Faux Cicero

"A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?"

We all nod our heads, remembering the last time we encountered some office zombie with ink-stained fingers ...

This pithy quote appeared in a letter to the editor of my local paper recently and I cut it out and was going to file it, as its authorship was attributed to the ancient luminary Marcus Tullius Cicero. (106-43 B.C.)

Alas, credit for the paragraph goes not to the old philosopher but to one Taylor Caldwell, who in 1965 wrote a novel,A Pillar of Iron,based on the life of Cicero, and put those words into his mouth.

Unfortunately, like so many hoaxes that began innocently enough, this faux quote will probably make the rounds forever and a day, incessantly being applied to a man who lived centuries before the Roman bureaucrat was even invented.

My first meme

After politely putting off doing one of these meme things forever, I have finally succumbed, to the lure of the Lone Grey Squirrel. So,here it is: I will compel no one else to follow but feel free to do so of your own free will.

FIVE FAVORITE SONGS:
1. I Will Always Love You – the Dolly Parton original.
Dolly’s voice could induce global warming on Pluto.

2. All Love Can Be – Charlotte Church.
Another Woman with an angel’s voice.

3. Concrete Angel – Martina McBride
An achingly powerful indictment of child abus and those who abet it by looking the other way. If this song didn’t put a lump in your throat the first time you heard it, you might check your pulse.

4. Werewolves of London – Warren Zevon
Hey, not every one of my favorite songs is serious and/or sung by a Woman!

5. Jesu, the Very Thought is Sweet -- Bernard of Clairvaux
A sweet, elegant, simple hymn.

FIVE FAVORITE FILMS:
1. A Beautiful Mind
Powerful. Poignant. Leaves you wth a new perspective on dealing with mental illness.

2. Grease
It’s a stupid movie. The moral is deplorable, as well: Take up smoking and dress like white trash to catch a man. But I saw it when I was seven and it wrapped certain tendrils around my personality that I cannot escape. A guilty pleasure.

4. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Soooh funny! John Candy earned his place in heaven with this classic comedy– and if you don’t cry at the ending, once again, you are probably dead.

5. Cinema Paradisio.
An old foreign film, a bout a boy and an old man and their unlikely friendship. Saw it in college and its sweet memory lingers in my heart.

FIVE FAVORITE BOOKS:
1. Charlotte’s Web: One of the first books I ever remember reading. How I loved sweet, gentle Fern, goofy Wilbur and of course, Charlotte.

2. Lucretius: On the Nature of Things. A surprisingly good read for such an old book. Probes into the nature of the universe, from the mindset of a brilliant Roman of the first century of our era.

3. The Collier’s Encyclopedia. I get teased for reading this, but I have found fascinating details of history, biography and world culture in its pages that I would never have otherwise learned.

4. The Egyptian Book of Breathings and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Two ancient books that remind us how long humanity has hoped for immortality – and which express that hope in beautiful prose.

5. The Hardy Boys series. I had to include these because I read about 170 of them as a kid and if I have developed any vocabulary beyond the level of Homer Simpson, these books are the reason why.



FIVE FAVORITE CRUSHES:
1. Laura Ingalls Wilder, aka Melissa Gilbert. I loved that spunky little pioneer in my earliest childhood and vowed to marry Her, long before I was old enough to understand that the original pioneer was dead and the actress who played Her was not likely to show up at my school or accept my proposal.

2. Audrey Hepburn: What is not to love about this enchanting, playful, elegant Goddess of a Woman? She was a Star who never let us down.

3. Daisy Duke. Yeah, I was a typical young man of that era who greatly appreciated Her, umm, taste in dress.

4. Andrea Parker. From the Pretender television series. Beautiful but tough as nails on the outside – not hard to imagine Her bringing you down with a boot to the groin and then grinding out Her cigarette on your face – but if you watched the show long enough, you glimpsed the real Woman behind the façade – a Woman who actually did have a heart.

5. Oliva Newton John. See Grease, above. A beautiful Woman. Even in trashy spandex smoking an ugly corktip.

FIVE FAVORITE RANDOM THINGS:
1. Wildflowers.
2. Foods I have never tried before.
3. Swimming in real water (i.e., rivers and creeks, not chlorinated pools.)
4. Toads and hedgehogs.
5. Interesting people.

And you thought being a teenager was tough in your part of the world?

From Wikipedia:

The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior. The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural chloroform, and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand.

The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full ten minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years.

Back in touch

If I could have just one wish ...

(and it couldn't be for more wishes, world peace, prosperity for all, an end to all misogyny or a picnic with God)

...I might wish to be able to re-contact anyone in the world I have ever met.

I would find that little Girl, all grown up now of course, of whom I made fun in second grade for Her drab lunch box. I would beg Her forgiveness.

I would find the bully who tormented me in third grade -- and have a nice conversation during the visiting hours at his penitentiary.

I would find Kekulani S., whose every molecule I worshipped in eighth grade, whose footstep in the dust I would certainly have kissed given half a chance back then, and ask Her forgiveness for having tried to steal Her hairbrush as a keepsake of my juvenile idolatry.

I would track down Lara S., whom I wanted to love in college but just couldn't force the spark and whom I had to let go when I fell in love with my Beloved -- I would meet Her lucky husband and shake his hand and tell him to always be good to Her.

And I would render grateful thanks to a number of people who have been good to me in my life.

I don't know why this has weighed upon my mind lately. I fear that I have been wasteful in my life with the precious gift of human interaction. It is not titles or stuff that matter as the years advance: it is the gold of human intimacy.

Last week I googled the address of an old boss, my first real boss. I wrote a letter to him. I still haven't sent it. I intend to do so this weekend.

Facebook has been good for this. I am now back in sporadic contact with Darlene Tsu, as my longtime blog readers know, and other friends of whom I thought I had lost track forever ... my old buddy Jim B. (the B. is not short for Beam); and Heather from high school, too; and possibly I will be able to track down my one-time best friend Lawrence.

Just today, I Facebook-searched a former mentee from a writing class I taught years ago -- and it was great to re-connect with this brilliant soul, who now lives in Italy, vowing never to lose touch again.

Of Days

Friday.



Monday.

Garden Dreams

As I consider the lilies today ...

My yard needs so much work. I am rarely there, an absence not by choice.

I dream of colorful beds of flowers, a Thomas Kinkaide sort of fantasy. Reality is stubborn-as-hell wire grass everywhere and the never-ending struggle with Virginia's capricious weather.

I will be giving a clump of some very special daylilies to a relative this week, a unique cultivar that was given to me years ago by a couple who were passionate about hemerocallis.

Good gardeners are givers and thus they live on. In my little 1/4 acre, flowering almonds and apple trees were the gift of an old friend now lost in the fog of dementia. Fragrant thyme came to me from a friend who has now passed away. Honesty plant with its purple blooms and silvery seed disc, evokes the memory of my great Grandmother, who grew it out West -- my Great Grandmother who I have discovered this week was a player for Her turn-of-the-century high school Girls basketball team. Imagine that.

I will make room for lilies this month.