the power they have is not the power to destroy not while this Court sits
I to think about back when.
Back when there were rules and laws and people followed the laws.
Back when there was a level of respect.
Back when we thought that the Government was going to do their best.
Back when, if the Government lost their way, the Supreme Court was there to kick them back into line.
Back in 1928, in a case at the Supreme Court where the State of Mississippi sued to get lost tax revenue back, the Court found for the State.
This decision brought a dissent from Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. who felt that the the State of Mississippi was in the wrong and was going to far.
“The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.” Justice Holmes wrote.
Who knows what he really meant, but it sure sounded like the little guy had a friend in high places.
But things change.
The courts change.
The little guy DID have a friend on the court.
A man who once said, “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell, I will help them. It’s my job.”
But read that last line of the Haiku.
Not while this Court sits.
Justice Holmes was on the court into his 90’s.
That Court no longer sits.
The power of Government today now seems to be the power to destroy.
we saw potential that we thought we could bring out actually not
Watching TV last night, one of the ever growing list of do it yourself home repair shows flickered by.
There was a couple standing outside of this house that looked like a on old fashioned barn silo made of corrugated metal, laying over on its side.
The couple who lived there was being interviewed.
“We saw potential we thought we could bring out that never actually happened,” the couple said.
Why do I have this feeling that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and James Madison and all those folks are sitting around somewhere, saying the same thing.
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Madison and Mr. Hamilton discussed the possibility of the new country under a new constitution not reaching its’ potential because the country would be broken up by some ‘faction’.
Mr. Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 10 continues the discussion of the destructive role of a faction in breaking apart the republic that Mr. Hamilton started in Federalist No. 9.
Madison defines a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.“
Madison argues, these factions would be prone to make decisions in their own interest, and not for the public good.
Mr. Madison felt the answer was in a large democracy in the hands of elected delegates.
It was simple, thought Mr. Madison, because in a large republic, there there would be more “fit characters” to choose from for each delegate.
I am fascinated that the founders feared that maybe the United States was too big or would grow to big survive as a Union or that our freedoms would be abused.
I am dismayed that I while I can agree with Mr. Madison, that ‘fit characters’ in Government is a great response, I have to ask today, where did all those ‘fit characters’ go?
I often feel that when the USA poured out the brains, there were all on top, like cream, and now we are left with the bottom of the milk jug.
So much potential for a country less than 300 years old.
Hopefully it will be more than a potential that never actually happened.
can you start the day without knowing where you are more important, why?
Adapted from the passage:
“How can you start the day without knowing where you are? Or, perhaps more important, why? The answer to which is bound to be lengthy, imprecise, blurred by the urge to think that where you are is bound to be the right place on your short and brutish passage.“
From the novella, Westward Ho, by Jim Harrison.
Westward Ho is the 3rd part of the Brown Dog series which if you haven’t read you probably won’t but what can a body do about that.
Jim Harrison died 6 years ago back in 2016.
Probably about 35 years before that I saw a Jim Harrison interview on TV.
He was being interviewed at his home that at that time was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Mr. Harrison told how he could handle working in Hollywood.
With air travel available, Mr. Harrison said that while he was in a meeting on the west coast, he knew he could be home in Michigan in a few hours.
That, Harrison said, was the only way he could handle being in LA.
This is someone I should read I thought.
At that time I was working in a bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I was talking with a customer about recent books and she mentioned that her favorite was Jim Harrison.
“We just got his latest,” I said and grabbing a copy off of a stack of “Woman Lit by Fireflies” that I had set out that morning.
The lady looked over and took the entire stack and said, “I just finished my Christmas Shopping.”
I was left with that one copy in my hands that I had picked up.
It seemed to be a message so I took it home.
I still have that copy along with copies of most of Mr. Harrison’s other books.
It is odd that I still have that first book as I have given away so many copies of his books.
Yes yes and yes, his writing is profane, vulgar, rough, poetic and alive.
In another of the Brown Dog stories, Mr. Harrison writes that listening to an oldies rock station is like hearing all of your used-up emotions..
That is the feeling I get reading these books.
Yesterday, out of sense to prove there was such a thing, my wife and I drove to Savannah with the expressed purposed of finding the one and only mall in the low country.
To be fair, it is my wife’s birthday and I learned a long time ago it is better to let her pick out something then to try and guess what that wonderful woman will want to wear.
We found the mall and it was every mall anyone had ever been in anywhere.
The first job I ever had was in a mall.
It was in the bookstore, but still in a mall.
Malls and me, well, talk about a time warp.
The bookstore chain also had outlets in Ann Arbor so my summer job traveled with me back and forth from school.
I was paid, at least in part, to know stuff about books and to talk about books in such a way that customers would want to buy books.
I L O V E D T H A T J O B.
It wasn’t a job, it was a mission.
Yesterday, I was to happy to find that the mall in Savannah had a bookstore.
A Barnes and Noble but good enough.
And it was an older Barnes and Noble so that while it had the coffer bar, the games and toys section and the book-lover knicknacks, for the most part it was filled with books the old fashioned way.
I went into it’s huge history section.
It had 4 or 5 big bays of history books.
Military history beyond belief.
The proximity of the mall to Hunter Army Airfield and Fort Stewart may have had something to do with that.
I looked over the books and I was excited and sad at the same time.
Excited by the number of titles.
But sad at how few I recognized.
To make myself feel a little better I went to fiction to see how many Jim Harrison books they might have in stock.
I keep waiting for an anthology of some kind.
There weren’t any in fiction.
There weren’t any in classics which I checked for a chance.
If there is a period in history that attracts my attention it is 1939, that time when the British Government under Neville Chamberlain tried to keep Adolf Hitler under control through a policy that came to be known as appeasement.
You know, the plan that you keep giving in to Hitler’s demands in hopes that he will get tired and go away.
Mr. Chamberlain has come out on the short end of the history stick on this topic and in Britain few charges can damage a political career more than a charge of ‘Appeasement”.
But at the time it was popular and widely supported.
Down through history, the story of one man, Winston Churchill, holding the line against appeasement and preaching Nazi wickedness is one of the great stories.
It should be remembered though, that on one of the votes on the Government policy that Churchill called for [and in the House of Commons, Members of Parliament vote by leaving the House through the Yes or No door and then gather in the lobby outside ] Churchill found himself going through the YES door with but two other members.
I love this time and I love reading the accounts of how this all came down.
I have been reading the recently re-released diaries of Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon.
I have more to say about these diaries another time, but Sir Henry was “an upstart Chicagoan who’d unaccountably managed to marry the daughter of an exceedingly rich Anglo-Irish Earl, moved in vertiginously high circles.”
Sir Henry got into British politics and supported Prime Minister Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement.
And he kept a diary.
As the Munich Agreement came apart and Germany and Mr. Hitler moved to take over Czechoslovakia, Sir Henry recorded that on March, 14th, 1939, that Ruthenia was proclaimed independent.
Ruthenian lion, which was used as a representative Coat of arms of Ruthenia during the Council of Constance in the 15th century
Ruthenia?
Never heard of it.
Thank goodness for The Google.
I had to learn the who, where and what was Ruthenia.
I had a feeling it was made up but it wasn’t.
According to Wikipedia, Carpathian Ruthenia became part of the newly founded Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919, it was incorporated with nominal autonomy into the provisional Czechoslovak state as Subcarpathian ‘Rus.
Pump the breaks for a minute.
I mean, lean on those breaks and stop right here.
Look at those two sentences.
… Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919 …
Was a millennium of world history ever so easily dismissed?
If I write: Columbus came to the New World in 1492. Joseph R. Biden was elected President of the USA in 2020, the sentences would encompass some 500 years.
Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919, covers 919 years.
And for the first time in my life I hear about Ruthenia?
THERE IS A LESSON HERE.
The wikipedia article on Ruthenia starts with the line:
Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin as one of several designations for East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions, and most commonly as a designation for the lands of Rus’.
That didn’t help me much.
Luckily the term exonym was linked for further examination.
According to wikipedia:
Exonyms are a type of Ethnonyms.
An exonym (from Greek: éxō, ‘outer’; also known as xenonym) is a common, external name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, or a language/dialect, that is used only outside that particular place, group, or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons, but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words.
Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms.
An ethnonym (from the Greek: ἔθνος éthnos ‘nation’ and ὄνομα ónoma ‘name’) is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used by the ethnic group itself).
As an example, the ethnically dominant group in Germany is the Germans. The ethnonym Germans is a Latin-derived exonym used in the English language. Conversely, the Germans call themselves the Deutsche, an endonym. The German people are identified by a variety of exonyms across Europe, such as Allemands (French), tedeschi (Italian), tyskar (Swedish) and Niemcy (Polish).
As a sub-field of anthroponymy, the study of ethnonyms is called ethnonymy or ethnonymics.
Ethnonyms should not be confused with demonyms, distinctive terms that designate all people related to a specific territory, regardless of any ethnic, religious, linguistic or some other distinctions that may exist within the population of that territory.
My head is spinning and I think I have to get back to bed.
The line, “Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons, but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words.” did catch my eye though.
I am reminded of the story of D Day and the paratroopers that were dropped over Normandy in the dark.
Those paratroopers had a special password and countersign to identify friend of foe in the dark.
The paratroopers were to call out, “Lightning?”
The proper response was “Thunder!”
Why?
Those continental Germanic peoples on the other side had problems pronouncing difficult foreign words, especially words with TH.
Them Germanic folks would have responded, TUNDER.
As for Ruthenia?
According to Wikipedia, “On 15 March 1939, the Ukrainophile president of Carpatho-Ruthenia, Avhustyn Voloshyn, declared its independence as Carpatho-Ukraine. On the same day, regular troops of the Royal Hungarian Army occupied and annexed the region. In 1944 the Soviet Army occupied the territory, and in 1945 it was annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. Rusyns were not an officially recognized ethnic group in the USSR, as the Soviet government considered them to be Ukrainian.”
As Frank Lloyd Wright might have said, “There you are.”
go to the window watch wait and know the coming of a little love
But leave me a little love.
A voice to speak to me in the day end.
Based on the closing lines of the poem, At the Window, by Carl Sandburg.
Give me hunger, O you gods that sit and give The world its orders. Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love.
No Haiku For You 