Lucy took her mother on a trip to California to see the sites and visit the beach…
Tag: history
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My grandfather, who lived in a time period when big, bound dictionaries were about as valuable as a graduate diploma, bought a set of dictionaries from a traveling salesman. This effusive little man- not my grandfather, who was not little- instructed my grandfather that two payments would suffice.
When the first volume arrived, it instantly became the heaviest book in the house. How heavy was it? It could kill a mouse, a squirrel, or a peaceful moment in one swift, declining drop. At 1,344 pages, from “a” to “pocket veto,” it was a treasure, albeit outside the cedar treasure chest.
My grandfather, following his education, had a passion for knowledge, and taught himself engineering to help him advance in his career. But, he would have rather been a sailor or a ship’s captain, on account of his love of the sea and of a good boat. When he was on his boat, he would fish, and become less studious, and become disgusted with himself, because, after all, he’d paid all that money…and not a little…for the most extensive dictionary volumes one could buy.
My father grew up with the two volume The New Century Dictionary…and a large set of encyclopedias….as the main sources of information outside of the wit and wisdom of the more aged of the family. They might have had a way with history, and the encyclopedias may not have measured up in some cases, but the dictionary stood as the final say for spelling…and though increasingly dated as the decades passed, a first source for the more eclectic vocabulary that my grandfather acquired.
This two-set volume from 1927 has passed on to me, as the caretaker of a now-dated work of reference and amusement. It contains fine phrases and explanations from the Roaring Twenties that may not be the best source for the Terrible Twenties….I mean the 2020s.
Glancing through the New Century, one finds many words not in vogue in the second decade of the 21st Century.
But, for the character of the 1920s, the books are a gas, a sensation, a talk-of-the-town. Here you’ll find all the dirt on “frippery” and how “tawdry” it was…essentially silly…as “she who wore a hat wore a statement of absurdity.”
A sanitorium was a good place, not a place for mindless ninnies. Pennies from Heaven were a good thing, a penny for your thoughts had no attachment to financial value, and references to the appearance of a “bluebird” was a happy occasion. Conversely, one sang “Bye bye” to a blackbird.
The pages are adorned with drawings of a “barb” (a linen covering for the throat and breast), a whelk, and examples of 15th century gorgets. Every page contains at least one, and as many as four, artistic details. The finery is remarkable, particularly considering the low-tech methods used in publishing said pages.
Although the collecting of old books has faded in popularity as the screen has taken over the common world, an antiquated book can be a great substitute for the mindlessly predictable entertainment from the programmed screen world and the equally predictable “print” world via screen. Like the new Century Dictionary, it can be light reading while waiting for your dinner to cook, or your mail to arrive, or for the children to come home from school.
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this time of year sometimes ushers in nostalgia…that lamppost with the flickering light bulb…while we are stuck inside in the midst of a snowstorm lasting days. the last wild wind whirled in about six inches of the fine, fluffy stuff, outside my foggy door, while i was sleeping off a Christmas Eve feast of Hershey’s finest.
in the evening of the blessed day, in the fine tradition of my economically depressed descendants, I whipped up a feast of potatoes and baked fish for the fete of the holy night…and sat down to enjoy the sounds of silence, and the occasional settling of the old arthritic house.
it must have been the same in years prior….though their potatoes knew the pungent turf fire, and mine were a mere mixture of the boiled spud and a slathering of butter. fish would have been fresh, while mine were as frozen as a chunk of Antarctica before the scorching heat of an oven made them palatable.
still, a kindred fire burned within my heart. i had walked some of the same earth, through some of the same space, though today i was far from them, and farther from that space.
so…as it was that i was pondering upon these things, the world outside my window settled more softly in my mind. three days stuck inside a house with two bags of frozen fish, several potatoes, and enough orange juice for a shipload of scurvy-mad sailors, is certainly not a disappointment. i had three lights, a row of good books to read, and heat- though not a warm turf fire- in my living room, and a comfortable chair to settle into while waiting for the sun to melt the snows.
sure, i still might prefer the turf fire over my shiny oven. i still might prefer the wait, as i was telling stories of tales of long ago to my loved ones gathered around the fire. i still might prefer the aroma of the iron kettle baking, the peat smoke rising. and i still might even prefer the old wooden chair by the fire…for awhile.
but after a time i would long for the comfortable…for the present, because wherever i am, wherever you are, is always the present, and we belonged to that, no matter how much we think of the past.
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can i get a choir of non-angelic creatures to sing a chorus celebrating the coming demise of 2020? one more year of this kind of senseless torture…that i cannot imagine. can we just round up the bad actors and send them all to the Romulan Neutral Zone now…
next year, we should just skip January. I mean, who would notice? nobody makes any money in January anyway, unless they are running a ski resort…so why not start with February?
we could start the whole year on Valentine’s Day. Does anybody even remember the first part of February? Most of the time in my neck of the woods, our necks are frozen solid from January 1st to February 13th. We simply cannot move them. When my truck skids on a hockey-rink-thick slick of ice, i simply cannot, will not, turn my neck to see my progress. if I am in a snow bank, that’s grand too because i can always build an igloo…without turning my head. who cares what happens on ice? we have better things to do….like wait for Valentine’s Day.
Then, we could have a Chocolate Friday the weekend after Valentine’s Day. The following Monday could be Reese’s Monday, because…nothing goes better with old melted-down chocolate than peanut butter. With such a kickstart of love, we should be ready to rocket into the “New Year.”
There is precedence for this. Somewhere in the middle of the deep dark Middle Ages, the pope changed the calendar, and gave everyone a jumpstart into the year. Skipping January and part of February would likewise give us an excuse to forget about the plague of insanity birthed in 2020, so we could go back to living Our Best Medieval Life….I mean Our Best Life Now.
But….in order for this to work…we must be in this together. No one can get out of bed in January and early February…except to gorge themselves on ramen noodles to prepare for more hibernation, after “releasing the kraken” to the white porcelain goddess. Since a huge swath of the first world (and the darkest 3rd world) will have endured endless days wearing face masks, no one will be able to smell us until we are released from our quarantine cocoons as dawn arises on Valentine’s Day.
This will also ensure that faithful men everywhere will shower or bathe prior to enjoying the company of their women, as the great New New Year’s Day begins with celebrations of roses, chocolates, and other sweet aromas.
I cannot think of a more appropriate way to say goodbye and good riddance to one of the worst years in the history of the world…
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if my father had ever caught me spray painting a statue, a picnic table, or even a rock, i would have been punished, and humbled…reminding me of how small i was on this grand sphere we call earth. and that would not have been a bad thing. because i needed to learn to respect not just the planet, but also the people hanging on to the big blue ball in orbit.
sure i did some dumb things in my childhood, but i never defaced anything with spray paint. i had common sense, which does not seem to be too common anymore.
this morning, since it was the coolest morning in a month, i headed out onto a popular rail trail to hike for awhile. parking along a one lane gravel road, i hiked in to one of the more remote sections, which was covered in a canopy of trees, until i came to the entrance to a half mile tunnel…
twenty years ago, there was no graffiti on the front walls, and certainly not on the rocks nearby…
the magnificent tunnel, arching high above me, stretched forward, into the dark. but even into the darkness, graffiti on the walls, and empty spray paint cans on the graveled floor, assaulted my senses. thankfully no one appeared to be tall enough to insult the upper walls and ceiling high above me…
years ago, there were a few random pronouncements, mainly from some machoistic boys bragging about their sexual conquests with various girls. now, all manner of garbage defaced the walls of this historic tunnel.
what i want to know is who are these idiots disrespecting America’s natural and historic treasures? are these the masses who were never disciplined, who were never taught the meaning of respect, who never saw value or worth in human beings, nor in anything God created?
surely, these are the signs of a perverse and wicked generation, one destined for self-destruction…unless they are confronted with reality.
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out in the forest…here in an out of the way part of America..
sure now there probably was a building here at one time, but what were they doing organizing these large stones in such a way. Were they fans of Stonehenge? Or, was there a barn here?
what do you think?
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Hey, I wrote this for people to read. So..here it is again.
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Cajoe Phillips is buried within boating distance of The Big House- but not off of the same river. First, you would take a little boat down Wolf Creek to the banks of the Muskingum River. You might want to switch boats here to a much larger one, albeit one not too big- it has to fit through the locks.
After sailing down the Muskingum to the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum, the much larger river flows south and west. Any boat traveling down this way would have to be vigilant, the Ohio is a wide and full river.
In the old days it might take most of a day or two to travel down what was then a much more shallow river. Today, a small boat would suffer the pollution of numerous polymer plants spewing Mid Ohio Valley Crud into the air and over the water.
Until your boat slipped past the Little Kanawha River- not so little- pouring out into the ever growing river. Once the boat passed Parkersburg, the river churns all that sediment and the craft toward the isle of Cajoe Phillip’s most impressive residence…on Blennerhassett Island.
Ironically, Mr. Phillips was not a willing resident of the island. Along with several others from the east coast, Africa, and Ireland, he was considered legal property of Harmon and Margaret Blennerhassett, English adventurers who left Ireland (then oppressed by the British Empire) to settle on the edge of Virginia on the prettiest island in the Ohio River.
Cajoe, owner of a Bible, a hymn book given to him by Margaret Blennerhassett, and not much more, lived on the island with other slaves and servants. Today, the servant cabins are nowhere to be seen, although archaeological digs have been done on the island in search of such structures. These cabins would have been behind The Big House, back toward the gardens and the plantation itself.
This four mile long island was once a single plantation; now it is a carefully controlled state park in the West Virginia state park system. I say “controlled” because the island is not completely open to the general public- just the front part. The rear, an expanse of pasture for “wild” horses and deer, is inaccessible to the voting public…which makes one feel a bit like Cajoe Phillips…as the guided tour stops, and turns around, at a sign that proudly proclaims the site of “The Blennerhassett Plantation.”
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The first New Testament had no chapter and no verse, that was added much later. if the Word itself states that nothing should be added to the Word, doesn’t that mean we should have Bibles without chapter and verse?
the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest known copy of the New Testament, clearly shows a whole different format. One needed to “rightly divide the word of truth” in order to understand the flow of the letters across the page. For example, in the Greek for the beginning of Acts 1, the scholar of Biblical Greek can plainly pick out the words from the letters, which are shown separated for you on the insert at the right of the webpage. Below, you can have it translated into some languages, including English.
See http://www.codexsinaiticus.org
With no chapter and verse, the reader has to rightly divide it to understand it. Once that is accomplished, the reader can determine when a section of the Word ends. If I read John 3 for example, it is obvious that in the English that John 3:1-3:21 is a section. It is much easier to understand then. So, why were chapters and verses added?
If you go to the Codex Vaticanus, the younger of the two pieces, you will see where someone scribbled in verse numbers at particular intervals at the side of the page. The format is exactly the same as Codex Sinaiticus in how it was written without chapter and verse with Greek letters all lined up next to each other in a visually clean and ordered format to a length of a column, much like old newspapers that published in multiple columns on a page. Again, the type of utensil used to jot in verse numbers out to the side is very obviously of inferior type and origin to the original Greek, definitely from a different time period altogether.
There is another site loaded with Bible fragments, mainly on pieces of papyrus. Looking through them, I have not found one that differs – they all do not have chapters, nor verses, and all have letters lined up- the same as the Codex Sinaiticus. The length of the line of letters may be different, and in latter centuries, some capitals were added and spaces left between words- but that was in the 10th century. So, according to these records, there were no chapters nor verses in the Bible through the first ten centuries!
See http://www.csntm.org/manuscript
You might also be surprised that there are some verses that were not put in some. Both texts, for example, deleted a phrase where Jesus spoke about cursing something…
If you are a follower of Christ or interested in such things, visit the websites and see for yourself.
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if you are like so many people in North America, you are tired of the bitter cold. So- I decided to take you back to a short hike I did one day into the woods near a historic late 1800’s/early 1900’s oil field area.
This is a photo journey…
It was a beautiful sunny day, but chilly. As I hiked deeper into the woodland, more rock outcropping revealed ice…
...and shelter for small animals…
…and trails crossing small streams, as shadows formed in the wood….
and up hills…
...the trail bringing me to history hidden beneath the tree canopy…
remnants remaining of an oil field more than a hundred years old…
...for a pleasant hike back into the pages of history…
something poetic 