Cast Away on the Demon Isle

 

Marguerite de la Roque was a 27-year-old wealthy landowner in the Kingdom of France who in 1542 boarded a flotilla of three ships filled with 200 people, including a few other women and children, setting sail for the New World in an attempt to once again found a colonial settlement.  Previous attempts had failed miserably, and once an entire ship disappeared into the North Atlantic, with all hands, on its way.  We will not ever know why she left her comfortable life to do that, except that the expedition was headed by her uncle (some say cousin), Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, a distinguished nobleman and soldier personally selected by King Francis I to be "Lieutenant-General" of New France.  Jacques Cartier, much more able and the more obvious choice for leader, was subordinated to be ship captain and pilot.

Marguerite never made it.

 On the seven week voyage westward, she became involved with a young gentleman on board and scandalized the others, but especially embarrassed her uncle, which was a big mistake. After landing on the southern shore of Newfoundland, the Sieur Roberval decided to maroon the pregnant Marguerite, her lover and her maid Bastienne on the legendary Isle of Demons as fit punishment.  It was well-known to be infested with malignant, evil spirits and ships avoided going near it after hearing the demons' howls whirling around.  The castaways were provided with muskets and some supplies, and were last seen standing on the forlorn shore as the ships left to sail down the St. Lawrence River to the site of today's Quebec City.  Punishment was harsh in those times, especially when dealt out by someone whose entire character was stern, haughty and unyielding.  During the one-year life of the new settlement, Roberval hanged a petty thief, put miscreants in irons and whipped both men and women.  One survivor of the expedition, on his return to France, said six men were shot in one day.

While the Isle appeared on maps from 1508 to 1556, it was one of many imaginary lands portrayed not as actual discoveries but as a result of mistakes, fancy and invention or outright lies.  They did make the maps more interesting; truth in reporting was pretty secondary.  Many were set between Ireland and the coasts of North America.  One of the most fantastic was Hy-Brasil, west of Ireland, depicted repeatedly  for five centuries. The enduring legend was that a sorcerer lived there, immortal, accompanied by giant black rabbits.  You can fool some of the people...

Quirpon Island

It is thought that the actual location of the marooning was Quirpon Island, to the far north end of Newfoundland.  It is quite a way from the south shore where the ships made landfall, but there are no records to explain anything to us today.

 On the rocky island, Marguerite and her small party, in no way experienced settlers or prepared to survive winters, built a hut and shot and skinned bears for food and furs.  Scurvy, due to lack of fresh food, killed many in previous attempts at colonization in Canada, and Death had many other threats besides.  Her newborn child, her lover and her maid all died in turn, leaving Marguerite on her own.  At the end of two years, a fishing boat saw smoke rising, and conquering their deep fear of the demons, the crew rescued her after two unimaginably hard years.

Roberval met his end in Paris, beaten to death in the streets during an altercation.  Marguerite did better upon returning to her old life in France, telling her story to many wide-eyed listeners.

    

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"Feelin' Ain't Bein' "

 

You probably remember or have seen the iconic 1971 Coca-Cola television commercial about "teaching the world to sing" while sharing a Coke.  It was almost a mini-movie with a large international cast and a very cool location on an Italian hillside.  Despite being an advertisement, a brief experience generally as welcome as a pebble in your shoe, it could be called well-loved because it elicited such warm emotions, right up there with kittens, puppies and Clydesdale horses.  And once your emotions are at the forefront, your reason takes a break.  Think about that TV spot for a few moments, and all that good feeling was really about selling you a drink made of carbon dioxide, sugar, brown dye, caffeine and flavorings.  Emotional manipulation will lead or drive you to do things which are not in your best interest at all.

 The title above refers to one of the two things I remember that were on the walls of the tiny front office of WFMV-FM (classical music station in Richmond, VA, long gone).  One was a big grinning frog face ("Frog Music of Virginia" was our inside joke), the other was that hard to parse three-word aphorism.  I think our manager, Mr. Bill Massie, put it there, but I never did get the chance to ask him where it came from or really meant. I decided over the years that it meant don't be led by your emotions; use your head instead.

Scam and con artists have taken full advantage of the public this year of the viral pandemic and angry mobs at rallies and in the streets.  With all sorts of emotion engulfing us and making it hard to think clearly, we are easy targets for everyone from propagandists to ad people to that one percent of the population who are psychopaths.  And they're all very experienced at exploiting our fears and vulnerabilities.  From a recent magazine article:  Strong emotions can hijack our logical reasoning.  Fraudsters say the key to cheating people is to get them into a heightened emotional state so they can easily be manipulated.

So, what to do?  

There are ways to carefully and thoughtfully find a healthy balance to resist this onslaught.  Work on consciously repressing and controlling your negative emotions.  Back off and refresh yourself (I find nature, animals and music -- not all types, for sure -- do work).  And you, in distancing, can find some humor in others' crude attacks.  Keep your armor on. Make the effort to learn, adapt and change in order to put today's conditions into perspective and master your own reactions.  If you have a big purpose in life to propel you forward, great; if you can't quite think of one, just plant, improve or fix something. Thousands of waving flags, whether in North Korea, Nazi Germany, Red Square or on pickup trucks recently can't have any power over you if you are master of your domain (not exactly what they meant on Seinfeld, but I think that describes you in your armor).

"Listen to Your Heart"  was a popular song you probably heard on the car radio. But also know where your lane is and don't be fooled into driving into the ditch.

 

 

Go Time

 

I remember a quote from the Cold War era in which an American military official stated that while the Soviets played chess in war, the U.S. played poker.  Chess is a tactical game, where the action is visible and domination is key.  I guess that individual was thinking that flexibility gives an edge that is more difficult to counter.  Sun Tzu had a lot of insight into strategy above and beyond tactics which he developed after much experience on the ground. This sage general hasn't been proven wrong over the centuries, either.

Chinese gentlemen scholars had to master four arts:  painting, calligraphy, the guqin (a 7-string zither) and wei ch'i ("the surrounding game"), which we know as Go, after the Japanese word for it. It has a 3000 year history and a long and deep cultural influence  Someone else, I wish I remembered who, said that the revolutionary leaders of China and Vietnam understood strategy and tactics through the lens of this game.  I wonder if they had studied it at our service academies and senior colleges, whether it would have better prepared the military for Asian land wars (which General Eisenhower said we should avoid).  

Unlike chess, Go begins with an empty board with a grid of lines, the boards ranging from full-size 19"x19" to a compact 9"x9".  Black or white stones are placed in turn by either player anywhere on this grid (there are 361 intersections on the large board).  The point is to claim and expand territory, attacking weaker groups while surrounding and neutralizing your opponent's forces.  (Once placed, unlike in war, a stone cannot be moved again until it is captured). Does this maneuvering  remind you of Grant's Vicksburg campaign, the Chinese Civil War in 1948/49, Vo Nguyen Giap's victory at Dien Bien Phu or Hannibal at Cannae?  Cover the battle area with dense vegetation and mountain mist, as in Vietnam, and you have a lethal combination of Go and poker.  

There are several interesting states the play can go to in some areas of the board such as seki, or mutual life, in which neither player wants to move any of his group due to danger of capture.  Both groups remain alive but in stasis.  The Japanese term atari (sound familiar?) means a successful attack, or literally "to hit the target," when the fatal blow to a threatened group is stuck.  And there are old traditions to be observed, like picking up the stones between the fore- and second fingers, delicately and deadly like a spider moving in.

So, future strategists, don't pass Go.

 

Blocking one side at the DMZ, and attacking from one other side:  one of the principles of Go.

 

 

The Destroying Angels

 

                                            The assassination of Joseph Smith

Vigilantes, posses, paramilitaries, militias, armed clans' vendettas and feuds, range wars, murderous mobs...

Warlords, dictators, would-be dictators and cult leaders have used mayhem, terror and murder over and over again to further their greed for power.  Civilization, it seems, just cannot end mindless tribal behavior.  

In 1838, a secret society was established in Missouri by Mormons to protect themselves from attacks and to carry out reprisals -- the Danites, or as they were also called, the Destroying Angels.  Their early leaders such as Sampson Avard, Porter Blackwell and Bill Hickman left their violent mark on American history, from the Missouri War of 1838 up to the awful climax of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 120 innocent pioneers near present-day  St. George, Utah, in 1857.  The LDS church disavowed them officially, and eventually by 1870 the armed militia had dwindled.  A predecessor group, the "Armies of Israel," was somewhat organized in 1834 under founder Joseph Smith, when the attacks against their sect began and went on unrelentingly, forcing their moves westward year after year.  Smith himself was assassinated.

                                             Mountain Meadows massacre
 

 It is one thing to counter violence with the same.  But today we see the unfortunate result of a frontier tradition of individualism becoming an unthinking belligerence and expressing a hatred of a rational civil structure by means of promoting armed resistance to...what?  Misdirected rage is easily manipulated by cult leaders (political and religious) who demand conformity, surrender of individual thinking and basic human rights in a climate of antisocial disdain for all decent norms.  The inherent hypocrisy and blatant contradiction are not even noticed by their zombie-like followers.

In the course of history, light is periodically extinguished by the darkness.  We're not intelligent enough to light a candle and dispel it. 

 

 

Wilhelm's Eleven

 

Friedrich Wilhelm Voight was born in Prussia in 1849 and learned the shoemaking trade from his father.  But at the early age of 14, he began his criminal career with a two-week jail stay for theft.  He did not learn much from that: during a 27-year period, he spent 25 of them in prison.  Out in early 1906, he came up with a caper that Danny Ocean would have appreciated.

Wilhelm bought an army captain's uniform in a pawnshop, collected ten local soldiers solely on the authority represented by his uniform, and marched into the city hall of Koepenick, Prussia.  There the cowed city officials handed over 4,002 marks and change to the "captain," who obligingly signed a receipt (with someone else's name, of course). He sent his troop on their way back to duty, and disappeared.

                                                             City Hall, Koepenick

But, he was arrested a few weeks later in October 1906 and sentenced to two years.  While serving his time, the story spread around Germany and even the Kaiser was amused ("he seems like an amiable fellow") and pardoned Wilhelm.  Quickly becoming a folk hero, a wax figure was made for a museum, and he wrote a play  about his hijinks and toured central Europe.  Subsequently, in 1909, he published a successful book.  Over the next three-quarters of a century, another play, movies and television retold his story, a Clyde without a Bonnie, a Jesse James, a Robin Hood, and yes, like Zorro too.  The tried and true course of criminal to popular hero to media figure.

The ruse of using a false uniform has been employed for more sinister purposes.  One hundred and fifty Austrian Nazis did so in the first, unsuccessful, putsch in Austria (1934); the Wehrmacht did during the World War II invasion of the Netherlands and later impersonation of American MPs during the Battle of the Bulge, and it works in Afghanistan today.

Nothing is stranger than a true story.

Legends Are Made of These

 

In the Sunday newspaper, I saw a short review of a new book, Zorro's Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America's Superhero by Stephen J. C. Andes.  Thus the inspiration to look into the Zorro story, especially because of growing up with the well-produced Disney television show beginning in 1957 and starring Guy Williams (who personifies Sade's "Smooth Operator" song).

Television's "The Lone Ranger," we find, was based on a lawman in the Old West named Bass Reeves who was actually Black.  But that would not have played with the mid-century American audience.  Neither would the real-life characters behind the legend of El Zorro (The Fox).

 In 1919, a pulp magazine (above) published a five part serial by Johnston McCulley on the exploits of   Californio Don Diego de la Vega during the Spanish era in Alta California (1769 - 1821).  It was an immediate hit, followed by 65 more pieces by McCulley and a movie in 1920 starring Douglas Fairbanks.  Tyrone Power, Alain Delon, Antonio Banderas and many others over the next century appeared in successful Zorro films, not to mention plays, a musical, television shows both acted (one in Spanish) and animated, and a comic strip and books.  The character was irresistible, possessisng all positive human qualities along with superior skills, wit and daring.  Batman was, some think, based on Zorro (mask, cape, adventures at night, a daytime identity, fighting for justice and not gain), but already the superhero mold was being cast, as Batman was above the restraints of gravity and the limits of human ability.

 The two main historical personages our fictional hero was based on were not such fine gentlemen.

Salomon Pico (1821 - 1860) from central California was related to the last Mexican governor and his father was the manager of Rancho del Rey San Pedro.  He was given a large Mexican land grant in 1844, but the fateful year of the Gold Rush arrived soon after and he lost his land to squatters as well as his beloved wife.  Proud and wronged, he vowed vengeance, trading cattle and horses by day but riding at night down a path of violence, claiming to have killed 39 Yankees.  He was protected by fellow Californios who also were being dispossessed, seemingly disappearing into the air when chased.  Pico fled to Baja California where he held posts under an official who was an old military colleague.  But a new governor succeeded who was bent on ridding the state of outlaws, and Pico's eventful life was ended by a firing squad.

Joaquin Murrieta (1829 - 1853?) was as aggrieved by the invading Americans as Pico.  Arriving from Mexico to participate in the Gold Rush with numerous members of his family, his claim was taken away and he was falsely accused of stealing a mule. Solid facts about Murrieta are sketchy, but his legend in California, Mexico and Chile (because of a fictional claim he was born there) reverberates today as an avenger of wrongs.  Not that he didn't thereafter commit many of his own, from horse thievery to robbery and murder of ranchers, travelers and many Chinese miners.  One by one, his gang members fell: a stepbrother hanged early on, a brother-in-law killed during a shootout; even the notorious Three-Fingered Jack went down with him in the final face off, gunned down by a posse. His severed head was preserved in a large glass jug filled with alcohol as proof in order to collect the reward.  The grisly display was last seen at the Golden Nugget Saloon in San Francisco, before disappearing in the 1906 earthquake.

Their stories were embellished and published over and over again by newspapermen and sundry other highly imaginative writers, eventually coalescing into the Spanish-American Robin Hood/Scarlet Pimpernel folk hero we know as the dashing Zorro.  

    

What Have We Learned?

 

Lifelong learning is like the hamster wheel.  It never ends; there's always more to come!  (After all these years, I still think homework, however, is a waste of effort and time.  I only remember one assignment that was interesting.  We were tasked to write ten stories in Spanish.  Didn't want to stop at ten).  Here are some things I've learned after schooling ended.  And let's hear yours!

 Buddhism proposes that you must let go of regrets to achieve peace.  In theory, okay, but that is not realistic.  Only psychopaths have no regrets.  The greatest one is not being able to fix very much of what you messed up in the past.

 Nothing much good for you happens after midnight or in the desert.

"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Take charge of your own mental and physical health.  

Work on not paying rent or interest any longer than necessary.  Read  Your Money or Your Life  to get started on that.

Buy quality.  These days that is easier to do using consignment stores, library sales and local marketplace web sites.  You can pick up all the hand tools you would want at an estate sale for the retail price of one.

We will never figure out why the music and electronics were so great in the 70s and the clothing and hair styles were so hideous.

Bob Dylan was right:  "Don't follow leaders but watch the parking meters."

Don't do anything that will result in your being on "Dateline."

Don't fall for every new medium, which will probably be obsolete in a few years (remember laser discs?).  The mountain of audio cassettes still residing here is a constant reminder of that.

The best no-calorie treat is a tree's shade on a hot sunny day.  And it's free to all.

"No one knows anything."  So said writer William Goldman of Hollywood producers.  But think how widely that applies.