tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35470674206897229252024-03-14T12:49:13.692-04:00Ghulf GenesADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.comBlogger1840125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-77190246441293998962021-05-24T17:51:00.000-04:002021-05-24T17:51:01.905-04:00On the Cusp of Illiteracy Again<p>I wouldn’t have dreamt it few years ago, but these days my
fluency in computers is almost gone. Did I ever speak that language?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There was a time, after I had bought an Apple Computer
(because it was by far the cheapest), when I grew curious about computer
languages and decided to try… now here I have to stop because the name of the
language refuses to come. But as I typed on, it came back. I decided to see if
I could program in…Basic. That was then the simplest language. The screen on my
machine only held forty characters across (as it seems now). I bought myself a
big green card and after many sweaty but prayerful efforts, I managed to stick
it into a slot inside my computer. Amazingly it worked. Now I had 80 characters
across. The next step was to get Basic to draw me a line on that 80-byte
surface. That took about a week. Finally I’d done it. Not only that, but I also
managed to print that line on a sheet of paper.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Brigitte was in the kitchen (no doubt cooking something she
couldn’t replicate now [because she has the same problems I do]). She still
recalls my triumphant entry holding that sheet of paper with the single line
showing at the top.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I made it draw a line,” I cried, showing the line to her.
Pause. Well, that was the beginning. In a year or two I was earning a living by
programming computers of all sizes and using all sorts of languages. The list
of those would take me weeks to dig from memory, so I’ll spare you the pleasure
of reading them, but machine language was one of those. Programming in that “language”
is a little like scratching the inside of the machine with a screwdriver rather
than speaking to it through a higher level language.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These days, alas, when some invading something wants to take
over the job of protecting me from viruses (no, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> one), I have to call daughter Monique to tell me how to remove
that something forever and ever—until it returns.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Among the illiterate now, the old problems are back again.
How do I copy this page so that it will appears on my blog? If you are reading
this, I succeeded. If not, I’m no longer in the company of humans. Time to
learn how to use an IPhone…</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-34344244709906527942021-05-10T11:01:00.008-04:002021-05-12T11:06:55.002-04:00Shameless<p>Just saw a crow land on our birdfeeder; it was way too big
for it, therefore awkward, and quite unable to get a seed from the evenly placed
feeding holes. Moreover, something nasty hung from its beak, perhaps the
remainder of a worm.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At last it flew away and left me thinking that it was so
shamelessly just like a bird.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most of our bird visitors sit there seemingly proud of their
grace and peck at the seeds on offer sharply, accurately, with a kind of swift élan.</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-49742543680885157832021-05-09T13:26:00.000-04:002021-05-09T13:26:10.378-04:00No. No Moose.<p>An article with illustration in the <i>NY Times</i> today once more brought to mind that there is an
unfinished list in my mind or things I’ll never do or will never pay for. Among
the “never do” items belongs “Tightrope walking between two skyscrapers in New
York City.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Among the “never pay for” items belongs paying for a wig to
cover my bald spot. That one’s easy because I don’t have a bald spot. But even
if I had one…</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Combining these two categories, I am sure I’ll never shoot a
moose and, having shot it, pay to have its skull removed, preserved, and
mounted on a wall of my house. No thank you!</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-31718648740219027092021-05-06T12:34:00.012-04:002021-05-09T13:29:21.494-04:00Life Briefly Analyzed<p>Is life energy? It’s reasonable to think so. After all, all
the motion that we see here on earth or up in the sky is produced by energy—either
by suns of or by the original Big Bang that created the universe. Trouble is
that energy as such lacks one of the important features of life, consciousness.
If consciousness is viewed as more valuable or in a higher order than mere
energy, then to say that life is energy is to assert that something (consciousness)
can be derived from something that does not have the potential for it (energy).
With a little effort, we can in virtually all instances trace energy to
specific chemical or physical causes. Okay. The Big Bang is a little more difficult
to prove.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is life purposive? Of course. But by purposive I don’t
merely mean such things as satisfying hunger or building a career. Nor do I
mean the capacity for reproduction. Reproduction, after all, simply builds
other individuals like myself; all of them, myself included, must die. So life’s
purpose is to die? Absurd.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It does not surprise me, therefore, that humanity has ages
ago postulated that life’s meaning must be found beyond bodily existence. Death
is too poor a purpose to justify the complexity of life or the maintenance of
the incredible chemical machines that we are just to let them return to “dust”.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now materialists will claim that humanity’s projection of an
afterlife is just another human desire to “hang on” to life. That charge seems
reasonable until you become genuinely old. When you finally are, you become
indifferent to such things. Fall asleep dreamlessly and never awaken? That’s perfectly OK
for most of us.</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-13025038349602573032021-04-26T14:04:00.005-04:002021-04-26T14:08:10.812-04:00Lawless Complexity<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">One reason why societies decline—and
are then restored to life by revolutions—is lawless complexity. No. I’m not
against complexity. But there is a lawful and a lawless variety. What lawless
complexity is like is all around us—mostly on cable news. Each one of us, with
our organs, muscles, lungs, hearts, circulatory systems—we’re lawful complexity.
And woe to us when it stops obeying laws.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By the time the French revolution
erupted—and we learned to spell “guillotine”—the country had become paralyzed.
One simple example was the salt tax. If you wished to travel, every time you
entered a new <i>county</i> you had to buy
enough salt to last a lifetime. Nobody had that kind of money if travelling
across a region—or paying bribes to avoid the tax. Paralysis. And the salt tax
was just one of many such institutional knots that tied France into immobility.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Napoleon came and made order. All
such nonsense was wiped from the blackboard. One faith, one law, one king—well,
not a king <i>yet</i>. The same process
happened in Russia where misgovernment had stopped Russian life in tsarist
times.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-background-themecolor: background1;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: inherit;">A hint of what lawless
complexity is like <i>before</i> everything
stops is shown us daily by the <i>Wall
Street Journal</i>. Companies that make things or provide services no longer
appear very often on WSJ’s pages. What fills those pages are companies that buy
and sell fluctuating <i>moods</i>. The companies
are into futures—even if the future’s just tomorrow. They sell what many <i>think</i> will happen. What actually happens
no longer matters. Futures, futures. If the future looks rosy that faith will
build a Matterhorn of paper values—and they might disappear tomorrow. That
mountain will be built even if millions are starving <i>now</i>. Conversely, a grim future might fill a Grand Canyon with
losses even if everyone’s otherwise fine.</span></p>
<span style="background: white; font-family: inherit;">Revolutions
work if lawless complexity stops all motion in a country or a region. But if
the entire civilization has grown so complex that nothing moves any longer, the
change is more profound and takes centuries to fix. Wait and see. As for us
elders, we’ll see—but we won’t wait….</span>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-24917561063748961932021-04-22T12:03:00.002-04:002021-04-22T12:03:43.101-04:00Blinking Lights<p>Last night our overhead lamps in the house blinked out for a
second or two and then came back on. This repeated with random pauses over ten
minutes. Oddly, the plugged-in devices, including the TV, were unaffected.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I went outside to see if perhaps a bobcat had taken a bite
into our main wire. No bobcat trail; no great broken branch either. Went
downstairs to check the fuses. The fuses were peacefully in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the ON position.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now this is a minor household hiccup; no harm done… Why then
do I bother recounting it? Well, in my current mode of commenting on old age, I
want to note that such events, signaling something unexpected (like hassling
with workmen on the telephone, etc.), are a major fright if you live in a manner
where even the rise and set of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the sun
are somewhat traumatic (e.g. signaling dressing and undressing), never mind the
moon’s eccentric coming and going—or NOT coming and going. Think I’m kidding?
Just you wait!</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-37682240307250008712021-04-18T16:55:00.005-04:002021-04-18T16:55:47.570-04:00Our Physicality<p>It is odd to say this but true: Through most of
life when we are most active physically we least notice that we’re animals; in
old age our physicality becomes quite evident…perhaps because our soul is
slowly detaching from the body.</p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Indeed a soul-body unit is characteristic of
ordinary human life. That notion too is odd until at some point we realize that
what we <i>are</i> is not our bodies. A
little later we also realize that we’re our bodies’ prisoners.</p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">In youth we never think it odd that we are
clothed; it’s what we see everywhere—people clothed. Pondering life in old age,
it’s more obvious that we’re a very peculiar species of ape, a species captured
by souls and transformed into a kind of hybrid creature neither animal nor
spirit.</p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">One might argue that what in Christianity we call
The Fall is precisely this temporary unity between animals and spirits—temporary
because it ends. No. We’re not really physical. But until we return from this
Eden to the Sky, it will be an issue, initially unnoticed, later rather to the
front of attention. I better change my posture—my back, you know…</p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-77953490900346129592021-04-16T10:36:00.003-04:002021-04-16T10:38:06.983-04:00Weather Report<p>We’re usually only interested in weather immediately over us—unless
we’re travelling today to another location. If so, and we’re driving and it’s
winter, we will want to know about the weather along our chosen route. Will
there be snow on the way?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A much smaller number, particularly those working in the
weather business or have agriculturally sensitive businesses all over the
geography, are much more interested in weather patterns on a larger scale and
over longer periods—say decades.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Wall Street Journal’s map shows parts of Canada and the
entire United States. We look at it to see how our own area is forecast.
Detroit itself is in a green-colored region (meaning colder) and just touching
a region to the east which will have showers Buffalo to Boston and reaching
down to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
western regions and the southern range, extending from Vancouver down to Lost
Angeles, and from there around the southern border all the way Richmond on the
other side, are colored reddish because they’re warmer. No image of the jet
stream; not even a hint of how the North Pole or Antarctica are faring.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Probably the smallest number of people is keenly interested
in global weather, its patterns, and overall trends. These signal global
warming—but global warming will not really touch me today. If it did, and more
or less daily, public support of changes in our carbon consumption would be present
and growing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The small picture, the large picture. But I’ve said all that
above to make another point. We know as little about global weather trends as
we know about historic change. One might liken weather to history. It might “rain”
here but not elsewhere. The very few aware of such matters as cyclic history—as
presented to us by people like<span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-highlight: white; mso-shading: cornsilk;">Arnold
J. Toynbee (</span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">A Study of History</span></em><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">), Oswald Spengler (</span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The Decline of the West</span></em><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">), and Pitirim Sorokin (</span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Social and Cultural Dynamics </span></em><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">and, in a shorter version, </span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The Crisis of Our Age</span></em><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">)—have the best ideas of history as a system and where today’s
history <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>will carry us sooner or later.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-highlight: white; mso-shading: cornsilk;">In one’s advanced
years it is good to know not only about weather globally and history cyclically
but also the ranges of reality well beyond either. Can anybody help me see the
weather locally at Heaven’s Gate. I can leave knowing weather in Heaven more
generally to a later time.</span></p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-19986512910337641052021-04-12T11:51:00.002-04:002021-04-13T11:58:32.816-04:00Refuge Harbor<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In my last post I
focused on Yves Paret, who died on the day of his wife’s, Madeleine’s, funeral.
Madeleine was buried; Yves was cremated. Such choices of final disposal are real
issues for those of our age group. Indeed, my father was buried, my mother
cremated; going in different directions is not uncommon—at least not in our
family writ large. The choice tends to reflect personal traits. My father was a
traditionalist; the well-designed grave stone was, as it were, his last
acknowledgement of social status; he valued standing in the world, and his
stone still stands there today in Kansas City.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">My
mother drew her inspiration from nature and art; she was dynamic even in her
passing. She’d go on as a flame, her residues ash—but with the wish, often
expressed while she still lived, that her ashes should find their rest in water
and, presumably, keep moving in rhythm with nature’s never-ending stir.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">We’ve
never lived on or near the ocean; if we had, we’d now remember Mother’s resting
place as the Pacific or, preferably, the Atlantic. Preferably? Yes. We’re
thinking of the Gulf streams motion. But, no ocean for her. Years after her
passing she found her place in Lake Huron; if not the ocean then at least the
Great Lakes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
place we eventually found was on the east side of the Michigan thumb. The
locality was Port Sanilac, the place Refuge Harbor. We learned the name of the spot
after we had strewn Mother’s ashes in the Huron. And we nodded in wistful pleasure.
Refuge Harbor. After a long, hard life Mother had at last arrived. And she
would have approved.</span> </p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-8459256231109236492021-04-10T11:40:00.011-04:002021-04-13T11:44:13.998-04:00Yve's Passing<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Michelle’s
Father-in-law, Yves Paret, only waited until his wife was buried; then he too died to join her in that world beyond. Both had been in the same hospital but
in separate wards. Yves was heavily sedated with morphine to lessen the pain of
terminal cancer. Did he know his wife had died? Or didn’t he? We can’t be sure
because we cannot see beyond the boundaries of this dimension. But it is
perhaps meaningful that these two people, having spent a lifetime side by side,
departed together holding hands—or so we see it from this side.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">A time
of departures is now upon us. Susie’s Rex went first. Then my younger brother
Baldy. (In the next world he’ll now be </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">older</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
brother Baldy.) That was 2019. Spring of 2021 Madeleine and Yves. Brigitte and
I are next in line. We know this—but in a casual sort of way. In one’s advanced
years such things as passing become quite commonplace.</span></p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-74754152200712565622021-04-06T11:23:00.001-04:002021-04-13T11:25:49.758-04:00Au Revoir, Madeleine<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Speaking of old age
and its ultimate consequences, we learned four or five days ago that Madelein
Paret—Thierry’s mother and hence grandmother of Michelle’s children—has passed
away after brief hospitalization in France. As Brigitte put it hearing this
news: “Madeleine is home now.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">We
barely knew the lady, but in the course of at most three visits to France we
came to like her very much. The elder Parets lived (and still live) in Haguenau,
a small city almost at the north-western tip of France—close enough to Germany
so that Madeleine and husband Yves could speak a little German. Our meetings go
back some 30 years yet produce sharp images of crowded dinners (all family) and
Haguenau, the curious border town. Between then and now, we kept abreast of one
another by mail and, later, Facebook.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Memory
at our age: sharp enough to picture vividly aspects of events. But structured
and chronological memory is week. I had to look up Haguenau in a Christmas list
and then on a map. How long ago? I got there by taking our oldest grandson’s,
Max’s, age today…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Requiescat
in pacem, Madeleine. We’ll see you probably soon when the Earth train stops us
at heaven’s gate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-72681380301141132762021-04-05T10:58:00.005-04:002021-04-13T12:14:39.101-04:00Longevity – Reality and Appearance<p><span style="font-family: times;">It seems to me that deeply
layered as it has become over time, materialism is one of the reasons that long
life—and the longer the better—and even when it is maintained by drugs and
machinery—is viewed as a highly desirable condition. A minor side-effect of
that view is that some in science and medicine are laboring hard to prolong
life well beyond its utmost range, say 100 years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;">Long life as actually experienced
by most of us in our 80s and 90s is viewed more as a burden than delight. And
if the life oldsters live would extend 20, 30, or 40 years longer, we’d dread
the prospect rather than celebrate it as a wonder of science.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;">The physical side-effects of "being old" are obviously the most evidently undesirable—but these science might
mitigate. A deeper problem is boredom and disgust. The "thrillingly new"? We’ve
seen it all before. The trends, the trajectories? They are obviously down. We
grieve for our grandchildren’s children’s future. No medication can cure that
boredom and disgust; they are caused by cultural decline; and we’re not likely
to live hundreds of years longer when, perhaps culture will be reborn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span><span style="font-family: times;">These thoughts as a starter. The
subject of aging is deep. The young can’t write about it effectively. But with
a little help from lots and lots of drugs and vitamins, we can.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-81943156749892604792019-12-10T11:29:00.000-05:002019-12-10T11:31:09.276-05:00The Passing Has CommencedIn December comes
the task of writing the Christmas letter; it’s meant to help those people who
are not in frequent touch keep track of our general status; the letter
therefore is sent with some of our Christmas cards. Reading last year’s letter,
I noted that 2018 ended with Rex Turner, my sister Susie’s husband, passing
from our midst; Rex was the first of our generation to say farewell. In
preparing the 2019 letter, I noted that this year’s early events circled around
my brother Baldy. He was brought down by dementia at the time, roughly, of Rex’s
death. Then Baldy deteriorated rapidly; he died early in 2019.<br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Age colors one’s own
reaction. Rex was older; I expected him to leave before me; but Baldy was our “little”
brother—and in every way, I think, healthier and more energetic than I am. So a
kid brother passes before his creaking elder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I note this here in
passing, almost. The end days are not really in any sense a public matter. Others
of our age, of course, will know what I am saying and can rest in the knowledge
that the strange feelings of lifting a hand in farewell to someone you’ve lived
with all your life is odd, to say the least. And the desire to see him or her
again, soon (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Auf</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wiedersehen</i>, as the Germans put it) is a quite perceptible feeling.</span></div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-88888709364287873622019-10-31T09:34:00.003-04:002019-10-31T09:34:55.577-04:00Good-Bye Old OThrough a glass dabble-blurred by raindrops and the faint presence of the summer screen I see the vague dark roof randomly decorated by wet yellow leaves from a combination of maple and linden. Very distantly it seems a tall dark green mass is the top region of a wide pine or fir; it never sheds. Very far away behind it trees light green and yellow brown stand in line like words that run together; the telephone pole in that direction is a very tall comma or perhaps a dash. Days on end with rain we cannot see but feel when outside even before the first drops touch our face. Halloween is here to put an end to a short October in which, it seems, the highlight came last night in Houston where Our team (we lived there once) (and yes, the oldest, as we are) won the World Series away from home. For some reason the word cilantro wants to be written. My mind wants to spell it with an S and the Internet tells me that it is coriander; confusing in a way. But it’s not even nine o’clock yet I’m already closing on October by wishing for a heat wave in November. With Global Warming here with us, anything is possible and in California already is. ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-89660109186681483982019-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:002019-10-22T11:26:36.631-04:00We May Have Been Immune<div class="MsoNormal">
By a strange coincidence, Brigitte and I had a discussion yesterday morning about viruses. The context was reading the phrase “going viral” for the 50th time that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>morning in the papers. Then, yesterday evening, we heard a new word on MSNBC’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Word</i>. Lawrence O’Donnell was interviewing Norman (“Norm”) Ornstein; Ornstein is a political scientist who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI is a conservative think tank.</div>
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Now the coincidence I started with is not at all obvious; but I discovered this morning that the word Ornstein was using, unknown to Brigitte and me, kakistocracy, had been virtually unknown until April 13, 2018. On that date, the former CIA director, John Brennan, had used it on twitter to describe Donald Trump’s administration: “Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey.” You know what comes next already. The word went viral!</div>
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Yes, it went viral. But to our great surprise in this humble household, it took 556 days to reach us. Thus something is wrong with us—or else we were immune to viruses. Another way to say that is to use another old-fashioned phrase: we must sit “below the salt” (<u><a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/below-the-salt.html">link</a></u>). Otherwise we would have been using the word by at least by April 15, 2018. But no. We’ve only heard it yesterday. Shame.</div>
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The Internet gave us choices when we tried a search: cacistocracy or kakistocracy. We were betting on the K; the start of the word sounds Greek. Yes, so it turned out. The Greek for “worst” is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kakistos</i>. And if children are listening, I must tell them that, yes, it derives from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kakos</i>, meaning bad, and may be related to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kakka</i>, “to defecate.” Anyway, kakistocracy means the worst government one can imagine.</div>
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Finally, what took us 556 years to learn took modern humanity 375 years to remember. (Trump would claim that he is the Greatest Word Associationist who’s ever lived.) The first usage of the word (<u><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/04/13/kakistocracy-a-374-year-old-word-that-means-government-by-the-worst-just-broke-the-dictionary/">link</a></u>) has been traced back to a sermon given in 1644 during the Civil War—no, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ours</i>! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>—the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">English</i> Civil War.</div>
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Now if you are sitting even lower at the table than we are, thus even further below the salt, then even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> will now know what hides there in that potty.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-21991759715384099082019-10-20T11:10:00.001-04:002019-10-20T11:14:46.379-04:00October Horse and Other MiscellanyI missed the feast of October Horse (<i>Equus October</i> in Latin), anciently held on the 15th of the month. I did so for a perfectly logical reason. I’d never even <i>heard </i>of this celebration! How could I observe it? It belongs to the oldest Graeco-Roman times; indeed, the Greek historian Timaeus (345 BC – c. 250 BC) was the first to mention it—and he got his explanation wrong. Timaeus lived in BC times; hence October Horse belongs to the very deep past.<br />
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To understand this festival (categorized as religious but more likely a vulgar entertainment), it might help to put it into modern dress. Imagine that every October 15 a massive auto race were held. No limits would be placed on the size and power of the engines used, hence some really fast and weird cars would race with predictably many hair-raising accidents along the way. At the end of the race, the fastest and therefore the winning car would be displayed with masses of spectators present. Then men with powerful hammers and saws would attack it. They’d cut into its engine compartment and extract the engine any which way—and never mind if it was damaged. Others would attack its rear end and saw away its exhaust pipe.<br />
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Both teams, front and back, would then rush away in a fleet of trucks, each truck going in another direction. They would carry the engine and exhaust pipe, hiding each. Which trucks did these end up in? Nobody in the massive audience could know. The very expensive vehicle, the winner of the famous race, would, of course be left behind, an un-drivable wreck.<br />
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Our explanation is only half finished, at this point. In the real October Horse, the race was run by chariots drawn by horses, two to each chariot. The left-hand horse of the winning chariot would be sacrificed, i.e., killed by a spear. Then its head would be cut off—and also its rump with the tail. These would be carefully hidden someplace in the city.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2SB5Cbz79DtqY0J-wz5goBW-SvDIsWZr5M1CE42dDjwoDewuawpwkAa1fZdlF51UUAzCGBZoGtUr2W3XlvT7KviTfqTvcLJqBxhSPwkwARnO_iRHSvIJRIdK7aetS7rnZddEtYIG8Nva/s1600/October++Horse.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="190" data-original-width="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2SB5Cbz79DtqY0J-wz5goBW-SvDIsWZr5M1CE42dDjwoDewuawpwkAa1fZdlF51UUAzCGBZoGtUr2W3XlvT7KviTfqTvcLJqBxhSPwkwARnO_iRHSvIJRIdK7aetS7rnZddEtYIG8Nva/s1600/October++Horse.png" /></a></div>
But let’s go on. The contributions of the spectators now began. They were divided into two groups. The first were drawn from inhabitants of a huge neighborhood in Rome, Subura. Subura was a slum, in a way, inhabited by the poor, miserable: red light districts, and so on. The other group was drawn from a wealthy neighborhood in Rome’s best area, the Via Sacra. Off these people raced, running in masses. Their job was to find the Head (engine) and Tail (exhaust pipe) of the Horse (car). If these groups clashed along the way and fell into violent battles, why that was just part and parcel of <i>Equus October</i>. Those who found the Head displayed it for the next year; those who found the Tail, likewise. If one group found both—why the next year would be glorious—until October Horse returned again on the ides of October. Image <u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Horse">source</a></u>.<br />
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Now did I get this all correctly? Of course not. Even Timaeus had failed. But I can add what both of us now know. The festival was held on October 15 because it was the end both of military activities and of agricultural labors. So it was a festival of Mars, the god of war, and agriculture, the Sustainer of All.<br />
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It’s best to absorb even the few details I’ve managed to put forth. Destroying (i.e. sacrificing) a very expensive vehicle or horse—just for the hell of it? Letting the poor and the rich fight each other for ownership of the engine? Vast masses assembled to take part in the “fun”? October Horse was something even worse than we see all around us. But our festivals are on the social media. And the destruction is harder to see but much easier to cost out using Big Data and 5G.<br />
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Now for some miscellany. I discovered October Horse because I thought I’d find some festival in October beyond the well-known “celebrations”—like beer consumption at the October Fest or the children’s Halloween. My mind produced “The Rites of Spring” as an example, the ballet composition. I asked Google to display what it had stored under “The Rites of October.” In due course, I chanced across two entries on October Horse. Whaaat? October Horse? Discoveries then followed.<br />
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I also found an article titled “The October Horse.” That is the title of a novel by the Australian writer Colleen McCullough. Her novel is based in Rome. The sacrificial horse of her novel is Julius Caesar. Caesar was certainly, as a political figure, one of the best, brightest, and thus one of the swiftest. And at the beginning of his reign, if we may call it that, he was sacrificed by being stabbed with a knife. <i>Et tu, Brute</i>?<br />
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The image I show is Laocoon spearing the Trojan horse—an act from which Timaeus derived the October Horse festival. Both ancient and modern historians think he was wrong. And when you think of it, the horse shown is not exactly huge—or wooden. Never mind. The Trojan war has at least as many landmines as does <i>Equus October</i>.ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-72602718543898912592019-10-16T13:07:00.000-04:002019-10-16T13:14:37.299-04:00The Late Statue of Humanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhILfc9BU9jRmMS7VdqDbZCz0Rxws-fxJt-F4ysWNtmYHqh_q4q4xf_3se-h5gMSvuF1NNI16H9bbk_RNFVjX6VnKzQJlzwnYGxQL-F4rTBDf_W9bq-m_6iGTfcUDOTMr1My3UvimWcKQMO/s1600/Statue+of+Humanity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="791" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhILfc9BU9jRmMS7VdqDbZCz0Rxws-fxJt-F4ysWNtmYHqh_q4q4xf_3se-h5gMSvuF1NNI16H9bbk_RNFVjX6VnKzQJlzwnYGxQL-F4rTBDf_W9bq-m_6iGTfcUDOTMr1My3UvimWcKQMO/s640/Statue+of+Humanity.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Let me start with the Statue of Humanity (<u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Humanity">source</a></u>). I am able to capture its image as it existed in 2011, shortly before it was demolished. If the statue itself could be made to disappear, so might images of it if Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, decides on erasing them.<br />
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The Statue stood outside of the Turkish city of Kars. The city is located near where the border between Turkey and Armenia runs, close enough so that, standing where once the Statue stood, one could see Armenia in the distance if powerful binoculars are handy. Why had this Statue been built? It had been intended to commemorate an uneasy peace formed between Turkey and Armenia in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1916); in that genocide at least 600,000 Armenians were killed by Turkish troops in an action weirdly reminiscent of recent events on the border of Syria. Meaning: is a Kurdish Genocide now to be anticipated? The next question? Why had this Statue been taken down? Well, Erdogan, then still only a Prime Minister, had seen the Statue on one of his trips in 2011; he had expressed a strong dislike of it, calling it a freak. Despite local opposition, the City of Kars had then begun its disassembly, removing the heads first. So there is a link between the genocide, back when, and the possibility of another genocide, in the future. That link is Erdogan.<br />
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Finally, concerning the Statue, its designer was the sculptor Mehmet Aksoy (1939-); he got his commission in 2009; he was still laboring on the work in 2011 when the men with the crane and front-end loaders to take it down again arrived.<br />
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Not that there is a bigger picture than Humanity, but there is an historical big picture here, best represented by a map. The picture is that the collapse of great social structures, such as the Ottoman Empire, leaves behind troublesome echoes for years, sometimes even for centuries. The Ottomans ruled from Turkey. Under their governance, the many peoples they oversaw included the Armenians to the east. Armenia is a thinnish wedge of land between Turkey and Azerbaijan. And the part of Turkey that Armenia adjoins is what is still referred to, at least by Kurds, as Kurdistan. The map I show will reveal the situation (<u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan">source</a></u>).<br />
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The lightly-colored region is labeled Kurdish-inhabited. Thus the Kurds inhabit parts of Turkey, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—going clockwise. The map also shows Armenia, of course. The Armenians irritated Turkey in the early 1900s by being friendly with Russia. Ah! There is Russia, too, in this great ethnic mix.<br />
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Problems, problems, problems. Back in the good-old days (but don’t look too closely), the Ottomans kept the peace all around inside their domain of rule. My late guru, the historian Arnold Toynbee, explained that situation by saying that the Ottomans regarded the peoples they ruled as species of stock—cattle, horses, sheep, and such. It was best to keep the various stocks from fighting and profit from their use or sale. But the Ottomans didn’t last. Nor, for that matter, to name another large domain, did the Soviets. Hence we now have “residual” problems in the Ukraine too. All kinds of problems. In human history, bigness usually spells peace; breakup causes chaos. Perhaps we should replace the Statue of Humanity by renaming the Gobi Desert The Pasture of Humanity. But is the Gobi big enough?ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-47097108246086841602019-10-10T11:45:00.001-04:002019-10-10T11:48:23.952-04:00The Color of October<div class="MsoNormal">
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Noticed, on waking, that the two calendars on the wall looked very similar through blurred eyes. They were both patches of yellow-orange. Later I went about the house and examined other calendars too. Most were obediently pumpkin-colored.</div>
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But while October might be pumpkin-colored, another and more subtle question is What’s the Color of a Pumpkin? The kindly loan of the pumpkin picture I am showing came from this <u><a href="http://cottageinthemaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/many-colors-of-pumpkins.html">source</a></u>. The blog is called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my little cottage in the making</i>. The image I show is the first of many more in a blog post titled “The Many Colors of Pumpkins.” Incredible variety, nicely displayed. Nothing’s simple in this crazy age of ours—not even the color of a pumpkin.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-87619280056847619302019-10-10T11:13:00.001-04:002019-10-10T11:13:58.046-04:00We Don't Need a New Thermometer<div class="MsoNormal">
This morning after waking up and having a sip of cold coffee, I checked NBC News, curious, don’t you know, if Europe is still there. The headline in text at the bottom of the screen said:</div>
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Politics is taking a toll on Americans’ health, according to a new study</div>
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The text was actually shorter, but what I’m quoting is an online article by NBC published September 25, 2019. That date is what “new” means in the headline. The NBC article is <u><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feeling-sick-or-losing-sleep-over-politics-you-aren-t-n1058536">here</a></u>. NBC itself was summarizing the content of an article that appeared in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Plos One</i>, a recently founded scholarly journal. The original article, titled “<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics,” is available <u>here</u>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The essence of the content? The study is based on a survey of individuals reporting their own feelings. One in ten of those participating reported feeling badly about politics these days. From the Abstract:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #202020; font-size: 10.0pt;">Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Thus the article thus is what you might imagine. Scientific up to a point, but mostly reporting on how people felt when asked about politics. One in ten is not a very high number. But the headline makes you think that things are in a pretty sorry state. “Even physical problems” were reported. We need a new thermometer now. On the other hand, I saw an ad the other day that showed a man giving himself an EKG by touching two tiny pads on a table with his left and right index fingers. The EKG results appeared on a cell-phone sized screen. So maybe we don’t need a new thermometer now. But we certainly need a new politics.</span></div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-61577509951870270232019-10-05T12:09:00.000-04:002019-10-05T12:35:20.612-04:00Snap Shot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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From a living room window we see people walking their dogs every day, yes even in the rain. There are hardy types of owners who are not stopped by a little down-pour. But of them all, we know two very well.<br />
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One of them is Leo, the Shi Tzu in my picture. Leo lives next door with Pat and Lloyd. The other is Katie the Beagle, a personality who occurs multiple times on this blog. Katie lives across the street with Monique and John, who’re <i>our </i>family. This is Leo’s first appearance on Ghulf Genes.<br />
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Leo is quite young, energetic, and very territorial. It's quite possible to miss the genuine dog traits of a little dog with a name like Shi Tzu; but when you get to know them and watch them in action, you realize that the canine is as strongly present in these fur balls as it is in some giant labrador. I think of Katie, by contrast, as a great-grand-mother: she spent her early years in a breeding place; she's lived a "civilian" life now for many years and she is getting old; she's also suffering from chronic ailments. But a nice day will make her pull you on a leash so that <i>you </i>feel your <i>own</i> age. Can't walk that fast any more...ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-83607463994387084582019-10-03T10:42:00.000-04:002019-10-03T10:51:19.857-04:00A Picture of Eternity<div class="MsoNormal">
Next to our coffee machine, in a kitchen corner, lies a tray we got along the way, no memory when and where. The corner is well lit by a strong bulb mounted under a kitchen cabinet; you see the light but not the lamp. The tray is more or less covered by objects, but in that light some surface of it is always brightly visible. It is one of the many images of the Moulin Rouge painted by Michel Delacroix (born 1933). I see it multiple times every day; and what with its undeniable qualities and charm, it feels like it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">part of me</i>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCCQR4xW-3HicQyxor0uh9vcGYQsMez7AaMM6e6jHu53uyBzvepSS1wc1Xc9HyH_uuqftiJBg5zfvl1i81n3oxK6wRyqLY95FtTRFNq5v_-hBTfvGA4jhu_mNI1oIMQBqlb7bswD9C6nI/s1600/Moulin+Rouge+Delacroix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="693" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCCQR4xW-3HicQyxor0uh9vcGYQsMez7AaMM6e6jHu53uyBzvepSS1wc1Xc9HyH_uuqftiJBg5zfvl1i81n3oxK6wRyqLY95FtTRFNq5v_-hBTfvGA4jhu_mNI1oIMQBqlb7bswD9C6nI/s640/Moulin+Rouge+Delacroix.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Part of me and yet, curiously, a picture of eternity. It is always, predictably, reliably, and pleasingly the same. Its colors neither change nor fade. In a time in which seemingly nothing remains untouched by whatever you want to call it (I call it blight), it is a rock hard reminder that some things, even quite trivial things like a tray, are there to remind us of another reality which faith would have it (and faith these days is absolutely needed) stands in contrast to the blight and holds on firmly to hope (as a mother’s hand holds on to a child’s).</div>
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The subject is now uppermost in my mind for obvious reasons. Incidentally, we’re now also reviewing the BBC Sherlock Holms series; in a moving fashion it also serves the same role as the tray. I keep telling Brigitte, as we watch the repeating opening sequence with its horse-drawn carriages and men in fancy hats buying newspapers, “Images of my youth.” Well, of course, not quite. My stay here began a mere three years after Delacroix was born. But yes. Horse-drawn carriages. Yes. I might hear the sound of those hoofs as I opened my eyes in the morning. And once past, all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> eternity: rock solid so that even a tray can hold it forever.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-75887707167441090812019-10-01T12:09:00.000-04:002019-10-01T12:12:05.283-04:00Odysseus the LittleLovely sunny day. It follows a series of very rainy days and such adventures as a partially flooded basement, a battle with the sump pump, walking Katie the Beagle, and then toweling her down.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGkL9sJG8ASVW25lK2PysEpyGVveq4nkhtn22i7FZFKhpNquLlnaKvowVqaDi0RsVZRkPTOppmB_42KJFMxPrK86rnPep53Rv7PNJxEbjL5oG9LlC5R5GVRDQ0zxRSJM0j3wiXF3k2_rSM/s1600/10012019+Bswallowtail+003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGkL9sJG8ASVW25lK2PysEpyGVveq4nkhtn22i7FZFKhpNquLlnaKvowVqaDi0RsVZRkPTOppmB_42KJFMxPrK86rnPep53Rv7PNJxEbjL5oG9LlC5R5GVRDQ0zxRSJM0j3wiXF3k2_rSM/s200/10012019+Bswallowtail+003.JPG" width="200" /></a>Today is different. The sump pump hums. The basement is dry. Katie went walking in sunlight. Incidentally, when women with children see me walking Katie, they say, “Look, look, honey. See? A puppy!” But this puppy is a great-grand-mother, almost blind, and suffering from a chronic lung condition. Alas. Katie went walking with Monique this morning and, again, looked like a puppy. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKfMnim8TJidM1w3wabYdYXptrh3DLhjyP1MJXoHoSa10CGQFh0uWpqEiVA4NYb-1USDZKm9wPsWdQPB5c4KIrzsHGhnqAcDm7D710DYg7GQulFOtbNxjX3Xkmk01Oo3gwvbJrPgzvs8H5/s1600/10012019+Bswallowtail+001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKfMnim8TJidM1w3wabYdYXptrh3DLhjyP1MJXoHoSa10CGQFh0uWpqEiVA4NYb-1USDZKm9wPsWdQPB5c4KIrzsHGhnqAcDm7D710DYg7GQulFOtbNxjX3Xkmk01Oo3gwvbJrPgzvs8H5/s200/10012019+Bswallowtail+001.JPG" width="200" /></a>Inside the house I glanced at the aquarium where we are raising two Black Swallowtail caterpillars. Startled by something, I stopped dead. Can’t be! But it was. One of the pupae, by far the smaller of the two, had opened and released a Butterfly. Just last night I was sure that pupae was done for. Join me in saying Welcome—to Odysseus the Little shown here in two versions: in the shade and in the sun. The yellow coloration says male. Brigitte is into Greek names for butterflies, hence Odysseus. She shortens that to Ody. This little fellow had had a fight to be born.</div>
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Soon now Ody will take off. We’re guessing that it will be in a north-westerly direction. Always so—whether back east in Grosse Point or here in Wolverine. And Monarchs have the same sense of direction. They know something we do not.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-50482136919525815512019-09-29T09:43:00.000-04:002019-09-29T13:36:43.096-04:00What Used to be 4E<div class="MsoNormal">
As a senior in high school, I had to come up with my future occupation. The word chosen would appear under the name placed under the picture in the Year book. The word I chose then was Journalist. I’d enjoyed very much both writing for our school paper, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lillistrator. </i>My work there also earned me a trip to Chicago to take part in a national conference for high school journalists. As fortune had it, I fell in love for the first time with one of the girls from across the country. The romance reached its highpoint when we walked along the Loop on a sunny day and actually held hands. (Those were the days.) Furthermore, as if all this were not enough, I enjoyed writing more than any other occupation, So Journalist in the Year Book. For a while in college, indeed, I aimed for a degree in journalism; but that did not last long. And though I worked in several of the great sectors in American life, journalism was never one of them—not even peripherally.</div>
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Despite this, I’d been exposed to journalism in some classes, and what with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lillistrator</i> in the background, I had (and continue to have) a kind of proprietary view of the profession. I think I know what journalists have to do—and have to avoid. Early on I’d heard and approved of the idea that journalism was The Fourth Estate. The First is the Clergy, the Second is the Nobility, and the Third is the Commoners. The Fourth received its name in 1787; Edmund Burke used it, and Thomas Carlyle told us so in a book titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On Heroes and Hero Worship</i> (<u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate">source</a></u>). The phrase spread to many other countries in Europe and perhaps beyond. The notion of “estates” has virtually disappeared in ordinary language, but it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> provide a useful way of at least initially viewing social reality. Today’s keywords, like Tech and Media and Middle Class—and places like Below the Poverty Line—lack the organic rooting that “estates” once sank into the soil.</div>
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Long ago, down at the working level, different rules applied to the News Story, the Feature, and the Editorial. The first two pertained to news reporting; the news story, above all, was intended to be straight and factual; the feature could have color and did not need to begin with a summary sentence. Opinion and advocacy were restricted to the editorial; it was not only permitted but expected that the editorial writing, including opinion columns, would take a more human view of unfolding events than the value-free camera of a news account or the artistically lively feature.</div>
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This morning, by chance, I woke at 4 am and wandered out of the bedroom to my usual armchair before the TV set. Groping in the dark I found the remote and turned on the TV, muting the sound. There was CNN, Fourth Estate, in modernese 4E. To my amazement CNN had actual news stories running—and such as one no longer sees on cable these days—unless one has access to CGTN (for those who don’t know, that’s China Global Television Network (which we watch a lot)). Here came stories from Europe, Africa, China (Hong Kong), India, Afghanistan and even the USA in which neither whistleblower, impeachment, nor Donald Trump were even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mentioned</i>. Amazing. Fascinating stuff; had quite forgotten.</div>
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Traces of 4E still remain—more in the print than in the chatter media. But even in print, the thinned out remnants have been more and more replaced by what has become just another (if still somewhat unruly) new slice of what in the Old Days we’d called Entertainment but which the New York Times is trying, very hard, to rename Style. <br />
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Reach for the wand. Off button. Push. Faint light in the grey sky. Nights getting shorter. Equinox is over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything changes. All the time.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-84612791553716303372019-09-21T18:49:00.000-04:002019-09-21T18:53:57.702-04:00Our Colonial HeritageIn our childhood—perhaps to this day—children playing too loudly or wildly were routinely called “Hottentots” and reminded to Stop it! Stop it! It occurred to me that there might really have been Hottentots once; and in Europe Africans might have been viewed at a great distance as generally wild…<br />
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Turns out it is true. The word comes from the Dutch settlers of the southern tip of Africa, the Cape Colony. The word was initially a way of imitating the speech patterns of the Khoikhoi peoples native there. The Khoikhoi used many click consonants in their speech (clip-clop being an example in English). That wildness is associated with them is obviously due to Europe’s distance from Africa and ordinary Europeans’ general ignorance.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3547067420689722925" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>As the enclosed illustration shows, they were pastoralists with orderly habits, shown here preparing for one of their recurring moves (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottentot_(racial_term)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;">source</span></a>)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6vHNQMzASBr4_r4d2CHXL3AMVaCc1mMWJ8e83GmL3T51vf7KohNAdxjDpD9BpYuonup-7EpvhphdTgW4asU0XDL9z888PNcwSztlxtVhSxCBNmwIbJTLYrw4jHnHBGd5w1AgZArPuQqp/s1600/Sameul_Daniell_-_Kora-Khokhoi_preparing_to_move_-_1805.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="949" data-original-width="1349" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK6vHNQMzASBr4_r4d2CHXL3AMVaCc1mMWJ8e83GmL3T51vf7KohNAdxjDpD9BpYuonup-7EpvhphdTgW4asU0XDL9z888PNcwSztlxtVhSxCBNmwIbJTLYrw4jHnHBGd5w1AgZArPuQqp/s320/Sameul_Daniell_-_Kora-Khokhoi_preparing_to_move_-_1805.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Those who’ve followed my source-link above will have noted that the article referenced is titled “Hottentot (racial term)”. When I began this post, I did not know that it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>. Then I recalled Prime Minister Trudeau’s problem, reported yesterday, that he had worn “blackface” in the 1990s. Was “blackface” also a “racial term”? Evidently not. Wikipedia’s article on that subject is not so designated. Racialism, of course, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a problem. But its practice and use in language is recent. Now it happens that Hottentot is based on the Boer’s difficulty in understanding the language they heard—not on the skin-color of the speakers. So the Boers used a repetitious but meaningless sound to describe the people they’d encountered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">My next topic should now be “barbarians,” but time’s run out. That word comes from the Greek and was descriptive of people who seemed to repeat themselves—bar, bar, bar. Humanity’s earliest racialism appears to have been directed at those who couldn’t speak their language.</span></div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3547067420689722925.post-80296650867709234072019-09-19T17:16:00.002-04:002019-09-19T17:16:53.028-04:00Hobbits Put an End to Summer in Detroit…SoonThis morning’s conversation took us (prematurely, I thought), to the End of Summer. Prematurely because it seems to me that the real summer had only shown precursors of itself, not a whole deck of its cards. But, of course, as Brigitte reminded me, we were now in September! And I should have known. In my childhood we were told that months ending in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ber</i> were generally of the colder sort.<br />
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So we to the calendars went. A few informed us that, indeed, in just five days Summer would be definitely Over. The Fall Equinox comes on September 23—at least here in Detroit. Another calendar calls it Beginning of Fall. Equinox, of course, means that day and night have the same length on this day. No wonder we kept wondering why the lights had to be turned on earlier and earlier.</div>
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All this, of course, is the bad news. So what’s the Good News? It is that September 22, thus exactly the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">last</i> day of summer, is Hobbit Day. Those are the small humanoids created by the mind of R.R. Tolkien—Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Now according to this Wikipedia <u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbit_Day">source</a></u>, there is a conflict here. According to Shire-Reckoning, the two birthdays fall between September 12 and 14. Our Gregorian calendar produces September 22—and only one day.</div>
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Good news, yes—but the usual scholarly not-so-is-so hullaballoo.</div>
ADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06408980212433714362noreply@blogger.com0