Call me a quitter.

I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking.        He called me a quitter.     (Steven Pearl)

In my family the worst thing next to folk dancing and incest was quitting. It didn’t matter that you hated it. “Don’t be a quitter.”  The idea was that if you made a committment to someone or something, you were obligated FOR LIFE or until the gig was up. Don’t sign up if you don’t intend to  . . .  and so on.

It’s not hard to discern the origins and practicality of such a dictum. Many events and activities in life shouldn’t be entered into lightly, as they say, and should be thought out so thoroughly that the necessity of quitting is precluded. Naturally. Given.

My parents were right not to let me quit the tough courses in high school. I wanted to, thinking “Current Events” and “Home and Family” would make me hip and prepare me for “life.” I was right not to let my daughter quit band when the going got tough, and it was requiring hours of memorizing scales and practicing difficult pieces. She’ll confirm my rightness. But I may not have been right in not letting my son quit certain sports.

My husband was out of the state for a few days a couple of weeks ago. In his absence I took a job. I had turned down a couple of offers, but this was a dream job that I really wanted in the priciest boutique in town. The owner and I hit it off, even supported the same presidential candidate, so after a two-hour interview I had the offer. I would help her manage the store. Best friends to be.

“What were you expecting in terms of salary?”
Well, uh, . . .  “I was thinking $$$. Is that doable?”
“Yes. We can do that.”
“Great!”

But walking to my car after closing that first day, I realized that I had made a mistake, lured yet again by the promise of easy.  I was actually running. The projects that I’m working on are getting harder. I spend a great deal of time working through tutorials. It’s too much sometimes. But it’s satisfying, and it suits me.

So I quit the first week. I needed to. Not quitting would have been taking the easy way out and sacrificing what I’ve wanted to accomplish for years.

I fully support not picking up activities (or people!) with little thought and then abandoning them.  By their nature many things demand sticking with it until the end. Marriage is one. Childbearing is one. But t-ball is not. Your college major is not. (I changed five times.) Leaving a job if you can afford to is not.

So call me a quitter.  It wasn’t easy given my upbringing.  But I’m taking my chances and trusting my instinct that it was the right call.

Frost’s ambiguity and the importance of titles

Do they still make students memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken?” If not, at least the poem is still included in most antholgies. Courses in American literature usually deem Frost a very rural, pro-American, voice of democracy, voice of the people kind of poet. He is that. But there is much more. More brillance.

His deliberate ambiguity is easily overlooked, and yet therein lies the heart of his work.  Without it “The Road Not Taken” is another good poem with a common theme:  There was this dilemma. I had a difficult choice to make.  I made it.  The poem shares this theme with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” (. . . and miles to go before I sleep.)

The speaker describes a pleasant wooded pathway that forks. Both paths have advantages.  They are equally “fair” or desirable. In fact, he is “sorry” that he cannot take both.  But a choice must be made, and he chooses one path over the other thinking that maybe some day . . . but no, he knows he’ll never return to the rejected path.

The last stanza gives enough subtle evidence that perhaps the choice was not the better one.  The speaker’s telling the story with a sigh implies an uncomfortable nostalgia. Sighs usually do. And, too, he’s still wondering about his choice in the hyperbolic “ages and ages hence.” He took the less-frequented road and, yes, that choice made all the difference. Now when most use the phrase “made all the difference” it means for the better. Our poet is not so obvious. He leaves enough clues to make us examine his poem more closely and to wonder why that one-time choice is still on his mind years later and why he still sighs when he remembers.  Regret?

Finally, always go back to a poem’s title. It is not “The Road Taken.” The subject of this insightful poem is “The Road NOT Taken” and that makes all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Bodies Exhibit: Why we read Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man’s overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions.

In Shelley’s day, early 19th century, many in the field of “natural philosophy,” or science, were trying to discover the “life impulse,” or the origin of the life. This was the time that Dr. Galvin (see Galvinism) was attempting to resurrect dead bodies. It was commonly believed that electricity, also newly discovered, was the spark of life and experiments were conducted making a dead frog’s legs jump, for instance. Percy Shelley’s first wife, the pregnant Harriet, drowned herself in the middle of London in a pond upon learning that her husband was having an affair with Mary. Doctors tried new methods of resusitation on her to no avail.

Many, like Shelley and her atheist husband, Percy the poet and her philosopher parents the Godwins, had abandoned a belief in God, so substitiute answers to fundamental questions were sought. Elaborate salon discussions were held at the Godwin home where Percy and Mary met.

However, the Shelleys held Romantic worldviews. While denying the Judeo-Christian God, they also distrusted pure science and favored a more transcendental view and certainly believed, like all Romantics, in the sanctitiy of Nature — capital N. Tamperings with nature, its fundamental laws, would surely open a Pandora’s box.

Hence, when the married Percy, Mary, Lord Byron and Mary’s half-sister and another friend were vacationing at the Vila Diodati, a contest was proposed. It was raining and philosophy is only fun for so long. Everyone go away and write your best ghost story.

The boys got bored with the project and left it in favor of throwing the football, but the 18-year-old Mary invented the monster we are all so familiar with today: Frankenstein’s monster. (Frankenstein is actually Victor Frankenstein, the dubious creator. The monster is unnamed.)

The novel was and still is a hit and has been produced and parodied in many genres, including Gene Wilder as “Young Frankenstein” in Mel Brooks’s comedy. But Mary was dead serious. Her point: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. Victor’s fascination with the “unhallowed arts” digging around in cemeteries searching for body parts was even to the atheist a despicable act. Further, Victor’s experiment playing God (Shelley’s Nature) results in the death of his little brother, a family friend, and his own bride on their honeymoon, all victims of the monster and Victor’s pride.

Last weekend I visited a museum where the Bodies exhibit is on display. This exhibit has stirred global controversy, one side lauding its educational value, its magnification of the glories of the human body, the other side declaring it an exploitation of human dignity. In the museum I visited, the exhibit was adjacent to the children’s museum. A uniformed employee steered children away, loudly warning parents to keep to the right.

No wonder. Twenty-one real human bodies and 260 body parts are displayed in “dynamic” positions that mimic everyday activities. Some hold that the Church kept the world in the scientific dark ages through its squeamish approach to the human body. Others, like me, believe that there is a sanctity to life and death and the body itself. To display real people, though dead, without names, without identity, and reportedly without their permission (possibly Chinese prisoners,) is an invasion of privacy (current battle cry du jour) in the most extreme manner.

In an article by Paulette Miniter for SmartMoney.com, the following financial statistics shed more than a little light.

“Provocative ideas are often lucrative ones, and though Premier [Geller runs Premier Exhibitions (PRXI: 4.68, -0.34, -6.77%), a $463 million company that operates "Bodies" shows around the globe.] has been public since 1993, it’s just starting to get respect on Wall Street. Shares have gained 158% year to date to $15.65 as of Wednesday’s close. “We believe the company’s stock price has only recently begun to reflect its potential for significant sales and earnings growth,” Chris Krueger, an analyst at Northland Securities in Minneapolis, said in a research report in late July. Shares hit a 52-week high of $18.62 on July 18.

“In Premier’s fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, revenue nearly doubled to $11.4 million and earnings about tripled to $3.3 million. Cash and cash equivalents are up to $19.7 million, a substantial increase from $2.5 million a year earlier.”

The National Enquirer pulls in big bucks, too. This display appeals to man’s base, morbid curiosity. It’s a freak show. Anyone who wants to study the human body for educational purposes will find no shortage of material. Exhibit viewers see more than medical students do.

Who are these “bodies?” Victor used the random recently dead and buried. “Bodies” uses anonymous cadavers, too. From China. According to an AP article by Mitch Stacey published by the Washingtonpost.com August, 2005,

“The company says it legally obtains specimens from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China, but there’s been media speculation that some of the bodies are those of executed prisoners or other victims of an underground anatomy market. Premier maintains the bodies used in its shows are unclaimed cadavers.”

Anything for a profit. Imagine your father’s body, privates and all, on display for millions of gawking viewers. Without his permission. He has no name any more. He has no grave with a tombstone marking the resting place of his mortal body. He has been plasticized by a firm in China and is viewed at $2o.oo a peep in a carnival side show. Hardly dignified. It’s dehumanizing and recalls everything we hated about Nazi experimentation, doesn’t it?

Where is the Church on this? It holds the corner on these issues and should make the traditional Judeo-Christian view on this subject known. (I saw some Catholic anti-exhibit press.)

I appreciate the navy burial service and offer it here. Note the careful, reverent protocol. But what were we thinking. Look at the “Bodies” stock figures. The Department of Defense could make billions! The exhibit: War . . . What is it good for? 

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq85-1.htm

Plagiarism: I finally get it

Looking over my dashboard, I noticed some incoming links carrying the same title as one of my recent posts. I clicked it, and found a blog called “Just Being Rich” and there was my own post, “Big Hat. No Cattle.” Others have borrowed posts before, but always with attribution. Of course. But here, it began by saying that here is an interesting post by “Jonathan . . . ” somebody and then the text. My text. My idea. His name and no mention of me. Neither could I leave a comment. (not sure how he did that)

 When I taught English, I always emphasized the concept of intellectual property. Using the example of their tennis racket or car being stolen, I’d then move to “mind properties” and show students how important are one’s ideas and expressions. I can buy another purse or pair of golf shoes. But for someone to claim the creations of my intellect  — the self that originates ideas, that thinks — is so unethical and dishonest.

Ironically, I’ve always said that experience is the best way to learn. I’ve been plagiarized, and I finally get it.

It’s not exactly morbid, but . . .

“Famous last words.” We say it idiomatically when someone says something profound, but not necessarily reliable or likely to happen. I guess we like to think we’ll have the presence of mind, when the time comes, to say something witty, profound, or memorable. Maybe we should only hope for intelligible.

What runs through the mind when the end is certain? I’ve been reading the famous last words of well-known people.   In some of the examples, the dying person realizes that an accident is imminent. Some are dying of a disease. Many think of family. Others, God. There’s fear, arrogance, and anger. Relief. Maybe our last words represent who we were in life. 

The suicides are the hardest to read. Or maybe the final utterance of those about to be executed. How helpless and human we are when facing death, the most democritizing agent we have.  See for yourself.

• Please don’t let me fall.
  Who: Mary Surratt, before being hanged for her part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. She was the first woman executed by the United States federal government.
• All right then, I’ll say it: Dante makes me sick.
  Who: Lope de Vega, famous playwright, on being assured that the end was very near.
• I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.
  Who: Leonardo da Vinci
• My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.
  Who: Oscar Wilde
• One more time.
  Who: Wolfman Jack (pseudonym of Robert Weston Smith), Veteran radio DJ. Spoken to his wife, with open arms, after completing a tour promoting his autobiography. During a loving hug, he collapsed and died in her arms.
• Draw your sword and kill me, so they can’t say, ‘A woman killed him.’
  Who: Abimelech. Judge of Israel.
• Am I dying, or is this my birthday?
  Who: Lady Nancy Astor (lots of family around the bed)
• Let’s roll.
  Who: Todd Beamer, passenger on United Flight 93, September 11, 2001.
• KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you. Gas is running low.
  Who: Amelia Earhart
• A dying man can do nothing easily.
  Who: Benjamin Franklin  Note: As he lay dying, his daughter suggested that if he lay on his side, he could breathe easier.
• Das ist absurd! Das ist absurd! Translation: This is absurd! This is absurd!
  Who: Sigmund Freud
• I’m tired of fighting! I guess this thing is going to get me.
  Who: Harry Houdini  One of Harry Houdini’s tricks was to tighten his stomach muscles and invite strong men to punch him in the stomach, and he would withstand the blow. He was asked by a young man one day if he would be able to withstand such a blow. Houdini replied yes and was promptly punched in the gut. As Houdini had not had time to brace himself he received the full force of the punch and his gut ruptured, wounding him fatally
• Oh, do not cry - be good children and we will all meet in heaven.
  Who: Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States
• No, you certainly can’t.
  Who: John F. Kennedy  context: This was said in reply to Nellie Connally, wife of Governor John Connelly, commenting “You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome, Mr. President.”
• I am just going outside. I may be some time.
  Who: Captain Lawrence Oates, on Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition, while suffering from frostbite and sheltering from a blizzard, Oates felt he was decreasing his companions’ chances of survival. Oates voluntarily left the tent; it was his 32nd birthday. He was never seen again.
• I have not told half of what I saw.
  Marco Polo, Venetian traveller and writer

These quotations were casually researched, a nice read, and came from wikiquotes, so, as you know, do serious tracking if you wish to cite.

Big hat. No cattle.

My current night (actually in the bed) reading is STILL Atlas Shrugged, which will, I estimate, take me seven months to complete. It deserves to be savored. Pre-bed reading involves toggling between The Millionaire Next Door and Millionaire ‘Women Next Door. Even though English won out (barely) over sociology as my major, both involve observing and understanding people, and there’s nothing like a nonfiction, well-researched text about topics like money.

Big hat, no cattle is an expression that symbolizes one thing that Thomas Stanley’s research made evident: real wealth doesn’t show.  Rich isn’t wealthy. The book shows that 80% of current millionaires are first genreation: they didn’t inherit. Most are businessmen who live in their hometown with their first wives in a home surrounded by neighbors that make far less than they do. Most don’t drive foreign cars. Two thirds are self-employed. The wife’s job (50% don’t work) is teacher.

The figures? Total taxable is $131,000 (50th percentile) with average income at $247,000. Eight percent (low) have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category. Most live on less than 7% of their wealth. The current home is valued at $320,000, the same home they’ve lived in for 20 years, thus its value has appreciated greatly.

The point is that many people have sacrificed wealth for high-status material possessions. No wonder. In a commercial, advertisement-driven world, we are told that we must buy because we deserve it. 

Both books are in your local library or get them cheap at BN. Both go beyond facts and figures to render informed advice and, most interestingly, biographical snips and examples.  Great reading.    (allow that the pub. date is 1996)