Woman being beautiful

I was out on a lunchtime errand today and was taking a cellphone call from my car in a shopping center parking lot.

Noticed a vehicle going in slow circles, angling for a close-to-the-door spot. Nothing unusual about that.

Looked up a few seconds later and noticed the lovely red-headed Lady who had been driving the car was now parked in a disabled parking spot -- that's what She was looking for! -- and was unfolding a sort of chair apparatus.

Looked up again and saw that the apparatus was a portable wheelchair into which She carefully set a frail and ancient Woman.

And then They two disappeared into Macy's.

It is a beautiful thing and a necessary thing to care for our aged ones. And that includes not just trips to the doctor and the drugstore but also, every now and then, to Macy's.

People, especially older folks, need to feel that they are more than a biological depository for pills -- that they can still get out and shop for perfume or a pretty outfit like any other human being.

New month, new place

In a month's time, especially when one is as scatter-brained as I am, one cannot possibly come to know a country. Still, I feel as if I drew a little closer in October to the millions of people who call Australia home, and to their history.

Across the world now I go in this new month of November, to the land of Austria.
Wilkommen!

Gnostic studies

Among at least one Gnostic sect, all who had achieved gnosis (enlightenment), were considered to be equals, not only of each other but even of Christ, whose salvation work was not by blood but by His teaching.

There was no hierarchy in this sect; indeed, the positions of bishop, deacon, etc., were divided up by lot, which was interpreted as the will of God, and changed often. The sect even had the audacity to consider women as equals and to allow them to serve in these temporary positions.

This was, of course, all very offensive to the non-Gnostic Christian church, which was in that same era solidifying its hierarchal structure and for which the blood of Christ was the very heart of the faith.

Hydromel

Tonight I was browsing through my books and by chance read a short story from my library by Vassili Iretsky, "Hydromel."

I found it chillingly timely, even though it was written nearly a century ago. The setting, of course, is the Soviet Union during the first years after the communist Revolution.

"From his long-legged English father Bromley had inherited obstinacy and perseverance, from his Cossack mother a poetic love for the open vastness of the black-soil plains ... Almost entirely with his own hands he built a small house ... and last of all, some beehives.

"One winter's day, grim-visaged trouble made its entrance ... appeared first one horse, then a second, then a third ... [each] carried a surly looking man ...

"One of the men ... bawled at him: 'In accordance with the orders of the Ispolk[Executive Committee], you are to submit yourself unquestioningly to my authority...You are understood to own a number of hives: the whole lot are to be nationalized for the benefit of the workers: that goes for all the honey and wax you've got, too ... Hand over everything you've got; if you don't, you'll be shot.

"'...For once in a way you can work for the proletariat, instead of the other way around ... Parasites have been formally prohibited.'"

"Bromley threw him a contemptuous look. 'Parasites,' he said looking him up and down, 'are people who live by the honest labor of others. All my life I have never worked less hard than any ordinary workman, and perhaps a good deal harder. This honey was produced by my labor, certainly not by yours; yet you assume the ----'

"He was not given time to finish. An obscene oath burst from the leader, followed by: 'In accordance with my powers I have the right in the event of resistance to arrest and shoot you. You are resisting: I arrest you! ... You've made profits out of your land. That sort of thing's been stopped. Now's the time for the workers to make a bit of profit for a change. That's all there is to it."

Lapham's Quarterly

I received a piece of mail recently inviting me to subscribe to something called Lapham's Quarterly. It is a new magazine which proposes to examine several times a year some current event question and then "find answers to that question from authors whose writings have stood the test of time."

Homer, Twain and Goethe would be called upon and Tacitus and Virginia Wolfe.

I am of mixed feelings. It sounds interesting -- it sounds like a shortcut to what I have been trying to do myself for the last ten years. In essence, plumb the great and sometimes obscure minds of all human history and find their relevance today.

But perhaps the shortcut is the problem. At the risk of sounding arrogant, maybe I don't want other people picking and choosing from history for me.

I get a further hint of this when the editor mentions that the failure to have a sense of history led to "the catastrophe in Iraq." Now I do try to spare my readers my political feelings for the most part, but the fact is, whatever one may think about George Bush and the invasion of Iraq, a democracy is now in place where once a cruel and warmongering dictatorship once held sway. It is admittedly a flawed and frail and messy democracy -- but aren't they all? Slavish devotion to history might have taught us that no democracy has ever existed in Iraq and therefore never could. Slavish devotion to history would have discouraged the very Founding Fathers of the U.S. from their own experiment in democracy.

But those great men learned from history, from the writings of the Greeks, of Plutarch and then they left history behind and created a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. They knew the odds and they defied them.

So I'm not sure about this Lapham thing. Plus, it costs $60 a year.

Australia continued

I have learned this week that Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. Very cool. And very practical, considering proximity and considering the growing role of China in the world.

Maybe being bilingual ought to be a requirement for a US president.

Something else about the man:

"Researchers looking into Mr Rudd's family history discovered that his fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Rudd, was transported to Australia in 1801 to serve a seven-year sentence for "unlawfully acquiring a bag of sugar".

However, his crime is eclipsed by that of the prime minister's paternal fifth great-grandmother Mary Wade, a London street urchin who made a pittance by sweeping streets and begging.

In 1788, aged 12, she and an older girl coaxed an eight-year-old girl into a toilet where they relieved her of "her dress, petticoats, a linen tippet, and a cap and absconded".

Wade was sentenced "to be hanged by the neck til she be dead" after a trial at London's Old Bailey in January 1789 but the sentence was commuted to transportation to the colony of New South Wales.

Another relative of the prime minister was convicted of forging coins. Mr Rudd's paternal fifth great-grandmother Catherine Lahey arrived in Sydney in 1800 after forging one shilling and sixpence to pay her rent."

The article notes that convict ancestry is fairly common in Australia, and is today a badge of honor, not shame.