Random Word of the Week

Sandman

“He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good.” Most folks recognize these lines from the “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” lyrics written by Haven Gillespie. Some folks find the image a bit disturbing. These days, a man who watches children sleep is probably going to need to register with the local law enforcement.

It might have been acceptable, and respectable, when this song was written back in the 1930’s, for a grown man to secretly track children’s sleep and behavior patterns. It might have been fine for him to wear a bright red uniform with white fur trim. Even being overly jolly might not have raised an eyebrow. But we’re a jaded lot, these days. We’re the ones who drive our children a block to the bus stop to keep them safe. “Helicopter parenting” is a thing, now. A creepy man who breaks into the homes of children to reward them for good behavior and adequate sleep is just not going to be accepted for long.

But how about the Sandman? Not only does he keep track of kids sleeping, if they’re not asleep when they should be, he throws sand in their eyes to make them sleep! And, he controls their dreams. I don’t even think he’s jolly. He may reward good behavior, though. In Hans Christian Anderson’s story, he carried two umbrellas. The one for good children had fantastic pictures on the underside and was held over their faces while they slept to give them wonderous dreams. Bad children got the blank umbrella, and dreamless sleep. So there.

Vilhelm Pedersen illustration from “Ole Lukøje” by Hans Christian Andersen

Sandman certainly isn’t as popular as Santa, but he did get at least one song: “Mr. Sandman”, written by Pat Ballard. It was recorded by a host of performers, including the Chordettes 1954 version which made it to the number one spot on Billboard’s charts. If you’re unfamiliar with the lyrics, “Mr Sandman, bring me a dream…” is a request for the Sandman to bring a real-life man (or woman, according to who is singing) worthy of one’s dreams. Aside from the amazing assortment of artists who’ve recorded the track, and the possibility that it inspired the later, “Please Mr. Postman” lyrics, the Sandman song is still just a single, while Santa gets albums full of songs about him.

Even so, the next time you wipe the sleep out of your eyes, or hear any one of the “Mr. Sandman” versions, you may want to consider: was my sleep full of wondrous dreams with fantastic images? or was it it blank and dreamless? I mean, I’m sure Santa and the Sandman compare notes, and if you have no dreams, you may want to buy yourself a coal-burner in time for Christmas.

Plunger

Is there an age when folks stop feeling like they have a different career choice? Not necessarily a regret that they chose the wrong career, but that another option would be good once they’ve finished with this one. Like when folks become comedians after being teachers. Or novelists after being accountants. I’m just wondering if there’s a cutoff at some point.

Having had a pretty good career (still going) in the corporate world over the last 30+ years, I’m still wondering what to do next. I pretty much never narrowed down the possible careers I’d considered when I was a kid, so singing, dentistry, and house painter are all still options. Ok, maybe dental school takes a bit too much time and money to start now, but everything else is still on the table.

To make matters worse, there are new opportunites that have been added that didn’t exist when I was a kid. Uber driver. Podcaster. Virtual Assistant. Day trader. I could start part time and work up to full time just in time to retire from my corporate gig. It’s just too hard to know whether any of these would be more satisfying or successful than, say, cinematography. I mean, I wouldn’t want to waste my life on a bad second career choice.

Speaking of day trading, if I became a gambler (almost the same), and took huge risks with the potential for huge gains (like I said, almost the same), I might be called a plunger. True. It’s one of the meanings. Or a diver, which is also called a plunger. But we usually think of plungers as the tool to clear the toilet. Or the piston in a syringe. All called plungers. But nobody ever asks you to bring a plunger except the one that’s a plumbing tool.

Hey, speaking of plumbing, how long does it take to become a plumber? Can I start part time? I’ve gotta consider my options…

Deliberate

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, rushed out of our minds and lives by the encroachment of the Black Friday phenomenon. I hope that the sales flyers, Christmas lists, and who-gets-what-where didn’t dampen the gratitude and family interactions that make Thanksgiving its own special holiday. And the food! Did you have way too much of way too many choices, and then follow it up with way too much of way too many dessert choices? I can’t be the only one.

One thing that was unique for us, this year, was that my son brought his smoker and smoked our two turkeys. Not only was that a wonderful taste experience, but it made it much less of a crisis when the oven element burned out. It was the larger, lower oven in our double oven. The top one is shallow with only a single shelf, so we had some delays and used some creative solutions to make everything come together.

Just starting to smoke the dry-rubbed pork.

Since we had the smoker here, we had also smoked a “Boston Butt” (upper part of the pig shoulder) a couple days before. Aside from the benefits of smoking the meats (tenderness, flavor, the chance to use “smoked butt” in every conversation), it isn’t the fastest cooking method. In fact, BBQ restaurants even advertise how slow they smoke their meats–slower always seems to be better. In our case, the extra time was definitely worth it for both the pork and the turkey.

But we don’t always associate “slow” with being better; there are alot more microwave ovens sold than smokers, for example. But there are situations where taking our time is absolutely the best choice. Being good at making quick decisions is usually helpful in sports, business, and life. But some decisions need to be weighed carefully and considered over a little more time. Those situations call for us to be deliberate. A root of this word is “libra”, which some may know as the zodiac sign represented by scales. The word, deliberate, is really talking about weighing carefully.

We can also walk in a deliberate way, which tends to be with a slow, even pace that one might employ while thinking more about a difficult decision than about hurrying to a destination. And another way to use deliberate is as a verb, such as what juries do to determine a verdict; the thoughtful, careful discussion, weighing each side’s arguments for the best chance at coming to the truth–and to unanimous agreement. And you probably know that when used as a verb, deliberate is also pronounced differently. This makes it a heteronym, since it is the same word, but sounds differently according to the meaning (such as bow or separate). Just a little extra info at no extra charge.

The well-known fable of the tortoise and the hare is actually a lesson in the value of being deliberate. Slow and steady yields better results than quick and inconsistent. Wait, you didn’t think it was about how to win a footrace, did you?

Corpuscule

Although I may have learned this in my schooldays, it was a surprise to me when I recently read that the Mason-Dixon line defined the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, settling a decades long dispute. In fact, the dispute was violent enough, at times, to be called “Cresap’s War”, named after a particularly nasty (and scrappy) Marylander.

The conflict was caused by an error in the land grant to William Penn in 1681, based on an inaccurate map, which essentially overlapped the 1632 Maryland grant pretty significantly. In fact, even Philadelphia fell within the disputed territory. It’s embarassing when your capital falls within the next state. Anyway, after on and off hostilities through the years, a final boundary took effect in 1750, and Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the line in the 1760’s, earning themselves unexpected and lasting fame, and the 2019 equivalent of almost one million dollars.

Grace Street Cemetery, which has the graves of 275 Civil War veterans

The East-West line was along the latitude of the point 15 miles due south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia, which was on what is now called South Street. Where all the hippies meet. And a good place to eat. The line meets a North-South portion defining Maryland’s Eastern border with Delaware. At the corner is the Delaware border with Pennsylvania, which is an arc, rather than a straight line or natural border like a river. It is part of a twelve mile circle around New Castle, DE.

It wasn’t until the Missouri Compromise in 1820 that the Mason-Dixon line became associated with slavery and the legendary North-South border most people associate with the name. You can even buy Mason-Dixon souvenirs. Maybe even a souvenir from Cresap’s War, as well as the Civil War.

Speaking of bloodshed, there is something unusual about blood cells that you may not have ever thought about being unusual: they are not connected to anything. Unattached cells like blood and lymph cells are called corpuscules (or corpuscles). The word can also refer to any tiny particle, so it’s less special in that usage. In fact, the word literally means “little body”.

So, the next time you get a little splinter that causes some bleeding, you can say that a corpuscule caused you to lose corpuscules. Be sure to say it to someone who’s read this blog, though, or they’ll think you’ve lost more than a few corpuscules.

Hochhuth

Not long ago, my wife met a guy at a yard sale who was down on his luck. She ended up working out a deal where he would come to the house and fix a couple things and do some yard projects. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

One of the items he was to fix was a generator she’d bought at a previous yard sale. Generators are pretty heavy, and this one had no wheels. So I had put it on a yard wagon and pulled it around to the back patio. Since the wagon raised it up a bit, he left it on the wagon to work on it. He started by changing the oil, then he worked on checking the fuel flow.

Sign in Haiti where we bought fuel for a different generator while we were there in 2017.

This was going on while I was in the house, and at about this point, I heard him say, “no no no NO NO NOOOO!” And then the sound of things falling and more “NO’s” from him. I called out to ask if everything was ok, even though it was clearly not. Of course he said it was fine. But he was lying.

It turns out that while he was checking the fuel, he disconnected the fuel line. The gas tank was about half full. So gas was squirting out. And he couldn’t get it stopped. So gas was squirting out. In his further attempts to get that stopped, it started to tip off the yard wagon. This is probably the point where he started “No-ing”. As the generator continued squirting gas and continued to tip off the the yard wagon, he also lost his balance. As they tumbled over, the container of used motor oil got knocked down and spilled out, as well. But the generator was on top of it, so he couldn’t just pick it up, and used motor oil coated about one-fourth of the patio. He didn’t come back after that day.

Not everything we do works out the way we hope; you’ve probably noticed that. The German dramatist, Rolf Hochhuth, produced a nine hour play called “The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy” in 1963. It was his first major work, and of course it has never been performed in full, but always abridged. The work has been very controversial, but not for its length; it is highly critical of Pope Pius XII for his silence regarding Hitler and the Holocaust. Oddly enough, Hochhuth became good friends with British author, David Irving, best known as a Holocaust denier. At one point, he defended Irving in an interview, and became a victim of his own controversy; he was eventually forced to issue an apology.

He has gone on to produce other controversial works, including one in which he made the villain a real life person who was still alive and who successfully sued him for libel. Since Hochhuth is still alive at the time I write this, maybe we’ll run into him at a yard sale and he can take a crack at our generator.

Mozetta

Lorenzo Corsini was a lawyer in Florence, Italy. He came from a powerful family which was not only nobility, but had very close ties to the Catholic Church. He had many high ranking clergy on both sides of the family, including a saint on his father’s side. In fact, when he was 33, he also joined the clergy by buying a high ranking position of his own. Within five years, he was named an Archbishop.

Before long, he also became the Papal Treasurer, and eventually became Pope Clement XII. It was in 1730, and Corsini was 78 years old. He had an interesting term, even though it lasted less than ten years. He is known for such architectural projects as the facade of Saint John Lateran, and a chapel there, restoration of the Arch of Constantine, and starting the Trevi Fountain. Visitors to Rome are likely to see all of these, and Saint John Lateran is an “archbasilica”, outranking even St Peter’s, so a pretty likely stop for pilgrims. It’s also where Clement XII is buried.

Clement XII (1730-1740) By Agostino Masucci

He is also known for banning Catholics from becoming Masons, and worked to reunite the Roman and Orthodox Catholic churches, and reduce the differences between the Romans and Coptic and Armenian churches. And, consistent with his interest in caring for the church treasury, he was able to make quick and significant improvements to its financial situation.

Two other important notes: by the time he became pope, he was mostly blind and bedridden. So he conducted business sitting up in bed, and never saw the architecture and building projects to which he is so closely associated. But most importantly in our immediate context, he wore a mozetta. Of course he wore a mozetta; it is part of the uniform for the pope and cardinals and other church officials. It’s a short, wrap-around cape with a hood, and the painting of Pope Clement XII by Agostino Masucci shows just enough of the hood so you can tell it’s there.

It’s a nice touch, as well, to show His Holiness sitting up in a chair, looking as though we have just interrupted him reading a letter.

(Read more, here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04030a.htm)

Hey, by the way, you know you can follow this blog (so you don’t forget and miss out)? Yeah, should be at the very, very bottom (according to what device you’re using), and it’s a button that says something like, “Follow”, so you’ll know it when you see it. Thanks!

Nonforested

Last weekend, I took a hike. Literally. About 45 minutes or so from home are some of the tallest mountains in Virginia. At 4001 ft high, Flat Top is the highest of a triplet of mountains called the Peaks of Otter. My hike was on Sharp Top, which is the pointiest peak, and the third peak is called Harkening Hill. Fun fact: the state of Virginia is represented in the Washington Monument by a blocks of stone taken from these guys.

The hike from the restrooms to the top usually takes a couple hours. I took a few pictures along the way, and took plenty of rests–or, stepped aside to let people pass on their way down. The sign says it’s 1.4 miles, with a 1340 foot elevation gain. On a beautiful, cool day at the peak of the Fall season, it can get busy. That accurately describes last Saturday, and it was a challenge to find a parking spot at the trailhead. But the foot traffic wasn’t as bad as the parking, so that was good.

The view from Buzzards’ Roost, Peaks of Otter.

Because Sharp Top is so pointy, the view from the top is quite a panarama. This is what makes it such a popular hike. Most of the surrounding area is farms, orchards, or undeveloped. So the scenes from every angle are broken into nonforested sections cut out of what is mostly forested land. In one direction, one can see a bit of a rippled ridge, which I think looks much better in real life than in pictures. The opposite direction is where more of the farms and population would be seen. There’s also something of a viewing spot called Buzzards’ Roost, but it’s more rock climbing than hiking to get to the top. I slid into a decent position and took some pictures, though.

Nonforested is the opposite of forested, and simply means an area that is not covered with forest/trees/woods. Meadows, fields, farms, cities, neighborhoods–these are generally nonforested areas. Most of us spend most of our time in nonforested spaces. Then we occasionally travel to forested places for refreshment. That was certainly true of my Peaks of Otter trip. Maybe we should all just take a hike.

Feruled

Early on Saturday, I happened to walk by the indoor play area in my church. It is closed off, but with windows, like a larger version of the ones they have in some fast food places. Just inside the windows in this particular play area are benches, and I noticed that on the longer leg of the L-shaped bench area were a number women, chatting away with enthusiasm. On the shorter leg were a smaller number of men, all looking quite dejected and like this was absolutely not how and where they ever wanted to spend Saturday morning, and not interested in any conversation, thank you very much.

Of course, the children were running around in their stocking or bare feet, screaming and sweating, adding to the stench and noise that helps keep the rest of us from venturing inside. This was actually a birthday party, and the cake and other sugary treats were yet to come. So, yes, the energy level was going to go way up, followed by the crash and burn and tears and tantrum phase. Maybe the anticipation of this progression is what was going through the minds of those forlorn men sitting inside.

The women, on the other hand, were loving the chance to socialize with friends while their kids thoroughly exhaust themselves. They didn’t even care about the aforementioned stench and noise. Maybe they got used to it after a few minutes.

Paint brushes for house paint, displayed like a bouquet. — Some paint brushes from my extensive collection.

Feruled, or ferruled, means that something has a (usually metal) band around it. That band is called a ferule (ferrule). It can actually be a cap, rather than a band, and it usually holds things together and/or protects them. Our house has plumbing that has flexible plastic tubes with metal bands holding the tubes to the fittings. Ferrules can also be plastic, such as the one that holds the soft tip of a pool cue onto the end of the wooden shaft.

But the one where I’d actually heard/used the word before is that most paint brushes are ferruled. That is, a metal band holds the bristles in place and protects them from being damaged where they connect to the handle. When I use a paint brush for house painting and such, my fingers are actually on the ferrule, not on the shaft of the handle.

Now, what doesn’t make sense to me, is that the plastic band at the end of shoelaces is called an aglet. But it is just like a ferrule, so why does it get a different name? All those stinky shoes lined up in the little cubbies in the kids play area with aglets instead of ferrules. Ah, well, it didn’t stop me from telling the story; it only kept it from fitting together nicely. Maybe if I crimped a ferrule around it…

Morphologic

Having been in the workforce for over thirty years, it may be surprising that I still struggle with setting goals. In fact, I have been reading, making notes, and thinking very long and hard about this over the last year or so. Jim Rohn was a success coach and provided many quotable quotes, and my favorite tells how to set goals: “Decide what you want; write it down.”

It’s a simple plan, and yet… I still struggle. Last week I actually wrote this note to myself: Make imperfect goals. Part of my struggle is trying to get it right on the first try. I have to conciously permit myself to maybe–gulp–get it wrong. Believe it or not, that’s even hard for me to type! And I haven’t written any imperfect goals since I gave myself that assignment.

It’s also not such a simple plan, as it turns out. What do I want? I want to relax all day and get strong and fit. I want to get rich by reading a book on getting rich. It’s pretty easy to write a ridiculous goal. But “Get strong and fit by exercising daily” seems a bit like a page from the journal of Captain Obvious. In this pursuit, in any case, I have set myself a goal to write a blog post each week for a year (we’ll see what happens after that), and I’ve only missed one week since I started on August 6.

Speaking of this blog post, today’s word can be a challenge because it has a pretty easy definition, but is used in some painfully technical sentences. Morphologic simply means “relating to the form and structure of plants, animals, words, rocks, etc” (my personal dictionary definition–you’ll only find it here).

Identifying morphologic similarities and differences is key to many studies. We separate creatures in Biology this way; for example, new world monkeys and old world monkeys may both have tails, but only new world monkeys can use them to hold things. The periodic table of elements in Chemistry basically lines up the elements in order of how many protons they have, and then groups them by similar behavior. We gain language skills by learning parts of words and sentences and putting them together to express different thoughts.

We set goals to improve ourselves and the world, to achieve something worth greater effort than just coasting downhill. Although, making the world a better place by coasting downhill in my recliner on wheels sounds like my kind of goal. Especially if I could get rich at the same time.

Unsobering

We were out a little late last night, and went to bed pretty much right after we got home. I’m not even sure if it was later than usual. For whatever reason, I must have slept pretty well. Normally I get up early on Tuesdays and Fridays, and when the alarm went off this morning, my first thought was that it was the early alarm. But I immediately realized it wasn’t the right day for that, and that it really was my normal time to get up. My next thought was amazement that my just-woke-up brain could process that correctly.

Girl holding drink in martini glass with cold clouds floating off it. — This frosty cold drink will keep you sober, especially since it’s just for show.

Morning has been coming too early for me pretty much since my teen years… Maybe it’ll get better in my retirement years. That’s about the only good life phase left. We’ve been doing some retirement planning, making sure we’ve got funds where they should be, how much longer I need to work before I can retire, based on how long we’re planning on living. This is a very odd discussion to have. It’s sobering to think about planning for the end of your life, but that’s essentially what is happening every time we meet with our investment folks.

Contrast that with going to hear a comedian telling stories about trying to impress a girl by showing off your car’s acceleration. And crashing into her family car. Which her father is driving at the time… Probably the worst moment of their lives up to that point. But we can barely breath from laughing. In fact, that would be unsobering. It’s the opposite of sobering.

Something else that is unsobering, used as a verb, is the process of moving from sober to not sober. Not so much getting drunk, but getting less sober. Could that be called light drinking, as opposed to heavy drinking? Maybe if you were light drinking while at a comedy club, you would be unsobering while listening to unsobering stories. Well, now I’m dizzy.