How Shiloh can they go?

If you think the Ivory Tower creeps are only trying to destroy Israel now, you'd be wrong. 

The bright lights of learning want to destroy Israel in the past as well. 

Out of curiosity regarding the famous 1982 Civil War battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, I looked up the name in Merriam-Webster, the #1 name in American dictionaries. I couldn't remember if it had two H's, believe it or not. But if you think I'm dumb, get a load of this:

I want to point out that Shiloh was NOT a village in ancient Palestine on the slope of Mount Ephraim. Shiloh was a village in ancient Israel. Shiloh was the site of a temple of the Israelites long before there was a temple in Jerusalem. That temple, says Chabad, stood for 369 years. It was in Samaria, but that was part of Israel in the iron age. And all this was long before the Romans stamped their name, Palestine, on this land in AD 135. In other words, Shiloh was founded 500 years before the area was called Palestine by its authorities, so calling this area "ancient Palestine" is ahistorical and should be an affront to Jewish people. 

(Webster's definition of the word Palestine doesn't make things any better.) 

The fun continues in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster: 

"Ancient city, Palestine" it says, and describes its founding thus. Interestingly, the "Shiloh" entry in the famous 1911 edition of the encyclopedia does not mention Israel -- but it doesn't mention Palestine either. Its description makes it clear that they are referring to a site belonging to the Israelites. 

"Ancient Palestine." Feh. When the editors of Britannica write about one of the native tribes in the Utah area, they don't say that they lived in "ancient Utah." They write that the Paiute, for example, "one time occupied what are now southern Utah, northwestern Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California." But here they don't even say that Shiloh was in "what is now" Palestine; they infer that it was always Palestine. 

While it's true that the Greeks had used the term Palaistinê to refer to the area between Egypt and Phoenecia, that was not what the natives called it. And if you think native preferences don't matter to professorial types, then why is Canada putting aboriginal names to everything in sight? 

We see that it's not enough for the modern academic to want to wipe Israel off the map now; they want it expunged from history entirely. 

I suspect there will be some lame reasons given for their not calling the ancient homeland of the Jewish people Israel, but from what we hear out of academia these days, I would distrust it out of hand. Our universities and institutions of learning, including educational publishers, have not covered themselves in glory in the last forty years. In fact, they have proven themselves unworthy of our respect. 

They are incapable of acting as disinterested keepers of knowledge, and they don't even pretend to. Why would anyone trust them?

Secret construction.

So, what're we building?

Beats me. Well, were I to guess, I would say it's a hotel, and likely a Hampton Inn. Hamptons have that center pile and wings that jut forth from the rest of the builting. They're also usually four or five stories, tops. 

A Hampton with all the doodads on it.

When they were framing this I thought it might be a Home Depot. You couldn't guess by the signs. You still can't. Construction projects in America always used to have big signs with the art from the architectural firm showing the glorious new thing being built and cueing in the citizens to what wonders awaited. 

The project could be a skyscraper; could be a dam; could be a school.* Whatever it was, the sign was intended to promote the community's interest in it.

But on this project, as on most I see now, there's no signage telling you a damned thing. Well, maybe one of the contractors on the project will have put a sign on the fence -- a dirty sign, toted from job to job -- as a way of keeping the company name up:

And that's it. 

I have to think this is part of a growing trend in the last fifty years to object to anything being built, even if the local town or county legislature approved it. Like Rufus T. Firefly, whatever it is, we're against it. Factory? Pollution. Power plant? Environmental destruction. New housing? Brings in more of THOSE people. Shopping plaza? Death to local businesses. Prison? Not here, bub. Road? Noise and pollution. Dam? What about the red-striped pootwangle fish?

No one wants to live next to a prison, but as for the rest, this is not the attitude of a great nation. 

And it's often not too smart. The local government that got elected by promising jobs becomes accused of taking bribes when the ground is broken for factories or shops that provide those jobs. Maybe we'd all like it if the whole town could be completely supported by a Christmas tree farm and a family-owned beeswax candle shop, but that's not how money works. That's not how anything works.

So we feel betrayed, everyone gets mad, the project gets built anyway, and only the lawyers are happy in the end. 

And maybe Joe of Joe's Cement.

This, I think, is why we never see information about the exciting project on signage. The less information, the less chance people will find an excuse to hate it, and go grab torches and pitchforks and cause trouble. 

It's all quite exhausting. 

Meanwhile, I really hope that is a Hampton Inn and not a prison. 

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* My high school was supposed to be a brand-new building, and had the signs to prove it. Then the city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and all building projects were stopped. We had to attend the old 1930's building, which was so overcrowded that the fire marshall probably turned white with fear if he ever peeked in. The new school opened the year after I graduated. It looked pretty much like the art on the signs. 

But he got no skin in the game!

 

Hand crafted.

Three years ago I wrote about a couple of old men I had encountered through work when I was a young man. There was mailroom Joe, who hoped we could become friends like on TV, but he was fired from the job soon after. And there was Gabe, a doddering old man who duly showed up for work every day at the company he had founded maybe fifty years earlier, but they didn't let him do anything anymore. I thought it was interesting to remember those men, how each in his way tried to hold on to relevance in a world that really didn't care. 

There was a third man whom I wanted to write about, but I couldn't do it unless I found the present he gave me. And I'm very happy to say that I found it during our recent move.

So, what is it and how did it come into my possession? 

This is a small hand-carved monkey wrench, made from a single piece of wood. The dial on the handle opens and closes the grip. It is smooth as silk.

One summer in college I worked in a living museum kind of thing -- where you dress in Olde Tyme clothes and tell people about the place and what people did in the past. I was in the carpentry shed, with a bunch of tools and a foot-powered lathe and pants with a flap in front and suspenders and a collar with a necktie and a vest. Jolly old town carpenter, that was me! Fortunately I didn't actually have to make many things. Craftsmanship did not descend upon me with the title. 

But craftsmanship was certainly thriving in the old man -- whose name I have forgotten if he ever gave it -- who came to visit once in a while to discuss woodwork. I had no real knowledge, but he didn't mind. He liked to tell me the kinds of projects he was doing. And I liked to listen to him, but he did get in the way -- when people would come in, I had to do my history schtick. And he'd be there in his 20th century clothes, sometimes adding information that was not helpful and sometimes irrelevant. 

But if there was a visitor who did know about woodcraft, the kind of fellow who liked to play Stump the Docent ("What kind of wood are you using? Was that found in this area at the time? What sorts of household goods would be made here? What would the local carpenter charge for say, a table and eight chairs?"), then my elderly friend was exceptionally helpful as a distraction. 

I was a college kid! You couldn't expect me to know anything! 

Anyway, as the end of the summer season approached, my friend gave me that little monkey wrench. It's beautiful. The wheel is perfect and the hand-carved screw on the clamp still works as well as it did all those decades ago. It was very kind of him to part with this, and I have always enjoyed showing it to guests.  

I wish I knew the fellow's name -- gone now, I'm sure, but he was another example of the kind of man we often see. Retired, enjoying a hobby of small interest to most people, but capable of amazing flourishes of skill. Thanks for visiting, Woody, or whatever your name was, and thanks for the gift. I cherish it still. 

Trash talk and dead bodies.

I don't want to keep dwelling on things that are different in this alternate universe to which I have moved. But I will. The thing is, it's just close enough to the old life I had that it throws me off. 

Take the trash pickup. Longtime readers of this blog -- all good-looking and tasteful, with powerful intellects and enormous patience -- will recall that in New York, I complained a lot about the free-for-all that was our trash situation. People put everything short of dead humans out for pickup, and maybe they disguised a few of those. You could use any ol' trash receptacle you had handy. And the garbagemen came by on Tuesdays and Fridays, with a "recycling" pickup on Wednesday.

Here, the trash pickup is one day a week: Monday, You don't dare miss it because they won't be back. So people have their stuff out Sunday night, although I haven't seen a pickup here before noon Monday. It's one of those towns where you get two large trash cans when you move in, one for garbage and one for recycling garbage, and everything has to fit inside. The truck comes by and picks up the can and dumps it into the hopper. Another truck comes by later and gets the other can. It cuts manpower by two thirds, and it keeps people from trying to leave a sofa or a piano for pickup. 

Well, they wouldn't try it twice. 

My main problem is that I don't know what the hell day it is. I had tuesday-wednesday-friday tattooed on my consciousness. When a holiday would bump the week forward a day, that was bad enough. Here, around Wednesday I do not know immediately what day it is, because the trashman would not be back for days. I'm a rudderless boat on the sea of time now. 

And I'm scared of my sink.

This is the first time in my life I've lived somewhere with a garbage disposal. The InSinkErator came with the place. I am glad to be able to get rid of most food garbage instantly -- so I'm not stuck with it until next Monday! -- but man, it's scary and loud. 

All I ever heard of these things were what happened when you let utensils fall into them and what HORRIBLE things happened to YOU when you tried to get them out. 

Stone cold killer

I mean, the way this thing goes through a head of celery or a chunk of beef has to give you pause. I could easily see Steve Buscemi's leg sticking out of the sink in a remake of Fargo. 

Wish me luck with the InSinkErator, and that I do not forget what day of the week it is when Monday arrives. Last week the truck dude failed to completely empty my garbage can and it's got some bad juju going on right now. If I miss him tomorrow, I'm going to have to shove all the garbage into the disposal. And I think that may work no better than trying to get Steve Buscemi in there.  

More lessons.

As we continue to get things set up in our new home in Dixie -- the area, not the cup -- I have continued to reflect on some lessons learned in the process. 

1) It's different when it doesn't snow a lot.

Back in New York, the potholes from last winter are still being fixed. Where you don't get a lot of snow, the roads don't get nearly the same damage. People have been telling me how they got a shocking SIX INCHES OF SNOW in one storm last winter, but there were precious few plows and I guess no salt trucks, so people had to wait until it melted. Which I suppose took a one or two days. Meanwhile, I have seen zero potholes. 

Roads weakened by salt and other chemicals and damaged by the expanse of freezing water give way in spots. Not seeing much evidence of that here. 

You see this brick structure leading out to the street? In New York, a plow would have busted the end of it years ago. Many times have I seen these kinds of things built, and many bricks have gone flying by March. Snow plows aren't invulnerable to ice and snow either -- and snow plowers are only human.

2) People really are friendlier down here.

New Yorkers always make the case that, while they act like jerks on the outside, they have a heart o' gold on the inside. And I think that's mostly true. But in this part of the south, at least, they act friendly on the outside, which is nice. And it's institutionalized: in Publix, the big supermarket chain, I've found that you not only don't you have to bag your own groceries*, you really can't -- the way the counter register line is set up, you can't reach them. Besides, there's a clerk already doing it. Customer service means something here, apparently. 

*Self-checkouts do not apply; you gotta bag your stuff there.

Maybe the biggest, most general life lesson I had drilled into me was:

3) Sometimes "I did my best" doesn't matter. 

We really hit the wall hard when moving day came. The last few days we were literally throwing things into boxes and hoping for the best. We should have been working harder to get things prepared before the big day, but it seemed like it would never come, and when it did, it happened faster than expected. So in the end, we just had to gut it out. Which meant that there was no "That's enough for today," no "I'm wiped out," no "I did my best." 

Most jobs that are not in emergency services are specifically set up to make sure things can be done by reasonable staff in reasonable time, so you never run into this kind of panic. When I was in the magazine business, deadlines meant working late, because those presses would roll when scheduled. But even then, everyone was prepared and it didn't usually become a big problem.** 

It had been a long time since I'd been caught in a situation where I could not quit until the job was done, however late, however exhausted, and it was humbling. And I lost some pants along the way, as I've detailed on this blog. The whole thing was a fuster cluck of massive proportions, and we're still digging out.

But at least we don't expect to be digging a lot of snow.  

As the man says, everything in life is a blessin' or a lesson. I hope I've had enough lessons for a little while. 

**A beloved colleague in the magazine game went to work for a celebrity rag for a while, and found herself working all night long to get the stupid magazine out the door on time. While it was a sort of news magazine, there was no need for that kind of panic and mania and drama; it was just poorly run.

And one married a Wilson!