The broom man
August 24, 2005
For a dozen years I have jogged or walked up and down south 22nd Street, communing with rabbits, squirrels, dogs, and our mutual Maker. I usually see a few humans, too, jogging, walking, biking, sitting on porches, or working in their yards. One of these nodding acquaintances is “the broom man.” He lives on the corner of 22nd and Washington, and I often see him puttering about in his yard. He is probably about my age, pleasant, stocky, bandy-legged, sandy-haired, always willing to pause in his exertions and exchange a word or two.
Lately, I have found him vigorously wielding a cane kitchen broom, well out in the street in front of his house, sweeping away at I know not what. Whether wielding a broom in the street or a rake in the yard, I know exactly what comes next. He will hold the broom out toward me and say, “Here. You do this for a while.” I protest that I don’t want to deprive him of his exercise, give him a farewell wave, and continue on.
I really ought to stop long enough to get acquainted, but maybe we are both better off knowing each other only in passing mode. But, then again, . . . .
Dave, never sure about these things
New Webster’s
August 23, 2005
My wordsmith shipmates might be interested in this article about the just-published “Webster’s New World College Dictionary.”
Dave
Inflation
August 23, 2005
Back when I was a young tiger, scrambling to feed a growing family, I wasn’t very concerned about price inflation. I knew what it was, of course, and that it made widows and retirees able to buy less and less with their dollars. I didn’t much care because my paycheck was rising faster than prices. Who, me worry?
Then, through no fault of our Government, many years followed with little inflation. Not many of you wage earners now being bled to fund my Social Security checks (thank you very kindly) have experienced inflation, at least not enough of it to land on your financial radar screen. I wish it were within my power to force you all to read the latest screed from my favorite screamer, The Great Mogambo (TGM).
In his sane life, TGM is Richard Daugherty, general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group and editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, “an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.”
I remember that I was still trying to shake a killer hangover when I read that Total Fed Credit abruptly fell by $7.4 billion last week, taking the total back down to $792 billion. The next thing I knew, I was in the emergency room and doctors were trying to re-start my heart while trying to restrain my wife, who is screaming, “Let him die! He wants to die with dignity!”
I told you the guy is nuts!
Ours is a country that does nothing but spend every dime it makes, and which continuously borrows more money. Historically, this is a recipe for disaster.
He seems to have read the same history books I have. Could he be right?
The joke goes, “I spent my entire million-dollar inheritance. Most of it I spent on women, fast cars, booze and drugs. The rest I spent foolishly.”
He looks at the present economic slowdown, and observes
And this slowdown may be showing up in the way that inventories are sort of building. I would assume that inventories are increasing because people are not buying as much, which would explain why they are not borrowing as much, although the producers and retailers are still stocking as much. Trying to be as philosophical as I can (and you can tell I am being philosophical by the way I wipe the drool off of my chin and try to act dignified for a change), this had to happen sooner or later, as every schoolchild knows that you cannot continually go farther and farther into debt forever. I, personally, learned this valuable Mogambo lesson (VML) rather early in life, and I remember it like it was yesterday, when I went to my dad and asked to have another advance on my allowance, and how he laughed, and with acid in his voice asked, “Do you think you can perpetually bring forward future consumption into today?” Maybe it was HOW he said it, but I never forgot the lesson about over-consumption via debt, and I hope you don’t either.
I must quit quoting this guy (He is sooo quotable), but here’s his closing paragraph. (If you wonder about the gun metaphor, you’ll just have to go to
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/0820.html
to find out.)
One of the reasons that I use this gun metaphor is that the latest reports shows that inflation is running at 0.5% for July, and when you multiply that by twelve months in a year, you come up with (and you can check me on this) 6%. Inflation, even after all the massaging and tweaking by the government to make things look good, is running at 6%! This is terrible, terrible, terrible news! It was within living memory that Nixon (as I recall) seized dictatorial power and imposed wage and price controls on the entire economy because inflation was at an intolerable 4%! So this 6% thing is terrible, terrible, terrible news! And it demonstrates, one more time, the utter, utter failure of the Federal Reserve.
I’m afraid that one of these sunny days we may find out the hard way that TMG was on to something, and it may not be pleasant. There is little you or I can do to stop inflation, but it never hurts to add to our economic education.
Dave, worried about the price of bass lures
What’s a barky?
August 22, 2005
In the age of sail a ship’s name might be the HMS Victory or the HMS Agamemmnon, but to the foremast jack and his shipmates she was simply “our barky.”
Dave
Uncle Gus
August 22, 2005
Aurelius Augustinus died in 430 AD, but he is on my short list of heroes, sort of a spiritual favorite uncle. He was a philosopher and a great Christian bishop, perhaps best known for his The Confessions of Saint Augustine. This little classic tells the life story of a young man both blessed and tormented by a brilliant mind, grasping for spiritual certainty, yielding to the pleasures of a profligate life, until he finally abandoned the profession of Rhetoric and devoted his life to God. All the while, his godly mother Monica never ceased to pray that her son would come to faith in God.
There’s something in Augustine’s pilgrimage for everyone, especially those of us who seek a rational basis for faith in God.
As Augustine’s faith matured, he started taking on skeptics who were asking questions like, “What did God do before He created the heaven and the earth?” Whether his arguments are still persuasive in these days of scientists vs. creationists is really beside the point. I think that every generation must wrestle with the idea of linear history for themselves, since it is ultimately a matter of faith, but we also can benefit greatly from the struggles of those who have gone before us.
Fr. Harold Gardiner nailed it in his introduction to a 1957 edition of The Confessions when he said, “He speaks to the atomic age as mightily and sweetly as he spoke to the age of dying Roman imperialism because ‘heart speaketh to heart,’ and if ever there was a great heart to speak, it was his, and if ever there are small and frightened hearts who need his words, they are ours.”
Dave, in debt to “Uncle Gus.”
Pascal’s wager
August 21, 2005
Most of us have very few completely original thoughts. We “stand on the shoulders of the giants” who went before us and do our best to extrapolate (an excellent example of an unoriginal thought itself).
One of my “giants” is Blaise Pascal. One of these days I’ll talk a little about his remarkable life, but here I want to recall Pascal’s Wager, partly because I have trouble remembering it. Here it is:
If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.
Pascal’s logical conclusion was that …we are compelled to gamble…
A good Sunday thought-starter, eh?
A bit of Pascal trivia: Shortly after Pascal had proven to his own satisfaction that a vacuum existed, Descartes wrote, rather cruelly, …has too much vacuum in his head.
Dave, continually battling the vacuum in his head.
Bass fishing blues
August 20, 2005
I wrote this last June 29 on the old web site:
As I cast my plastic worm toward the shoreline rocks at the Lake of the Ozarks, enjoying the cool of early morning, I wonder why I don’t get discouraged this time of year when I probably average no more than one bass-bite an hour. I think it’s because I don’t have a clue whether there is a fish within casting range. This makes a bite, when it comes, a total surprise. Is it a tiny fish or a monster fish?
I categorize bass caught as dink, small, or large. A dink is less than 12 inches long, a small 12-16 inches, and a large over 16 inches. If it breaks my line or my rod, it’s a monster, which usually happens a couple times a year. (One snapped my line this morning.)
Dinks account for about a third of my catches, smalls one-half, large one-tenth. That’s as good as this old man with a weak back (and weak head) can do, but it is enough to keep him going.
I provide those around me with many reasons to think I’m a couple of bricks short of a full load, but bass fishng must be at the top of the list. I fish from a tournament-class bass boat, but I’ve never fished in a tournament. When I surprise myself and boat a fish, I never keep it for dinner. I kiss it and release it back to its natural element. I’m not satisfied with a simple fishing pole, bobber, and nightcrawler; I have a rod locker full of expensive rods and reels. Worms or minnows? Nah, I spend five bucks for a Cabela’s RealImage Jointed Rad Shad crankbait.
Go figure.
Angler Dave, yearning for the lake
Cheese of wads?
August 20, 2005
I thought you’d never ask.
The wads were plugs of rope-yarn, cloth, or green wood rammed down the barrel of a gun to keep the powder and shot in position. They were stored in bundles resembling a cheese wheel, just right for sitting with your back against the bulkhead as you swap yarns with your shipmates.
Sailing a man-of-war was a highly technical occupation as evidenced by the maze of ropes and blocks that make up a ship’s rigging. Like most technical areas it developed its own jargon. Everything on board had a name, and the grass-combing landlubber on board may be excused for thinking he was hearing a foreign language.
Of course you know what is meant by jury-mast, Flemish fake, scraper, carline, weather-gage, tumble-home, euphroe, clew, lead-line, gig, garland, athwart, hanging knee, luff, and parrel, don’t you?
Dave, landlubber
Y.A.W.
August 19, 2005
Yet Another Walk.
Mother Nature did some light house cleaning last night, as evidenced by leafy twigs, small tree branches and other detritus along my morning walk route. The air felt soft and smelled clean in the aftermath of last night’s thunderstorms. Once again I thanked my Maker for the long string of dashes, runs, jogs, and walks He has allowed me since mid-1977 - 27,663 miles worth, to be exact. It’s good to be alive.
As I approached 22nd and Washington, a lithe, young mother crossed in front of me briskly pushing a baby buggy and talking non-stop to whomever or whatever was in it. Something clicked in my memory bank. I pictured another young mother, surname Ayers, pushing a borrowed buggy along a deteriorating ocean boardwalk in Red Bank, New Jersey, during the hurricane season of 1954. The wind off the ocean was fresh and gusty, portending the imminent arrival of Hurricane Hazel. Son Larry was getting his morning outing and his mother a little exercise while I was completing my Officer’s Basic Training at Fort Monmouth, NJ. Said son had by this time survived falling on his head and noisy parties and rats in our basement apartment (coming up through the toilet) and who knows what other hazards, but he eventually grew up and turned into a good, if slightly eccentric, man, the very model of a classical liberal. (That’s a complement, Larry, in case you’re wondering.)
Another block and I came upon a puddle of rainwater in the street with a half-dozen robins sitting in it. Really. What were they doing, besides staring at me as I strode by? I don’t ever recall seeing several robins just sitting in a puddle of water before, or in a birdbath for that matter. It may have just been the novelty of groundwater after a long, hot, and dry summer. I bet it felt good.
Dave
Words, words, words
August 19, 2005
The Patrick O’Brian aficionados are cranking up their annual ‘flowing sheets’ competition, a writing contest with essays limited to 600 words. Here is an exchange between participants having English as a second language.
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:42:46 +0200, Satyam
wrote: >600 words sounds like a practical limit to me, that’s about the
>number of English words I know! Can you repeat words?
>
>Actually wondering how many words does an average person
>know, ‘average’ meaning those who don’t know that fornicate has
>to do with scales.
>
>SatyamIt depends. Many years ago I read some articles on this subject, but I may be slightly off target in the figures. I hope more knowledgable Lissuns will correct me where needed.
In one’s mother tongue the average person comes by with between 1500 and 2500 words actively used, including 200 to 500 specific jargon connected with one’s profession or hobby. A lowly educated person who never writes and hardly ever reads has (far) less, an academicaly trained and/or heavily reading person like your avearge Lissun may easily be up to over 5,000 actively used words or more. Passively known words (=words one can easily enough understand but would not or hardly use oneself) are several times the number a person uses actively.
If one actively knows 600 words in a foreign language, one has a workable knowledge of that language, sufficient for daily use, like for ordering a hotelroom or a meal, instructing a taxidriver, and conducting simple conversation at the level of “Where are you from?” and “I like
your beautiful country very much!” and discussing football (which is about my level in French or Indonesian). For more profound
conversations and reading simple literature (like James Bond or Harry Potter) more is needed: at least 1200 active and 5,000 passive, a level
that I had in English when graduating from HighSchool at A-levels. I believe Mira now has attained it in the Dutch (she is reading HP5 in
Dutch now), allowing her to enter into university to take a course for a Master Degree. (Which she has an interview with a study-councillor
this morning and it’s only her linguistical skill that may disqualify her.
If they do turn her down, she should take another course with classes in English, but for several reasons we prefer Dutch).I think foreigners reading and enjoying the Canon (which of course includes all non-anglophone Lissuns) must have at least 5,000 passively known general words plus several hundred jargon, both nautical, medical and other jargon like ‘tumblehome’ and ‘treepanning’ and ‘calling out’. So I
make no doubt Satyam has much more then 600 actively known words and therefor his contribution should be allowed to be longer as well.Jaap, who had to look up both ‘debauched’ and ’sloth’
Dave, who admires those who are fluent in several languages.
