Use a Restroom, Not a Street Just so we’re clear: as your parents probably made clear to you by the age of three, the only proper place to pee is in a potty. The city has provided portable toilets in the downtown area for you. Please use them. The highest number of arrests each year involve those who don’t
The Sub Heading on this webpage states:
We may not have any advice for curing a green beer hangover or how to get your family to agree on the perfect parade-watching spot, but we do have some great tips to help make your St. Pat’s experience safe, fun, and citation-free!
I am reminded of what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in his article, Natural Law (Harvard Law Review 40, 41 1918):
There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil who has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk!
By the way, this is the only way I celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable
Okay I fudged the middle stanza with 8 syllables, I just love the way the words roll off your tongue.
Anyone feel left out?
Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people.
They are subject to all these defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad.
But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is the wrong;
and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own —
not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine —
I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws.
To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him.
From Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Translated by Robin Hard with an Introduction and Notes by Christopher Gill, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 2011.
From the Introduction:
MARCUS AURELIUS (AD 121–80) was born (as Marcus Annius Verus) into a distinguished Roman family; after his father died in his childhood, he was adopted first by his grandfather and then by his uncle, Aurelius Antoninus, who became emperor in 138. Marcus married Antoninus’ daughter, Faustina, in 145 and they had several children, including Commodus, his first and only surviving son, who succeeded Marcus as emperor. On the death of Antoninus in 161, Marcus became emperor, along with Lucius Verus, who had also been adopted by Antoninus. They ruled together until Lucius’ death from illness in 169. Marcus’ period as emperor was dominated by confronting serious external threats to the boundaries and stability of the empire, especially from the Parthians in the east and the Germans in the north. Much of the period 168–80 was spent by Marcus in the Danube region, campaigning against the Germans, mostly successfully. In 175 there was a short and unsuccessful rebellion against him by Avidius Cassius. He died from illness in 180.
Marcus had the normal Roman aristocratic education in oratory and literature; his teachers included Fronto, and an extensive correspondence between them survives. But he was attracted from an early age to philosophy; the Stoic teachings of Epictetus were a special influence. The Meditations, probably written in his later years, served as a philosophical notebook in which he set down short reflections, based on Stoic ethics, summarizing the principles on which he based his life.
oh the rains came down the floods came up, it was gone in seventy two hours
An affluent group of beachfront property owners in Salisbury, Massachusetts – a coastal town 35 miles north of Boston – are mourning the loss of their investment after a safety measure they took to protect their homes failed.
The dune, made of 15,000 tons of sand, was meant to keep dangerous tides from encroaching on to the shore and damaging beach houses. The dune had just been completed in February but was gone within 72 hours.
there was something very real, work-like about this new phase of it
Adapted from the passage: About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh — this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.
In Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Boston, James R. Osgood and Company, 1883).
In the book Mr. Twain recounts his adventures as a student or ‘cub’ pilot on the Mississippi River around 1855.
Pilots stood a four hour watch on and four hour watch off through out the day that required getting out of bed at Midnight every other day.
Mr. Twain writes that on his first day, “The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman said —
‘Come! turn out!’
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure; so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed. I said: —
‘What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the night for. Now as like as not I’ll not get to sleep again to-night.’
The watchman said —
‘Well, if this an’t good, I’m blest.’
The ‘off-watch’ was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks as ‘Hello, watchman! an’t the new cub turned out yet? He’s delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.’
It is at the this point that we get to the above quoted passage.
This morning I got up.
I have had to get up in the morning most of my life but there it was today.
Standing in the shower, I had time to ponder the act of taking a shower.
Using the Google I learn that home hot water heaters (as we might recognize them) were invented in 1897 but still by 1920, only 1% of US homes had indoor plumbing or even electricity.
One online article states: The establishment of standardized plumbing codes in the 1940s finally paved the way for widely available, safe indoor plumbing that relied on the storage tank water heater.
My Dad was born in 1920 and I wondered when did he get used to a DAILY hot shower.
In 2024 I expect … EXPECT … to take a morning shower in not only HOT water but hot, fresh water.
I stood under the gush of water and tried to imagine all the I’s that had to be dotted and T’s that had to be crossed to make sure this minor miracle of the industrial age was so thoughtlessly made available to me at a rate that I was able expect my morning hot shower to work
If it didn’t work, it was some kind of an emergency for somebody.
But I digress.
I had a day yesterday and slept heavily last night to wake up a minute before the alarm and was able to switch that off before it sounded and woke up my wife.
Got the coffee going in the dark and into the shower.
Out in my robe, got my coffee and tablet and sat in the dark ready to find out how much the world had changed overnight.
My tablet glowed in the dark.
Morning coffee and reading out of the way I got dressed and packed up and off to the car to get to work by 7am.
Something was wrong or at least I thought it was as I am mostly confused in the morning anyway.
It was cool almost cold and it was dark.
But what was going on?
Something wasn’t right.
I felt, like I like to say, there was one boot off.
One boot off but I couldn’t tell which one.
Up in the dark and off to work.
I do it but I never get used to it.
I do it but I have never liked it.
Getting up and going to work in the dark adds something very real and work-like about this phase of a job.
And I pulled out on to the parkway and drove to work.
Between me and work are several high bridges over the Inter coastal water way.
From the top of these bridges I can spot the eastern edge of the United States and the Atlantic Ocean and the sun coming up.
And this morning was cold and dark and no sun.
Wait just a minute.
What was going on here.
Not any clouds or anything, but the Sun wasn’t coming up or something.
Something wasn’t right.
I checked the clock and I was on time.
I checked the traffic map and traffic was as it usually was.
I got to work and parked.
I got out in the dark, got my bag out of the back and locked the car.
As I walked the walkway to the front door I hauled my watch out of pocket and popped it open.
I held it in the light of the doorway light to read it.
6:00am!
I looked around the dark.
I looked at my watch that I hadn’t looked at since last Friday.
No Haiku For You 