Introduction To Musings X

SEASON’S GREETINGS 1999
Thanksgiving – Advent – St. Lucy’s Day – Solstice – Christmas – New Year’s – Hanukkah – Twelfth Night – Kwanzaa

As you can plainly see, since June, due to the generosity of John and Renee, I’ve had a Dell computer. I am much slower learning than today’s bright boys and girls, but I keep at it, including, as you will see, trying different type fonts. E-mail address: CJWinFL@aol.com.

This tenth year of Musings comes to you with my strong wish that this has been a good year for you and yours; and that 2000 (Y2K as they say) will be a year of health and happiness.

My health seems stable, with the continued help of physicians and prescriptions. On October 26, I had a pacemaker installed to assist my lagging heart. I have often wondered whether I would see the year 2000. Now there is a good chance I will.

Through the years, in these little essays, I have included events in my personal history. Members of the family like these inclusions. I still have much regret that I know so little about the early lives of my parents. So I share my own, writing about events remembered of my “green years”, even when recollection is painful. (Perhaps in one Musing, Al or Rose might speculate that I am trying to exorcise traumatic specters of my boyhood).

Be that as it may, I raise a glass to you all – Skoal!

Random Paragraphs

October-November 1998

Clipped from Readers’ Digest (? years ago)
MUSICAL COMEDY:

Radio Stations WQXR-AM and -FM in New York distributed a flyer listing the following quotes from grade-school essays on classical music:

Refrain means don't do it. In music its the part you better not sing.

Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was rather large.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music.

Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have heard of.

Aaron Copland is a contemporary composer. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most composers do not live until they are dead.

Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.

I know what a sextet is, but I’d rather not say.

Caruso was at first an Italian. Then someone heard his voice and said he would go a long way. And so he came to America.

Formula for Failure: For many years I have been an observer, sometimes participant in the stability and potential of church congregations. Apart from demographic and other factors which cannot be ignored, I have noticed three conditions which prevail in a congregation skidding down the road to fossil inertia or dissolution:

1) An intense loyalty to YESTERDAY,
2) Irrelevant nit-picking or determined ignorance TODAY, and
3) No Vision of TOMORROW.

Midrash: There is a Midrash tale of the ancient wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which has similarities to the Greek myth of the Procrustean bed. When a traveler arrived, he was placed in an iron bed in the public square. If the man was too short for the bed, his legs and body would be violently stretched until he matched the length of the bed. A tall man would have his legs amputated until he fitted the length of the bed. The rabbis labeled this sin in Sodom and Gomorrah as the sin of conformity. There the wrong-headed citizens insisted that everyone think as they did and act as they did. There could be no differences in Sodom and Gomorrah – no differences of worship or belief or action. That is why these cities were doomed to destruction. (RABBINIC STORIES, William Silverman)

THE ODOR OF SANCTITY:

Edward Gibbon in his DECLINE AND FALL writes of Sylvania, sister of the tyrant, Rufinus (A.D. 396). Sylvania, “who passed her life at Jerusalem, is famous in monastic history. The studious virgin had diligently, and even repeatedly, perused the commentators on the Bible, Origen, Gregory, Basil, etc. to the amount of five million lines. At the age of three score she could boast that she had never washed her hands, face or any part of her whole body, except the tips of her fingers to receive the communion.”

Whew! Sylvania was no role model for “cleanliness is next to godliness.” When she chose to devote her life to solitary, monastic study, she found a way to ensure her privacy and protect her virginity, fer sure.

CHURCH WELCOME MAT: Anne Johnson, in her column “Flotsam and Jetsam” in the Pelican Press, writes: “An Episcopal priest in Maryland has an unusual advertising campaign with a Renaissance-style picture of Jesus’ crucifixion and the message: ‘Of course people with pierced body parts are welcome in our church.’”

My contrarian attitude would query this clergyman, “Does that mean I am LESS welcome if I do not have a ring on my nose, on my tongue, or to my belly-button or some other body-piercing decoration?” Would there be any merit points for a Mennonite black straw hat and untrimmed chin whiskers? Or a tattoo depicting Salome dancing for Herod?

KEEP AT IT!

“This I learned from the shadow of a tree
Which to and fro did sway upon a wall:
Our shadow-selves, our influence may fall
Where we can never be.”

[Editor’s note: CJW credits this poem to A.E. Hausman; however, a search of Google books reveals that this poem is first credited to A. E. Hamilton, in THE UNITARIAN, February 1908. Again, later, as Anna E. Hamilton, in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine, 1923.]

The new employee stood before the paper shredder looking confused. “Need some help?” a secretary walking by, asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “how does this thing work?” “Simple,” she said, taking the fat report from his hand and feeding it into the shredder.

“Thanks, but where do the copies come out?”

ACCEPTANCE:

Act II, Sc. 2, Caesar to Calpurnia,

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

Stranger Than Fiction

October 21, 1998

Walter LeFeber, in his book THE AMERICAN AGE, described some of the proposed activities of the C.I.A. to overthrow Fidel Castro. If the author was not a respected historian, one could conclude that he took imaginative trips.

The C.I.A., in its covert war, planned to kill Castro. How? One plan (p. 560) was to give Castro exploding cigars! Another plan: “Spread word in Cuba that the Lord’s Second Coming was about to occur, but the Lord hated Castro. On the day of the Lord’s supposed appearance, a U.S. submarine would surface along the coast, set off fireworks, and so frighten Cubans who would then overthrow Castro. One C.I.A. agent labeled the plan ‘Elimination by Illumination.’”

If what LeFeber wrote is true, or largely true, C.I.A. could be an acronym for Congenital Idiots Association. Or, alternatively, [the C.I.A. could serve as] scriptwriters for slapstick comedies.

Herald Of Joy

September 16, 1998

“Silence is the perfectest
herald of joy; I were but little happy,
if I could say how much.”
- Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc. 1

There are times when the noises of our living fray the edges of my patience. At the movies, the “coming attractions” have the sound so turned up that the shouts, shots and explosions hurt the ears, as well as solidifying my determination that that movie I will never see. On the TV, the ever-present commercials frequently have the sound so revved up that I immediately push the “mute” button. This year, the news and talk shows have been incessant in speculations and smarmy gossip, dissecting every word and emotion uttered and expressed by President Clinton.

Just now, I started the cassette of the Simon and Garfunkel classic, “The Sound of Silence,” but frustratingly discovered the tape had broken. However, I found a relevant paragraph in a review of MONK, by De Wilde: (The Economist, April 11th):

“According to a jazz joke of the late 50s, two hipsters were at a nightclub absorbed in a quartet session led by the pianist-composer, Thelonious Monk. When When Monk’s turn came for a solo, he sat motionless at the keyboard, staring into space as the rhythm section thundered away. One hipster protested, ‘Hey man, he didn’t play anything,’ to which the other replied in awed tones, ‘Yeah, but just imagine what he was thinking.’”

The review goes on to comment, “Monk was indeed given to prolonged silences on any occasion, social or musical, interspersed with utterances brilliant, gnomic, idiosyncratic.”

By the way, I have found a way to watch baseball on TV. I turn off the TV sound, put a disc on the CD player, and combine the game with Bach or Grieg or whatever music I fancy. After all, when one attends a baseball game, the experience is visual; and the sounds are not the constant chatter of play-by-play and “color,” but rather the sharp crack when ball meets bat, the clump of cleats as the base runner dashes from second to third, the thud of the baseball hitting the left-field wall at Fenway.

Back in the days when there was a jukebox in every saloon, diner and ice cream parlor, it was said that some of these music boxes had a slot, where, for the coin, one could purchase three minutes of silence. I can not recall any personal experience of such a juke-box, but what a wonder-full idea! Have you ever been to a cocktail party and devoutly wished you could purchase three minutes of silence?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a tour of the United Kingdom and Europe, met Thomas Carlyle, as well as Wordsworth and Coleridge. According to the story, he made an evening call on Carlyle:

“He called on Carlyle one evening and was given a pipe, while his host took one for himself. They sat together smoking in perfect silence until bedtime, and on parting shook hands most cordially, congratulating each other on the fruitful time they had enjoyed together.”

If you are fortunate, as I am, there is a person, or there are persons, with whom you can be in each other’s presence and be silent, and feel no need for extraneous, nervous chit-chat.

In 1956, the poet John Holmes delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, “The Eleventh Commandment.” That commandment is LISTEN. The poem is long, but here are a few lines:

“And shining, Moses went down.
He read from the tablet the last word: Listen.
Those who were to be the new world heard the law,
And Moses began again with the first word: Listen ...”

Here in the quiet of my 8th floor apartment I know the balm of silence. The world is not shut out. The street noise from Tamiami Trail is muffled; the refrigerator motor kicks in regularly; occasionally, subdued corridor sounds; the telephone will beep. But the silence is also listening to one’s inner deeps. Silence is a “herald of joy.”

Blow Wind

August 28, 1998

“... blow wind, swell billow and swim bark!
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.”

Cassius, JULIUS CAESAR, Act V, Sc. 1

As Hurricane Bonnie approached the North Carolina and Virginia coasts, I was reminded of an ancient and a modern happening, both of which illustrate the nonsense and malice which now and then (too often) characterize the heated pronouncements of some Christian and other religious leaders.

Edward Gibbon describes a violent and destructive earthquake on July 21, A.D. 365, which caused havoc in the Mediterranean area. The sea retreated, killing innumerable fish as well as stranding vessels in the mud. When the sea surge returned, boats were stranded as much as two miles inland. In Alexandria, Egypt, fifty thousand people lost their lives in the inundation. (THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Vol. I, Ch. xxvi, p. 1023 ff)

[Regarding the] Christian bishops of the time, Gibbon goes on to write that “these most sagacious divines pronounced that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake; or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.”

We can never know if anyone of that time asked these “inspired” clergy:

“What about your believers who perished with your so-called heretics?”

“What kind of God would have so little power of discrimination?”

In 1998, the wealthy Christian evangelist and TV promoter of his variety of religion, Pat Robertson, made an angry pronouncement. Robertson was incensed, asserting that Orlando Florida could be struck with hurricanes, earthquakes, and possibly a meteor because gay groups were permitted to display rainbow flags during an event at Disney World. Thousands of gay men and women celebrate “Gay Days”, a privately sponsored event at Disney World.

Earlier this year, a series of tornadoes swept Central Florida, causing much property damage and, I think, about twenty-eight fatalities. The most severe damage seemed to have occurred in Kissimmee, a town near both Orlando and the Disney complexes. Robertson asserted that these catastrophes were God’s way of punishing the Disney company not only for “Gay Days”, but also because the Disney company maintains a policy of non-discrimination in hiring and benefits.

Robertson’s diatribes would be hilarious if it were not for the influence of his TV network broadcasting ignorance and engendering hatred.

No tornadoes or fires touched the Disney complexes, people or programs. Why not? Why punish others for what Disney and the Orlando City Council are alleged to be guilty? Does Robertson’s God have such poor aim?

As this is being written, Bonnie is deluging Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia. Is it ironic that Robertson’s headquarters is located [there].

The tectonic forces which cause earthquakes, the climatic conditions which create hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods were functioning billions of years before human life evolved on this planet. The processes were not altered because we humans appeared. We know, or should know, that caution and preparedness are ingredients for dealing with natural forces and mitigating their effects. There have been and there always will be catastrophes without limit which will exert a high cost in human life and suffering. That is the cost of living on this planet. Where would you rather live? Mars? The Moon? Perpetually orbiting in a space capsule?

Accepting that, however, Gibbon writes cogently, “the historian may content himself with an observation, which seems justified by experience, that man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements. The mischievous effects of an earthquake, or deluge, or hurricane, or the eruption of a volcano, bear a very inconsiderable proportion to the ordinary calamities of war.”

Gibbon died more than 200 years ago. The 19th and 20th century wars have amply verified his statement. World War II cost 50 million lives, not to speak of World War I, Korea, Vietnam, and the horrors of the tribal wars in Africa.

To live in a Paradise may be a comforting fantasy. However, reality proclaims, “Here we live on this planet, Earth. Let’s do our best to contend, to accept, to help, to change for the better, or at least muddle through.”

As Cassius said to Brutus (Act I, Sc. 2),

“Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Pistol Packing Preacher

July 17, 1998

Today’s Sarasota Herald Tribune carried this news under the headline, “Kentucky legalizes pistols in the pulpit”: the Kentucky General Assembly amended a 1996 law which allowed state residents with permits to carry concealed weapons, but banned them from schools, government buildings and houses of worship. The change made it legal for ministers and church officials to carry weapons inside houses of worship if they have concealed weapons permits.

One of the advocates of the change was “Willie Ramsay, a preacher at the Somerset Church of Christ (who) argued that churches are robbery targets because of the offerings they collect.”

If Willie is a Shakespeare fan, perhaps he found some sanction in Henry IV (Part I, Sc. II), where Hotspur proclaims:

“Now for our consciences the arms are fair
When the intent of bearing them is just.”

There is much disagreement in Kentucky about this new law; many oppose it and will seek repeal of the amendment.

This news story sparked my speculations as it would any veteran preacher. Did I ever need to carry a gun in the pulpit? That never occurred to me, although in a novel I read years ago, CIMARRON, by Edna Ferber, I recall that the Yancey Cravat, brandished his six-shooter when a heckler was interrupting Yancey’s sermon in a tent filled with frontier people.

I have always been aware that ministers never receive unanimous endorsement for their sermons. At least I never did. My story is not that much different from most others. At times we create boredom, encounter disagreement, engender dislike, even stir hatred. But, carry a 357 Magnum or a Beretta into the pulpit!! No thanks, I think not. I wouldn’t even know the proper etiquette for wearing the gun belt and holster inside or outside the clerical robe.

Perhaps there is cause for some fear. When I read Edward Gibbon’s description of early Christian preachers in the age of Constantine, maybe so. (THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Vol. I, Ch. XX, p. 763):

“...The preachers recommended the practice of the social duties; but they exalted the perfection of monastic virtue, which is painful to the individual and useless to mankind. Their charitable exhortations betrayed a secret wish that the clergy might be permitted to manage the wealth of the faithful for the benefit of the poor. The most sublime representations of the attributes and laws of the Deity were sullied by an idle mixture of metaphysical subtleties, puerile rites, and fictitious miracles: and they expatiated, with the most fervent zeal, on the religious merit of hating the adversaries, and obeying the ministers of the church.”

There are a few preachers, still, who match Gibbon’s scathing description, but fortunately there are not many (I hope). More accurate in today's world, perhaps, is the following quote (source unknown):

“Some pastors employ the same strategy that Herman Hickman employed when he was head football coach at Yale in his relations with alumni – keep them sullen but not mutinous.”

However, such an attitude, notwithstanding the witty Herman Hickman, leads to what in our shop is termed, “negotiated resignations.” (The old “Heave-Ho” but stated politely euphemistic.)

But, pistol packing preachers, I think not – abas, avaunt, no way.

High School Senior

June 27, 1998

“To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to’t with delight.”

Antony, Antony and Cleopatra,
Act IV Sc. 4

About ten days ago, when son John was videotaping and interviewing me, one of his questions punched the ATM buttons of my memory bank. I mentioned that I had been released from all classes the last half of my senior year at Everett High School.

In high school I was enrolled in the Commercial Course, I learned the skills of typing, shorthand, business forms and correspondence, double-entry bookkeeping, adding and calculating machines, etc. What I missed were certain courses in the College Preparatory division, particularly algebra and geometry.

I was in the Commercial Course partly from choice and partly from advice of aunts and uncles who emphasized that with my father dead, there was no way I could think of college because I needed to go to work full-time as soon as possible. Furthermore, as Uncle John Granstrom said to me, with my grandfather nodding approval, “Girls need college, not the boys. A man can always pick up a shovel and find laborer’s work, but a woman needs a college education if her husband should die.” They probably had the economic plight of my widowed mother in mind. I don’t believe that careers for women per se mattered to them or even occurred to them.

This advice was given years before the Great Depression, so these well-meaning relatives did not know that there was to be economic disaster with few laborers’ jobs to be had until the New Deal of the FDR years brought the WPA, the CCC and other measures. Thanks to the “commercial” courses, I had jobs all through the depression.

However, there was a reckoning when I went to St. Lawrence University in the 1940s. I was admitted on probation until I acquired high school credits for algebra and geometry. I went to Canton High School to qualify in these subjects. I surmise I was something like the little girl in the clip-art below:

[Editor’s note: cartoon girl with speech bubble, saying “Plato was a thinker who died in the year 347 and wasn’t born until 427. He thought out how to do this.”]

I still recall the strangeness and discomfort of that experience. I was old enough to be the parent of the high school sophomores in class with me. I may have been older than the teacher. It was a great relief to finish that requirement.

I have a good memory of the work/study program of Everett High School, January to July, 1929. In the Commercial Course there was opportunity for a few students to skip the last half of the school year and work in business. Those chosen had to have excellent marks, of course; and I was one of those qualified and chosen.

So I reported to the Milk St., Boston, office of Percy Gleason, a Certified Public Accountant. He had a woman assistant whose name I forget. She and I worked the outer office and Mr. Gleason had the inner office. The duties were not difficult: typing, correspondence, reports, tax returns, adding and checking columns of figures, filing, etc.

Most rewarding of all, I was paid $14 a week. The fares on the “Elevated” were not much, so I had more dollars than I had previously delivering groceries afternoons and Saturdays.

I did miss out on Senior social life – parties, the Senior Picnic at Norumbega Park on the Charles River (canoes, eating, dancing, necking), the Senior Prom, etc. But I wouldn’t have been participating anyway. I had some regrets about missing that part of high school life, but there were many of us in that graduating class of about 450 who for various reason did not take part in Senior social activities.

Another benefit of working for Percy Gleason, I was able to buy a new blue-serge suit, black shoes, white shirt for graduation.

The experience of this high school senior was not the usual one, but my regrets were minor and the benefits of that working experience were major. The most important lesson, perhaps, can be put in a sentence, “When you are on the job, arrive on time or before, work diligently, and stay until five PM.”

Humiliation Can Be A Two Way Street

June 22, 1998

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, sense, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that....”

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Act III, Sc. 1

From the time of the First Crusade when Christians who didn’t go to the Holy Land stayed home and killed Jews, to the genocidal slaughters at Auschwitz and other death camps, the most repulsive blot on centuries of European Christian “civilization” has been anti-Semitism. 2,000 years of tragedy and suffering because one is Jewish is almost beyond comprehension. In re-telling another story of how Christians can hate, it must be noted that anti-Semitism was not limited to Roman Catholics. There has been much Protestant anti-Semitism, including the key Reformer, Martin Luther.

Some months ago, the Vatican issued a somewhat tepid, understated acknowledgment of the anti-Semitic acts and pronouncements through the centuries. Then I came across one of the lesser known, and less genocidal, acts.

My source is a comprehensive history of the Papacy, SAINTS AND SINNERS, A HISTORY OF THE POPES, by Eamon Duffy, who is a Roman Catholic church historian.

Pope Leo XII (Annibale della Genga), whose tenure was from 1823 to 1829, was elected because the majority of Cardinals wanted stronger spiritual leadership. Leo XII was puritanical and conservative. Apparently he believed people should get no joy from life. People playing games on Sundays and feast days could be jailed. Applause and encores in the theater were forbidden on the grounds that Leo “and his advisers thought they provided the occasion for display of seditious political feeling.” Women were forbidden to wear tight-fitting dresses.

Jewish people, as historically usual, became scapegoats and victims – confined to ghettos with walls and locked gates. They were not allowed to own real estate.

In addition, they were persecuted in a most reprehensible manner. “Three hundred Roman Jews were required to attend special Christian sermons every week and the hiring of Christian proxies was forbidden.”

I am not a trained educator, but I know enough about learning to be convinced that such coerced attendance is a method least likely to have any effect. My belief is that it was deliberately planned to be an insulting, humiliating experience.

There is a surprise ending, however—a forerunner to the way O. Henry would develop his short stories.

The successor to Leo XII was Gregory XVI (Dom Mauro Cappelari), 1831-1846.

In the political ferment which eventually led to Italy as a nation, Pope Gregory XVI spent enormous sums resisting the Carbonari and “Young Italy” movement led by Mazzini. At the time of Gregory’s death, the debt owed by the Papal States was sixty million scudi. (According to the dictionary, a “scudi” was a monetary unit of a gold or silver coin).

Where would the Pope go to get a loan of that magnitude? Here’s the “O. Henry” twist: He went to the famous banking family, the Rothchilds, who were guess what, Jewish!! So perforce, restrictions and persecutions of the Jewish people in Rome had to be lightened and mitigated.

I have the fond hope that the Vatican hierarchy were thoroughly discomfited and humiliated to go hat in hand to plead for that loan.

Were We Grateful?

April 25, 1998

The loom of history weaves strange and unpredictable patterns. Different threads must be interwoven to understand consequences. If you live west of the Mississippi, you might not be in the United States had it not been for Toussaint L’Ouverture. If you are in the river cargo business on the Mississippi, you might have to pay custom duties to another country if President Thomas Jefferson had not ignored the Constitution and his own principles and expediently embraced opportunity. If Napoleon’s plans had not been totally frustrated, you might be speaking French when you celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans. If it had not been for rebellious slaves in Haiti, the United States might be comprised of the 26 States east of the Mississippi River. I thought of a paragraph in a letter received the other day from my grandson, Carl A., who was commenting on “chaos theory”: “Chaos is interesting in that it may outline some of the boundaries of what humans can know. The Butterfly Effect, in miniature: a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, causing small air currents that, through a complex chain reaction, lead to a thunderstorm in New York. Such is a succinct example of why weather prediction is, and always will be, generally unreliable past a couple days.”

I believe that history has, sometimes, parallels to nature, particularly akin to weather causes and predictions. In this summary of events, 1801-1803, I am following closely Herbert Agar, THE PRICE OF UNION. Most historians would not differ substantially from his recounting of events. The quotations from Henry Adams and Thomas Jefferson are from Agar’s text.

Napoleon wanted the French Empire restored to its former position of strength on the North American continent. In 1801, his brother Lucian obtained a treaty from Spain which ceded Louisiana to France. Napoleon agreed to preliminary articles of peace with Great Britain, freeing his troops for a Louisiana invasion.

Then the focus shifted to the Caribbean, the island of San Domingo (today’s Haiti), where French commercial interests were central. Napoleon needed a base for troop support for his anticipated conquest of Louisiana. Of the 600,000 inhabitants of the island, 500,000 were Negro slaves (I am using “Negro” because then it was the common term). Under the leadership of a remarkable man, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the slaves revolted at the time of the French Revolution. Whites were massacred. But during the Revolution, the French National Assembly abolished slavery. Toussaint became a General of the Republic; and ruled San Domingo, convinced and asserting that it was a sovereign State. When Napoleon came to power in France, Toussaint refused to obey his edicts.

In 1801, Napoleon dispatched a large army commanded by General LeClerc (his brother in-law) to defeat Toussaint and to re-institute slavery. The plan was for General LeClerc, after subduing the island, would lead his 36,000 man army to conquer Louisiana.

The danger was recognized in our young nation. President Jefferson wrote to Livingstone, the American minister in Paris:

“It (the cession of Louisiana to France) completely reverses all the political relations of the United States .... There is on the globe one single spot the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of the territory must pass to market.... The day that France takes possession of New Orleans... we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

In January, 1803, Jefferson sent James Monroe to join Livingstone in Paris, with orders to buy New Orleans. Jefferson had no constitutional authority or congressional sanction for this action. But, seemingly, he believed there were times when one “must arise above principle.”

Meanwhile, the French were doing badly in San Domingo. Brigades meant for Louisiana were being destroyed by the Negroes of San Domingo. Although Toussaint was captured and died in French captivity, the savage war continued. Napoleon experiencing overwhelming losses in his forces, and seeing no prospect of victory, told Talleyrand to sell the whole territory of Louisiana.

Thus, on April 30, Louisiana was purchased by the United States for $11,250,000, plus an additional sum to subsidize debts owed by France to American citizens.

Henry Adams wrote, “The prejudice of race alone blinded the American people to the debt they owed to the desperate courage of five hundred thousand Haytian Negroes who would not be enslaved.”

Historical events are less subtle than a butterfly wing in Tokyo, but frequently unpredictable. History has a way of surprising even the most assured and astute of predictors. There is a “law of unintended consequences.”

Shakespeare has King Henry IV say to Warwick:

“O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors!”

(KING HENRY IV, Part 2, Act 3, Sc. i)

Once Upon A Time

April 15, 1998

Stories are told to children long before they begin their ABCs. Adults respond to stories and learn from them, too. The story teller is more ancient than the formal historian. The Bard antedates the essayist. A lecture on moral principles is less pungent than a pertinent parable; a fable less distasteful than moralistic exhortations. When Hamlet (Act II, Sc. ii) ends a monologue:

“... the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

he was emphasizing the power of a story.

So, in this Musing, two stories represent wisdom in living. No explanations or conclusions, just stories or parables.

I – Muddy Road

Two Buddhist Monks, Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. “Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan, “are you still carrying her?”

II – Jade Student

This is the story of a man who wanted to start a jade collection. He was a rich man, but didn’t want to be cheated, so he determined to seek instruction in jade grading from the most famous connoisseur in the world. Through a friend he was introduced to an expert on jade, and learned that the course consisted of twelve lessons and would cost a thousand dollars. “That’s all right,” he said, “How do the lessons go?”

“You come here every week for one hour, and in twelve weeks you will know how to evaluate jade,” the teacher responded.

Each week the man went for his lesson, and each week his teacher placed a different piece of jade in in his hand and walked from the room. That was all. At the end of the eleventh lesson, the student was so angry he complained bitterly to the friend who had arranged the lessons. “You led me astray. You let me think this man was really an expert and look what what I’ve got for my pains – eleven hours of holding a stupid piece of jade in my hand.”

Together they went to the twelfth lesson. Again the jade expert simply put a piece of jade in the hands of his pupil and walked out of the room.

“You see?” said the pupil to his friend, “not only has he wasted my time and money for the first eleven hours, but to add insult to injury, in the last hour he gives me a fake piece of jade.”

(I have lost the source of these stories so I am unable to give proper credit. )

A Winter’s Tale

March 18, 1998

(With apologies to Will S)

FIRE AND ICE
“Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
- Robert Frost

“Abide the change of time
Quake in the present winter’s state and wish
That warmer days would come.”

(Posthumus, CYMBELINE, Act II, Sc. iv)

I do not believe I could ever be persuaded to live in a wintry climate again. Here on the Gulf Coast, it is a cold snap when the temperature dips to the fifties. I put on a sweater or jacket when most guys around here are in their shirtsleeves.

This sensitivity or distaste for chilly weather may have been engendered by the years I lived in St. Lawrence County or Rochester, N.Y. But an event in my childhood may have also etched on my bones this affection for warmth and dislike of cold.

I was probably eleven years old, I recollect, because my father was still living. As I may have mentioned in other writings, I was somewhat of a roamer as a child; and often enough went off by myself.

One very cold winter day, well below freezing, I was in the Mt. Hood reservation, a county or state area with a lovely pond. The pond was frozen over. I walked out on the ice and broke through, soaking myself up to the neck.

Climbing out, drenched, I made the couple miles back home. I was chilled to the bone. My clothes froze on me. When I reached home, my mother stood by me at the kitchen range as I painfully shed my clothes. I still have some sort of trace auditory memory of the crunching sound as my frozen clothes hit the floor.

Put to bed with wrapped, heated flatirons at my feet, thoroughly blanketed, I knew the blessing of warmth.

However, the next morning, I could not move my legs. My mother called Dr. Listernick, unusual for her as she had not much faith in the medical profession. He came. (House calls were not that unusual then). I have no recollection of what he prescribed, but in a couple of days I was up and a bout, seemingly with no after-effects. “He gave you strong medicine,” my mother said later, “And that’s why you do not have rheumatic fever.” I believe that was her diagnosis, not Dr. Listernick’s.

Thus, as Phil Harris used to sing, “And that’s what I like about the South.”

P.S. That pond at Mt. Hood is the setting for a subsequent musing, “A Summer Reverie.”

Mysterian

January 7, 1998

Don’t bother to look up that title in the dictionary – it’s not there. I believe I have coined a word to describe my cosmic theology. In a prior Musing several years ago, I quoted J.B.S. Haldane: “Now my suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose.”

This venture into that line of thought was sparked by Annie Dillard, writing in the January 1998 “Harper’s”. I tip my hat to Annie Dillard, because she composed an essay based on statistics which is both fascinating and a trigger for one’s speculations.

Consider this paragraph in her essay:

“Ten years ago we thought there were two galaxies for each of us alive. Lately, since we loosed the Hubble Space Telescope, we have revised our figures. There are nine galaxies for each of us. Each galaxy harbors an average of 100 billion suns. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are sixty-nine suns for each person alive. The Hubble shows, says a report, that the Universe ‘is at least 15 billion years old.’ Two galaxies, nine galaxies, sixty-nine suns, 100 billion suns ....”

Read that again being aware that there are nearly 5 billion persons on this planet. 9 galaxies for every one of us, each galaxy with 100 BILLION SUNS. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, sixty-nine suns for each person alive!! These stellar findings stun my ability to comprehend.

Or, to quote physicists Kasner and Newman about a near-at-hand object: “Our efforts to grasp the number of electrons that pass through the filament of an ordinary fifty-watt light bulb in one minute equals the number of drops of water that flow over Niagara Falls in a century.” (CLEOPATRA’S NOSE, Daniel Boorstin).

Can you grasp THAT?

In the face of such overwhelming Numbers, Forces, Distances, where is there a slot for a Zeus? An Allah? A Yahveh? A Christian Trinity? I know that believers will testify that God exists and we are his children. For them it is a leap of faith and a comforting belief. I have no quarrel with them except that I cannot say “Yes” when my mind says “No.”

But the events in the Universe seem to refute any idea of a God “who holds moral relations with man,” to use the old phrase. Annie Dillard calls attention to April 30, 1991, when a series of waves drowned 138,000 people. Quoting her again:

“Two million children die a year from diarrhea, and 800,000 from measles. Do we blink? ... The flu epidemic of 1918 killed 21 or 22 million people.”

Every year, sometimes every month, there is a “natural disaster” that kills multitudes of persons.

For years I have been a Humanist Unitarian Universalist. I hold that all philosophies, theologies, credos, catechisms are human interpretations of human experience. I believe that reason can prevail over revelation, although it does not seem to most of the time. I believe that the problems of humankind will be solved by human persons or they won’t be solved at all; that we need to recognize that all humans deserve respect and dignity; and that our never-ending task is to reach for universal brotherhood/sisterhood and all that is implied in that goal.

But I cannot fit a cosmic theology into the human scheme. The Universe is too astounding, awesome, for any rational speculation or logical conclusions. Therefore I am a Mysterian.

Whatever this Universe is and the causes of its Dynamisms, Force, Time/Space enigmas are a deepening mystery. As Annie Dillard’s article brings home, the more we discover, the greater the mystery. Nothing convinces me that there can be a final or even tentative answer to “why?” Why is there such an amazing Universe? What is it we are trying to comprehend? Why is there anything at all? Thus, I think of myself as a Mysterian. As Ray Bradbury wrote, “We are an impossibility in an impossible Universe.” In a lighter vein, Woody Allen observed, “I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the Universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”

So as a Mysterian I will never know what the Universe is or why, but I’m here on a planet where there is truth, beauty and goodness as well as the contradictions and prostitutions of those values. While standing in awe of the cosmic mystery, this planet is our world, our home. Embrace it, value it, improve it, and share.

Introduction To Musings IX

December, 1998

I am somewhat astonished that I have continued these MUSINGS for nine years. 1998 has been a better year, medically, than 1997. An August check-up showed no re-occurrence of cancer; [I] feel o.k., low energy.

If I have filled in some gaps in knowledge of the family and about relatives, that makes the effort worthwhile. More than that, I am amply rewarded if I have encouraged anyone in the family or among my close friends to follow the trail of their own ideas: that is, what are the implications? What may be the result or unintended consequences? Who has benefited or will benefit? What can I believe? What must I do?

One of the paragraphs I mull over from time to time is the conclusion of Albert Camus’ essay, “The Artist And His Time,” where he wrote (not degenderized):

“Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some say that this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundations of his own sufferings and joys, builds for all.”

That is a message for whatever religious tradition you celebrate at the Winter Solstice. Bless you all!!!

Grandfather W

The Dangers And Hopes Of Universalism

February 22, 1998
Sarasota

I want to discuss this subject with you, but first you need to know my bias. I have been a Unitarian Universalist 37 years since consolidation of the two denominations. Before that I was a Unitarian for 4 years, two of which I was unaware, being an infant from birth to 2; and two years as a layman in a struggling little Unitarian church in Massachusetts. I was 45 years a Universalist, as a boy, as a layman, as a minister.

I’m particularly conscious of this today as we celebrate Helen Harwood’s 100th birthday, because her father was the teacher who was the strongest influence in my adult life. John Murray Atwood was Dean of the Universalist theological school at St. Lawrence University. I was fortunate enough to be one of his students.

He was a superb teacher. When I was there he taught theology, Greek, and parliamentary law; other years he taught Biblical languages and literature and sociology of religion. But more than his scholarship, he was generous, forgiving and wise. I will never forget how he accepted a student who had been expelled from Tufts; he believed in giving a second chance. That student was a friend of mine. We traveled together to Canton for the interview with the Dean. [CJW note: he accepted me – unpromising ... + so to speak here I am]

Helen, you know and I know that your father was one of the most admired and trusted leaders of Universalism in the 1st half of the Twentieth Century.

Thus, as some of you describe yourself as Unitarian, not Unitarian Universalist, so too, I am sometimes neglectful and identify myself as Universalist because Universalism has characterized so many years of my life and thought. Furthermore, Universalist is a much more accurate description of my personal religious philosophy.

First, I want to make a brief summary of Universalism as a theological position. Then, present instances where Universalism was a bad idea. Then outline its theological evolution in the 20th century which incorporates hope for our human venture in this world where so much intolerance, war, and misery have occurred.

Universalism was a simple theological foundation for belief, even though it was disturbing and heretical to the other religions. God was too good to damn any of his creatures to Hell forever. God must at least be as kind and loving as the worst parent; and what parent would consent and send a child to burn in hell forever? In other words all souls would be saved.

In prior years, after that brief explanation, I would be asked, “What do Universalists believe?” I would answer usually in this fashion: Universalists do not believe alike in many ways. We differ. The proper question is, “How do Universalists arrive at their beliefs?” From where I stood, and stand, one can assume that there is acceptance of tested truth accumulated and continuously refined and amended by the historian, the geologist, biologist, astronomer, physicist, social scientist, practitioners of other learned professions. The Universalist believes reason to be a guide and validates propositions through experience and experiment. All theologies are interpretations of experience, not
divine revelations. The worth and dignity of all persons as the highest values. The Universalist looks with hope, still, on the nature and destiny of the human venture in spite of calamitous and cruel events.

But there are dangers; and sometimes Universalism can be a bad idea. What is bad about Universalism? When it is coerced. In a recent book, THE CURSE OF CAIN by Regina Schwartz, the author states the case succinctly: “Universalism comes in different shapes, as an ideal of genuine tolerance, as an effort to protect universal rights and as a kind of imperialism that insists we are all one and that demands an obliteration of differences.”

Universalism is bad when it is an imperialism. The major religions of Western culture have such a history, and a bloody, cruel, and intolerant history it is. Catholic means universal. In many centuries the Catholic church was coercive – believe with us or be damned. There were the persecutions and tortures of the Inquisition, the hypocrisy and the bloodshed of the Crusades. Mass killings of heretics was praiseworthy.

Protestants were hardly more generous. Len Peck’s fine and scholarly sermon on Servetus was a pertinent reminder. In England under Henry VIII, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, the Protestants and Catholics took turns persecuting, torturing and killing each other.

Much of this found sanction in words attributed to Jesus, although most scholars say the verse was a late addition to the gospel by the early church (Matthew 28/19) “Go therefore and MAKE disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father [and] of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In Islam’s early centuries, the followers of Mohammed forcibly converted the peoples where their militant warriors invaded.

Even the religion of the Hebrews came to a Universalism which was imperialistic. They invaded Canaan, not their land, killing and slaughtering.

Look at Deuteronomy 7/5: “...you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. . . .you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their graven images.”

Even the splendid and poetic Universalism found in Micah and Isaiah has the aroma of imperialism, “Come to the house of Jacob’s God; and he may instruct us in his ways....” Y’all come, but you MUST worship OUR God.

When the Puritans came to this country and seized land and got rid of the Indians, the natives, they justified it by the biblical example of the Hebrews seizing Canaan, showing no mercy to the people who lived there.

A Universalism that is THEM against US is bad. An imperialistic Universalism of any variety will never create a world that is free and fair.

Why, then, did some of us become Universalist ministers? In the 20th century, much of it within my personal memory and experience, theological Universalism had lost much of its power. Most of the mainline Christian churches had quit preaching Hell and brimstone. (The revival of fundamentalism, particularly in the Southern states, in recent decades would hardly have been predictable in the first half of this century.)

There was not much agitation among us over the growth of scientific thought, including evolution theories. The higher criticism of the Bible made both Unitarians and Universalists aware that scripture was not the inerrant word of God, but rather the religious literature of Judaism and Christianity. Heaven and Hell become referred to more as allegory or metaphor than reality. When we experienced frustration or problems, we would say, “That’s the Hell of it.” Right? Years ago, a Christian minister defined Hell this way, “the self-defeating nature of the egocentric life.” That’s a long way from burning in hell forever or Dante’s vivid images.

In my experience, Universalism went through many of the same conflicts and controversies as Unitarian in the first half of this century. We experienced the same conflict between theism and humanism as did the Unitarians. We each debated whether or not we were a Christian denomination. Fortunately, tolerance and acceptance prevailed. Helen’s father, defending the freedom clause in Universalist principles, wrote “Not that a man may do as he pleases, but that he may be true to the vision HE has gained on the Sinai HE has climbed.”

So some of us became Universalist ministers in the 30s and 40s, not because of the “No Hell” Universalism, although some felt the old beliefs still relevant. Rather, it seemed to some of that Universalism was the BIG IDEA; the worth and dignity of every person had become the main plank in our religious platform. Not that we expected that millions of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists would become Universalists. Rather, respect for the rights of others demanded that we acknowledge, advocate and protect the right of all persons to choose the faith that would sustain them. That was the Big Idea. Imperialism of any kind was the Bad Idea.

Before I close, a word of explanation: Some may have heard of Billy Sunday. 80 or more years ago, he was a popular, evangelistic preacher, the Jerry Falwell or Jimmy Swaggart of his day. When 100,000 dollars is referred to, it would probably be a million today.

Dr. Levi Moore Powers, from 1913 to 1919, was minister of our Gloucester Universalist Church and one of the noted preachers of his day – courageous and unafraid to criticize establishment forces. 80 or more years ago he was preaching on the need for a national health insurance plan; he defended the right of workers to organize and strike, he was an advocate of the League of Nations. In a sermon preached about 1919, he said, “The only adequate faith is that which will make the world brotherly, and that is a genuine belief that we are brothers, all children of a Father who has no favorites. Billy Sunday says that belief in the Universal Brotherhood of Man is ‘bosh’ and ‘tommyrot’ and those who live by the faith that Billy Sunday preaches reward their faithful servant by giving him fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for proclaiming his ungodly gospel.

“But we have not so learned Christ. There is an Eastern proverb which says, ‘I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they were all my brothers.’ That old heathen was more of a Christian than Billy Sunday. Universalism teaches that every man we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith, and great enough to live it, the future will be ours.”

I am not a Christian theist as was Levi Powers. Today we use more gender-free language. After all, he spoke those words more than 78 years ago. Yet, if we too sensed more deeply and proclaimed more fearlessly that every man, woman, and child we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother or sister, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith and great enough to live it, the future may not be ours, but it will be the way, and perhaps the only way, as we join millions of others of whatever faith who share the dream, that this pained, conflicted world may be saved from destroying itself in a Hell of human making.

Hurrah!!

October 14, 1997

Yesterday afternoon, sipping my two ounces of Grant’s Scotch, I reflected that two months had elapsed since surgery at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Then, by co-incidence, or what a Jungian might name synchronicity, I was re-reading a page in the 1959 “Lenten Manual” compiled by Robert Cope, a friend and colleague I have not seen for many years.

Bob printed a quote from the late Irish playwright, Sean O’Casey, from “Sunset and Evening Star”:

“Even here, even now, when the sun had set and the evening star was chastely touching the bosom of the night, there were things to say, things to do. A drink first! What would he drink to – the past, the present, the future? To all of them! He would drink to the life that embraced the three of them! Here, the whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down, and with only the serenity and the calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!”

So I drank to that. More importantly, I toasted the Fabulous Five (California, Arizona, Oregon, Virginia, Sarasota) who have done so much to ease the burdens of recovery. You know who you are. MY enduring gratitude is much deeper than I can ever express in words.

Then I read in the current (10/13) NEW YORKER, “... America in the nineties has produced a new demographic category – the Old Old, over 85.” I am now one of the Old Old. The article points out that this is the fastest growing age group. Being radical in religion, liberal in politics, slow of foot, this is the first time I have ever been in the fastest anything.

Perhaps this is a somewhat dubious distinction because we of this category are keenly aware that “every winding river winds at last to the sea.” More emphatically, however, there are those of us of the Old Old whose perceptions are sharpened and thankfulness increased. We meet the nights and greet the days with quiet thankfulness that we can laugh with the jokers and weep with the grieving; that we know and are known; that we love and are loved.

HURRAH!

About English

October 1, 1997

This doggerel appeared in “The Jeffersonian”, our newsletter.

I was reminded how difficult our Swedish forebears must have found our language.

We’ll begin with box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot... would a pair be beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set is teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth?
If the singular is this, and the plural is these,
Why shouldn’t the plural of kiss be kese?
Then one may be that, and three be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim.
So our English, I think you will agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

The Curious Curse Of Cain

July 29, 1997
Sarasota

(Genesis 4 1/25)

The story of Cain’s murder of Abel has several odd aspects, including the curious punishment the Lord pronounced on Cain: “you shall be banned from the soil, which opened its mouth wide to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. If you till soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall become a ceaseless wanderer on the earth.”

In this theme of “The Curious Curse of Cain” there are several points I submit for your consideration:

1) How the myth of Cain and Abel demonstrates that the ancient scriptures we call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly Genesis, are not a single document, without error, revealed by God, but a blending of ancient myths and legends from pre-historic tribes with unlike legends and cultures.

2) Then I would have you consider the difficulty of using scripture as a source of legal or religious authority with which, or by which, to judge alleged criminal acts.

3) Then I will use this old story as a bridge to our own times to ask whether in this modern, enlightened nation, as we attempt to deter homicides, we become confused and illogical as our emotions are whipsawed between justice and revenge.

First, the ancient scripture named “Genesis” – the story of beginnings – is not a single narrative but a blend of several ancient traditions. Almost all biblical scholars agree on that interpretation. The scholarly arguments deal with which stories are part of which of the 3 or 4 ancient cultural/religious deposits, usually named J, E, D, [and] P. Robert Pfeiffer, who was a noted bible scholar at Harvard, and whose textbook was used when I was studying these traditions, concluded that the Cain and Abel story was one of the stories from the “S” tradition (for “Seir”), coming from primitive tribes then located in Edom, near the Dead Sea.

The Cain and Abel story may have its origins in a saga of continuing feuds between nomadic Bedouins and settled agricultural peasants. The flocks of sheep and goats tended by Abel would be more characteristic of wandering tribes. Cain, a tiller of soil, represented a more settled agricultural culture.

When Cain and Abel brought their respective offerings to the Lord – Cain, an offering of the fruit of the soil; Abel, the choicest of his lambs – the Lord rejected Cain’s gift and accepted Abel’s. When the brothers had gone to the field, Cain angered by rejection, killed Abel. (A modern parallel may be the 19th century conflicts in the Western U.S. between ranchers and farmers, which at times were lawless, vicious, and murderous.)

The Lord, when he finds out about the murder of Abel, pronounces a curse on Cain, [and] tells him he will never be able to grow crops, and says, “You shall become a ceaseless wanderer on earth.” In addition, the Lord places a mark on Cain so that no one will kill him. The Lord, in this strand of tradition at least, did not believe in or practice capital punishment for murder. So Cain is banished.

Elie Wiesel, survivor of the Holocaust (in which he lost his father, mother, and sister), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and prolific author with great impact not only on Jewish thought but millions of persons in other traditions, in his book, MESSENGERS OF GOD, deals with Cain and Abel and comments (p. 40) “No other Biblical situation contains so many questions or arouses so many uncertainties.”

Wiesel asks many questions – each one formidable enough for a forum – where were the parents in this confrontation? Why did God favor Abel’s gift over Cain’s? He also comments that there is less Midrashic material (commentary) about Cain and Abel than any other Biblical figures.

My assertion, as a father to two sons, would be that you don’t reject one son’s gifts and accept the others – no way – not unless you are a stupid or vicious or unbalanced parent.

The curse is curious. As Alice in Wonderland said about her experiences, it gets “curiouser and curiouser.” There’s an “O Henry” twist or surprise ending. We read in the old story that Cain does NOT become a wanderer. He settled in the Land of Nod, “East of Eden”. Cain marries. Who is the woman if Adam and Eve were the first persons on earth? That has always been a provocative question for those who believe in the literal inerrancy of the Bible.

In the famous Scopes evolution trial in 1924, when Clarence Darrow was cross-examining William Jennings Bryan about the literal truth of the Bible, Darrow asked Bryan if he knew where Cain got his wife. Bryan answered, “No, I leave the agnostics to hunt for her.” That was a clever and crowd pleasing response, but ducked the question completely. Where did the people come from who lived in the city founded by Cain?

Did you ever wonder why Cain settled down and founded a city rather than becoming the ceaseless wanderer to which he had been sentenced? Why didn’t the Lord extradite Cain for violating parole? I assume the Lord couldn’t extradite because the Land of Nod was out of his jurisdiction; a different theological venue. The varying tribal cultures all had their own god or gods. All gods are jealous gods, I surmise, – emotional creatures.

There are fascinating developments in the city and culture of Cain. His great-great-great-grandson was Lamech, who was the first bigamist recorded in scriptures, for it says, “Lamech had two wives, Adah and Zillah.” By the way, there is no condemnation of Lamech for having two wives.

According to scripture, the children of Cain, Adah and Zillah, were remarkable. Jabal was the “ancestor of those who dwell in tents and amidst herds.” Jubal was the ancestor of all who play the pipe and lyre. Tubal-Cain began the art of metal working; and later became part of the Masonic tradition.

In other words, if one believes the Bible literally, the descendants of Cain, the Kenites, were the innovators of music, settled cities, the pastoral life and metal-working. That’s quite a heritage from Cain, who killed his brother and was cursed by the Lord. After all, according to many fundamentalists, “that’s what the Bible says.”

Lamech was not persuaded from his tradition that murder was evil. He orated to Adah and Zillah his wives,

“I have slain a man for wounding me
And a lad for bruising me.
If Cain is avenged seven-fold,
Then Lamech seventy-seven fold.”

Lamech represents a culture centuries removed from the more primitive days. Of course, the founding of cities, music, metal working did not begin in just one place, but among many peoples on the earth. The stories of Cain in the Land of Nod are the passed-down boasts of a tribal culture which was clever with tools, valued music, and was brutally fierce with its enemies.

Which brings me to the next point: There is great difficulty in using scripture either as the source for a standard of morals or for the proper dispensing of justice.

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 1/17) represent the most famous code of conduct in the Judeo-Christian heritage, even though the stated rules have been persistently broken by countless individuals and most nations. The 6th Commandment is usually quoted, “thou shalt not kill.” In some translations it is, “thou shalt not murder.” This would seem to exempt the soldier in war, the policeman on duty or a person defending a home because the intention is not to murder but to take action in fidelity to one’s pledge, duty or self-protection.

But such exemptions would not seem to apply to such death penalty offences as:

“He that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be be put to death.” (Exodus 21:12 14/07)

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus 22 v. 18)

“Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath rest unto the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.”

“The man that commiteth adultery with another man’s wife, the adulterer, and the adulteress shall be put to death.” (Leviticus 20, 1/16)

“He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be surely put to death.”

You may recall the rather indelicate story of Onan (Genesis 38/30) who was killed by the Lord for practising birth control. If true then, or could be true now, there would be a goodly number of millions subject to capital punishment. Just about every man, guys.

There are many other offences punishable by death found in these old scriptures. These cruel punishments are supposed to be The Word of God. But also, the same god that pronounced, “thou shalt not kill (or murder)”.

The Lord, who paroled Cain in Genesis 4, is certainly inconsistent with the harsh god of Leviticus and parts of Exodus. In the curious curse of Cain also, Cain is quoted as saying, “my punishment is greater than I can bear.” That line has been the text for innumerable sermons about the destructive powers of remorse and guilt. But, as we have seen, Cain not only could bear it, but founded a city and a long line of creative and fierce descendants, one of whom became a role model and hero for the distinguished Masonic order. That’s another O Henry twist.

Throughout the ages there have been many offences punishable by execution. In 1994 Congress added the death penalty for more crimes: drug felonies and drive-by shootings. In our country, murder and treason are punishable by death. In recent weeks, Timothy McVeigh has raised the national consciousness of the death penalty. There was satisfaction when the jury decreed he must die. The overwhelming sentiment and belief is that it is proper and just that he should die for the terrible crime for which he was found guilty.

Since the Supreme Court restored the legality of the death penalty in 1976, nearly 400 have been executed since Gary Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in Utah. In Florida, executions in the electric chair have been temporarily suspended since the grisly experience of Pedro Medina in April. When the switch was turned on, orange and blue flames flared from the leather mask around his head.

I am one of a minority who is still opposed to capital punishment, the death penalty. I am aware that 8 out of 10 people favor the death penalty. Although outnumbered 4 to 1, I still believe that violence in our society will not be cured by violence. In my judgment revenge is the predominant motive for the death penalty. But satisfying the feeling for revenge never has brought back one victim from the grave.

In our nation, there are more than 3,200 persons on death row waiting for execution. Texas has the most, 448; California next with 444; Florida third with 350 persons waiting to be strapped into the electric chair in Stark.

Even if you completely disagree with me on the death penalty, are you willing that innocent persons be executed? A study this year by a University of Florida scholar, Michael Radelet, showed nearly 70 inmates have been released from death row in the past 25 years because of doubts about their guilt. About 10 days ago (July 14) NBC News had a similar story – doubts about the guilt of some who have been sentenced to death. This week – O’Dell.

Other studies in the past have disclosed much the same results. The Veach Committee, a few years ago, sponsored a study that showed at least 25 innocent persons were executed. Ernest van de Haag, then of Fordham University, was quoted as saying that 25 wrongful executions were an acceptable number. I do NOT find this an acceptable number. An innocent person who is executed would not find this an acceptable number. Neither would his/her family and friends.

Capital punishment has been abolished in most of the Western world. Law changes. We reject execution the many ways prescribed in the old scriptures and in laws throughout the centuries. It is not easy to forget that there was a time when people were executed for not believing in the Trinity. Laws attempt to adjust to the needs of society but adjustment is usually slow and lags behind needs and developments.

The curious curse of Cain, and the death penalties prescribed in Leviticus and Exodus are, a remnant of customs and mores with no relevance for society’s fumbling attempts to be just and fair.

Even though polls indicate that those of us opposed to the death penalty are outnumbered 4 to 1, I still do not believe that we will stop people from killing people by killing people.

BENEDICTION:

Hold on to what is good,
even if it is a handful of earth

Hold on to what you believe,
even if it is a tree which stands
by itself.

Hold on to what you must do,
even if it is a long way from
here.

Hold on to life,
even if it is easier letting go.

Hold on to the hand of your neighbor,
even when we are apart.

(adapted from Pueblos of New Mexico)

Millions For Muscles

July 15, 1997

There has been a confluence of recent events and an historic singularity that stimulated my thoughts about the astonishing rewards that society bestows on the star athlete.

This conjunction associates the baseball players in the Major Leagues’ All-Star Game, the notorious Tyson biting Holyfield’s ear twice, and the story of Maximin in the 7th Chapter of Volume I of Edward Gibbon’s (unabridged) THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

If a baseball player is a star, he can command millions of dollars a year. Albert Belle has an eleven million dollar contract for five (?) years. Similarly many others although for lesser millions. I believe the New York Yankees have a salary budget for players of sixty-nine million dollars this year. At the end of the season, there will be a number of players qualifying as “free agents”, who will move to another team for a raise in the millions of dollars.

I came across a bit of doggerel verse which seemed apropos:

“The Center Fielder:
In the shadow of DiMaggio he stands,
Eclipsed by Willie, Mickey and the Duker,
Who – despite his mediocrity – commands
more lucre.”

Mike Tyson’s purse in the Holyfield bout was thirty million dollars, or so it has been written. In being suspended for the outrageous “pay for chew” action in twice biting Holyfield’s ear and being fined 10% of his purse, Tyson must make do with about twenty-seven million. My sympathy is extremely difficult to locate. But then, boxing as a sport has never appealed to me – I have never attended a bout.

However much I am surprised by such dollar rewards for professional athletes, I make no judgment on the merits of such pay. The immense sums paid to some corporate CEOs seem more out of whack than the incomes of professional athletes. The economics of professional baseball and football are neither in my area of information nor my capacity for comprehension.

But in rewards for athletes, Maximin tops them all because his physical prowess made him a Roman Emperor about 1862 years ago.

According to Gibbon, about 230 C.E. Emperor Alexander Severus with his troops was in Thrace, returning from an expedition. Maximin was a young barbarian of giant stature who asked to compete for the wrestling prize in the contest being staged by the Praetorian Guard. In one afternoon, Maximin threw sixteen of the best wrestlers of the troops; the next morning he threw six more.

These feats were enough to secure Maximin attention from the Emperor. Then he was chosen to head the 4th Legion, which, under his stern leadership became the best disciplined of the whole army.

In 235 C.E. the troops proclaimed Maximin Emperor, and they hastened to murder Alexander Severus. (A frequent pattern of leadership change in those declining years of the Roman Empire).

Gibbon writes that Maximin was eight feet tall, could drink seven gallons of wine in a day; eat thirty to forty pounds of meat a day; could crumble stones in his hand and tear up small trees by the roots. Somewhat unbelievable, but Gibbon who frequently expresses some skepticism about the reliability of some of his ancient sources, does not do so in the case of Maximin.

Maximin had the wealth of the Empire at his hand – money and privileges even the highest paid quarterback or left-fielder would envy. But like so many of his predecessors and successors, Maximin was a cruel despot, executing thousands for supposed treasonous acts.

Thus, in 238 C.E. Maximin, along with his son, was abandoned by the Guard and murdered by the troops. His brief years as Roman Emperor reminded me of Shakespeare’s lines in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, (Act II, Sc. 2), where Isabella says to Angelo,

“O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is
Tyrannous
To use it like a giant.”

Magnetism, Charm, Attraction – There’s No One Suitable Word

June 25, 1997

Listening to Lena Home doing “Just one of those things” on a CD of Cole Porter music, I remembered her “star” qualities. Then I noticed somewhere in a news item that she is now eighty years old.

In my generation there was an adage or axiom about her: If you did not fall in love with her, don’t bother to go home. Just take a taxi to the funeral home; you are dead already!

I believe that is an accurate appraisal. Lena Home has surpassing beauty, extraordinary musical talent, charismatic personality, and that undefinable and matchless quality called “presence.”

There was no need for me to take a cab to the funeral home.

The “Rot Of Power”

June 4, 1997

This is a sequel to the March 5 “Musing” about Lord Acton and his famous and accurate adage that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, plus his succeeding sentence that “Great Men are almost always Bad Men.”

The “rot of power” is a phrase used by Howard Fast in his book, BEING RED (1990, Houghton Mifflin). Howard Fast was a member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. from 1944 to 1957. His memoir is a gripping story of his idealism, activism, disappointments, persecution and prosecution by those of power in our government; and then his bitter disillusion with the Communist Party, from which he resigned in 1957.

In those years, I had some cause to know a small measure of such feelings so I resonated to his recollections. Whatever else one might say about Howard Fast, he can write! This edition of BEING RED lists forty-six other books he has written. Probably the best known are FREEDOM ROAD and SPARTACUS. I’m grateful to Rose for lending me her copy of BEING RED.

Howard Fast deals with the anti-communist hysteria in our nation following World War II. It was so easy to forget that without the Soviet Union’s courageous and costly battles against the Nazi invading armies the end of WWII in Europe might have been agonizingly prolonged. The Nazi failure to conquer the Soviets was vital, particularly in the siege of Stalingrad; followed by the capture/surrender of the German armies led by General Von Paulus, and including as I recall it, about 20 of his Generals.

If these Nazi divisions had been available to defend the Western Front and help repel the Allied invasion on D-Day, it is quite reasonable to assume that the lives of immeasurable thousands more American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops would have been killed, maimed or captured. But there was little gratitude expressed in our nation for that.

Instead there were the slanders, bullying and unsubstantiated charges by the likes of McCarthy, Cohn, Rankin, and Parnell Thomas, which ruined the careers and lives of persons who refused to bow and scrape before the “Un-American” committees. J. Edgar Hoover was the “shadow dictator”. Activities he initiated or approved along with Senator McCarthy and his ilk caused fear to spread like an unchecked virus throughout our land.

Troilus says to Cressida (Act III Sc. 2):

“Fears make devils of cherubims;
They never see truly.”

That insight was amply demonstrated in those difficult years.

There was bizarre comedy occasionally in the midst of lies and slanders. Historian Walter LaFeber, reporting on Senator McCarthy’s attacks on experienced foreign service officers, noted that James Byrnes, former Secretary of State, tried to defend one victim, saying, “since the officer was reared in the State of Georgia he could not be expected to have any Communist tendencies.” (The historian also notes, “it didn’t work.” - THE AMERICAN AGE, p. 504)

The trial of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee members in 1947 embodies the savage paranoia of the times. During the Spanish Civil War, a physician, a citizen of the U.S.A., organized medical services for the Republican forces fighting dictator Franco, including ambulance service and shipments of medical supplies from New York to Spain. Fast writes, (p.144):

“When Spain fell to Franco, Dr. Barsky returned to private practice in New York, but he could not and would not sever his connection with the Spanish Republicans, so many of whom had escaped Franco by crossing the Pyrenees into southern France, and as soon as the war in Europe ended, Dr. Barsky went to Toulouse and arranged for the purchase of an abandoned convent which would then be turned into an excellent hospital. Arrangements were made with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee to operate the hospital and to distribute food and medicine among the Spanish refugees.” The funds were raise in America under the aegis of the Joint Anti-Fascist Committee; the appeal being named the Spanish Refugee Appeal.

Because the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee refused to give the names of other members and donors to the Congressional Un-American Committee, Fast and ten others, three women and seven men, were indicted for conspiracy and contempt of Congress. The Judge immediately threw out the conspiracy charge. But they were convicted on the contempt charge because they would not tell the names of friends and supporters of the Spanish Refugee Appeal. They were sentenced to three months in Federal prison, which they served.

This is just one instance of a multitude of violations of constitutional rights by congressional committees.

Disillusion came to Howard Fast also from the cause he had believed and served at great personal cost. He began to have doubts about the rigid orthodoxy of the “party line” and about conditions in the Soviet Union. A speech by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 confirmed that under Stalin, there were mass repressions and killings, anti-Semitic actions, including killings of Jews. The Stalin crimes, revealed by Khrushchev stunned Party “faithful”, particularly in the United States. The Communist Party dwindled to almost complete ineffectiveness in the U.S.

Howard Fast resigned from the Communist Party in 1957 and immediately became almost a “non-person”to those still obedient to the “party line.”

For an insight into those years, I recommend BEING RED. If you doubt Howard Fast's story because he was a Communist Party member for thirteen years, read other accounts of those troubled, fear-ridden years.

I end these remarks with the conclusion with which Fast ends his book. Fast and his wife, Bette, traveled to Europe in 1957 on the Queen Mary. Also aboard was Ambassador Fedorenko of the Soviet Union. He sought out Howard Fast for a long conversation to find out what had happened to the Communist Party [of the] U.S. They talked and talked.

Finally, Fast asked Fedorenko, “You’ve thrown a lot of questions at me. Will you answer one question of mine?”

“If I can.”

“Then tell me, Ambassador Fedorenko, when your country, united with China, could have kept the peace forever, why did you split?”

“His answer if fixed in my memory for as long as I shall live. ‘Fast’ he said to me, ‘Why should you imagine that the people who rule my country are less stupid than the people who rule yours?’”

Then I thought of something that Albert Camus wrote (“Bread and Freedom”, p. 89)

“After all, if freedom had always to rely on governments to encourage her growth, she would probably be still in her infancy or else definitely buried with the inscription, ‘another angel in heaven.’”

Sun And Shadow On Patriots’ Day

April 19, 1997

“Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud,
And after summer evermore succeeds
barren winter with his wrathful nipping cold;
So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.”

(Gloucester to Humphrey, HENRY IV, Act II Sc. 4)

The Shakespeare quotation meshes with my feelings on this two-hundred-twenty-second anniversary of the early rebellions of our American Revolutionary War. When I was young, this was an important holiday in Massachusetts.

In elementary school we had memorized appropriate poems: Longfellow’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”:

“’Twas the eighteenth of April seventy-five
Hardly a roan is now alive
Who remembers that fateful day and year...”

Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” began:

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

But now there are shadows, “The brightest day hath a cloud.” April 19 is also the second anniversary of the worst terrorist event our country has known: The bombing in Oklahoma City destroyed a building and killed 168 people. Most of us will not soon forget the piteous sight of the bloodied children being carried away from the site of the bomb blast.

Perhaps when you read this, the trial of the accused bomb plotters will have ended, one way or another. However much some people might hate, resist and hate the Federal Government, to express rebellion by killing 168 innocent persons is both unforgivably murderous and completely asinine. How any movement, “militia” or whatever, justifies such acts of hate is beyond my comprehension.

I recalled, perhaps irrelevantly, Robin Lane Fox and her history of early Christian leaders and their prejudicial bias against human sexuality:

“In 251, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, was telling his Christians that the plague in the city had its advantages; it allowed Christian virgins to die intact.” (p. 251)

If the Bishop was trying to distill some good out of the tragedy of the plague, his effort was obsessionally stupid.

April 19 is also the fourth anniversary of the final action in the Branch Davidian events near Waco, Texas, where 81 lives were lost. Although some circumstances of that tragedy still seem cloudy, it is another example of the terrible consequences that can happen when a religious cult disdains and shuts out the world wherein we all must live. Where, also, we must get along together, somehow, even when that world is insecure, hazardous, or just displeasing.

Such are shadows on Patriots’ Day. But also I remember sunny days and happy events. First of all, we celebrated on the 19th, not two days later in order to create a “long” weekend. Because I am not pleased with that transference, you may think me a “purist” or overly sentimental, but so be it.

April 19 was the traditional day when we planted peas in the backyard vegetable garden. In a normal growing season, they would be ready for picking July 4.

That was important because there were several years when, on the 4th of July, Grandfather John Wilson would bring a large, fresh salmon for the holiday meal. To go with the baked salmon there would be boiled new potatoes and fresh peas from the garden. In my mind’s ear I can still hear the rattle of the peas hitting the pan as they were stripped from the pods – like a tiny machine gun. What a meal!

But my associative memories are always enhanced when they relate to my grandfather. A skilled ship’s carpenter, carpenter, pattern maker, he was gentle, wise and strong. His daughters and sons-in-law deferred to him and listened to him, not just because he was family but a man who deserved every bit of the respect given him. He was the honored Patriarch of the family.

Back to April 19 and the Boston Marathon. Nowadays the report is that a million people now gather along the 26 mile, 385 yard route. When I was a boy, large crowds lined the sidewalks, particularly from Kenmore Square to the finish line, then at the BAA Clubhouse.

On Patriots’ Day in the 1920s, the major league baseball teams would play two games, morning and afternoon. This gave spectators time to watch the leading runners after the morning game. If the Red Sox were at home, it was only a few minutes from Fenway Park to Kenmore Square. If the Braves were playing, Braves Field was on Commonwealth Avenue on the Marathon route. (The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee and then to Atlanta. The Atlanta Braves are a winning team-been in several world series. The old BOSTON Braves were not. When they won the pennant in 1914, they were called the “Miracle Braves.” But I have some fond memories of Braves Field - the Knothole Gang, Rabbit Maranville, Wally Berger and, notably, “Spahn and Sain and two days of rain”, a winning formula for the Braves.)

The Boston Marathon celebrated its 100th anniversary last year – the oldest and most famous marathon in the country. This year is the 101st running. But they’ll run on April 21, damn them. There will be 10,000 runners starting at noon. No American has won since 1983.

However, I remember a big winner from the early days. Clarence DeMar won seven times, I believe. He was a Boston hero because he worked in Dorchester and lived in Melrose. He was a printer. Pure amateurism prevailed then. No money prizes; no subsidies for training or living expenses or wearing a particular brand of running shoes. The winner received the traditional crown of laurel leaves and the famous beef stew of the BAA (Boston Athletic Association). All the finishers got the beef stew but only the winner the laurel crown.

Not only did I see Clarence DeMar leading the race several times but also early one Summer evening in Maiden Square as I stood on the sidewalk, there came the sound of running feet; and Clarence DeMar ran right by me, his bald spot shining with sweat. His year-round training schedule was to run home from :work, Dorchester to Melrose, about 15 to 18 miles every working day! What was I doing in Maiden Square? I don’t remember but as a boy I was always a bit of a wanderer.

In one of these musings, I’ll relate my singular experiences on Mt. Hood – NOT, I HASTEN TO ADD, in Oregon, but a county reservation in the Malden-Saugus area.

The length of this piece may emphasize how and why April 19 is to me one of the great dates in the roster of holidays.

Acton Was Accurate

March 5, 1997

[My] son John sent me the extended review of THE SECRET HISTORY OF ARMAND HAMMER, by Edward Jay Epstein. The book details the life of perhaps the #1 con man, swindler, traitor of the century. Armand Hammer bribed, lied, intimidated, bought-off any and all attempts to disclose his secret acts of treason, fraud and deceit.

I wrote John that I could not help but remember Lord Acton’s famous dictum that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What many people do not know or neglect is Lord Acton’s next sentence: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” These sentences are found in the “Acton-Creighton Correspondence,” one of the pieces in ESSAYS OF FREEDOM AND POWER. Lord Acton was reviewing THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY DURING THE REFORMATION by Bishop Creighton.

Lord Acton was writing more than a century ago. His reference to Great Men being Bad Men targeted not only persons in the field of religion: Luther, Cranmer, Calvin, the Popes, others, but also Mary Stuart, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Cromwell and Louis XIV. His many observations about power and great men/bad men applies to Armand Hammer in our day. We of the 20th century are aware also how flaws are revealed posthumously as well as currently in the character and behavior of our U.S. “great men.” E.g., Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon.

An offbeat reminder occurred to me as I write this – “Conway’s Law” – “In any organization there will be always one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.” I wonder in Hammer's case, who was fired that knew what was going on?

As usual, Shakespeare anticipated later wisdom when Brutus speaking of Julius Caesar says to Lucius:

“The abuse of greatness is
when it disjoins
Remorse from power.” (Act II, Sc. 1)

Who was this Lord Acton who wrote so wisely? I have not had access to a full biography but from the Preface and Introduction to ESSAYS OF FREEDOM AND POWER there are fascinating details. The Preface to this edition was written by Herman Finer; the Introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb, both scholars.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton was born in Naples in 1834 and died in 1902. His English family roots went back to the 14th century. His maternal ancestors were the Dalbergs, whose family estates were on the Rhine. His English father was an adventurer whose career was shady.

Dalberg-Acton, obviously wealthy as well as aristocratic, lived in several family residences in his growing years:Naples, Paris, Herrnsheim on the Rhine, Aldenham and London in England. He succeeded to the title Lord Acton upon the death of his father.

He was fluent in Italian, French, German and English. Himmelfarb writes that conversations at dinner were multi-lingual. He talked in German with his Bavarian-born wife; in English with his children; French with his sister-in-law and Italian with his mother-in-law.

Acton's scholarship was prodigious. Herman Finer noted, “I compute he read 20,000 books.” Is it possible? He died at the age of 68. If he started reading books at, say age 8, he had 60 years of reading. My arithmetic divides that into about 334 books a year for 60 years!!!

He was a pious Roman Catholic, but disagreed with the Vatican when the infallibility of the Popes was declared in the last half of the 19th century. His thorough and scholarly defence of his position is found in his essay, “Conflicts with Rome.” But his disagreement on this crucial issue did not cause him either to leave the Roman Catholic Church as some others did, or lead to his excommunication as some others were. Lord Acton lived and died a believing Roman Catholic (but he did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope).

About 1890, he faced grave financial difficulty. It appeared that he would have to sell his vast library of books, documents, manuscripts, and original sources. However, Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy American, came to the rescue and purchased Acton’s library. But Carnegie permitted it to remain in Acton’s custody for his lifetime. That huge collection is now at the Cambridge University Library along with hundreds of boxes of his notes for the book he intended to write and never did: THE HISTORY OF LIBERTY.

In 1895, Lord Acton was named to the prestigious post of Regius Professor in History at Cambridge University, where he initiated and made progress on the famous CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY. What was hugely ironic in this appointment is that as a young man, Lord Acton was refused admission as a student to Cambridge because he was Roman Catholic. Truly a remarkable man of priceless integrity. What a contrast to Armand Hammer.

Well, John, you couldn't have known that you would spark all this when you sent me that book review.

Transitory Friends

February 11, 1997

Polonius is usually played as a pompous toadie to King Claudius in HAMLET. Yet Shakespeare has Polonius say to Laertes, his son:

“Those friends thou hast, and their
adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul
with hoops of steel.”

Splendid advice. However, in our mobile society, friendships can become transitory. We move, and even good friends are memories not intimates. That has been true for me, and I have reflected with some sadness on that experience many times.

Recently I have been remembering my friend, “Woofie” – his given name was Wilfred, but only the 5th and 6th grade teachers called him that. To everyone else he was Woofie. I never met his parents, so I don’t know what they called him.

I must have been 11 years old and in the 6th grade. I started thinking again about Woofie after seeing Al Pacino’s movie about Richard III, particularly the battle at Bosworth Field where Richard vainly cries, “A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

You see, it was Woofie who provided me with my one and only experience on a horse.

Woofie, although a year or two older than I, was in the same grade at school. He had been “kept back”, as we used to say, a couple of times. Although older, he was shorter than I was, but stocky and strong. He had told me more than once that he was going to run away from home so he could be a jockey.

So it must have come about that he knew I had never been on a horse. So, one Saturday morning who should arrive at my home but Woofie and a horse. He told me the horse belonged to his father and maybe it did. It was a work-horse and usually pulled a dump cart.

The horse was large! In order to mount I had to stand on the top step of the front stoop. We both climbed on, riding bareback with Woofie holding the reins. I doubt if any saddle could fit its huge back. Astride the horse, my legs were straight out; the horse’s back was that broad. I remember that it was not that comfortable. We rode for a couple of streets. The horse walked. I doubt if it could trot, let alone run. That’s my only experience horse-back riding.

That same year Woofie and I got into trouble at school. We were playing catch on the school grounds and the ball broke a classroom window; “Run”, said Woofie and we ran. Of course we were known and severely reprimanded. I can’t remember who paid for the window, my parents, perhaps.

Woofie then got into big trouble. He was sent to the principal’s office, Mr. Arnold. Mr. Arnold was a slight, gray-haired man to the best of my recollection. His office was on the second floor of Horace Mann School.

Woofie stopped me on the way home and told me that he had “thrown Mr. Arnold down a flight of stairs.” I had doubts that Mr. Arnold was “thrown” but he might have been pushed. Woofie was capable of that.

I never saw Woofie again. He was expelled from school and ran away from home. I doubt if he became a jockey, he would have been too heavy. But he might have become a groomer or a trainer. I have hoped from time to time that he made out O.K. Shakespeare has Marianna say to Isabel (MEASURE FOR MEASURE, Act V, Sc. 1):

“They say best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much better
For being a little bad...”

When I read that, Woofie is one of those I think about.

A paragraph by Paula Spencer in the current “Reader’s Digest” was another stimulus to write about Woofie:

“Because in addition to our friends of the heart – the traditional, everlasting ideal – it is rich with friends of the road who, like James Michener’s cowpokes, herd with you for a particular stretch and no farther. These brief friendships are equally intense, equally necessary, equally worth treasuring as any other, and for the duration of that ride you can’t survive without them.”

Favorite Literary Works

February 5, 1997

“I had rather than forty shillings
I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets
here.”
(Slender, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR)

I am neither an English teacher nor a literary critic. But there are examples of writing so superior that I have again and again read them. Why do they grab me? Structure, logic, the irreplaceable verb, adjective or noun, an economy of words that dares me to look at myself and the human condition, informing with literary charm, striding with ebullience the less-trod paragraph paths? All or most of these qualities in felicitous arrangement.

An incomplete (off the top of my head) list of favorites that I have read again and again would comprise these (in no particular order of priority):

Shakespeare:
Henry V’s orations to his troops on the eve of battle.
Hamlet’s soliloquy.
Portia on the quality of mercy.
Macbeth’s despairing soliloquy.
Jacques’ Seven Ages of Man.

George Bernard Shaw: Preface to ST. JOAN

Charles Dickens: DAVID COPPERFIELD

Arthur Bryant: ENGLISH SAGA 1840-1940

Albert Camus:
“Reflections on the Guillotine,” found in RESISTANCE, REBELLION AND DEATH
The Last paragraph of “The Artist and His Time”, also found in RESISTANCE, REBELLION AND DEATH.

Lord Acton: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM AND POWER

The Book of Amos in the Hebrew scriptures

The Gospel of Mark in the Christian scriptures

Alfred Newboldt: “Drake’s Drum”

Barbara Tuchman: THE GUNS OF AUGUST

Abraham Lincoln: The Second Inaugural Address

What would your list comprise?

You may have noted that I do not refer to my choices as “classics.” I remembered Mark Twain’s definition of “classic”: “A book people praise but don’t read.”*

I worry a bit in these years nearing a new millennium. When sci-fi writer, Ray Bradbury wrote, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading,” he touched a painful possibility.

So, dear reader, along with your aerobics, work, walks, sports, good conversations laced with fine wine or single-malt Scotch, occasionally signal “time-out”. Read a book; read again and again that which illuminates a human condition, a hope, a vision, or just simply entertains.

* Editor’s note: the actual quote is, “Something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”