What Would Jimmy Do?

I’ve used the word mesmerized from time to time. To be truthful, I’m not sure I always use it correctly. Sometimes I use it when I suppose I could have used fascinating, or sometimes in place of transfixed or astonished. Anyhow, that got me to thinking that maybe I didn’t really know how to use the term — after all, it is kind of a strange word. I wondered where it came from….
Checking the dictionary, I found that the word mesmerize comes from the last name of an 18th century German physician Franz Mesmer. Mesmer believed that all people and objects are pulled together by a strong magnetic force, that was later called mesmerism. The dictionary meaning is (1) attract strongly, as if with a magnet; (2) induce hypnosis in.

It turned out that my extensive research discovered that Franz Anton Mesmer was a pretty interesting character. He was a kind of astrological psychotherapist and faith healer all rolled into one. He was operating in Vienna when someone reported him to the Imperial Morality Police (that’s a real organization there.) Anyhow, apparently young girls were entering his house and not coming out for a long time — like days or even weeks. Mesmer claimed that the girls suffered from various nervous conditions and he’d moved them into his house for treatment. The cure that made him famous involved a blind girl who said she was cured after a few days where she was given massages. Well it turns out that in the 1760s, that sort of thing was looked on with some amount of suspicion and disapproval. The medical profession of Vienna ganged up on him and denounced his treatments as quackery — so, he packed up and headed for Paris. 

Mesmer claimed that illness was caused by blockages in the body — and he was one of the few people who knew how to remove them. He believed that the whole universe was full of an invisible energy, which he called “animal magnetism,” and it was controlled by the movements of the stars and planets. By “magnetizing” his clients (apparently by massaging them) he could dislodge the blockage and — they would be cured. 

Over time his popularity grew and more and more people wanted to see him, so he started magnetizing whole crowds at once. He invented aa contraption — a wooden tub of water with metal rods attached — so that a group could gather around it holding onto the metal rods and transfer their magnetism to the water. Then he would spray the water over the rest of the onlookers with a hose and tell them they were cured.

He also came up with the idea of magnetizing trees. Then he’d hang ropes from them and when his patients touched the ropes, the miracle energy would flow through them. Mesmer claimed that this channeling of energy also explained psychic phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, and the ability to see the future.

Mesmer became very popular in Paris and King Louis XVI was one of his biggest fans. The king offered Mesmer a pension for life — on one condition. He had to submit his work to scientific investigation. Not surprisingly, Mesmer said thanks, but no thanks. But the king appointed a royal commission to investigate Mesmer’s claims. The commission gathered the best scientists in Paris — among them, Benjamin Franklin, as an expert on electricity (Ben was, at the time, American ambassador to France.) The commission also included Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry and Dr. Joseph Guillotin, inventor of the guillotine. No big surprise, but the commission concluded that Mesmer was a fraud. The commission admitted that some people seemed to have been cured, but there was no truth in what Mesmer had to say about scientific astrology, trees, ropes, tubs of water, etc. “Animal magnetism” was nothing but a hoax. 
Mesmer was smart enough to know he was beaten — he left France and the mesmerizing business for good and settled in Austria. 

I thought this was a great story, but it didn’t answer the question as to why the dictionary would define mesmerize as “induce hypnosis in.”  So — more extensive research….
In 1789, one of Mesmer’s disciples, Marquis de Puysgur was applying the Mesmer method of “animal magnetism” to a young boy, and discovered, to his surprise, that the boy was in a trance. He would stand, walk, and sit on command, and when he woke, he didn’t remember anything about it. So that may be the way mesmerize and hypnotism got linked.
Also, stage illusionists in both Europe and America, who were followers of Mesmer, added this new trick to their acts. So animal magnetism kind of faded away and mesmerism and hypnosis kind of became synonymous.
— 30 —

One thing I always told my kinds when they were growing up was, “Choose your battles wisely.”  It’s so easy to get into a “battle” over some little insignificant thing, that later seems stupid that any time at all was wasted on the subject. 
I’m sure I wasn’t the first to come up with that advice, it’s probably still a popular phrase in parenting today. But I was thinking about it and it really is kind of important in living a contented life. Life is full of opportunities to choose between making a big deal out of something or simply letting it go, realizing that it doesn’t really matter. If all your battles are like going to war, you’ll probably have much less chance of winning those that are truly important. 

Naturally there will be times when you want, or need, to argue, confront, or even fight for something you believe in. The problem is that many of us argue, confront, and fight over almost anything. If you do that — turn your life into a series of battles over “nothing,” there’s almost sure to be so much frustration that you lose track of what is truly relevant.
If your goal is to have everything work out in your favor, even the tiniest disagreement or glitch in your plans can be made into a big deal. That’s probably a sure-fire prescription for frustration.

If you think about it, life is rarely exactly the way we would like it to be — and, other people very often don’t act the way we’d like them to. Every day there are aspects of life that we like and maybe an equal number that we don’t like. There is always going to be people that don’t agree with you. People that do things differently. And things that just don’t work out. These are facts of life. If you fight these facts of life, you’ll spend a good part of your life fighting battles.
I can see my kids rolling their eyes right now, but a better way to live is to decide which battles are worth fighting and which are better left alone. 

If your primary goal is to have everything work out perfectly, you’ve probably already given up on this blog and already commented how stupid it is. But if your goal is more along the lines of living a less stressful life, you’ll realize most battles aren’t worth fighting. Does which restaurant you go to really matter enough to argue over it? Does the fact that your neighbor parks his car on the grass warrant a letter to the HOA? Things like these are what many people spend their lives fighting about. 
Speaking for myself, I think I’ve always chosen my battles wisely, but today I find I rarely need to do battle at all.
— 30 —

As a lot of you know, I’ve been searching for answers lately — answers to questions that can’t be answered. Over the years, during our travels, I’ve collected a number of books about Buddha and his teachings. Obviously I’m not a Buddhist, but I’ve found that a lot of his teachings make sense — I don’t consider them religious…. just very often, good advice. 
In my quest to accept things the way they now, and to accept myself they way I am, I ran across a Buddhist teaching that I remembered from a long time ago.

The principle  of that particular teaching is that all of life is in a constant state of change. Everything has a beginning and everything has an end. Every tree begins with a seed and will eventually transform back into earth. In the modern world, that means that every car, piece of clothing — everything — is created and all will wear out and crumble. It’s only a matter of when. Our bodies are born and they will die. The teaching uses a glass as an example — it’s created and will eventually break. 

Like a lot of Buddha’s writings, this teaching gives me a certain amount of peace. When you expect something to break, you’re not surprised or disappointed when it does. This is easy to say, but hard to do — but it’s important…. instead of becoming immobilized when something is destroyed, you should feel grateful for the time you have had. 

Buddha suggests that the easiest place to start is with the simple things — a glass, for example. Take your favorite glass and look at it for a moment, and appreciate its beauty and all it does for you. Now, imagine that same glass as already broken, shattered all over the floor. He suggests that you try to maintain the perspective that, in time, everything disintegrates and returns to its initial form.

I don’t think that Buddha is suggesting that anyone wants their favorite glass, or anything else, to be broken. I think he’s trying to say that we should try to make peace with the way things are.
I’m guessing that the purpose of this teaching is that you should develop the philosophy that allows you to maintain your perspective — when the glass breaks, rather than saying, “Oh no,” you should think, “Ah, there it goes.”

Of course I’m not dealing with a broken glass, but I get the message. I haven’t accepted the way things are now, or the way I am now, but it’s good advice and I consider it another step on my journey.
— 30 —

A lady that goes to our church recently had plastic surgery of some sort — I’m not sure what she had done, or why. But, as you might imagine, it generated a lot of talk and quickly divided people into two camps — those for it and those against it. 
I really have no opinion and never thought much about it other than hearing about various celebrities, that had “work done.” 

Anyhow, I became a little curious and decided to google how many people have some kind of plastic surgery every year. Well, google turned up about a million articles about plastic surgery, but one short page caught my eye. It talked a little bit about the history of the procedure.

Physical appearance was very important to the ancient Egyptians — they were one of the first civilizations to use makeup. If an Egyptian suffered an injury that no amount of makeup could conceal, reconstructive surgery was an option — provided that the person had a high enough social ranking. Records dating to 1600 B.C. detail procedures for treating a broken nose by packing the nasal cavity with foreign material and allowing it to heal — it seems like these were, essentially, primitive nose jobs. Then about 1,000 years later in India, a surgeon named Sushruta developed a relatively sophisticated form of plastic surgery for the nose that eventually spread across the Arab world and into Europe.

During the 15th century, Sicilian doctors pioneered a method of suturing and closing wounds that left minimal scarring and disfigurement, and by the 16th century, early methods of skin grafting were being created. It wasn’t until the 19th century that this growing medical field got its common name — “plastic surgery.” That name is attributed to the German surgeon Karl von Gräfe, a pioneer of reconstructive surgery.

Initially, those procedures were typically reserved for people who had suffered horrible damage to their face or body. So what brilliant person came up with the idea of plastic surgery for a purely cosmetic reason? The first silicone breast implants were developed in the 1960s by plastic surgeons Frank Gerow and Thomas Cronin. The first person to receive breast implants (not for medical reasons, such as after undergoing a mastectomy, but strictly to improve her appearance) was Timmie Jean Lindsey.

Just like everything else, plastic surgery develops new procedures and surgeries all the time. A procedure called JewelEye implants tiny platinum jewels in the eye to create a glint is supposedly becoming “popular.”
I guess the desire to improve one’s looks is about as old as the human race….  
— 30 —

Claire always liked Peeps — those little marshmallow chicken looking things that were on display around Easter, and probably other times of the year especially near the checkouts in stores. I always insisted that she buy some whenever they were available. I always think of her when I see them.

Obviously I have too much time on my hands lately or maybe I watched  too much of the Olympics — I must have sports have sports on my brain.
But, anyhow, I discovered a cool sport — Peep Dueling. It involves placing two Peep marshmallow confections in the microwave oven, facing each other. Insert a toothpick into the front of each peep and turn on the microwave. That will cause Peeps to expand. The first Peep to deflate the other with its toothpick wins!
I guess as you get older it doesn’t take much to entertain you….
— 30 —

Those of you that know me, and the few that read this blog, know that I had the utmost admiration of my dad. One of my biggest regrets is that I never told him how much I admired him. I really can’t think of any bad traits he had. If you had asked my mom, I’m sure she’d have said that he worked too much and work was too much a part of his life. That may be a true statement, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a “bad trait.” One of the things I most admired about him was his acts of kindness. I certainly don’t know everything he did, but I can make a pretty long list of people that he helped over the years.
But here’s the thing — those people never knew that the help they were getting came from my dad. I don’t think he ever told anyone that he did these things. He never told me — I found out through other people… and he certainly never told my mom. 

A lot of us do nice things for others, but we usually mention these acts of kindness to someone else. After all, when we share our acts of kindness or generosity with someone else, it makes us feel like we are thoughtful, good people. So why wouldn’t we tell someone how nice we are and how we, ourselves are deserving of kindness? 

I think any act of kindness is inherently good, but there’s something special about doing something kind or thoughtful and not mentioning it to anyone — ever. I’ve always heard that you should give for the sake of giving — not to receive something in return. That’s really what you’re doing, when you don’t mention your kindness to others.

I don’t think my dad ever regretted for a second that he kept his acts of kindness to himself. The world would be a much better place if everyone was like my dad.
— 30 —

Have you ever wanted to “pay someone back” after an unpleasant or hurtful comment or argument, or wanted to “settle the score” after a friend breaks your trust or betrays your confidence?
I bet there aren’t many of us who are blameless. You probably can’t honestly say that you have never harbored thoughts of getting even with someone who has done you wrong. I would imagine that if the truth be told, most people respond to a real or perceived hurt or slight with some desire to retaliate. Thankfully, most people do it through thoughts alone — but a few retaliate with action, delivering revenge on the offender either physically or through a carefully thought-out plan. The desire for revenge is common to everyone. 

Why is that? The obvious answer is that it makes us feel better, but from what I’ve read, psychologists say that we are acting in response to our emotions when it come to seeking revenge — and — the primary motivation for seeking retribution is either anger or fear. I always just assumed anger was the motivation — I really hadn’t considered fear, but if you think about it, it makes some sense. We all — especially men — have a fear of “losing face.” If you let someone cut you off in traffic, or step in front of you in line without some sign of resistance, you think you’ll be seen, or maybe worse — perceive yourself, as feeble or a pushover in some way.

We all know how petty-minded, or even mean spirited it is to want revenge — but — we also know how satisfying it is to even the score.
So why don’t we just “turn the other cheek” rather than seek revenge? I don’t think forgiveness comes naturally to us humans. We tend to want to get even because that’s only fair — kind of like restoring the natural order of things.

But anyhow, revenge has been around pretty much forever and I don’t see much indication that it’s going away anytime soon. Even Shakespeare wrote about it in The Merchant of Venice…. “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”
I’m certainly not one to give advice, but maybe we should all just take the view that there is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
— 30 —

I know neither faithful reader is old enough to remember Tokyo Rose, but it’s an interesting story — and probably worth doing some serious thinking about given the environment we’re living in today.

During World War II, the Japanese broadcasted anti-American propaganda. One of the most famous broadcasters of the propaganda was a woman by the name of “Tokyo Rose.” 
When I was growing up, there were lots of stories about Tokyo Rose – supposedly a sexy-sounding woman that spoke to American troops over the airwaves in an attempt to demoralize the Americans by broadcasting things like the latest U.S. military losses, and them being so far away from home.

Those broadcasts did take place, but there really was no Tokyo Rose. That propaganda was broadcast by a radio program called “The Zero Hour,” and the program used multiple female broadcasters that could speak English. The name itself, “Tokyo Rose,” was never actually used by any of the broadcasters. It was a name created by American servicemen and it stuck throughout the war. In reality, there was not just one Tokyo Rose, but several, all of whom could speak English and worked for the Japanese-produced radio program, “The Zero Hour.”

That’s interesting, but the story doesn’t end there….
After the war and the Japanese surrender, American troops started searching for Japanese leaders and others who may have committed war crimes. The press started looking too, sometimes reporting what the military found and sometimes beating the military to the punch. Two reporters (Henry Brundidge and Clark Lee) set out to find “Tokyo Rose,” the notorious siren who tried to demoralize American soldiers and sailors during the war by highlighting their hardships and sacrifices. They managed to identify one young American woman that was born in Los Angeles, Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino, who had made propaganda broadcasts. (D’Aquino sailed to Japan in 1941 without a U.S. passport supposedly to visit a sick aunt and to study medicine.)
Brundidge and Lee offered her a lot of money (which they later reneged on paying) for exclusive rights to interview her. D’Aquino agreed — signing a paper that identified her as Tokyo Rose. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, Tokyo Rose wasn’t an actual person. It was the fabricated name given by soldiers to a series of American-speaking women who made propaganda broadcasts (under different aliases.)

It turns out that as a result of her interview with the two reporters, D’Aquino was seen by the public (not by the Army and FBI investigators) as the mythical character Tokyo Rose. That image defined her in the public’s mind in the post-war period and it continues to stir debate about her role in World War II even today.

In September of 1945, after the press had reported that D’Aquino was Tokyo Rose, U.S. Army authorities arrested her. The FBI and the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps conducted an extensive investigation to determine whether D’Aquino had committed crimes against the U.S.  But the authorities decided that the evidence did not merit prosecution, and she was released.
After being released, D’Aquino requested a U.S. passport. American veterans groups and famous broadcaster Walter Winchell learned about that and became outraged that the woman they thought of as “Tokyo Rose” wanted to return to this country. They demanded that the woman they considered a traitor be arrested and tried — and not welcomed back. 

The public furor grew so much it convinced the Justice Department that the matter should be re-examined, and the FBI was asked to turn over its investigative records on the matter. The FBI’s investigation of D’Aquino’s activities had covered a period of five years. During the course of that investigation, the FBI had interviewed hundreds of former members of the U.S. Armed Forces who had served in the South Pacific during World War II, unearthed forgotten Japanese documents and turned up recordings of D’Aquino’s broadcasts. But, many of those recordings were destroyed following the initial decision not to prosecute D’Aquino. So the Department of Justice initiated further efforts to acquire additional evidence that might be sufficient to convict D’Aquino. 

With new witnesses and evidence, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco convened a grand jury, and D’Aquino was indicted on a number of counts. She was detained in Japan and brought under military escort to the U.S. She was immediately arrested by FBI agents, who had a warrant charging her with the crime of treason for adhering to, and giving aid and comfort to, the Imperial Government of Japan during World War II.

Her trial began on July 5, 1949, one day after her 33rd birthday. On September 29, 1949, the jury found her guilty on one count in the indictment. The jury ruled that: “…on a day during October, 1944, the exact date being to the Grand Jurors unknown, said defendant, at Tokyo, Japan, in a broadcasting studio of the Broadcasting Corporation of Japan, did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships.”

This made D’Aquino, who had gained notoriety as Tokyo Rose, the seventh person to be convicted of treason in the history of this country. On October 6, 1949, D’Aquino was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and fined $10,000 for the crime of treason. 

On January 28, 1956, she was released from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, where she had served six years and two months of her sentence. She successfully fought government efforts to deport her and returned to Chicago, where she worked in her father’s shop until his death. President Gerald Ford pardoned her on January 19, 1977. She passed away in 2006. 
— 30 —

Both the readers of this blog know that I’m old. I’m older than a lot of things. I’m not quite older than television, but pretty close. Television didn’t come to Oklahoma, the state I where I was born until I was about 7 or 8 years old. If you’re interested, you can check the archives of this blog for stories about the early days of television in Maysville, Oklahoma.

Television was an interest of mine from an early age and I was very interested how it worked. TV sets today are pretty big and very thin — almost like a big picture frame. But until fairly recently, a television set was very bulky and took up a large chunk of whatever room it was in. The basic reason for that was the screen was something called a cathode ray tube and in order for that to work, the TV set had to be almost as deep as the screen was wide. 

Anyhow, my subject today is a guy by the name of Philo T. Farnsworth. Philo invented something that pretty much changed the world.
But — his invention is something that most people have never heard of. And most people never even heard of Philo T. Farnsworth either. The invention? The dissection tube — it’s actually the thing that made televisions, until recently, work.

Phil was the son of a Mormon farmer. His family moved from Utah to Idaho in 1919 when he was 11 years old. He was surprised that their new home was wired for electricity (and on top of that, it had a flush toilet.) Phil became obsessed with all things electrical.
By the time he was 13, he was a self-taught electrical engineer. And he was invaluable around the farm. When a generator blew, Philo came to the rescue, and he built motors from spare parts. He devoured newspaper and magazine articles about new ideas in electricity — and thought of ways he could improve on those ideas himself.

What would turn out to be his life’s work was inspired by an article about Scottish inventor John Logie Baird and his work with cathode rays. Baird had been attempting to reproduce real images on a screen but so far hadn’t been able to produce anything but blurs of light. Right from the start, Philo was obsessed with the transmission of images onto a screen.

One day, while plowing a field, the thought came to him that electrons could scan an image line by line, just like his plow was working through a field. It took Philo another seven years to translate his idea into a working television system. On September 7, 1927, he successfully sent a single line from his camera — which he called an image dissector — to some friends that were looking at a glass receiver tube. That was the first-ever transmission of an electronic television picture. 

Within a few years, Philo was involved in a legal battle with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA.) The company didn’t want to pay Farnsworth royalties to produce television sets, so they instigated a legal battle over who was the rightful inventor of television — a Russian immigrant they’d hired (Valdmir Zworykin) — or Farnsworth. After a lot of analysis and testimony, the U.S. Patent Office awarded the invention to Farnsworth. 

In 1957 Philo appeared as a mystery guest on the quiz show, What’s My Line? He was introduced as someone with a unique claim to fame. A panel of four people were supposed to figure out exactly what that was. When asked if he was the inventor of something that could be painful when used, Philo said, “Yes. Sometimes it’s most painful.”

Philo believed that he had created a way for people to waste a large portion of their lives. He wouldn’t allow his own children to watch television because he thought it would ruin their “intellectual diet.”
Maybe he was right.
— 30 —

I was fortunate during my working years to have many good friends. One that I worked with in several locations around the world was a dear friend that I called The Bear. He didn’t look like a bear — he was a little on the stocky side, but something about the way he walked reminded me of a bear. So I always referred to him as The Bear.

Not too long after we had arrived in Manila, and were living in a temporary apartment, The Bear stopped to visit us for a few days on his way to Tokyo.
The temporary apartment wasn’t really set up much and Claire was hesitant to have “guests,” but since The Bear was a long-time good friend, she agreed we should have him for dinner. Since we weren’t settled, Claire decide to have I guess what would be considered maybe an Asian version of fondue. A neighbor in the apartment building loaned us a small electric hibachi that was placed in the center of the table. The idea was that everyone would cook their own beef that had been sliced into individual “servings.” 

When we got the hibachi, it turned out that it would only operate on 220 volts. Our apartment was wired for 120 volts. But not to worry — the neighbor gave us a small transformer to convert 120 to 220 to operate the hibachi. He also gave us a flimsy extension cord so we could get everything connected. Using the extension cord, we were able to set up the hibachi in the center of the table, by placing the transformer under one of the chairs and then running the extension cord from the transformer to the wall.

We had invited The Bear and another couple that knew him from a previous overseas tour. We had drinks — if I remember, out of some make-shift “glasses” from the kitchen. We sat down for dinner and it just happened that The Bear’s chair was the one with the transformer underneath. We were all having a good time and catching up on the latest from everyone. I began to smell something burning, but the conversation continued and The Bear was talking about when we were in Vietnam together. I noticed there were wisps of smoke that looked like it was coming out of The Bear’s head. Then there were billows of smoke seeming to come out of his head. Suddenly, The Bear jumped up as the seat of his chair became hot. The transformer (beneath The Bear’s chair) had become overloaded, and slowly caught fire. We quickly extinguished the small fire and we all had a good laugh.
It was hard after that night, not to refer to my friend as the “Burning Bear.”
— 30 —