genuine “must shovel” snow had failed. She had, presumably, become confused by Global Warming talk and trends. The earliest attempts came in November but never even fully covered drives, never mind roofs and roads. “It snowed a little,” was the phrase. And while the white did unevenly mark the grass out back, it was light enough so that even shy autumn leaves could hold up small brown sails; some even moved east in the wind, reminding me that Fall Raking had fallen short of one hundred percent.

So January 19, 2019 (a properly uneven year) came with skies triple-grey and dumped snow any which way. It cumulated to about four inches and piled under wind-pressure to hillocks high enough so that taking the garbage out resembled an Arctic trek. We too got snow, not just the East Coast. But continuing to trouble our local Winter Fairy, in Alabama they had tornadoes.

Very white out there, very bright the sun. Lovely, lovely. A neighboring oak’s still holding on to leaves with the usual oaken tenacity; but that’s just a species. Other trees have all obeyed; the evergreens are decorated with white jewelry.

Question to the Fairy? Will this first 2019 storm be the last as well? Who knows, these days. Everything’s confusing when oceans boil and icebergs melt.

Conscription and Some Relatives

Back when I was in the military, thus well before 1973, military conscription was still in force. Most of the men I served with were therefore draftees. Tending to the contrarian, I had enlisted voluntarily and was therefore considered to be Regular Army. I signed up for four years; the Draft kept people for just under two. In addition I served another extra year so that we (Brigitte and I) could organize our transition from Germany to the U.S. more efficiently. We’d met in Germany and married there.

One of the largely overlooked benefits of the Draft was that large numbers of at least the male population actually experienced most aspects of military work. That experience taught a person that military life and work was, most of the time, about as far removed from heroism as is construction, farming, factory work, or professional sports. And what with the public fully aware of the nature of this lifestyle (let me call it that, tongue in cheek) the tendency to view soldiers as heroes was not continuously on display back then; now it is on display far too much. But that sort of talk or oration has its own benefit too. When people glorify “our heroes,” we  may be sure of two things. First, they may never have served themselves (indeed they had often heroically schemed to avoid service) and, second, they often praise our heroes to cover themselves with borrowed (if sometimes fake) glory—not because they believe a word of what they say.

These thoughts arose as I put away one of my 2018 calendars named “America the Beautiful.” Its thematic, built of photographs of statues (half the months) and landscapes (the other half), is “patriotic.” In effect, it is similar to the glorification of the ordinary GI, but at a larger scale. To be sure, the landscapes show that the American land is beautiful—but so is land across the globe. As for heroics and military events, all countries have the equivalents in their history. Using such images to point at “beauty” has a flavor of self-praise; it’s innocent in the calendar, but it's a way of bending from the hard truth of things.

It only takes small steps from these instances (and flag-worship too) to White Supremacy, American Exceptionalism, and other dangerous forms of tribalism. To praise the soldiers, let’s praise service. To praise the country, let’s praise its mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and plains. Patriotism? Let’s pay our taxes. The higher achievements of humanity are never mere collectives you can put on— like fatigues.

2019: Superstitiously Yours

I’m not superstitious, but, alas, inside of me (down in the slums of my not that shining city of a self) lives another person, actually a very close but often troublesome friend. And that friend certainly is. Superstitious.

One of my superstitions is that even years are unlucky. Therefore I wear my watch on my right wrist (Wrist 1) in even years because the watch will counter the misfortunes that come with my left wrist (Wrist 2). Now like most right-handers, I’ve worn my watch on the left. But then, years ago now, I began to wear my watch on my right wrist whenever the year became divisible by two. I began this in order to fight the bad vibrations which, I thought, a year like 2018 would certainly bring. The year 2016 had, again, proved my dark self’s superstition (nor had my watch, on the right hand, help): the election results that year. And when 2017 arrived, with my watch still on the right wrist, I decided that I would leave it where it was—in its “guarding” location—even if the year was, otherwise, favorable, being uneven. 

Today, a little late for January, I am once more faced with the choice. Do I treat 2019 as a year that needs protection against malign forces that invisibly hover beneath grey and even sunny skies? Or do I burden my left wrist with a watch and, for some days, look on the wrong wrist for the time?

The BREXIT vote in the UK suggests that 2019 has not yet taken a positive hold. To be sure, Theresa May kept her office as Prime Minister the next day, but only by a slim margin of 20 votes. Anyway, she won. In an even year she certainly would have been kicked out: thus my dark self assures me. The U.S. is still a member of NATO. Thank you, uneven year. But can I be sure of you? And Mueller is still biding his time and may be barred from making his Mueller Mysterium public.

So decision time is difficult. A helpful idea, however, might be tried in 2019. I have, like most fogeys of my age, more watches than I have years left to live. For about $11.99 I can get a battery for one of them and, in this crucial but unpredictable year, wear two watches, one on each wrist. You’re wise. You get it. Such matters actually mean something when you are forced to wander slums.

Dawn of the Monarchs

Some preliminary notes on context. In the summer of 2014 we moved from the east to the west of the Detroit metro area. In the east we lived in Grosse Pointe; now we live in a village called Wolverine Lake.

In Grosse Point Brigitte chanced upon a butterfly egg on a dill plant. The dill was growing in the crack of the concrete near our garage. Brigitte coaxed that egg into our first butterfly—raised indoors and then released. It was a Black Swallowtail. Thereafter we raised several generations of Swallowtails; they came to lay eggs on plentiful patches of dill we were always raising deliberately or by chance. Eventually we got to wondering why Monarchs never left traces enough for us to add them to the output of our Butterfly Ranch, as we came to call our tiny backyard. This led us to plant some milkweed there; Monarchs like to start new life on large milkweed leaves. That planting was around 2013, possibly earlier, but no Monarch ever came or, as we now believe, we never noticed.  Monarch lay very, very tiny eggs, faintly yellow in color, easily mistaken as mere spots on the leaves. From these spots come tiny caterpillars that, initially, require a powerful magnifier even to see. So 2013 passed. We packed and moved to Wolverine Lake.

Here, for some reason, Swallowtails haven’t yet found our forests of dill. We have much more yard here; thus we also planted several milkweed plants. On these, thanks to the much more educated eyes of our neighbor, Pat Littlefield, Monarchs left their eggs. With Pat’s help, we have finally succeeded in nurturing three of those invisible yellow spots into as many gorgeous Monarchs. We’re showing our third, a young lady, called Scarlet. When the first two, Romeo and Juliet, were ready to take wing, we had not yet mastered the art of releasing butterflies while also managing a camera.

So now the Era of the Monarchs has begun here, in the west. More to come. As for ancient history, see the index and click on Butterflies. You'll see information on Monarchs as well, but not one that we had raised ourselves and released after its emergence from its translucent pupae.

Green Thursday

Whenever Easter week arrives, and Thursday of that week, we always wrestle with the naming of the day. It takes a while before we re-remember that it is called Maundy Thursday. Not surprisingly, I’ve got a post on that subject going back some years (link). Today we discovered that in German the day is called Green Thursday. That religious day like that would carry a color (well at least since the 17th century and only in Germany) was another surprise and took some research to grasp.

It turns out that German etymologists are not in full agreement on how green came to be attached to Easter Thursday. The Biblical reference around which the discussion swirls is Luke 23:31. In the King James version it says:

For if they do these things [the abuse of Jesus on the way to the cross] in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry.

In German the word used for tree is wood (Holz); green wood is alive while dry wood is dead. 

The green wood here is Jesus himself, made clear in the full quotation, which I take from the Jerusalem Bible (Luke 23:26-32):

As they were leading him [Jesus] away, they seized on a man, Simon from Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him shoulder the cross and carry it behind Jesus. Large numbers of people followed him, and of women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For the day will surely come when people will say, “Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne, the breasts that have never suckled!” Then they will begin to say unto the mountains, “Fall on us!”; to the hills, “Cover us!” For if men use the green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?’ Now with him they were also leading out two other criminals to be executed.

Green, thus has multiple meanings here: life itself, youth, freshness, and, by implication, sinlessness. Green Thursday is thus a day of forgiveness of sin, the renewal of the soul, dry wood made green again. The other explanations offered by etymologists range to references of season, to eating habits on Maundy Thursday in Germany (heavy on vegetables in a fasting season) and other similar associations. But the biblical reference is used most often, and, it seems, rightly so. The words come from Jesus’ mouth as he is making his way to crucifixion—to be followed by Resurrection!

The Hungarians and the Poles (to mark Brigitte’s and my places of birth) call this day Great Thursday. The French call it Jeudi Saint; that Saint we would here render as Holy.

Brigitte, whose gift for words is very deep, correctly surmised, before any research took place, that the Green in that Thursday may hark back to the green palms seen just a few days before on Palm Sunday. That turned out to be one of the competing explanations the German etymologists mentioned as well!

*   *   *   *

In the course of this venture we also looked up why the Germans call Good Friday Karfreitag. The meaning of that Kar escaped us. That word comes for Proto-Germanic karo or kara, sorrow, trouble, and care. The word care comes from kara. If we wished to follow the German model, we’d call Good Friday Care Friday.

On "Ignorance is Bliss"

I suppose that at its core Bliss is the feeling of being completely and overwhelmingly protected. Being a baby in one’s mother’s arms comes to mind. Ten days ago (a week ago Tuesday) I had a massive nosebleed that sent us to the Emergency Room. Naturally. Such things always happen at 2 in the morning. My ignorance of nosebleeds had amounted to bliss before this event. Afterwards, I learned that nosebleeds are almost never fatal. This makes sense when you think about it. No large artery reaches the incredibly complicated tissue fields of the nose designed to pick up hundreds of different faint odors. But there are arteries, nonetheless, very fine ones. Three ER and four Ear-Nose-Throat doctor visits later, I also learned that if the cause of an ordinary nosebleed cannot be found, the cause must lie with those fine arteries in the upper nose. They come from all sides and then meet centrally to coordinate their collective work. Surgeons have discovered ways to introduce the tiniest wires into those arteries. At their tips are tiny cameras and other more active devices; the surgeons can see what’s going on—and do all that needs doing. But this admirable solution is only necessary if more straight-forward cauterization of the nose tissue, carried out through the vast great canyon we think of as the nostril, cannot be used.

Circumstances so conspired that it took eight days before the actual trouble became clear last Wednesday. Then about five minutes later, electrical cauterization had already fixed me. I was on my feet and walking, without a plastic waste-can under my chin, back into the snowy world in company of Monique—she who had spent two nights and several days guarding me while the otolaryngologist probed for the proper answer.

Under these conditions, I’m very much inclined to ignorance is bliss on many, many of the things that make up this octogenarian body.

Then today I have an e-mail from my oldest friend, Phil. He tells me that, after much thought, he had decided to forgo a scheduled “spinal fusion” in his neck. All I know is that pain had been involved, and what with the pain gone, why do anything at all? Right! Right! Do I want to know more? No! No! What if I had another nosebleed? And while spending torturous minutes pressing a bloody towel to my nose other thoughts, about spinal fusion (in full detail) would rise into my mind? That might cause a fatality nosebleeds are not supposed to cause…

IMMENSA

In the wake of at least two days of national dispute concerning President Trump’s mental health and fitness to serve in office—capped by Mr. Trump’s announcement that he is very smart, very stable, indeed a genius—all that’s left for this nation to restore proper order and sanity from border-to-border and sea-to-shining-sea is to organize a formal IQ test for the president, administered by some appropriate agency, e.g., the Department of Homeland Security or possibly the EPA. Based on Presidential Tweets, Mr. Trump’s ability to score at least 98 percent on that IQ test is so certain that actually taking the test would seem to be redundant. Therefore American Mensa, an element in Mensa International, should declare President Trump a member.

Trump as a member of Mensa, however, produces some awkward problems. The name of this organization is taken from the Latin for “table”; more to the point, that table is supposed to be round, symbolizing the meeting of equals. And that’s a problem, isn’t it? Mr. Trump may not wish to subordinate himself in such a way to the world’s aristocracy of intellect.

The solution, I suggest, is a renaming exercise. Mr. Trump, having been invited to join, will no doubt immediately tweet saying: “I’m Mensa. Didn’t I tell you?” The first part of that tweet, ignoring apostrophes and case, could be rendered as IMMENSA—or making Intellect Great Again. Mr. Trump could then get to work on having IMMENSA’s symbol changed to a gigantic cone—of which he would be the tiniest but highest atom at the very top.

The Seven Sisters and Two Brothers

Once upon a time there were seven sisters and two brothers. Their mother was Detroit, their father was Edison. The first sister was born in 1915, the last in 1921. The two brothers, who were twins, saw birth in 1951; they are still alive. The sisters all died in a major explosion on August 10, 1996. That would make the oldest sister 82 that year. The event is known as the detonation. That sounds ominous, but in fact it was highly controlled.

So how do I know—first, that both the sisters and the still living brothers were or are not human and, second, that they were smokestacks of two great side-by-side power plants on the eastern edge of the City of Detroit? Two reasons.

When we first moved to the Detroit metro in 1989, Brigitte and I both worked downtown in the Penobscot building. We commuted on Jefferson Avenue along the shores of what is known as Detroit River—the water-way that connects Lake Saint Clair and Lake Erie. On the way home we could see the sisters and the brothers distantly to our right. The second reason is that we got a lovely pair of coasters for Christmas this year. One is titled Seven Sisters Two Brothers; the other Penobscot Building. Thus we have memorials of the two great views that first symbolized Detroit for us.

An image of the coaster and a 1952 photograph of the plant are below:

The coaster on the left comes from GT Home Detroit, accessible at https://www.gthome.space/. The one on the right was taken by one Dave Wasserman from Virginia and is shown in the Detroit Memories Newsletter at this site. I’ve chosen that last image because it still shows smoke coming from the sisters. The plants were all converted eventually to burn natural gas.

The remaining Brothers represent a capacity of 240 megawatts. To make sense of that, Detroit Edison’s total summer capacity is 11,000 MW, of which Brothers is 2.2 percent. And Detroit Edison itself supplies 37 percent of Michigan’s total electric power; that Michigan total is 29,831 MW.

Now couple of more notes. The Sisters generated power from 1915-1921 until approximately 1986. Then they just stood there, idled, until they were brought down by a controlled demolition in about five seconds or so, the smokestacks, as shown in the coaster above, falling to the left, the leftmost leading the way. Vast brown clouds took their place temporarily. The Brothers operated on coal from 1951 to 1987. Then they were converted to natural gas.

A final touching sort of point. Those fallen Sisters left a deep hollow in the souls of power engineers. How do I know that? I know that because I discovered this morning that there still is a power plant called Seven Sisters. It is located Manitoba, Canada, on the Winnipeg river. It doesn’t burn anything. It’s a big dam powering turbines. The plant has an odd name for a hydropower facility with only six turbines. But you go with your heart—and never mind the count…

Reading out the Window

Not a typo. To be sure, my first act on rising is looking out the window. But then the world I want to see is really merely Weather. I already know my drive, backyard, pear tree, and the rest—or the trusty Honda and the houses across the way.

So Window here means World generically, and early on I’m reading it because the world window is made of paper: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Detroit News (all depending on the day). A screen would be another kind of Window, but I wake first and the TV makes a noise that might wake Brigitte. That would be. Sad. So paper it must be at first, and for me by preference. I get more from paper and with fewer distractions.

Given the built-in bias in every form of medium, Windows is the real word here. Reading out the Windows, plural. WSJ? Stocks. NYT? All the news that’s fit to print. Well, not quite. The Detroit News? Sports. It takes some effort to figure out what sport deserves half the front page—unless you recognize the code words, e.g. Simpson blankets Bohannan. Is blankets a name, noun, or verb?

My own reading is very selective these days, and the time spent on the W (be that Window, Windows, Weather, or World) less and less. That’s because as you retire (in every sense of that word), you notice that you no longer recognize the names, be that Simpson, GreenSky, Nvidia, or MoneyGram. Much effort must be expended even recognizing what, say, Nvidia does. And when you do, you’re  no longer interested.

I note here that W is not quite the last letter of the alphabet, but close. Thus the World is not quite all there is to read about. There remains something that transcends the W. XYZ. So after reading out the Windows for a brief spell, I fold the papers for Recycling and turn to XYZ. In practice that means tidying up or, on a day like today, dressing warmly to shovel some snow. Doing that I see a big green truck pulling up. The letters GFL are on its side. Even our trash hauler is going in for abbreviations! But what does that mean? Remove the goggles; peer more closely. Ah. Green for Life. But all out there is white and blowing…

Sober Second

The second day of this or any other new year illustrates Nature’s “No comment” take on the human adulation of symbolic transitions. Yesterday was brilliantly sunny. To be sure by evening the sky had clouded up so that the much heralded Supermoon on New Year’s eve was hidden. Today, on the second, everything is very cold and properly grey again. From my upstairs typing spot, where the view is of my roof, the active of my three chimneys is shown producing the fog of smoke. Snow’s everywhere, showing its dirt; this is old snow, folks. New stuff is supposed to come, but as yet the three flakes I’ve seen were just a half-hearted test run.

Every year we joke about “last year,” meaning five minutes ago—as Times Square is made the stage for not very funny jokes by Media folk. And the bedroom, when you reach it, at 0:05 am, might just as well be 2014, 2015 or any other year in recent memory. Nature is wiser than we are. Time must have a stop, to be sure. But there is no time in Nature. What Nature shows is cold-eyed endurance, especially this time of year.

The third will be even more normal, no doubt; and 2018 will therefore really be here: a change in our accounting. Even years are what? Luckier? More trying? Look out the window. Neither luck nor doom are visible.

Concerning supermoons, by the way, this site has two posts; the first, here, explains what they are; the second, here, corrects an error made in the first. 

A Tiding on Tides

What with bright sunshine, on a very cold Nordic sort of morning, illuminating our still standing or hanging Christmas decorations, my mind suggested that soon, thus on or around January 6 of the year that dawns tomorrow, I would have to return this household to its ordinary state. Yes. For me the Christmas season began in childhood on December 6, St. Nicholas day. In Hungary we put our nicely shined shoes into the window on the evening of December 5. By morning Mikulas (as we called him) arrived; he filled our shoes with candies and fruits nicely highlighted with red paper and silver ribbons. Random thought: if a fat man can get down through a small chimney in the U.S., he can certainly breach a pane of glass in Hungary… Now at its other ends, the Christmas season always ended on January 6 for me, the day of the Magi.

Making sure that I still had all this correctly, I checked on the dates. At my age such exercises are recommended; various problems with memory surface as you overstay… In my brief research, I encountered the word “tide” multiple times, as in Christmastide and Yuletide. Very well. In eighty and counting years I’d simply accepted that word; today the question arose: Whence tide? Good question.

If you use a smart-phone as your computer—no need to get up—you rapidly learn that the only tide that seems to exist is that caused by the moon on ocean shores in two kinds of forms, ebb and flood. But in Yuletide the word must has some other root. Upstairs, therefore, to consult a real computer. Online Etymology Dictionary informs me that “tide” comes from proto-Germanic tidiz, or “time division,” thus meaning a period or season. The use of the word for shore tides came late, in the mid-14th century… The word tidings, as in news, shows how a useful concept comes about. It is rooted in the fact that as time changes, things happen. Tidings come from old English tidan, “to happen,” and that word arises from the original tide as well. The Dutch for “newspaper” is tijding pronounced exactly like “tiding”; the German is Zeitung, a word in which the z present in tidiz is prominent still.

Contemplating such mysteries, I might add, refresh one’s mind when the only tidings on TV seemingly center on how in card games one kind, or single card, trumps all the others.