Arsen Darnay's Blog, page 19

Let’s Hear It For Miss P!

The Grumpy Old Man must keep his peace today. Sometimes the papers do bring good news. A Beagle won the 139th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show! The dog was Miss P (popularly) or Ch Tashtins Looking for Trouble (formally). The WKC is based in New York. A beagle won this event only once before, in 2008. It produced what became known as a national “Beaglemania.” Well, 2015—get ready for another!

Around here, Beaglemania is kind of an everyday affair—owing to Katie the Beagle, known worldwide for her Haikus. I show a picture of her here, matronly although she appears, because I don’t wish to violate anybody’s copyright. As for Katie—she certainly looks like a champion, doesn’t she?

The Murray Mysteries?

We’ve lived the last forty years or so in the suburbs either of Minneapolis or Detroit. One of the fringe benefits of such locations has been access to CBC-TV. CBC stands for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is instructive to have such access. Outwardly Canada is very like the United States, and yet the differences are striking. Canada is a vast geographical domain but a small country based on population; some aura of Britain still surrounds it with the waist deep decadence of Britain absent. Those fond of such sports as curling and ice hockey are well served by CBC—and when the Olympics are on, one can get a view of those games from a very different perspective and without the feeling that one’s viewing the Olympics of Advertising rather than of summer or of winter sports.
All this by way merely of introducing a quite different subject—namely a wonderfully entertaining television series called The Murdoch Mysteries. Its hero is William Murdoch, the leading detective of the Toronto Constabulary. The time is the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The series is light, you might say: humorous, not grim, and quite unpredictable. Murdoch is a man deeply into science and experimentation—yet he is a devout Catholic and a bit of a prude, the “straight man” in the comedy—but don’t get me wrong; the episodes are often excruciatingly suspenseful. Important scientific figures, famous authors, titans of industry, and inventors make appearances in episodes. And, generally, Murdoch Mysteries touches on virtually all major fads and movements that enlivened nineteenth century English-speaking culture. We like all the characters, especially like Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig), Constable Crabtree (Johnny Harris), and pathologist Dr. Julia Ogden (Hélène Joy). Murdoch himself, played by Yannick Bisson (shown in the inset ( link )), is featured as a “great” detective, known all over Canada and parts beyond. Viewers no doubt think that this designation is a bit of the same fun-and-games that the Mysteries is all about—until, like me, they look further.
When they do, they discover one John Wilson Murray. The author/creator of the Murdoch Mysteries is Maureen Jennings, an immigrant from England to Canada. Her inspiration for the series was a real detective, namely Mr. Murray, who was Ontario’s first “provincial detective,” appointed in 1875. Murray was assigned to solve particularly difficult cases anywhere in Ontario—and soon developed widespread fame. His own cases also carried him all over the world—much like Murdoch’s own. Not only that, but Murray also wrote a memoir, with Victor Speer, which is as dramatic and vivid as the Murdoch series. Furthermore, it was entitled—well, the image I show ( link ) tells you the title. What more need I say?
Sometimes a life is adventurous and strange enough to become a fiction—and it’s difficult to see which is the more authentic. For a short but illuminating account of Murray and his book, I would suggest this link for a story that appeared in the Toronto Star. One line is worth quoting here: “Murray once stated he hated lies as much as he hated mosquitoes.” Yes. Murdoch would say the same thing. Author Jennings, who is now 76, generally approves of the series if with a small demurral. She says:
The only problem I've really had is with the hair! No woman would wear her hair down [as Dr. Julia Ogden does in the first season] and most men would have had a moustache, but the producers don't like the way they look on TV!
The current Murdoch series, in its 8th season, may be obtained from Netflix on disk or by streaming. An earlier version (much more serious but less innovative in tone or execution) is also available at Netflix on disk. Fun watching…

Bi-Polar World

George Orwell’s super-states came to mind as another paragraph on the Greek bailout was penned yesterday. Europe’s negotiators broke off talks with the Greeks. The story in the New York Times this morning reported this Greek reaction: “Greece, meanwhile, has suggested that it could turn to Russia or China for help if its talks on debt relief and a rollback of austerity measures break down.” The Russians and Chinese might review Virgil’s famous saying, but with a slight edit: Beware of Greeks even when they’re seeking gifts….

Let's Say It Again

February has a special meaning to us around here being at the same time the anniversary of Brigitte’s birth (1st), our marriage (3rd), and my “coming to adulthood”—that day, for me, being marked by entering the U.S. Army on February 21. My second day in the Army was a day off—so that I could laze around and get used to my shaven head. Back in those days February 22nd was a National Holiday, Washington’s Birthday. Year after year, thereafter, a holiday reminded me of that anniversary—until, in 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act created Presidents’ Day and moved it to the third Monday of February. Pragmatism triumphs over history.

That Jugular Vein

And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than his jugular vein. [Koran 50:16]
Last year about this time the subject of “fate” surfaced and I wrote a note on the subject ( here ). That day  vast amounts of ice were melting; now the snow is decently frozen all over. In any case, the subject seems to belong to the month in which the blessed spring is but a month away. It occurred to me in the course of a morning conversation (that first cup), that fate, at the personal level, is all about temperament—and temperament is very much an expression ultimately of the body type. The verse I cite from the Koran is illuminating. It speaks of God’s nearness to us—but what about that jugular vein? Symbolically it is the carrier of life—but it is distant from us, you might say. It belongs to that region of reality over which we have very little control—the “given,” the material order.
Part of our conversation also involved laughing at the review of the movie If I Stay which deals with a teenage girl’s near death experience. Mia, the lead character, spends her time in an out-of-body state tracking her own body and her family and friends. The review ends on this note: “So does Mia stay or go? Let’s just say that she’s a child of her generation with an unshakeable sense of empowerment. Never mind what God or random-chance may have in store for her. ‘I’m running the show,’ she declares toward the end. Deathless words from a near-death decider.” [WSJ, August 22, 2014] I cite this snippet by way of indicating the modernist view of reality: “I’m running the show.” But the truth is otherwise.
We’re running the show in the same sense as a deep-sea diver is inside a massive diving suit—linked by lines and pipes to a boat and oxygen supplies—the boat itself linked in countless ways, not least by radio waves, to the greater world on shore. The surrounding “suit” is much more real, in the practical sense, than the self inside it. Just as our body must constantly exert itself against the vast influences which the world exerts so also the soul must exert itself, at times, against the temperament which we can manage but never really control. If it weren’t so, the concepts of body-type and temperament would not have so clear a meaning to us, and fate would have no meaning. Yet it is continuously invoked when our splendid running of the show starts fraying or even runs aground.
Even when it’s not a snowy February, such morning thoughts keep me humble—because mornings are hard on those who’s temperament is stained with the melancholic dye.

Continent-Spanning Landmass

Some crossword puzzles need special notice—and a listing in Public Language Abusers International. The one that had us twisting into pretzels was Jolene Andrews’ puzzle (2/5/2015) called “Hail Mary,” its thematic being football, in which 43 Down was “Continent-spanning landmass.”
The thoughts that run in naïve minds (we’re gradually becoming crossword wise—but we’ve only been doing these for about two decades, hence we’re not yet taken for locals yet) is something like the following: The continents are landmasses. So what in the hell can a continent-spanning landmass be? Is there something beneath the continents that some kind of curved bridge of land, a kind of flattened St. Louis arch, actually links? Is there such a thing? Why haven’t we heard of it before?
Well, it turns out that there is something above the continents, and sometimes more than one. They are the names attached to continents. And, indeed, if we look carefully at maps of the world, we only find the names of seven continents but, visually, there are only six (including Antarctica)—or five if we count the two Americas, North and South, as one; and we may as well. They are not separated by any water.  But, instead, we have seven! One modestly sized one is called Europe, which isn’t a continent at all! Therefore the answer to the puzzle, which was EURASIA, is not, technically correct, not in a question which talks about “landmass.”
Every puzzle has at least some clues we mark in blood red—and try to remember for use in the future. But occasionally one really wants them to grant us a fracture.

Space v. Light

The view from my office window. After our move, I’ve exchanged a vast office in the basement of our old house, a place always gloomy except under wings of neons hung over illuminated spots here and there, for a small upstairs room from which I can stand guard over the roof of our house—and admire the Lake Wolverine across the way.
Indeed this house is marked by ample and always glorious light, especially on a frozen morning like today. The basement here is of a narrow and humble kind; and my neons now blaze their lights over those of our plants that don’t fit into the house during the grueling season of sub-zero weather.
When it comes to offices, I tend to choose space over light—but it is rather a pleasure, here, to have both.

Dum de, da Dum, da da Dum

Or simplifying the definition of poetic meter. In yesterday’s description of the meter of a hymn, I used the English saying “four beats and then three and a half” in order to avoid cluttering up the post with such phrases as “a trochaic tetrameter alternating with a trochaic tetrameter catalectic.” Now what I call a beat is what poetic tech-speech calls a “foot.” Feet are made of two or three syllables with different stresses. A foot may thus be (with Greekish names and examples added):
Dum de Trochaic By the shores of Gitche Gumee Longfellow da Dum Iambic To swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells Keats Dum Dum Spondaic And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim Hopkins de de Pyrrhic My way is to begin with the beginning Byron da da Dum Anapestic On the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond Dr. Seuss Dum de de Dactylic This is the forest primeval. The murmuring… Longfellow da Dum de Amphibrachic I think I will call it the Circus McGurkus Dr. Seuss
The meter I had in mind was a tetrameter, thus a count of four feet by line, with the even lines shorted by a syllable, thus:
Dum de, Dum de, Dum de, Dum deDum de, Dum de, Dum de, Dum.
Saying those aloud brings home the flavor of the formation, with a satisfying sort of finish on a stressed syllable bringing a though to a close.
We could, of course, all decide, the world over, to use the metric system of measurement. Similarly we could decide to teach poetry in a simple way and call what now is called trochaic Dum-de, iambic da-Dum. Now if we speak of iambic pentameter, we could say 5-da-Dum, or describe a trochaic tetrameter as a 4-Dum-de and that trochaic tetrameter catalectic as a 3.5-Dum-de.
We’re not going to do it. Poets will (one of these decades) once more use the formal definitions. For the moment people mostly do not bother. In a Democratic society, everybody is a poet. We’re not going to do it because learning is meant to be difficult, and once it is possessed, it gives us a strange kind of lift in status—at least in our own eyes. So that, discovering I didn’t know how to describe poetic meter “properly,” this morning I set to work finding the right way to say it all.
I imagine people three millennia hence vaguely knowing a little English (as now I vaguely know a little Greek) because in that future people will speak tongues none of us today would understand if  (but don’t hold your breath) right after we finally have Artificial Intelligence, we’ll discover Time Travel. But it would please me, needless to say, that in that very distant future some poor guy will, looking up the right way to measure poetry, came across such things as a “3.5-Dum-de” and genuinely wonder what that means.

Tantum Ergo

I woke around 3:30 last night with the opening words of a famous verse composed by Thomas Aquinas and sung at mass at the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament: Tantum ergo Sacraméntum. The meter, four-beats and then three-and-a-half, alternating, was also in my memory together with a vague sense of the music as well. That whole experience goes back roughly to my twelfth or thirteenth year of life.
So where did this come from suddenly? Questions of this kind can’t be precisely answered, but it occurred to me this morning that struggling with translating Latin into English four days ago may have set tendril of memory vibrating at an unaccustomed wavelength—right back to the time when I was studying Latin and, incidentally, singing hymns in Latin as well. It took a while, and I had to be asleep, before the answer echoed back—to a question I cannot formulate.
Herewith the two stanzas of Tantum Ergo—which conclude a much longer hymn called Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium. The translation is by Fr. Edward Caswall.
Tantum ergo Sacraméntum Down in adoration falling, Venerémur cérnui: This great Sacrament we hail, Et antíquum documéntum O'er ancient forms of worship Novo cedat rítui: Newer rites of grace prevail; Præstet fides suppleméntum Faith will tell us Christ is present, Sénsuum deféctui. When our human senses fail.

Genitóri, Genitóque To the Everlasting Father, Laus et jubilátio, And the Son who made us free Salus, honor, virtus quoque And the Spirit, God proceeding Sit et benedíctio: From them Each eternally, Procedénti ab utróque Be salvation, honour, blessing, Compar sit laudátio. Might and endless majesty. Amen. Alleluja. Amen. Alleluia.
What a glorious—and compressed sort—of language Latin is!

Cross or Pile?

In an obscure academic paper titled “Bonus Scarabaeus—an Early Christian (?) Magical Gem from Pannonia” (Brigitte discovers the strangest things)—I came across images of a magical coin with its two sides designated as “avers” and “revers.” The missing e’s may have to do with the translator, but, in any case, I got to wondering. Were sides of coins once called by these names? The answer seems to be No. The sides of coins are folk designations. But sticking with avers for a moment longer, that word is Old French derived from the Latin adversus, which had the meaning both of turned away (against), and turned toward (confronting), thus face-to-face, hence “heads.”
Wikipedia informs me that the Romans’ heads or tails was navia aut caput, thus ship or head; the head, of course, was the emperor’s. The Germans say Kopf oder Zahl, head or number, Hungarians say fej vagy irás, head or writing, the Spanish say cara ou cruz, face or cross, the French say pile ou face, pile or face (but more about “pile” in a moment). The English once used cross or pile—so there is that “pile” again.
The pile in this context is not a “mound” or an “accumulation” but, rather, a pillar, the pier of a bridge. In France the reverse of coins was often a bridge. A pile also means a javelin, thus a stout rod with a sharpened tip; in German the word Pfeil means both an arrow and an architectural pillar. The English pylon (from the Greek for “gate”) is not seemingly related—although great gates often have pillars.
Avers and revers had me instantly remembering the Superbowl. At the Superbowl the “visiting” captain calls the toss; in the last one that would have been Tom Brady. I was imagining Brady calling the toss by saying “Avers” or “Ship” or “Pile.” Ahhh. The sorts of thoughts that fill a snowy morning… That morning, thanks to the Cross, has now turned sunny.