Food Fight

Seventy-nine years ago today, a gang of female protestors entered a small grocery store in Nazi-occupied Paris and began yelling and snatching the canned sardines on display. Arms loaded, they ran back outside and tossed the cans to the crowd in the street.

It was a sardine riot.

The Nazis had been starving the Parisians during the Occupation, just to show them who was boss. They denied civilians everything from beans to broccolini, potatoes to pasta, sausages to sardines. 

The sardine riot—an organized street protest against the shortages—resulted in the killings of two policemen and, in time, a wave of reprisals by the Nazi puppets who ran the Vichy government.

The obscure event is recounted by French studies professor Paula Schwartz in Today Sardines Are Not for Sale, new from Oxford University Press.

Schwartz describes the food riot as "banal," a "human interest story consigned to oblivion. 

"Even the human toll of the incident was sadly banal," she writes in the introduction. 

An eyewitness called the riot, "a brief scuffle of no importance."

But the story's banality makes it enchanting. 

There's no Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, FDR or de Gaulle moving history's levers; no great armies storming the beaches or fighting in the forests; just a group of hungry French housewives tossing canned fish.  

"Microhistories" like Schwartz's are among my favorite kind of books. 

Launched in 1983 by Natalie Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre, the microhistory craze goes on unabated. 

The best microhistories I've read have covered a crazy pageant of subjects: rock bands, businesses, hobbies, professions, books, paintings, voyages, meetings, battles, crimes, trials, disasters, animals, cities, and paleontological digs. 

One of my all-time favs, Small Town Talk, examines the history of Woodstock—the town, not the festival; another, Thunderstruck, recounts the invention of the radio. Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life describes the Smithsonian's plunder of a Canadian treasure. 

Microhistories, in William Blake’s words, try to "see the world in a grain of sand." They bring you so close to a subject you feel its breath on your face. Then, they pull back the lens. You get to look at the big questions scientists, psychologists, philosophers and theologians pose. 

Why, for example, do cultural moments always originate in villages? Why do we always credit thieves with history's greatest inventions? Why do we think only the strong survive?

Forty years in the writing, Today Sardines Are Not for Sale examines a 20-minute incident that, in a grain of sand, lets us see how Western Europeans—women, in particular—came to terms with Hitler's invading armies.

Through a 200-page close-up on “the women’s dem­onstration,” you learn what it was like not only to be a Parisian housewife, but a resistance fighter, a collaborator, a grocer, a cop, a spy, a snitch, a jurist, a Commie, a corrupt politician, and a Nazi occupier.

"As a protest action emblematic of its time and of its type, the affair presents an extraordinary opportunity to understand some signal features of everyday life in Paris under German occupation," Schwartz writes in the introduction.

But Schwartz's book, like all microhistories, does more than that.  

Today Sardines Are Not for Sale also asks several big questions. 

Why are most women's contributions throughout history forgotten?

Why is history itself a moving target?

And will Americans have to starve before they stand up to fascism once more?

The book is terrific. 

Try it out.

Brain Dead

 

Shot between the eyes at Chickamauga, Indiana Private Jacob Miller’s chances of surviving the Civil War were infinitesimal.

As his company fled a Confederate battalion of sharpshooters the morning of September 19, 1863, it abandoned Miller on the battlefield.

"I was left for dead," he later told a newspaper. "When I came to, I found I was in the rear of the Confederate line. So as not to become a prisoner, I made up my mind to make an effort to get around their line and back on my own side."

Miller sat up and probed his wound with a dirty finger. "I found my left eye out of its place and tried to place it back, but I had to move the crushed bone back first. I got the eye in its proper place and then bandaged it the best I could.”

Miller was so blood-soaked, the Confederates he encountered didn't recognize his blue uniform. He managed, half blind, to escape them and hobble back to the Federal lines, where he was carried by stretcher-bearers to a field hospital. A nurse helped him climb onto the operating table. "The surgeons examined my wound and decided it was best not to operate and give me more pain, as they said I couldn’t live very long," he said.

Miller decided to take his life into his own hands. He snuck from the hospital and followed a road heading "away from the boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry." But he soon collapsed from exhaustion.

"Monday the 21st I came to and found I was in a long building in Chattanooga, lying on the floor with hundreds of other wounded. I raised myself to a sitting position, got my canteen, and wet my head. While doing it, I heard a couple of soldiers who were from my company. They could not believe it was me as they said I was left for dead on the field."

Because he was able to walk, Miller was told to leave Chattanooga and find his way to Nashville, 130 miles away. He left with the men from his company. They crossed the Tennessee River that night.

"Tuesday morning the 22nd we awoke to the crackling of the camp fire that a comrade had built to get us a cup of coffee and a bite to eat," he said. "While eating, an orderly rode up and asked if we were wounded. If so, we were to go back along the road to get our wounds dressed. We had to wait till near noon before we were attended to. That was the first time I had my wound washed and dressed by a surgeon."

Miller was told to walk to Bridgeport, Alabama, only half as far as Nashville. From there, he could catch a train.

"We arrived at Bridgeport the fourth day out from Chattanooga at noon, just as a train of box cars was ready to pull out," he said. "The next thing I remember, I was stripped and in a bathtub of warm water in a hospital at Nashville."

The surgeons in Nashville also refused to operate and shipped Miller to a hospital in his home state of Indiana. "I suffered for nine months, then got a furlough home and got doctors to operate on my wound" he said. "They took out the musket ball."

Miller recovered in three months and was discharged from the army with a $40 monthly pension ($680 today). But his wound didn't close. Family and friends, shocked to learn he was alive (he'd been listed as dead), could see his pulsating brain through the hole in his head. "Seventeen years after I was wounded, a buck shot dropped out of my wound and thirty-one years after, two more pieces of lead came out," he told the newspaper.

Although he suffered constant pain and never again held a job, Miller married and had a son. Occasionally, in the years following his mishap, he would suffer spells of "stupor." Miller would tramp around town for two weeks, shouldering a stick and insisting he was on picket duty. He lived to the age of 88.

This Memorial Day weekend, please consider a fact: although a tad loony, Jacob Miller survived his war. His service should be honored, yes, but on Veterans Day. 

On Memorial Day we honor soldiers who didn't survive. It should be clear from the former holiday's name: you can't become a veteran if you die before your discharge. 

But Americans—without benefit of a musket ball in the head—are so brain-dead, they conflate the two. I blame poor teachers, sloppy journalists, and cheesy advertisers for their confusion.

If you're unsure of the difference, learn Memorial Day's origin story. It's touching.

From Béarnaise Sauce to Socialism

In France this day, celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Commune de Paris are wrapping up.

The Commune, a brief but world-historical uprising of Paris's working class, still rankles conservatives today.

That's because—from start to finish—it was a socialist uprising: a time of class warfare and revenge; of workers' rights, women's rights, and immigrants' rights; of living wages, debt forgiveness, rent control, cheap mass transit, and plentiful food.

Karl Marx loved (and inspired) it.

The two-month Commune didn't rise from nowhere.

It was triggered by the trauma of the four-month Siege of Paris, Bismarck's campaign to cripple the city, throughout which the working class had been corralled into a single arrondissement to starve to death. 

As Parisians' food dwindled, "siege cuisine" became popular.

Working-class people ate rats, cats, and dogs to survive, while the wealthy ate horses and mules and animals they took from the zoo—including camels, zebras, antelopes, and ostriches.

To make the wealthy's meat palatable, Parisian chefs experimented with fancy dishes like pâté de rat; stuffed donkey’s head with sardines; broth of elephant; and kangaroo stew. 

Sauces—first popularized by Chef Carême—came into particular use. 

Paris's chefs served meat cooked in burgundy, tomato puree, pepper sauce, truffle sauce, béarnaise sauce, and sauce chasseur (hunter’s sauce).

Without money for bistros, the working class had to settle for boiled, fried or baked rat, cat, and dog. No wonder they rebelled, once Bismarck's siege ended.

Like all of Paris's poodles, the Commune came to a terrible end. 

After a two-month reign over Paris, the Commune was crushed by soldiers rushed from Versaillais. 

They killed over 70,000 workers in the streets, executed another 30,000, and burned down a third of the city.

So much for socialism. 

But at least we have béarnaise sauce.

POSTSCRIPT: Learn how artists depicted the Paris Commune here. 

HAT TIP: Thanks to historian and gourmand Ann Ramsey for inspiring this post.

Comparing

Look for the similarities, not the differences.

— Alcoholics Anonymous

AA members believe "comparing" is the sure path back to the bottle. 

Comparing leads the drunk to minimize his problem-drinking ("I was never as bad as he was") and exaggerate his ability to control his drinking ("He drank every day; I'll only drink on weekends").

Instead, the drunk is supposed to "identify" with fellow members—accept that he's also an alcoholic and admit he can't control his drinking (it controls him).

My experience working with hundreds of different businesses has taught me that comparing—in AA's sense—is one of executives' worst habits—and an equally certain path to self-defeat.

I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time an executive told me "we're different" (a statement often followed by "we're the industry leader").

Business strategists would call that attitude "optimism."

I call it drunk-think. 

Executives who believe "we're different" are drunk, drunk on a special flavor of Kool-Aid known as "Cheery Red." 

Drinking too much of it causes comparing.

For a decisionmaker, that's a terrible self-handicap.

Drinking too much Cherry Red, like drinking too much alcohol, blurs vision, slows cognition, and impairs judgement. 

And, like drinking too much alcohol, drinking too much Cherry Red can bring on denial—even deliria.

You hear examples of drunk-think in businesses every day. 

"That's unnecessary."

"That's untested."

"That can't be done." 

"We tried that, it doesn't work."

"That's too expensive." 

"That's too risky." 

"That's fine for other companies."

"That's for start-ups."

"That's for losers."

"That's irrelevant."

"I've never heard of that."  

"That's not how we do things here."

Drunk-think distorts reality because it's always way-too overconfident. 

Like the abusive drinker who believes he's different—that he can control his drinking—the executive afflicted by drunk-think believes that, compared to others, he is awesome—he can pull it off. He's peerless, after all, exempt from the ordinary constraints all his competitors suffer; exempt from the laws of economics, too. He has no need to rock the boat; challenge the company status quo; look outside for new ideas; or adopt others' proven strategies. He only needs to stay calm and carry on.

Eventually, drunk-think will take its toll on the executive. 

He may not destroy the company car, but he's sure to destroy the company's value.

Resistance is Futile

Such argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal.

— John Harvey Kellogg

Like the Borg, "physicalist" philosophers are a hard-nosed bunch.

Physicalists hold that there's absolutely nothing that's supernatural: the only real substance is physical, and everything that's real is nothing more than its physical properties—the mind included.

By extension, one day the mind will be explained fully by neuroscience, according to physicalists.

For a century, physicalists have dominated debates about the 2,500-year-old "mind/body problem" in philosophy.

But—despite a century of vaulting advances in neuroscience—the tide of opinion is turning.

More and more philosophers today resemble Hegelians, the philosophers who dominated the mind/body debate in the 19th century. (Hegel believed that "All that is real is rational and all that is rational is real.")

One example is Galen Strawson. He believes everything is mind—that electrons are conscious.

Strawson is a new breed of physicalist, one who holds that, while everything is indeed physical, mind pervades it, a view known as panpsychism.

Strawson arrived at his opinion by realizing four truths:

1. Each of us knows for certain that he, she or they exists—that minds exist.

2. There's only one kind of substance—physical substance. 

3. Therefore, mind must be physical.

4. But there actually is no "substance," according to contemporary physics; there are only "vibratory patterns in fields." Mind must reside therein. It is latent in the energy that composes electrons—every electron, everywhere. Mind is everywhere.

Strawson's argument has merit because, like Hegel's, it's simple, positing neither all-natural nor supernatural substances. Everything is a unified one. 

And there's no longer any cause to debate where body ends and mind originates. Body ends nowhere. Mind originates everywhere. 

Debate over.

If panpsychism sounds whacky, it's not. It's mainstream.

Resistance is futile.

Polymaths

You know you're old when you're asked, "Do you have hobbies?"

— Warren Beatty

Bob Lowry, a blogger I enjoy, recently asked whether the search for a "perfect passion" in retirement isn't a fool's errand.

"There is no doubt that a passion or hobby that is meaningful to you is one of the keys to a satisfying retirement," Lowry says, "but searching for those things that inspire and motivate you might be a waste of time."

You'd be better off, he says, trying your hand at a lot of "imperfect" pursuits.

"Don't allow yourself to stagnate just because you haven't stumbled onto the one thing that lights your fire," Lowry says. "Try all sorts of activities. If what you are doing doesn't grab you, drop it. 

"When you find that passion, the thing that pushes you out of bed each morning, you will know it. In the meantime, you have had fun, learned something new, got your blood pumping, or at the very least gotten off your butt."

Lowry's spot on: there's nothing wrong with polymathy—in fact, quite the opposite. Polymaths are often the ones who connect dots we would never, ever connect—or notice in the first place.

The late motivational speaker Barbara Sher called polymaths scanners, people "unlike those who seem to find and be satisfied with one area of interest." 

Unable to latch onto one or two imperfect passions, scanners are "genetically wired to be interested in many things," Sher believed.

That polymathy makes scanners disturbing to others. 

"Because your behavior is unsettling, you’ve been taught you’re doing something wrong and must try to change," Sher said. "But what you’ve assumed is a disability is actually an exceptional gift. You are the owner of a remarkable, multi-talented brain."

One of my favorite polymaths was Winston Churchill. We remember him as a politician, but throughout his life he devoted equal energies to writing (the greatest source of his income), painting, horse breeding, and bricklaying.

Yes, bricklaying.

As he found painting (and brandy), Churchill found bricklaying a remedy for the "worry and mental overstrain" (i.e., manic depression) that dogged him most of his life.

In pursuit of the hobby, Churchill built brick walls, walkways, fish ponds, patios, a swimming pool and a child's cottage, all on the grounds of his estate. 

He also became a member of the local mason's union—despite his vocal opposition to unionized workers' wage demands and the right to strike.

Churchill had little interest in the betterment of the working class.

Even a polymath has his limits.

Now and Then

The future ain't what it used to be.

— Yogi Berra

Every day I read about a retiree who say she's never been happier.

I'm glad I can say the same.

The reason why occurred to me just this week: I have lost a whole dimension of time: the future.

My career, I see now, always forced me, at the cost of the present, to focus on the future: on plans, budgets, deadlines, pitfalls, and potential catastrophes; on this afternoon's call, tomorrow's meeting, next week's presentation, next month's earnings, next year's trends.

Today I pretty much ignore the future. 

Now I live in the now—and then.

Now I fill my time with projects that absorb all my attention, and pastimes that fling me backwards in time, into mankind's, or my own, history.

Sure, I keep a calendar and a to-do list, but they don't exert much influence. What's in store holds little sway over me any more.

In fact, having lived mostly in the future, I now see it's vastly overrated.

Above: Head III by Francis Bacon.

The Time Has Come for Amtrak One

If TV's Secret Service agent Jim West could travel in his own private train, why can't President Joe Biden?

Biden's weekend visits to Delaware, as widely reported, are an irritant to local drivers, who get trapped in hour-long backups as he's chauffeured to and from his Greenville home.

A private train could solve the problem.

Just as the commander-in-chief boards Air Force One for flights to Europe, he could board Amtrak One for hops to Delaware.

It would perfectly suit his reputation as a loyal rider—Biden rode Amtrak every day for 36 years—and unflagging champion of rail travel.

Please feel free to forward this blog post to the Oval Office, if you have any inside contacts there. I'd do it myself, but so far I've had little success at influencing White House policy.

Could be my taste in old TV shows.

Who Owns the Earth?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs,
but not every man's greed.

― Mahatma Gandhi

Republicans are often called "idealess," but that's unfair.

They have an idea: they want to own the earth.

But is it even possible? Can a party of people own the earth?

Our Founders' favorite philosopher, John Locke, answered the question in 1690 in his Second Treatise of Government, arguing "no."

While reason would suggest no one can own the earth, Locke says, the Bible proves that fact: "God has given the earth to mankind in common." 

But if that's true, why do we believe in ownership at all? How can anyone say he owns any piece of property? How can he say he owns something which "God gave to mankind in common?"

Locke answers the second question by examining an age-old farming practice: fencing.

Although nobody "originally" owns the earth's natural resources, Locke says, we can't make use of those resources until we "fence" them, as it were. 

"There must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man," Locke says. 

That means of appropriation is fencing.

And when someone fences—"removing" a resource from access by others—he adds value to it—the value of his labor. 

"The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, are properly his," Locke says. "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." 

A man's labor "annexes" and "encloses" a property, Locke says, excluding it from "the common right of other men.' 

In a phrase, workers keepers. "The condition of human life, which requires labor and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions," Locke says.

Work, in effect, infuses any resource worked on with property rights, which allow that resource to be owned by the worker.

Appropriating resources you haven't worked on, on the other hand, Locke calls robbery—in his eyes, a sin.

"God has given us all things richly, but how far has he given it to us?" he asks.

"As much as any one can make use of life before it spoils, so much he may, by his labor, fix a property: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil."

So no one can own the earth, but any man can have his own little acre—provided he works to improve it, Locke says. 

If he does not improve what he grabs, he's letting it spoil. That's Locke's definition of robbery.

You can't defend robbery by claiming, "Well, all of us own the earth, as God commands," because God also commands that all men should labor. Those who don't have no "title," no right to "benefit of another's pains." Those who don't labor are—literally—robber barons. There's no place in the world for them.

There's also no place for their greed, Locke says. 

Greed urges you to take more than you can improve—or ever use. 

If the barley inside your fence goes to seed, the vegetables die, the fruits rot, and the sheep and goats get sick, it signals you have grabbed more than you can care for, more than you can use; and therefore that you're greedy. 

It's "useless" and "dishonest," Locke says, to grab more than you can tend to or consume.

Although he's been dead for three centuries, Locke would be the first to say the modern Republican Party is the party of despoilers, robber barons, and greedy sinners.

But you knew that.

Sign of the Times

Today's Sabre outage, which halted many departures at major US airports, riled a lot of passengers.

My local newscaster kept pronouncing "outage" as "outrage," claiming there was an "outrage at airports nationwide."

Sign of our times?

Hard to Please

People who are hard to please, in other words, idiots.

― Marty Rubin

In today's New York Times, Harvard professor Dr. Sema Sgaier profiles the four types of Americans who resist the Covid-19 vaccine and suggests we mollycoddle them. To which I say screw that.

Sgaier surveyed 17,000 Americans and places the vaccine-avoiders into four categories:

Covid Skeptics—the idiots who think the vaccine is a Chinese plot. "Everyone in this group believes at least one conspiracy theory," Sgaier reports.

The Cost-Anxious—the idiots who worry about the vaccine's cost (it's free, of course).

System Distrusters—the idiots who feel maligned by doctors.

The Watchful—the idiots who are waiting for other idiots to get vaccinated first.

The good doctor recommends four ways to deal with the wretches: we should "hold conversations" with them; "offer them a "vaccinate later" option; "be transparent" about the vaccine; and "avoid trying to debunk what they believe" and instead "acknowledge how they feel."

That kid-glove approach sounds like good psychology. It may even be smart public health.

But we're talking about idiots here, and lots of them; in fact, 38% of Americans are idiots, according to Sgaier's survey. That's too many adults to mollycoddle, if we want to survive the "Commie threat from China."

"When it comes to idiots, America's got more than its fair share," Lewis Black once said. "If idiots were energy, it would be a source that would never run out."

I Can but I Won't

I'm as guilty as anyone of romanticizing the Greatest Generation.

But—just as millions of today's Americans are jerks about mask-wearing—many of the Greatest Generation were jerks, too.

Jerks about rationing.

Three months before Pearl Harbor, FDR signed an executive order intended to curb households' consumption of commodities. He knew they'd soon be in short supply. 

Commodities like cars, tires, gas, oil, coal, wood, towels, linens, clothes, shoes, meat, fish, catsup, mustard, butter, milk, cheese, coffee, sugar, jelly, shortening, canned fruits, canned vegetables, chocolate bars, candy bars, and bubble gum.

Americans were asked by their government to accept sacrifice—all for the good of the coming war effort. But millions never did. Millions hated rationing—as they did FDR—and cheated.

They cheated by stealing and counterfeiting ration coupons; buying coupons from relatives, neighbors, and the Mafia; hoarding goods; and buying them from bootleggers, black-marketers, and crooked merchants.

The Americans who complied with rationing, for the most part, ignored those who didn't, although one government official said the latter were "secretly in sympathy with Hitler or Hirohito."

Plus ça change.

A Nation of Neurotics

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

— Sigmund Freud

What's wrong with everyone? 

Covid-19 is a moving target. 

The CDC's advice about shots, mask-wearing and social distancing merely moves in response.

Better and better news comes out every day.

Yet everyone wrings their hands.

Riders on the Storm

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. 

Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

— Samuel Butler

We're about to see Joe Biden try to replace deprivation with comfort—or at least the opportunity to achieve comfort. And we're about to see Republicans try to block him.

I was raised to be a New Deal Democrat and cannot sympathize with anyone—except the rich—who supports the other party; and I can hardly sympathize with the rich. (My tender feelings fizzle fairly fast for households earning $300K+ a year.)

Biden's plan is bold because justice is at stake.

Justice is simple.

If you're a Republican, when it comes to defining justice you're on the wrong side of history—or two centuries behind the times, anyway. Your notions of rugged cowboys and laissez-faire capitalists are as outdated as frock-coats; so are your miserly notions of producers, moochers and looters. But you don't care. You're too busy dodging taxes and griping about socialism.

But if you're not a Republican, you know justice is about fairness, not self-interest, not ownership—and certainly not ownership of you (the gripe of Republicans is that taxes equate to Stalinist "forced labor"). Fairness means you don't trammel others' rights, including the right to a fair opportunity—a "fair shake," as Biden prefers to say. 

What's so complicated about that?

Now, Congressional gridlocking aside, the realist in me recognizes that giving everyone her fair shake won't be easy. 

First, some rich people will have to pay more taxes. Tough turkey. If you earn over $300K, I won't cry for you.

Second, some poor people will waste their opportunity. That'll be no one's fault but their own. I won't cry for them, either. Justice, after all, assures inalienable rights; even the right to screw up.

Dasein ist geworfener Entwurf, as Heidegger said: into this world we're thrown.

Thrownness is the human condition, our lot in life, the hand we're dealt. We're all born "situated," as Sartre said. Some are born haves, some have-nots; some White, some non-White; some abled, some disabled; some competent, some grossly not so. Justice seeks to throw off our thrownness.

We're all just riders on the storm. 

Why don't Republicans get that?

Some Things are Nonnegotiable

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

― George Orwell

In The New York Times this week, conservative columnist David Brooks observes that the gospel of woke has already reached the remainder shelves, its freshness expired.

The proof, he says, lies in the fact that corporate America has co-opted it.

Corporations have the uncanny ability to productize progressive ideologies, Brooks says, "taking what was dangerous and aestheticizing it."

He cites the example of a nearly laughable pamphlet for math teachers, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.

The pamphlet urges teachers to shun "racism in mathematics."  

"White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when there is a greater focus on getting the 'right' answer than understanding concepts and reasoning," the pamphlet says.

"Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity," and objectivity is racist.

Objectivity is racist, the pamphlet insists, because it's paternalistic, provoking fear and self-hatred among math students unaware of the correct answers.

Brooks might find this stuff silly and harmless; I don't. 

There are tens of thousands of teachers imbibing this swill.

Mathematical truth—what philosophers call realism—is apodictic, immutable and—as harsh as it sounds—nonnegotiable. 

Mathematical truth may be the last bastion of white supremacy, but I'll defend it to the end. 

Otherwise, truth is only that which is trouble-saving.

Do you want your grandkids crossing bridges engineered by snowflakes unable to add two plus two?

Not me.

Inimitable

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

— T.S. Eliot

There's theft and there's appropriation. 

Theft is like porn: you know it when you see it. I recently sent an article to the editor of Successful Meetings; the following week, my article—poorly recast—appeared under a staff writer's byline. 

That's theft.

Andy Warhol, on the other hand, made imitation boxes of Brillo, not for display in grocery stores, but in art galleries. 

That's appropriation.

Whole books have been written about Bob Dylan's penchant for appropriation.

He's appropriated melodies from folk singers, blues players, country artists, and English balladeers; lyrics from novelists, playwrights, scriptwriters, and fellow composers; and paintings from other painters.

Critics are quick to call Dylan's borrowings theft, but even Shakespeare was hardly above appropriation, as T.S. Eliot noted.

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal," Elliot wrote of Shakespeare. 

"Bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

Dylan has appropriated from plenty of others; but he's welded what he's taken "into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn."

His way of welding makes him inimitable.

NOTE: Bob Dylan turns 80 this month. He resumes touring in June. A retrospective of his paintings opens in November. His archives opens to the public next May.

Money for Jam

I believe in everything until it's disproved.

— John Lennon

French jam-maker Bonne Maman is cashing in on a myth, thanks to a law professor's tweet.

Michael Perino claimed in February Bonne Maman's founders helped Parisian Jews survive the Holocaust by hiding them from the Nazis.

His proof? A remark by a nameless old lady he met in a New Jersey supermarket.

The tweet caused social mentions of Bonne Maman ("Granny's" in English) to surge.

Reporters who've fact-checked Perino have come up dry. 

But Perino has defended the claim, saying, "What possible reason would this woman have to go out of her way to lie?"

The professor should know better. He's making what philosophers call the "appeal to ignorance."

The appeal to ignorance—a logical fallacy—insists a claim must be true because we don't know any facts that would make it false.

Two prime examples of the fallacy are the claims, "Hilary is a secret sex-slave trafficker" and "Santa Claus is coming to town." 

You can insist either claim is true because there are no facts that disprove the claim; but you'd be wrong from the logical point of view. And there are plenty of facts suggesting the two claims are false.

Speaking of facts, as it turns out Bonne Maman's founders (whose descendants have refused to comment) didn't live in Paris during World War II; nor are they considered "righteous gentiles" by Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center.

And yet people want to believe. As philosopher William James said, "your belief will help create the fact."

Above: Bonne Maman by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas board. 8 x 10 inches.

Kick the Bucket

Bucket: an open-topped, roughly cylindrical container.

Gambrel: a frame used by butchers for hanging carcasses.

— Collins Dictionary

When KFC founder Colonel Harlan Sanders died 40 years ago, a pal of mine joked, "He must have kicked the bucket."

Kick the bucket comes not from American chickens, but British pigs.

According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a bucket is 18th-century British slang for a gambrel.

"When pigs are killed," Brewer's says, "they are hung by their hind-legs on a bucket, with their heads downwards. To kick the bucket is to be hung on the bucket by the heels."

Farmers (and city folk) would soon apply the gruesome expression to anyone who died.

The first known appearance of kick the bucket can be found in the August 1775 edition of The London Magazine: Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer.

"My old mess-mate, Tom Bowline, met me at the gangway, and with a salute as hearty as honest, damned his eyes, but he was glad that I had not kicked the bucket."

Pictured above: A bucket. A gambrel.