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?

Santobsessed.

 I think in America we have a kind of mental development of Santa that runs like this:

1. Clement Clarke Moore publishes his famous poem in 1823

2. Thomas Nast draws Santa in 1863

3. Coca-Cola gives us a common picture of Santa in 1930

4. Rankin and Bass do the rest, starting 1964 

But there's a lot that gets left out of that outline. We've been Santa obsessed for quite some time. A search for "Santa Claus" on Discogs returns 27,895 hits. A quick look at the priceless Gutenberg Project site reveals books about Santa Claus that I did not know existed, and maybe the same is true for you. Sixty-one titles pop up on the site if you search there for "Santa Claus." For example:

A Reversible Santa Claus by Meredith Nicholson (1917)

This is a curious book by a curious writer; Nicholson was, among other things, a US envoy to three different countries. But he had been an Indiana newsman and loved to write, apparently. Here's the Amazon description of this book: 

A reformed thief known as Billy “the Hopper” – named for the ease with which he’s always made his escapes - has retired with one last haul and settled down on a chicken farm with his wife, Mary, and another former thief, Humpy. Mary used to be a pickpocket. Humpy used to raise chickens in jail, so he’s got valuable experience. All three of them are glad to be living a quiet life within the law, but one day the Hopper sees a wallet sticking out of someone’s jacket on the train and is unable to resist pocketing it. This sets in motion a chain of events that results in the Hopper inadvertently kidnapping a toddler.

Not sure how much actual Santa Claus is in this one, but it's the book on this list I'm most interested in reading. I'm wondering how "reversible" works into the "Santa Claus" too. Does that mean Hopper comes down the chimney and takes stuff away, like a proto Grinch?

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A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (1904)

Some of you may recall that Oz creator Baum had written a biography of Santa, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, in 1902, which was adapted for TV by Rankin-Bass in 1985. This one is really a short story, but one of the first in the Evildoers Threaten Christmas subgenre that has proved so durable. In it, the Daemons who live in the caves near Happy Valley and hate Santa all the time decide to kidnap him so he can't bring happiness to the children. But the various magical creatures that help Santa (not elves -- ryls, knooks, pixies, and fairies) manage to get Santa's presents delivered. Santa is released on Christmas Day by the frustrated bad guys. (Sorry; spoiler alert!) Well done, knooks & co. 

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A Defective Santa Claus by James Whitcomb Riley (1904)

Although not so well remembered today, Riley was another Indiana writer, exceptionally popular in his time for poems and stories for and about children. The book is actually a poem in dialect that, like so much of his work, harks back to simpler times in the 1800s. 

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Christmas in Storyland, edited by Maud Van Buren and Katharine Isabel Bemis (1927)

I don't know anything about the editors of this volume, but it's exactly what you'd expect -- a book of Christmas stories for children. Santa plays a part in many of them, naturally. That same year the editors also released Christmas in Modern Story: An Anthology for Adults. Back when "adult audiences" just meant "the kids won't like it."

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Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land, and Other Stories by Ellis Towne, Sophie May, and Ella Farman (1878)

Lill with The Man Himself. Moore's reindeer names 
are used in the book (Dasher, Dancer, et al.) 

The book doesn't say which author wrote which story (there are four in the book), but the star is definitely Lill, who in the first tale explains how she happened to come upon Santa Claus Land while walking and met the big guy. At the end she tells us that Santa Claus Land is not in a fixed place, and she has been unable to find it again. 

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Tommy Trot's Visit to Santa Claus by Thomas Nelson Page (1908)

Tommy Trot looks like what is now a pretty standard Christmas story for kids. One summary says, "The story follows a young boy named Tommy Trot who goes on a magical adventure to visit Santa Claus at the North Pole. Along the way, he meets a variety of friendly creatures, including a talking reindeer and a group of mischievous elves. As Tommy explores the enchanting world of Santa's workshop, he learns valuable lessons about kindness, generosity, and the true meaning of Christmas." Which sounds like movie adaptation of The Polar Express, although a non-psychotic version. 

Page also wrote A Captured Santa Claus (1902) (very different from the Baum Kidnapped story, featuring Civil War veterans) and Santa Claus's Partner (1899), so he knew from Santa stories. He also had a very romanticized view of the Old South that pretty much guarantees his books for adults will be painful to modern eyes. 

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Santa Claus' Sweetheart by Imogen Clark (1906)

In case you wondered where Hallmark got the idea to do Christmas movies:

The story follows Jessica, a young bakery owner who finds herself falling for a mysterious man named Nick who bears an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus. As their romance blossoms, Jessica discovers that Nick has a special connection to Christmas that transcends the ordinary. Clark's delightful narrative captures the spirit of the season with its themes of love, hope, and second chances. Through vivid descriptions and endearing characters, she transports readers to a charming world where miracles can happen and love is always in the air. "Santa Claus' Sweetheart" is a perfect read for anyone looking to experience the joy and wonder of Christmas all year round.

A short novel, looks pretty sweet. 

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Santa Claus' Message: A Christmas Story by E. Franklin Tregaskis (1921)

I have found almost nothing about E. Franklin Tregaskis beyond this Australian story, a short one that takes place in a crapped-out gold mining settlement called Twenty-Foot, where only two men are still trying to get something of value out of the ground as Christmas approaches. One is an old-timer, the other a man with a family, and there's been no rain to sluice out what thin pickings might be had. Then a mysterious message appears... Anyway, this shows that Australia's been Santobsessed just as we have.

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I haven't even mentioned all the storybooks on Gutenberg that have some Santa Claus in passing, or the plays for children that are up at the site (because parents always want to see the kiddies put on a performance). And who knows how many other Santa stories are out there that Gutenberg hasn't gotten to yet? 

All of this is to say that our love of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas is not new; it is a very sturdy part of the American culture, and God bless Santa Claus. May his stories always point the way to the One whose great story among us we celebrate on Christmas Day. 

But it was delicious.

While many people remember the tragic Great Molasses Flood that struck Boston in 1919, few now recall the Tremendous Canned Jellied Cranberry Roll that nearly flattened the city center in 1913. 

The last call.

On September 11, 2001, Aaron McLamb captured a picture of a lone fire truck going toward disaster while most of us fled. Ladder 118 from Engine Company 205, 74 Middagh Street, Brooklyn, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. None of the six men on that truck would return. 

I'll have something different to say about the date tomorrow. All my thoughts seem pretty insignificant today somehow. 

Offices.

Everyone hates offices. I don't know anyone who gets excited about offices in general. No one is thrilled because of the office. Everyone complains about them. You'd think they were sheer torture. 

They're mostly just dull and designed poorly.  

meh

I remember -- but have been unable to locate -- a picture of a big magazine subscription department from more than a century ago. I think it was Ladies' Home Journal, then based in Philadelphia, which advertised itself as "The Magazine with a Million," meaning a million subscribers in 1903 -- a towering achievement at the time, something no other U.S. magazine had done. The subscription office was a huge floor with tiny little desks laid out like a vast bingo card. Each worker had his or her little desk to process subscriptions. It must have been hot, boring as hell, and I don't know how anyone could have stayed awake. No one was rushing to the bathroom to check TikTok or play Wordscapes. It probably paid peanuts, too. 

On the other hand, it was not expected to be a career in and of itself. A man working the tiny desk might be going to business school at night -- a perfectly acceptable alternative to college then. A woman doing the job would probably be expected to leave to get married at some point, unless she was supporting her sickly old mom. But it was desirable work, in that you were not being run off your feet like a waitress or digging ditches like a slob.

Bad and boring as it may be, office jobs were considered superior to other kinds of work. In many regards, they still are, although the way we krex and moan about them you'd think we were getting surgery without anesthesia every day. To be fair, in 1903 there were no overweening tin-pot HR dictators, no "team building" exercises, and no mandatory training to tell you to respect one another's pronouns. 

Did offices ever really have this kind of thing?  

No place I ever worked, at least that I know of. Yes, folks, this is a genuine book from 1962, and this is what guys used to do before X-rated movies and OnlyFans. See why Americans were more literate in those days? We even had to read to get our naughty thrills. 

Things have changed so much since 1962, let alone 1903. Automation and computers have been eating away at jobs for decades, and guys like Elon Musk say they'll even take over the "creative" businesses like advertising. The Internet has devastated the magazine business as much as any other. Ladies' Home Journal closed up shop almost ten years ago. Rival Good Housekeeping is still alive as a magazine, but I've heard that in the 2010s, LHJ had lots of boneheaded management hastening its end. 

Except for those who program and feed the computers, office jobs may be on the way out entirely. We may complain about them, but we'll miss them when they're gone. 

Bartleby the scrivener was an office worker, you know. 

Ah, office! Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!  

Thieving elves?

I think those Keebler elves are up to something. 

This packaging has a kind of flair that makes me think of two of the Girl Scouts' most popular cookies.

To be fair, the packaging may be new, but the Keebler varieties are not. Keebler, which has a history dating back to 1853 and is now owned by Ferrero SpA (after being a Kellogg company for 19 years), has been making its fudge-based cookies for some time. But more to the point, Keebler was actually the first commercial bakery to make cookies for the Girl Scouts to sell. Keebler is still involved with the Girl Scouts, actually; its Little Brownie Bakery subsidiary is one of two companies that bake the cookies for the GS gang. (The other is ABC Smart Cookies.)

But are these knockoffs of the Girl Scout brands? I can't prove a connection, although Lifehacker says they are. The Fudge Mint Delights (formerly known as Grasshoppers) are indeed a type of Thin Mint, and the Coconut Dreams match up to the Caramel deLites (a.k.a. Samoas, depending where you live in the United States). But they are not identical. For example, the BusyBee blog did a taste test of the mint cookies a few years ago and found the Thin Mint slightly superior to the Keebler mint cookie. 

What does this all mean? I don't know. My wife was the Thin Mint fan in the family -- in the days B.F. (Before Fred) she and her roommate each bought two boxes of Thin Mints from people at work, not knowing the other was doing the same, and sat down to feast on four boxes. (Not all at once! or so she says.) But my wife thinks that Thin Mints just aren't as good as they once were, that something has changed, or got cheaper, and she won't bother with them anymore. And she thinks all Keebler cookies are poor. She much prefers the Back to Nature brand of mint fudge cookies, now owned by giant pasta company Barilla.

So let's hear your reviews in comments. 

I understand that the Girl Scouts have been distancing themselves from controversy in the last couple of years, and good for them, but frankly, I still think they are a lousy organization, if not completely woke then woke-adjacent. Why would girls want to join the Boy Scouts except that the Girl Scouts suck? The Boy Scouts got driven to bankruptcy, decided to let girls in, changed the name to BSA, then to Scouting, and now they suck even more than the Girl Scouts. The son of a friend of mine has had enough and quit -- and this kid was an ace away from Eagle Scout. He thinks it's a waste of time. The local Scoutmaster is a dummy, and the troops are disbanding one after another. It's pretty sad. 

Scouting may be dead, alas -- but as long as the Girl Scouts of America can make an excuse to do it, they'll keep raking in cookie money. I foresee a future when both organizations are as forgotten as the American Benevolent Legion, but people still buy Girl Scout branded cookies, not even knowing what a Girl Scout once was. 

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P.S.: If, like me, you're curious how a mint-chocolate cookie got to be called a grasshopper, it may have gotten the name from the green cocktail of crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream, which dates back to 1919 (according to Eater). The cocktail was popular in the fifties and sixties, so the cookie likely borrowed the name. By now the drink is not so well known, so the word GRASSHOPPER does not immediately signify mint and chocolate. No wonder Keebler changed the name of the cookie. 

Tires me out.

I know it's not like this in every state, but in New York you have to get your automobile inspected once a year. It's not a big deal, and I think it isn't a bad idea. People are often not aware that they may have problems that may be more expensive down the line -- or even dangerous. Plus, my car's inspection generally coincides with its need for an oil change. 

Of course, if the Oil Change light comes on before that, I do what anyone would do -- put in a quart and reset the idiot light. I ain't got time for all that blinkin' and flashin'.

As usual, my car passed inspection -- or would have, but for the rear tires. Those showed signs of serious wear. The mechanic passed me anyway, but said I should get them replaced. Since he didn't have to give me the Passed Inspection Sticker but did, I was now honor-bound to seek out new tires. 

How old were the tires, anyway? I couldn't quite remember. But I realized I had a way of knowing. The last time I got new tires, only a couple of months had passed before I was run off the road by a total idiot and ran into a spoon, which ruined my new front tire. Sure enough, I blogged about it at the time. I was surprised that all that had happened seven and a half years ago. My memory of changing out the tire for the spare and discovering the spoon wedged deep in the old one will be fresh forever. 

Rich guys have people to change their
spoon-wrecked tires. 

That was the weekend of the Supermoon, and it seemed to be bringing me Supercrap Luck. Can you believe it's been that long already? November 2016 seems like some mythical land, a happy place where no one had ever heard disgusting words like "COVID-19" and "Antifa" and "Soros D.A." A place, however, where twisted metal spoons might lie around in gutters, waiting to leap out on unsuspecting tires and burst them like a grape tomato on an archery target. 

On the whole, I think I got off lucky with just a couple of new tires on this inspection. Any engine problem would likely cost more. The thing is, as a freelancer, I have a habit of looking at any expense in terms of a bad assignment I completed to get the dough. "I spent countless hours on that stupid job, and now I have to blow the whole check on tires?" (Yes, Fred, that's how adulthood works.)

As for the spoon that busted my tire in 2016, I still have it. Sometimes you want to have visual aids when you tell a story that loopy.

The shifting battleground.

Yesterday being the celebration of Memorial Day, I was thinking about our nation and those who live in her embrace and yet despise her. For one thing, as I've said here in the past, it's become abundantly clear that Leftists only admire Americans who fight other Americans; there is no place in their admiration for Americans who fought foreign enemies. How can there be? If all foreigners are superior to us in this blighted country, there's no foreigners that we should defeat. 

That calculation seemed to start as defending the Native Americans, then moved on to others who were believed to have been unjustly at the sword point of the American military -- the Mexicans, the Spanish, and so on. Pretty much anyone who could be classified as Not White fell under that umbrella. Certainly we should not have been fighting the Vietnamese; it's not like they attacked us! That worked backward as well, that in retrospect we shouldn't have been fighting the Koreans. 

Admiration for the Confederates was swept away early, but then for the Union military too, as they most assuredly were not fighting to end slavery but for some selfish cause. The military in World War I were suckers and eventually dropped beneath notice. 

Holding out to the very end were the American warriors of World War II, and they mostly hung by a thread because of Pearl Harbor and the Final Solution. But Hiroshima eventually made us turn on America's fight against Japan, and now apparently the Left hates Jews, so the Nazis are not as bad as they used to be either. 

Now we're able and encouraged to despise all American fighters, unless they fought America herself. What a relief it must be to no longer wonder if one would have had the sustained courage to go to war for the nation, the sheer guts to stand firm in the heat of battle! Discarding respect for America's military means you never have to look up to them for anything anymore.   

It's easy to do this kind of thing when you don't teach genuine history. The younger generations literally know nothing about anything other than what Leftists choose to teach, and they certainly don't want to teach anything that shows America in a good light. 

But that's not even what I wanted to write about. I set out to write about the American Dream and how the idea has been mangled, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. 

When is Men's History Month?

I demand a Men's History Month. We're a minority in America (49.6% of the population are women) and we need to stand up and be noticed. 

And who knows? Maybe if there is a little more respect for the men in our culture, they'll stop putting on women's gym clothes and trying to pretend they think they're girls so they can beat the snot of out ladies. 

Of course, the argument is that men, especially white men, have all the power in the country and so they don't need any recognition for their accomplishments. As one of the white cisgendered oppressors, I say to that: Nuts! If we have it so great, why are men almost four times more likely than women to commit suicide? 

But let's get back to sports for a moment, because the just-completed Women's History Month likes to shove the famous 1974 Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs tennis match in the Houston Astrodome in our face every year, and it ought to be addressed. In fact, except for women's tennis, which it publicized, I think it's done a disservice to other women in sports in the long run. 

I have no doubt that the match was honestly won by King; moreover, I don't care. Bobby Riggs was a washed-up 55-year-old man when he played that match, and his opponent was 29. Riggs had retired from professional tennis 11 years earlier. The last time he'd won a major, Harry Truman was president. Sure, he was shootin' off his mouth, saying he could beat a female opponent regardless of her age, but that was all in service of his main mission: to Promote the Career of Bobby Riggs. And in that event, he succeeded admirably. 

Meanwhile, on Earth, a man of competitive age beat both the Williams sisters at tennis in 1998 -- in back-to-back matches. The Williamses claimed to be able to beat any man ranked under 200, so Karsten Braasch of Germany (ranked #203) obliged. The pack-a-day-smoking Braasch beat them 6-1 (Serena) and 6-2 (Venus) while drinking beer. Sure, this was a funsies match, and no one involved was too caught up in the result, but then again, how different would it been if they had? Maybe not a lot. Serena was always a ferocious competitor (a trait that served her well, but also led to some John McEnroe-type hysterics later in her career), and I can't believe she took it easy on Braasch. 

The Riggs/King match, though, made it seem more plausible that a woman could beat a similarly able man at a physical challenge, when in fact this not true. Sure, there are plenty of women who could beat me any anything -- I'm not proud, or competitive, or athletic -- but they could not beat a man at the same level of ability. Which is why they are being viciously routed by jerks who claim womanhood but have the physical advantages of manhood. 

We're not celebrating those dudes in our Men's History Month. We're celebrating the ones who gut it out every day to do the right thing for those they love, who show honor and courage and deal squarely and honestly with everyone. Those are traits men respect, traits we need more of in society. 

Easter!

 It is Easter! 

I've written about my religiously ignorant childhood before, about how little I knew of Christmas (but not as little as my younger cousin, who thought it was the birthday of Santa Claus). I was so ignorant of Easter that I don't even know if I had any guesses as to its significance. Maybe I just thought it was one of those inscrutable adult things, like banks and insurance. I knew the Easter Bunny brought baskets of cheap chocolate and jellybeans that tasted of nothing but sugar, and those were fine by me. Years later I would learn two important things: 

1) What Easter really means.

2) That even poor chocolate can be coated with peanut butter and made into a tasty mock-Reese's treat. 

About eggs, I had no idea. The association with new life is obvious, but spring less so. Chickens don't just lay eggs in the spring, as other animals have their young in the spring; they pop out eggs all the time. Not a great symbol, but I guess we're stuck with it. 

I'm going to turn to Robert Lynd (1879-1949), an Irish writer who lived in London and wrote reviews, light ephemera, and pieces in favor of Irish nationalism. His 1921 collection The Pleasures of Ignorance contains an article on Easter eggs. It includes some wisdom on the topic that could have been written today, or at least before the Internet removed the necessity to go to actual books to look things up. Nevertheless, just as today, the author begins his search (in the Encyclopedia Britannica) and immediately becomes distracted:

The egg I was looking for was the Easter egg, and it seemed to be the only egg that was not mentioned. There were birds' eggs, and reptiles' eggs, and fishes' eggs, and molluscs' eggs, and crustaceans' eggs, and insects' eggs, and frogs' eggs, and Augustus Egg, and the eggs of the duck-billed platypus, which is the only mammal (except the spiny ant-eater) whose eggs are "provided with a large store of yolk, enclosed within a shell, and extruded to undergo development apart from the maternal tissues." I do not know whether it is evidence of the irrelevance of the workings of the human mind or of our implacable greed of knowledge, but within five minutes I was deep in the subject of eggs in general, and had forgotten all about the Easter variety.

But does he lose hope of finding out anything? He does not:

In order to learn something about Easter eggs one has to turn to some such work as The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which tells us that "the practice of presenting eggs to our friends at Easter is Magian or Persian, and bears allusion to the mundane egg, for which Ormuzd and Ahriman were to contend till the consummation of all things." ... Next Easter, I feel sure, I shall look it up again. I shall have forgotten all about the mundane egg, even if Ormuzd and Ahriman have not. I shall be thinking more about my breakfast egg. What a piece of work is a man! And yet many profound things might be said about eggs, mundane or otherwise. I wish I could have thought of them.

To be fair, the modern online Britannica has much more to say about Easter eggs, some of which you can find in this essay. Personally, like Mr. Lynd, I'm not very much interested in Easter eggs, and not just because, as when I was a child, I am much more interested in Easter chocolate. 

Now I focus on the true significance of Easter -- which, if I believe it, must be the most important thing to have ever happened on this Earth; and if I don't, is of no significance whatever. (But I do.)

Still, there's nothing wrong with Easter chocolate. Even the cheap stuff can be brought around with a little Jif. 

Stunning archeological find!

I know you think I'm just an editor and writer, spending my days cramped over the computer, pounding out words and nursing phrases to health. Boring, right? Well, that's not the whole story, my friends! Unbeknownst to you, your friend Fred is also a paleontologist and an archeologist! I just do it for laughs; there's not usually a lot of money in that stuff. It's why Indiana Jones had the same hat for fifty years.

But who cares? It's the science and the history that concern us! And that is why I am excited to share with you my latest finding, one that will rock the foundations of academia and change forever the way we think of dinosaurs and prehistoric man! 

You see, it has been a longstanding prejudice by the scientific community that dinosaurs died out 63 million years before the appearance of the first humans. They point to stories like those of famed caveperson Alley Oop, who had a pet dinosaur, as being silly, ahistorical, unscientific. 

Well, I say: Nuts to that! Because I have discovered proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. I present to you this cave drawing that I found following extensive and exhaustive research. And digging. Oh, so much digging. My achin' back! But it was worth it. 

Clearly, what we have here is an example of a giant spike-boned dinosaur, similar to Alley Oop's Dinny, as rendered by our primitive ancestors. I submit that this vivid and detailed cave depiction is of the Kentrosaurus genus (Kentrosaurus meaning prickle lizard), which was said to have died out with the late Jurassic. Late Jurassic! As you can see, that's just silly talk.

Obviously the artist had seen one of these magnificent beasts sometime in the paleolithic era. But this stegosaur appears to have a much larger head than most known dinos of its type, a head more suited for carnivorous rather than herbivorous habits. I confess my identification of the animal as a Kentrosaurus involves some guesswork. But it is prickly and it is a lizard, and I've known a number of people that fit that description, so let's call it educated guesswork.

Assuming this is a discovery of a new and unknown species, I humbly suggest the name Kentrosaurus Flinstonica for it, a tribute to that modern stone-age family who demonstrated peaceful coexistence with dinosaurs in legends passed down to us. 

But where did I find this amazing work of art? I'm afraid I will have to keep that my secret, at least unless the Journal of Old Stuff publishes my paper and pays me handsomely. And even then it may not be possible for others to investigate the find personally. It's been rather rainy, and I'm afraid it may be washed away.

Be glad I have preserved the image for science. You're welcome!

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land.

As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of people: Those who divide people into two kinds of people, and those who do not. Well, I'm usually of the latter, but today I'm the former, I guess. 

Here we go: 

There are two kinds of Americans: Those who believe that human rights are God-given, and those who do not. This distinction is at the heart of all our political problems. The old counterargument, that rights are granted by government alone, had been the cry of tyrants, and was renewed by the new tyranny of Communism in the twentieth century. It exploded in our national consciousness right about the time we were able to recognize that the government's duty was to protect these God-given rights for all citizens. 

Until very recently, most Americans would have agreed wholeheartedly with this famous passage from the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

I suppose there is no more crucial passage in our nation's founding than that. Some modern students think Olde Tyme people were longwinded, but look at these exceptionally important and in fact revolutionary ideas summed up in 54 words:

1) These truths are self-evident: they are postulates in no need of proof;

2) That God has endowed us with rights that are above and beyond politics;

3) That they are just three: we have a right to be alive; we have a right to be free from oppression; we have a right to seek happiness as free men;

4) That the only point of government is to secure (NOT PROVIDE) these God-given rights;

5) And that governments are formed by human beings and exist by the consent of those human beings who are under its jurisdiction. 

We've heard it all a million times, but how many of us realize how important it is? What a shocking statement it makes? The people on top through history had always acted as if the whole point of government was to protect the clan, whether the clan be a tiny tribe or Rome or France, and everyone's main job was to protect the brains of the outfit -- the ruler. The Declaration turned it all on its head. If the king infringes on the rights given to us by God, king had better watch his back. He has lost his legitimacy.

But if we don't believe in God, or don't believe that these simple rights are from the God that created us, what then? "Human rights" are disposable, mere lip service to keep the plebes in line, but there's no reason they cannot be infringed upon as much as desirable. It seems crazy that anyone would willfully dispense with the idea that his own rights come from a power higher than government. But in their effort to dethrone God, the Communists were perfectly happy to give the dispensing of rights back to government -- as long as they had their hands on the whip. 

And this is where we are now. 

We may be near or maybe even just past the tipping point, where fewer than half the people in the United States believe in that statement in the Declaration. Certainly there are those who scoff, saying the so-called "negative" rights are worthless, just the right to starve in the street; we need positive rights, the right to food, clothing, free education, housing, healthcare, and whatever else comes along. 

But those are not the rights we were founded on, because the Founders knew any real right was based in the right to freedom. They would have found it preposterous to go looking for a government-enforced right to someone else's labor. Which is what free food and free medicine and all the rest are. 

The heart of the matter is this: If Americans no longer believe that God (or nature or just human dignity, if you must) has given us the rights mentioned in the Declaration, rights that are few in number but rock-solid inviolable, then we're truly sunk. Those who control us will deny those rights; those who are controlled won't believe they are worth fighting for. 

The ironic thing is that those of us who believe that those rights are from God believe it is true whether we accept it or not, but will be forced to watch our government violate these rights as much as it desires. 

But those petty kings had better beware -- not from the peasants as much as their Creator. They were given a wonderful nation, and they'd better take care of it, or they will have to answer someday to Him. If human rights come from God, God is not going to be pleased with those who destroy these rights among others in their care -- especially in the United States of America, where we have known these things for 247 years. 

Southerners on Broadway.

Contrary to some people's reminiscences, our culture in the 1970s was not all America hating post-Vietnam Watergate-obsessed conspiracy theories.  

In fact, almost 50 years ago a musical hit the Broadway boards, based on a Civil War story and starring Southerners. It was called Shenandoah.

The musical was based on a 1965 Jimmy Stewart film, and written by Peter Udell, Philip Rose, and James Lee Barrett (who wrote the movie), with music by Gary Geld. It ran for more than a thousand performances. It told the story of a family of yeoman farmers in the Shanandoah valley, a large non-slave-owning family who wanted nothing to do with the burgeoning war but were caught up in the horror of it anyway. These were the kind of people who in real life caused West Virginia to split from the eastern side and join the Union. 

Shenandoah starred John Cullum -- familiar to many people today from his appearances on Law & Order. He had been blowing the doors off the 46th Street Theater as South Carolina's John Rutledge in 1776 a few years earlier -- a role he repeated in the 1972 film version -- and played a scheming playwright in Ira Levin's Deathtrap a few years later. A very versatile actor, who would win the Tony for Shenandoah. (It did not win Best Musical; that was the year of The Wiz. The book got Best Book of a Musical, though.) It was promoted heavily on local TV, something that didn't happen only at Christmastime in those days. 

Shenandoah was typical of the Americana that was in the air leading up to the Bicentennial. People who think of seventies culture as nothing but disco and pet rocks and cheesy sitcoms might be surprised how reflective the nation was in that era, and yet celebratory. This musical entered that spirit. The story is tough -- the large family suffers at the hands of Union soldiers and Confederate deserters, a dramatic example of Trotsky's line that “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Moreover, the patriarch, Charlie, is a man whose faith in God has been wrecked before the play begins by the loss of his wife, and his is a spiritual journey as tragedy unfolds. I can't imagine a current musical even taking religion seriously enough to make it the dramatic center of the story. Audiences now would be yelling, like Job's wife, "Curse God and die!" 

And it's hard to imagine that a play about sympathetic Southerners, even those opposed to slavery and the War Between the States, would be a hit on Broadway. It would be panned as being a musical about "nice Nazis." Because people are stupid and know nothing and just want to shout. 

Shenandoah was revived in 2019, although not on Broadway. I'm not certain it could run on the Great White Way at all, not just because it takes place in the Confederacy. Broadway musicals are ridiculously expensive to produce, far more so than in 1974, and these days there has to be a built-in audience before the thing even opens or investors won't touch it. So a musical has to be constructed like a commodity around well-known pop songs (Jersey Boys, Smokey Joe's Café, MJ, Beautiful, and on and on) (and even then it can be a disaster) or be built around a movie that has a strong following (Elf, Legally Blonde, Back to the Future, all that Disney crap, and oh so much more). Foreign performance rights are also crucial to recouping investment, and a play based on a time in American history does not sound like a layup for audiences in Europe and Asia. While revivals of past hits are a good bet, Shenandoah never reached the rarified atmosphere of a few megahits like Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Wiz, or Gypsy. Investors may take a flyer on something new, if it's woke enough, and take a bath on it, patting themselves on the back all the way to the tax write-off. 

As we gear up for our Semiquincentennial in 2026, I see no sign in the current culture of reflection or celebration. They revived 1776 with stunt casting -- an "All-Female, Transgender, and Non-Binary Broadway Revival," although the internal contradictions of that casting requirement will make your head spin. It makes one wonder if the John and Abigail Adams numbers are based on hot girl-on-girl action, because that's where our culture is now. Ahistorical, childish, and stupid. 

I doubt we're going to make it to the Tricentennial at this rate. 

Working out the kings.

I don't think that I'm really worthy to make any comments on English royalty, being an American. There were reasons beyond the crimes of George III that we wanted out of the empire, but man, did we give George the business in the Declaration of Independence. 

Still, I am glad that the royal family remains a rallying point for many Brits who love their country. Genuine patriotism is a genuine good, and is being steadily killed by the people who run countries, and to hell with that. I also don't care if the royals stole stuff from other cultures, diamonds and whatever. All top dogs tend to be very grabby, and if they were better at it than the heads of other nations, too bad. If the tables were reversed and the Great Emeralds of Yorkshire (can you imagine such a thing?) were held by the Chinese, say, hell would freeze over before Yorkshire got them back.  

But today I'm writing as an American a little annoyed by Americans' interest in the whole Royals saga and spectacle. Yeah, it's history, but when you get down to it, it's really institutionalized celebrity and worship of wealth, all tied up with a cord made of Disney/Hallmark culture and a cord made of soap operatic mishmash. Something for everyone, I guess. It's happy fun royalty, with all the dough and pomp but without the teeth. Charles III may be able to have someone bumped off if he really needs it done, but it won't be legal and it won't be public. No hanging of his enemies and leaving the bodies to rot on display at Execution Dock.

Many Americans may think they would like to be a king or queen, but these people really would not want to live under the rule of one. If they think they would, ask if they'd like a King Joe or King Donald. One or the other would make them throw up. There's only one way peasants can get rid of a tyrannical family, and it's not an outpatient procedure.

Well, the job's done, Charles is installed, and I didn't watch a bit of the Coronation, although I was up early enough. 

Speaking of the kingship not having any teeth: People who did watch the show tell me that Chuck 3 doesn't look too healthy, a much older 74 than his mum was at that age in 2000. I trust the gang at the Crown Jewel room in the Tower of London has Wills's hat size on file. Might need to resize some crowns soon, is all I'm saying. 

The ancients.

When I get up in the morning and I feel a little ancient, I remind myself -- well, no, I'm too busy schlepping to the bathroom and wondering what time it is to remind myself of anything. But if it is a morning where I feel the aches and pains that begin in middle age and end five hours after death, I remind myself that age is only a number. An enormous number, but a number.

Of course, when applied to various things, ancient is a relative term. Here's a little list I drew up to show how the word ancient, when commonly applied, changes depending on the subject:

Actors - Richard Burbage

Actors to Americans - Edwin Booth

Actors to Millennials - Robert Downey Jr.

Religions - Hinduism

Rocks - Bedrock, Hudson Bay, Canada (4.28 billion years old a week from Friday)

Colleges - Oxford

Buildings -

Duh.

Authors - Aristophanes 

Novelists - Cervantes

Novelists to Millennials - Stephen King

Stars - Methuselah (age: 16 billion; looks not a day over 15 billion)

Music -  “Seikilos Epitaph,” 1st century AD

Pop Music - Britney Spears 

Medicine - Belladonna

Topical Medicine - Coal Tar

Medical Treatment - Leeches

Nations - Iceland

Automobiles - Model T

Bloggers - Instapundit

Websites - Amazon

Computer - ENIAC

Modern Computer - iMac

Telephone - Candlestick

Telephone to Millennials - Flip Phone

TV Sitcom - Father Knows Best

TV Sitcom to Millennials - Full House

👴👴👴

So you see, it's all relative. And speaking of relatives, I have some who are older than I am, so as long as they're still kicking I am not going to consider myself ancient. 

The Hand that writes.

I was asked about writing a religious novel -- not one with religious themes, but a straight-up story where faith is crucial to the plot. And I have to say, while I would love to write a Ben Hur or The Robe or a story set in the modern day where a character's faith is central to the plot and miracles occur, I don't think I'm qualified to write such a thing. I'll tell you why. 

It's not because I don't have faith. I believe in God, I believe in Christ. But I also can't speak for them. A writer of this kind of work generally wants to show the miraculous, if subtle, work of God in action in the characters, and I think that'd be presumptuous of me. I'd be a terrible scriptwriter for the Almighty. 

Little Sally is dying! But her father comes to You and prays! Okay, now here's the scene where You heal Little Sally.

Sally [dies]

What? 

Well, it happens. We know it does and we're sorry it does. God is sorry it does. Dickens was sorry it did when he killed off Little Nell. (Oops, spoiler alert!) It's a fallen world and all too often the very best, most sincere prayers have to be answered with a no. (See also: Gethsemane.) Am I as a writer supposed to decide when God would make that decision? Am I to mislead readers into thinking that's how it works? I get sore enough when I read a historical novel where figures of the past are made to dance to the author's pipes rather than act as the real men and women would. One best-selling novel I refused to finish because I thought it did such a poor job with famous men of the past. If we can't get, say, Wellington right on the page, how are we going to get the incomprehensible God?

This I suppose is why Catholic writers like Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy didn't write stories where God reaches in and produces desired outcomes. And yet they are (or some are--looking at you, Evelyn) infused with Christian life in one level or other. However, I don't think I'm up to writing those kinds of books, either. 

Faith is the most important thing in my life, and it surely can be found in one form or other in my writing. I just don't think I can make it the utter focus of a book without falling into error. And if I should lead my readers into error, kindly put a millstone around my neck and drop me in the Hudson. I aim to entertain, not lead others in bad directions. 

Mailed it in.

In case you feel like you're wasting time with whatever you're doing, let me just remind you of something:

The US Postal Service has its own podcast.

These days, every organization has to have its own pricey Web site, podcast, video introduction, YouTube channel, and LinkedIn page. Some never get much farther than all that. The part where they actually do something useful, benefit society, and/or make money? Forgot in all the excitement.

It's weird to see that the post office has a podcast. What is the post office's rep? Slow, late to adopt tech, humorless, a dinosaur, at worst just a benefits program that happens to deliver the mail, as General Motors became a benefits program that happens to make cars. The post office doesn't even have a lot of fun stamps anymore. The last time a stamp issue was a big deal was the Young Elvis vs. Fat Elvis vote in 1992.

I was looking for the tracking tools on the USPS site when I came across the link for the podcast, available on Apple Podcasts on on the Simplecast site. So, okay, what the hell do they talk about on a podcast by the post office? What could possibly interest you and me, going about our business and not much thinking about mail? I mentioned to my wife that the post office has a podcast and she said, "I can't imagine a duller one."

I downloaded episode 32, new this past Tuesday, in which Bill Gicker, USPS director of Stamp Services, talks about the 2023 stamp program. Other episodes deal with topics like postal history, delivery preparations for the holidays, the origin of the zip code, and why mail-in voting is totally safe, you bet, no cheating here. Each one is just around half an hour. 

Well, it actually was fairly interesting. Got some standard jukey intro music, and then the host introduces the guest, and they talk about post office things. I learned some info bits from the episode I heard -- like, new stamp designs are chosen three years before they are issued, a citizen's group is included in the voting, and the post office is at least as obsessed with diversity as any other American organization. I don't think I heard the name of a straight white person mentioned among the upcoming 2023 issues except Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (The current rule says someone must be deceased for three years before being eligible to be enstampified.) Peanuts stamps do very well, according to Gicker, as does the Black Heritage series. The host is fine and all, but I'm not much into postal things, so I don't know that I'd download another episode. Maybe some of the American history-tied episodes. (They did not mention that once again! the price of a first-class stamp is going up, this Monday the 22nd, to 63 cents.)

I'm sure there's an audience for this stuff -- even though interest in philately has declined, it has not gone away entirely. It might be of interest to employees; the post office currently has more than 516,000 full-timers on staff (about the population size of Atlanta, Georgia), and no doubt millions of former and aspiring employees in the wings. And the beauty of the podcast environment, like that of the blog (cough, cough), is that don't need to put up big bucks to design, write, and produce the thing. Why, sometimes one idiot with an obsession (ahem) is all it takes. So the USPS may not be spending much, but they got a PR program out of it. 

I guess it seems odd because -- why do it all? We know the post office loses money every year, and the odds of it being able to become a money-making enterprise are about as good as the odds of it being able to lay off redundant workers -- roughly 0%. Most of us treat it like a utility, so it's like if the local water company had a podcast. It could be interesting -- clean water available on demand is a great luxury in the history of the world -- but why do it at all? 

If you're the kind of person who likes checking out the odd spots in podcast world, check it out and let me know what you think. It's hard to find stats on podcast listeners or subscribers, but Mailin' It does have a 3.6-star (out of 5) rating from 182 reviewers, so someone must be enjoying it. But it just seems like another way that modern organizations spend time, effort, and resources to tell people how great they are instead of actually being great. (See also: the Academy Awards.)

Back to nature: Massive die-off edition.

I guess this is food week on the old blog, although maybe not always an appetizing one. 

Off and on over the last few years, I've seen articles suggesting that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is a lot healthier than the modern agriculture-based lifestyle, and better for the environment as well. Articles on CNN, Psychology Today, the Portland Press-Herald, and many others tout those taut and hearty bands of fishin', huntin', foragin' man- and womanhood, compared to our fat, sedentary Olive Garden-suckin' selves. Even snooty science journals give the thumbs-up to the H-G lifestyle, although admitting that the high childhood mortality, illness, and deaths by accident are a bummer. 

Hunting-gathering does seem to have its advantages. No mortgage, no taxes, nothing to weigh you down. Just go and live off the land. Away from civilization. King of the non-road! You might say,

No phone, no lights, no motor car,

Not a single luxury,

Like Robinson Crusoe,

It's primitive as can be.

I don't think it's for me. I'd hate to leave all my books behind, but that's part of bidding farewell to civilization. As George Carlin put it so memorably, "That's all your house is--a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it."

There's just one other little problem with us all going ultra-Paleo. 

Hunter-gatherers need a lot of room. Since they don't herd and they don't plant, they can only get what they need from nature. Thus, as at least one study estimated that the world could only support about 10 million hunter-gatherer humans. Nature, in her goodness, would probably see to it that our numbers stayed in that range -- we'd eat ourselves into famine, or just beat one another's brains in when things got scarce. 

So if we're going to adopt that healthy hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we'd better get started dying off, and in a hurry. There's more than 7 billion of us now, so we have to drop about that many humans; 10 million is a rounding error with numbers like that. 

Personally, I've always felt that those who hate civilization ought to go right ahead and leave it; that should cut down on a few right out of the gates. For the rest of us, I guess we'll just have to sit here all fat & lazy, surrounded by our stuff. Dang it.

Bygone favorites.

Calvin Trillin is still kicking. He's always been a terrific writer, great at the long-form feature, but like most people I was drawn to his short humor pieces. One I remember well was the essay pondering the disappearance of Chicken à la King. Chicken à la King was once a mighty dish that crossed the continent, then suddenly vanished. To quote from the piece:

There must be billions of gallons of chicken à la king somewhere. There was a time--in the 1950s, say--when the whole country seemed to be awash in chicken à la king. Thousands of Kiwanians ate it at Kiwanis luncheons. Kiwanians ate so much chicken à la king that whenever I heard them sing their song, "I'd Rather be a Kiwanian Than in Any Other Club," I expected to hear a few lines in there about the health-giving qualities of the dish that was giving strength and succor to all Kiwanians everywhere:

There's nothing can defeat us, 

Whatever life may bring. 

'Cause we can go and eat us 

Some chicken à la king. 

So I'd rather be a Kiwanian than in any other club.

It may be small succor to the Kiwanians and others that Swanson still makes a canned variety of the stuff, but perhaps it's cold comfort. The canned stuff cannot match the majesty of Chicken à la King in the wild!

Just in the time I've been hanging around the earth being a nuisance, I have seen ubiquitous foods vanishing into obscurity. Once exotic or high-falutin', these popular meals became a symbol of American yahooism and were discarded. Or maybe everyone just got bored. Also, following the Kingsley Amis rule of More will mean worse, the more popular a food becomes, the less likely it will be prepared well. 

Here are some that have gone the way of the dodo, Howard Johnson's, and the Automat:

Beef Stroganoff: Such a delight when done well! Which means, you can't go cheap on the beef. And no mushrooms. So simple, yet so many ways to screw it up, and oh so many did.

Chicken Chow Mein: The staple of every Chinese restaurant in America, now shuffled off to the side like a poor relation. I once saw it in a buffet. It was the only remotely Asian dish there. 

Duck à l'Orange: Duck was much more a mainstay of the American diet in the past. This fancy dish was a great way to serve it, the citrus counteracting the fattiness of the duck.

Turkey Tetrazzini: Once a popular way to get rid of leftover Thanksgiving turkey. No one ever asked "How do Italians know how to cook turkey?" Just eat it, kid. Santa's watching.

Chicken Cacciatore: Another beloved Italian dish, barely seen outside of Grandma's kitchen now. That Corningware casserole of hers must be at least 80 years old, right?  

Salisbury Steak: Did they ever eat this in Salisbury? Who cares? If you didn't get it from Mom or Grandma, you got it from Swanson, and were glad to get it. 

Fondue: Children, the legend says that once upon a time, if you got married, you got a Crock-Pot and a fondue set. Maybe a blender. The slow-cooker might become a real life-saver for busy families, and Dad might have fun on the weekends with the blender, but the fondue set? Used five times the first year and never after. 

Boeuf Bourguignon: The sign of high-class cooking in the mid-seventies, boeuf bourguignon was even a favorite of Superman's. 

But by the mid-1980s, for fine dining, zee boeuf was not considered enoeuf. Also in the boozy French meat department:

Coq au Vin: One cup of wine for the chicken, three cups for the chef...

Coquilles Saint Jacques: A fantastic way to cook scallops, but a good bit of work. Plus, scallops are excellent with very little frou-frou stuff, so why bother?

Salad Bars: As a food class, the American salad bar of the seventies was an amazing leap forward in food service. It actually got Americans of the era to eat some raw vegetables, although probably most of them also took five rolls and some chow mein.

Fried Oysters: This one goes way back, but people still alive remember when oysters were no big deal and frying them a perfectly reasonable way to eat them. Snobs might go the Oysters Rockefeller route, which is to oysters what Clams Casino is to clams. Come to think of it:

Clams Casino: There.

Veal Oscar: A shockingly complicated dish with crabmeat, asparagus, demi-glace, clarified butter, Béarnaise sauce, and so on -- no wonder restaurants don't want to bother with it. 

Lobster Newburg: I had it once in Maine, and it was really salty. I ate lobster at almost every meal and this was the only thing I didn't like. Sorry, Mr. Newburg (or Wenburg); probably just a bum cook that day. Also on the lobster end of obscurity: Lobster Thermidor. 

Shrimp Cocktail: Sure, you see it around, but not like in times past. Why, we had hot-and-cold running shrimp cocktail! Meaning, boiled and chilled or fried. Excellent either way.

Baked Alaska: The king of desserts! A spectacular presentation of fire (browned meringue, often done by setting booze ablaze) and ice cream! 

Time passes, and yesterday's snobby dish becomes today's nouveau riche garbage. Prime rib and chateaubriand may hang around thanks to wedding caterers, but the trendsetters have gone somewhere else. Lately they're snacking on whatever they find in the dirt or traveling to countries with very poor sanitation to pester the natives and eat there. I think I'd rather stick with Salisbury steak, tell you the truth.

Too soon?

Okay, I know this is essentially the same gag as yesterday's, but I had a lot of deadlines.

Also, the World Economic Forum is meeting this week, and I'd suggest that they think about these two gags when they start in about us peasants having to eat bugs. At least Marie Antoinette's legendary (i.e., not true) remark about letting the peasants eat cake supposed to have been born of ignorance. These sons of bitches mean it. Plus, cake is better than bugs.