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Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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A Particularly Persistent Superstition

A Particularly Persistent Superstition

If you’ve never heard this Latin phrase before, you might want to remember it. It describes a logical fallacy which, translated into plain English, is “after that, therefore because of that.”

Let me give you an example. You are a little boy who, for the first time in his life, kisses a girl the in school playground. That same day, your teacher decides to land hard on you—even though she does not know about the kissing incident—and makes you sit in the corner all afternoon with a dunce hat on your head while the whole class taunts you. Using a very common form of magical thinking, you blame the punishment on the kiss, even though it is totally unrelated. Because the punishment came after the kiss, you assume it is because of the kiss. Result: you think that girls must not be kissed, or else terrible things will happen.

In September 1966, to give an example from my own life, I had a terrible headache. I was during my summer vacation just a few days away from starting graduate school in film at UCLA. I managed to cook a hot dog for myself as well as a can of corn. On the hot dog, I smeared some ketchup. Within an hour, the headache became unbearable. I managed to crawl into bed, but the pain kept ramping up. I realized I had to contact my parents and tell them that something was wrong. It took me over an hour to crawl to the kitchen phone, blacking out from the pain several times in the process. Finally, I managed to get my mother at work. Having told her what was happening, I collapsed on the kitchen floor.

And Then There Was the Canned Corn

And Then There Was the Canned Corn

The next thing I knew, I was in the emergency room at Fairview General Hospital in Cleveland being asked questions by physicians. Within minutes, I fell into a deep coma. Somehow, my doctor figured it was a pituitary tumor; and, when I came to after having been wrapped in ice to keep my temperature down, I was operated on. I might add the operation was a glittering success.

However, gone from my diet were hot dogs, ketchup, and canned corn. The one time I had that lunch, terrible things happened. It is only forty-eight years later that I can now eat those three items—though not together. And I put mustard on my hot dogs now instead of ketchup.

In a smaller way, I still see the same logical fallacy at work in my life. The last time I ate at the Yamadaya Restaurant, I suffered what looked to be (but wasn’t) a stroke: It was a transient ischemic attack (TIA). Only today was I brave enough to go back. Somehow, at the back of my mind, I still fear something bad will happen to me today. And I didn’t even get to kiss a girl this time!

 

My Brother Sets Me Straight

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Now I Know What I’m Going to See There!

Now I Know What I’m Going to See There in Peru!

Last night, my brother left the following comment on my status on reading Nigel Davies’s book The Incas on Facebook: “How about The Dinky Incas”? That set me back for a minute. Who in blue blazes were the Dinky Incas? Well, there was only one way to find out: I Googled it. Then it all came back to me. There was an animated television series around 1959-1960 called “Clutch Cargo,” starring a ruggedly good-looking hero with an enormous jaw named Clutch Cargo who flew to strange locales with a small freckle-faced boy named Spinner and a dachshund named Paddlefoot. They engaged in the type of exotic adventures I recall from reading Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge comic books.

By the time my brother was of an age to enjoy the limited animation adventures of “Clutch Cargo,” I was already a teenager who was much too sophisticated for that type of stuff. Dan, on the other hand, was eight or nine years old and watched every episode.

Now You, Too, Can Follow Their Adventures

Now You, Too, Can Follow Their Adventures

The series on the “Dinky Incas” was about a missing archaeologist who was on a dig in Peru which resembled, more than anything else, a Mayan pyramid in the jungle. (The real Incas didn’t build pyramids and they preferred the higher-elevation altiplano to the jungles of the Amazon.) Clutch, Spinner, and Paddlefoot run into two unsavory characters who try to do away with them, because, of course, they’re after all the gold and jewels. But Clutch and his sidekicks take care of them right quick, as you can see for yourself if you have twenty minutes to watch the whole series, which is available by clicking here.

Sweating at Pepperdine

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The Malibu Campus of Pepperdine University

The Malibu Campus of Pepperdine University

Because I forgot to bring my camera today, I’m using one of my old Minolta pictures of the Pepperdine University Campus in Malibu. Martine likes to walk around the hilly campus, and it’s great exercise. Today, however, we’ve been hit by the northern edge of another Mexican monsoon. The result was incredibly muggy and sweaty weather that felt like Florida this time of year. At several points during the walk, I just wanted to lie down on the grass and take a nap … but we pressed on.

As California is in the middle of a heinous drought, the campus looks much browner today than the above photo. Usually, we would see several groups of deer wandering between the buildings and feeding on the grasses. Today, we saw only two of them from a distance.

It’s strange to consider that (1) we are in a drought, but (2) we can’t just wring all the moisture out of the air so that it drains into the ground.

It will be a month or two before get the really dry Santa Ana winds that make the skin around our fingernails peel painfully. By then, I will be in Peru, high in the Andes, trying to keep from freezing my butt off.

 

 

3989 East 176th Street

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Where I Lived 1948-1964

Where I Lived 1948-1964

When I looked up my old street address on Google, I was also given the opportunity to get a photographic view of the house where I spent most of my childhood up to fifty years ago. The house in the middle fronts on where Eldamere runs into East 176th Street. On the left side of us lived the Smiths; on the right, the Fordosis, our “enemies.” The photograph makes the front yards look much bigger than they were by about a quarter. The tree hides the window to my second story attic room, where I spent much of my time doing my homework and reading.

We were just a few houses in from Harvard Avenue, where Charley Fontana’s corner grocery store was located. Once, when I was little, William Boyd, the star of the Hopalong Cassidy television series, stopped at Fontana’s and was mobbed by little kids, one of whom was me. He handed out embossed plastic commemorative coins stamped with the name Hopalong Cassidy.

About half a mile left on Harvard was Saint Henry’s Church and School, where I attended grades two through eight. (Don’t tell anyone this, but, to my eternal shame, I never finished first grade.) Then I spent four years at Chanel High School in Bedford, which was renamed St. Peter Chanel before it blinked out of existence last year.

It was a pretty nice neighborhood when we moved there in the late 1940s. Because most of the houses were pretty new back then, the streets were barren. Now they are flanked by large trees that were just getting started when we moved to Parma Heights. By then I was at Dartmouth College and was way too sophisticated to care.

What made us move out was a real estate practice known as blockbusting. The early 1960s were a time of racial tension. When real estate salesmen paraded potential black buyers to neighborhood houses, the existing residents—including my family—panicked and sold out. We thought the neighborhood would become an evil slum like the Hough District just east of downtown. It never did: The new owners apparently were just as intent on making it a nice place to live as the Hungarians and Poles who left the area.

When I returned in 1998 to look around with my brother, we were pleasantly surprised.

 

Hot Dog Stick

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The Original on the Boardwalk in Santa Monica

The Original on the Boardwalk in Santa Monica

We got together with our friends Bill and Kathy Korn today and did something a little bit different. Bill had been visiting restaurants featured on the late Huell Howser’s television programs and decided he wanted to try the Original Hot Dog on a Stick restaurant on the Santa Monica Boardwalk, just a few steps from the Santa Monica Pier. The above picture shows the restaurant, which somehow never had the connective words “on a” painted on its sign that is now part of the company name. So it was to the original stand dating back to 1946 to which we repaired to dine on a delicious hot dog stick.

Martine was not particularly enthralled with having to sit on a wall that was liberally decorated with dried bird droppings, and even less having to maneuver through the massive crowds on the pier; but she put up with it. Bill and Kathy are from a part of Los Angeles where going outdoors in July is, to say the very least, uncomfortable. Just to get an idea of the crowds, see the picture below:

Crowds on the Beach North of the Santa Monica Pier

Crowds on the Beach North of the Santa Monica Pier

Curiously, we had some rain this afternoon. Not only did we have rain, but also a rare lightning strike that killed one twenty-year-old male and injured several other people. By the time we went, about an hour and a half later, the storm, such as it was, had moved eastward.

Speaking of Hot Dog on a Stick, I remember visiting the Pier one Sunday morning in 2009 and wandering into the middle of several hundred young men and (mostly) women dressed in the standard uniform for a corporate meeting:

Hot Dog on a Stick Meeting 2006

Hot Dog on a Stick Meeting 2006

 

 

Walking Through History

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The Nice Lady from the Legio X Fretensis

The Nice Lady from the Legio X Fretensis

Martine and I love attending the large military re-enactment encampment at Old Fort MacArthur in San Pedro. Last year we missed it because I was still in Iceland, but today we spent the whole day at the Old Fort MacArthur Days event. It’s not that we were interested in the shooting events with all their noise and smoke: It’s just that it feels like walking through history.

The Legio X Fretensis (“of the sea strait”) actually existed. It was established by Augustus (then called Octavius) Caesar around 40 or 41 B.C. to fight during the Roman civil war. It lasted almost 500 years, fighting in the civil war that saw the end of the Roman Republic, plus two of the Roman-Jewish wars in Palestine. Some elements of it fought with Marcus Aurelius.

In San Pedro, the members we saw belong to a group that calls itself an “educational service organization” whose purpose is to instruct people about the Roman army, particularly in the First Century A.D. I enjoyed stopping by their tent for a few minutes to talk to the well-informed lady pictured above. As you may or may note know, I am a Roman history nut who has read all the works of Tacitus and many of his contemporaries. I am always delighted to find people who not only are well read in the subject, but can add to my knowledge.

During the next few days, you will see a few more postings about some of the things we saw during the re-enactment. By the way, Old Fort MacArthur is not named after General Douglas MacArthur, but after his father, General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., who was Governor-General of the Philippines after the Spanish American War. It seems to me his son also had some dealings with that particular archipelago….

 

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Los Angeles

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Venice Beach 2002

Venice Beach 2002

I was so very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.

My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (Chesterton, Balzac, and Borges); things associated with my past life (Cleveland and Dartmouth College), people who have influenced me (John F. Kennedy), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the months to come, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. To see my other entries under this category, hit the tag below marked “ABCs”. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. Today, we’re at the letter “L,” for Los Angeles, where I have lived for almost half a century..

Los Angeles is a difficult place to get to know. It took me at least five years before I even had a grudging acceptance of the city. Now I feel that I love it, for all its strange ways. I do not love the earthquakes, the hot weather, the gigantic brush fires that fill my lungs with ash, the self-entitled young professionals in their expensive sports cars, the decaying infrastructure, the Santa Ana Winds that make the skin peel off around my fingernails, or the long distances involved in going just about anywhere. And yet, there is a quality of the light that suffuses this place, especially early and late in the day. I also like the blend of cultures, mostly Latino and Asian, that make this a cosmopolitan metropolis.

This is a city that has its own literature. Here, for instance, is Raymond Chandler in his story “Red Wind”:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Mostly because of the outside influence of Hollywood in its glory days, many great writers passes this way and left their mark: Aldous Huxley, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, John Fante, Evelyn Waugh, Ray Bradbury, and Joan Didion—just to name a few. If you like that sort of thing (I do not), there has also been a lot of modern art and architecture produced.

You may have heard that California is in a historic drought and has received precious little rain for the last three years. When I go to Lima, Peru, later this summer, I will be in another Pacific coast city where it almost never rains. I suspect it will remind me of L.A., except for the very different cultural context.

Would I ever move from Los Angeles? Possibly. Around the time I retire, I will no doubt come to the realization that I can no longer afford to live here. When that happens, it will be a difficult time for me. But then, nothing is forever.

 

The Phantom Beep

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It Was Driving Me Nuts

It Was Driving Me Nuts

It happened yesterday morning at work. Every 30 seconds, like clockwork, I would hear a beep. At first I thought it was the microwave in our office kitchen, but it continued to happen. Then I thought it was our HP 9050 copier. In fact, I identified the sound as coming from the rear left of the sorter. At that point, I called LaserCare to send out a rep to shut off the beep. He came out and checked out the machine, but he couldn’t figure out the source.

Around this time, I went to the other side of the office and heard it coming from around there. First I suspected the secretary’s laser printer, but it continued after I unplugged out. Then my attention was drawn to the smoke alarms overhead. I called the Office of the Building, and they sound out a technician to check it out. After he informed me that the alarms were not battery operated, I had an awful suspicion.

The beeps were coming from me!

After I had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) a couple of weeks ago, the UCLA Cardiology Department fitted me with an event monitor “just in case.” While I was wearing the unit on my belt, the cable connection from the unit to the contact points on my chest had worked loose. Partly, it was because the plastic tab connecting the unit to my belt had gotten stretched.

So now I wear the unit in a small digital camera case. The only problem is that there is a visible wire that emerges from the case and disappears into my shirt. When people notice it, I warn them to be careful of what they say because I’m wearing a wire….

When Hungarians Picnic

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My Father and My Uncle at a Picnic

My Father and My Uncle at a Picnic

Set your Wayback Machine to about seventy-five years ago. At one of Cleveland’s many parks, you would see those two irrepressible Slovak twins—Elek (Alex) and Emil Paris—and their girls having a Hungarian-style picnic. The entrée of choice is likely to be szalonnás kenjer, or sliced rye bread with chopped onions, paprika, and smoked bacon drippings. On the left is Elek, my father, with either a girlfriend or his first wife, who was said to be overweight. Next to her are my Aunt Annabelle (née Herbaj) and Uncle Emil. It was a scene to be repeated well into my teen years, except the girlfriend/first wife was replaced by my mother.

Speaking of Hungarian picnics, allow me to quote Carl Sandburg to you. His short poem is called “Happiness”:

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life
      to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
      thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
      I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
      the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
      their women and children and a keg of beer and an
      accordion.

I’m not altogether sure about the accordion. The Paris brothers were too busy eating to sing. On the other hand, when I went to Slovakia with my parents in 1977 (it was then part of Czechoslovakia), we sang all the old songs with my pretty cousins Gabriela, Margit, and Marinka (the last two being themselves twins).

A brief note about nationality: Like the Kurds, the Slovaks were a cohesive people for hundreds of years before ever having a country of their own, until Vaclav Havel, last President of Czechoslovakia, granted them their independence in 1993. When my father and uncle were born in 1911, Slovakia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was administered by the Hungarians. In the end, my father spoke better Hungarian than Slovak; though I found out as early as 1977, Hungarian was spoken only by the old people.

 

(Almost) Never at a Loss for Words

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Ho I Wound Up in the Emergency Room This Weekend

How I Wound Up in the Emergency Room This Weekend

It all started at work 45 minutes before quitting time. Our deranged boss had left, and I was chatting with one of the accountants about accommodations and food service at Death Valley National Park.

All of a sudden, although I knew very well what I wanted to say, it all came out as inarticulate babbling of the village idiot variety. For about three minutes, I could not translate my thoughts into words. That frankly freaked me out. The accountant suggested I call 9-1-1, which is exactly what I did. Within twenty minutes, I was hauled out of my workplace in a gurney and taken by ambulance to UCLA Medical Center, which is only about five blocks away.

No sooner was I wheeled into the emergency room than I was surrounded by doctors questioning me and testing my reactions. I thought I had suffered a mild stroke, but there was no drooping of one side of my face or difference how I felt being touched on my right or my left. I was asked to touch my nose, touch the doctor’s finger. (Fortunately he did not ask me to pull it.) The tests kept on for several hours and were even resumed this morning. UCLA is a teaching hospital, and my case appeared to be a good instructional vehicle.

I was given an MRI scan, X-Rayed, electrocardiogramed, and marinated. in olive oil The upshot was that I had not in fact suffered a stroke, but merely a temporary clot that had deprived me of the ability to speak and be understood. The whole thing lasted only about three minutes. By the time the Fire Department paramedics came, I was able to pronounce terms like panhypopituitarism and chromophobe adenoma without batting an eyelash.

The way I see it, I was once again nicked ever so slightly by the Grim Reaper’s scythe as it whooshed by me and hit someone else. What I had was called a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA). I know  now that I have to watch my step carefully. The next whoosh of the scythe could wind up removing my head from my shoulders.