De Ole Folks at Bay, or Massa's in de Cole Cole Ribber

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t’s Stephen Foster Memorial Day in the United States, for what that’s worth. This racist composer of some of the most insipid songs ever to bore into a listener’s brain apparently has his own day—the day of his untimely death, like those honoring Χian saints and martyrs. Why I don’t know. It’s not as if we don’t have real composers in this country to honor—Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, Ornette Coleman, Florence Price, or Billy Strayhorn (to name but a few).

Ah, but who can forget such beloved compositions as “Massa’s in de Cole Ground,” “Gwine ter Run all Night” (a.k.a. “Camptown Races”), “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” or “Old Folks at Home” (a.k.a. “Way down upon de Swanee River”)? I sure as hell wish I could. I could extend this list easily, but nausea overwhelms me. I mean, seriously, these are the lyrics to one of his most celebrated songs:

Camptown ladies sing dis song, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
Camptown race-track five miles long, Oh, doo-dah day!
I come down dah wid my hat caved in, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
I go back home wid a pocket full of tin, Oh, doo-dah day!

Gwine to run all night!
Gwine to run all day!
I’ll bet my money on de bob-tail nag,
Somebody bet on de bay.

Really? This clown deserves his own day? I guess in all fairness he’s not as fucking awful as Francis Scott Key, but that’s a low bar to get over. And he did write some catchy melodies, almost at a level with Barry Manilow. (Who can forget “Like a good neighbor | State Farm is there” or “You deserve a break today”? Again, I wish I could.) But is that really enough?

Seriously, anybody can write a Stephen Foster song. Just plunk away at the black keys on the piano, set it to a primitive harmony, ladle in syrupy lyrics about de ole plantation days, and you’re ready to go. An instant American classic.

Toxic Femininity

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 see in the news that a thirteen-year-old girl managed to escape from the man who kidnapped her, murdering her mother and father in order to keep them from being “barriers” to his violent project. I feel confident that Nancy Rommelmann and her fellow journalist Leah McSweeney will soon be explaining how this is an example of “toxic femininity” and urging that the girl “just get over” her parents’ murder and learn to live with things—you know, choose not to be a victim and all that.

I mean, gee whiz, shouldn’t we think of what poor Jake Thomas Patterson must be going through? What young man hasn’t at least considered murdering a teenager’s parents and carrying her off to a remote cabin in the woods? That’s just how young men are. It certainly shouldn’t be allowed to blight his future prospects—boys will be boys etc. Let’s all try to forgive him and put this whole unpleasant business behind us without getting into victim culture and all those sorts of distasteful things. Brett Kavanaugh would understand.

Think about it. In a few years maybe we’ll be seeing Justice Patterson nominated to the Supreme Court. He’s certainly got the qualifications for it—at least in the Dopey Don’s America. A callous indifference to human life, a strong desire to achieve his own ends whatever the cost to others—and not one, but two actual murders under his belt. Maybe they didn’t have the prominence of Jamal Khashoggi, but surely the removal of every “barrier” counts.

President Trump should consider it. That is, assuming he can ever manage to get the U. S. government open again.

Another Corrupt Politician Out (2008)

[Originally posted at Rational Rant on 11 January 2008]

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ccording to the New York Times, John T. Doolittle, who along with fellow-travelers Richard Pombo and Tom Delay did so much to gut environmental laws for the benefit of private corporations, is planning to step down.

WASHINGTON — Representative John T. Doolittle, a California Republican who has suggested he is almost certain to face criminal charges in a Congressional lobbying scandal, announced Thursday that he would retire from the House next year.

The announcement by Mr. Doolittle, 57, who is in his ninth term in Congress and was once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, made no reference to the criminal investigation by the Justice Department, which has centered on his connections to the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Last April, Mr. Doolittle’s home in suburban Virginia was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of that inquiry, and his wife, a campaign fund-raiser, was subpoenaed for her financial records.

The aptly-named Doolittle spent his time in Congress attempting to destroy the endangered species act and to make sure that nothing was accomplished on virtually any environmental front. Given this record it is no surprise that the California Republican had ties to corrupt lobbyists. The Times added:

Justice Department officials would not comment Thursday on the status of the criminal investigation against Mr. Doolittle, who is among nearly 20 House Republicans to announce that they will voluntarily leave Congress over the next year. Prosecutors appear to be focused on business connections between Mr. Doolittle’s wife and lobbyists, including Mr. Abramoff, who might have sought to influence his vote.

...Until this week, Mr. Doolittle publicly rebuffed calls for his resignation and said he was eager to seek another term. Branding his critics within the Republican Party as “weasels,” he continued until several days ago to seek donations for a re-election campaign this November.

I wonder what happened to change his mind. [11 Ja 2008]

The Washington Clown-Fest (1999)

[From my pre-weblog, 9 January 1999. Yeah, it’s a day late.]

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here’s probably no good reason to put in anything here, really, but this impeachment farce continues in Washington, and I might as well get something down about it. It’s unbelievable that Congress has sunk this low, to use the power of impeachment for what can only be described as narrow partisan ends, but there it is I guess. Nobody I’ve talked with gives a damn about any of this—the general opinion seems to be a let’s-get-this-damn-thing-over-with attitude. Detachment is the only way to handle this idiocy. This bizarre defense the Republicans (my own party, God help me) keep coming up with is like an incredibly bad sleight-of-hand trick. It’s not what Clinton did that’s important—it’s the fact he lied about it. That’s the real issue. Don’t look at the goldfish bowl I’m trying to hide behind my back—you’re supposed to be looking over here, where I have the sheet in the shape of a bowl. Come on, audience—now I’m going to do it again, and this time try to follow the trick—look at what I want you to, and not at what I’m really doing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. For God’s sake, people, come off it! The only issue here is whether having an “inappropriate relationship” with an employee is in fact a high crime or misdemeanor on the level of treason or bribery—or election fraud or selling arms to our nation’s enemies. If so then the issues of lying under oath or obstruction of justice assume a serious cast and we can talk seriously about maybe removing the president from office. But without that it’s all dust and cobwebs. And when the Republicans themselves keep on saying that the issue isn’t sex, it’s perjury (for which so far they haven’t presented the vestige of a case, as far as I can see, since no one has even addressed the question of materiality), or lying under oath, or obstruction of justice, or something or other like that—well, hell, they might as well just come out and say We don’t have any kind of a case, but we’re hoping somehow to get Clinton on a technicality. While I have little respect for the American people on the whole, this time they’re quite correct in their perception that the case is about Clinton’s sex life. Period. And the Republicans have only a lame magic trick they can’t quite get to work. [9 Ja 1999]

Martyrs Day (Panama)

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t’s Martyrs’ Day in Panama, and as this is the fifty-fifth anniversary of the event, I attempted to write something a bit more substantial than I’ve been able to manage recently, but events have conspired against me, and I’m now out of time to do anything.

So to hell with it. Maybe next year. There’s a decent article on it by Eric Jackson preserved at The Internet Archive, and some fascinating links at maestravida dot com. You can check them out if you like.

Raccoon Incident (1993)

[Passage from my journal for 8/9 January 1993:]

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oday. I got up about sunset—four or five in the afternoon—and went downstairs to see my father and have some stew. He had added considerably to the stew, and the flavor had improved somewhat. We conversed about various news items, and then he headed off for Canby. I watched May to Decem­ber (appeared to be the first episode), Are You Being Served?, and Waiting for God. The British comedy evening on KOPB. Worked some on notes dealing more or less with my Shakespeare book; mostly dealing with other Elizabethan playwrights, however.

The raccoons came by about 2:30 a.m., two of them, and they accepted eggs from me gladly. They seemed really happy about the unfrozen water I put out for them, and things seemed to be going well until one of them attempted to mount the other. The female (I suppose) ignored her assaulter for a minute or so, and then suddenly turned on him viciously, biting and clawing. He fought back, and they both zipped around the porch at high speed, bang­ing into things and making noises like cats fighting played back at twice normal speed. Eventually they fell off the porch and the one (I think it was the male) took off stiffly and unhappily, or so it looked to me. The other seemed shaken by the conflict too, and walked off a little later. Somebody came back and ate the rest of the food later, though. I didn’t see it; I was writ­ing. (In all fairness, I don’t know what sex either of them was; I would suppose the one attempting to mount would have to be male, but I’ve seen dogs attempt to screw other male dogs, so who really knows? And what do I know about the sex life of raccoons, anyway?)

Another Brick in the Goddamn Wall

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nd things continue to wobble uncertainly this Plough Monday; maybe it has something to do with it also being St. Distaff’s Day this year. It is the seventeenth day of the partial government shutdown here in the United States, and President Trump is apparently preparing to finally address the nation to make his case for a destructive and expensive wall along the nation’s southern border, instead of tweeting and twittering like a high-school kid.

I can’t imagine what he’s going to say. It will be pointless, of course, and stupid, and filled with lies, because that’s the kind of guy he is. A liar, a boaster—what else could it be? But that’s not the important part—rather, can he put on a performance that will turn the numbers around for him? Can he throw a spectacular enough tantrum to convince American voters to line up behind him? I mean, that’s what it comes down to. He needs something like Reagan’s stack of dollar bills reaching to the moon to pull that off—and even that may not be enough. He needs the American people behind the wall, rather than up against it.

The Get Back Sessions: Third Day

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kay. It looks like another not-so-joyous Yuletide season has come to its inglorious end with Three Kings Day, also known as Theophany, Þrettándinn, Epiphany, or Hierophany. (One of those I made up.) In Iraq it is Armed Forces Day, and in Laos Pathet Lao Day. Locally it is Recycling Eve—the day on which we put our recycling containers on the curb, hoping to find them empty the next day.

Fifty years ago at Twickenham the Beatles returned to work after a weekend break to attack their ill-fated Get Back project with enthusiasm bordering on apathy. Some effort was devoted to “Two of Us” and “Don’t Let Me Down,” but nobody seemed much interested in Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” or Lennon’s already-recorded “Across the Universe.” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” also received some attention.

The fates of these songs were to be, well, varied. The Beatles never did record “All Things Must Pass” Harrison would eventually record it on a solo album. The band also passed on doing anything further with “Across the Universe”; the already-recorded version would come out on an album benefiting the World Wildlife Fund. “She Came In Through the Bathroom” would appear as part of the second side of Abbey Road in a rather different incarnation. “Don’t Let Me Down” would appear as the B-side of a single.

As for “Two of Us”—its fate, like most of the songs intended for this project, was to be consigned to Limbo. In point of fact the Beatles, as a functioning group, never did issue any version of “Two of Us.” Or “The Long and Winding Road,” or “Dig a Pony,” or “For You Blue,” or “I’ve Got a Feeling.” By the time the album Let It Be came out, the Beatles were no more. Nor did its former members agree on the product.

And that, I would argue, makes it a posthumous production, with all the disadvantages posthumous publication entails. Worse yet it was explicitly condemned by one of its creators, relegating it to the Beatles Apocrypha.

I intend to pursue this issue at excruciating length in subsequent installments. But don’t hold your breath. I have the attention-span of a firefly.

Impeach the Motherfucker Day

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nd another day goes by with Homeland Security furloughed while our Clueless Leader tries to figure out how to get the government running again. (Hint: it involves not throwing a fit because some middle-aged woman called you a joke.) Gutless Mitch McConnell dithers indecisively, caught between a pillow and a soft place. Millions wonder about how to pay for their food and their housing, while garbage continues to pile up in our national parks, a visible symbol of the end of American greatness.

It’s like the old song says, I suppose—“I close my eyes and try to smile; I know things are bad and getting worse, But after all this I can rest awhile…” At least I wasn’t murdered in the back seat of my mother’s car like seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes. She didn’t do anything to provoke her killer, the authorities keep on saying. What the fuck? Of course she didn’t do anything—what could she have done? What could anyone have done to provoke anybody into opening fire on her? I mean, maybe if she’d been armed and about to blow the guy away, then maybe—just barely—you could argue some sort of provocation. Maybe. But otherwise it’s just so much empty gas.

If people are holding the notion that gun ownership confers with it the right to randomly blow people away when they “provoke” them then they have seriously misread the Second Amendment. (Not as badly as the Supreme Court did, maybe, but still pretty damn badly.) Freedom of gun ownership no more conveys the right to use it as you like than freedom to own a car conveys the right to run somebody down if you feel that they’re blocking your way. (I’m looking at you, Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah.) Or freedom of speech conveys the right to order a hit on a journalist you dislike.

Childish nonsense. Don’t talk to me about provocation. Get this guy off the street, and get this goddamn government working again. Otherwise I suggest that the slogan for this twelfth day of Χmas 12019 HE should be a hearty “Impeach the motherfucker!”

Bleak Moment: Still At Large

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t’s Independence day in Myanmar, as well as the Day of the Fallen against the Colonial Repression in Angola, the Day of the Martyrs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, World Braille Day, Ogoni Day, and of course the Eleventh Day of Χmas. Anti-American nuts are flipping out because one representative took her oath of office on a copy of the Quran, while another used the Constitution. (They should have used the old 1611 Bible translation, blessed by Saint James himself, I suppose. At least they took the oath of office, unlike those freshmen Republicans a few years back who skipped out on the whole business to get drunk.) Some of the rest of us are looking in awe at the pictures coming in now from places as close as the far side of the moon and as far as Ultima Thule. The killers of Jazmine Barnes (shot for no reason while riding in the back seat of her mother’s car) and Fallon Smart (killed by a hit-and-run driver whom the Saudi Arabian authorities helped escape from custody in Oregon) are still at large. Criminal polluters are being given a free hand to poison our air and water by the current corrupt administration in Washington. And in local news—I can’t get back to sleep after my dog woke me up to go for a walk.

Festival of Sleep

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he Republicans having failed at keeping the government open when they had control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, now look to the Democrats to bail them out of the difficulty they created for themselves. What’s in it for the Democrats is far less obvious. On this tenth day of Χmas the Dopey Don’s reckless gamble is looking more and more like a bust. Maybe sleeping in should be the order of the day.

But setting the Festival of Sleep aside, today is the fiftieth anniversary of the second day of the Beatles’ infamous Get Back project, a project that rode the roller-coaster of despair from a high sense of ennui to low and bitter recriminations. The concept was simple enough—the Beatles would write and rehearse an album’s worth of material which they would then perform live before an invited audience. The recording of that concert would then be released as their next album, and the film of the whole ordeal could serve as a television special or something. It would take a band a lot less talented than the Beatles to pull this feat off.

Still, at this point in the project spirits were as high as they would ever be, and boredom had yet to transform into umbrage. On the first two days the various members put their wares on display. McCartney had “Two of Us,” “The Long and Winding Road,” “Oh! Darling,” and “Let It Be.”  Lennon had “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Dig a Pony,” and “Child of Nature” (the last still evolving from the White Album sessions). Harrison had “All Things Must Pass” and “Let It Down,” while Starkey had “Taking a Trip to Carolina” and “Picasso.” They also took a look at “I’ve Got a Feeling” and resurrected “The One After 909” from their early days. (I may have left some out.)

Some of these would indeed end up being performed for the project, while others would turn up on Abbey Road or later solo albums. There were a number of passes at things that never did turn into proper songs and would probably be now forgotten if they hadn’t been immortalized by the tape recorders that the film crew kept running for possible later use. Some bits from the day did end up in the eventual film—Harrison getting an electric shock, for one, and part of a run-through of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”—but for the most part the material was left in decent oblivion.

Playing Chicken Day

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oday is the ninth day of Χmas, Isaac Asimov’s birthday (observed), the Feast Day of Saint Macarius of Alexander, and Run It Up the Flagpole and See If Anybody Salutes It Day. In Haiti it is Ancestry Day, and it’s Berchtoldstag in Switzerland. It is the twelfth day of President Trump’s partial shutdown of the American Government in protest over his not getting his way on funding a pet project. It is the last day of Republican control of the U. S. Government.

None of this exactly inspires me, to be honest. The American government shutdown is both stupid and suicidal, with Trump playing chicken with the incoming Democrats, who have nothing to lose. It’s like the scene in Groundhog Day when Bill Murray bets that the train is going to swerve first. It’s probably not going to happen, and there’s no reason that it should happen.

I don’t know why my party—the Republican Party—has decided to embrace such anti-American values as torture, welshing on debts, and breaking contracts. (Americans have of course done such things all along, but that doesn’t make them American values. What makes them values is embracing them, and celebrating them.) I guess I don’t care that much either; it’s just another milepost in American’s long degradation and fall.

Happy New Year!

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kay, it’s now the 12019th year of the Holocene Era and species are going out one by one as the water rises along with that old cosmic thermostat. The President of the United States is a blithering idiot who is incapable of figuring out what he needs to do just to keep his own government running. Americans are murdered by Saudi Arabian nationals, protected by their government, with seeming impunity. And all I can say is—ignore it, everybody. Enjoy our ride to extinction. It turns out that having large brains and an unparalleled ability to process data is not all it is cracked up to be. That we can see our own doom coming is useless when we can’t muster up the will or resolve to deal with it.

Imagine an Aluminum Pole (2014)

[Χμας repost from 2014]

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aturnalia week draws to an end with the decidedly nontraditional celebrations of Festivus and HumanLight. Festivus is the older of the two, going back to the 1970s (and first popularized by a Seinfeld episode of 18 December 1997), while HumanLight is the invention of members of the New Jersey Humanist Network in 1998 (first celebrated 23 December 2001).

Both seem to be intended as alternatives to the familiar Pagan / Christian / Commercial holiday of Christmas. Where Christian Christmas celebrates the intrusion of the paranormal into the natural world, HumanLight features “the unique human capacities for reason and compassion”. Where Commercial Chri$tma$ promotes consumerism, Festivus deliberately strips down the holiday (as symbolized by the unadorned aluminum pole rather than an elaborate Christmas Tree). Neither celebration has yet acquired the annoying religious advertising that unfortunately infests Christmas.

HumanLight, honestly, is so stripped-down you can hardly call it a holiday at all. It doesn’t really happen on any particular day—just whatever convenient occasion (a day off say) falls near the 23rd of December. There are no fixed elements because “Humanists tend to shy away from both rigid thinking and rituals”; it looks like little more than a social gathering with a color-scheme—red, blue, and gold, standing for reason, compassion, and hope. Celebration suggestions include those things that used to make Unitarian parties for kids so dismal—educational entertainment, audience sing-alongs, face-painting. Performances by magicians, jugglers, and comedians are also suggested. Forgive me for saying so, because I admire the sentiments of the occasion, but a HumanLight celebration is pretty damn close to my idea of hell.

Festivus, on the other hand, has its rituals. There is the low-maintenance Festivus pole, for example. There is the Airing of Grievances, where “each participant tells friends and family of all the instances where they disappointed him or her that year”. There is a Festivus dinner, followed by the Feats of Strength, in which “the head of the household tests his or her strength against one participant of the head's choosing”. It’s minimalistic, rather like a Samuel Becket play performed by a community theatre sans budget, but at least there is something distinctive about it. I believe I’ll pass, personally, but it sounds more fun than a HumanLight dinner featuring readings from Humanist authors, thank you.

As far as I can tell there are no Festivus songs. HumanLight has co-opted John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Madonna’s “Holiday”, and created in addition its own “HumanLight” and “Decorate the Tree of Knowledge” (Sonny Meadows), “These Three Flames” (Monty Harper) and “HumanLight Song” (Sara Brown). I haven’t heard any of them, except the ubiquitous “Imagine”, but they’ve got to be better than “The Little Drummer Boy” or “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (I say rashly).

Both holidays eschew the solstice with its pagan religious overtones. That may be a good thing, but ultimately seems to leave them rootless. At least the old traditions and symbols are ultimately rooted in the natural world around us. Evergreen boughs and holly, lights and candles—it doesn’t matter whether we are honoring Odin or Jesus or no-one at all. We continue the custom even as we assign different meanings to it. After all, as Latka Gravas (to borrow from a different situation comedy) observed, “the only things that separate man from the animals are superstition and mindless ritual.” These denatured holidays have all the fizz of flat cola. They leave out the heart of the thing, and are ultimately as unsatisfying as decaffeinated coffee or alcohol-free beer.

Prolog to a Lost Novel (1990)

[passage written 15/16 December 1990]

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e was dying; Epiphanes knew that for certain. Waves of pain washed across his body like the sea over Egypt’s shore; his thoughts no longer cohered one to the other. So much was left undone, so many things now he would never do in this life—and unfortunately for him, there would be another life. “You will never escape till you’ve paid the last penny”—Jesus had said that. Or was it his father? Carpocrates—he could hear his voice, telling him the precepts of Jesus, the god-prophet who had appeared a century before to liberate men from the cycle of re-birth, so that when a man died he would stay dead … if he’d done everything, if he’d paid that last penny. Hard to think. The pain—

His breath was leaving him now, never to be called back. His vain attempts to catch it only exhausted him and left him weak and lifeless. Okay, so this isn’t working, but this is only the detailed outline phase. Epiphanes struggled for his Breath, and felt his life ebb away. There was nothing to be done, nothing at all. He had power, wealth, disciples, but there was nothing now to prevent him going on to the next phase on the wheel, to a new set of experiences, to a new life. Make peace with your accuser, he thought weakly, make peace with the evil that is here-and-now, with the great Jailer who held the keys to the World….

Tortured by excruciating spasms he screamed aloud, red mist before his eyes. This was it, he felt, the last horrible moments of this life. Hello, Tomorrow—here comes the Future. And, as if on cue, before the red faded to final black, something reached out of the Nothingness before him. Something reached out, something seized him, and something took him away into its Nothing. The universe twisted, and Epiphanes was not.

Later his followers would say that he ascended into heaven. [15/16 Dc 1990]

An Unnerving Experience (1991)

[A passage from a letter, 15/16 December 1991]

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 just had a rather unnerving experience, though it turned out to be nothing serious—at least, not for me or mine. A man was shot and killed in the vacant lot next to our house. I visited my brother earlier today (literally yesterday; it’s a little after one in the morning), and when I came back, my house was cordoned off and the area was crawling with police. I couldn’t find out anything about what was happening; officers assured me that I could get in to my house but they themselves couldn’t help me. Several of them as well as various bystanders told me what happened—all very different stories—but apparently a man, who may or may not have been fleeing the scene of a crime, stabbed a policeman, who retaliated by shooting him. One bystander said that the man was handcuffed and lying on the ground when the officer shot him—four times, according to her. This is a little weird, even for North Portland. [16 Dc 1991]

[The “vacant lot” is now the site of a dance studio, and “our house” is now the site of a vacant office building.]

Rocks in the Sky (repost)

[Repost]

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any years ago, when I was maybe twelve or thirteen or so, I got a paperback book with a title something like The World’s Strangest Mysteries. I think somebody gave it to me as a gift—a birthday or something like that—but the details are foggy. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I read a fascinating account of how in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries people observed stones falling from the sky, or at any rate what seemed to be stones that fell from the sky. There was no science, however, that could account for such a phenomenon. How would rocks get into the sky in the first place, in order to fall? According to the story a famous American statesman (and scientist) who read of such an event observed “that it was easier to believe that two Yankee Professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven.”

I really liked that statement. I have quoted it on various occasions since then; I think I used it in a paper I wrote for some junior high class, though maybe I only considered it. I liked the statement because it asserts the correct position to take when presented with impossible evidence. I don’t know about the lying part, but when people assert things that are impossible it is far more likely that what they say isn’t true, that they are lying or mistaken, than that the impossible is possible. Witnesses can be wrong. The universe, on the other hand, is the way it is.

Of course, the other reason I like it is that its premise is wrong. Stones can, and sometimes do, fall from heaven. Although there was no known mechanism for getting stones into the sky, there was evidence that they had fallen. Multiple eyewitness accounts, destruction caused by their coming to earth, the stones themselves. It was impossible for them to have fallen, and yet they had. As Dr. Derringer liked to observe, “Eliminate the impossible. Then if nothing remains, then some part of the impossible must be possible.”

Several explanations had been proposed to get over the impossibility of stones getting into the sky in the first place. One proposed that the materials for the stones ascended in the form of vapor, collected in the atmosphere, combusted through some unknown chemical reaction, and fell to earth in the form of a solid precipitate. Another was that volcanoes hurled the stones into the sky, either from the earth, or perhaps from the moon. And then there was the possibility that small unseen bodies were orbiting the earth elliptically like comets, and occasionally burned up when passing through the earth’s atmosphere.

The trouble is that none of these made the impossible possible. Eventually scientists would get the hang of meteors, but that hadn’t happened yet on 14 December 1807. About seven on that morning a Mrs. Gardner of Wenham, Massachusetts, took a look out her western window and observed the moon apparently in the act of falling out of the sky. It was a fleeting impression only; an instant later she saw that what she was seeing was a fireball moving parallel to the horizon. Judge Wheeler at Weston, Connecticut, and Mr. Page at Rutland, Vermont, likewise observed the meteor. Many fragments of the stone were gathered up by eager collectors.

One of these collectors was Daniel Salmon of New York. A large piece of the meteor fell near his house, and he found himself possessed “of the largest fragment of the meteor Stone which has yet or proverbelly Ever will be found wighing 37 pounds”. It was “proved by Inconterable Evidence to have fallen on the Same Day the Meteor passed Over weston”; he and his neighbors had seen “that a Stone fell on the Same field where this fragment was found”. It was a field of rye and oats and the piece “was found 3 feet below the Surface and many Spires of Green Rye & Oat Stibbel at the bottom of the Cavity” as well as on the rock itself.  “[T]his must be an Evidence that it fell from the atmosphere” he wrote excitedly.

Naturally he turned to the President of the United States as the most appropriate person to examine his find. “I Should take Great pleasure in being the bearer of this New Visitor in the united Stats and to Give the Curious an oppertunity of Seing this Mass was not the Distance So Great and my Resorces Small” he wrote to Thomas Jefferson on 8 February 1808. Were it not for the cost he would be happy to exhibit it to the President and Congress.

Jefferson replied on 15 February 1808 with an astonishing letter that should be required reading for any investigator of fringe phenomena. About the stone he noted that “Its descent from the atmosphere presents so much difficulty as to require careful examination. But I do not know,” he continued, “that the most effectual examination could be made by the members of the National Legislature, to whom you have thought of exhibiting it.” A scientific body like the Philosopical Society of Philadelphia would be more likely to be qualified to examine it, and its results would carry more conviction. “We certainly are not to deny whatever we cannot account for. A thousand phenomena present themselves daily which we cannot explain, but where facts are suggested, bearing no analogy with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proofs proportioned to their difficulty. A cautious mind will weigh well the opposition of the phenomenon to everything hitherto observed, the strength of the testimony by which it is supported, and the errors and misconceptions to which even our senses are liable.”

Proofs proportioned to their difficulty—exactly. Extraordinary things require extraordinary evidence. “It may be very difficult to explain how the stone you possess came into the position in which it was found,” he noted. “But is it easier to explain how it got into the clouds from whence it is supposed to have fallen?” At that time, judging from the proposed explanations, it clearly was not.

An article by Benjamin Silliman, the chemist who would later be the first person to refine petroleum, proved to be a sensation. He and his fellow Yale professor James Kingsley, had thoroughly investigated the incident, and the evidence presented, including a chemical analysis of the fallen stone, made it hard to avoid the conclusion that a large rock had in fact fallen from the sky. There was enough evidence for Nathaniel Bowditch to form “An estimate of the height, direction, velocity and magnitude of the meteor, that exploded over Weston in Connecticut, Dec. 14, 1807,” published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1809.

As time went on, more observations were gathered, and more hypotheses put forth, it became clearer not only that stones did fall from the sky, but how they did it and why. By 1874 the situation had changed so dramatically that Silliman’s son (also named Benjamin) could tell the following anecdote:

Thomas Jefferson, then president of the American Philosophical Society, is reported to have said on this occasion, in the well-known language of David Hume regarding miracles, “that it was easier to believe that two Yankee Professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven”—a remarkable evidence of the limited knowledge of such subjects then prevailing in this country, even in the minds of the most cultivated people.

And this is the actual source of the statement. Not Jefferson, but the son of one of the “Yankee professors” in question, and—as Anna Berkes pointed out, a “Yankee professor” himself. Yeah, it’s another fake quotation, one of those sayings that’s too damn good to be true. Personally, I like what Jefferson actually wrote better—but it doesn’t have the snap of the “Yankee professors” version. Too bad we can’t have both.

A Lady of Syracuse (Χμας repost)

[Χμας repost]

T

oday is St. Lucy’s day. Standard reference sources say that all we know of Lucy is that she lived in Syracuse and was martyred during the Diocletian persecutions of 304 CE. So the Britannica, so the Catholic Encyclopedia, so Wikipedia. I have no idea on what they base this claim. There’s supposed to be a late fourth-century (CE) inscription in Syracuse supporting this, but I haven’t been able to get the text of it anywhere, and it appears that all it says is that her feast day was 13 December even back then. Even this minimal claim seems to be a considerable overstatement, unless there is something more substantial than her name appearing in ancient lists of martyred Christians.

Where evidence is lacking legend rushes in. And so it is with Lucy. Thus we read in Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Lives of Saints with Other Feasts of the Year According to the Roman Calendar (Ioachim Carlier, 1669) “The glorious Virgin and Martyr Saint Lucy, was born of honorable, and rich parents in the city Syracosa in Sicily. She was a Christian from her Infancy, and much inclined to all things of vertue and piety especially to conserue the purity of her soul, and to offer to God the flower of her Virginity.”

These things—her parents being rich and honorable, for example—aren’t really data, so much as the stage-machinery necessary to make the legend work. Or, to look at things the other way round, they are details deducible from the subsequent course of events. And the setup continues: “Her father being dead, her mother, who was called Eutychia, against the will of the damzel, promised to marry her to a yong Gentleman of prime quality, although a Pagan; but she went on deferring it, and seeking occasion to hinder it from taking effect.”

The version of Christianity that won out made a big thing of virginity. It was a way for showing contempt for the flesh—for the physical world. (Other versions seem to have shown their contempt for the flesh by indulging it, to judge from the condemnation of both pagan and Christian sources, but we have to infer their beliefs from the invective of their opponents. Sorry about that, Carpocrates.) In ordinary terms, easily graspable by most present-day Christians, Lucy’s father had left her money and/or property so she could make a good marriage and live the rest of her life in reasonable comfort. Eutychia looked around for just such a good match, and promised her to a likely young guy with good prospects.

This is the way things have been done for generations. I don’t say they’re right, but they are how our forebears managed their affairs. Marriage was an alliance between families, arranged by the parents, and essentially a financial transaction. At least that’s how it was until some wise guys decided to redefine marriage a few hundred years back. Literature from Romeo and Juliet to Love and Friendship to Fiddler on the Roof derived conflict from the effects of this redefinition.

Lucy was faced with a familiar dilemma—familial duty vs. love, with the twist being that this love was not carnal, but the spiritual love of her lord and savior. She needed a way out. “And our Lord presented her with a very fit one,” according to de Ribadeneyra, “by sending her mother Eutychia a long and troublesom flux of blood, which lasted her four years, without finding any remedy in Physitians and medecins.” Good move, Jesus. Afflict the mother with something incurable—there’s a miracle for you. A very Christlike thing to do.

“Then it happened,” (and now we’re switching to St. Ælfric’s account, as translated by W. W. Skeat) “at the mass, that the gospel was read how the woman was healed, that had a flux of blood, when she touched the Saviour’s robe.” Lucy seized her chance. “Then said Lucy, full of faith, to her mother, ‘'If thou believest, mother, this well-known gospel, believe that Agatha has merited something from Christ, since she suffered for His name that she might ever behold Him in her presence, in eternal bliss. Touch now her tomb, and thou shalt soon be whole.’”

This plan they carried out, and Lucy was assured by St. Agatha that her mother was now healed. (Agatha of course had long since died, but dreams were apparently considered valid methods communication in this world.) Lucy seized on this fortunate occurrence to promote her scheme. “Mother,” she said (and these speeches come from the Caxton-Elliot translation of The Golden Legend), “ye be guerished and all whole; I pray you for her sake by whose prayers ye be healed, that ye never make mention to me for to take an husband ne spouse, but all that good that ye would give me with a man, I pray you that ye will give it to me for to do alms withal that I may come to my saviour Jesu Christ.”

Eutychia replied, “Fair daughter, thy patrimony, which I have received this nine years, sith thy father died, I have nothing aminished, but I have multiplied and increased it; but abide till I am departed out of this world, and then forthon do as it shall please thee.”

“Sweet mother, hear my counsel: he is not beloved of God, that for his love giveth that which he may not use himself, but if thou wilt find God debonair to thee, give for him that which thou mayest dispend, for after thy death thou mayest in no wise use thy goods. That which thou givest when thou shalt die, thou givest it because thou mayest not bear it with thee. Give then for God's sake whiles thou livest: and as to such good as thou oughtest to give to me with an husband or spouse, begin to give all that to your people for the love of Jesu Christ.”

Apparently this now sounded like a good idea to Eutychia, or maybe Lucy just kept at her until she was fresh out of reason, but however it went Eutychia started selling off the jewels and land left for Lucy’s benefit, and Lucy had the pleasure of distributing necessities to the poor. One apparently quite recent account has it that when taking food down in the catacombs for the persecuted Christians hiding there she would wear a wreath with candles on it around her head to find her way—presumably a retrojection of the modern practice into the ancient story. They gave to the “poor and to strangers, to widows and exiles, and wise servants of God” (according to Ælfric), a form of wealth redistribution that would have infuriated de Sade, his disciple Ayn Rand, and the mad tea partiers alike. The old accounts say nothing of what tests they administered to the recipients—did they have them pee into a cup, or what?—but those widows and wise servants of God must have been living it up on Lucy’s inheritance.

In time word came to the ears of the guy Lucy was supposed to marry. He went (according to The Golden Legend) to Lucy’s nurse to try to find out what the hell was going on. She told him they were selling off their stuff because they’d come up with something “which had a more fairer and nobler heritage than his was, the which they would buy tofore ere they should assemble by marriage.” The guy helped them out, but “when he understood that she gave all for God's love … he felt himself deceived” and turned her in to the authorities.

Dragged before the Governor, Paschasius, Lucy defended herself as best she could. Sabine Baring-Gould observes “The Acts contain the particulars of a long discussion between the judge and the virgin, which bears a family resemblance to all other such discussions, and which, if genuine, would oblige the reader to believe that all early Christian martyrs were imbecile, and all their judges fools.” Ælfric observes “Then was Paschasius wroth, and they spake much, until he promised her a beating if she would not be silent.” Not content with that he moved on to threatening rape, and then to attempting to burn her alive, without success. Lucy simply refused to either be raped or set on fire. Baffled by her noncooperation Paschasius finally simply ordered a soldier to cut her throat, which for some reason worked when the other expedients failed.

And so passed Lucy of Syracuse on the 13 day of December. Sabine Baring-Gould observes, “It is not improbable that a virgin Lucy did suffer at Syracuse, and died by the sword, but the Acts are worthless.” A couple of centuries before Pedro de Ribadeneyra felt a bit more confident, saying “the story of her life and Martyrdom is taken out of very ancient, and authentical books,” though he notes that he does not know why she is “commonly painted with her eyes in a dish, which she holds in her hands”, nor does the story recount “that she plucked out her eyes to deliuer herself from a lasciuious yong man who persecuted her, as some do write.” Personally I’m not even that confident that she ever existed. And yet she is still celebrated, even if none of his really have the faintest idea why. There’s glory for you, of a sort.