Playing Pretend

Tonight is the State of the Union address. In our day, as usually, the media were projecting the main thrust of it days ahead of time. We were told that President Obama, whose ability to govern has been neutralized by the paralysis of the legislative branch, will announce initiatives in 2014 he is able to carry out without legislative backing. Thus he will act administratively.  

But it is well to remind ourselves that important actions always involve some kind of compelling force—and the expenditure of money. All matters left to the President’s sole discretion tend to be of a minor nature. The Constitution, Article II, Section 2, grants him command over the military—but not declaration of war. He may also “require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in cases of Impeachment.” He “shall [also] have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” This part of Section 2, however, is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court which will decide “what is is,” i.e. what “the Recess of the Senate” actually means—seeing that the Senate has been playing games and pretends to be in session when it actually is not. Finally, in Section 3, the following words appear: “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” What little freedom the President possesses, administratively, lies in that phrase. When Congress has not been meticulously detailed in specifying exactly what the President has to do, the President is free to interpret the vagueness. Let us say that some law requires that regulations be issued on, say, toxic gas emissions. In that case, up to a point, it is up to the President to define what “toxic” means and then to lay down in detail how that gas is to be regulated.

Congress sometimes, pretending to be regulating something, to satisfy a noisy constituency, will pass a law requiring that the President shall issue regulations that have no real power. Such was the case in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) a long time ago (1976). It demanded that the EPA promulgate “recommended guidelines” for the disposal of solid waste. These guidelines had no teeth. Nonetheless, they were part of the Act. I was then at EPA. We largely ignored this requirement of the RCRA. The process for promulgating “guidelines” was just as lengthy and onerous as issuing real “regulations.” It took months of work, publication in the Federal Register, public meetings, publication of comments, and a long process of answering each comment. So we “neglected” these guidelines until we were sued by a consortium of environmental activists.

These activists, in turn, sued not because they wanted guidelines but because they wanted regulations. But until the guidelines were available, they could not pressure Congress to revise the RCRA to turn them into regulations. This, you might say, is the “glory of democracy” up close and personal. Despite our vast effort to publish guidelines, no regulations ever followed—because Congress didn’t want to do it.

It the President can be sued because he doesn’t do something, he can be (and very often is) sued because he does. This is happening in countless cases every year. The processes drag on and on. Their chief merit, it seems to me, is job-creation, creating jobs for lawyers. But, in these latter days, even that seems to be flagging. Just the other day I saw a story about graduating lawyers having problems finding actual jobs…

The President’s intention, therefore, to use his oh so limited administrative powers to lift employment, curb poverty, implement health care, and to solve the immigration problem will, if minorly successful, no doubt still be under litigation after he has retired and Hawaii is building the Obama Presidential Library.

Milkweed in Winter

So this has been a rather snowy winter around here. Genuine snow-falls almost daily. Looking out the window of our sunroom yesterday it seemed to me that our skeletal milkweed had suddenly bloomed again. For images of milkweed in bloom, we have to go back a ways to October (link).

A $46 Million Minus Sign

In the Wall Street Journal this morning comes an article titled “New Masters of the Art Universe.” Hedge fund managers are evidently spending their small change on buying expensive art and then—they can’t really help it, it’s a reflex with them—trading these art works again. I was just scanning the story sort of when I saw one purchase that made me laugh spontaneously. One no doubt famous trader had spent $46 million on a painting simply known as Rothko’s “No. 11 (Untitled).” I am bringing a copy of it here—not, mind you, a photograph. I dare not reproduce the actual image lest I be sued for copyright infringement. I made it myself using the Paint program Microsoft conveniently supplies with my Vista operating system.

Moments later Brigitte was laughing with me. Now, of course, ours is but a view from one perspective. We view art as imagery. And yes. Rothko’s total oeuvre, to give it the appropriate description, is mostly minus signs in different colors, but his pronounced preference is for shades of red and orange. The few blue-tinted minus signs don’t look at home at all. Green is absent, except in the pocket of Rothko buyers. The more comprehensive view point, in which “art as image” is only a slice, includes vast ranges of human perception based on trading value, money, shorting and longing any kind of saleable object. And that’s where our Masters of the Art Universe are busy vying with one another for reflected glory. 

Iconotropy

The subject arose—these things happen seemingly by chance, like seeing a cardinal appear on a snow-covered branch in January—why it was that God forbade the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to a certain pair in Paradise…and how come it was the woman who reached for the fruit and not the man—whereas it is only too well known that in such cases the woman would have been more passively cautious whereas the man, typically of  men, would have grabbed the apple first, even priding himself of able to climb the tree if so required.

Well, never mind. The discussion, as it evolved, brought back memories of Robert Graves’ call it essentially unreadable book, unreadable to an amateur, like me, who knows no Latin and even less Greek really—The White Goddess. In that book Graves coins the word used in my title, a word that the Wiktionary (here) defines as follows:

The accidental or deliberate misinterpretation by one culture of the icons or myths of an earlier one, especially so as to bring them into accord with those of the later one.

Graves held that images, usually carved or rendered as mosaics, created in the Age of Matriarchy were later reinterpreted in such a manner as to conform to the ideology of the Age of Patriarchy that rose to dominance later. Literally, the word means “image-turning” in English.

Graves provides many examples of such reinterpretation, but one of these will do. Take the tale of Paris, the Trojan, who, given an apple by Hermes at Zeus’ institagion, was to decide which of three goddesses (Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite) was the most beautiful. Paris chose Aphrodite and, by this decision, caused the later eruption of the Trojan war as the slighted goddesses decided to retaliate. This tale, of course, is an extreme abbreviation.

Graves argued that the tale was formed from icon created in the matriarchal age in which the Tripple Goddess is shown; and one of them is handing an apple, sacred to the Goddess, to a shepherd. Graves emphasizes that the three are not competitors but persons of a single being. Obviously the image shows the hand-off of an apple: a man’s hand, a woman’s, both touching the apple in the act—but nothing showing who is giving to whom. In one tradition the power of blessing—with the sacred apple—is that of the feminine. In the other, the power is with the male.

Similarly, the same icon is the source of the tale in Genesis in which woman (Graves calls Eve “the Mother of all Living”) gives an apple to Adam. But here the female’s action is interpreted as disobedience of the male figure of God the Father. And Graves saw this as an instance of iconotropy.

Quite amazing things turn up when the rare bird lands. And sometimes the answer is very obscure indeed if one’s rather random walk through literature, sacred and heretical, produces words no one ever uses anymore.

DIA: Elusive Coherence

We live in a catch-as-catch can world. On two earlier occasions I’ve mentioned the Detroit Institute of the Arts (DIA) (link, link). It has the misfortune, now that Detroit is in bankruptcy, of being municipally owned. To satisfy the city’s $18 billion in debt, the holdings of the DIA, valued at around $1 billion, may be sold. The picture here, however, is more complicated than would appear. We all think of the DIA as the museum. But things are otherwise.

The DIA, per its own June 30, 2013 financial report, is a 501(c)(3) not-for profit corporation. The first of its several purposes is to “Assist the Arts Commission of the city of Detroit (the City) with the operation of the Museum under contract with the City.” In other words, the DIA does not own most of the art the DIA shows; the City does. The same report also states explicitly that “the City holds legal title to certain museum assets, including artwork.” Evidently that title is to most of the DIA’s holdings; the DIA’s financial report itself only shows total net assets of $176 million. Furthermore, according to news reports, DIA may have to sell art up to a maximum of $500 million to satisfy the City’s bankruptcy. Concerning its holdings of art, the DIA has this to say in its financial report:

In conformity with allowable museum financial statement presentation practice, the value of the art collection is excluded from the statements of financial position. Title to art objects purchased by or donated to the DIA is in  the name of the City absent contrary restrictions imposed by a donor. Such art is accessioned to the permanent collecton of the museum upon approval of the Board of the Arts Commission of the City.

The report also states that the DIA (read the City) received donated art valued at $2.1 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013—but that that sum (unaudited) does not appear in the financial report. The City of Detroit—not the DIA—also owns the building and land occupied by the DIA.

Now the state, in the person of the Attorney General of the State of Michigan, has issued a Formal Opinion (No. 7272, dated June 13, 2013. It assets that “The art collection of The Detroit Institute of Arts is held by the City of Detroit in charitable trust for the people of Michigan, and no piece in the collection may thus be sold, conveyed, or transferred to satisfy City debts or obligations.”

Which makes me wonder whether or not such a Formal Opinion may be overturned in the courts. Or is that the final word on the matter? If so, why is that not common knowledge?

I looked up this much of the background because a cabal of foundations, lead by the Ford Foundation, has offered the DIA $300 million to be used to satisfy some, at least, of the City’s underfunding of its pensions. The total of those underfunded pensions is $3.5 billion; therefore the $300 million is but a drop in the bucket. And yet—despite that—the New York Times informs me that the DIA may still have to cough up $500 million.

It will work out somehow. But my sense of outrageous disorder in the world keeps being confirmed. And having watched a dreadful story on PBS last night, it makes me wonder how far $300 million might go toward eradicating cholera in Haiti, evidently planted there by UN soldiers sent to keep order in that devastated region. Especially if, despite $300 million, the DIA still has to sacrifice its Van Gough and such.

Tracing Kinds of Quince

The season of remembering is here—remembering the sunny days of Spring and Summer, remembering the deeper past—and such memories sometimes join. ‘Tis the season, after all, when gardeners curl up with seed catalogs.

Brigitte was looking out at the now, temporarily, melting snow and noted that our lilac bush has more than doubled in height and width since its acquisition three years ago. Then she added mournfully: “But we’ve yet to see any quince on our quince bush.” That bush joined our garden two years ago.

Brigitte’s statement then constellated—as mention of quince always does—an early period in my life, circa 1942, the year I first went to school. That happened in a small city in Hungary, Cegléd, these days with a population of 38,000. My father was briefly stationed there as a soldier. We lived in a palatial mansion then, complete with servants’ wing and two floors with exceedingly high ceilings. The pile was heated by huge stoves—which were so expensive to feed with wood that in the single winter we spent there, most of the house was shut down. And while we had stables accommodating four horses at need, a huge and several formal gardens, the toilet was out of doors—which lent winter yet other charms. But one of the charms of this place was quince. We had at least four large quince trees; they produced abundant and large fruit. Of Cegléd I remember the swimming pool we walked to—very modern—the school I attended, which was five grades in one small room, each grade with a single bench on which we sat. There were five of us first graders and I sat in the middle of the first bench. Why so small? In a moment. I also remember the main shopping street, quite near us, where I first noticed with childish wonder that women wore very high heels.

Now the quince we have—along with Monique and Theresa, one of Monique’s neighbors (which also inspired us to buy quince bushes)—turn out to be flowering quince, formally Chaenomeles speciosa. This species produces fruit similar to but somewhat smaller than the quince in Cegléd. Speciosa, at maximum height, is about 3 meters; the fruit is dark yellow. The species that grew, and presumably still grows in Cegléd is Cydonia oblonga; it is a tree that, at maximum, reaches 8 meters into the air; its fruit is much larger, pear-shaped, and green to light yellow; a tree will typically produce about 300 pounds of fruit in a season. For these reasons, I’ve wondered, since getting our shrub, if they are really closely related. It turns out that they are: Same family (Rosaceae), same tribe (Maleae), same subtribe (Malinae), and same subfamily (Amygdaloideae). They differ in genus (Chaenomeles vs. Cydonia) and therefore also at the species level.

Cegléd had a very rural feel to it in my early years; it has since developed a good deal. It appears to have been a strongly protestant city; its largest church is also the largest Calvinist church in all of Hungary; Protestantism, in Cegléd has a very big footprint, not least several huge Lutheran and another large Calvinist church. For this reason, perhaps, my father arranged for me to attend a Catholic school—and one within walking distance. Hence the small classes—and five grades taught simultaneously by a single teacher; he would spend about five minutes on one grade then shift to the next—while those left behind had some task to perform…

Reminiscing in old age in the Age of Information is often quite an active business. Thus helped by Google Maps I was rapidly able to locate the swimming pool where we had spent many sunny afternoons—and, remembering the streets we walked to get there and to get back, I also managed, more or less accurately, I believe, to vaguely to locate where we had lived. To give a feel for the look of the place, I reproduce here a photograph taken by one Károly Héda titled “View from Eötvös Square” (link). The picture is recent, but it did really look like that once. The church in the distance is Holy Cross, so Catholicism is present. But for emphasis I am showing, in the second image, the Calvinist Great Church, as it is known, of Cegléd, from Wikipedia (link).

So who was Eötvös? As best I can discover, he was probably Loránd Eötvös (1848-1919), a well-known Hungarian physicist and the inventor of the torsion pendulum used in clocks; that process uses a heavy cylindrical weight, suspended on a spring, to provide the action of a pendulum. In my search I also discovered another Péter Eötvös (born 1944) who is a well-known composer and conductor. But the square, I think, belongs to Physics.

Now back to quince again. I show here the fruit, first, of the quince tree and, next, of the quince shrub. For a look at our own shrub, I suggest you check out this earlier post (link).

Amazing, really, the paths that memory produces—much like that of a donkey going from one cactus to the next. And elaborating in detail on all the little seeds one finds in memory’s catalogue, like that torsion pendulum for instance, would easily produce a volume. But a post, today, must suffice.

Symbolic Sugar

The term came up because I used one of those punches intended primarily for punching holes through paper—so that sheets may be placed in a three-ring notebook. The device is quite good for punching holes through belts as well. Quite contrary to what I see when I issue from the shower, I seem to be getting thinner; therefore my belt must be tightened at intervals. Well, the punch had been used, since the last time, for its intended purpose, and as I cleaned out its hollow tube, bits of round papers fell out as well. “Look, confetti,” Brigitte said. And then she wondered what the word meant.

Well, it comes from a Latin word meaning “to make with,” therefore the word “ingredients” is being understood. Comfacere. The word came to be associated with light pastry and candy later. The m in com got changed to an n. Our word “confection” comes from it. In Italian this turned into confetti—and originally meant small candy thrown into crowds at festivals.

Later on it turned out that it’s a lot cheaper to toss tiny bits of paper than heavier candy. A tightening of belts, perhaps? So there you are. When they rain confetti on us, we are receiving symbolic sugar—and that’s good for an attractively low Body Mass Index. Mine is almost normal; not quite, but almost.

For Christie’s Sake!!

It strikes me as quite implausible to imagine that people delayed an hour or more because a bridge is closed would reason as follows:  “This must be my Mayor’s fault, a Democrat, who failed to endorse my Governor, a Republican. And this is what he gets. Therefore I will not ever vote for my Mayor again.” If traffic delays produced such thought, we would have recall elections all over the country every month, and nothing would get done. Come to think of it, nothing is betting done anyway.

Here is a popular Governor. His chances to run for president are now totally ruined? I’m made to think so by a press possessing the brain-size of sharks. (We learned yesterday that sharks have quite minute brains.) In 2016, yet. When I let my mind roam over attractive candidates for president, Christie does come to mind, along with Jerry Brown of California—and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With a Democratic Congress behind her, Hillary Clinton, seems to me, would also make a formidable president, but that proviso makes such an outcome unlikely. Furthermore, while certainly a wild man, but in an attractive way, Christie might just be taken at his word. He did not cause that traffic jam.

Shaking my head, moving my hands wildly. The New York Times again tells me that our Visa Card is unresponsive. We may be denied such news in the future unless we act with alacrity. Might be a good idea to let the paper lapse…

Converging Echoes

A splendid episode of Nature on PBS last night brought us the latest news, you might say, of the Lipizzaners of Austria: “Legendary White Stallions.” The subject is close to home because, as I’ve had occasion to report quite a while back now (link), my Father was a dedicated patron and practitioner of dressage, the peak, you might say, of equestrian pursuits. Yesterday’s program (a rerun, I can’t find when it first aired) centered on the horses, their breeding, training, and ultimate retirement. This is a highly traditional activity, evidently very well funded, and seems to preserve, but in a fully-alive version, something grand that, surely even when it began, in 1565, in Vienna, would have seemed as strange and wonderful as it still appears to us today. This, then, is one of the echoes from the past I want to note.

The other begins with the program itself, Nature. Nature is the production of THIRTEEN, the New York-based PBS station. A lonely tree in what appears to be a desert-like region is its signature. I forget how this linkage got established, but I can never see that picture without immediately recalling a mini-series of the 1980s called The Flame Trees of Thika—indeed thinking, when I see it, that Nature’s logo is a flame tree. Yesterday I stood corrected. Brigitte, who is a great fan of that image, was a little startled when I called it the “flame tree” yesterday. “No, it’s not,” she said. “Thika? That’s a different sort of tree.” So off I went to check this matter out.

As always, in such situations, I was convinced that Brigitte was right, of course. Her eye for shapes is as infallible as is Pope Francis when addressing faith and morals formally. What I wished to discover is why I had made that linkage.

The first clue here was that both Nature’s tree and the Flame Trees are African. Nature’s image is an African acacia. And the Flame Trees of Thika? Well, the mini-series was made from a memoir written by Elspeth Huxley about her childhood in Kenya. Elspeth Huxley is part of the Huxleys—of whom Brigitte and I very fondly remember particularly Laura Huxley, the wife of Aldous, whose books, particularly This Timeless Moment and You Are Not the Target helped us cope with life in the long ago. So here is another echo. But back to those trees.

I bring two images. The first, by Peter Pazucha, a retired photographer (link), shows a panoramic view of flame trees. The second is one of the covers of Huxley’s memoir itself, showing the same shapes but not quite so prominently.

So it’s all in the shape of the trees. But here is a little more. Some of the flame trees (or those so named) belong to the same family as the acacia: the Fabaceae. But the Kenyan tree is most likely the Spathodea, family of Bignoniaceae; it has red flowers that resemble flames in bloom. Odd how things sometimes resemble one another even when their physical linkages are extremely distant. But in our memories certain things converge and signal the presence of values never forgotten.

Traditional Mysteries

Close readers of the economics pages may have noticed the confirmation of Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank—and wondered why, in the stories about this event, pundits are treating the lady as a de facto Queen of Finance in the United States—indeed, as one put it, the most powerful woman in the world.

After all. After all, if we stick strictly with the mechanics of the thing, the policy set by the Federal Reserve Bank is expressed in the decisions taken by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). That body is made up of twelve members and reaches decisions by voting. Seven of its members, including the chair, are members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Five other members are drawn from the twelve presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. One of those, however, has a permanent seat on the FOMC, the president of the NewYork Federal Bank. The other four serve for one year and are then replaced by another four drawn from regional federal banks.

What we have here, in other words, is a straight-forward democratic arrangement in which the Chairwoman of the Fed could just as likely be on the losing as on the winning side of a particular vote. Why then is she treated as the de facto “monarch” of monetary policy.

Well, the simple answer is that she actually is—now that she is confirmed. But the reason for that has little to do with voting and everything to do with the gradual evolution of a tradition. Let me try to describe this.

The simplest way to put this is that the FOMC is governed by consensus—not really by majority vote. The consensus forms around the person of the Chair. In the course of FOMC meetings, members of the committee may disagree with the Chair and may also express their dissent in so many words; but when it comes to a vote, they will back the Chair. It is customary for all Governors to vote unanimously with the Chair—and to be joined by the President of the New York Fed in doing so. That produces a majority of eight, each time. But the tradition at the FOMC is that no no more than two members may dissent. This is described as the “informal policy of the FOMC.” Dissents, some say, are intended to signal potential changes in policy in the future.

It’s quite amusing, in a way, to read how academic observers of this process attempt to explain it. At best they merely describe how it has gradually come about. As for the Why of this curious centering of effective power in one person, students of the process fall back on equally nebulous phrases. The importance or prestige of the office has gradually increased. A “tradition” rules this community; it is made up of, after all, highly qualified experts who’ve spent entire working lives in or around banking and finance. They all abhor the evil consequences of signaling rifts to the Market. The real decisions are worked out in privacy and out of the glare of journalistic light. Therefore, you see. And, presumably, whoever is appointed to be Chair of this institution will be reliably a member of this community and will uphold the traditional way. She or he will move to a vote only after the decision has been sanctioned by consensus.

No wonder, then, that chairs of the Fed are by any measure the most careful speakers in public—and their words are subjected to careful parsing as if they were an omen or issued from some being beyond the clouds.

It remains a fact, nonetheless, that this very sane and deliberate tradition of governance—at least of a part of our public affairs—could break down and, given time enough, someday will do so. Not, we hope, under Janet Yellen. May she rule in peace.

The Closing Bracket

Brigitte reminded me this morning that it is Three Kings Day—Epiphany. “Ah yes,” I thought. “The sixth.” In Europe, at least if you were a child, the Christmas Season began with St. Nicholas day—not with the first Sunday in Advent. St. Nicholas day falls on the sixth—of December. As children we put our shoes on the window sill the night before and went to bed. In the morning the shoes were filled with fruit, candy and cookies; bright red paper and twigs of fir decorated the display; and for good measure each child also received a switch, to be used on our bottoms if we should be bad. And the season also ended on the sixth—of January, when the angels notified the shepherds and the Three Kings came to visit the Christ-child in his manger. That day—both for Brigitte (who lived her childhood in Poland) and for me (in Hungary), that day was also traditionally appointed to take down the Christmas tree and to store the Christmas decorations for another year. The season lay between brackets, you might say, isolated from the relentless flow of the world—thus outside of time.

Let’s Kick It

It’s high time now for 2013 to kick the bucket—I mean on this blog. Until a 2014 post appears, the last year hangs around, at least in the margin. So it is time. That phrase—“kicking the bucket”—appearing in my mind, I did what I’ve done at least five times before since the appearance of search-engines. I tried to discover the origin of that phrase. Wikipedia does its best (here) but largely fails, I think. Suicide? Not very likely. The reflexive, spasmodic stiffening of leg muscles appeals to me, accompanied, no doubt, by that “last gasp.” For me the best depiction of this supposed terminal action is held in the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The kicking is done by Jimmy Durante quite early in the movie, and it looks awfully authentic.

In my childhood back in Europe, comedy put its stamp on the last day of year on the radio. Even as young children, Brigitte and I used to listen to those broadcast as bright children would, not really getting the jokes but enjoying the novelty of late, late, late-night radio listening. On my last shopping trip in 2013, also listening to the radio, I noted with pleasure that NPR had embraced that sort of programming too on the 31st. While my trip lasted, the object of the jokes was Microsoft and its famed leader, Bill Gates. And the snippets were extremely funny.

Therefore it’s appropriate to part with that year lead by Jimmy Durante. Like all real comics he was a contrarian figure who managed to delay his own passing by almost a whole month. He kicked the bucket in actuality on January 29, 1980—no doubt needing to rest up, first, from his antics on December 31, 1979. Humor lifts us above the dreary fray. Our  sense of humor may well be our best gift from on High.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 11312.31

Well, let’s see now. If Star Trek is any kind of guide on how we shall measure time in the distant future, thus  roughly from the next century onward, it appears that a kind of chaos of dates will dominate and every household will have to accumulate, at the beginning of each year, a quite diverse set of calendars. A quite amazing welter of mostly opaque information on Star Trek dating awaits the avid fan. I’m something even less than a rank amateur. Therefore, to mark this last day of 2013, I will stick to the dating convention that began with Star Trek, The Next Generation—a phrase that experts abbreviate as TNG.

The dating in that series was based on a five-digit number and a single-digit decimal. Suppose the stardate was 42437.5. In that case the digits have this meaning:

4          [Twenty]-fourth century

2          Star Trek TNG Season 2

4          { A three-digit number ranging from

3          { 000 to 999, advancing in

7          { uneven intervals through the season.

.

5          Time of day expressed as a decimal fraction. 0.5 is noon, thus half of a day.

The first stardate used in this format was 41153.7 for the first two episodes of TNG. The last was 47988—without a decimal point, therefore suggesting midnight of the release day. The stardate I’ve parsed out above is the date of the sixth episode of Season 2, “The Schizoid Man,” which so happens to feature Darnay’s disease (link).

Needless to say, there is no way to march from a stardate to an actual year except by searching the dialogue in each episode. In some of them actual dates using our own calendar—and presumably still in use then—are mentioned. And for the avid fan, this produces hours, days, even years of useful occupation.

The Powers that Be behind Star Trek’s creation, not least Gene Roddenberry, wished to avoid repeating actual years some 200-plus years in the future. People might then be tempted to speculate if such and such a technology could or could not as yet have been invented.

My own rationalizing attempt in that title is to bow respectfully in the direction of obfuscation. Therefore I use 1 for the [twenty]-first century, two digits for year, two for the month, and two digits beyond the decimal to indicate a day. That’s good enough for dates up to the twenty-ninths century into the future until a new convention must be introduced. And no pesky annotations like Anno Domini or Current Era need clutter up the pristine screen.

Happy New Year!

Color it Brownian

Back about ten years ago I wrote a family memoir; its well known to the family. It covered our history in Europe and ended with our variously dated arrivals in the United States. Even looking back to our great grandparents, Brigitte’s and mine, it was clear that war played the major role in the history of all our lives then; it was the sky, and the turbulence in it, that formed the dome above. Therefore that book had a strong thematic. And because large parts of our families emigrated—to the United States, Canada, Latin America, and even to Australia, the theme was a kind of movement toward the goal. The title, Majd Amerikába, holds that thematic. Literally it means, Wait Until We’re in America. My Mother used that phrase often when we wanted something that could not be had.

Years after writing that book, I hazarded another. It never got finished. I had titled it America: Our Random Walk. In fact I’d quite forgotten that title; it came back a couple of days ago when, in one of our discussions, Brigitte mentioned Lauriston Place, one of our streets. And that had me checking back in that manuscript to see where it was located in relation to two other places where we had lived in Fairfax, VA.

That narrative ran aground after a dozen chapters precisely because the random nature of our life amidst the peace and plenty of the once mythical Amerika produced problems of story-telling. The tale split into two rather incompatible tines, as of a fork. The family history retained its meaning—but the outer world became chaotic, so much so that actually describing it, meaningfully, came to demand more and more space. It was a family history—not a sorting out of an ever more shattering economic/political history which here, in this land, became the sky under which we continued doing what mankind had done forever and ever—raising a family.

The random is quite difficult—to understand, to integrate, to see comprehensively. The second chapter of an old book we got for Christmas, The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, deals with the difficulties. It is titled “The Lure of Completeness.” When too many things in some kind of motion impinge on too many other things, and vice versa, we get situations which are theoretically capable of explanation—but always only theoretically. And if we could somehow slow down and freeze the motion, infinite time would be required to trace its lawfulness. And then, suggest the author of the essay, Sir Hermann Bondi, we’d probably discover something deeper to plunge us right back into ignorance.

Color it Brownian, one might say. Brownian motion, discovered by the botanist Robert Brown in 1927, is one form of the random walk—which, whether used to understand Wall Street or those who work on Main Street, is rather a poor environment for story telling. The human experience is resolutely and defiantly teleological. Brigitte heard me say this sort of thing about that unfinished book and said: “Why don’t you just simplify it? You’re good at that. And stick with the family.” I might do that. But let’s wait for Spring.

Urbi et Orbi

That Latin phrase must please all those with even a weak ear for the poetic. The words are big this morning because the papers are reporting the Pope’s address to “City and World” (or “City and Earth”); it is the Pope’s Christmas address. It happens to be newsworthy, this year, because, in praying for peace, Pope Francis included the following sentence: “And I also invite non-believers to desire peace with that yearning that makes the heart grow: all united, either by prayer or by desire” (link). Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal rendered “non-believers” as “atheists,” perhaps because that word is more dramatic; but never mind that. In the spirit that Pope Francis urges, I enfold the media in a peaceful embrace today.

I had been under the impression that “Urbi et Orbi” goes back to ancient Rome as an early sort of “State of the Union” address. Turned out I was wrong. Wikipedia dates the address to the thirteenth century and the reign of Pope Gregory X. Wiki then adds a reference to the Polo family (whose most famous member is Marco). Soon after Gregory’s election, Niccolo and Matteo Polo brought him a message from Kubla Kahn, and the Pope then responded to it. Some people, anyway, link this fact to the name of the Christmas message—although, seems to me, the Pope is always addressing the earth, not just the City of Rome.

Urbs, in Latin, simply means “city”; the origin of that word is not know, but, seems to me, might be a modification of orbis, meaning circle, ring, hoop, or disk. Online Etymology Dictionary notes that the “circle” had begun to transform itself into a “sphere” or a globe by the thirteenth century already (in Old French)—thus by Gregory’s time. Galileo didn’t arrive until the sixteenth and died in the seventeenth century. To us in the twenty-first, “orb” certainly means a sphere and no longer a circle. And as that geometrical concept has expanded, so has our concept of peace, at least as Pope Francis sees it. It has claims on all of us, believers or unbelievers alike.

Fourth Sunday in Year Thirteen

We celebrated our fourth Sunday of Advent in the last few minutes of that Sunday by lighting our last candle around what in Germany we called the Adventskrantz (Advent Wreath). The photography, you might say, phailed me this year; the wreath is not quite visible. And this posting actually comes on a Monday. But as they say, it is the spirit that matters, not its actual physical manifestation. 

With this humble image we send our greetings and best wishes to all who read Ghulf Genes. May your Christmas be blessed—and, as the Germans also say, a good slide into the New Year (einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr).

Butterfly Mecoin

In what struck Brigitte as a meaningful coincidence, the New York Times today, on its front page, brought a story about the Monarch butterfly and Milkweed—to close out a year in which, in the context of butterflies, was a central event in our live this year. Meaningful coincidences, we gratefully note, are frequent enough so that Brigitte has coined a new word to refer to them: mecoin; it’s easier to write in diaries and such than the full phrase with 23 letters.

Yes, we saw our own milkweed—planted in what seemed an almost meaningless gesture to help save the Monarch from ultimate doom—bloom for the first time this summer. Today we discovered that we are not alone. Major public efforts, headed by such institutions as the University of Northern Iowa (once a neighboring state), the University of Minnesota and the University of Kansas (we’ve lived in both of those states), along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Academy of Sciences are collaborating in the establishment of large tracts of land on which the milkweed, and other ecology-friendly weeds, will grow profusely and provide the thinning populations of the Monarch a little genuine hope. To this list I should also add the State of Mexico; it is also striving to reverse this most deplorable population crash.

It’s warmish out; the snow still lies fairly thick on the ground. As it rains steadily. The year is almost over. I thought I’d written all I would, this year, on butterflies back in November. But now a mecoin gives me one last chance to promote this worthy effort.

And, by the way, we are also providing milkweed seed we’ve harvested to members of the far-flung family so that our batch will multiply and once more fill the earth.

Crossword Centennial?

Twenty-thirteen has been rich in important anniversaries, 50-year and 100. Or so it seems. It was the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, the 50th of C.S. Lewis’ passing, also the 50th anniversary of the show Doctor Who. Those of us old enough to have been in our twenties fifty years ago can at least vaguely attest to such anniversaries as that. But what about centennials?

Yesterday was supposedly the centennial of the crossword puzzle—universally proclaimed by Google’s search page. On December 20, 1913, one Arthur Wynne composed, and the New York World published, the first such thing. But a hundred years are a long time; as I pursued this subject this morning, things began to seem less clear. Wikipedia, in its article on the subject, dates Wynne’s achievement as December 21, 1913 and cites the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its source, no less (link). Wiki adds that Wynne’s puzzle “embodied most of the features of that genre as we know it.” But the crossword is evidently older than that—going back to 1837 in the English magazine called St. Nicholas. Which means that the centennial should have been celebrated in 1937, when I had reached the ripe age of 1. Italy was not far behind. In September of 1890 Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica published one devised by Guiseppe Airoldi. Early on the feature was named “word-cross.” If we see “the cross” as symbolizing pain, certain puzzles—certainly all those in the New York Times on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays belong to the painful variety. The words were inverted into “crossword” later—perhaps to ease our pain.

Whenever the crossword really began, it has brought Brigitte and me, both of us word-crossed sorts of people, plenty of agony, laughter, and joy—not to mention additions to our already fairly decent personal dictionaries… So let us take pencil in hand and celebrate.

The Clash of Being and Becoming

The church needs to recognize that things have changed and times are changing and people are changing.

     [Frank Schaefer, former Methodist Minister]

Everything flows, nothing stands still.

     [Heraclitus of Ephesus]

The trigger for this note is the first quote. A story in the New York Times this morning relates a conflict within the Methodist Church. Frank Schaefer, one of its ministers, was expelled for violating the rules of the Methodist Book of Discipline; the context was gay marriage. The Rev. Schaefer clearly voiced his own convictions, no doubt feeling that they are self-evident and should therefore command universal assent. But that is because we are now living in an age in which Becoming has achieved at least a temporary dominance.

Having been brought up in a tradition in which Being is the ultimate anchor and reference, I’ve found it odd that our times are so enamored of Becoming. It’s everywhere. It neatly matches the spirit of an Age of Progress. That age itself takes its inspiration from the theory of evolution—which seemingly provided, in the nineteenth century, a plausible alternative to explain Life, at minimum, and, by extension the whole of reality as capable of explanation without God. Heraclitus, who anticipated the rise of Hellenism by some handful of decades, gave Becoming its brief motto; he had no access to Darwinism yet, original or neo, but still believed that reality had always been, would always be, but never the same at any moment. Job One, therefore, is adaptation—and the early bird catches the juiciest worms.

I’m speaking here of fashions—fashions in thought. “Being” is associated with God, “becoming” with matter. Nothing wrong with becoming, per se, of course. It’s a matter of observation, another way of saying that energy is present and acts in Time and Place. No time, no change. My musing centers, rather, on the promotion of this concept to a very high rank. Why is that? Perhaps because in our current social life the transcendental is effectively silenced and mere motion and change have been promoted and are evoked to justify change. Cultural epochs are marked by one or the other side of this pairing; Becoming is king now, but we are moving toward Being again.

I think this because I am convinced that we’re now passing through what might be called an anti-Renaissance; the twentieth century represented an important segment of it. Therefore philosophers—Whitehead comes to mind and, for me, also David Bohm, the physicist, in his cosmological writings—are struggling in some way to reconcile Becoming with Being. But, such is our time, they begin by looking at physical reality first in their attempts at explaining the “mystery.” The mystery is consciousness, agency. They are headed back toward a comprehensive answer but do not quite arrive.

The curious thing is that Being and Becoming are readily reconciled if one begins with consciousness, with agency, the most fundamental experience all of us share. Trying to explain what we are, we discover a hierarchy in which Being is more fundamental than Becoming, hence on a higher plain. And even that which always flows and moves must first be before it changes and thus because something else that still is. Even the flux is, first of all, before it is transformed. Reason, which is irreducibly part of awareness, then leads us to add another dimension to reality beyond the three of space and time. And with a transcending dimension added, the conflict disappears. Bohm discovered an “unconditioned order,” read intelligence, as a complement to the “conditioned order,” read matter. Whitehead discovered an evolving God. Close. But we’re not there yet. Anti-Renaissance still has a ways to go.

Benson’s Apocalypse

About a month ago we learned, on Siris (link), that Pope Francis had made reference to a science fiction work, Lord of the World, written by Robert Hugh Benson, a British Catholic priest. The book was published in 1907! Well, that was irresistible. We had a copy of it within the week, and since then Brigitte and I read it together in daily segments right after lunch; Brigitte did the reading. We finished yesterday—and indeed, it was a tour de force.

Benson was a quite prolific and popular writer. He wrote science fiction (3 works), historical novels (7), contemporary novels (10), children’s books (3), devotional works (8), apologetics (10), plays (4), and other books (4) including biographies and a book of poems.

Lord of the World is a profoundly philosophical work—its story being the ultimate victory of absolute materialistic secularism the world over. That might suggest slow, weary reading. But the book was intensely suspenseful, quite a thriller, and we had a real job keeping from reading on and on, as rapidly as possible, to discover what happens next—although we already knew the end before we even began.

Benson was born in 1871 and died in October 1914, thus three months after World War I began. He’d lived intensely and had died young of heart failure. His prophetic gift was significant—but muted. He saw the future clearly in its essence, but not its tawdry nature. The future’s technology is smooth, clean, silent, and pleasing to the eye. He projected the triumph of materialism in every category—except the spiritual. The few great outbreaks of disorder that he shows carry powerful premonitions of, say, Nazi mobs. There is no sense of what we see now, the “war of all against all,” disguised as markets, free speech, and competition. The world’s a kind of physical paradise, its air-traffic almost silent, its ground-traffic underground, its surfaces soft and sound-absorbing. The conflict is all in the “sky”—as in Dürer’s image (shown elsewhere here). Nor does he recognize that everything constellates its own resistance—in reality—so that the great tendencies he saw have not yet, and never shall, actually achieve victory. The reason for this, however, is explained in Benson’s brief prefactory paragraph:

I am perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book, and open to innumerable criticisms on that account, as well as many others. But I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and which I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines to a sensational point. I have tried, however, not to scream unduly loud, and to retain, so far as possible, reverence and consideration for the opinions of other people. Whether I have succeeded in that attempt is quite another matter.

At the same time, the book has extraordinary insights into spiritual life—at the collective as well as at the individual levels. These passages in no way interfere with, indeed they heighten, the story-telling tension. Surprising subjects are touched upon, like the post-death vision of one of our favorite of four major characters that carry this story, Mabel Brand.

A most unusual book—weirdly modern, weirdly out of this world. The book produced some widespread reactions—because of its gloomy ending. This impelled Benson later in his life to write a kind of utopian work, Dawn of All. Needless to say, Amazon is flying it to us now—not yet on Benson’s famous volors nor yet on Bezos’ future drones—just by plane and UPS truck. We can hardly wait.

Messiah Down Through Time

With John and Monique we heard a rather exceptional performance of Handel’s Messiah yesterday at snowbound Christ Church in Grosse Pointe Farms, MI. The conductor was Scott Hanoian (a well-known musical figure here and nationally); the chorus was Christ Church’s own, 58 strong. Exceptional, also, were the program notes. They brought a bit of the history of this masterpiece and of its initial reception in Dublin, where it was first performed on April 13, 1742. Part of the notes holds this quote from the Dublin Journal appearing on the 10th and 13th:

Many Ladies and Gentlmen who are well-wishers of this Noble and Grand Charity for which this Oratorio was composed, request it as a Favour, that the ladies who honor this Performance with their Presence would be pleased to come without Hoops [hoop-framed skirts], as it will greatly increase the Charity, by making Room for more company. The Gentlmen are desired to come without their Swords.

Controversy surrounded the Oratorio initially because it was performed in regular theaters. And neither the places nor ordinary performers were thought, by some, appropriate to handle sacred texts and music. An anonymous letter-writer to a London paper, for instance: “I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it in, or a Company of Players fit Ministers of God’s Word.” We had a good laugh about that after the performance while dining at Grosse Pointe’s “The Original” Pancake House—until it occurred to us that much the same reaction might take place today if Hollywood got into this particular act.

In 1785, Abigail Adams was visiting London and attended a performance of the Messiah. She was quite as entranced as we were; she spent a guinea on the ticket; she thought that expensive but well worth it. So how much did she spend? Various sources on the Internet have done their best to inform me. A credible answer, translating Year1800 guineas into our current dollars puts a guinea at around $60. One thing certainly has changed. Prices have dropped. We only spent $25 per ticket.

The program notes also brought us the actual text of the Messiah. It turns out to be quite an amazing collation of biblical quotations from the Old and the New Testaments assembled for a particular context. This was the first time that we could listen while also clearly grasping what the voices actually said—and it gave this evening an extra dimension we’d never experienced before.

The Ins and Exes

It surprised me to discover that the word influence, as used today, originated in Renaissance times and arose from astrology. As Online Etymology Dictionary puts it, it meant “streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon character or destiny of men.” Before the fourteenth century, the word simply meant in-flow, as of water and such. Quite rapidly, in a cultural sense, thus by the mid-fifteenth century, it had come to mean “exercise of personal power by human beings,” thus the “influential person.” The emphasis in both instances is mine. I see this as the rise of the secular. What once emanated from the stars, and earlier still from God, had come to be something that emanated from humans—though not from all of them.

There is no such word as exfluence—despite its utility and nicely democratic aspects. We may not, as individuals, be very influential but we’re most certainly exfluential. I ponder that daily when I perform my first action of each morning on waking up. But those things that we all do, and quite regularly, like breathing and blinking, are not actions likely to be used as honorifics.

There is a sense in which secular times are an inversion of religious ages, and the word in question is a nice example of that. Influence once signified something coming into us, from on high; and now it means something that comes out of us and changes our environment. In has become ex. We retain influence in its old meaning only when describing that staggerer over there who’s “under the influence.”

This brief ramble had me next researching intuition. In my personal dictionary, certainly, the word has great significance. I think of intuition as knowledge flowing into me and, what with my not having done a thing, from a higher source. OED therefore surprised me again. In that word that prefix, in, actually means at, or on. And tuition has the meaning of “looking after.” Intuition therefore means knowledge acquired after looking at something—presumably with a bit of an effort. That amounts to “observation.” If that’s the case I’m not surprised that its origins go back to the mid-fifteenth century as well, from Late Latin. That’s not at all the model in my mind, namely a kind of heavenly whispering of vital knowledge or insight—the cognitive form of grace.

To be sure, Webster’s third (and last) definition of intuition comes close to my personal one: “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” Here again we have a pairing corresponding to contrasting cultural realms: intuition as a kind of grace, intuition as scientific observation. Fortunately there is no extuition in the dictionary. An extuitive individual might be a bore—unless he or she wrote very fine poetry.

Who Can Deal With Excess Complexity?

The thematic here is not all that new on this blog—but worth repeating. Not that such insights help in any sense at all—except the individual. When we are caught in a horrendous storm, it is reassuring sometimes to glimpse a few recognizable landmarks.

The motivation today is an editorial in the New York Times on the subject of ambiguities that surround the so-called Volker Rule. That rule, in a nutshell, is part of the Dodd-Frank financial law and restricts U.S. banks in the making of speculative investments on their own behalf. But it’s not the Volker Rule that interests us here but, rather, its extraordinary complexity—now that it is being implemented. Brigitte flagged the editorial for me with heavy commentary. In effect she said that complexity is simply swallowing us.

Indeed, having read the thing, I could not but agree. But as is often the case with me, I had a rather apocalyptic reactions to the thing. As I noted that reaction, the thought came that sometimes, certainly not all the time, the apocalyptic solution is the only one available. And we have quite excellent historical precedents for it.

The first of these is the Gordian Knot. That knot, no doubt, was the same sort of thing in ancient Greek times as the Volker Rule is for us today. And Alexander the Great dealt with it, metaphorically, by using his sword to disentangle it—with prejudice, as we used to say a few years ago. No doubt he wiped the slate clean and had his underlings start from scratch again, something that, alas, is absolutely necessary at long intervals in social affairs when things have become unworkable. The Hellenistic era, call it Ancient Modernity, is dated from Alexander’s death.

Our own era, Modern Modernity, can be dated from, say, the French Revolution. The Alexandrine figure of that time was Napoleon. He made order again—and that order then was copied by his friends and enemies, certainly in mainland Europe. He wiped away centuries of accumulated law in France and started again.

These are my landmarks. They give me a kind of futuristic hope amidst the prevailing vast confusion. Alas, it takes a single individual with genuine power to do what Alexander and Napoleon managed to do. No such figure is visible now. Therefore my use of that word, futuristic. To the old wisdom, “This too shall pass,” we might add a complement: “That too shall come…”

Hired Help

News comes this morning that the House and Senate negotiators have agreed on a budget that will be good enough until September 2015. So we were told by two papers that reach this house, the one with the lower-case h. Is that the end of the fiscal meltdown crisis? Well, the vote is still ahead.

Just yesterday Brigitte wrote as follows in one of her notebooks; she keeps up several, each on a different major aspect of our lives:

I have become more and more aware of how speculation is the major content of news reports:  “should, may/might, plans, expects, soon, near, suggests, etc.” are operative words. Those definitive words “is/are, will, etc.” are used only in reports of little if any impact on any real action, rules, and described facts!

If House members and senators actually bless this agreement soon, we will be able to say that the hired help has finally gotten around to doing its job.

Yes, the paradox of democratic government. We the People hire the people we hope will govern us. But democracy is either unnatural or Janus-faced. Those hired in this way cannot help but think that they are now our masters—and free to spend their time quarreling with one another.

Truth  to tell, the news caught me by surprise. I made what might have been a very costly error recently. I bought a laptop (called “Tyke” hereabouts). Getting it up and running right has cost lots of time, money, and stress—enough so that all those mountain-sized public problems had entirely disappeared from my view. This is the first post composed on Tyke—whom I am constantly having to remind that it is the servant and I am (at least titularly) its Lord and Master.

Perplexed from A to Z

The words I have in mind are aghast, bamboozled, bewildered, flustered, rattled, uncanny, weirded-, and zoned out—all produced, in unalphabetical sequence, when I got to wondering about the meaning of bamboozled.  

These words are linked in turn to 1) ghosts, 2) baboons, 3) wilderness, 4) bustling around, 5) noise, 6) knowledge (its absence), 7) fate, and 8) drugs. My source for dispelling my perplexity is the Online Etymology Dictionary—except for the last two.

Aghast means to be terrified in Old English, the verb being gaestan which itself is derived from gaest, read ghost or spirit. The word is still very much with us, but ghosts are rarely involved. A quick search yielded two recent headlines: Was Norman Rockwell gay? Family aghast at biography; Kashmir Lawyers Aghast Over Conditions of Kishtwar Jail Inmates.

Bamboozle seems to be a word welded together from the Scottish word for “to perplex,” bombaze, and the French embabouiner, meaning “to make a baboon of.” The Scotts, here, seem to me to have the greater voices since, to be bamboozled, is to be bewildered—a word derived from the feeling of being lost in the wilds.

To be flustered has its origins in excessive activity—a kind of fuss, stir, or commotion. It comes from Scandinavian sources, as in the Icelandic flaustra,  “to bustle.” The word came to be linked to activity while being under the influence of drink—but that original meaning has been widened to being agitated by something which is never altogether pleasant.

To be rattled is to be distracted, by noise or commotion, thus related to being flustered. Rattled is what I always am when I see bright lights, men, and guitars and my flustered finger can’t find the mute button fast enough. Uncanny, curiously, is simply the state in which effective knowledge is denied us—thus when the supernatural intrudes. Canny is to be knowing and therefore careful; but if ghosts appear or strange noises rattle us in the dark—and we’re therefore aghast—why then, in retrospect, we’ll describe the situation as uncanny—because we didn’t know what to do.

Low on the list but not yet last, being weirded out is defined for me by our Dictionary of American Slang (DAS) (2007 and therefore, presumably, quite obsolete): it describes weird out as “To become or make hallucinatory or intoxicated; to feel a loss of reality because of a strange experience.” That’s the modern take. Back in the Long Ago weird meant fate, as in the Proto-Germanic wurthis. Then, as now, I would insist, what comes around and then goes around in turn is often quite enough to weird us out. And that is fate.

Zoned out? DAS describes that condition as “Intoxicated with narcotics: HIGH.” Yes. We are in Orwell age of 1984, where HIGH means LOW. And if you’re missing a word for confusion starting with C, confusion will do. And if you’re missing an S, zoned out can also be spaced out—lifted high by the same fuel.

Sorting…

Yes, sorting. It’s almost certain that the order of reality we inhabit here is lawful in the sense that chemistry and physics rule. At best we can arrange it so that chemistry and physics shield us from what looks to us as random flux. But beyond arranging that which absolutely rules this world we cannot change a blessed thing. All of life—and not just ours—is engaged in this arranging and this exploitation; and the more efficiently it is adapted, the humbler its attempt to fit itself into available ecologies, the more it also resembles inorganic nature. It seems easier to be a bird or bee than to be a human.

It makes a contrast to compare a life lived as a simple herder—say of sheep in Mongolia, living in yurts—and one in which a bus, subway, and elevator deposit our bodies in a New York skyscraper where, managing computers bouncing signals off satellites, we communicate arranging vast inventories of, say, electronic parts, while our children study in places or are still just tended by nurseries or schools reached by similarly complicated transportation networks to meet cohorts of care-givers who, like us (hopefully) earned degrees and have the skills to do their jobs—not least CPR, say, should a maddened terrorist crash a plane into our 40-story highrise or the dozing driver of a train cause his cars to roll off an embankment into a preschool’s playground.

The contrast comes into full view when I assume that human life takes its meaning (let me keep it simple) from saving our souls. That should be possible whether we’re simple herders (Mongolian, Kikuyu, or whatever) or Moderns who form the cells of a Babel of Secular  Extravagance. The herder will have his tribal religion and traditions. We moderns will be sophisticated. But in which life is it easier to achieve the ultimate end? Which life is more centered on reality? In which are distractions minimized?

Our birth, of course, assigns the particular curriculum we shall be obliged to follow. You can’t grow up herding in Manhattan. But as consciousness grows, keeping things simple is always wise. And those of us living in Secular Madhouse would be surprised to discover just how complicated it is to make a living herding sheep. But the vast tundras are also empty and silent, most of the day—although  they won’t support a decent crop.

Only in Puzzles

In the USA Today crossword puzzle (Saturday last) appears the following clue: “45. Propel a gig.” It is supposed to produce a three-letter formation. That’s an easy one. In goes ROW.  

		R
		O
		W

Trouble was, the upper horizontal word, 4 letters, was clued as “44. Unit of loudness.” And the lower horizontal as “51. Suffix denoting wealth.”  That ROW in 45-Down produced a whole lot of frustrated searching. There seemed to be no real alternative to ROW if the clue is read as referring to a verb. DECIBEL was too long for that unit of sound. Now as for that suffix signifying wealth—we both knew that that was a work-around. The puzzle’s author was left with a meaningless series of letters and thus found those letters in a suffix. Eventually we wrote in SONE for unit of sound —but that, of course, rendered ROW obsolete. And as for that suffix, it came to us that a “millionaire” might work.

	S	O	N	E
		A
A	I	R	E

These two answers worked splendidly with other words that came from above and continued below but left us no choice but to insert an A between the O above and the R below. Trouble is that “oar” is a noun and not a verb. But. The but in this case is that fact-checking is at least as important a task for crossword puzzle as for political editors—if not more so. So to the dictionary we go. Turns out that “to oar” is a transitive verb. I can “sing” without any further reference (intransitive verb). But I can’t simply oar. I’ve got to oar something—say a gig? And there is a further limit imposed. You can only “oar” in crossword puzzles. When it comes to the real world, the following verses don’t fit the bill:

Oar, oar, oar your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

It’s okay grammatically, if not otherwise. So we crossworded that word into the space erased and sighed a sigh of muted satisfaction.

Vivos voco...

A convoluted and amusing discussion had Brigitte writing in her diary a funny line modeled on the opening verse of Friedrich Schiller’s immortal poem, “The Song of the Bell.” We have two separate and complete “Works of Schiller” in the attic—but we now live in the latter days; thus instead of going up to fetch a volume from that these days frigid sphere, I went to get the poem, much more quickly, from the Internet. Alas.

Herewith the first verse in German and in English. The English version was produced by Margarete Münsterberg (slightly edited to bring it closer to a literal translation). The entire poem is available here (in German) and here (in English).

Fest gemauert in der Erden	Walled in fast within the earth
Steht die Form, aus Lehm gebrannt.	Stands the form burnt out of clay.
Heute muß die Glocke werden.	Today will give the bell its birth.
Frisch Gesellen, seid zur Hand.	Fellows, lend a hand to-day.
Von der Stirne heiß	Sweat must trickle now
Rinnen muß der Schweiß,	From the burning brow,
Soll das Werk den Meister loben!	Till the work its master praise.
Doch der Segen kommt von oben.	‘Tho blessing comes from heaven’s blaze.

What struck us today was that the poem features a motto in Latin: Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango. We’d both read this famous poem as children, later as adults. Each time new surprises await us. One of those, this time, was that motto. Translated it means: “The living I call, the dead I mourn, the lightning bolt I break.” Schiller used that motto because these words, once, were used as inscription on big bells themselves—either all three on one or one on each of three bells. The first symbolized Faith, the second Hope, the third Love. We have a case here of Schiller quoting the bell itself… The illustration, from Wikipedia (here), is the Bell called Faith in the Hoffnungskirche Berlin-Pankow. Close examination will show the words Vivos voco in the metal of this bell poured in 1913. The word above the motto is Glaube, German for Faith.

Endless discussion—perhaps a little too rich for a grey Monday morning—followed. Brigitte began with trumpets and speculated about the relationship of these two different instruments of sound in the context of religion and of culture. Eventually we came to a somewhat vague but satisfying conclusion. The trumpet, surely, was there before the bell, sounding with strident fury in the Old as well as the New Testament. And the trumpet will come again, resounding in the End Times when Revelations’ Seventh trumpet is finally heard. Meanwhile we have the siren. But as for the Bell, did it, perhaps, mark a geologically brief but a culturally meaningful interval when Faith was more triumphant—and raised on high—during the centuries of Christendom?