The Implausible Admiral

 

A regular theme here at "Just Sayin'" is the rogues gallery:  rascals and larger-than-life characters whose stories are always better than fiction.

Take one Anthony Sherley (1565 - 1635), adventurer, Oxford graduate and son of a wealthy English family.  It seems the Sherleys lost their land and fortune (this was during the Tudor era, when such a rude twist of fate was pretty common) and the sons had to take to foreign lands and the seas between to find their way in the world.  There is, of course, constant danger; after Anthony was awarded a knighthood by French king Henry IV, Queen Elizabeth back home was so irritated she out jailed him so he could rethink that, which he did.

It was time to absent oneself from such vigilance, so Sherley took to privateering on the west coast of Africa and all through the Spanish Main.  And then, oddly enough, he went to Persia and so charmed Shah Abbas the Great that monarch made him a prince and his worldwide ambassador.  Rebuffed by Muscovy, he was warmly welcomed by the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of Spain.   News of his service even led to a mention in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night!

How Sherley fooled the savvy Shah, and next the Spanish king, will never be known.  But why would the latter appoint him admiral of a fleet being assembled to attack the Turks?  After all, there was the memory of the Armada disaster and Sherley's own extensive career raiding his majesty's New World empire.  Not mention just having been an employee of an infidel potentate.

Now our intrepid Prince and Admiral made a misstep: failing to link up with the naval forces headed to war with the Barbary pirates at Tunis as he was commissioned to do, he instead raided merchant ships and, unsuccessfully, the Greek island Mytilene.   Sherley's large expenses were to be covered by new taxes on lawyers in Sicily (then a Spanish possession).  The lawyers, churchmen and the nobility-dominated Parliament were incensed.  The rich revolted at the very idea of being taxed, and proposed arming the poor as a mob to make sure that did not stand.  It worked, then as now (Tea Party...), of course.

The Spanish lost confidence in the High Admiral, and he spent the last 30 years of his life barely tolerated at that Court as a supplicant, in poverty.

Stories, maybe true or maybe not, attach themselves to such outlandish actors over time.  It is said Sherley claimed to the Sicilian Viceroy that he knew a secret alchemical process for making silver and how to seize the fabled gold mines of Timbuctoo!  

   

  

The Real Thing

 

One of the pleasanter tasks of summer is choosing which treats will go in the choose-your-own six-pack at the grocery store to be enjoyed on the deck in the dappled shade later on.  We actually found some Coors Banquet Beer bottles in the cooler last week!  Have not seen that in a while.  If something is well made and has been for a long time, it has an attractive air of authenticity.

Coca-Cola boasts that it's "The Real Thing," but since it went to all HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) as sweetener by 1984, I don't think it's been real since.  Or maybe after 1929, when the last traces of cocaine -- or a very similar substance -- were removed.  It was, after all, sold as a stimulant, and coca leaf with caffeine is inarguably that.  And I remember being very disappointed when real German Lowenbrau was no longer imported, but made by Miller-Coors just using the name under license.  Brands sometimes persist like ghosts, seen as having a built-up value, long after the original is gone.    

 If you have met a cat or baby, you can see that they are drawn to authentic things.  Our one-year-old granddaughter just flies to buttons, zippers, paper, container lids and boxes.  And the bought cat toys pretty much lie ignored by Blackberry the cat (a natural thing like a bug has a lot more appeal).   

 We know places become loved to death by mass tourism, and what was originally the draw gradually, then mostly, disappears.  It seems that the tropical island of Bonaire is still an authentic place on the globe, with only about 140,000 visitors a year (HersheyPark, in contrast, hosts three million).  It is primarily a divers' paradise, not a mega resort spot or a cruise ship destination, without international chain restaurants and the locals operating their own small businesses.  Now forget you ever heard of it.

Growing your food, or buying locally produced, and preserving it at home takes planning and deliberate effort, but the feeling of satisfaction (and the taste) is, well, the real Real Thing.   We don't have access to a big garden anymore, but do make a lot of jam, applesauce and sometimes pickles to keep that tradition going.

   

The Puffin, The Piano and the Pirate

 

When visiting coastal places with palm trees, we enjoy strolling around marinas.  I'd much rather admire estate homes, impressive cars and boats than own one.  Boats, especially, live up to their description as "holes in the water to throw money into."  But our recent visit to Hilton Head Island brought forth a memory of one day and night I enjoyed of that diamond life.

  Way back, growing up in suburbia,  we had a neighbor family unlike any other around there.  Mr. and Mrs. Bill S. and their two daughters had an ordinary home, but on entering you did not see anything like the ordinary:  no furniture in the living room except for a gleaming black Steinway piano and a huge black and white photo of a movie pirate.  The piano represented the girls' exceptional musical talent (the younger played a gold-plated flute), and the picture told you something essential about Mr. S.  

From 1969 to January 1974 he owned a legendary ketch (a two-masted yacht) called the Pious Puffin II, built in 1947 at Amsterdam.  The previous owner, Josephine Forrestal, widow of the Secretary of the Navy, had purchased it to donate to Bob Jones College of Jacksonville, Florida.  It had a short stay there, as two professors tore the 65' masts off under a bridge (here it is languishing, post-accident:)

Mr. S. bought it for $64,000 to restore and then put the Puffin into charter service.  He had operated a marina and could do just about anything (he had a degree in music education, was a jazz drummer, and at this time was a self-employed telephone systems consultant0.  But things went awry, as any foreign-hulled boat could not be used as a charter in the U.S.  He took the matter to Congress, but the bill was nixed in committee, since the law was clear and the sort-of association with James Forrestal was not enough to make an exception.  

Many friends and family enjoyed the magnificent Puffin anyway, with its built-in piano, stained glass, engraved cocktail shakers and room to sleep eleven and three crew.  A couple married on her in 1971.My one day and night on her was devoted to work, sanding, polishing and applying pumice paint to the edges of the deck.  The Puffin went up and down the East Coast, to Chesapeake Bay and the Caribbean, and I didn't, but it was the coolest anyway.

 A couple from Iowa bought the boat to complete the restoration, but there were not sufficient funds left to make their planned around the world sail.  It ended its 33-year career as the official Pirate Week vessel at Grand Cayman; it was scrapped in Miami by 1980.

Looking like Errol Flynn, Mr. S.  lived, in a way, the life of the pirate on the living room wall.  And I will probably never meet anyone like him again.

"The Greatest Liar on Earth"

 

(No, not the Mean Tangerine and his gang of mendacious morons.  They should remember what Dean Wormer said: "Loud and stupid is no way to go through life, son.")

John Hance was born into a family of fifteen in Tennessee in 1838.   Things did not go really well for him earlier in life.  After joining the Confederate army, he was captured, imprisoned in the awful Alton, Illinois camp but was fortunately exchanged.  He headed West with Wild Bill Hickok's brother as a teamster and scout and escaped death again after being wounded three times in brush-ups with native Americans.  

John then went prospecting, but like most, found pretty much nothing.   Did he finally give up?  Not at all -- he headed to the Grand Canyon and built a legend for himself as he became a guide and host for visitors.  Theodore Roosevelt was so amused by Hance's tall tales while exploring the trails in 1903 he bestowed that "Greatest Liar" title.   Well deserved:  two that are remembered was that he claimed to have dug the Canyon by himself, and that his horse could fly over it on top of the fog.   If he was not used by Mark Twin as a model for a character, he should have been.

John's last home was a cabin at the beginning of the Bright Angel Trail.  He was the first person interred, in 1919, in the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery.  Would that we had someone like him in the news today.

  Reclusive artist Arthur Harold Beal, another endearing eccentric, left behind a more tangible legend in the form of gigantic folk art.  In 1928 he purchased a steep tract in Cambria, California, and spent the next fifty years building Nitt Witt Ridge, a sprawling "castle on the hill" using only manual tools.  It was made of wood, concrete, car parts, appliance parts, stone, cans, shells and beach debris, and supposedly parts of the nearby Hearst Castle where he is said to have worked for a time.

Neglected and vandalized for seven years after his death in the early 1990s, it was bought and opened for tours.  Today Nitt Witt Ridge is a California Historical Landmark.  So Beal finally attained some respectability and stature, things he probably could have cared less about!

   

For Twenty Four Centuries

 

"My intellectual desire is to escape life as I know it and dream myself into that old world..."

George Gissing, successful 19th Century British novelist (23 books in 23 years), had reasons for finding comfort in nostalgia for the ancient world.  Two miserable marriages and expulsion from the college he had worked so hard to attend, as well as ill health, made a trip to the lands of Magna Grecia in far southern Italy a tempting diversion.  

His final goal was to visit the sole remaining fragment of the largest temple built in the old Greek colonies, that of Hera Lacinia, at Capo Colonna, the easternmost point of the Calabrian peninsula.  The temple had endured from the 5th Century B.C. until the 17th Century, before it was ignominiously dismantled for use in building projects in nearby Cortone.  But disappointment dogged Gissing, who had become too ill with malarial fever  to go beyond a sight of the lone Doric column in the distance.  He did, however, leave a fine account of his travels, By The Ionian Sea, published just two years before his death in 1903.  It is still currently available, fortunately, in several reprints. 

An excavation in 1910 revealed a good many objects from the vanished temple of surprising artistic quality; above is a gold diadem that crowned the statue of Hera.  While it seems impossible that it was not looted long ago, ancient coins showing it in place on the statue seem to prove its authenticity.  Votive offerings also found, now in the local archaeological museum,  were far above the level of the usual terracotta or minor jewelry items:

 

   A 1095 review in The Nation stated "The book is worth reading from beginning to end."  Rather faint praise.  But like the stalwart temple column, Gissing's work will stand the test of time.

I Want To Believe

 

People want to be fooled.  The fun ways include April Fool's jokes,  magic acts, haunted house attractions, and movie magic (heroes, fantastical superheroes and action-adventures).  Other situations are dangerous, morally ambiguous or just a waste of money:  carnival sideshows,  patent quack medicines, mass scams and speculative bubbles like the South Seas and tulip hysterias, and more recently the 1920's stock market and the 2008 real estate blowup.  And many do fall for telephone and e-mail frauds because it just may be that this time you win and get something for little or nothing.  

Shamans and priests throughout history have leveraged knowledge of mysteries, herbs and hallucinogens to gull generations.  People really want to believe that sort of thing.  Psychopaths are highly skilled in fooling and manipulating others; even the educated and savvy can fail to detect one in time, or at all.  They can take a lot more than your money, as any viewer of Dateline is aware.

Psychopathic dictators and strongmen can fool masses of people to reach for their guns and act completely against their own interests.  Such people want a strong leader in total control who will defend them from imagined enemies and allow them to escape mundane reality by roiling in emotion.  Easy to fool people consumed by fear and absolute conviction. 

  They hate educators and "experts" (after they're told to) because they do not want their dreams, hopes and beliefs to be discredited by the facts.   They badly want to be fooled.

As another blogger advised so well:  Act rationally in an irrational world.

 

Fools' Gambit

 

Today is the 50th anniversary of President Nixon's visit to open up China and welcome it into the world community.  Unlike other grim anniversaries such as 12/7/41 and 9/11/01, it was not a call for unity but just an unnecessary surrender in advance.  "The U.S.president put himself in the position of supplicant to Beijing.  Chinese state media said a prosperous China would be a peaceful China, and it would be a huge market for American exports." (June Dreyer of the U. of Miami)

But the exact reverse happened.  

Domestic big business saw a large untapped market in China as well as a source of very cheap outsourced labor.  Nixon thought he could pry China away from the Soviet Union (they had a little tiff going) and possibly get some cooperation in ending the Vietnam War, in addition to advancing those big business dreams.  

What we got instead was a disastrous trade imbalance in China's favor, closed manufacturing plants, loss of jobs and hope in cities and rural areas, and a tsunami of inexpensive low-quality goods that do not  last.  My grandparents had several Vornado floor fans, built like tanks, for the summer.  They worked for decades.  Now all you can find is Chinese-made ones that are wobbly plastic contraptions whose switches will fail in a few months, and are of course unrepairable.  

  And there seems to be no way out now.  In answer to Trump's retaliatory tariffs, China put the brakes on American grain imports, devastating the Midwest.  I saw this myself on the Mississippi River, where loading stations were deserted and barges, normally following each other closely, were nowhere to be seen.  

In 1972, China was divided by its Cultural Revolution and despite saber-rattling was not a credible regional threat.  Now they have a large, very modern Navy and Air Force -- and guess who paid for it.  Masters of the long game, after 72 years Taiwan and the South China Sea are easily within their grasp.

Like hornet nests and sleeping junkyard dogs, some things are best left alone.  

"The Verb 'to be' Never Takes an Object"

 

"What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so."

-- Emerson

We recently picked up a copy of this book at the local library sale, and it brought two thoughts to mind.  The first was, where you when I needed you?  If I had gone through this thoroughly in high school, how much easier and clearer those English classes would have been.  You need context to learn something.   Emerson again: "No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning."  

The second thought was, what moments or books or teachers stand out in your memories of formal education (after all these years)?  That one is easy for me.  Mrs. Neidermayer at Tuckahoe Junior High School, who said emphatically that if we took one thing from her English class it should be that rule about the verb 'to be.'  Her combination of sternness and self-deprecating humor endeared her to my immature little heart.  Although Mrs. N didn't know it, she also launched me on a lifelong (so far) interest in the origin and meaning of sur- and place-names when she said her own name meant "lowland farmer."  I had no idea at the time that names meant anything or so often have fascinating histories.  Go ahead, ask me what the -ez ending on Hispanic names means.

I also remember Dr. See and Dr. Blake fondly from college -- and almost no one else except for the Art History professor whose class was nothing but a treat.  Jansen's History of Art, the large and expensive textbook, was the only one of all those in four years I should have kept forever.  But, I had to sell it in order to eat that week.  At least one thing I had learned by then was to be pragmatic. 

The best textbook I do have, though, also acquired a few months ago at the library sale, is an 1871 volume, A Brief History of the United States.  I haven't seen all U.S. history texts, of course, but I doubt it has been surpassed.  Not many of us will re-read any of our old schoolbooks, ever, but I'll probably go through it again one of these days. 

So, Mrs. Neidermayer, wherever you are, know that your work was appreciated and lives on.

        

More Jibber-Jabber

 

272 words -- that's all of the Gettysburg Address.  The previous orator went on for two hours.  Who better said what the occasion called for?

No lesson learned, though:  today's fresh hell is podcasts.  Easily available technology has enabled over two million more gasbags to be broadcasting than we ever needed.   And the U.S. has about half of the worldwide listeners.  I'll admit there are many more blogs, but they're not the hot thing anymore (as this one with between 10 and 20 readers proves).  

Joe Rogan's is the number one 'cast, but he's just another in a long line of radio shock jocks like Stern and Limbaugh back to Father Coughlin.  Same drivel, different package.  The others in the top five are more intelligent, so we can take some comfort in that.

Beyond being another form of self-expression, there is money in this.  Podcast ads work:  $2 billion in revenue last year, and 60% of listeners bought something.

TED Talks are wisely limited to 18 minutes in length, enough time to make your point without going on and on.   Some of what are overlong and pointless: sports talking heads, the screaming money guy, evangelists, and chat shows like "The View" and the many morning and late night ones on each network.  And...infomercials, looonng home improvement company ads, and almost everyone you see texting and talking on their smart phones beyond any reasonable need.  Of course, people are free to speak and to listen to all this, but I can't understand why.

 I am going to do my part and shut up now.

Escape Velocity

 

It was nearly midnight, and while an episode of "Rumpole of the Bailey" murmured on the Talking Pictures television channel, Richard Troup, M.D. retired, was lost in a very pleasant daydream though day was long over.  He had put a deposit down on a holiday in the eastern Mediterranean, where he would soon be on a terrace overlooking the Aegean from Rhodes, the water a kaleidoscope of unnameable blues and greens, with just the right sprinkling of jolly cotton-white clouds drifting by.  He would make the acquaintance of an olive-complected lady, worldly, distant, even dismissive at first.  One could see in her visage the heredity of centuries:  Greek, Roman, Anatolian, maybe some ancient Phoenician.  Things to guess, not to know.

The phone was ringing, rudely evaporating his reverie.   What now?  A distressed-sounding son Arthur needed him, he said, and could he bring a certain sum of cash?  He gave the location to meet but no further explanation.  Click. No lawyers or guns? 

There was, of course, only one source of cash (not only at this hour but due to circumstances Richard faced these days after the divorce):  the holiday fund.  He was going to enjoy spending it on a delightful trip since, as it had been built up from his cash-paying private patients, and neither ex-wife nor the Revenue  had any knowledge of it.  One had to keep some things for one's self.  Well, maybe not.

Next door, Mrs. Swann was also up unusually late due to the Agatha Christie in her hands.  There was little point in going to bed before the ending -- how could there be any sleep!  Neighbor Dr. Troup's headlights swept an arc by the window.  What could that be about? she thought, always on the alert for an intriguing story.  Turning her attention back to the old paperback, she would at least find out what the deadly party guest was really up to.   Mrs. Swann had been up to something herself, with a mortifying, but not mortal, result.

 Upon Richard's arrival at the old church he drily called Our Lady of Modest Aspirations, the man present (who most closely resembled a potato)  explained the situation while Arthur kept silent and fiancee Helena glared.  Arthur, a freelance advertising rep for several local publications by day, ardently pursued his passion, a music career, at most other times.  He had recently convinced this promoter (instant relief at this revelation -- not a kidnapper, drug dealer or loan shark) that he would bring enough of a crowd to bigger venues beyond Cranleigh village -- Barnstable and Woking, for example, then on to London -- to make an investment in him worthwhile.  Ever the salesman! thought Richard.  The crowds had not appeared.

"I should have known better, even with a signed contract; I'll admit it.  But I'm out a considerable amount.  Considerable.  You can make it -- some of it, anyway -- good or I can go public with a civil suit.  My lawyer has had these want-to-bes for breakfast before."

Richard, after a frozen moment of hesitation, handed over a thick envelope.  

"Well call it even, then," the potato allowed.  "Best not to say another word, all of us."

After a straight gaze lasting several seconds directed at Arthur, the promoter got in his small van and headed back home, smacking both his forehead and the steering wheel.

"I am beyond embarrassed," Arthur said to his father.  "And I just wrecked everything, Hels.  I'm so sorry."

"Yes, you are!  And don't call me 'Hels' ever again! I hate it.  Better -- don't call me again at all."  She would have thrown her engagement ring in his face before she stomped over to Richard's car, if she'd had one.  It looks like none of us is going anywhere but home.

Mr. Swann, retired from HM Revenue and Customs, happily spent time working on the detailed Waterloo diorama which had taken over the den and at The Richard Onslow with his mates.  The silence around the house discomfited his wife not so much in itself, but did allow for too much solitary time for regret.  After years at the newspaper writing articles that quickly ended up in dustbins, she, in retirement, finally finished her mystery novel (with some added romance threaded in) and her agent got to a publisher.  

Then the roof fell in, or so it felt.  Her manuscript was rejected; some junior reader there found it was too similar to one of Emma Frances Dawson's short stories.  She could not argue her case.  It was.  The rare, obscure 19th Century volume she had found in a village used bookstore should not have been known to anyone anymore.  What luck.

Mrs. Swann had an even grander plan than a big city book signing or two.  With the proceeds from what she was sure would be at least a modest success, she was going to visit a good friend from youth who was now living in Queensland.  Tropical trees, flowers and birds...

Having to tell her husband she was not going to be published (carefully editing out the reason why), or going to Queensland, was deflating.

"Well, we can all just enjoy who we are where we are," was Mr. Swann's honest attempt at comfort.  Ugh.  Old Sartre got it right.

 

Warrior Princess

 

A local high school senior wrote a newspaper essay recently about the problem of women in history still being passed over or getting very few words in books and articles written by men.  We're missing out on true stories that make mass-market fictional characters look pale by comparison.  Let's take the Way Back Machine to a thousand years ago to meet "the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie."*

Lombard princess Sikelgaita of Salerno (Italy)  was titled the Duchess of Apulia when she became the second wife of the Norman Duke Robert Guiscard.  He divorced first wife Alberada to make this union, and he could not have found a closer equal.  Guiscard was called "the weasel;" despite the nickname he was anything but, being much more like a Kodiak bear.  "He had a thoroughly villainous mind...was a man of immense stature...his bellow put thousands to flight.," according to a contemporary Byzantine account.   Not content with his domain in southern Italy, after taking Bari, the last Italian outpost of the shrinking Byzantine Empire , he crossed the Adriatic to begin a conquest of the rest of it.

Sikelgaita was right by his side in all her six feet of armored glory, charging into the battle for the port city of  Dyrrhachium shouting, long hair streaming, a real life Brunnhilda and true daughter of Wotan.  When the Anglo Saxon axemen in the employ of the defending Byzantine Emperor boldly attacked the mounted Norman knights, sending them running (they were still pretty ticked off about the Norman conquest of their England fifteen years earlier),  "Gaita" loudly called on her horsemen to return:  "Stand and fight like men!"   When that did not have an effect, she seized a spear and took after them.  Shamed or inspired, they returned and destroyed every one of the Saxons.

Guiscard had to abandon the invasion to deal with rebellion at home.  Gaita accompanied him on his return three years later to trash the Empire again.  And once again Fate intervened to stop his victorious advance, when Robert and many of his army succumbed to a typhoid epidemic.  His loyal wife and warrior was with him until the end.

That was not all Sikelgaita was, although she had even commanded a successful siege of the city of Trani by herself.  She had also studied medicine in the most advanced school of the time, and somehow found time to have eight children! 

After spending time in religious seclusion in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, the princess, duchess and general died five years after Robert.  

Maybe Sikelgaita should return to educate some male writers (this one gets a pass).

_________________________

*from author John J. Norwich

        

Das Rad

 

Though the child's year is slow

And the aged one's runs fast,

Serf and king alike must go

All that lives must pass.

Some Wise Guys

 

"These may be platitudes, but they are framed in wit, the swift phrase firmly lodged in the brain."  -- Louis Untermeyer

From distant Epictetus to Washington (Rules of Civility) and Franklin, to the more contemporary Ambrose Bierce,  Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken and Will Rogers, aphorists and writers of epigrams have surely been better guides to ethics and living than those who suck up our airspace such as celebrities,  economists, evangelists, dunces and murderous dictators.

A while back, we took a look at another gem of this genre, The Wisdom of Amenemopet from ancient Egypt.  I had not heard of this before; it's always surprising to discover how the more you know about a subject you discover how much more you don't know.  It would have been a much better use of time to have read this in school rather than Great Expectations.

And I had never heard of Balthazar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom either.  This volume of 300 maxims was published in 1647 by Gracian, a Jesuit teacher and preacher, under a pseudonym as with all of his other books but one, because his sort of Rabelaisian satire and irreverence was not appreciated by his employer.  After he read a "letter" supposedly sent by the Devil from the pulpit, however, he pushed the unamused Church too far and was censured and sent into internal exile.  Gracian won this tiff in the end; his Wisdom was a best seller in both 1892 and 1992!  Some examples:

-- Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose

-- A synonym is a word you use when you cannot spell the right one

-- Never open a door to a lesser evil for other and greater ones slink in after it

-- A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity

-- The wise at once does what the fool does at last

-- Dreams will get you nowhere; a good kick in the pants will take you a long way

-- Every fool stands convinced...the faultier a person's judgement the firmer the convictions (T. S. Eliot completely agreed)

-- Always act as if you were seen...if you can't be good be careful

-- Politeness is the chief sign of culture (That one's for you, Canada)

***

And from our more misanthropic and cynical countrymen:

Bierce:  He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity

Twain:  Never refuse to do a kindness unless the end would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink -- under any circumstances

Rogers: Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock

Mencken:  Puritanism --  the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy

Wit and wisdom make a perfect cocktail.