Napoleon at the Gates of Moscow After Napoleon had won a tactical victory against the Russian army at Borodino, one of the bloodiest and most pointless battles in the history of the world, he stood waiting at the gates of Moscow to meet with a deputation of the city fathers.

He had been through this ceremony countless times before. The representatives of the well-to-do of the cities he had conquered came out and gave him the keys to the city and thereby avoided a riot of wanton looting.

He waited, hmm, hmmm, hmmmm. And he waited, hmmm, hmmmm, hmmmmm. And then he started to get a little nervous. And then he waited some more. No deputation. It never came. And it started to dawn on him, I think, that he was up against something he had never seen before, because he was too dense. The power of the Russian nation.

I don't think he knew it right then, but he probably got a sneaking suspicion that his goose was cooked.

The Russian people had earned their nationhood fighting Genghis Khan. They were not in the habit of sending out deputations. For them, war was total war.

The declarations of Czar Alexander during this terrible drama are inspiring historical documents; he said he would not be the first to draw the sword, but he would be the last to sheath it, and he was as good as his word. His armies ended up in Paris.

When French troops entered Moscow, they couldn't even find people to act as translators. The only people left were people who for one reason or other couldn't leave. The only diplomatic contact the French had with the Russians was the head of the Moscow orphanage who had stayed behind to protect the children in his care.

Then, after the French had occupied the city, a brigade of carefully instructed incendiaries began their work, waiting for a 'favorable' wind, and burned it down around their ears.

Napoleon was never the same again, although he wasted millions more lives before he was done. If only he had realized what a mighty ally he had in Alexander's Russia.

.  ¶ 7:38 PM 0 comments

  Harry Golden's Favorite Socialists Here's an excerpt from For Two Cents Plain by Harry Golden about Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early years of the 20th century:

"The Socialists, of course, were important then. Morris Hillquit was a brilliant speaker, and so were Louis Waldeman and Congressman Meyer London; but my own favorites were Scott Nearing, Algernon Lee, Norman Thomas, and August Claessens. Claessens was a Roman Catholic and of course the Jews were pleased and flattered when he threw a few Yiddish words into his speeches.

Tammany Hall [a dominant political organization in New York] did everything to harass the Socialist spellbinders. Occasionally a few Tammany henchmen would set up a soapbox on the corner opposite the Socialist speaker. When the Socialist began to speak, the Tammany Hallniks would begin to sing, 'Tammany, Tammany; swampum, swampum, get the wampum, Tammanieee.'

Tammany had the help of the police, and the big thing was to demand a license from the Socialist and thereby upset his meeting.

'Where is your license to speak here?' demanded a policeman of Claessens one evening. Claessens stalled as the cop made a path in the crowd around the stand.

With perfect timing Claessens then shouted: 'My license to speak here was given to me on July 4, 1776 in the City of Philadelphia.'

The cop scratched his head and ran back to the call box to ask the desk sergeant what to do next -- and the crowd roared.

The soapbox Socialists were advocating social security, unemployment insurance, and public housing, and they were harassed and arrested. Now [1959] Richard Nixon is for social security, unemployment insurance, and public housing, and this could happen only in America."

I have been having a ball with Golden's three bestsellers: Only in America, For Two Cents Plain and Enjoy! Enjoy!

.  ¶ 2:56 PM 0 comments

  A Break in the Clouds .

My uncle Robert Bruce Dickson passed away recently. He flew a carrier-based fighter plane in World War II. He recommended Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance to me. It was a gripping read and it explained a lot that I didn't know.

I didn't really come to know and love his characters. Everything happened so fast. They were really just vehicles to portray the global drama that they were all caught up in.

But there are moments in the book which make it a great work of literature as well as a great work of historical fiction.

I'm thinking of the American officer who is sent as a liaison to the Russians. Part of his job is to see that the US gets a little credit for all the Lend-Lease aid we had been sending. He's sitting with a Russian general at a review somewhere and remarks that a soldier is wearing a uniform made in America.

The general replies, " Russian body."

Wouk also gave a beautifully understandable explanation of the Battle of Midway, when the outcome of the war was decided by a break in the clouds.

Wouk explains that the plan of attack for the US aircraft went like this: first the fighters were supposed to arrive to engage the enemy fighter planes. Then the dive bombers were supposed to attack.

Then, when the enemy's fighters were all engaged, the torpedo bombers were supposed to come in. That's because they had to come in low and slow and release their torpedoes along their exact flight path.

The problem was, the torpedo planes arrived first, three waves of them, and they were all annihilated by the Japanese fighters. Wouk lists their names. They all died except for one guy, Lieutenant George Gay who somehow managed to bail out and witnessed the entire battle.

The Japanese then brought their aircraft back and began rearming them with bombs for an attack on Midway Island. It was then that a squadron of US dive bombers arrived and saw, through a break in the clouds, four Japanese aircraft carriers.

They destroyed three of them and in that moment decided the Battle of Midway and turned the tide in the Pacific War.  ¶ 7:26 PM 1 comments

  Nimble Dancing .


More fun facts from Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond:

While the Mycenaean Greeks had a written language called Linear B, it was known only to scribes and was used exclusively for taxation. It was also a syllabic language, meaning it had a character for each syllable, unlike the phonetic alphabets of modern languages, where you can make all kinds of syllables using a much smaller combination of symbols.

Mycenaean civilization ended around 1200 B.C.E. -- we're not sure why. The ancients attributed it to a Dorian invasion, but it also could have been due to volcanic activity. Anyway Greece had 400 years where nothing was built or written.

Just after 800 B.C.E., around the time of Homer, society was revitalized and they borrowed the alphabet of the Phoenicians, adding a few letters and voila! The beginning of European literature. Homer was the first known author, although many say his poems were actually written by another blind poet of the same name.

But the first preserved example of Greek alphabetic writing is on a potsherd from around 740 B.C.E. which reads:

"Whoever of all the dancers performs most nimbly will win this vase as a prize."  ¶ 5:00 PM 0 comments

  Captain Blood -- He's Not Mean; That's Just His Name .


One author of great reads that I share with my grandfather is Rafael Sabatini. Grandpa had a bunch of his works and I read them all. This guy knows how to write a book.

You do have to skim a bit when the heroine is being purer than pure or the hero is being truer than true. I once contemplated writing a work of criticism entitled "Heads of Finest Bone: The Heroines of Rafael Sabatini".

That's because in a lot of these books the heroine gets the wrong idea about the hero and it takes exhaustive, needless effort to bring her around.

But Sabatini is able to capture my imagination with his ingenious plots and although I have no way of knowing -- it's hard to tell with historical novels -- I think he has a love of history and a true wish to portray historical situations as accurately as he can.

Captain Blood is his signature work -- made into the swashbuckler with Errol Flynn. Captain Blood is not a mean guy. That's just his name. He's Dr. Peter Blood, actually, and he likes gardening. He gets sentenced to a penal colony for treating wounded men after a battle in the English Civil War because some of the men were designated as enemies.

Dr. Blood has the last laugh on the judge who sentences him to penal servitude. He looks him in the eye and tells him he's going to have a stroke within a year and he does.

So to make a long story short he becomes Captain Blood -- kind of like the Dread Pirate Roberts in the movie "Princess Bride".

And Sabatini has lots of other great books. In one of them, I can't remember which one, the heroine is about to be ravished by the insidious villain who has actually employed her old boyfriend to abduct her and bring her into his clutches.

Since she has been betrayed by the one who ought to have been her protector, it's up to Sabatini, the author, to rescue her in a highly ingenious fashion.

The non-hero old boyfriend has slunk off to the alehouse, having done his dirty deed, and the villain, alone with the heroine in his townhouse grabs her and prepares to plant a kiss upon her neck when he sees...

The tokens! Those telltale little red rings with a sore in the middle that mean you have... The Plague!

You know the song "Ring Around the Rosy"? It's about the tokens. "Pocket full of posies" -- that's to mask the smell. "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." You get the picture.

Admittedly the plague is not a good thing, but if it protects a woman's chastity... That was a heck of a lot more important in Sabatini's day. Besides, you know the butthead boyfriend is going to nurse her back to health.

.  ¶ 8:51 PM 1 comments

  The Sacred Syllables *

In my last entry I wrote about The Cloud of Unknowing, a guide to meditation written in the 14th century.

Most meditation is done silently, in private.

But there is another kind of meditation that is done out loud in public places -- a way of increasing the wisdom and spirituality of all those around you. You just need to know the sacred syllables and say them in the right order.

The first two sacred syllables are AH WAH. The next two are TAH NAH. The last two are SI AHM. You can see there's a lot of AHs in there because this is the language of eternal joy.

It's good to say them faster and faster. AH WAH TAH NAH SI AHM. AH WAH TAH NAH SI AHM. Impress your friends!

*  ¶ 11:09 AM 1 comments

  The Cloud of Unknowing and the Quest for Answers *

My great friend Ken Moselle was, and still is, I suppose, very fond of the following poem:

Fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly,
Man gotta ask himself why, why why?

Fish gotta rest, bird gotta land,
Man gotta tell himself he understand.


"Dad," said the boy in ancient Greece, "what is that blazing orb in the sky?'

"Why son, that's Apollo's fiery chariot."

That's an answer. It just shuts people up.

In my opinion the greatest barrier to knowledge is thinking that you know, and I am quite sure that I am not alone in holding this view. I think The Apology of Socrates treats this theme far better than I could and I recommend it as a great read.

So thinking that we know is a barrier to wisdom and understanding. So now I think the second greatest barrier to wisdom and understanding -- and to eternal, life-affirming joy -- is the need to understand. The grasping, gotta go out and seek understanding point of view.

I think that rather than go out and seek knowledge, the fruit and nuts model, we should increase our capacity for understanding. Then I think the knowledge will come of its own accord. I think knowledge is kind of like rain, so rather than go out looking for it, it's better to shape a vessel with the greatest possible capacity.

Ever leave a question open in your mind and go about your business for a day or two and come back to find it answered? I have. And how.

So this big long wind-up is to recommend a book called The Cloud of Unknowing. It's kind of a meditation manual for monks and nuns written in the 14th Century. Here's an excerpt, courtesy of Wikkipedia (Wikkipedia Rules!):

"Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love ... and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God."

The author suggests to novices in meditation that they place the cloud of forgetting beneath them and the cloud of unknowing above them, and to experience love and joy. (I'm summarizing blithely here.) The book also reminds us how important this spiritual seeking (without seeking) is to the well-being of the universe. I happen to believe this also, but I cannot come up with any definite proof of the proposition.

For us who live in the world, I think this means stop seeking answers, especially simple ones. I think it suggests we should go out and experience: live and love and and observe and learn and enjoy -- in short, do everyting except form conclusions, just like Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire.

As George Kennan so aptly pointed out, "The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas -- complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse."

I think we should get used to a world without clear answers, where we have to muddle along the best we can without any blinding bolts of insight from above. Or any fiery chariots.

*  ¶ 8:11 PM 1 comments

  Intrepid Solo Women's Travel -- Isabella Bird
  ¶ 7:23 PM 2 comments

  The Longer Fragments of Arthur T. Nash As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the work of the poet Archilochus survives only in the fragments that were quoted in educational materials -- treatises on literature and grammar books.

The works of Arthur T. Nash are also fragmentary, but for altogether different reasons. As he is an author of my acquaintance, I have asked him about this, and he replied that he would rather be known for an apt fragment than add to the 'steaming heap,' and by this I think he meant all the unchastened material that is produced in this day and age.

[Chasten means to prune of excess, pretense or falsity.]

Here are the two longest fragments of A. T. Nash's poetry:

A Voice is a Vice

A voice is a vice
That ties your thoughts to words.
Words cannot fly like thoughts,
So shut up.
Be a banana bird in a windy city
Or cat leaves on the walk.
Filter like mad
And don't look horny.
Goodbye.

Jamaica Plain

With their little episides, Lord,
We seek to entertain thee.
May it ever be so or not so.
Phantom nut bushes, may they ever lurk
In the forest of worthless words.
May those who seek anguish find it.
I sing sea shanties under my breath.

May the disco jungle two-step
Lull the young of the cities to honey-sweet sleep.
I will clatter with the old women and the night orderlies
Down Huntington Ave.
And lie with the sirens
Sweet banshees of dire emergency.


I have to add that this last poem says a lot about the Boston Subway System, especially Kenmore Square and the Huntington Street Line that rattled through Jamaica Plan.  ¶ 5:55 PM 0 comments

  The Poetry of Arthur T. (not Ogden) Nash Most people know Arthur T. (not Ogden) Nash for his punchy, get-in-and-get-out poetry, notably the breakfast poem and the duck poems:

A Breakfast Poem

What?
No muffins?

Face Facts

Nobdy cares if you see a duck where there isn't one.
Nobody.


Edgy

Ducks march around the periphery of consciousness
Where they know I cannot see them.
I don't know what they have in mind.


Most people do not know, however, that A.T. Nash also wrote poems to illustrate obscure literary terms.

In this poem, he illustrates the term 'onomatopoeia,' which refers to words that sound like whatever they are describing:

To Know

"Speeshat! Speeshat!" The snow-shoed crust
Speaks Russian to the smasher of its shine.


This poem was actually used in the classroom, but we won't say where, to protect the reputation of the educator in question.

Nash also wrote a poem to illustrate the use of the predicate nominative, a vestige of the classical era. How many of you, dear readers, actually say, "It is I"? You know it's correct, but you don't want to sound like a pedant, so you say, "It's me."

In an interview in a magazine called The Power of Poetry, Nash explained that he wrote this poem after reading the alumni notes from a school he attended.

One fellow alumnus was an airline pilot and was pictured with his strikingly beautiful wife, Lanique Luxton, a flight attendant. This alumnus said he and Lanique used to wave at the school when they passed over it.

Another alumnus was one who had tried for nearly six weeks to interest Nash in selling Amway products, Nash said in the interview, and this alumnus was now retired in Colorado and enjoyed deep-powder skiing with his wife, whose name happens to be Silence.

So after all that, here's the poem:


Why Is It Not I?

Why is it not I?
Married to Lanique Luxton,
Soaring over Dexter,
Waving to the chumps below.

Why is it not I?
Shushing through deep powder, and
At day's end,
Retiring to the warm embrace of Silence.  ¶ 11:32 AM 0 comments

  Words of Wisdom from Archilochus Archilochus was a Greek lyric poet and a mercenary who lived around 700 B.C.E. (Before the Current Era) He was famous all over the ancient world for his satires, and he is credited with the invention of iambic verse, no small claim to fame. Most of his work is lost, unfortunately, and we have only the bits and pieces that were cited in grammar books and treatises on literature.

Supposedly it was a big disgrace for a Greek soldier to lose his shield because it meant he had run away from the enemy. We hear that Greek mothers used to tell their soldier sons, "Come back with your shield or on it," meaning "Be victorious or get killed."

Archilochus didn't buy this. Here's one of the fragments we have of his on the subject, translated by yours truly with the help of the late Norris Getty:


"My shield is lying in a bush somewhere in Thrace,
A great find for some Thracian.
I threw it away when I was fleeing for my life.
I can get another shield."


Here's another fragment, a philosophical one:


"Spirit, spirit, tossed about on a sea of unruly troubles,
Rise up against your enemies, throwing out your chest.
If you are victorious, do not chortle overloudly,
And if you are defeated, do not fall down in your house and lament.
Recognize the rhythym that governs men."  ¶ 11:08 AM 0 comments