Old-School

"Old-School Musicians in Merida"

    I was impressed by the almost Christ-like sacrifice represented by the career of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the only governor of the state of Merida to learn, and speak, the Mayan language. He who, while still a young man, had been imprisoned for encouraging the native Mayans to break down fences erected by rapacious land-owners; fences that prevented the peasants from accessing their ancestral lands. He who, in 1922 at the age of 47, was elected overwhelmingly as governor of the state.

     Carrillo Puerto proclaimed the "first socialist government in the Americas". During his 20 months as governor he initiated land reform, confiscating large estates and returning land to the native Maya. He promoted new farming techniques, granted women political rights, began family planning programs, fought against alcoholism, and fought for the conservation and restoration of pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological sites. In the first year of his administration, 417 public schools were opened; and he founded the Universidad Nacional del Sureste.

      In early 1924 he, with 3 of his brothers and eight of his friends, was lined up and shot by political enemies. 

      My friend was trying to remember a love song said to have been written for Carillio Puerte when he fell in love with a young woman visitor from the United States. In 1922, the 33-year-old American  journalist Alma Reed (whose marriage to Reed had been annulled) was invited to Mexico by President Álvaro Obregón as an honoured guest. In February 1923, her party was welcomed to Yucatan by the strikingly handsome governor; described in her autobiography as "a man of exceptional magnetism and rare physical beauty. He was attired in a crisp white linen suit and, in his over six-foot height, towered head and shoulders above the assistants and petitioners who crowded around him". To a colleague who asked how she found him, she replied unhesitatingly «He's my idea of a Greek God!» The attraction seems to have been mutual. At the end of the year, Reed returned to the States to prepare for marriage, never to see Carrillo Puerto again. 

    The song addresses her as "La Peregrina” ('The Pilgrim'), by which name she is now immortalised. Composed, in the 4 verse Trova style, by Ricardo Palmerín (a Yucateco composer), to words by Luis Rosado Vega (a Yucateco poet); though not a great song, it was known by all and sung by many, even to this day.  

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e06PHapO6dc;  

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrvspxq6N8;

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=420nOTLt92w&t=58s;

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw0CqmKi1Bg. 

     On Friday, at 7pm, we returned to the little plaza where, the previous night, we had heard the singing and dancing of La Serenata. No audience now, but three microphones on the stage; and one elderly guitarist in a severe black suit, like an undertaker's, who confessed to knowing the 100-year-old song. He said if we returned at 8pm he and his colleagues would open their ‘spot’ with “La Peregrina”.

     When we returned at 8, it turned out the owner of the bar had changed his mind and was going to ask a younger group to play. We were disappointed, as of course were the musicians. After a word with his colleagues, who had appeared from nowhere, they agreed to play the song, just for us. They lined up; leader in the middle, lead-guitarist on our right, he with the big fat acoustic  bass guitar on our left. And they sang the song; just for us. My friend gave the leader 200 pesos, though that hardly reflected our joy at hearing the song, acoustically, from three guitars and three singers who, between them would be carrying at least two hundred years of memories and tradition.

      There was a suggestion that the Gringo journalist was a US spy. But I think it would be wrong to doubt the honesty and good faith of Alma Reed; she spent many subsequent years in Mexico, and was a great supporter of the politically motivated muralist painter, Orozco.

     After hearing ‘our love song’ sung so beautifully and authentically, just for us, we made our short way back, past the patient horses and their gaily decorated fiacres, to our hotel. Long after midnight I could still hear the repetitive thumping and out-of-tune wailing from the youngsters and their loudspeakers in our little plaza. 

     Perhaps we should call in on the restaurant tomorrow and tell the owner how delighted we were to hear the ‘old school’ musicians singing a true Yucateca song without amplification in the square on Friday night.

PEREGRINA

(Ricardo Palmerín/Luis Rosado Vega)

Peregrina de ojos claros y divinos

y mejillas encendidas de arrebol,

mujercita de los labios purpurinos

y radiante cabellera como el sol.

Peregrina que dejaste tus lugares,

los abetos y la nieve y la nieve virginal

y veniste a refugiarte en mis palmares

bajo el cielo de mi tierra, de mi tierra tropical.

Las canoras avecillas de mis prados,

por cantarte dan sus trinos si te ven

y las flores de nectarios perfumados,

te acarician en los labios, en los labios y en la sien.

Cuando dejes mis palmeras y mi tierra,

Peregrina del semblante encantador:

No te olvides, no te olvides de mi tierra,

no te olvides, no te olvides de mi amor.

(For others of my posts about Mexico, put the keyword Mexico in the search box.)

Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs

 Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs.

I wonder how interested we should be in those murderous cults of the postwar era that led their devotees to commit mass suicide. It is such a bizarre extreme that interest seems somewhat ghoulish.  Dutch tulip-mania was odd. Christianity is odd, and in some forms very odd. But these cults strike me as impossible to understand.

I am thinking of the seventies cult of "the jungle poisoner", Jim Jones of Jonestown, and his "Peoples Temple" cult that culminated in 1978 with 'revolutionary suicide' in the Guyanan jungle. And of David Koresh's "Branch Davidian" cult that ended (in 1993) in the  Mount Carmel siege near Waco (Texas). The third example that comes to mind is less well known in the Anglophone world; it climaxed in French-speaking Switzerland in the nineties. I looked it up on Wikipedia  –– 'L' Ordre du Temple Solaire'. 

"The Order of the Solar Temple (French: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS), or simply the Solar Temple, was a French-speaking religious group, often described as a cult, notorious for the mass deaths of many of its members in several mass murders and suicides throughout the 1990s. The OTS was a neo-Templar movement, claiming to be a continuation of the Knights Templar, and incorporated a mix of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and New Age ideas. It was led by Joseph Di Mambro, with Luc Jouret as a spokesman and second in command. It was founded in 1984, in Geneva, Switzerland."

It seems to me that these three murderous cults of the postwar era were each started by charismatic pranksters who were amused at their ability to hoodwink people, but who grew to believe their own nonsense, even to death. This Swiss cult was said to contain many "intelligent middle class adherents". (!)

Part of my interest comes from the realisation that essentially all religions are cults; it is hard to find a definition of a cult that does not include the Church of England. There may be a spectrum, running from Jim Jones on the one hand to the archbishop of Canterbury and the Quakers on the other. But Quakerism is undeniably a cult; its followers proudly and stubbornly following their charismatic (though long dead) leader. On that spectrum running from Jim Jones to George Fox there lies all the great religious names: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Guru Nanak,......; men with magnetism, and a message that appeals.  

The number of adherents who follow a cult determines its social standing but that may depend on marketing as much as on appeal; think of Spanish thumb-screws and the 'Auto da Fé '. 

Popularity may relate less to the plausibility of the claims, than to their desirability, their ability to meet a human need. Some people crave status. But many people need a friend, and many need hope.  

I have remarked elsewhere [1] that the outstanding popularity of Christianity as a world religion may derive from the hope of life after death. After all, how plausible is 'life after death'? And how desireable? 

The Quaker cult seems to be 'odd man out' in that there seems to be essentially no claim. Followers are offered (a) friendship, and (b) the sense of doing the right thing. Nothing more (in the present century). That may be why the cult is dwindling. 

[1] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/12/life-after-death.html

Los Tres Cojos

Los Tres Cojos 

Traffic moves slowly in Mexico City; more correctly I should say it move rapidly but with many pauses. The queues of stationary cars, at certain points on the Circuito interior, are so dependable that teams of nimble sales persons are poised ready to dash in amongst the cars with sweets, or drinks, or trinkets, or lottery tickets; especially at rush hours.

At traffic lights on major crossings, where the cycle-time allows, there are often entertainers poised ready to step into the space in front of the cars to perform for their captive audience.  On Avenida José Vasconcelos I have often seen children juggling with three balls and, after dark, young men juggling with flaming torches. Sometime you see tumblers or break-dancers. They have to move smartly when the lights change, but clearly know when their time is up.

Today I saw a unique display; three one-legged men on crutches playing with a  football. They kept their ball up with great skill using their three single legs, occasionally extending a crutch to stop the ball escaping into the traffic. 

The Spanish language has a special word for a one-legged man — un cojo. And, not surprisingly, also for a one-armed man — un manco. (Cervanres was one such, I am told.)  I teasingly asked about a man with only one eye, and was told “Yes, a one-eyed man is referred to as un tuerto.” What verbal richness! What nice distinctions become possible with a language so specific! Why are such words missing from the English Language? What is special about the Spanish – their legal system, perhaps?

But I am ashamed to note that I have already deserted the bizarre spectacle that moved me to write this note; my tres cojos at the crossroads in front of the Russian Embassy. 

(For others of my posts about Mexico, put the keyword Mexico in the search box.)

A Lesson for Eighty-year-olds

 A lesson for eighty-year-olds faced with lost keys and the collapse of a familiar way of life. 

The key-fob was missing and La Profesora could not get back into her office. She had only gone to the 'ladies', locking her office door behind her. The search, of every conceivable place, had delayed departure by half an hour, and the chauffeur needed to get home as his 10-year-old was coughing blood in hospital. 

All this led to a restless night of self recrimination, doom scenarios, and the listing of jobs for the morning with 'changing-the-locks' at the top. Finally sleep arrived.

Next morning the hair-dresser was due at 10am, but reported that the traffic in the city was 'blocked'. Further catastrophes loomed; what if she never arrived, nor the maid, nor the flowers! 

But with daylight, came a WhatsApp message from the profesora's faithful post-doc; the key-fob had been found; allegedly "in the waste-bin in the Ladies", with the used paper towels! Then, on the dot of 10:00, a buzz from the concierge announced the arrival of the hairdresser. 

The mind, now freed from its worries, could notice that the sun was shining, picking out the dazzling yellow jasmine on the house across the (abnormally empty) street. The tumbling world was back on its feet. 

Crab Apple Jelly

Crab Apple Jelly 

Once again the hedgerow yielded a heavy crop of windfallen crab apples, and I felt bound to try to make use of them.  I have made crab apple jelly for several years now with some success, so set myself to do that again. 

I gathered a bagful of sound fruits, took them home, washed them and weighed out a portion (1.215 kg). These I halved and put in my leaky old pressure cooker with 1.2 litres of water, brought them to the boil (at atmospheric pressure) and simmered them for 2 hours. 

When cold, I put the whole lot into a 'muslin' bag (derived from an old pillow), and set to drip overnight. Next morning, I squeezed out nigh as much again with my hands and set the fluid aside. The pulp I re-extracted with a second litre of water, and that I think was a mistake -- though not fatal. Next time I shall use less water, perhaps 750 ml. I brought the mixture to the boil again, and again simmered for an hour. Filtered again through the 'muslin', I combined the two liquid extracts into the cleaned pressure cooker. I added 1.0 kg of ordinary granulated sugar. (In previous years I added the same weight of sugar as of the fruit, as I do for seville-orange marmalade, but wondered if my jelly was 'too' sweet.)  The volume of all this amounted to 2.88 litres, determined by measuring the diameter of the cylindrical pan and the depth of liquid; and applying the formula:

Volume  = depth x 3.14159 x (diameter/2)^2. (volume in ml, if measuring in cms.)

Bringing the sweetened extract to the boil and simmering for an hour brought the volume to 2.58 litres, but there was no sign of setting. So I turned up the gas and fanned the open pan to enhance the evaporation. Half an hour brought the volume to 1.627 litres. A sample allowed to cool formed a wobbly gel. 

So, on the third day, I brought the pan gradually to the boil, with stirring, warmed 8 jam jars in the oven to 80º, and scalded their lids in a basin with a kettle of boiling water.  After switching off the gas, I allowed the pan to cool for 15 minutes before ladling the  hot jelly into a pint jug and pouring it into the jam jars. I filled 5 standard (454 gm) jars.

Please Stop the Bombing

 Please Stop the Bombing

    The other day I took a telephone call from an unknown number. I am very ready to be hostile to unknown callers, resembling in that respect my father. I managed an "Hello" in my driest, coolest, voice with a faint interrogative upturn at the end. However, a pleasantly cultured voice told me that he was phoning on behalf of humanity; "Humanity & Inclusion" in fact, whose appeal on Facebook I had recently signed. 

    "Been going since the eighties, in a quiet way", he told me. 

    Well (I thought to myself), it is a rather un-arresting title; a 'catch-all'. As though they had founded the charity before they had thought of the cause they were going to espouse. 

    "Why were you opposed to the bombing of civilians?" he asked me. 
    "I regard the bombing of non-combatant civilians as a war-crime, prohibited by Protocol I (1977) of the Geneva Conventions", I explained,  "Though, if Hamas deliberately mixes their combatants among innocent civilians, they are as guilty as the Israelis. However, that does not make the bombing legal." 

    "And I want nothing to do with such brutality and criminality" I added. 

    Of course, it cost me a year's worth of donations to Humanity & Inclusion. But it was a worthwhile phone call, as it has clarified my mind on the matter. 

    I do protest. I would not want to be a citizen of a brutal, criminal and inhumane country. 

A Disturbing Tale

A Disturbing Tale

I overheard the following distressing story in the pub. Horace was recounting his observations and deductions to his sympathetic friend Gaius Maecenas, who was suitably moved.

I knew Horace quite well, a retired academic biologist and dilettante browser in the Literary Review Weekly. Some 10 years ago he had placed a personal advertisement in his favourite magazine; something along the lines of:

"A young seventy year-old, who loves the LRW for its liberal views and wide coverage of philosophy and politics, would like to meet a woman who enjoys music as conversation and vice versa.

He thought this might catch the eyes of women who shared at least some of his interests.

Needless to say he received a number of replies: some interested, some tentative, some distant. One ended up as a pen-pal, one as a musical but temporary affair, one as a soul-mate and partner. Horace moved from Cornwall to a modest house in our village in Oxfordshire, nearer family, but not too near. The chosen lady duly arrived, for 3 months, but, like Persephone, she had to return every year to her home in Ecuador for the remaining 9 months. Horace in his turn would spend a couple of months each year with her in Quito, but for the rest of the year lived a bachelor existence in the village.

Our academic used occasionally to cross the road to the Bell Inn to chat with a few of the regulars while drinking a half pint. It seems that, one day, an attractive stranger caught his eye sitting in the window seat, for she was reading the Literary Review Weekly.   It was the first time he had seen that paper in the village, other than in his own home. 

"Hello! A fellow reader of the LRW " he said. 

"Yes. Isn't it awful about those prison camps?" she replied.

"I have not seen the latest number, because I am two or three copies in arrears. But I trust the paper will give a fair account."

She was never seen again, in the pub. But some months later was seen waiting at the Bell Inn bus stop. Indeed, it appears she regularly walked past the academic's house on the way down to the bus, or back from it. Handsome, blonde, well-dressed; she was conspicuously different from typical residents of this particular village.   

Taking the bus one day, Horace found himself sitting behind the blonde stranger, so he took the opportunity of getting into conversation, learning her name (Sarah) and inviting her to coffee any time she was passing his door. 

No such opportunity occurred for several months, but Sarah did eventually pop in; once. She seems to have worked in the States at one time, in some slightly obscure capacity, perhaps banking or our diplomatic corps.  She lived, he learned, in a small house, in the road behind his own, backing on to fields. After that single visit she was not seen again for more than a year. Then she turned up, at the door, asking if the coffee-offer was still valid. Well, it was, but not just then, for a reason I did not catch. Sarah seemed unwell. She wondered if Horace was also experiencing the debilitating radiation emanating from the building-site behind her house. It affected her in disturbing ways. She fingered her hair which hung in lank strands across her face. She thought that he, a scientist, would probably know about such things. But he, a scientist, was scared. Was she going mad? 

"So sorry not to be able to invite you in just now, but come another day." Well, she never did. After several months Horace went round into the cul-de-sac and looked for a small house. The end one was tiny, but seemed empty. He pressed the door-bell. An irritated neighbour popped out and asked him what he wanted. He said he was trying to track down Sarah. 

"Sarah lives in number 26, next door the other side." He thanked the neighbour and crossed over to ring at number 26. Eventually the door opened sufficiently to reveal an even more bedraggled Sarah. 

"Thank you for asking me, but not just now. I shall be in touch." And the door closed again. '

Horace was disturbed. Being, by profession, a maker of hypotheses, given to adding  two-plus-two , he wondered if the reading of the LRW was no accident? And how did she know he was a scientist? Questions started to flood his brain. Was she one of the women who had seen his personal advertisement in the LRW? Had she been stalking him for 10 years? Did she move to the village after he had? Had she suffered a 'break-down'; broken by disappointment at the failure of her gambit. Did she ever come out of the house now? Did she have her food delivered?

"It is a sad, and moving, story", said Maecenas, "whether or not she moved to the village to 'trap' you; for you describe the collapse of an attractive, intelligent and extrovert woman into a dejected recluse in the space of six or seven years. You might blame yourself for not noticing her pain. But you cannot blame yourself for enticing her to the village. You seem to have been essentially unaware of her"

"Well, thank you Gaius. That is what I keep telling myself. But what should I do now? I am scared of getting involved. I already have the Sri Lankan widow ringing my doorbell once if not  twice a week. Her curious mixture of Tamil and Portuguese baffles and exhausts me, though I can see she needs help, with her phone, bank account, probate and what not! "

"Hmm", said Maecenas.

I left before they did, unobtrusively, with a quiet wave to Tracey behind the bar.

  

Fathers and Daughters

  Fathers and Daughters    

      I know many cases where there seems to be a special relationship between daughters and their fathers (as contrasted with their relationship with their mothers).  Whose hand does a daughter want to hold? Whose attention does she want to catch? It may be that I exaggerate the number by noticing them, and that it is my problem (as it were); but I think I am detecting a tendency, a natural bias in the female child towards the male parent. 

     I have gone on to wonder whether this tendency is innate, a hardwired sexual orientation, even in a very young child. Or, whether the relationship builds up by itself over the first 2 to 3 years of a girl's life, resulting from her interactions with her two parents. Perhaps she turns to her mother for food and security but to her father for his approval. It seems to be highly likely that the two parents will respond differently to demands; mother with a sigh or a cuddle; father, flattered into an attitude of heightened interest.

     Here is a case in point. A couple with an eight-year-old daughter came into the pub, the girl in front, the man at the rear, wearing a slightly odd sunhat (perhaps of leather).

      "Dad, what would you like?, asked the girl. "Dad. Dad, what would you like?" She was on the edge of sounding precocious; as though she was going the buy the round. But her parents ignored her. They bought drinks and settled on the table next to mine, the parents on opposite sides, the girl floating.

      "Dad, you are my best friend." 

Whereupon the father (continuing his exposition):     

      "It just needs enough of the high energy particles coming from the sun to be bent by the earth's magnetic field by just the right amount ."

      " I have never seen the aurora borealis", said mum. 

      "Nor have I ever seen it" admitted dad. He put his hat on his daughter's head just in time for the European barman to say "That's a nice hat!"

      "Daddy".

      "Georgina must have known if they really were living together" said mum.

      "Daddy".

      " Yes?"

      "Hmmmm," all of a sudden she had forgotten what she wanted to say.

      "I don't think they would go that far" continued the mum, at which point the girl went round and snuggled up to her, and received a reflex cuddle. 

  

     It was very different as I approached the bus stop four hours later. A seven-year-old boy, shouting over his shoulder at a thirty-something-year-old man who was rather grimly pursuing the boy down the tow-path: "Get away from me. Get away from me. I know what you are going to do, you bully." This carried on in front of quite a crowd of waiting passengers. The boy seemed considerably 'het-up', but not so distracted as to miss the opportunity of playing to his audience. 

     However, I was worried and felt that I ought to do something. I converged on the man as we both walked after the boy; spoke a few soothing words and urged him not to go too far. I think I must have pitched it about right, as he did not shout at me to mind my own business; but carried on round a corner. He came back a minute later, with the boy, having established (it would seem) a temporary truce. 

     Daughters and sons! Two adjacent episodes, at random, but head-to-tail as though deliberately pointing the contrast.

  Darwin, Freud, or Lorenz/Tinbergen imprinting? Or all of these schools?

(See also "Kicking" (https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/05/kicking.html))

The Pebble-Sellers

I rounded the corner from Main Road into the deserted Bull Baulk. It was mid-afternoon on one of the hottest days in the year. I could see a couple of children on the pavement some 50 yards away. At a guess, a boy of 7 and a girl of 5. As I got nearer I could see that the boy was holding up a sign; well, a piece of cardboard on which he had written the word "Please". 

I wondered if they had something they hoped they could sell me; home-made scones perhaps, or books they no longer needed. Sure enough! On a nearly empty tray they had 4 or 5 pebbles each of which, as  they pointed out, had been 'decorated' with a black felt-tip marker. 

"Fifty pence each" said the little girl. "We have sold all those already". She gestured to the tray's emptiness.

Fifty pence seemed quite a high price to my ancient brain, but my eye was taken by a smooth, flattened, stone on which one or other, the boy or the girl, had written in uneven black letters: 

Have

a

Good

Day

I picked it up. It fitted snugly in the palm of my hand. It felt nice. The sentiment seemed genuine. A wave of generosity welled up inside me and I decided I would buy. The girl jumped a little two-footed jump of excitement. But "Oh!" I had no money; only my Debit Card. 

"Never mind" I said, "It is not too far to my house. I shall come back in a quarter of an hour and if you are still here and it is still for sale I shall buy it then. But why don't you wait in the shade." For the sun was still hot at four in the afternoon. 

Indeed, it was a stiflingly hot day, in spite of two ferocious claps of thunder. The first had startled me into rushing out to the street to see if a crane had fallen off a low-loader; the second a synchronous flash-bang exploded right in my face. But little rain had fallen. 

My cool, well-curtained, house welcomed me in from the heat. Fortunately I found a fifty-pence piece. I also picked from my own collection of pebbles a small piece of mid-jurassic limestone for I though the children might enjoy the 180-million-year-old fossils. "Older than the dinosaurs" my little grand-daughter had told her astonished schoolmates in Brookline, Massachusetts. And out I went again, into the heat.

My two little pebble-sellers were still there, still out in the sun. They were delighted with my coin which they put in a small box, already containing two others. And I gave them my lump of fossilised shell-fish, explaining its age. "Gosh! Older than me!" said the boy. 

Back home I put my little 'wishing-stone' in the pebble bowl on the kitchen windowsill. I felt pleased with my purchase. It smiled back at me: "Have a Good Day".

Literary Success

Literary Success 

The desire, the felt need, to talk is surely the need to be heard; and the desire to write is surely the desire to be read.

We seldom talk to ourselves, aloud, and appear odd when we do. (The unceasing chatter of internal monologue is something different.) Yet we write page after page of unread prose, sustained (I suppose) by the thought that those pages may be read by someone, sometime. 

I am reading Virginia Woolf's "Diary", volume three, 1925-1930. It is clear that she minds extremely whether or not her work is being read; and will be read by posterity. Then, following the admiring reception in 1925 of "Mrs. Dalloway" by certain critics, she relaxes. She then claims, with T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster, that it is the writing alone that matters; the capturing of a thought; the moulding of a sentence. 

I propose the thesis that we do, absolutely, need to be read, by at least some people, the discerning few; perhaps only by family, perhaps only by one person. But, once we are granted that minimal audience, we can then concentrate on, and relish, the power and the beauty of our prose. 

It rankles, somewhat, that for some people the words flow from their pens straight into the best-seller list. Are those best-selling novices blest with a natural felicity, or the accident of a good plot; or are they perhaps great mimics, following a formula? For others, there are years of apprenticeship. For Virgina Woolf, for example, there were ten years and three unread novels before her two masterpieces. 

It must matter what we write as well as how we write it, but right now I am worrying about writing style and will wonder on another day about hooking the interest of the reader. 

How can we improve our writing style? Can we self-improve? Can we read our own prose with a sufficiently critical eye to see where we are being boring, or ambiguous, or trite, or illogical, or wrong. One problem is that we know already what we mean to write, and may not even read our own text accurately. A further and more insidious problem is the narcissus-trap, of so liking the thoughts we believe we are successfully expressing, that we accept our own work too readily.

It would be a great help if we could obtain outside help, offered so sensitively as to be emotionally acceptable; perhaps doing no more than encouraging us (as writers) to criticise ourselves; perhaps using bland key-words to flag, not actual objections, but categories of problems; like logic, rhythm, spelling, clichés;  so bland as to be unarguable.

This would not guarantee that our prose becomes compelling, accessible, or even readable; but it would surely guarantee that it improve.

Virginia Woolf, in her "Diary", often asks herself what she is doing in that exercise, in her case; perhaps honing her skill, capturing observations to feed into future novels, and recording conversations. In 1926, after 10 years of sporadic but persistent diary-keeping, she even raises the possibility that her diaries might eventually be published. I find them (and Anne Bell's foot-notes) fascinating, and read steadily on, two pages at a stretch. 

My own blogging started as an attempt to understand a topic (banking, debt, Ash die-back, COVID, the origin of morals, international law, etc).  As a result my blog lacks focus. It is unlikely that any single reader will find adjacent posts interesting. Yet, I think they are being read, a  little. (And not just by robots, though those undoubtedly dominate. Perhaps 1% of the 140,000 visits recorded by the blog are real people; perhaps 0.1%.).

(Comments direct to cawstein@gmail.com are welcomed.)

Decisions

Decisions

I hate making decisions. 

In a restaurant, I clutch the menu, dithering between the candidate dishes till the waiter comes to me. Even then I dawdle, till I plump for one (or the other) of my favoured two. I then look around the table, with relief, and a faint glow of triumph, as though I had just completed an exam. And I watch with surprise as the remaining diners grapple so easily with their own dilemmas. 

Why do I so hate decisions?

I have often thought it might be because I have what Lewis Carroll called "the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind". That sounds a lot better than admitting to being hopelessly indecisive. But then I fear I am flattering myself; indecision is after all a handicap and not a super-power. 

Another explanation with which I have often toyed, is to suggest that instinctively and habitually I have guided my life by reason, rather than by emotion, or will. Which, I ask myself, is better: Shepherd's pie or Lasagne? Of course, I realise that I do not know; I lack any relevant data. It does not occurs to me that I could simply shut my eyes and imagine putting a forkful of each into my mouth.

My standard recourse is to toss a coin. Not an actual coin. That would be altogether too geeky! But I have evolved a random-number generator in a corner of my brain which I can spin. And as it slows towards its resting place, I point out to myself, that if I cannot detect a preference, then it cannot matter – much. 

Furthermore, if I find that I do not like the decision of the spinning coin, I can over-rule its choice. I remain boss.  After all, dammit, it is I, not the coin, that has to eat the dish. And thereby I have finally tricked myself into imagining eating that rather bland potato topping. Ugh!

– = – ≡ – = – 

Some decisions are more important than others. For example, choosing a wife. I do not remember floundering around that fateful, life-determining, decision in my case. Perhaps it was she, not I, that decided. But I do remember chatting with a younger friend just after I had married. "I know", I said, "you have practically none of the relevant information! You have simply to shut your eyes and jump, and hope for the best."  So, I suppose there must have been elements of that in my own case. 

Was it good advice? I sometimes wonder. It was fifty years ago. He is still married, while I have had thirty five years of a second bachelordom. Mind you. I have never regretted my decision to marry that girl, and we have three successful children to love and admire as they grow up; and learn, somehow, to make their own decisions. 

                     The Psychology of Terrorism

Under the series heading 'Just the Facts' Gerald Posner posted on 5th May 2024 a reasoned plea titled 'Words Matter: Why Not Call A Terrorist a Terrorist?'. 

He detected, in parts of the main-stream press,  a reluctance to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. Apparently Associated Press says that "the terms terrorism and terrorist have become too politicized and [are] often applied inconsistently."  Likewise the world affairs editor for the BBC, John Simpson, said last October that terrorism "is a loaded word," and that "it's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn......".

Gerald Posner thinks otherwise. He wants to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. He thinks that calling Hamas 'militant' is not strong enough; that it 'normalizes' their 'horrific acts of terrorism'.

I do not think the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' are useful in this situation. They are ill-defined, and tend to obscure the issues. When an angry many loses his temper, he loses the argument; vilifying the enemy is similar; it does not help. 

Calling Hamas a terrorist organisation adds nothing except an unnecessary and unfocussed implication of disapproval. It points to the scary nature of their criminal actions, and hints at a deliberate use of fear to enhance the military and political effectiveness of their crimes. As though such a strategy was not used by large and disciplined armies; nor allowed by the laws of war; because it breaks the rules, like hitting below the belt. Yet, as normally used, the term "terrorist" describes the attitude of the onlooker more than the nature of the crimes. It sheds little light on the psychological motivation of the perpetrator.

Hamas is certainly 'militant'. From the level of support given to Hamas, it seems that many of the 2 million people of Gaza feel desperate. With inadequate weapons, a bunch of brave zealots, maddened by decades of frustration, rush out and attack a powerful, ever-encroaching and inexorable enemy, which is supported and equipped by a superpower. What use is that? 

But what else could they do? Their protests were not heard, and their rockets proved useless. They had only their fists and kitchen knives. 

Who said Palestine belongs to the Jewish people; was it God or Mr. Balfour? And, whoever made the declaration, were they right to do so? 

Is there no grown-up person in the room to explain how mixed races and mixed religions can live together? It worked, more-or-less, under the Babylonians, and the Romans, and perhaps best of all under the Turks.