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Monthly Archives: August 2023

“The Echo Elf Answers”

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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

English poet Thomas Hardy uses an echo based on the last few words of a number of questions he puts regarding his future. It’s a somewhat dark poem, but a good one.

The Echo Elf Answers 

How much shall I love her?
For life, or not long?
               “Not long.”
 
Alas! When forget her?
In years, or by June?
               “By June.”
 
And whom woo I after?
No one, or a throng?
               “A throng.”
 
Of these shall I wed one
Long hence, or quite soon?
               “Quite soon.”
 
And which will my bride be?
The right or the wrong?
               “The wrong.”
 
And my remedy– what kind?
Wealth-wove, or earth-hewn?
               “Earth-hewn.”

Summer Reading

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Not Just for the Beach

Years ago, I used to take the bus to the beach, arriving in the late morning before the sun and sand got too hot, and bringing a book along. In the summer of 1968, I read all four novels of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet on Santa Monica Beach, near Lifeguard Station 12.

Now that I am retired, I don’t get up as early as I used to; but I still don’t like the heat of late afternoon on the sand. So I opt to read in the comfort of my apartment.

What do I like reading in the summer that I usually don’t read at other times of the year? Here is a quick summary, in no particular order:

  • The mystery novels of John D. MacDonald (especially his Travis McGee novels), Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard set in Florida. There is something about the state that produces interesting villains.
  • The 19th century travel books of Sir Richard F. Burton (no relation to the actor), which may be a little stiff and Victorian in their style, but, Lord, the man saw a lot. I used finished Goa and the Blue Mountains.
  • I don’t know why, but I enjoy re-reading the novels of William Faulkner when the weather is most hot and sticky in Southern California. I just re-read Sanctuary.
  • Science fiction and fantasy seem to be more fun during the summer. This year, I am re-reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and re-seeing all the Sir Peter Jackson films.
  • While I am at it, let me put in a good word for my favorite sci-fi authors from Eastern Europe: Stanislaw Lem of Poland and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky of Russia. The Strugatsky Brothers’ Roadside Picnic is a super-great.
  • I love to read books about India when it’s hot outside. Particularly interesting are the histories of William Dalrymple.
  • Noir novels are always good, but have you ever tried reading French noir? Pascal Garnier, Boris Vian, and Jean-Patrick Manchette are excellent.

That’s all for now. I’m about to start re-reading some of Honoré de Balzac’s great fiction.

Scruffiness Is in My Blood

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My Father, An Unidentified Man, and My Uncle

As I looked at this old picture of my father and uncle, I realized something about myself. I’ve never exactly been a fashion plate. It goes all the way back to those two wild and crazy guys from Czechoslovakia, Elek and Emil Paris.

In a dark suit on the left is my father Elek. He has one knee on the ground and his shoes looked slightly scuffed. On the right is my Uncle Emil. He is not dirtying his suit my kneeling on the grass. And—what’s that?—he’s actually wearing spats. Also, note the cufflinks. I would not be surprised if my Dad were wearing a short-sleeved shirt under his suit coat, as I see not a hint of sleeve.

Sometimes, the habits of a lifetime have long antecedents, even though the Paris brothers were identical twins.

By the way, the picture dates back to before I was born in 1945.

Mayhem on the Road

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Keep Safe: There Are a Lot of Bad Drivers Out There

Martine and I have noticed that the highways of the United States have become more wild and woolly of late. To wit:

  • Particularly on residential streets, STOP signs are frequently ignored.
  • That also goes for traffic signals where one or two drivers typically crash a light when it turns red.
  • Drivers appear to get a frisson of pleasure by violating traffic laws if it gets them where they’re going a few milliseconds faster.
  • U-turns have become more common, not only on residential streets but on main roads.
  • The cell phone has become a major distraction, whether by talking or texting.
  • Los Angeles has decriminalized jaywalking at a time when accident rates of automobiles with pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooters, skateboarders, and others continue to rise.
  • Even when pedestrians cross at crosswalks and at street corners, they run the risk of being hit.

When one brings the matter up to the police, they complain that they don’t have enough officers to enforce the traffic laws. I suspect they would say this even if the police force was increased in size by a factor of three.

To survive, one has to drive like a Buddhist monk, with 100% of one’s attention on the road, and minimal flare-ups of road rage when one is confronted with an obvious violator. And that’s not easy to do!

The Crossing of the Berezina

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The low point of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow was the crossing of the ice-choked Berezina River, after the Russians had destroyed the bridge. Curiously, that crossing was also a choke point in Charles XII of Sweden’s invasion a hundred years earlier—a fact that Napoleon was aware of as he carried with him Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII. Here is the scene as described in Patrick Rambaud’s The Retreat:

What Voltaire wrote of the Swedish troops could have been a description of this shadow of the Grande Armée: “The cavalry no longer had boots, the infantry were without shoes, and almost without coats. They were reduced to cobbling shoes together from animal skins, as best they could; they were often short of bread. The artillery had been compelled to dump all the cannon in the marshes and rivers, for lack of horses to pull them….” The Emperor snapped the book shut, as if touching it would put a curse on him. Slipping a hand under his waistcoat, he made sure that Dr Yvan’s pouch of poison [for possible suicide] was safely attached to its string.

And here is the beginning of Victor Hugo’s poem “Expiation,” part of his The Punishments, about the retreat from Russia (as translated by Robert Lowell):

The snow fell, and its power was multiplied.
For the first time the Eagle bowed its head—
Dark days! Slowly the Emperor returned—
Behind him Moscow! Its own domes still burned.
The snow rained down in blizzards—rained and froze.
Past each white waste a further white waste rose.
None recognized the captains or the flags.
Yesterday the Grand Army, today its dregs!
No one could tell the vanguard from the flanks.
The snow! he hurt men struggled from the ranks,
Hid in the bellies of dead horses, in stacks
Of shattered caissons. By the bivouacs
One saw the picket dying at his post,
Still standing in his saddle, white with frost
The stone lips frozen to the bugle’s mouth!
Bullets and grapeshot mingled with the snow
That hailed ... The guard, surprised at shivering, march
In a dream now, ice rimes the gray moustache
The snow falls, always snow! The driving mire
Submerges; men, trapped in that white empire
Have no more bread and march on barefoot.
They were no longer living men and troops,
But a dream drifting in a fog, a mystery,
Mourners parading under the black sky.
The solitude, vast, terrible to the eye,
Was like a mute avenger everywhere,
As snowfall, floating through the quiet air,
Buried the huge army in a huge shroud ...

That was the low point of Napoleon’s reign, unless you include Elba, Waterloo, and captivity under the English at St. Helena.

The Greatest Chart Ever Drawn

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Charles Minard’s Chart of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign 1812-1813

Never before has a military campaign been illustrated so completely as Charles Joseph Minard’s 1869 Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812–1813. It shows the strength of Napoleon’s forces at every point in the campaign.

Compare the red band at the far left of the illustration showing Napoleon’s force of half a million men as they crossed into Russia in June 1812. Notice as the red band narrows until it reaches Moscow, particularly after the casualties of the Battle of Borodino.

The black band illustrates the retreat from Moscow as winter is beginning to set in. That band gets progressively narrower until the crossing of the Berezina River at Studienka, highlighted by a black smudge I made on the above chart. After Berezina, only 25,000 combatants and 30,000 non-combatants survived. You can see the black band narrow after Berezina.

That particular battle was frequently described in Honoré de Balzac’s stories. particularly “Adieu.” It market the catastrophic end to a catastrophic campaign, which led in short order to Napoleon’s first exile, on Elba.

On the lower part of Minard’s graph, the relative temperature at several selected points during the retreat from Moscow is shown. Note that it was it its lowest around the time the Berezina was crossed.

A Nice Burn

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A Sichuan Seasoning That Will Set You on Fire

My brother and I are well-known fire-eaters. Most of the meals I prepare for myself (but not Martine!) are off the charts when it comes to hotness for most of my friends.

It all started when I went on my first vacation to Mexico in 1975 and discovered El Diablito Chile Habanero. There I was in a hot country with smoke pouring out of my ears—and loving every minute of it! After discovering Marie Sharp’s Chile Habanero from Dangriga, Belize in 2019, I thought I had the perfect picante sauce.

Then my brother introduced me to Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp (illustrated above), which not only has the perfect burn but actually adds flavor. In the last few weeks, I have experimented with Spanish Rice and Spanish Barley, both seasoned with Fly by Jing. Not only was I sold, but I ordered a couple more bottles from Amazon for when my first bottle goes empty (which should be in about a week).

Interestingly, the chili crisps are made with Chinese ingredients originating in Chengdu by a Chinese-American living in Los Angeles. Her name, BTW, is Jing.

The Babes of Star Trek

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Diana Ewing as Droxine in “The Cloud Minders” Episode of Star Trek

Every once in a while I kick off my shoes and re-watch one of the original episodes of Star Trek. I am always amazed at how many really beautiful women show up in the series. I can only speculate that Gene Roddenberry must have been an incredible lech, but with good taste. I have already written about Marta the green Orion from the “Whom Gods Destroy” episode, played by Yvonne Craig.

Diana Ewing played the lean and strikingly beautiful blonde Droxine in “The Cloud Minders” episode from the same year (1969). She is one of the epicene Stratos cloud dwellers who live lives of idle pleasure while the Troglytes [sic] below mine zenite, which clouds their thinking.

Whereas Marta had a thing for James T. Kirk, Droxine was more interested in the tall Vulcan, Spock. Unlike Marta, Droxine is still alive at the end of her episode. But alas, the Starship Enterprise never returned to Stratos later in the series.

Vidyādhara

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A Vidyādhara Couple

I am currently reading a book of Kashmiri tales that go back a thousand years or more. The book is Somadeva’s Tales from the Kathāsaritsāgara, written around AD 1050, but retelling from an earlier source. To understand the quote below, you must realize that Vidyādharas are celestial beings very much like angels—but angels who can mate with humans without losing their supernatural abilities.

The tale in question is called “Alaṅkāravatī,” which tells the tale of the promiscuous Anaṅgaprabhā, who has just jilted her lover, King Harivara:

When Harivara found out that Anaṅgaprabhā had left, he wanted to die of grief. But the minister Sumantra consoled him and said, “Why don’t you understand this? Think it over yourself. Anaṅgaprabhā left her husband, who had obtained the powers of a vidyādhara by means of a [magical] sword, the moment she saw you. Why would a woman like that stay with you? She has left for something trivial because she does not desire the good, like someone who is enamored of a blade of grass believing it to be a heap of jewels. She has definitely gone with the dancing teacher for he is nowhere to be seen and I heard they were in the dance hall together in the morning. Since you know all this, why are you so attached to her? A promiscuous woman is like the sunset which has a moment of glory every evening.”

Do You Still Pay Your Bills by Check?

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During the course of her daily walks, Martine finds the strangest things. Today, it was a hoard of undelivered mail consisting of invoices from which the checks paying them had been removed—presumably to find some checks that could be altered in favor of the thieves.

Mixed in with the bag of mail were food containers with food scraps, typical of the garbage stewed around my neighborhood by the homeless. It is likely that the thief was a homeless ex-con who had learned how to modify checks during a previous imprisonment.

I no longer pay bills by mail. Instead, I use the BillPay service of Bank of America. In five years of usage, I have had no problems; whereas, in previous years, I had problems with mail being delivered late or not at all. This cuts out the Postal Service and all those larcenously inclined bums who prey on it.

Tomorrow, I will give Martine a ride to the main Santa Monica Post Office with the bag of stolen mail, which she brought home from her walk. The mail was scattered all over the intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and 20th Street in Santa Monica.