"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
Not that numbers ever tell the whole story, one view of the U.S. killed and wounded in Iraq:
Killed
Year 1 (March 20, 2003-March 19, 2004): 583
Year 2: (March 20, 2004-March 19, 2005): 938
Wounded
Year 1: (March 19, 2003-April 2, 2004): 2,988
Year 2: (April 3, 2004-March 14, 2005): 8,256
(Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties)
March 14th is Albert Einstein’s birthday. Since I’m unconversant with mathematics — though I can show off every once in a while with arithmetic — I can’t pretend to understand much about his theories of relativity except some of the changes they’ve brought. Lots of us leave a world completely changed from the one we were born into; he’s one of the very few who left a world his ideas had transformed.
And then there’s the 15th. The Ides of March, and if you want to know why it was called that — well, check here. All the historical and literary interest in the date stems from Julius Caesar getting knifed (44 B.C.) by pals. More personal interest attaches to the date because it begins a run of March and April dates that were birthdays of close friends growing up (and my sister’s birthday, too) — on the 15th, 21st, 22nd, 26th, 30th, 31st, and the 6th of April. Not dates I’ve written down — they just happened to stick in my memory, maybe because of the proximity of my own birthday. Whether I’ve been in touch with any of these people or not, I still think about each of them, if only briefly, as the days come each year.
It’s too horrible to ponder what life would be without trivia, so I won’t (and besides, everyone knows that trivia isn’t really trivia at all, but precious knowledge nuggets that must be nurtured and cherished and trotted out the next time there’s a lull in conversation).
Today’s precious knowledge nugget comes by way of The New York Times Science section: "Slithery Medical Symbolism: Worm or Snake? One or Two?" It’s a discussion of the Asklepian (as the Times has it; a more common usage in English appears to be Aesculapian, checking both Merriam-Webster online and the number of Google hits that come up) versus the caduceus as the proper symbol of the medical profession. Paraphrasing Albert Brooks, you know the symbol as the stick thing with a snake (or snakes) wound around it. I haven’t been looking closely enough these past decades, because the difference had escaped me. And a difference there is:
"In Greek mythology, Asclepius was a half-mortal who had the power to heal the dead. He learned it by seeing a snake he had killed with his staff revived by another snake, which had crammed herbs into its mouth.
"Using the same herbs, Asclepius saved a man killed by one of Zeus’s thunderbolts. (Zeus frowned on that presumption, which also threatened to put his brother Hades, the god of the dead, out of business, so he zapped Asclepius too. Zeus later relented and made Asclepius the god of medicine.)
"Several historians blame the mix-up on a 19th-century British publisher and an American Army surgeon. The publisher, John Churchill of London, used the caduceus on popular medical texts he exported – but as a printer’s mark, because Hermes was the god of commerce.
"The surgeon, Capt. Frederick Reynolds, lobbied hard in 1902 to have a gold caduceus adopted as the badge of Army doctors. ‘From Captain Reynolds’s correspondence with the surgeon general’s office,’ two Australian medical historians sniffed last year in The Annals of Internal Medicine, ‘it is apparent that he was unaware of the distinction.’
"…Doctors who know the classics are particularly offended because Hermes was also the god of thieves and, even more ominously, was charged with leading the souls of the dead to the underworld.
Speaking of “crap journalism” and the information-consuming public, here’s the famous passage from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919) in which he proposes the marketplace of ideas :
“… When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country. … Only the emergency that makes it immediately dangerous to leave the correction of evil counsels to time warrants making any exception to the sweeping command, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.’ ”
What I learned:
Born this day in 1732.
Chopped down a cherry tree and confessed. Turned out he didn’t. Chop it down or confess.
Was a land surveyor. Tried to imagine what that job entailed. Lots of time in the woods, lots of time using mysterious instruments, lots of notebook work.
Fought in the French and Indian War. I can picture this, but lately I think of how bad the bugs and food and toilet realities must have been and how you never see that in the movies.
An important man of Virginia. Leader of the Continental Army. Lost battles around New York. Surprised the Hessians at Trenton. Soldiers walking bloody barefoot in the snow, dozens dying the night before the battle from exposure.
Then Valley Forge. Cold and hungry for two winters.
Yorktown. Washington won after all.
Back to Virginia. Wife: Martha. Owned slaves. Not sure he talked about them.
Then to New York to become president. Sworn in at Federal Hall, looking right down Broad Street from Wall. Thanked god at length.
Didn’t want to be king. “Call me ‘Mr. President.’ ”
Two terms. Valedictory: “Avoid foreign entanglements.”
Back home to Mount Vernon. Low doorways. Bad teeth. Caught cold and died. 1799.
From The New York Times site, where I first saw the news (The Rolling Stone site, which still lists Thompson as “national affairs desk,” doesn’t have an item posted yet):
DENVER (AP) — Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.
“Acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism.” Well, the AP’s got to play it straight. But I don’t think a description like that begins to touch what Thompson did. What do they mean, “books like ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”? Fact is, there’s nothing like it. And what Thompson did wasn’t to popularize a form of fictional journalism. He invented a new, sort of quasi-journalistic literary genre that challenged readers to figure out just what in it might reflect the writer’s experiences. The exercise was more to distill and intensify the reality he experienced. But no more stabs at explication and criticism from those ill-suited and unqualified to do it, like me.
The person I immediately thought of upon reading this news was Jay Johnson. Jay was one of the news editors at The San Francisco Examiner when Thompson was writing his column for the paper, and it often fell to him to be Hunter’s “editor” (he was just “Hunter” around the newsroom, though he was never there) — the person who would sweat in increasingly unquiet desperation as Hunter’s Sunday night deadline came and went. Hunter often (perhaps always, when it came to The Ex) communicated by fax. Back in the mid-’80s, when Hunter’s Ex saga began, fax machines would accept and print out long scrolls, not neat single pages. And Jay would be the one who would get Hunter’s scroll. The column was typewritten, but it was usually preceded or accompanied by a long, scrawled personal note to Jay or maybe just an off-the-cuff diatribe to set the tone. Long after Hunter stopped writing the column, he’d still fax his late night screeds to Jay. I sure hope he kept them. They’d be a minor (or, who knows in this world? — major) treasure.
Television will rot your mind. Really it will. I say that knowing that it’s too late for me. But go on — save yourself.
With that public-service message out of the way, let me just say that life has finally regained a bit of its equilibrium. I’m working some, everyone in the family is healthy and happy as can be expected in the age of Bush, the Sequel, and the new season of “Survivor” has begun.
This installment is set in Palau. The producers are playing up the area’s heritage as scene of a bitter struggle between the United States and Japan during world War II — including a long, savage and perhaps needless battle on the island of Peleliu (the subject of Eugene B. Sledge’s memorable “With the Old Breed“). Lots of striking video of shot-down planes and wrecked ships. It’ll be interesting to see whether they talk about how awful the fighting really was. Probably not.
Too early to come to any conclusions about the new crop of people, although the producers did throw in a couple of mean tricks right from the top. They sent 20 people out to the islands instead of the customary 16 (or 18 who have appeared on the last two installments). Then they devised a way to choose up sides after everyone had been there a day or so, with a provision that only 18 of the 20 would get chosen; two people would get sent home right then and there. So, if anyone had been getting on the group’s nerves, they were gone. Of course, there was one middle-aged woman who, apparently to show her individuality and mettle, had shown a predilection for bursting into tuneless, self-composed “Survivor”-related arias. She was eliminated, along with one young guy who just seemed like a cipher. Bye!
An immunity challenge wound up with a third person sent packing. Again, it was a woman who all but campaigned to get voted off by assuming the role of her tribe’s boss. I sympathize. The idea of competing on “Survivor” is actually attractive to me — just for the show biz, not the million bucks. I’m just afraid I’d get spotted as the biggest jerk on Day One and voted off first, too.
Still thinking about Lincoln and the current Bush and whether they would have been on the same side during the current or former unpleasantness. I figured the White House must have had a Lincoln’s Birthday event that might shed some light on the question. Checking the White House site, sure enough: George and Laura hosted a performance of “Lincoln Seen and Heard,” a dramatic presentation of some of the 16th president’s speeches and writings. Sam Waterston, who was Lincoln’s voice for Ken Burns’s Civil War series, presented the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The latter was delivered about five weeks before Lee surrendered at Appomattox; it had finally become clear which way the way would go. Yet Lincoln’s words, which he knew would be read in the South, are entirely without a sense of triumph. Bush could have learned something from that before he put the flight suit on and flew out to that carrier. But of course, if he was liable to learn a lesson like that, he wouldn’t be our George.
At the end of the evening, Bush talked briefly about what he had heard. He said Lincoln was our greatest president. And he hinted, of course, that Lincoln’s words bolster his program to shock and awe the world’s evildoers out of existence with high explosives and the wonders of democracy:
“The Civil War was decided on the battlefield; the larger fight for America’s soul was waged with Lincoln’s words. In his own day, Lincoln set himself squarely against a culture that held that some human beings were not intended by their Maker for freedom. And as President, he acted in the conviction that holding the Union together was the only way to hold America true to the founding promise of freedom and equality for all. And that is why, in my judgment, he was America’s greatest President.
“We’re familiar with the words of the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural, so eloquently read by Sam. And this performance reminds us that Lincoln wrote his words to be spoken aloud — to persuade, to challenge, and to inspire. Abraham Lincoln was a master of the English language, but his true mother tongue was liberty.
“I hope that every American might have the experience we had here tonight, to hear Lincoln’s words delivered with Lincoln’s passion, and to leave with a greater appreciation for what these words of freedom mean in our own time.”
Yesterday, I neglected the traditional Abe Lincoln birthday greeting. Of course, I don’t think he’s complaining much. Anyway, happy birthday, Abe.
In the past year, I visited his tomb for the first time, discovered that he made his last speech in Illinois in Tolono (the day before his birthday, in 1861), and that, for whatever reason, he liked to sleep with guys. Abe, we hardly knew you.
One thing I find myself wondering about in the age of George W. Bush, the Great Emancipator of Iraq, is whether Lincoln and Bush would be in the same party — either now or back in Lincoln’s day. Perhaps it’s an empty game to play, and I don’t pretend to know where Lincoln would stand on issues such as the war on terrorism or Iraq (though he didn’t hesitate to suspend rights in the midst of the nation’s emergency; so there’s some interesting evidence you might pursue).
On the other hand, it’s extraordinarily difficult to imagine Bush taking Lincoln’s path. I can much more easily imagine Bush as a defender of the South’s rights to pursue liberty the way it saw fit — for whites only — than see him as someone who would have risen to defense of the Union. It’s much easier to see him standing up for the rights of property owners — slaveowners — than recognize the human rights of their property. I think he’s the first president in my lifetime I’ve felt this way about, though he’s hardly the first president elected from the former Confederacy in our time.
If there were any groundhogs in these parts, they’d be able to see their shadows today, whatever that portends in this Mediterranean climate of ours.
Meantime, it’s James Joyce’s birthday (1882, in Dublin). By way of The Writer’s Almanac, a couple of quotes:
To a publisher who objected to the vulgarity of some of his writing in “Dubliners”:
“It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization [sic] in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.”
A life observation:
“Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”