Journal Entries
Short Heroes
Posted Apr 9, 2010
Okay, I think I'm in love.
Although it seems as if I will never get through the Civil War, every day brings new wonders to my bleary eyes as I work my way through the history course I'm writing under a tight deadline. This week, I've started with Olaudah Equiano, the African slave who survived, got free, and wrote a book, through various forms of slave resistance, and am now in the middle of explaining the abolitionists.
Who were cool people in many ways. The piece de resistance of today's work was the discovery of a picture of Benjamin Lay - one of the many reasons for being proud of Philadelphia. Lay looked sort of like this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3372/3438348014_d455982db0.jpg
He was four foot seven and lived in a cave in Abington, PA, with his wife, back in the 18th Century. From this stronghold (where he was visited by Ben Franklin), this delightful vegetarian gnome (that's what John Greenleaf Whittier called him, a gnome) made forays into the Abington Friends Meeting and told them off about slavery.
Once, he stalked in wearing a long coat. Now, you will recall that Quaker meetings are silent affairs, unless someone is moved to speak. Lay was moved. Really moved.
He told them they were all hypocrites, and should lay aside their Quaker coats. As he would now do...
...to reveal a suit of armour (anathema to Quakers) and SWORD (double anathema). Then he proceeded to demonstrate the evils of some of them keeping slaves by...
Stabbing a Bible with the sword. This in itself would be less awful than you think, as Quakers are well aware that it's, er, just a book and not a talisman, but Lay had hollowed the thing out and filled it with pokeberry juice. (Did I mention he lived in a cave? In the woods near Jenkintown?) The splash probably created laundry issues.
It did not surprise me (but it did make me chortle) to read that Benjamin had already been thrown out of two countries, just for being odd. First his native England, then Barbados. I think there must have been a clause in the Pennsylvania Royal Charter that said 'Thee cannot expel people for weirdness. Remember George Fox.'
Lay got to them, bless his heart. In 1758, they set up a committee (a Quaker specialty) to go talk the rest of the Quakers out of slavery. It worked.
Hurrah for strange people. There aren't enough of them. Benjamin Lay proved once again that it's not the size of the dog in the fight...
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Latest reply: Apr 9, 2010
Spring Has Sprung, Boing, Boing
Posted Apr 1, 2010
We're all having a good time here in North Carolina today. Nobody plays any April Fools' Day jokes on us - they wouldn't dare.
As a lady on television said last night, you don't mess around with us. We are belligerent, and might turn violent if fooled.
I am usually a pretty patient individual, but I am incensed at the news coming out of the UK today. Have you people lost your minds?
It's bad enough the French are trying to poke a hole in the fabric of reality (some say that is their national pastime, but I say leave their prime minister out of this). Their Large Hadron Collider is going to make a black hole and I'm going to be stuck with reality tv for all of eternity.
The only hope we've got is that the thing is really sentient and will keep sabotaging itself. The latest effort involved a seagull and a baguette - said bird dropped crumbs in the works, a form of pain-tage that I heartily approve of. (I smell a Goth here - that's too poetic for words.)
Anyway, now the Independent's science issue is telling us that youze guys are planning on entering the black hole race:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hadron-collider-ii-planned-for-circle-line-1932744.html
On second thought, maybe it would be a good idea if the UK built an LHC of their own.
After all, being British, the scientists would make it go in the opposite direction...
...which might cancel out the effect of the frog version...
Never mind. Happy fooling, fishing, or whatever you do on this lovely day.
And remember what Abe Lincoln said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Discuss this Journal entry [104]
Latest reply: Apr 1, 2010
Biology is Exuberant
Posted Mar 31, 2010
Biology is being too exuberant right now.
I understand that it's snowing in northern Ireland, and the lambs are in hiding. Elektra saw a picture of snowed-on crosuses in Scotland and got all teary-eyed.
Humbug. I've just been out for an hour and a half, and I had to come in, close the windows, turn on the a/c, and take a pill.
It's insane out there.
Every tree that makes flowers, is making flowers. It's beautiful. (Yeah, I bought some filum.)
Nature is bustin' out all over. Kids home for spring break are riding scooters around the parking lot, being a hazard to traffic, every puppy the neighbours acquired in the last few weeks is out investigating, the squirrels and birds are complaining, and the Mexicans have picked today to stir up all the dust in the hallway preparatory to spray-painting the staircase, which apparently involves another noisy machine and much discussion in Spanish - probably later some salsa music.
Bah, humbug.
I can't breathe, and I'm supposed to be teaching the Mexican War...maybe the salsa music will help...
Discuss this Journal entry [39]
Latest reply: Mar 31, 2010
Twisters in North Carolina
Posted Mar 29, 2010
Last night was, er, interesting.
The weather people were having a field day. They used their Doppler radar and computer programs to keep us all up to date on exactly which roads were in the path of the eight tornados heading in a northeasterly direction across the state.
North Carolina has weird weather. When it's warm, like last night, and rainy, the place turns into a tornado alley. And when they start telling you how big the hailstones are - I got worried when somebody said the word 'baseball' - it gets really interesting. (Note: Nobody has garages. We had marble-sized hail once. The car insurance people were busy writing checks for days.)
Especially when we don't even *own* a cellar.
Ah, well. We seem to be in a good corner. The storms passed by us to the north, by about 20 miles or so, and the other pocket of trouble was already east of us, so all we got was a lot of rain and some really loud thunder. (Which meant that Ariel the Philly wonderdog spent the night hiding under the covers.)
At first I thought the weather people were just making a meal out of it, as usual. But then I saw this:
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212292522.shtml
Apparently, in one place the tornado picked up a school bus and relocated it inside a daycare center. Not good interior decoration, but at least it was night, and nobody got hurt.
These little tornados may not be as spectacular as the ones in Kansas, but they mess things up real good.
Elektra is probably wondering about now what I got her into down here.
Today is lovely. Sunny and warm. We even have power. This is cool. I was here when that ridiculous Hurricane Hugo had the bad taste not to disperse before it hit the Smokey Mountains. I was near Charlotte, and we had no power for a week. All you heard was chainsaws, all the roads were blocked with trees...
I think renaming those hurricanes after fellas was the start of all the trouble. Giving them girls' names kept them quieter... Now they have macho issues.
The weather is too much with us.
Discuss this Journal entry [29]
Latest reply: Mar 29, 2010
Night and Obama and Blue Hawaii
Posted Mar 17, 2010
Our president is unusual - he was born in Hawaii, our weird 50th state, the one that's several time zones away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This confuses Americans, who are geographically challenged at the best of times.
A Bulgarian-born geography professor at the University of Pittsburgh, back in the 1970s, used to rant to me about the quizzes he gave students. At that time, university freshmen could not reliably locate Vietnam, Israel, or Canada. This annoyed him no end, and made me laugh.
The Bureau of Statistics for the State of Hawaii is now threatening to rescind people's privileges of petition (an important part of the Bill of Rights, so this is tricky), simply because they are causing the work there to grind to a halt while they answer idiot letters.
They're tired of explaining to people that they aren't entitled to a copy of Mr Obama's birth certificate. Only Mr Obama is entitled to a copy of his birth certificate. This is private information.
Why all this? You see, to be president of the United States, you have to have been born in the United States. (This was to keep the British from sending Bonnie Prince Charlie over, or some such, but it has the salutary effect of keeping us safe from a Schwarzenegger administration, for which I am grateful.)
Where do these people who are clogging the snail mail think our president was really born? In Tahiti? Or are they really not sure that Hawaii is a state?
It's a state, people. It used to be a kingdom. It's a lovely place, I understand (never been there).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ltAGuuru7Q
Discuss this Journal entry [71]
Latest reply: Mar 17, 2010
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