What Would Jimmy Do?

I just happened to notice that yesterday was Nelson Mandela’s birthday.
He was the son of a Tembu tribal chieftain and was born on July 18, 1918 in South Africa. He became a lawyer and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944.

In 1964, he was convicted for sabotage as a result of his participation in the struggle against apartheid, and spent the next 28 years in jail. All that time, he remained a symbol of hope to South Africa’s non-white majority. He was released from prison in 1990 and elected President of South Africa in 1994. It was the first election in which all races participated.
Happy (belated) Birthday Nelson!
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I saw a friend at church recently and said, “Hey, you got your ears lowered.” He looked at me like I had three heads and said he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. When I was growing up, that was a common phrase — if my dad was going to get a haircut, he almost always said, “I’m going to get my ears lowered.” In fact, just about everyone said it, no one hardly ever said they were going to get a haircut.

I admit that I hadn’t heard the expression in a long time, and it just kind of popped out, but I was still amazed that my friend swore he had never heard it and had no idea what it meant. Actually, this slang term always made more sense to me than a lot of the others that I heard — when you get a haircut, it appears there’s a larger distance between your ears and the ends of your hair…. giving the illusion that your ears have been lowered.

I guess this is just something else that shows my age — it probably falls into the category of an old fashioned (i.e. corny) sense of humor. I also remember when I was a kid, when someone would ask, “D’y get a haircut?” we’d always answer “No, I got ‘em all cut.”

Of course just getting a haircut itself was a lot different than it is today. When I was a kid growing up in Maysville, we had a couple of barbershops — that’s where men got their hair cut (or “ears lowered”) and there were a couple of beauty shops — that’s where women got their hair cut, or whatever they had done to it. If it was a barbershop, it had a barber pole outside. 

I remember my dad always took me to get my ears lowered. When we went in, the barbers (usually two) both acknowledged us and spoke while they clipped away. We always just took a seat, there was no signing in or anything like that — we just looked around and saw who was ahead of us. My dad usually  talked to people and I usually looked a a comic book — I remember the barber shop always had comic books for kids. I always kind of listened to the conversation(s) because the barber shop was where ordinary farmers and businessmen solved the world’s problems. 

When the barber finished cutting someone’s hair, they left and whoever was next just climbed into the chair — everyone always knew who was next. Then they’d start a conversation with the barber about the weather, or fishing or hunting, sports (usually baseball) or maybe some town issue. 

When it was my turn, the barber put a board across the arms of the barber chair to make me taller and it was hard to sit still when the scissors and clippers got around my ears. I remember knowing when the barber was about finished, when he put some lather on the back of my neck and made a few swipes with a straight razor. 

All barbershops (at least all good barbershops) had a barber pole — and it was in good working order, with those red and white strips spinning around. When I was a kid, I don’t remember ever having my hair cut in a barber shop with more than three chairs — most only had two. And most of the good or popular shops had a deer head or a fish or something hanging on the wall. 

Today, I get my hair cut where Claire gets her hair done — it’s honestly not a “cool” place. No talk about fishing or hunting, or sports, political issues… no deer heads on the wall — not even any straight razors. 
No wonder “getting my ears lowered” has turned into just another chore to check off my list.
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I’ve always been a big fan of trains. My first trip (outside of Maysville or the surrounding towns) was by train. May dad had to go to Okmulgee on business and he took my mom and me along as a kind of mini-vacation. It was the first time I ever stayed in a hotel, too — but that’s another story. Okmulgee is only about 150 miles from Maysville, but I was only about 3 or 4 years old and it seemed like we’d traveled to another country. That was my first experience with trains and over the years, I’ve taken a lot of trains in various countries. Taking a long train trip in the U.S. is still on the agenda.
Anyhow, I thought maybe today would be a good time to think, and write about trains….

The train is often listed as one of the most important inventions that humans have come up with. History books give trains the credit for allowing the quicker shipment of both people and goods, and leading to the industrial revolution.
The earliest trains were powered (actually pulled) by horses and then along came steam power and then diesel power — Most/Many more modern trains today are powered by electricity.

I mentioned that the first trains were pulled by horses — when James Watt came along during the development of the steam engine, he invented the word “horsepower” to help sell the new technology. He discovered that prospective buyers couldn’t understand how efficient steam power was, so he used the horsepower measurement because everyone back then knew what horses were capable of.

So steam power dominated the world of trains up until about the 1940s — when diesel came along, it was pretty much the end for steam powered trains. A diesel engine performed more efficiently, propelled the train faster, and didn’t require as much manual labor. By the 1960s, steam trains were almost non-existent. 

At one time, trains in the US ran on a very precise schedule — most all train personnel carried a pocket watch that kept extremely good time. That “on-time precision”  is pretty much gone today, but in many other countries, trains still run very much on time. China, for instance, measures arrival and departure times in minutes. But I think Japan gets credit for having the most reliable train system — even a delay of a couple of minutes will get you a free voucher and personal apology.

Like most subjects, there’s a few “gee-whiz” facts about trains….
After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his body was transported by train through 180 cities on the journey back to his home state of Illinois.
Stray dogs in Russia take the train from the suburbs into the city of Moscow each morning to scavenge for food. In the evening, they take the train back to the suburbs — to get a good night’s sleep, I guess.
The first underground railroad was inaugurated in 1863, in London. The Metropolitan was a steam engine system that operated through a series of small tunnels underneath the city. However, the system had problems with ventilation — the smoke from the steam engines caused poor visibility and disastrous breathing conditions.
“The Great Train Robbery” occurred in 1963 — a Royal Mail train traveling from Glasgow, Scotland, to London, England was taken over by 15 men. They got away with £2.6 million — the money was never recovered.
The USA has the most train tracks of any country — 125,000 miles. China is second with 99,000 miles and Russia comes in third (89,000 miles.)
The longest train route that is covered by a single train is the Trans-Siberian Express. The route is from Moscow to Vladivostok — 5,778 miles. The trip takes 6 or 7 days and makes between 74 and 145 stops.
The engineer responsible for designing the Kamikaze planes for Japan during World War II also developed the Shinkansen — the Japanese bullet train.

So trains, early on, became a part of our lives. Agatha Christie once wrote that trains are are wonderful…. to travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact to see life.
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Back on July 14th, we talked about Bastille Day in France and how the storming of the Bastille kind of kicked off the French Revolution. And we mentioned that the Bastille was built during the Hundred Years’ War to help protect Paris.

Today, I thought we might talk a little about that war. The Hundred Years’ War was, needless to say, a long struggle between England and France — over succession to the French throne. The war lasted from 1337 to 1453, so it should be called the Hundred and Sixteen Years’ War. 

Here’s how it all sort of came about….
When Charles IV of France died without a son in 1328, Charles’s first cousin was chosen to succeed him, becoming King Philip VI. But Edward III of England, as the deceased king’s nearest male relation, was considered by some to have the stronger claim to the throne. When Phillip VI confiscated the territory of Aquitaine from England in 1337, Edward III responded by pressing his claim to the French throne, beginning the Hundred Years’ War. The war began with several stunning successes by Britain and the English forces dominated France for decades. Then, the struggle see-sawed back and forth. In the 1360s, the French were winning. From 1415 – 1422, the English were winning. After 1415, King Henry V of England revived the campaign and conquered large portions of France, and won extraordinary political concessions. From 1422 onward, however, the French crown struck back.
The conflict saw major developments in military strategy and technology and the final French victory at Castillion in 1453 was the first major field engagement of the war to be decided by gunfire. 

Joan of Arc, a 19-year old peasant girl, that claimed to hear God’s commands, led the French army to reclaim much of their land. But she was captured, tried and found guilty of heresy. Joan was burned at the stake. The story goes that she cried our for a cross as she was being burned, and one was hurriedly made by an English soldier from two sticks.
Joan of Arc was later declared a saint. 
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I’ve often heard that there is a difference between being smart and being wise. Well, since the weather’s hot and and I’ve already cut the grass this week, I thought I’d just exercise my brain in the air conditioning and think about that…. 

I remember, when our kinds were in school, at most parents’ get-togethers, some would invariably tell us how smart their kids were — we used to hear it all the time. But I can’t say that I remember any of them saying their kids were “wise.” I remember when I was in school, the “smart” kids pretty much had the key to success — the teachers seemed to like them better and they got a lot of opportunities that other students didn’t. It was just a given that they were going to be successful. (Not that I am, but I don’t remember any of the “smart” kids in my class being any more “successful” then me.)
But again, I’m getting a little off the subject — I started out wondering what’s the difference — if any — between being smart and wise?

Smart and wise are both positive words that describe a person’s intelligence and judgement. Someone doesn’t have to have a lot of experience or information to be smart. Wise is usually used when referring to someone that is older and more experienced. And wise isn’t meant to be a one-time compliment — it’s meant to acknowledge a person’s general intellect. If a person is considered wise, it almost always means that they not only possess wisdom, but also have experience. 

So “smart” is a word that stresses intelligence — “wise” is a word that describes someone with a lot of experience, along with knowledge and sound judgement. And smart can be used to describe people of all ages, but wise is usually associated with people who are older and more experienced. A smart person doesn’t necessarily have experience and knowledge, but a wise person almost always does.

Smartness refers to a person’s capability and their ability to learn, but wisdom requires more than just that. Wisdom comes from understanding the real world, and all it’s complexities — not just a limited environment, like school. 
I think that (some/many) smart people tend to process information in a strictly logical way, but wise people also process the emotional, spiritual, and other subtleties along with the logic. 

But it’s good to be smart — maybe even better to be wise…. and maybe if you’re smart, it’s easer to become wise. 
My dad (who I considered to be a very wise person) once told me that a smart person knows what to say, but a wise person knows whether to say it.
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A few weeks ago, this blog was about the guillotine that came into prominence during the French Revolution. Today is July 14th, and a day for celebration. Why do we celebrate a good beheading or an angry mob? Back on July 14, 1789, the commoners in France were none too pleased and their actions created the original Bastille Day.

So what was this Bastille anyway? The Bastille was a state prison on the east side of Paris — built in the 1300s during the Hundred Years’ War against the English. It was built to protect the eastern entrance to the city of Paris.

By 1789, it had become a symbol of the monarchy’s dictatorial rule and when it was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob, the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed. 

On July 14, 1789, the revolutionaries decided to make a huge statement and storm the Bastille, where political prisoners of the regime were being held. It turns out that on that day, there were only 7 prisoners in the Bastille — 4 counterfeiters, 2 mentally ill people, and 1 count who was sent to prison by his own family. So much for liberating political prisoners.
So was the attack on the Bastille worth it? Actually, the attack was symbolic, but there was a practical reason for the invasion, too. The revolutionaries had managed to loot and steal thousands of firearms, including some cannons. But those things were useless without gunpowder. and guess where a lot of gunpowder was stored? Yep — in the Bastille. 

Before the attack, the Bastille Was actually scheduled to be torn down and replaced by a public square — today only a few stone foundations from the original structure exist. But Marquis de LaFayette, a commander of the French national guard ,and a good buddy of George Washington, sent the the key to the Bastille to Washington — it is on display at Mount Vernon.

So the storming of the Bastille symbolically marked the beginning of the French Revolution — the monarchy was overthrown and a republic set up… based on the ideas of liberty, equality and brotherhood.

After the revolution, in 1880, France’s senate decided that their country should have a national holiday. July 14th was highly contentious — conservatives considered the storming of the Bastille to be too violent and bloody of a day to commemorate. Other possible choices included August 4th, the day the country’s feudal system was finally abolished, September 21st, the anniversary of the first French republic and February 24th, the start of the second republic. But July 14th won out — it not only marked the storming of the Bastille, but also the Fête de la Fédération, which the country celebrated one year later, on July 14, 1790. That day a huge celebration was held on the site that the Eiffel Tower now stands. The day represented the changes that France had seen in the past year — rather than divisiveness and political turmoil, the country was now relatively calm. 

When the law declaring July 14th a national holiday was passed, the law was deliberately ambiguous. It didn’t say which 14 July was being celebrated. Of course, today everyone just thinks of it as Bastille Day.
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Yesterday when I was doing some checking on the validity of something I saw on Facebook, I ran across some interesting facts about both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Both men had a lot of similarities — and — differences. For years, Lee got more respect than Grant — both as a military leader and as a personality. But recently, historians have demoted Lee and promoted Grant on both counts. 

Comparing the two is an interesting endeavor, if you’re so inclined. It’s far too large a subject for the length of these blogs — but I ran across something that I found particularly interesting…..
Robert E. Lee was older than Grant by sixteen years, but both Lee and Grant died at the age of 63. Lee died on the campus of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, where he served aa president. He died from pneumonia two weeks after suffering a stroke.
Grant died at a vacation cottage in Mr. McGregor, Ny, just outside Saratoga, after a months-long battle with throat cancer — probably connected to his habit of smoking cigars.

Seems like both Lee and Grant were good guys — it’s unfortunate that the Civil War hurled the two against each other in battle. They were both skilled commanders in military science, and also political science.
Some of their quotes indicate they were basically peace loving and opposed to war…..
“Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one” ~ Robert E. Lee
“I have never advocated war except as a means of peace” ~ Ulysses S. Grant
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Maybe I’m just getting old, but the Internet (and even the local and national news) seems to be full of “factual” accounts and stories that are in fact, not true. This morning, I did something that I almost never do — I looked at Facebook. Actually, it was a mistake — I intended to open something else, but my finger must have activated Facebook on my iPad. I started to immediately close it, but something caught my eye — one of my “friends,” who I have no idea who he/she is, had posted in big, bold letters —“Robert E. Lee owned no slaves, but Ulysses S. Grant did own slaves during the Civil War.”
Well….. there was no source mentioned as where this information came from, or even why it was posted. 

I closed Facebook and went on to what I originally started to do — but, as the day went on, I got to thinking about that statement — it just didn’t seem right. Pretty much everyone owned slaves around the time of the civil war, so it didn’t make sense that Lee wouldn’t.  So a bit of quick extensive research put this statement in the false, or not true, category. I’d guess if it was in the news, the Washington Post would give it four Pinocchios.

Lee personally owned slaves that he inherited upon the death of his mother, Ann Lee. Following the death of his father-in-law, he assumed command of 189 enslaved people. I didn’t dig much more — that was enough to convince me that the statement was false.

When fake information is repeated, it becomes difficult for people to discern what’s real. Unfortunately, we seem to have gotten to the point that when we agree, it’s the truth — when we differ, it’s fake.
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A few blogs back, we talked about ”Friends of Bill W.” Bill Wilson, or “Bill W.” was a Wall Street banker who drank away his career and his marriage, eventually having to spend several stints in a hospital due to alcoholism. 

AA began in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, as the result of a meeting between Bill W., a New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith. an Akron surgeon. Both had been hopeless alcoholics. 

Both Bill and Bob had each been in contact with the Oxford Group — a mostly nonalcoholic fellowship group that emphasized universal spiritual values in daily living. Under the influence of this group and an old friend, Bill had gotten sober. He maintained his recovery by working with other alcoholics, but before meeting Dr. Bob, none of the other alcoholics had actually recovered. 
At the same time, Dr. Bob’s Oxford Group membership, in Akron, hadn’t helped him enough to achieve sobriety. When Dr. Bob and Bill finally met, Dr. Bob found himself face-to-face with a fellow sufferer that was succeeding. Even thought he was a physician, Dr. Bob didn’t know that alcoholism was a disease. He responded to Bill’s convincing ideas and soon got sober (apparently never to drink again.) This sparked the founding of AA.

Both Bill and Dr. Bob set to work with alcoholics at Akron’s City Hospital. One patient quickly achieved complete sobriety. These three men make up the nucleus of the first AA group — although the name Alcoholics Anonymous was not yet used.
In the fall of 1935, a second group of alcoholics began to take shape in New York, and in 1939 a third group was started in Cleveland. Early in 1939, the Fellowship published its basic textbook — Alcoholics Anonymous. The text was written by Bill and reviewed by many of the early members. The book explained AA’s philosophy and methods — the core of the book is now well-known as the Twelve Steps of Recovery. The book also included case histories of thirty recovered members. 

By 1950, there were an estimated 100,000 recovered alcoholics, worldwide. Also in 1950, AA held its first International Convention in Cleveland. Dr. Bob was a speaker and spoke, in what would be his final talk, of the need to keep AA simple. He saw the Twelve Steps enthusiastically adopted for the permanent use by AA throughout the world. Dr. Bob died on November 16, 1950.
Today, in almost every city in America, there’s likely to be an AA meeting happening. 
I’m not sure who said it, but it seems appropriate for everyone — not just alcoholics: “I have found that the process of discovering who I really am begins with knowing who I really don’t want to be.”
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I suppose I should be writing this around Halloween, but it’s July and we were at a party a few days ago and the subject of ghosts came up. Actually the conversation wasn’t particularly interesting — that’s too bad, because I think ghosts are interesting. I’ve had a few personal experiences related to “ghosts” and maybe I’ll put them on my list of things to blog about.
But I thought today, I’d just talk about ghosts in general….

Scientist say there is no evidence that ghosts really exist, but there are plenty of people that think they are real. 
There are different types or forms of ghosts — I’m sure there are some/many that I don’t know about but I know there are (supposedly) ghosts that appear as floating balls of light — they’re called Orbs. Poltergeists are noisy ghosts that can touch (and often break) objects in the physical world — they like to make noise and mischief. Some ghosts appear as mist or fog and ghosts known as funnel ghosts show up as blurry spots in photographs. Casper cartoons show ghosts that look like bedsheets with eye holes — I’ve never heard of a bedsheets ghost, but who knows?
The word ghost comes from the Old Germanic word gaistaz — meaning soul or spirit. It also shares a root with the word gasp. Maybe that’s why some people gasp when they see a ghost.

Arguably, the place with the most ghosts anywhere is the Tower of London. The place is nearly a thousand years old, so I guess there’s been plenty of time for ghosts to take up residence. Some of its ghosts include the wife of Henry VIII, Lady Jane Grey (the nine days queen,) and even a bear. The tower used to have a zoo, so that probably explains the bear.

When the ancient Romans wanted revenge on someone they didn’t like, they believed they could get a ghost to do it for them. They could do that by writing a curse on something called a curse tablet and putting it into a grave.

 Ghost hunters and paranormal scholars agree that ghosts prefer to haunt at night because there is less commotion and electronic disturbances. The witching hour is the time during the night where supernatural and paranormal happenings are more likely to happen. Ghosts and demons are said to be at their most powerful during the witching hour. I’m not sure exactly when the witching hour is.

The official term for the fear of ghosts is phasmophobia — a phobia that is also linked with the fear of the dark. It’s one of the most common fears for both children and adults.

There are lots and lots of ghost stories — probably one of the most famous is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by ghosts of the Christmas past, present and future. But the first ghost story appears to have been written in the first century AD, by the Roman author Pliny the Younger. He described a ghost he saw in his house in Athens, Greece. The ghost was an old bearded man fully shackled in chains.

So — maybe you believe in ghosts or you don’t… maybe people who say ghosts don’t exist are just afraid to admit that they do. Or maybe Stephen King had it right when he wrote “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
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