DTRT

 

I once mentioned to a co-worker, just as idle conversation, that I had observed there were usually from one to three churches on most corners of a city that was (and still is) awash in violence and crime, and it looked like no one was learning a whole lot on Sundays.   He did not like that much, stating that "church is for sinners."  I thought "wha...?" but said (and this was the wrong thing to do, judging from his reaction) one could ignore the twisting toils of religion and philosophy by substituting four words:  Do The Right Thing.  

But...while that should prevent a lot of bad behavior if practiced,  I have found it often does not work out too well for you.   

Once while I was picking up car wreck litter on the boulevard -- it is banked the wrong way and about once a month a speeding car goes off the road into the drainage area or hops the median.  Someone stopped and accused me of being the driver who made the mess and wanted my information.  A block closer to home, I once picked up some litter caught by a parked car's wheels (the wind always blows on trash day); the owner came out of his house, followed me home, and demanded to know what I was doing to his car.

Many years ago during a very bad snow and ice storm, I received a frantic call from the person on duty at the radio station where we worked.  The studio had moved to the middle of nowhere behind a farm and was no treat to get to, especially at night.  He had been trapped there long beyond his shift, probably quite hungry, and needed me to relieve him.  It would not have been right to not help, so I headed out in my mother's car with bald recapped (remember those?) rear tires.  On the way, a VW was sitting at the bottom of an icy hill with no brake lights on.  Too late, I realized it was not moving; it did move when I slid into it.  A bogus "neck pain" law suit later, I found my insurance cancelled and had to give up my own new car (not the accident one).  No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.

Away from vehicular to-dos, there are many more examples, which I will spare you, except for these:  I found a Social Security card near the local library on a walk.  I returned home, got on the computer and found an address for it, walked back and returned it, asking if this was the right residence.   The man who answered was extremely suspicious and unfriendly, but carefully took the card before shutting the door quickly.  That was sure worth all the effort.  And once I complimented a stressed mother (a relative) who was dealing with a shrieking toddler at a big noisy event just with the motivation to make her feel a little better.  Big mistake, as it was taken the wrong way.  No more unsolicited encouragement from me anymore!

I don't know why things play out this way.  Despite the evidence, I still think DTRT is a valid common-sense guide.  That ol'  karma is tricky, though.

    

What You Say?

 

We saw surf music legend Dick Dale perform in cozy local venue nine years ago.  A serious guy, he did little patter, made one joke (not repeatable here) and reminded us that "Thoughts become words, words become actions and actions have consequences."  There are many versions of this (one carrying it further: actions--habits--character), and the basic idea goes back at least as far as the Buddha, two and a half millennia ago.   

So, the words we use -- they are powerful. Amateur linguist Benjamin L. Whorf put forward a hypothesis ("linguistic relativity") that one's language influences and molds one's cultural reality by limiting our thought processes.   For example,  sexism seems built into languages with gender (Romance, that is, Latin-based ones, Hindi and Arabic); the male version of a noun or pronoun is the default.  Think of the term "mankind," or that doctor, actor or nurse have until recently pretty clearly indicated the person's gender who is being spoken of.  

German is well known for its use of long compound terms for precise description.  In this case, though, it is probably scientific and psychological thought which have influenced the language rather than vice-versa.  The Whorf hypothesis is better understood as a correlation or in a reciprocal way than as deterministic, like the old nature vs. nurture debate*.  But think about the corrosive effect of foul language in all-male environments and hip-hop music.  It is like, on a physical level, a neighborhood of empty lots, weeds and broken glass.  Both do clearly have strong negative influence.

The Hopi and Mandarin languages do not have tense.  But those who speak them do indeed know what time is and what is past or present.  So does the world look the same in different languages?  The ancient Greeks did not have a specific word for "blue."  An Australian aboriginal group thought of the sky as black.

   In 1984, Orwell made a strong case that language can and is used as a malignant tool to shape and control what we think:

Speaking of control, it is said that cats have 40 or more vocalizations.  They mostly mean "Feed me," and you had better get up and do it.

_________

*The subject of one of the Three Stooges' best films.

 

A Real Wonder Woman

 

 Augustina Raimunda Maria Saragossa i Domenech was celebrated by Byron in one of his best-known poems:

"Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul?  Foiled by a woman's hand before a battered wall..."

When Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, driving all the way to Lisbon and forcing the flight or abdication of Spain and Portugal's kings and installing brother Joseph as the new ruler, Augustina accompanied her husband, Sergeant Juan Rosa, immediately to the resistance, bringing along their young son.  The desperate defense of Zaragoza, which they joined, was mostly up to civilians facing an overwhelming French force. 

After heavy bombardment, the invader attacked at several points.  At Portillo gate, those gunners and militia who were not already dead fled to the central town square.  The abandoned 24-pounder cannon Augustina was near had been loaded with canister (shrapnel) shot; she touched it off and fired right into the face of a dense enemy column, driving them back with great loss.  The citizen defenders, inspired, rallied and returned to the barricades, holding the besieging army at bay for three months.  But their home was left in ruins.  Napoleon  was informed of the high casualties, and that "It is impossible that Zaragoza should ever recover; this city is a horror to behold. "

Amazingly, Augustina and Juan escaped and later participated in the second siege of Zaragoza, the defense of Tortosa and the decisive battle of Vitoria.  She became so ill she almost died, and their son did.

Honored as La Artillera and Maid and Defender of Zaragoza, Augustina was made a lieutenant and granted a lifetime pension by the grateful king -- the only female officer of the Peninsular War. 

Juan was also promoted to lieutenant and survived the war by eight years.   Augustina remarried a doctor, had a daughter, and lived to be 71.  She is buried near the scene of her brave stand, at the parish of Nuestra Senora del Portillo.

Portrayed by Goya

     

This Is New

 

We had two guests this Thanksgiving, one familiar and one brand new.  For eleven years, Blackberry the cat has been quite enthusiastic about sharing some turkey, for which he is quite thankful (you can tell by the purrs).  In her new Bumbo chair (above) 5 1/2 month old granddaughter Lucielle sat perched on the table, about to enjoy some of her first big people food, mashed sweet potatoes, like her a local, organic product.

 At first she rolled it around in her mouth, warily checking it out,  followed quickly by wide open eyes and a big grin.  More, please!  She ate the whole little bowlful, then eyed all the other dishes on the table:  "Okay, what's next?"  Someday, she and Blackberry might be competing for that turkey.

Having a fast-developing baby around has been quite a change.  Corners have filled up with child furniture and equipage, including a stroller that we still have only half figured out.  The Bumbo chair and changing table/crib combo are huge improvements on the cheap, clanky things we had when her father was little.  

Lucy's changing and growing at an astonishing pace.  Where a few weeks ago her hands were swinging around randomly, she can now spy my sweatshirt zipper pull looking up sideways, go for and grab it accurately on the first try.  

We're looking forward to more Thanksgivings, as well as other occasions and milestones, with this happy little sweet potato eater.

    

Olio*

 

It's time once again to clear out the attic here at "Just Sayin'."  So, here are three sort-of blog ideas, apropos of nothing:

Going Medieval

The list of very old places in Europe I want to see keeps growing.  Just found about the "Ruelle des Chats" -- Cats' Alley -- in Troyes, France. It is about seven feet wide, and the house tops lean into each other.  Guess there wasn't good urban zoning in place back in the Thirteenth Century.  They did, however, place stones along the bases of the buildings so people could get up out of the way of horses.  The structures you see today are reconstructions after the great fire of 1524,  but certainly look old and odd enough for those of us who like this sort of thing.

What If?

What if we had accepted the 1954 election in Vietnam, which chose Ho Chi Minh as president as the French closed up shop?  Would anything have turned out substantially different if we had not decided on twenty years of war instead?  The result was the same, except maybe Laos and Cambodia might have gone a different, much less miserable and violent, way.  

What if the French (maybe we do have a blog theme here) had not tried to claim and conquer the Ohio Country in order to link up their colonies in Canada and Louisiana?  Losing the latter to either the British or Americans later was probable, but they may have kept Canada more or less along its present borders and not have instigated the French and Indian War, which certainly contributed to the beginning of the American Revolution.  Several French Canadian officials did see and express that they did not nearly have the resources or manpower to make the Ohio expeditions turn out favorably.  But the 1789 Revolution and Napoleonic wars would have resulted in Canada's loss in any case.

The Big List

I was thinking about favorite books yesterday; here are mine.  What would you add or subtract?

The Story of Mankind (Van Loon), History of Greece (Bury), The Great Game (Hopkirk), The King Must Die (Renault), Memoirs of Hadrian (Yourcenar), Studs Lonigan (Farrell), In Our Time and For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway), Dubliners (Joyce), On the Road (Kerouac), A Small Town in Germany (Le Carre), Voyage of the Beagle (Darwin), The Wind in the Willows (Grahame), Death Comes to the Archbishop (Cather), Rome Across the Euphrates (Stark), Translations and Selected Poems (Pound), The March of Folly (Tuchman), Translations from the Chinese (Waley), Iberia (Michener), South Wind (Douglas), Raintree County (Lockridge), Treasure Island and The Black Arrow (Stevenson), The Golden Bough (Frazer), Julian (Vidal), Caesar (McCullough), August 1914 (Solzhenitsyn), The Farfarers (Mowat), The Alexandria Quartet (Durrell), The Fatal Shore (Hughes), The End of the Road (Barth), and Circe (Miller).  

________________

*Olio = miscellany.  A very useful crossword puzzle word.

Your Fourth-Quarter Game

 

It may not seem so when you are looking at it in your future, but retirement doesn't mean you get off the train and sit on a bench.  Change doesn't stop and planning, adaptation and decision making are challenges you must, not might, deal with.   For example, grandchildren:  our home is now crowded with new baby furniture after all these years!  And all that landscaping that you ambitiously planted over time?  Now it's huge and not the weekend outdoors entertainment it used to be.

Many relocate, especially to a latitude without winter or to a lower cost of living area. We researched and visited, but with all the pros and cons (the latter often not clear early on), it would have worked out about the same. If we had to shovel the snow, that would outweigh things like mosquito-borne disease -- but not hurricanes.  We pay our association fee and do not worry about blizzards or Category IV storms.

Social Security and Medicare (you know, those dangerous slides into Socialism) made the modern idea of retirement possible.  Before, if you did not possess wealth, you got to work yourself to an early death or move in with the children.  If you were just on your own and lived too long, well, you were on your own and not in any kind of good way.  When our grandfather was working as a young man in the early 20th century, it was 10 - 12 hours a day six and often seven days a week.  He did survive until the 40-hour week (opposed as socialist, of course) came to be and finally enjoyed a retirement with a pension.  He was smart, but lucky too.

Life can be slower and simpler in retirement; you can finally embrace Thoreau's advice.  If you cling to status and have not eliminated debt completely, either you can afford it or it sinks you.  What would the bill be for replacing this roof?

Not dealing with commuting traffic or overpaid co-workers who do very little work or not having to schedule a few vacation days twelve months in advance?  Yes, please.

Except... that big fresh breeze of freedom often will be counterbalanced with the chill wind of increasing health problems.  It's always something.   That rule of this  life is not one of those things that change. 

Still, it's a good deal and I'll take it.

      

 

Nine Lives

 

The chameleon Trebitsch as Chao Kung

Many people follow the same occupation for most or all of their lives. But one Ignac Trebitsch was quite the opposite as he was, successively (quoting author and scholar John  Lukacs), a petty thief, journalist, Presbyterian missionary, clergyman, councilman in Halifax, a vicar in Kent, researcher for a philanthropist, member of the House of Commons in 1910, oil drilling speculator in Eastern Europe, a defendant in criminal fraud lawsuits, promoter of a WWI scheme against the German fleet, British prisoner for three years, press secretary in Germany, military advisor to Chinese warlords, and Buddhist monk with a small sect following. This chaotic journey across the globe ended with his death in a Shanghai hospital in 1943. 

Born to a well-off Jewish family in Hungary, he began his first occupation, that of a thief of gold watches and jewelry, after they were ruined by a stock market crash.  As religion and politics are the natural refuges of scoundrels, Ignac went to England in the 1890s to begin conversion to Christianity with the Society for Promotion of Christianity Amongst the Jews.  He stole from them, of course, and high-tailed it back to Hungary and Germany where he met his future wife Margaret Kahlor.  Not surprisingly, Ignac abandoned her and their two sons at various times in various countries, even as far away as Java.

In case you might still give our ramblin' man some benefit of the doubt, consider what he wrote in a pamphlet during the Japanese occupation of China:  "They molest nobody...they are kind and helpful to the people..."

In China during WWII he conspired with German agents to install himself as leader of Tibet under the Reich after the untimely death of both the high lamas.  His life ended not as king of the Himalayas, but as a Buddhist monk named Chao Kung (he styled himself an Abbott) with only two followers.

Punch magazine had some fun with the unusual  Member of Parliament

 

 In between being a Christian and Buddhist, he joined the Theosophist religious movement, which is the source of today's New Age culture, believe it or not.  One might, maybe, question his sincerity in any of it.  But he probably enjoyed the wild ride.