Unwritten

Sometimes we regret our failure to write
about things that really interest us.

— E.B. White

Leaning on mutual experiences, writers often neglect to describe what's most vivid to them, because those things are usually trivial, ephemeral, and even embarrassing:

The blueberry and lemon pie that was baked in an Amish woman's kitchen. It remined me why humans have 10,000 separate taste buds.

The emerald-tinged background a Zoom caller used. It made her appear mighty and powerful, like a female Wizard of Oz.

The $300 check the state mailed to my house. It was a "gift" to help pay for gasoline. Delaware has more idle cash than Elon Musk.

A passage in The Searchers describing a harrowing skirmish with Comanches. "Sleep is good and books are better," R.R. Martin says. I love naps, but he's right: books are better. 

Speaking of books, the autographed first edition of Rabbit Run that I snagged off the web for $22. It arrived in the mailbox with the check from Delaware.

The Red Cross worker who spoke my first name every time she uttered a sentence. She either really liked me, or kept repeating my name to prevent her from labeling my blood-bag with some other donor's name. (There were four of us on her tables at once.)

The news from Odessa that Ukrainian soldiers digging a trench unearthed a trove of Ancient Roman amphorae, all in pristine condition.

The art teacher who told me that you're damned lucky to be married to such a beautiful woman.

The red fox in your backyard, out searching for a snack at twilight.

HAT TIP: This post was inspired by E.B. White's 1930 essay "Unwritten."

Words

It's only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.

— Barry Gibb

A stickler for words, I draw the line when you coin words to spare a group of people hurt feelings.

I'm not advocating the use of slurs and vulgarisms.

I refer to euphemisms.

Euphemisms are so Victorian.

So prim were they, Victorians couldn't abide mention of a breast or thigh at the dinner table. So they invented the terms white meat and dark meat. 

They couldn't mention the bathroom. They had to say restroom. 

They couldn't mention pants, only unmentionables. 

I'll take dysphemisms—straight talk—over euphemisms any day. 

Dog house over pet lodge. 

Stock market crash over equity retreat. 

Kill over pacify.

I've always been fond of comedian Jonathan Winters' famous dysphemism.

Winters, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was never committed to the psychiatric ward. 

He was sent to the rubber room.

Euphemisms are useful, of course, when we need to discuss taboo subjects or wish to shield others from unnecessary sorrow. 

They function in these instances as "verbal escape hatches."

But I lose patience with euphemisms when they're used dishonestly, whether by governments, corporations, political parties, or do-gooders.

When you say you plan revenue enhancements, do you think I don't know you mean higher taxes?

When you say new family size, do you think I don't know you shrank the amount of product in your package?

When you say climate change, do you think I don't know Earth's atmosphere is getting hotter?

When you say we need to aid the unhoused, do your think I don't know you mean the homeless?

Give me a break.

Your word substitutions are worthless.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

There is always something new to be found in America's past that also brings greater clarity to our present, and to the future we choose to make as a nation.

— Eric Rhoads

I volunteer time and money to support a local "friends" group devoted to Cooch's Bridge Historic Site.

It's a labor of love.

A lifelong history buff, as a kid I never "got" why everyone wasn't equally enthralled by the past.

But I couldn't explain to anyone why—other than its romantic aspects—I found history so enchanting.

I had no explanation.

So I was delighted to discover in college that the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had formed a theory of history that, for cogency, has never been topped.

Hegel thought that history is like nature: it evolves. 

Just as nature evolves toward more complex and harmonious systems, he argued, so does history. But where nature represents the material, history represents the spiritual.

History is the evolution of spirit (Geist).

Of course, that's a big leap from the record of events you'd find in a history textbook, or even the record found at an archeological dig. 

But Hegel distinguished three ways of understanding the past:

• Original history, which comprises eyewitness accounts of the past and historians' interpretation of those accounts. Hegel called this the "portrait of time."
  
  
• Reflective history, which comprises grand narratives of the past. Hegel distinguished four kinds of reflective history: universal, pragmatic, critical, and specialized. Universal history examines whole nations and peoples. Pragmatic history examines the past through the lens of an ideology, such as Christianity. Critical history examines the past with the aim of providing an alternative explanation of it (The 1619 Project is a contemporary example). Specialized history examines singular topics, such as furniture, art, munitions, or mass migrations.
  
  
• Philosophical history, which comprises the history of ideas. Here, events embody thought and are spiritual epiphanies. In other words, Hegel insisted, history is Geist manifesting itself. History is not a matter of dates and places, but of ceaselessly unfolding "logic."
  

Philosophical history reveals to us that history—despite the recurrences of greed, cruelty and sadism—is incremental progress. Looking back as philosophers, we see that the bad is always overcome by the good; that reason always prevails; and that freedom, the "soul truth of Geist," ultimately triumphs.

History, Hegel said, is Geist "in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially."

And that which Geist is potentially is personal freedom.

Above: Cooch's Bridge. Photo by Ann Ramsey.

Triumphs in Publicity #315

The art of publicity is a black art.

– Learned Hand

Publicists are dodgy by nature, but some handle it better than others.

A publicist who appeared on CNBC in October deserves a medal for his artful dodge.

He appeared on the weekday program Power Lunch to puff up investing in the tech firm Upstart.

The publicist was clearly addled when the host asked him a simple question.

"What does Upstart do? What kind of company is it?"

The publicist paused, frowned, then pretended his audio had cut out.

He never answered the question, leaving the host to confirm that Upstart was a great investment.

Triumph #315: 

Asked an unwelcome question, he claimed jiggy audio.

Postscript: CNBC has since declared Upstart a "disaster." On Friday, its stock price fell 55%, placing the company among the week's "top five biggest financial losers," according to Seeking Alpha.

Little Soul

Little souls who thirst for fight,

these men were born to drill and die.

— Stephen Crane

Like 190 thousand other Irishmen, Mike Folliard, my cousin six times removed, fled County Roscommon in the 1850s to escape starvation.

He wound up living on a farm outside leafy Franklin, New Jersey.

Mike was 18 in late July 1861, when Congress authorized formation of an army of 500 thousand volunteers—a call to arms that was immediately met by men like Mike, who enlisted for the thrill of marching into battle and the steady paycheck promised (Mike mailed all his army pay to Ireland, as boat fare for a widowed sister).

On August 27, Mike was mustered into the 1st New Jersey Cavalry (the "Jersey Cavaliers") at Trenton. At some point the next month, while stationed in Washington, DC, he visited a photography studio—likely that of Matthew Brady—to have his portrait taken in his handsome, new uniform.

That was the last time he'd do anything so civilized. 

Just a few weeks later, he found himself in Virginia, riding scout to defend the capital from Confederate takeover.

Cavalry was used throughout the Civil War as an infantry commanders' "eyes and ears," so Mike's regiment was nearly always exposed to enemy fire.

Mike's regiment fought in major battles at Cross Keys, Cedar Mountain, Brandy Station, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and Bristoe Station.

During the latter engagement, in October 1863, Mike was captured by surprise outside a village known as Buckland. The cavalry officer who allowed Mike's regiment to be entrapped, as it had been, was none other than General George Armstrong Custer.

Mike was summarily transported to Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where he lived among 45,000 other Federal POWs inside a stockade surrounding 16 acres of land (the size of three city blocks).

As it was to many other prisoners, Andersonville was unkind to Mike.

He died of scurvy on July 25, 1864, six months after his capture.

A thousand other POWs at Andersonville died, as Mike did, of a disease brought on by starvation.

He was only 21.

Above: Little Soul by Robert Francis James.  Oil on canvas. 11 x 14 inches. From an 1861 photograph of Corporal Mike Folliard, who is buried in grave Number 3938 at Andersonville National Cemetery.