"For Rent by Owner" up at Wherever It Pleases.

"For Rent by Owner" is up over at Wherever It Pleases.

18 February 2012: Feast of St. Agatha Lin.

...tenth, eleventh...Oh yeah, Twelfth Night!

Twelfth Night marks the last of the twelve days of Christmas (no, you heathen, they don't lead up to Christmas--that's Advent). Earlier today, the UPS guy delivers the last box of the twelve gifts your true love gives to you--hopefully charged to his card rather than yours. Your next move is to figure out what your going to do with twelve drummers drumming (as opposed to twelve lords aleaping--if the Brits want to get rid of them that bad, they can ship them to the Falklands).

In civilized places, there's a major blowout involving the Wassail bowl, shoe, canteen cup--whatever holds liquids--while the rosca de reyes or king cake is being baked for tomorrow (which probably explains how beans, coins, Baby Jesus figures, or whatnot end up in them--next year, keep Uncle Julio the heck away from the Wassail bowl or at least brace him and disarm him of the tequila bottle). Tonight before you hit the rack, don't forget to put one shoe filled with hay out for the Wise Men's camels, donkeys, water buffaloes, riding iguanas, or what have you. For tomorrow is Epiphany, Dia de Reyes, or Fastnacht.

In the less civilized places like were my folks come from, there is Berchtenlaufen. This is when several hundred young guys run through the streets cracking whips and ringing bells to chase evil spirits out of town--apparently said spirits are still hungover from the preceding twelve days of festivities. In even less civilized places, such activities mean your team won the championship.

Also, it's bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up after Twelfth Night (this is an update from Candlemas--2 February). A bosun's mate and his family I know seem to live to a rather different calendar. About All Saints, the lights go up and, a week after Easter, they come down. I must admit through, for those five months, the turkey, manger, and rabbit in their front yard make for one heck of a landmark when you're trying to give someone directions (people going from one end of Quantico to the other have been detoured via the Naval Weapons base just so it could be used).

It's also the name of a pretty decent play by some guy named Shakespeare.


Over the Fence

I received another letter from Homer Smute, the world's oldest minor league baseball player, the other day.

Homer:

The problem with living in the fast lane is you know what you did because of the bills, alimony, palimony, child support, community service, fines and jail time. But you can't remember the fun you had doing it.


I got to admit that Mitch Groengras. the Busters' grounds keeper is no quitter. To keep the grass down, the management let people run their cows on the field. Of course, Mitch had to go around with a shovel before games. But the cows didn't keep the grass short enough, so they tried sheep. Well, this got the grass down to about the right level, but Mitch had to come in twice as early with his shovel before games. Tim Molesight, our Left fielder, told me this morning over coffee at Karina's Good 'nough Cafe that Mitch told management yesterday he'd start paying one of the farmers out of his own pocket to cut the grass with his tractor.


The only problem with turning your cap into a "rally cap" is not only is your team losing, but now you look stupid too.


As team logos go, the Stump Busters' ain't one of the most uplifting. Let's face it, a tree stump, no matter what you do to it, just don't sing.

Now the Washington Wild Things (Washington, PA) has one of the best I've seen.

Note: Homer asked me to put in a link to their website: http://www.washingtonwildthings.com/


I don't know how much longer the team can keep going. The younger guys keep leaving to go someplace where they got a better chance of advancement, like Dundalk.



Remember the Catholic Writers Conference Online

26 February to 5 March 2010.

Free registration at: http://www.catholicwritersconference.com/



5 January 2010: Feast of St. Convoyon, George Washington weds Martha Dandridge Custis 1759, Benedict Arnold commanding British naval forces burns Richmond, VA 1781, Alfred Dreyfus sentenced to Devil's Island 1895, Richard Nixon orders development of Space Shuttle 1972.

Lessons from the Muse Online: Part 4

The following is the fourth assignment for the World Building workshop at the Muse Online writers' conference:


MARINE CORPS SCHOOLS

Apergis Barracks

Wexford--Tara



Officer Candidate Gunnery Sergeant Lew Diamond Puller



Assignment 56A

The officer candidate shall give a short explanation of languages and their usages within the empire.



A number of major languages are currently in use within the Erin Empire.


The standard language of inter-system trade, government, and military coordination is Imperial Standard. The present thinking on the origins of Standard is that it was a development of either American or English, two early languages. At the moment, there is great disagreement over which of these languages is the true root (several academic duels are fought each semester with occasional loss of life in addition to maiming over this subject. Conrad of Bad tolz being the most famous because of his defense of the proposition that, at one time, the two languages formed a single unitary language he called "Canadian"). Until a few years ago, it was the fashion to include High Brazos' Texican within this family. There is at present a symposium in Blood Rivier on Bantu headed by Dr. Shaka Retief to settle which of these two root languages is included in addition to Zulu and Afrikaans that make the creole that is Bantu. The form of standard normally spoken on Tara is sometimes hard for offworlders to understand and between representatives of remote regions of the capital planet, Imperial Standard is used as a trade language.


On Yamato, a form of Nipponese is spoken and a semi-pictographic written language is used. There are certain similarities between the written Nipponese and the Xenese used by the CPM. There is aslow shift from the pictographic to an alpha-numeric written language in motion among the younger Yamato. a new fad for a mixture of Nipponese and Standard called "Yamard" is fashionable in Eto.


The Bayern of course speak Bayern. Here also is argument among language scholars. The two sides maintain Bayern is an outgrowth of one of two ancient languages: Bavarian or German. Conrad of Bad Tolz refused to involve himself in the discussion as he believed that the matter was trivial when compared to his thoughts on "Canadian."


As a note, next term, I will begin instruction in Arkmese in preparation for my possible posting to that planet. This will, of course, depend on the course of the insurgency referred to as the "Nipo rising."



DVDs for Christmas (Note to FTC: I bought this dang DVD myself!)

Dr. SEUSS' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (staring Boris Karloff) and Horton Hears a Who! Warner. 26 minutes each.

I ran into the Grinch back in fourth grade. Our school library had a bunch of these slightly off-center works of Dr. Suess (aka: Therodor Suess Geisel) and many of us were scarred for life. As it happens, the Grinch was the first of his books I read. Rather than Santa and plastic reindeer, it posulated the subversive idea that Christmas isn't a matter of getting, but giving of oneself. When you think of it, it's a story of conversion sparked by the Grinch witnessing the whos' living their faith. Instead of the unfortunately common plot of the sinner realizes his mistakes and imediately begins to preach the good news, the Grinch quietly joins and is accepted by the whos. Dr. Suess was a good writer because he could be subtle.

When How the Grinch Stole Christmas appeared on TV in 1966, Boris Karloff not only narrated but was apparently the model for the Grinch's facial expressions. When the green one gets his wonderful, horrible idea, it's purest Karloff (think Dr. Scarabus in the 1963 movie The Raven). As he carves the roast beast with his new friends the whos, the Grinch smiles beatificaly (no one could smile as saintly as Karloff--also think Dr. Scarabus).

This is the true Grinch. On the same DVD is Horton Hears a Who. And the joy is Jim Carrey--who the heck is Jim Carrey?


18 December 2009: Feast of St. Winebald of Wessex, Hannibal wins Battle of the Trebia - Second Punic War 218 BC, Mayflower lands 1620, Piltdown Man found 1912, Operation Linebacker II 1972.

Of "Chained Dogs" and females.

Here is another chunk of Chained Dogs.

Preface

My father, Dr. Wilhelm Kluge, died in a traffic accident in the American city of Phoenix while on his way to take part in a study of dark matter at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) at Mount Graham in the southeastern part of the State of Arizona.

Among his papers was found the following story. It speaks of a short period during Germany's war in North Africa. My father, like many veterans rarely spoke of his experiences in World War II. The most that he shared with us, his wife and children, were a few happy, often comic, interludes.

Reading the story while going through his papers, I found the answer to a few questions raised in the mind of the family by some of his actions. One was why my father named our older brother "Conrad," a name that appears on neither side of the family. A second was why he occasionally used phrases and terms more usual in Upper Bavaria. A third was his habit of going to Munich's Catholic Cathedral, the Frauenkirche, each Friday to light a candle though a confirmed Lutheran. And, fourth, his amassing a large collection of English and American books between the end of the war and his death that had nothing to do with his profession.

My father's writing was clear and crisp. I have had to make very few editorial changes. Thus, it speaks with his voice.

I am indebted to my Canadian wife, Sally, for help with the translation of his story from German to English. If there are mistakes in the manuscript, they are wholly mine.


Manfred Paul Kluge
Munich: 24 December 2008




Is the female of the species, Homo sapiens sapiens, a mammalian ectotherm?

It has come to my attention during the well over half a century I have been observing (including the thirty-four years of my marriage) that the female of our species is apparently a form of mammalian ectotherm [see below]. Through the period of observation, the women in my life have generally complained of low-temperature environmental effects at any temperature below 32 degrees C (90 degrees F). The affect of these declarations is the adjustment of thermal controls to a temperature level incompatable to comfortable survival for the male of the species. This leads to any number of coping strategies such as standing on porches in sub-zero weather for purposes of thermal regulation rather than more normal activities of smoking a really good cigar, or removal of outer coverings to achieve the same outcomes (which explains why, as usual, the writer is sitting in his skivies as he types this).

Professor Jeffrey M. Foxworthy has this noted this, to females, common feature. In his academic work, he points out that ice cold feet in the small of the back at oh-dark-thirty is the norm. He further reported that the men observed sitting in statiums in freezing temperatures stripped to the waist are not, as commonly thought, drunk. Rather they are escorts of significant others who have stripped them of their clothing because "I'm cold."

All this leads to the possible explanation that the female Homo sapiens sapiens is indeed an ectotherm and, thus, unable to regulate her internal temperature. Rather than controlling her internal temperatures, she instead controls her climatic environment, often to the detriment of the males of the species in the immediate area.


Note: An ectotherm is an animal that is unable to regulate its internal temperature independant of its environment. An endotherm such as the male of Homo sapiens sapiens regulates its internal temperature independant of the environment.



4 December 2009: Feast of St. Osmund of Salisbury, Crusaders capture Sidon 1110, Suttee outlawed by Raj 1829, Mary Celeste found abandoned 1872, Marine Raider Long Patrol - Guadalcanal 1942.

Sweetening the pot (okay, baiting the hook).

From time to time, I'll be posting bits and pieces of works in progress. This one is from Chained Dogs:

On Heinzelmannchen

The Heinzelmannchen is a house spirit that oversees such things as household and barn cats properly controlling the local mouse population, the farm 's dogs keeping rabbits out of the garden and protecting the chicken coop, and keeping matches out of the hands of children. He is generally described as a small, fat man with brown or gray hair and may or may not have a beard. He accomplishes large amounts of work without appearing to seriously labor. He is generally friendly and very fond of beer (as one folklorist from Potsdam put it, "He's a damned Bavarian!"). He is one of the few such creatures to marry. The Heinzelfrau is a buxom female version of her spouse. Interestingly neither the Catholic nor Protestant Churches have taken a stand on the Heinzelmannchen.


Dr. Wolfgang Adalbert Murtz. Folklore of the Germanys: An exploration in rural belief. trans. Maria von Kurtz-Gunther. Munich: University Press, 1954. 397-398.


A number of characters in the Conrad Ritter cycle, of which Chained Dogs is a part, describe the sleuth from Upper Bavaria as a "Heinzelmannchen." (In my own case, a number of people, who should know better, have also referred to me as such.)




Review: (Note to FTC: I bought my own dang copy!)

Quest for Kim. Peter Hopkirk. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Peter Hopkirk is one of the premier writers on the Great Game during the period of the Raj. For those unacquainted with this subject, this was the period roughly between 1830 and 1914 when Great Britain worried about Czarist Russia's encroachment on Central Asia. The fear that kept the lights burning late in White Hall and Simla (in the dry season) and Calcutta (in the rainy season) was that Russia would conquer Central Asia (the "Stans"), then conquer Afghanistan, build a railroad across them, and invade British India. The Great Game was the term for the intelligence war (a lukewarm one) played by both sides.

In his book, Quest for Kim, Hopkirk attempts to follow the path of Kipling's beloved hero ("protagonist" is much too weak a word for this adolescent) as depicted in Kim. He finds that while somethings, such as the people and the countryside are much the same, others such as the railroads and telecommunications have changed greatly. As a small example, in Lahore the gun, Zam-Zammah, on which we first meet Kim is still on its pedestal across from the "Wonder House," as the museum was called in the vernacular, to which Kim and the lama go (the lama to view the art treasures and Kim to eavesdrop). A fragment of the horse market where Kim takes the lama to meet Mahbub Ali, the Afghan horse dealer and master spy, still exists. On the other hand, Hopkirk discovers, in Pakistan, no one from president (or general) down to station master knows when the train leaves for the border or even if one runs there at all. Only one man in Lahore actually knows--the single ticket seller. This worthy is also able to tell Hopkirk why the phones in 1995 only ring but never answer in the Lahore railroad station--the phone bill wasn't paid by the railroad (a part of government) so service was turned off by the telecommunications system (also part of the government).

Quest for Kim is a wonderful mix of travel writing, history, and geography laced through with Hopkirk's general good humor. This is one Englishman who joins the mad dogs out in the noonday sun and provides great entertainment.




1 December 2009: Feast of St. Edmund Campion, actual bear Winnie the Pooh was named after by Milne donated to London Zoo 1919, opening day for Tundra Swan east of I 95 & south of Prince William/Stafford County lines.