What Would Jimmy Do?

Both the readers of this blog probably remember a previous discussion about fortune cookies. Well, I was out with some friends a few days ago and the subject came up again. Actually, the discussion started with someone referring to “American Chinese” food as opposed to “real” Chinese food. 

Probably most “American Chinese” dishes were inspired by their counterparts from China. But, due to different cultures, tastes, and other things, the American versions of Chinese foods are usually more meat-centered and less dependent on vegetables than dishes that originate in the far East.

A lot of popular dishes like General Tso’s chicken, Sesame, chicken, Chinese chicken salad, chop suey, chow mien, crab rangoon, fried rice and Mongolian beef, to name a few, are items at Chinese restaurants that are essentially American derivatives.

And then there is the fortune cookie — indisputably American, even though it was probably created by a a Chinese immigrant in the United States. 
Fortune cookies became synonymous with Chinese restaurants in the United States. The cookies were folded by hand and the fortunes were inserted using chopsticks until 1964.
Today fortune cookies are everywhere — even in….. China.
Fortune cookies only became available in Asia because American tourists kept asking for them…..
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I wish it wasn’t true, but the fact is that “death” has occupied my mind a lot recently. I’m trying my best to deal with things, take a realistic view and try to accept that it’s inevitable and part of ‘life.”
I’ve read a lot about it lately and some sociologists believe that we create a lot of euphemisms for death because we’d rather avoid the subject all together — and — the substitute “labels” help mask our discomfort. According to the theory, people are apparently more comfortable “kicking the bucket” than just dying.

I found two possible origins of “kick the bucket” — as you might expect, both are kind of morbid.
One involves the slaughter of pigs. In the days of yore, a pig was hung by its heels from a wooden beam, after its throat was slit, allowing the blood to drain out. This beam was for some reason, called a “bucket.” Maybe because the pigs were hoisted by means of a pulley system similar to that on an old-fashioned well, but I’m not sure. In the throes of death, the pig’s heels would sometimes knock against the wood. Butchers of the time would often hear the sound of the hog kicking the “bucket.”

Another possibility comes from the act of suicide by hanging. In order to do that, a person must stand on something, secure the noose around their neck and either step down or kick the support away. The theory is that a bucket is something small and easy to stand on. That seems like a more logical explanation to me, except that “kicking the bucket” doesn’t only refer to suicide — it’s used to describe any kind of death.

Either way, death isn’t a pleasant experience, and so the use of euphemisms to describe it may be appropriate or at least easier to talk about — like, buying the farm, pushing up daisies, going into the fertilizer business, taking a dirt nap, etc….
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If any of you have lived overseas, you know that something we take for granted — dependable and fairly stable electricity — isn’t the norm in a lot of places. A number of places we’ve been it was necessary to plan events around when you guessed the power would be on — at least “full on.” Brownouts were commonplace. 

One of the first experiences with dealing with these issues came shortly after we arrived at a new post. The first night in out new quarters, we were both tired from days of travel and “moving in” to the new place. We figured we’d just go to bed and get a fresh start the next morning. We went into the upstairs bedroom, but the lights wouldn’t come on — neither would the ceiling fan. I figured the fuse had blown and after searching — and finding — the “fuse box.” I couldn’t find anything wrong, so we just went to bed — leaving my expert troubleshooting for morning. 

About midnight, all the lights came on VERY bright and the ceiling fan was turning so fast it almost shook the room — sounded like a helicopter. There was also a very loud buzzing noise. I ran around turning off some of the lights and the ceiling fan. I had no idea what happened, but we certainly had (lots of) electricity upstairs

The next day, I had time to explore and discovered a few things about our house — and — the neighborhood. It turns out that the house was located only about half a block from a strip of, for lack of a better name, “bars.” Exploring the house, I found on top of the refrigerator (why there, of all locations, I don’t know) a step-down/step-up transformer. The transformer had a power surge alarm…. yep, a buzzer. 

So here’s the results of my troubleshooting and analysis of the problem: All the bars down the street turned on their air conditioners about 4:00 pm, just in time for happy hour I suppose. All those air conditioners used up just about all available electricity. There was a curfew when we were there that went into effect at midnight. So — the bars closed down at midnight and shut off their air conditioners. When that happened, all the electricity surged back in to the rest of the neighborhood. 
It turned out that wasn’t too bad — at least it was predictable — some places we lived you never knew when, or if, you’d have electricity.

We learned to step-up the transformer before 4:00 and turn on any lights or fans we thought we might need, and we also learned to step-down the transformer before we went to bed. That prevented the ceiling fan from trying to take off and the alarm buzzer from waking up the whole neighborhood. 
So, do I miss times like those? Actually, sometimes I do…..
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9/11 was a reminder that the world is unpredictable, fragile and sometimes full of tragedy. Today, we remember the innocent lives lost, the heroes who stepped forward and the unity that carried us through.
We honor — we remember — and we vow to never forget.
Maybe Aesop said it best…. “United we stand, divided We fall.”
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When we moved to Shepherdstown, St. Agnes was in the process of building a new church building. Shortly after the building was occupied, I was asked to build some Bluebird houses to be installed at various locations on the grounds. I didn’t know how to build a bird house with all the characteristics necessary to attract a specific type of bird — in this case, the particular type of Bluebird native to this area. I of course googled plans of how to build such a birdhouse.

I was cleaning out some old computer files the other day and ran across those plans and another interesting article about birds that I had saved for some reason. The article was about how birds sleep on tree limbs without falling off….

Nest building birds don’t sleep in nests — they just use them to raise their families. Some birds crouch down in the grass or in bushes to get their sleep. But there are many species of birds that sleep while perched on tree limbs. It seems pretty amazing that they could stay up in a tree while asleep because when people (and lots of animals) fall asleep, they usually go limp. But most of the birds in this area belong to an order known as passerines — birds with feet that are adapted for perching.

Most birds have four toes on each foot, and these toes can be arranged in different configurations  — depending on the type of bird. A passerine typically has three toes that face forward and a “big toe,” or hallux, that faces backward.These birds have an ingenious tendon-locking mechanism (TLM) that causes a special ligament in the back of the leg to tighten automatically when the bird sits on a limb.
The tendon locks the toes and secures the bird to the perch. Because of the TLM, the bird doesn’t have to keep its muscles actively engaged to maintain its grip — the bird stays on the limb until it retracts its toes. Other animals, like bats, have a similar mechanism that allows them to hang upside down without falling.

It’s interesting, and maybe a little morbid, that the TLM doesn’t disengage when a bird dies. Skeletons have been found still perched in trees — In fact I found one many years ago when I cut down a small tree…..
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I don’t mean to imply anything to anyone with this — I just think it’s an interesting quote from Desmond Tutu…..
“When the missionaries first came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
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I was helping my neighbor put new shutters on  his house and to get the old ones off, we used a small pry-bar that I’ve had for years. He said he should get one of those things and I asked him if he knew what it was called. He didn’t, and I told him that it was a jimmy. (if you look up jimmy in the dictionary, it says it’s a short crowbar used by burgers.)  He thought that was pretty funny. 

But people’s names are used to describe all sorts of things and situations.
I guess maybe of all the names in the English language, “John” might be used the most in unflattering ways. We’ve all heard of a “Dear John Letter, an unknown dead guy is referred to as “John Doe,” and even worse, we call a bathroom the “john.”

Well, I wondered what the heck John did to deserve so much disrespect. I figured extensive research was in order….
It seems like the most common or popular explanation for why we call the bathroom the john is that it retained an association with the first name of British nobleman Sir John Harrington, who invented the flush toilet in 1596. Well that sounds reasonable, but it didn’t satisfy my extensive research. Harrington is, in fact, usually credited with devising a prototype of the flush toilet — it was not conceived by Thomas Crapper (You’ve probably heard stories about that, too, but it’s a myth.) But anyhow, the “john” moniker for the bathroom almost certainly is not related to Harrington.  Here’s why (maybe.) When Harrington invented the toilet, he called it the “ajax” — a pun on the term “jakes,” that was slang for toilet at the time. And — the newfangled toilet idea never really caught on during Harrington’s lifetime. It didn’t come into widespread use until after 1775, when another British inventor, Alexander Cummings, got a patent for it. So it seems pretty unlikely that Harrington’s name would have been attached to the toilet nearly two centuries later. The term “john” as a term for the bathroom wasn’t recorded in print until the mid-18th century — nearly 150 years after Harrington’s moment of glory.
Now consider that “john” is a distinctly American term — people in Britain don’t call the bathroom the “john.” The usually call it the “W.C.” — short for “water closet.”
So even with all my extensive research, the origin of the term isn’t really clear. 

I found an interesting article that indicated that the first recorded use of the term “john” to refer to the bathroom dates back to 1738 and is found in — get this — the rules that governed the actions of incoming Harvard freshmen. The rules say, “No freshman shall mingo against the College wall or go into the fellows’ cuz john.” At that time, “cuz john” was short for “cousin John,” an 18th-century American slang term for the bathroom.

Cousin John’s actual identity isn’t known, but he probably wasn’t anybody in particular. Probably, “going to visit cousin John” was a euphemism for using the bathroom — kind of like “I’m going to see a man about a dog” has been used more recently. I wasn’t familiar with the word “mingo” — it was slang for urinating. I think it’s kind of funny that the college elders at Harvard thought it was necessary to enact a rule that prohibited students from peeing on the sides of college buildings.
But — I’m not sure that college kids have changed that much — maybe the  rule is needed even today…..
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A few years ago the musical Hamilton was very popular — might still be, I’m not sure. Anyhow, after seeing the play, I did a bit of research on Alexander Hamilton. I hadn’t though about it until a few days ago until we were having one of our world problem-solving sessions out on the patio. The conversation, as it sometimes, does, turned to politics and for some reason I remembered that I’d looked up some stuff about Hamilton. I wasn’t picking on Hamilton — it just happened to be on my mind after I’d seen the theatrical production.

If you’re anything like me, you’re sick and tired of hearing about sleazy politicians and their scandals. I wish it was like the good old days when he had honorable leaders. Well, the reality is that there’s always been sleazy politicians — seems like there’s more today, but…..

Alexander Hamilton is considered to be one of the greatest of America’s founding fathers. He put his personal stamp on the creation of American through his hard work, determination, and sheer brilliance. He served as George Washington’s trusted aide during the Revolutionary War. He was one of the primary architects of the Constitution, the first Secretary of the Treasury, and he created the National Bank.

In 1791, at the height of his influence and power — and, while he was happily married — Hamilton met Maria Reynolds. This attractive young woman asked him for money. She said her philandering husband had abandoned her. Hamilton later said he was touched by the poor woman’s story. Apparently he was touched enough to begin an affair. Several months later, Maria’s husband appeared at Hamilton’s door. 
Hamilton expected Maria’s outraged husband to demand satisfaction — a duel to the death. But — James Reynolds only wanted $1,000 as compensation for husbandly pain and suffering. Hamilton paid up, and James granted Hamilton leeway to continue the affair — in return for future payments.
Hamilton continued his relationship with Maria for a while, but he soon realized he’d been taken by a husband and wife con team. After he was able to wriggle out of Maria’s grasp, he breathed a sigh of relief. He considered himself lucky to only be a few thousand dollars poorer and to get rid of Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds.

In 1792, Hamilton received a visit from three U.S. senators, including James Monroe. They told Hamilton about a rumor that he had given money and secret Treasury Department information to someone named James Reynolds. (James was currently residing in a Philadelphia prison.) Hamilton faced the accusations and came clean. He confessed to the affair with Maria, but denied giving away secret information. The senators believed him. He had squeaked by again.

A few years later, Hamilton left the Treasury Department and returned to private law practice — his scandals remained hidden, and he was an influential figure in national politics. He even considered running for president in 1800. But a pamphlet dredged up the whole Reynolds Affair. It was a tale of sex and payoff in high places and created a sensation. Hamilton suspected that James Monroe — one of the senators that came to his office —had leaked the story. Monroe was an ally of Hamilton’s opposition for the  presidency, Thomas Jefferson.
Hamilton decided to let it all out. He’d wrote a fiery essay admitting he had sex with Maria, but he denied any wrongdoing at the Treasury Department. Apparently Hamilton wanted everyone to know that he might be a two-timing skunk — but — he wasn’t a crook. His public career survived, but just barely. His enemies continued to discuss the affair, and his friends were embarrassed by it. There was no chance he could run for president. The election of 1800 was won by….. Thomas Jefferson.

There’s no record of Hamilton’s wife’s reaction to her husband’s embarrassing behavior. Hamilton’s death occurred in the famous duel with Aaron Burr — after the duel, his wife burned all her correspondence.
An interesting side note is that Maria Reynolds later had an affair with Aaron Burr…. 
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While continuing to clean out our library — to be sure we don’t have any “banned” books, I ran across an interesting little book about Alchemy.
For thousands of years, maybe more, alchemists have had two goals — transmuting base metals into gold, and discovering the Elixir of Life, which would grant immortality to those who drank it. So far, not one alchemist has changed lead ( or any other metal) into gold. And everyone who drank various elixirs has since died — quite a few of them from the elixirs they drank. All in all a pretty spectacular history of failures.

But these guys weren’t all quacks. A guy that today is revered as the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, Sir Issac Newton, dabbled in alchemy. In fact, one of his papers describes a recipe for the Philosophers’ Stone, a legendary substance that reputedly could turn base metals like iron and lead into gold. And — the recipe he described had come from his older contemporary, the famed British chemist Robert Boyle. 
(Alchemists believed the philosophers’ stone could transform common metals like lead into silver or gold and could be used as an elixir of life for health and longevity. It was considered the most pure and perfect of all substances. Alchemical images often include pairs of animals or people uniting to become one. These represent the combining and refining of different ingredients into a new form — the philosophers’ stone.)

So — how could so many have failed so often for so long….. there are a lot of reasons, but the underlying reason is that alchemists — all of them — didn’t have a clue as to how the universe really functions. A lot of them were diligent experimenters and did their research, but they invariably started from bad premises. Bad premises get you bad results in science — and — alchemy.

I’m pretty sure you can make gold from other elements — maybe not easy, but start with a huge cloud of hydrogen floating around the universe, then collapse it into a supergiant star. Let that star run through its natural life, fusing hydrogen into helium, and helium into carbon, then oxygen, silicon, and iron, and on and on through the process of thermonuclear fusion in its core. Eventually, the star will completely collapse and explode in a supernova and shoot out millions of tons of gold and other heavy elements. So theoretically, the process is pretty simple. 

But all the alchemists were woefully ignorant of atomic theory, or even the periodic table. But they did have some practical knowledge of metals and ores, learned from the experience of metallurgists and other metal workers. And they believed that everything in the universe was comprised of varying amounts of four elements — earth, fire, air and water. So if you presume everything is made from those four things, the changing one metal to another is just a matter of rearranging the proportions — typically through the use of acidic solvents and alloys. That makes perfect sense, if all matter is actually comprised of the four elements — but — it’s not. 

Alchemy was known to ancient Greeks, Chinese, and Indians as “the Art.” That’s probably because they thought that the seven known metals (gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron and mercury) were in some way aligned with the seven major planets in the sky (the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Mercury.) So astrology and alchemy came together making it a mystical art as well as a practical endeavor. If these were the guiding principles of alchemy, it’s no wonder alchemists didn’t make much progress in terms of making gold. 

Of course, some alchemists put on a good show and claimed to make gold. In the 3rd century B.C., Bolos of Mende, writing under the name of Democritus, claimed in his treatise, Physica et Mystica, to have made gold. But for anyone wanting to do the same, his written directions for changing other metals into gold were extremely vague, and there was a lot astrological mumb-jumbo thrown in that further muddied the waters. 

Alchemists certainly had a good idea, but their search for gold has produced massive, never-ending, total and complete failure.
I once heard that to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost.
But maybe William Shakespeare said it best — “You are an alchemist; make gold of that.”
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Well, once again, there’s been a school shooting — this time in Georgia. And once again we’ll probably hear that all our national leaders are shocked that such a thing could happen. And Congress will offer their thoughts and prayers to the victims — and their families. They may even have a moment of silence.
I’m sure knowing that makes every parent feel better about sending their kids to school today….
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