Remember the Texas 7? I do. If you don’t, you can read all about them, here. Then maybe it’ll become clear why I find them memorable. <All I can say is, they sure looked like Christian missionaries to me.> It’s been over a week since we did This Day in History in these pages. But it’s been exactly 19 years since these guys broke out of a maximum security prison in South Texas and left behind a note saying, “You ain’t heard the last of us yet.” And brother, they weren’t just a-whistling Dixie.
For a while after their capture in a trailer park just off Highway 24 outside Woodland Park, the guy who owned the place sold t-shirts with a lurid logo that said “Home of the Texas 7.” The place had a For Sale sign on it for a while after that. Eventually I heard he went bankrupt. As for the 7, one committed suicide before he could be captured. The surviving six were all convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die for their role in the shooting of a police officer. Four have already been executed. The remaining two sit on death row.
Moral of the story? Don’t mess with Texas, I guess.
And also? If yer gonna do t-shirts, pick a better logo.
Well, you knew it was coming. I even warned you yesterday. End-of-year “Best of” season is hard upon us. Probably every newspaper in the country has a “Year in Photos” spread about now. The DP is no exception. You can see theirs in full, here. The cover photo for that feature is, IMHO, extraordinary. It’s a simple portrait, taken close-up, of the face of 110 year old Mabel Nesmith.
LITTLETON, CO – MARCH 2: Mabel Nesmith celebrated her 110th birthday with family and friends at Colorado Assisted Living Homes in Littleton. March 2, 2019. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
First off, you don’t find many “Mabels” around anymore. And of course, you also don’t find many folks who were born before WW 1. But DP photographer Hyoung Chang took this amazing photo last March on the day Mabel turned 110 at the assisted-living place in Littleton where she lived until she died in August. More from Hyoung Chang, here. And thanks for all your good work, DP photographers!
The year 2019 winds down to its inevitable end. With any number of “Best of” lists pending, perhaps it’s only fitting we should consider “Famous Last Words” – AKA epitaphs – from the Latin, meaning literally “on the tomb.” The good folks at How Stuff Works have summarized their winners for this category here.
Me personally? I’m particularly fond of the following:
“Here lies Lester Moore.
Four slugs from a 44.
No Les, no more.”
And of course, there’s this one from the man who brought us the voices of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Yosemite Sam:
How about you?
What’s your favorite?
“I Told You I Was Sick” is attributed to Dorothy Parker.
But in fact, as epitaphs go, that one’s probably apocryphal.
Hmmm: Now there’s another WOTD – for a different day.
You just gotta love a WOTD that’s time-less. “What!” I hear you exclaim? How can a Word of the Day be time-less? That’s an oxymoron. “Exactly,” I reply.
As Merriam-Webster puts it:
The ancient Greeks exhaustively classified elements of rhetoric, or effective speech and writing. They gave the name oxymoron — literally “pointed foolishness” — to the deliberate juxtaposing of seemingly contradictory words. The roots of oxymoron are oxys meaning “sharp” or “keen,” and mōros meaning “foolish.” Of course, the two words are nearly antonyms themselves. That makes oxymoron nicely self-descriptive. Oxymoron originally applied to a meaningful paradox condensed into a couple of words. For example: “Precious bane,” “lonely crowd,” or “sweet sorrow.” Today, however, what is commonly cited as an oxymoron is often simply a curiosity of language. One or both elements may have multiple meanings. As in, say, “jumbo shrimp.” Maybe it’s a phrase with elements that seem antithetical in spirit. Such as, say, “classic rock.” Or how about this one – my personal favorite: “Reality TV.”
Had a complaint recently that my blog posts are “getting shorter.” Well, so too are the days, come December. Besides, I retorted, the shortest ones are the most popular – especially humor and cartoons. So, to prove a point, here‘s one from the current New Yorker, titled:
New Yorker cartoon credit: Phoebe Helander.
So, THERE! Go on, I dare ya:
Show the world that brevity really is the soul of wit.
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Oh, and watch out for the dog.
You just never know what he might have buried out there.
If Black Friday didn’t jump start your Holiday Spirit, then here’s a little warm-up exercise to get you going. The longstanding tradition of a “Dear Santa” letter – left out on the counter along with cookies and milk on Christmas eve – is something we all remember fondly from childhood. In fact, I love it so much I’ve been saving up this post since the middle of last summer. So, here you go, friends. Please vote for your favorite Santa letter, below. And at the bottom? There’s a little present for the winner. Yer welcome.
Dear Santa….
Gotta love the budding little mafia don making Santa an offer he can’t refuse on a pony deal. Of course, beer and cookies is almost as good as milk and cookies, right? And if you have trouble reading that last one – my personal favorite – it says: “I am so good and never say bad words to now one (no one), not to my parents, or the middle finger. To Santa forome (from?) Josie. PS. Am I on the good list?”
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To the winners go the spoils: Yep Josie, yer on the very good list!
Rhapsody in Bond, I hear you ask? Yes, Rhapsody in Bond. I have rhapsodized before about my love for the Bond movie series – and you can read all about that, here. Now comes the trailer for the new one, and it’s well worth watching – if you’re a fan. (See the trailer here.) Daniel Craig stars again in this 25th installment of the long-running spy series, due out in theaters next April. Well, according to Variety – and you can read the full article, here – the Brits get a 5-day head start on us Americans. Why is that, I wonder?
“Bond’s most recent outings — 2012’s “Skyfall” and 2015’s “Spectre” — were massive box office hits, grossing $1.1 billion and $880 million, respectively. “No Time to Die” arrives in theaters in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2020 and in North America on April 8.
Ah well, no matter who gets it first, it’s gonna be profitable.
Also tons of fun – if you’re a fan.
Daniel Craig stars in “No Time to Die,” due out in theaters next April. And yes, I’m a fan!
Yesterday’s cartoon was an easy one. Today’s post is a bit tougher sell. This Day in History, 1917: “Psychiatrist reports on the phenomenon of shell shock.” These days we refer to it as PTSD. But whatever term you use, the mechanism of action is still poorly understood. What mediates between combat experience and post-trauma symptoms? Despite modern brain scan technology, that’s as much a mystery today as it was at the end of WW I.
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On this day in 1917 psychiatrist W.H. Rivers presents his report to the Royal School of Medicine. Titled “The Repression of War Experience,” the study was based on his work at the Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers. Doctors at Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, treated soldiers suffering from psychological traumas inflicted on the battlefield.
After World War I, the army was faced with 80,000 cases of “shell shock.” The term, coined in 1917 describes the physical damage done to soldiers on the front lines during bombardment. But it soon became clear that shell shock’s various debilitating symptoms – including anxiety, nightmares, and even blindness – could afflict soldiers who never were directly under attack. Thus the definition was broadened to include psychological effects produced by combat.
Army doctors’ primary mission was to get soldiers fit and ready for battle. Nevertheless only one-fifth of those treated for shell shock ever returned to active duty.
Talk of one thing “causing” another is as old as Aristotle. In his Metaphysics, the ancient Greek philosopher identified 4 types of causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. Think of the first causal type as an ingredients list: Butter, flour, sugar, and egg go into making cookies. Thus they are a cookie’s material cause. Think of the second causal type as instructions: “Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes on a greased sheet.” This is a cookie’s formal cause. The baker would be a cookie’s efficient cause. By applying instructions to ingredients, his/her actions produce – or “cause” – cookies. And as for final cause? That would be an answer to the query “Why do people bake cookies in the first place?” <Answer: Because they taste good!>
Much modern science centers around the first three Aristotelian cause types, while much religious talk is aimed at addressing the fourth. But any way the cookie crumbles, the baking process illustrates all 4 kinds of causes. And Aristotle will help us when we encounter causal claims down the road. Trust me on this.
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In this week’s NY Times Magazine there’s a story called “Does Who You Are at 7 Determine Who You Are at 63?” It’s about a British documentary film titled “Seven Up.” I am drawn to such stories for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that I am almost 63 myself. Plus, in my younger days, I studied Psychology, so that puts this thing right in my wheelhouse. Last but not least, when the title says “determine,” make no mistake, it’s talking about “causation.” There. See? I told ya Aristotle would come in handy some day.
What makes this particular project so extraordinary is that it has been ongoing continuously since 1964. The same group of 14 subjects was followed and recorded every 7 years by the same film-maker. If this were a sociology study instead of cinema, we’d call it “prospective” which means “looking forward.” And prospective studies are the gold standard for determining causation in sociology research.
By contrast, much social-scientific work – along with most cinema – is often “retrospective.” Now the thing about looking backwards is that memory is fickle and can play tricks on us, especially when we start talking about what has caused what. But if the camera stays turned on for 55 years straight? Well, then the results are both powerful and surprising.
In the words of the author of the Times piece:
To spend time with a child is to dwell under the terms of an uneasy truce between the possibility of the present and the inevitability of the future. Our deepest hope for the children we love is that they will enjoy the liberties of an open-ended destiny. That their desires will be given the free play they deserve. That the circumstances of their birth and upbringing will be felt as opportunities rather than encumbrances.
Our greatest fear is that they will feel thwarted by forces beyond their control. At the same time, we can’t help poring over their faces and gestures for any signals of eventuality. The trace hints and betrayals of what will emerge in time as their character, their plot, their fate. And what we project forward for the children in our midst can rarely be disentangled from what we project backward for ourselves.
Character. Plot. Fate. Cookies.
The premise of those who put together the original “Seven Up” documentary is captured by the saying “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will give you the man.” The film-makers selected 7-year-olds from across the full spectrum of British social strata. Their rather reactionary idea at the outset was that accidental factors of birth and early upbringing would drown out any chance for social mobility or real personal change over the course of a lifetime. But what they ended up documenting instead was a fascinating story of common humanity, captured in the arc of individual lives down the decades, superimposed on top of historic trends: Of the crumbling British class structure. Of worldwide economic shifts. Of women’s liberation. And too, of the slow yet inevitable decay of once-youthful bodies into senescence and mortality.
In short, the final answer to the question posed at the outset, “Does the child determine/cause the adult,” is both “yes” and “no.”
Which determining factors produce which end results? Aye, there’s the rub. And it’s a sticky wicket whether you’re talking bakeries or lifetimes. On the one hand, starting off with a common recipe and identical ingredients does produce cookies of consistent quality. But if you think all cookies end up tasting the same – or that all of life’s outcomes are predetermined before age 7 – then you simply don’t know chocolate chips from ginger snaps. And brother, you can quote me on that too. Well, me and Aristotle, I suppose.
Little Known Baking Fact: Substitute Baking POWDER for Baking SODA, leave out the egg and the sugar, and you end up with SCONES rather than COOKIES. And you can quote me on that!
