Hal Johnson's Blog, page 30

A garland of quotations XXI

Please buy the book I wrote

A Sulaiman (possessed of pomp)—fell at the ant’s foot;
Verily, the gnat displayed force against the elephant.
•Nizami Ganjavi, The Sikandar náma,e bara, or Book of Alexander the Great (1194).

Be wise in time; reflect; repent; and avert the thunder of our vengeance, which is yet suspended over thy head. Thou art no more than a pismire; why wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants? Alas! they will trample thee under thy feet.
•Timur, letter to Sultan Bayezid, c. 1400.

Woe be t...

Annotations on Vietnam

These are annotations for the penultimate chapter of the book Impossible Histories, which you can acquire just about anywhere, including here or your local library. No pressure on that acquisition, but these notes might make more sense with the book in hand.

p. 349
•epigraph:

…the People, who tho’ generally they are uncapable of making a Syllogism or forming an Argument, yet they can pronounce a word.
§Lord Halifax, Character of a Trimmer (1688).

•Oswald Mosley: One of these things in not like the ot...

Notes towards an alternate history: George Washington

Or what if Washington should close his scene,
Could none succeed him?—Is there not a Greene?
•Jonathan Odell, The American Times (1779).

I don’t have to tell you that George Washington served two terms and then stepped down.

Maybe he stepped down to follow his ideal, Cincinnatus, who took power to save Rome and then went back to farming when his job was done. Maybe he stepped down because he was used to unanimous adulation and after eight years with Washington in charge a feisty populace occasionall...

A garland of quotations XX

Your friends've all preordered Sorcerers

Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
•Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864).

Already the story’s starting to unravel,
the villagers stirring as your heart
pounds into your throat. O why

did you pick that idiot flower?
Because it was ...

Annotations on Aaron Burr

These are annotations for the eighteenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories, which you can acquire just about anywhere, including here or your local library. No pressure on that acquisition, but these notes might make more sense with the book in hand.

p. 342
•epigraph: The epigraph here was to be:

Oh, Aaron Burr, what hast thou done?
Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton.
You got behind a bunch of thistle
And shot him dead with a big hoss-pistol.
§anon., trad.

I didn’t always cite my epigraphs tho...

How to think about whether we should have fought the Civil War

“Why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
•Some guy back in 2017

The Civil War was really bad and lots of people died, and I can see why someone would want to avoid it. Henry Clay practically did backflips to prevent it, although of course he only managed to delay things. Clearly, slavery would have disappeared from America eventually, anyway (based on the fact that at least in overt form it’s disappeared from the rest of the developed world) so would we all have ...

A garland of quotations XIX

A great deal was happening everywhere, and people were certainly aware of it. It was regarded as a good thing when we were the ones doing it, and aroused apprehensiveness when it was done by others. Every schoolboy could understand each thing as it happened, but as to what it all meant in general, nobody really knew except for a very few persons, and even they were not sure. Only a short time later it might as well have happened in a different sequence, or the other way around, and nobody would ...

Annotations on Ethiopia and Yemen

These are annotations for the seventeenth chapter of the book Impossible Histories, which you can acquire just about anywhere, including here or your local library. No pressure on that acquisition, but these notes might make more sense with the book in hand.

p. 320
•Mecca: I wanted to title the book Elephants in Mecca and Nineteen Other Things That Didn’t Happen, but this, along with other proposed titles, got nixed.

•epigraph: The epigraph for this chapter was to be:

It’s considered more pious and...

The past is a foreign country II: Ann Landers

“Living memory” is of course subjective, because some people are eight years old, and some are eighty eight, and most people remember very little about the recent past. But 1978 is living memory for me, if only just, and looking back at some things from that year can remind me how much we have forgotten. To illustrate, I want to present some advice Ann Landers gave in 1978 to young girls fending off the unwanted advances of grown men. I’m quoting at length here, but please follow along:

I have re...

A garland of quotations XVIII

Which do you hate more, Timon, darkness or light?
“Darkness: there are more of you down here to spite.”
•Callimachus, from Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments (1987).

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
•Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (1606?).

Wealth (fé) is a source of discord among kinsmen; the wolf lives in the forest.Dross (úr) comes from bad iron; the reindeer often races over the frozen snow.•Futhork alphabet poem (C11?).

Beauteous ...