Whatever the Occasion

Via DesignTaxi, I saw a smart ad campaign providing it's always time for a McFlurry (as if we needed to be reminded). A timely version could have been "Argentina Wins. {McFlurry} Spain Wins. {McFlurry}"

With a middle-aged mindfulness towards calories, I was reflecting on how comfort food is also celebratory food. If your aunt dies, people are showing up with banana bread, baked ziti, and cake. If you win the lottery, you're not eating the opposite of that. Like, when your numbers hit that's not the day you're eating a salad.

There should be a word for this

What do you call that feeling when you walk into a empty restaurant having made reservations well in advance, a mix of embarrassment for the restaurant's poor showing and dread that you probably should have chosen a better patronized restaurant?

An Ancient Roman Teen Girl, Today

 I asked AI (Microsoft Copilot) to render a picture of an Ancient Roman teenager if she were alive in the 1990s. I think this captured it pretty well. I love the (ancient) tunic, hair and jewelry & (modern) jean jacket aesthetic. The expression is timeless!

Simple Wants

 A lesson I learned early, from Calvin and Hobbes.

General Wilfred Scott Would Have Had is Own Ways of Dealing with the January 6th Mob

A serious plot to kill Abraham Lincoln may or may not have existed. (Four years later an equally frothy situation did in fact produce a John Wilkes Booth, completed with a loaded derringer; it would develop eventually that in a time of civil war the most grotesque improbabilities can be built on ugly facts.) Washington had been full of ominous rumors all winter. The War Department had gone to great lengths to build up a thoroughly loyal home guard in the District of Columbia to prevent a seizure of power by secessionist sympathizers, and Winfield Scott had remarked that the general tension was such that "a dog-fight might cause the gutters of the capital to run with blood." Just before Lincoln left Springfield, a citizen visited the old general to ask whether precautions had been taken to make sure that Congress could formally count the electoral vote; it was being rumored that a mob would rise and prevent it, thus (presumably) making it impossible for Lincoln to take office. 

"I supposed I had suppressed that infamy," said General Scott. "Has it been resuscitated? I have said that any man who attempted by force or unparliamentary disorder to obstruct or interfere with the lawful count of the electoral vote for President and Vice-President of the United States should be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder and fired out of a window of the Capitol. I would manure the hulls of Arlington with the fragments of his body, were he a Senator or chief magistrate of my native state!" Subsiding a little, the general added: "While I command the army there will be no revolution in Washington."

L.E. Chittenden, Recollections of President Lincoln and his Administration, New York, 1891. p. 37-39

in

The Coming Fury: Volume One in the American Civil War Trilogy by Bruce Catton, 1961. p. 224 (I think?)

Postcrossing

This month I signed up for Postcrossing, a postcard exchange. I already sent my first five postcards (to Germany, Netherlands, England, China, and Japan) within the last week and now I wait for them to be received and for my first five to come. Tonight I wrote my profile which I think does a good job of summarizing where I am in life:

Hello - my name is T.J. (Thomas James). I loved the idea of Postcrossing  when I heard about it. I used to have pen pals - for language exchanges, to learn of life abroad (of which I was so interested) - and I miss those interactions. I have few opportunities for grand adventures anymore. These days two toddlers call me Daddy and that encompasses most of my time. So, I must find adventures locally, or through books, or through postcards from world abroad.

About me:

My family teases that I always have my nose in a book. I read about 50 a year, mostly non-fiction. Sometimes I worry I won't think of a good next book to read  and sometimes I worry I won't live long enough to read everything on my list.

I like to exercise (barbell weightlifting, sometimes running). I wish I could swim proper strokes better, I'd like to learn. I'm not sure if its a midlife crisis but I'm considering martial arts, like judo (I used to wrestle long ago). Actually, I wish I had a craftier hobby, where I could make something with my hands. Making my own journals sounds interesting. I used to play  music (trombone, harmonica, my brother taught me some drums, I taught myself some piano - but all are mostly forgotten) and would love to find an outlet for that again. I suppose my only "artistic" outlet now is cooking. I come from a family of feeders (it's quite the family trait - my mother has it, her sister has it, my grandfather had it, I have it). Make more than what you need is the menu-planning philosophy. I want to learn to make bread and pastries better.

I used to love to hike and camp semi-regularly. Being in nature is very centering to me. I'm taking my eldest camping for the first time next year. She'll be content to be near a river she can throw rocks in.

When I would travel, seeing the landmarks was nice, but one only meets other tourists. I liked to sneak into everyday places - the public transit, the grocery stores, the libraries, even the churches, just to be among the locals. But I still find I have plenty to explore in my region, even my hometown.

My superpower is I can sit quietly alone in a room for a long, long time.

In school my teachers singled me out for notoriously bad handwriting. I haven't practiced much since school. My wife asks me to decipher my love notes to her. That is to say, if I write something you can't read, I am sorry. :)

I have studied at some point, and would be happy to receive a postcard in: Spanish, French, Latin (I'd be very impressed to receive a Latin postcard), Italian, and Portuguese. Actually, I'd be happy to read a card in any language.

If you can't think of anything else, tell me a favorite recipe or local food I should try, a place in your hometown or country I should visit, a phrase in your language, or even just about your daily routine.

More than anything I'm curious about you and where you come from, and I'm interested. It's never a bad day if I learned something new.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Inherently Funny Words: Buh-, Puh-, Kuh-

This morning on my daily COVID-19 walk I listened to Charles Duhigg's How To! podcast, specifically the episode "How To Be Funny". The episode featured comedian Gary Gulman, who explained to a pastor seeking to liven up his sermons that certain words are just inherently funny - a general rule are words starting with the buh-, puh-, or kuk- sounds ("Chicken is funny while "hen" is not).

I saw Jerry Seinfeld mention the concept of an inherently funny word as well in a New York Times video some time ago, that "pop tart" was just an inherently funny word (notice that puh- sound!). This is also not new nor secret, as I read today on Wikipedia; Neil Simon noted inherently funny words in his 1972 play, Sunshine Boys:

Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' you get a laugh ... Words with 'k' in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland ... Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.

Economists on Screen

NPR's Planet Money did a 4-part (that I could find) series, "Economists on Screen" about a year ago. Wait, no John Nash?

1. Episode 1: Crazy Rich Asians
2. Episode 2: Jack Ryan
3. Episode 3: Aaron Sorkin (really The West Wing)
4. Episode 4: Stockholm 

For the record, literally none of these are even a tiny bit accurate.

Social distancing *does* work

It *will* prevent the spread of the coronavirus

Also, all other infectious diseases

Just like abstinence prevents pregnancy

The world holds many dangers so we should say indoors

There'd be no air crashes if we never flew

Don't lift heavy you'll hurt your back

Avoid running if you want to keep your knees

We should ban youth football to protect youth's brains

Outlaw pools to eliminate drownings

Note there's no birth defects if we never had children

Don't wonder what's around the next corner (it might be trouble)

And most of all, note that if we never risked love, there'd be no heartbreak

The End of the Beginning: Birthday #39 in Quarentine

In a different reality I would have started my 39th year in Yellowstone National Park, exploring the main geyser area, and splurging a couple of nights in the Old Faithful Inn. 

Instead, I got up to photograph the sunrise from the Harvard Bridge, I had a filling bacon & egg breakfast (and later brie and South African forelle pear lunch), started David McCullough's "The Great Bridge", played Civilization 6 (launched a joint war against Brazil), walked to the Prospect Hill Monument where George Washington first raised the flag (and I almost bought a condo, overlooking Somerville), watched real-life derangement and revenge documented in the film "Tread", stepped into The fossilized imprints of actual dinosaur footprints in Holyoke, and ate the meal of the year at Sturbridge's BT's Smokehouse.

So, I traded baby bison for baby gosslings. I visited no UNESCO site, but I checked-off a few things I'd never done before. And I had a wonderful birthday.

The humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. 

Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night.

War of the Worlds “Dead London”

A reopening thought experiment

1. "Hey, we can re-open American tomorrow. If we do that, no other trade-offs except ten dementia-vegetables in some Kansas nursing home with contract COVID-19 and die. Do you want to open America?" Absolutely, let's do it!
2. "Hey, we can re-open American tomorrow. If we do that, no other trade-offs except two of your siblings will contract COVID-19 and die. Do you want to open America?" Absolutely not!

Case #2 also has one-fifth fewer the causalities, yet but it's an obvious 'no'. I exaggerated the first case somewhat, but it'd likely the same assessment if Case #1 had ten strapping lads instead of people at the very end of life already. People far away you don't know, when it's abstract like that, the loss is less and easier to make. It's only when those closer to us are affected, even if minuscule in quantity, is felt so much more.

A Daring Adventure (Helen Keller on security, or its illusion)

In 1940, Helen Keller published Let Us Have Faith. The chapter “Faith Fears Not” included the following:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works! Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

(via)

A Drunk in Russia

[Gennady] Yanayev, who was probably making sure the mark was still in place, was the worst sort of Party nonentity. He was a vain man of small intelligence, a womanizer, and a drunk. I'm not sure it is possible to describe just how hard it is to acquire a reputation as a drunk in Russia.

-David Remnick in Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

Why "The Nutmeg State"?

From Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination by Paul Freedman:

Legend has it that sharp Connecticut traders perfected the manufacture of imitation wooden nutmegs that were added to real ones, the fakery covered by the cunning artifice of their making and the powerful aroma of real nutmegs. The popularizer of this story was Thomas Chandler Halliburton (1796-1865), a Canadian judge from Nova Scotia, who wrote folkloric stories about Sam Slick, a Yankee peddler who sold nutmegs liberally laced with wooden fakes. The tale was so appealing that the state adopted the unusual sobriquet "the Nutmeg State," which says something about the admiration of business success over mere ethics (p. 124)...

What does Heaven Smell Life?

From Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination by Paul Freedman:

According to the Koran, the fountains of paradise will be scented with ginger, camphor, and musk (p. 80)....The Christian Roman poet Prudentius (A.D. 348-405) described paradise as a place of balsam, spikenard, and "rare cinnamon" (p. 90)....

What Else Is There?: Thoreau

"...[O]n his return from one of his Maine journeys, he told the story at great length (though it was already written in his note-book) with the important details, not only to his family, but to his friends, with the utmost alacrity and pleasure, yet as if he were discharging a sacred duty, then wrote it out carefully in his Journal, and next as carefully corrected it for its issue to the public. This is indeed a rare talent. Most of us, if we have experiences, do not know how to describe them; or if we do, do not interest ourselves enough in them to give them forth for the benefit of others. He did this, and so well and so universally, that it must be conceded to him as a special felicity. Things made a deep and ineffaceable impression on his mind. He had no trace of that want of memory which besets some amiable beings. Yet as I have said, he was reticent; so he was, remarkably in certain ways. I can mention that he never or rarely spoke to me of the Indians; never alluded to his collections on the subject; and, in all the years (about twenty) that I knew him intimately, maintained a profound silence on that (to him) altogether engrossing topic. But there was little bound to his usual communicativeness.

Connected with this was his skill in asking questions, a natural talent, long cultivated. Sometimes, where the matter was important, he carried with him a string of leading questions, carefully written, which he had the ability to get as skilfully answered, though, if there was a theory to maintain, with a possible overlapping to his side of the argument. Ever on the search for knowledge, he lived to get in formation; and as I am so far like Alfieri that I have almost no curiosity, I once said to him how surprised I was at the persistence of this trait in him. "What else is there in life?" was his reply.

What Else Is There?: Catch-22

“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. 'This long.' He snapped his fingers. 'A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man.'

'Old?' asked Clevinger with surprise. 'What are you talking about?'

'Old.'

'I'm not old.'

'You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?' Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?'

'I do,' Dunbar told him.

'Why?' Clevinger asked.

'What else is there?”

Isn't there? (Brave New World)

"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended-there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is."

"But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othello said? 'If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.' There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Mataski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could-he got the girl."

"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "you can have girls without hoeing for them, and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago."

The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them ... But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."

He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of singing lights and perfumed caresses-floated away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday-on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world ...

"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here."

("Twelve and a half million dollars," Henry Foster had protested when the Savage told him that. "Twelve and a half million-that's what the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.")
"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God-though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"

Em Lisboa

christdatss

Stanko Abadžić, in Lisbon