January

Hans Castorp turned the cylindrical coffee-mill about in his hands.  It was, like the rest of the set, Persian rather than Turkish; the style of the engraving showed that, with the bright surface of the pattern standing out against the purposely dulled background.  He looked at the design without immediately seeing what it was.  When he did, he blushed unawares.

"Yes that is a set for single gentlemen," Behrens said.  "I keep it locked up, you see, my kitchen queen might hurt her eyes looking at it.  It won't do you gentlemen any harm, I take it.  It was given to me by a patient, an Egyptian princess who once honoured us with a year or so of her presence.  You see, the pattern repeats itself on the whole set.  Pretty roguish, what?"

"Yes it is quite unusual," Hans Castorp answered.  "Ha ha!  No, it doesn't trouble me.  But one can take it perfectly seriously; solemnly in fact--only then it is rather out of place on a coffee-machine.  The ancients are said to have used such motifs on their sarcophagi.  The sacred and the obscene were more or less the same thing to them."

"I should say the princess was more for the second,"  Behrens said.  "Anyhow she still sends me the most wonderful cigarettes, superfinissimos, you know, only sported on first-class occasions."   He fetched the garish-coloured box from the cupboard and offered them.

...

"Next delinquent," said the Hofrat, and nudged Hans Castorp with his elbow.  "Don't pretend you're too tired.  You will get a free copy, Castorp; then you can project the secrets of your bosom on the wall for your children and grandchildren to see!"

Joachim had stepped down; the technician changed the plate.  Hofrat Behrens personally instructed the novice how to sit and hold himself.
...
"We must first accustom the eyes," the Hofrat was heard to say, in the darkness.  "We must get big pupils, like a cat's, to see what we want to see. ...  Eyes open!" he commanded.  "The magicking is about to begin."  Hans Castorp hastened to obey.

They heard a switch go on.  A motor started up, and sang furiously higher and higher, until another switch controlled and steadied it.  The floor shook with an even vibration.  The little red light, at right angles to the ceiling, looked threateningly across the room at them.  Somewhere lightning flashed.  And with a milky gleam a window of light emerged from the darkness...  He was so kind as to permit the patient, at his request, to look at his own hand through the screen.  And Hans Castorp saw, precisely what he must have expected, but what it is hardly permitted man to see, and what he had never thought it would be vouchsafed him to see: he looked into his own grave. ...  With the eyes of his Tienappel ancestress, penetrating, prophetic eyes, he gazed at this familiar part of his own body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die.  At the thought there came over his face the expression it usually wore when he listened to music; a little dull, sleepy, and pious, his mouth half open, his head inclined toward the shoulder.

The Hofrat said:  "Spooky, what?  Yes, there's something distinctly spooky about it."

                                                               --Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain>, pages 262 and 215-218.

Yet, there may even be something of Christian significance here--a psychosexual symbol of grace.  One meets the beloved in intimate embrace not only in order, cleanliness, and virtue, but also in the willing and mutual exposure of the chaos of our lives, now symbolized bodily.

                                                 --James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology

  © 1978, page 176.

February

I was wild with freedom.  I was a hawk, a falcon, which had slipped its jesses.  The wide air was mine again, as it ought to be in boyhood, and that year—which seems in retrospect to have passed like a flash—was one of the only seven consciously happy years I have had in all my life.

            I spent it writing The Sword in the Stone.

            It seems to me now the book was a happy one because I was happy.  Merlyn’s cottage in the book is a fairly close description of the cottage I was living in.  The Forest Sauvage is the woodland which was round it.  The Wart is a mixture of the boys I had liked as a teacher.  And I was doing in real life the very things which occupy the Wart.  I was training a couple of goshawks to hunt rabbits.  I was helping farmers to make hay, I was out with the poachers at night as much as I was out in the daytime of that miraculous summer, I was fishing for tench before dawn, and most of the time I was looking after small animals which needed help.  I really did have an owl called Archimedes—he had been rescued from a pond as a baby—and the small badgers really did nip my ankles with their needle teeth until I hopped.  The book wrote itself, much as Merlyn’s dishes did their own washing up.

            …

            …  Later it and its sequels became the basis for a Broadway musical, Camelot.  I have fallen deeply in love with the stage version of my book—and of all things with the music.  It is wonderful music—but that is not surprising.  It is just like everything else which came out of that happy, lucky, free year.

                                                --T. H. White, in his introduction to the

1964 Time-Life edition of The Sword in the Stone. 

White was 30 or 31 years old when he wrote the book.

“Sir Ector has given me a glass of canary,” said the Wart, “and sent me to see if you can’t cheer me up.”

            “Sir Ector,” said Merlyn, “is a wise man.”

            “Well,” said the Wart, “what about it?”

            “The best thing for disturbances of the spirit,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then—to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never dream of regretting.  Learning is the thing for you.  Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is.  You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six.  And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing.  After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

            “Apart from all these things,” said the Wart, “what do you suggest for me just now?”

--T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (1938). 

Excerpt from Chapter 21 of the twenty-four-chapter book.

 Quotes of the month for May 2003 come from Chapters 20 and 21.

Terrence Hanbury White can be compared with no other writer of the 20^th Century.  He belonged to no school, preached no fashionable creed, spoke for no class or generation. …  Because he defied easy classification, his books never earned him the effusive critical acclaim that was lavished on many a lesser writer.  Yet when Tim White died in January 1964, a week or so after completing his introduction to this special edition of The Sword in the Stone, the novel had long been accepted as one of the few incontestable classics of modern English literature.

…

            In every age, of course, legend is not merely inherited but reshaped as well, and this has been particularly true in the case of the Arthurian epic.  T. H. White’s Once and Future King lived in the Sixth Century and had become a musty figure of folklore when, nine centuries later, Sir Thomas Malory took the story “out of certeyn books of frensshe, and reduced it into Englysshe,”  making the Knights of the Round Table live again for his time.  To Tennyson in the romantic 19^th Century, they seemed like proper Victorians; to Mark Twain, they were fitting figures for satire.

            It was T. H. White’s achievement to rediscover the wonder and nobility of Arthur’s age, finding in the conflict between Might and Right a telling parallel with our own darkened era.  No less than those people who lived amid “the great jungle of Old England,” he suggests, modern man inhabits a Forest Sauvage.

            …

            In the life of every man and woman, White believed, there is a sword locked in stone.  With honor and kindness and courage, with diligence and knowledge, it can come as swiftly and cleanly free as it did for the young King Arthur.

                             --The Editors of Time

 © 1964 Time-Life Books

April

            Lefty had been Harvard ’45 and premed; Swifty had been Ohio State ’44 and an engineering major; Chet, Colgate ’45, hadn’t picked a major; Wally, MIT ’43, would have become a physicist.  The class dates are significant.  That was our generation:  old enough to fight, but too young for chairborne jobs.  Most of us—I was an exception—had been isolationists before Pearl Harbor, or at any rate before the fall of France.  Unlike the doughboys of 1917, we had expected very little of the war.  We got less. …

            Bubba Yates, Ole ‘Bama ’45 and a divinity student, spent his last night of combat on the forward slope of Half Moon.  He fired BAR bursts at the enemy till dawn.  Six Nip bodies were found around him.  He was bleeding from four gunshot wounds; corpsmen carried him back to a field hospital.  All the way he muttered, “Vicksburg, Vicksburg . . .”  I heard he was going to be written up for a Silver Star, but I doubt that he got it; witnesses to valor were being gunned down themselves before they could report.

 …

            Killer Kane, autodidact, was dug in for the night near the crest of Sugar Loaf when a Jap loomed overhead and bayoneted him in the neck, left shoulder, and upper left arm.  The Nip was taking off his wristwatch when Kane leapt up, wrapped him in the strangler’s hold, choked him to death, and walked to the battalion aid station without even calling for help.

            Pip Spencer, aged seventeen, who wanted to spend his life caring for handicapped children, had his throat cut one night in his foxhole.  Nobody had heard the Jap infiltrators.

            Mo Crocker, with an IQ of 154 but no college—scholarships were hard to come by in the Depression—had worked in a Vermont post office.  He was deeply in love; his girl wrote him every day.  He disintegrated after one of our own 81-millimeter mortar shells fell short and exploded behind him.

 …

            Shiloh Davidson III, Williams ’44, a strong candidate for his family’s stock-exchange seat, crawled out on a one-man twilight patrol up Sugar Loaf.  He had just cleared our wire when a Nambu burst eviscerated him.  Thrown back, he was caught on improvised wire.  The only natural light came from the palest wash of moon, but the Japs illuminated that side of the hill at night with their green flares.  There was no way that any of us could reach Shiloh, so he hung there, screaming for his mother, until about 4:30 in the morning, when he died.  After the war I visited his mother.  She had heard, on a Gabriel Heatter broadcast, that the Twenty-ninth was assaulting Sugar Loaf.  She had spent the night on her knees, praying for her son.  She said to me, “God didn’t answer my prayers.”  I said, “He didn’t answer any of mine.”

                                                                                --William Manchester  (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004)

                                                                                Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980),

                                                                Pages 431-434, Dell edition, 1987.

There is, however, wisdom here, for those who care to seek it.  Roughly distilled, it goes like this:  to face reality is not to betray faith.  God answers every prayer, a preacher once said.

            Sometimes, the answer is no.

--Leonard Pitts, a Miami Herald columnist, whose column for April 1^st appeared on the Austin American-Statesman’s op-ed page under the title “Praying that Terri’s family finds acceptance.”

 May

One night some twenty years ago, during a siege of the mumps in our enormous family, my youngest sister, Franny, was moved, crib and all, into the ostensibly germ-free room I shared with my brother, Seymour.  I was fifteen, Seymour was seventeen.  Along about two in the morning, the new roommate’s crying wakened me.  I lay in a still, neutral position for a few minutes, listening to the racket, till I heard, or felt, Seymour stir in the bed next to mine.  In those days, we kept a flashlight on the night table between us, for emergencies that, as far as I remember, never arose.  Seymour turned it on and got out of bed.  “The bottle’s on the stove, Mother said,” I told him.  “I gave it to her a little while ago,” Seymour said.  “She isn’t hungry.”  He went over in the dark to the bookcase and beamed the flashlight slowly back and forth along the stacks.  I sat up in bed.  “What are you going to do?” I said.  “I thought maybe I’d read something to her,” Seymour said, and took down a book.  “She’s ten months old, for God’s sake,” I said.  “I know,” Seymour said.  “They have ears.  They can hear.”

The story Seymour read to Franny that night, by flashlight, was a favorite of his, a Taoist tale.  To this day, Franny swears that she remembers Seymour reading it to her:

Duke Mu of Chin said to Po Lo:  “You are now advanced in years.  Is there any member of your family whom I could employ to look for horses in your stead?”  Po Lo replied:  “A good horse can be picked out by its general build and appearance.  But the superlative horse—one that raises no dust and leaves no tracks—is something evanescent and fleeting, elusive as thin air.  The talents of my sons lie on a lower plane altogether; they can tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse.  I have a friend, however, one Chiu-fang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior.  Pray see him.”

Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed.  Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one.  “It is now in Shach’iu,” he added.  “What kind of a horse is it?” asked the Duke.  “Oh, it is a dun-colored mare,” was the reply.  However, someone being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion!  Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo.  “That friend of yours,” he said, “whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it.  Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast’s color or sex!  What on earth can he know about horses?”  Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  “Has he really got as far as that?”  he cried.  “Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together.  There is no comparison between us.  What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism.  In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external.  He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see.  He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at.  So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses.”

            When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative animal.

I’ve reproduced the tale here not just because I invariably go out of my way to recommend a good prose pacifier to parents or older brothers of ten-month-old babies, but for quite another reason.  What directly follows is an account of a wedding day in 1942.  It is, in my opinion, a self-contained account, with a beginning and an end, and a mortality, all its own.  Yet, because I am in possession of the fact, I feel I must mention that the bridegroom is now, in 1955, no longer living. …  Undoubtedly, though, what I’m really getting at is this:  Since the bridegroom’s permanent retirement from the scene, I haven’t been able to think of anybody whom I’d care to send out to look for horses in his stead.

                        --J. D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,      

                         © 1955; Little, Brown and Company LB paperback edition,          

                          May 1991, pages 3, 4, and 5.

June

EXERCISE

Think about something you hope will happen in your future.  Write it on a piece of paper.  Next, pick a date several years away.  Write down that date, along with the age you’ll be when it rolls around.  To get your brain in the “future” mode, you might also write down the ages your partner, parents, children, siblings, or friends will be on your target date.

                Now close your eyes and create your “future scene.”  Anchor it in lots of sensory detail: sights, smells, sounds, textures, temperatures (this helps you get into your body, which is close to your intuition, and away from your conscious mind, which often drowns out the intuitive messages).  Now simply check:  Do you have your dream job?  The perfect house?  A horse?  A boob job?  (I once had a client whose first comment about her future scene was, “Gosh, I’ve had so much plastic surgery!”)

                Once you get an answer, move forward or backward in time to find the approximate date you plan (deep down) to get what you want.  This is not a deterministic exercise:  If you don’t like the answers you get from it, you can change them.  What future scenes do tell you, very accurately, is what you now expect.  By magic or by design, you’re likely to make that happen unless you consciously decide to change you future.

                                --Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live,

© 2001, page 234.  Crown Publishers, New York.

…  Intelligence literally means “choose between,” from the Latin inter, meaning between, and legere, meaning “to choose.”  It is interesting that the word intelligence comes from the same Latin verb, legere, as the word select (selegere), which also means “to choose between.”  In other words, intelligence and selection mean just about the same thing.  Something more than intelligence, or choosing between, is required, however.

            We all know intelligent people who sometimes seem to act foolishly, and less intelligent ones who always make the right choices.  …

            …  The word education does not mean filling a person with information.  The Latin origin of the word education tells us that it means a drawing out.  The brain is like a muscle:  It must be drawn out and constantly exercised to keep it in good condition. …

            Today most people seem convinced that exercising their bodies is a good idea.  There is not so widespread a fad about exercising our brains, although there should be, since brains soon deteriorate if they are not used.

            Above all else, we should strive to counteract the dangerous tendency toward selecting information in a biased way—thus creating lies from the information that is now so plentiful. In other words, we must rise above mere information, and do our best to make intelligent decisions.

                                                --Keith J. Laidler, Science and Sensibility: The Elegant Logic of the Universe, 

© 2004 by the literary estate of Keith J. Laidler (1916 – 2003), 

Prometheus Books.  Excerpt from pages 26-27.

People who never make a mistake end up by never doing anything worthwhile—when they do not end up in institutions. A rigid insistence on strict criteria is the road to scientific catatonia.
 

--Solomon Diamond, Information and Error: An Introduction to Statistical Analysis,

1959.      Page ref & other info to be added later.

July

"Aquarius"

When the moon is in the Seventh House  

and Jupiter aligns with Mars   

Then peace will guide the planets   

And love will steer the stars                                                    

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius      

The age of Aquarius                                                                 

Aquarius!  Aquarius!                                                                 

“Initials”

"I Got Life"

(spoken) “This is 1968, dearies, not 1948;

1968! What have ya got, 1968?

May I ask?

What the hell you got, 1968, that makes you so superior?”

“Maaaan gives me such a headache!”

“Well, if you really wanna know, 1948...”

I Got Life, mother; I got laughs, sister;                                                     

I got freedom, brother; I got good times, man.                     

I got crazy ways, daughter                                  

I got million-dollar charm, cousin  

I got headaches and toothaches   

and bad times, too                                                

CHORUS:

Hair! (hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair)                                     

Flow it, Show it;                                                                          

Long as God can grow it, My Hair!                    

. . .

"Easy To Be Hard"

How can people be so heartless

How can people be so cruel          

Easy To Be Hard; Easy to be cold 

Oh, how can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends                      

Easy to be proud; Easy to say no

. . .

"Black Boys"

Black boys are delicious             

Chocolate flavored love             

Keep my cocoa handy  

I have such a sweet tooth         

"White Boys"

White boys are so pretty

Skin as smooth as milk

White boys are so pretty

Hair like Chinese silk

I tell ya, yer white boys give me goose bumps

White boys give me chills

and when they touch my shoulder

That’s the touch that kills

. . .

"Walking In Space"

. . .

My body is Walking In Space         

My soul is in orbit with God face to face

Floating, flipping; Flying, tripping

. . .

My mind is as clear as country air 

I feel my flesh, all colors mesh

Red, black; Blue, brown                                      

Yellow, crimson; Green, orange

Purple, pink; Violet, white               

White, white; white, white                

White, white...                                    

All the clouds are cumuloft, Walking In Space

Oh my God, your skin is soft, I love your face

How dare they try to end this beauty?

How dare they try to end this beauty?

To keep us under foot, they bury us in soot

Pretending it's a chore, to ship us off to war

In this dive we rediscover sensation

In this dive we rediscover sensation

Walking In Space, we find the purpose of peace

The beauty of life, you can no longer hide

Our eyes are open, our eyes are open

Our eyes are open, our eyes are open

Wide! Wide! Wide!                                                

"Abie Baby"

. . .

Yes; I's finished on y'all                   

Farmland with yo' Boll

Weevils and all

and pluckin' y'all's

chickens, fryin'

Mother's oats in grease;                  

I's free now                    

thanks to yo' Massa Lincoln

emancipator of the slaves                Yeah Yeah Yeah         

Emanci-muthafuckin-pator of the slaves          

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Emanci-muthafuckin-pator of the slaves

(spoken) “Slaves?” “Slaves?” “Where?”

Ooh-be-do, whoa, whoa, whoa

Four score, I said Four score and seven years ago           

(spoken) “Oh, Sock it to 'em baby, 

                    You're soundin' better all the time!"

Our forefathers, I mean ALL our forefathers

Brought forth upon this here continent a NEW nation 

(spoken) "Oh, come on, it’s to rock me Stokely!"

Conceived, Conceived like we all was; in liberty,

and dedicated-to-the-one I love—

I mean dedicated to the proposition—that ALL men          

Honey, I tell you ALL men, are created equal.

Ooh-be-do, whoa, whoa, whoa

Happy Birthday, Abie Baby

Happy Birthday to you, Yeah!

Happy Birthday, Abie Baby

Happy Birthday to you, BANG!

(spoken)  “Bang?” (mocking laughter)

“Bang?  Shiiiit, I'm not dyin' for no white man!”

“Tell it like it is, baby--you tell it!”

"Three-Five-Zero-Zero"

Ripped open by metal explosion

Caught in barbed wire; fireball, bullet shock

Bayonet, electricity, shrapnel, throbbing meat

Electronic data processing

Black uniforms, bare feet, carbines

Mail order rifles shoot the muscles

256 Viet Cong captured...               

256 Viet Cong captured...               

. . .

Oh, Prisoners in Niggertown

It's a dirty little war

Three-five-zero-zero

Take weapons up and begin to kill

Watch the long long armies drifting home

Ripped open by metal explosion

Caught in barbed wire; fireball, bullet shock

Bayonet, electricity, shrapnel, throbbing meat                    

Electronic data

"Good Morning Starshine"

Good Morning Starshine                 

The earth says "hello"

You twinkle above us

We twinkle below.

Good Morning Starshine                 

You lead us along

My love and me as we sing

Our early morning singin' song

. . .

"The Flesh Failures/Let The Sunshine In”

. . .

Somewhere                   

inside something there is a rush of

greatness

Who knows what stands in front of

Our lives

I fashion my future on films in space

Silence tells me secretly                 

Everything; Everything

Manchester England, England

Manchester England, England

Across the Atlantic Sea

And I'm a genius genius,                 

I believe in God

And I believe that God

Believes in Claude

That's me, that's me... that's me...

…The rest is silence...the rest is silence

We starve; look; at one another, short of breath

walking proudly in our winter coats

Wearing smells from laboratories                                                            

Facing a dying nation

Of moving paper fantasy

Listening for the new told lies

With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Singing; our space songs on a spider web sitar

Life is around you and in you

Answer for Timothy Leary, Dearie

Let the sunshine

Let the sunshine in

The sunshine in...

(repeat five times, or as desired)

--Gerome Ragni and James Rado, lyrics; Galt MacDermot, music:  “HAiR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” produced on Broadway from April 1968 until July 1972.  I recently found among Mother’s many saved paper items a Playbill from the Washington D.C. production of HAiR, along with visitor passes to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives dated July 30, 1971. (Jeff worked in Washington that summer for David Pryor.)  HAiR was produced by the Zachary Scott Theater in Austin in July and August of 2002.  (I saw it twice.)  See http://www.geocities.com/hairpages for more info. Besides the original Broadway cast vinyl LP (my source for the lyrics), the 1979 movie DVD and its superior soundtrack are available.

August

“... See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which the ancients knew nothing. ... I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race."

--Thomas Love Peacock,  Gryll Grange (1861), Chapter 19.  In this passage a character named The Reverend Dr. Opimian is speaking.  See the “science” section on the quotes page ofthe Thomas Love Peacock society website.

In referring to those who went through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Japanese tended to shy away from the term “survivors,” because in its focus on being alive it might suggest some slight to the sacred dead.  The class of people to which Nakamura-san belonged came, therefore, to be called by a more neutral name, “hibakusha”—literally, “explosion-affected persons.” 

--John Hersey, Hiroshima.  This excerpt is from page 120 in the new final chapter of the 1985 edition. The book originally was published in 1946, profiling six people who survived the bombing.  The new chapter describes what happened to the six people in the ensuing 40 years.

                Flowers covered the fields and forest floor and formed a cherished element of daily life.  Wild flowers and garden flowers were woven into chaplets worn by noble men and women, strewn on floors and tables at banquets, and scattered in the streets before royal processions.  Monkeys were common pets.  Beggars were ubiquitous, most of them crippled, blind, diseased, deformed, or disguised as such.  The legless dragged themselves along by means of wooden stumps strapped to their hands.  Women were considered the snare of the Devil, while at the same time the cult of the Virgin made one woman the central object of love and adoration.  Doctors were admired, lawyers universally hated and mistrusted.    Steam was unharnessed, syphilis not yet introduced, leprosy still extant, gunpowder coming into use, though not yet effectively.  Potatoes, tea, coffee, and tobacco were unknown; hot spiced wine was the favorite drink of those who could afford it; the common people drank beer, ale, and cider.

            Men of the non-clerical classes had abandoned the gown for divided legs clad in tights.  They were generally clean-shaven, although chin beards and moustaches came in and out of fashion.  …  Women used cosmetics, dyed their hair, plucked it to broaden their foreheads, and plucked their eyebrows too, although by these practices they committed the sin of vanity.

            Fortune’s Wheel, plunging down the mighty and (more rarely) raising the lowly, was the prevailing image of the instability of life in an uncertain world.  Progress, moral or material, in man or society, was not expected during this life on earth, of which the conditions were fixed.  The individual might through his own efforts increase in virtue, but betterment of the whole would have to await the Second Coming and the beginning of a new age.

            --Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century, © 1978, page 55.  This book is a study of Europe in the 1300’s using the birth, life and death of Enguerrand de Coucy VII, “the most skilled and experienced of all the knights of France” as its focal point.

September

In economic man the lay spirit did not challenge the Church, yet functioned in essential contradiction.  Capitalist enterprise, although it held by now a commanding place, violated by its very nature the Christian attitude toward commerce, which was one of active antagonism. …

… To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and under-age children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.  As restraint of initiative, this was the direct opposite of capitalist enterprise.  It was the denial of economic man, and consequently was even more routinely violated than the denial of sensual man.

No economic activity was more irrepressible than the investing and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes—and it was based on the sin of usury.  Nothing so vexed medieval thinking, nothing so baffled and eluded settlement, nothing was so great a tangle of irreconcilables as the theory of usury.  Society needed moneylending while Christian doctrine forbade it.  That was the basic dichotomy, but the doctrine was so elastic that “even wise men” were unsure of its provisions.  For practical purposes, usury was considered to be not the charging of interest per se, but charging at a higher rate than was decent.  This was left to the Jews as the necessary dirty work of society, and if they had not been available, they would have had to be invented.  While theologians and canonists argued endlessly and tried vainly to decide whether 10, 12.5, 15 or 20 percent was decent, the bankers went on lending and investing at whatever rates the situation would bear.

            Merchants regularly paid fines for breaking every law that concerned their business, and went on as before. The wealth of Venice and Genoa was made in trade with the infidels of Syria and Egypt despite papal prohibition.  Prior to the 14^th century, it has been said, men “could hardly imagine the merchant’s strongbox without picturing the devil squatting on the lid.”  Whether the merchant too saw the devil as he counted coins, whether he lived with a sense of guilt, is hard to assess.  Francisco Datini, the merchant of Prato, judging by his letters, was a deeply troubled man, but his agonies were caused more by fear of loss than by fear of God.  He was evidently able to reconcile Christianity and business, for the motto on his ledger was “In the name of God and of profit.”

--Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror:  The Calamitous 14^th Century,

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1978, pages 37 and 38.

OCTOBER

ROUNDY INTERVIEWS PROFESSOR DIRAC

AN ENJOYABLE TIME IS HAD BY ALL

By Roundy

            I been hearing about a fellow they have up at the U. this spring—a mathematical physicist, or something, they call him—who is pushing Sir Isaac Newton, Einstein and all the others off the front page.  So I thought I better go up and interview him for the benefit of State Journal readers, same as I do all other top notchers.  His name is Dirac, and he is an Englishman.  He has been giving lectures for the intelligentsia of the math and physics departments—and a few other guys who got in by mistake.

So the other afternoon I knocks at the door of Dr. Dirac’s office in Sterling Hall and a pleasant voice says “Come in.”  And I want to say here and now that this sentence “come in” was about the longest one emitted by the doctor during our interview.  He sure is all for efficiency in conversation.  It suits me.  I hate a talkative guy.

            I found the doctor a tall youngish-looking man, and the minute I seen the twinkle in his eye I knew I was going to like him.  His friends at the U. say he is a real fellow too and good company on a hike—if you can keep him in sight, that is.

            The thing that hit me in the eye about him was that he did not seem to be at all busy.  Why if I went to interview an American scientist of his class—supposing I could find one—I would have to stick around an hour first.  Then he would blow in carrying a big briefcase, and while he talked he would be pulling lecture notes, proofs, reprints, books, manuscript, or what have you out of his bag.  But Dirac is different.  He seems to have all the time there is in the world and his heaviest work is looking out the window.  If he is a typical Englishman it’s me for England on my next vacation!

            Then we sat down and the interview began.

            “Professor,” says I, “I notice you have quite a few letters in front of your last name.  Do they stand for anything in particular?

            “No,” says he.

            “You mean I can write my own ticket?”

            “Yes,” says he.

            “Will it be all right if I say that P.A.M. stands for Poincaré Aloysius Mussolini?”

            “Yes,” says he.

            “Fine,” says I, “We are getting along great!  Now doctor will you give me in a few words the low-down on all your investigations?”

“No,” says he.

            “Good,” says I. “Will it be all right if I put it this way --- ‘Professor Dirac solves all the problems of mathematical physics but is unable to find a better way of figuring out Babe Ruth’s batting average’?”

            “Yes,” says he.

            “What do you like best in America?” says I.

            “Potatoes,” says he.

            “Same here,” says I. “What is your favorite sport?”

“Chinese chess,” says he.

That knocked me cold!  It was sure a new one on me!  Then I went on: “Do you go to the movies?”

“Yes,” says he.

“When?” says I.

“In 1920—perhaps also in 1930,” says he.

“Do you like to read the Sunday comics?”

“Yes,” says he, warming up a bit more than usual.

“This is the most important thing yet, doctor,” says I.  “It shows that me and you are more alike than I thought.  And now I want to ask you something more:  They tell me that you and Einstein are the only two real sure-enough high-brows and the only ones who can really understand each other.  I wont ask you if this is straight stuff for I know you are too modest to admit it.  But I want to know this—Do you ever run across a fellow that even you cant understand?”

“Yes,” says he.

“This will make great reading for the boys down at the office,” says I. “Do you mind releasing to me who he is?”

“Weyl,” says he.

The interview came to a sudden end just then, for the doctor pulled out his watch and I dodged and jumped for the door.  But he let loose a smile as we parted and I knew that all the time he had been talking to me he was solving some problem that no one else could touch.

But if that fellow Professor Weyl ever lectures in this town again I sure am going to take a try at understanding him!  A fellow ought to test his intelligence once in a while.

--Joseph “Roundy” Coughlin, sportswriter for the Wisconsin State Journal.  This column appeared in that paper sometime in the spring of 1929.  My source for the article is QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, by Silvan S. Schweber, pages 18-19, © 1994 Princeton University Press. The subject of the interview is Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac  (August 8, 1902 – October 20, 1984).

November

            In the woe of the century no factor caused more trouble than the persistent lag between the growth of the state and the means of state financing.  While centralized government was developing, taxation was still encased in the concept that taxes represented an emergency measure requiring consent.  Having exhausted every other source of funds, Philip the Fair in 1307 turned on the Templars in the most sensational episode of his reign. …

            …

            Elements of witchcraft, magic, and sorcery were taken for granted in medieval life, but Philip’s use of them to prove heresy in the seven-year melodrama of the Templar’s trials gave them fearful currency.  Thereafter, charges of black arts became a common means to bring down an enemy and a favored method of the Inquisition in its pursuit of heretics, especially those with property worth confiscating.  In Toulouse and Carcassonne during the next 35 years the Inquisition prosecuted 1,000 persons on such charges and burned 600.  French justice was corrupted and the pattern laid for the fanatic witchcraft persecutions of subsequent centuries.

Philip bullied the first Avignon Pope, Clement V, into authorizing the trials of the Templars, and with this authority put them to atrocious tortures to extract confessions.  Medieval justice was scrupulous about holding proper trials and careful not to sentence with proof of guilt, but it achieved proof by confession rather than evidence of guilt, and confession was routinely obtained by torture. … Thirty-six died under treatment; some committed suicide.  Broken by torture, the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and 122 others confessed to spitting on the cross or some other variation of crime put into their mouths by the Inquisitors. …

…

…  In March 1314 the Grand Master, who had been the King’s friend and godfather of his daughter, was conducted with his chief lieutenant to a scaffold erected in the plaza in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris to reaffirm their confessions and be sentenced to life in prison by the papal legates.  Instead, before the packed assembly of nobles, clergy, and commoners, they proclaimed their own and the Order’s innocence.  Despoiled of his final justification, the King ordered both men to be burned at the stake.  … Jacques de Molay again proclaimed his innocence and cried aloud that God would be his avenger.  According to the tradition that developed later, he called down a curse upon the King and his descendants to the thirteenth generation, and, in the last words to be heard as he burned to death, summoned Philip and Pope Clement to meet him before God’s judgment seat within a year.  Within a month Clement did in fact die, followed seven months later in November by Philip, in the midst of life, aged 46, without suffering illness or accident.  The legend of the Templar’s curse developed, as most legends do, to explain strange happenings after the event.  The cause of Philip’s death has since been adjudged a cerebral stroke, but to awed contemporaries the cause was indubitably the Templar’s curse that had floated upward with the smoke from the pyre in the red light of the setting sun.

                                    --Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century. 

                                    Alfred A. Knopf, New York, © 1978, pages 42-44.

DECEMBER

Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron,

         iron is iron till it is rust.

There never was a war that was

         not inward; I must

fight till I have conquered in myself what

causes war, but I would not believe it.

                  I inwardly did nothing.

                       O Iscariotlike crime!

                  Beauty is everlasting

                        And dust is for a time.

--Marianne Moore, In Distrust of Merits, 1944.  Last stanza.