What Would Jimmy Do?

Coming home yesterday, I was behind a car from New Hampshire. Their license plate had the slogan, “Live Free or Die” on it. I got to thinking about that and did a little extensive research. “Live Free or Die” is the official motto of New Hampshire and it is on the state’s license plates. Those license plates are made at a state prison…..
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Maybe because of the Olympics, I thought of something someone I worked with years ago always said — “Pardon my French.” Of course he used it when he would swear and decided he needed to apologize. For no particular reason I got to wondering where that phrase came from. 

It probably, along with lots of other “insults,” grew out of the long-standing rivalry between England and France. They have a history of mutual contempt and each country’s everyday language contains lots of stock phrases and terms that speak ill of the other.

The English have pretty much always thought of the French as champions of indecency and lewdness. The English used the terms “French pox” and “French disease” for syphilis and other venereal diseases long ago. Of course the French weren’t about to take that lying down. One of their more inventive phrases was les Anglais ont débarqué, which translates to “the English have landed.” Not a big deal — until you learn that they used it to describe menstruation. The phrase probably stemmed from the bright red uniforms of the English soldiers that flooded into France to fight against Napoleon. They associated the English with an unwelcome crimson arrival.

The countries have always come up with similar terms for things, but swapped “French” and “English” as appropriate. For example, a “French letter” is an English euphemism for a condom. The French would say a capote anglaise (an “English hood”). In England, “to take French leave” means to leave without saying goodbye. In France, filer à langlais means “to flee like the English.”

I couldn’t find any similar symmetry with the phrase “Pardon my French.” Apparently when the French swear, and feel sorry about it, they usually say Excusez moi (Excuse me.)
Seems to me the French should say, “Pardon my English,” — but  — they don’t.
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Douglas Eugene “Gene” Savoy was born in Bellingham, Washington on May 11, 1927. He had no formal training as an archaeologist, but nevertheless, he spent a lot of time deep in the jungles of Peru. He discovered more than 40 lost cities in his career, including Vilcabamba, the Incas’ last refuge from the Spanish conquistadors. People magazine called him “the real Indiana Jones.”

However, like the movie-hero Indiana Jones, Savoy’s expeditions weren’t entirely driven by archaeology. He had much grander plans — including finding the legendary city of El Dorado, where rumors have it that one can delve into the “ancient roots of universal religion” — and — the fabled fountain of youth.

In 1969, Savoy captained a research ship and sailed around the world gathering information on sea routes used by ancient civilizations to prove his theory that they could have been in contact with one another. 

Savoy returned to Peru in 1984, where he discovered Gran Vitaya, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America. On one of his last trips to Gran Vitaya, he discovered a tablet that held inscriptions alluding to ships that were sent by King Solomon to the biblical land of Ophir to gather gold for the king’s temple. 
Discovery of the tablet started Savoy on what was maybe his most ambitious adventure — to find the exact location of Ophir and to find proof that the gold in Solomon’s Jerusalem temple came from South America. And — to learn the secret to immortality.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you that throughout his career, scholars scoffed at his theories and were skeptical of his findings.

I hate to spoil the ending, but Savoy didn’t find the secret to immortality. He died in Reno, Nevada, where he was known as The Most Right Reverend Douglas Eugene Savoy — head of the International Community of Christ. 
Members of his church believed that staring at the sun would allow them to take in God’s energy and become immortal. (I suspect that they might not ever have good eyesight, though.) Savoy’s religion was based on a secret Savoy said was revealed to him in the jungles of Peru.
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When we first moved to Shepherdstown, we had a little trouble adjusting to the pace. For a long time we were always early when we went anywhere. We just automatically figured in the traffic delays that we were use to any place we went. But in Shepherdstown, there wasn’t a traffic problem and it took us some time to adjust to it — living in a place with no “rush hour” was completely new to us. I was thinking about that the other day and I wonder how the term rush hour came to be.

To me, “rush hour” makes no sense. Take the “rush” part — no one can rush because there are too many cars on the road. I suppose that “rush” must really refer, not to speed, but to the rush of people that flood the roads, and public transportation systems trying to get home — or somewhere.

And if you think about it, the “hour” part is even more misleading than the “rush” part. Where we used to live in Norther Virginia, I guarantee you that “hour” lasts a lot longer than 60 minutes. So the “hour” of “rush hour”  is not your traditional chronological hour. It’s some vague, unmeasured block of time. I guess you could say the same thing about the “hour” in “happy hour.” And now that I think about it, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. In fact, since we’ve moved to Shepherdstown, I’ve kind of traded rush hour for happy hour……
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You’ll have to trust me on this one. I can’t tell you where this happened for a number of reasons — I can’t tell you the reasons, either. But here’s the story…..

It was shortly after the first of the year and three of us were assigned to a project in the place I can’t reveal. An apartment had been rented for us and whoever occupied the apartment before us was apparently there for Christmas because there was a fairly large Christmas tree in the living room. It looked like it needed some water and was losing lots of needles. I assume it was decorated at one time, but there were no decorations on it when we arrived. 

The street outside our apartment had a rather big pot-hole in it when we arrived and it seemed to get bigger and deeper every day. After we’d been there about a week, one night we sat on the front porch having a few drinks and watching cars dodge the now cavernous pot-hole. Then we had a spontaneously brilliant idea — we drug the Christmas tree out of the living room and “planted” it in the pot-hole.

The next morning, having breakfast, we noticed that the tree was still there, and cars were avoiding the hole — that was now clearly marked, thanks to our ingenuity. When we came back to our apartment later that night, the tree was gone — and — the street had been repaired!
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I remember back in 1999 and all the concern as to what would happen when the year 2000 arrived. There was widespread concern that computers wouldn’t work and people wouldn’t be able to get their money out of banks and maybe even civilization as we knew it would come crashing down. Of course none of that happened, but maybe it was the start of the conspiracy theories that are so popular today.

I read a book recently that mentioned similar happenings back in A.D. 999 when the clock was ticking down toward the new year of 1000. It seems that people throughout Europe were holding their collective breath. Everyone was wondering what the new year and millennium wold bring. Many thought it it would herald the Last Judgement and the End of the World, and pilgrims converged on Jerusalem where they thought the final battle between good and evil would take place.
According to the book, some of those pilgrims were thrown to their knees during the journey by a thunderstorm. They recorded the event for posterity, believing that the thunder was the voice of God announcing the Day of Judgement. 

In that same year — 999 — a meteor appeared in the skies above England, shining with a light so brilliant it turned night into day. That even caused a lot of doubters to become believers.
I guess the good thing is that nobody had to worry about their computer crashing….
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This morning, as usual, one of the first things I did was make coffee. And every morning, just like most of you, I imagine, the first question of the day in my mind is — where did my morning coffee come from?
Well, ok, maybe that’s not the first question in your mind, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

The story starts a long, long time ago, in a land where there were no Starbucks… and stories about the origins of coffee became legends….
According to an ancient Ethiopian legend, a goat herder named Kaldi discovered coffee while in the pasture with his goats. When he saw that his goats were acting frisky after eating berries from a certain tree, he decided to experiment on himself. Kale liked the effect so much that he told the local monastery about it. The abbot who ran the place thought the “magic berries” were a work of the devil and threw them into the fire. The burning beans produced such a good smelling aroma that the monks rescued them from the flames. The monks began to use the beans in religious ceremonies and for medicinal purposes. 

The earliest written record of coffee was about A.D. 900 by anArab physician-philosopher named Rhazes. Rhazes thought that coffee (which he called “bunchum”) contained a substance that could cure disease. But you didn’t drink it — the berries were dried, crushed, and mixed with fat to form a ball that was eaten.

An Arabian legend is very much like the Ethiopian, except, of course, in this version of the story Kaldi is an Arab instead of an African. It contains the same frisky berry eating goats, and Kaldi trying some, too. But in this story, a tired and hungry learned man named Aucuba just happened to be passing by and saw Kaldi and his goats jumping around. Since he was hungry, he ate the berries and — miraculously — wasn’t tired any more. Aucuba was so impressed that he took some of the berries, sold them, and became a rich man. No one knows what happened to poor Kaldi — apparently he didn’t have any of that entrepreneurial spirit.

So, it turns out that coffee was originally used by the general public as medicine (some might say it still is.) Only religious Muslims used the bean in a beverage. But by the 13th century, Arabian coffee houses (called “qahveh khanchs”) served it as a drink to anyone who had the money to pay for it. A lot of Muslims were so upset at the public use of this “holy beverage” that they threatened death to anyone who frequented these dens of sin. But we all know what it’s like when you gotta have that cuppa java — the threat didn’t keep the café crowd away. And those coffee fans must have “spilled the beans,” because the word about coffee started to spread.

European travelers brought back the news of an unusual black beverage called “qahveh” (coffee.) By 1615 Italy was importing it. Its debut caused a commotion among the Italian clergy who thought  it was the “bitter invention of Satan.” Pope Clement VIII, however, eventually gave his papal approval.  Over the next 80 years, coffee drinking and coffeehouses spread from Italy to other parts of Europe. In 1690 the Dutch managed to smuggle a few plants to the Netherlands where the first European coffee cultivation began. That ended the Arabian monopoly on the coffee trade. 

In 1723 a sneaky guy named Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu stole a coffee plant from the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden in Paris, with the intention of bringing coffee to America. According to historic records, on the voyage, he encountered violent storms, pirate attacks, and a severe water shortage on board. It’s considered some kind of a miracle that both he and his plant survived the voyage. It was from this one plant that the growth of coffee spread through the New World. 

Coffee finally made its way to Brazil in 1727. Francisco de Melo Palheta, a Brazilian army lieutenant, was sent by his country to arbitrate a boundary dispute between French and Dutch Guiana. Both countries were cultivating coffee, but they weren’t allowing the export of seeds or seedlings. Palheta wanted his country to be part of the lucrative coffee trade, so he endeared himself to the wife of the governor of French Guiana. She was so impressed with how he handled the arbitration that on his departure she presented him with a bouquet. Hidden in the bouquet were coffee seeds and cuttings. Palheta brought them to Brazil, where they flourished, beginning the now well-known Brazilian coffee industry.

So now you don’t have to do all that wondering about coffee — in the morning, you’ll have time to just stop and smell the coffee. And may your coffee kick in before reality does……
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During my working years, on several occasions, I was assigned projects in what was then considered “hard-core” Communist countries. We always went there with certain assumptions — the house or hotel room would be “bugged,” we would be followed, and we would have to be extra careful about breaking any “rules” that changed at least daily.

Years ago, two of us were assigned to one of these countries for a couple of months and we seemed to be handling it pretty well, except for the restaurants. To call them mediocre  would be a major compliment. I mentioned that to one of the clerks in our hotel and he became very excited and told be about a brand new restaurant that had just opened on the outskirts of town — he claimed that it had an “exotic” foreign menu. Well needless to say, both of us were very interested in checking out the new place to eat. I think it was the very next night that we decided to go there and after work, we went back to the hotel and got all cleaned up and put on clothes that would be appropriate for an “exotic” restaurant. We went through the lobby and the valet had pulled our car up to the front door for us. There were two or three guys hanging out in the lobby — I recognized them because they had been following us everywhere we went since we got there. I always waved and spoke to them, but they never acknowledged my friendliness. 

Anyway, we got in the car and started to the restaurant using the directions the hotel clerk had given us. My friend was driving and I was navigating. When we pulled out of the hotel driveway, a car fell in right in behind us — more of our friends that we were used to by now. We drove, with me directing, and I figured we had to be close to the restaurant, but the area we were in didn’t look like it would have any kind of a restaurant. So we stopped and asked a policeman and he sent us off in another direction and gave us landmarks to look for. We wound up in a complete dead end. We turned around and our friends following us also turned around and then pulled out from behind us, and took their place slightly ahead — my friend looked at me and I looked at him and I said, “follow that car.” And we did —directly to the restaurant. 

I don’t remember if the food was good or not, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t worth all the effort it took to get there. Our “guides” waited in the car while we ate. After the meal, we all headed for the hotel.
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This is a story I’m sure Claire would remember very well — we talked about it a few times over the years.
When we were in Manila, Claire served as the finance officer for our office. Shortly after we had arrived, she requested a new typewriter — the one in her office looked like it was about fifty years old. Apparently whoever had the job before Claire didn’t type, because it looked like it had been doing nothing but gathering dust for a while.

The request for the new typewriter was made through the embassy, as was the common practice. For some reason the embassy decided to procure a typewriter locally, rather than via headquarters in Washington. They purchased a brand new typewriter locally — it looked like the IBM Selectrics that most everyone used back then, but it was not made in the US, or by IBM. I think it may have been made in France, but I’m not sure. 

But anyway, Claire was happy — for about a day. The new typewriter just didn’t seem to work… ½ spaces between letters, letters overlapping each other, and all sorts of problems. She complained and the boss told her to call a repairman. That proved to be easier said than done — it seems that no one was able to locate a typewriter repairman in all of the Philippines. Finally, I asked one of the Filipinos that worked in the warehouse to find a repairman. He said he knew someone and shortly, the typewriter repairman showed up. But — there was a small issue. The repairman didn’t speak any English and no one in the office knew more than a few words of Tagalog. So I called our guy from the warehouse, who acted as an interpreter. The repairman asked what the problem was and the ‘interpreter” explained it. He then asked Claire to show him what was happening. Claire sat down and started typing — after a couple of minutes, the repairman started yelling, and waving his arms and Claire Stopped typing. Our guy from the warehouse conferred with the repairman and then started laughing. The repairman had said that Claire was typing much too fast — the typewriter’s ball with the letters — couldn’t turn that fast. She just needed to slow down. Claire, by now none too happy, asked how “slow” should she type? The repairman demonstrated, and according to Claire, his typing would be considered “hunt and peck” at best.

When we told that story, Claire always said it was the first, and probably only, time she had ever been told to work slower.
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I guess this falls into the category of believe it or don’t — but I think it’s true….
In 1985, Wilbur Snapp, the organist for minor league baseball’s Clearwater Phillies in Florida, played “Three Blind Mice” to protest a call made by umpire Keith O’Connor. The ump tossed him from the game.
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