Ides of March are come …. seer said softly, … they are come but they are not gone
Adapted from The Parallel Lives: The Life of Julius Caesar by Plutarch, as published in Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1919 where the author rights.
The following story, too, is told by many. A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: “Well, the Ides of March are come,” and the seer said to him softly: “Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.” Moreover, on the day before, when Marcus Lepidus was entertaining him at supper, Caesar chanced to be signing letters, as his custom was, while reclining at table, and the discourse turned suddenly upon the question what sort of death was the best; before any one could answer Caesar cried out: “That which is unexpected.” After this, while he was sleeping as usual by the side of his wife, all the windows and doors of the chamber flew open at once, and Caesar, confounded by the noise and the light of the moon shining down upon him, noticed that Calpurnia was in a deep slumber, but was uttering indistinct words and inarticulate groans in her sleep; for she dreamed, as it proved, that she was holding her murdered husband in her arms and bewailing him.
Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II also comes to mind.
Cassius speaks to Brutus
Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, That her wide walks encompassed but one man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough When there is in it but only one man.
As Kenneth Roth, a Guardian US columnist and visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch writes in his opinion piece, “Trump needs to reject Netanyahu’s quest for a forever war“:
As the world suffers the economic consequences of this disastrous war of choice, and people see yet another defenseless people being pummeled by the US-Israeli military alliance, public opinion is turning rapidly. American support for Israel has plummeted, first as it committed genocide in Gaza, and apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and now the crime of aggression in Iran.
Trump’s lawless belligerence and indifference to international standards have made the public in key democratic allies – Canada, Germany, France and the UK – favor a turn toward China, despite its own repressive indifference to international law. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Trump’s aggression is no more popular among allied governments. His pleas for help in defending tankers in the strait of Hormuz have so far come up empty. He has tried to up the ante, suggesting that his commitment to Nato, a defensive alliance built on pledges to support any member under attack, would depend on Nato members joining him in his offensive war of aggression. The response to that threat was decidedly cold.
Trump has an endless capacity to make fact-free pronouncements about the brilliant success of his policies. Iranians’ best hope may be that he declare victory and move on. Trump’s demand for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” complicates that face-saving strategy. Yet as the price of Trump’s folly mounts – new inflationary pressure, declining stock markets, worsening midterm prospects, even a disheartened Maga base – we must hope that Trump finds the wisdom to reject Netanyahu’s quest for a forever war and calls it quits.
Look again at the words …
Trump’s lawless belligerence and indifference …
Trump’s aggression …
Trump has an endless capacity to make fact-free pronouncements …
Trump’s folly mounts …
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
… the seer said to him softly: “Ay, the Ides of March are come … but they are not gone.
Ms. Sauma quotes Salman Rushdie describing the movie, “as his “very first literary influence.”
Ms. Sauma writes, “In all of western cinema, is there a more recognisable image than Dorothy in her blue gingham dress, arm in arm with the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man, skipping down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, so that the Wizard can fulfil their dreams? It’s somehow cheering that this chaotic, surreal musical about a teenage girl, her dog and her three weird friends running away from a witch, searching for a wizard, and trying to become their best selves is so influential.”
I have long enjoyed thinking about this article since I first quoted from it back when it came out in 2019.
Everyone has seen the Wizard of Oz.
And, as Ms. Sauma writes, “This is the key to its influence: the fact that everyone watches it in childhood. It seeps into your unconscious and stays there.”
I had to wonder.
Was it true?
In all of western cinema, is there a more recognisable image than Dorothy?
Has everyone has seen the Wizard of Oz?
I happened to be in a Pat Conroy cycle.
Pat Conroy, the author of the Low Country.
His books (and movies of his books) include The Great Santini and Prince of Tides.
And the book about his year teaching on Dafuskie Island, about 5 miles from where I am sitting.
That book, The Water is Wide, written in the early 70’s, about how, instead of joining the Peace Corps, Conroy takes a job teaching in a two room school house where he would have the 4th through 8th graders.
These kids were Gullah kids.
Born and raised on a barrier island with little contact to the rest of the world.
Conroy writes of his first day:
At the end of the day I had compiled an impressive ledger of achievement.
Seven of my students could not recite the alphabet.
Three children could not spell their names.
Eighteen children thought Savannah, Georgia, was the largest city in the world.
Savannah was the only city any of the kids could name.
Eighteen children had never seen a hill—eighteen children had never heard the words integration and segregation.
Four children could not add two plus two.
Eighteen children did not know we were fighting a war in Southeast Asia.
Of course, eighteen children never had heard of Asia.
One child was positive that John Kennedy was the first President of the United States.
Seventeen children agreed with that child.
Eighteen children concurred with the pre-Copernican Theory that the earth was the center of the universe.
Two children did not know how old they were.
Five children did not know their birth dates.
Four children could not count to ten.
The four oldest thought the Civil War was fought between the Germans and the Japs.
Do you get they picture here?
The year was 1973 but it might have been 1773.
Conroy digs in a makes the effort to expose his class to the rest of the world and encourages discussion on topics on levels that would bring in his students.
One day had a discussion, by chance after watching an old movie of the TV Show You Are There with Walter Cronkite (Conroy had discovered a movie projector in a store room and took all the movies he could get from the County School System) about The Salem Witch Trials and that led to questions and statements from the students on witches.
From here, I will let Pat Conroy tell the story.
Big C screwed his face up into his question-mark look. “It true if you throw water on a witch, she disappear?”
Suddenly every eye in the room was riveted on me. Only the pigs grunting and rooting on the schoolyard disturbed the silence created by this single question. And there was something about the question itself, something ancient and primordial, something that disturbed the hidden and oft lost mythology of my own youth; I felt something stir as I thought about the wet witch, and knew that a feeling in my subconscious was rising like an air bubble to the surface. Then I had it.
“Big C, you’ve seen the Wizard of Oz.”
Eighteen voices shouted hosannas to the trembling faker of Oz. Cindy Lou broke off into an impromptu rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” Others pretended they were cowardly lions. Richard stood up and walked like a scarecrow suspended from his stake. Each member of the class had memorized the movie classic, had watched it religiously each time it appeared on television and had added personal interpretations to the bizarre forces rampant in the spirit-haunted land over the rainbow. And if the Yamacraw children knew about Oz, then I was convinced a hell of a lot of other children in America knew about it, too. My jeremiads against television since my first days on the island had continued undiminished, fed with the plentiful food of my students’ ignorance about people, events, and the world. Now, in a single moment, I had to retract my sweeping indictment of TV: it had not failed completely, only partially. Every child in the room knew the legend of Oz by heart, the importance of the yellow-brick road, the incarnate evil of the wicked Witch of the West, and the ultimate hypocrisy of the great wizard himself. Oz, it seemed, had entered into the consciousness of American children, and not just a selected few, but almost every child in every situation. I considered Yamacraw a touchstone: if the Yamacraw children knew about it, then the chances were excellent that the vast majority of American children had been reached. The Wizard of Oz, through the medium of television, had become part of American mythology as important and relevant to the children of America as the Homeric legends were to the children of Athens.
So Big C’s question was the catalyst for a great and memorable afternoon, one of those rare moments generated by chance, planned by no one, spontaneous and joyful, transcending the need for a teacher or a classroom, and making me once more think of education as something alive and helpful, instead of as a withered dream in need of formaldehyde. Oz took over the rest of the day. For a couple of minutes it was utter pandemonium. Fred introduced a moving argument in incomprehensible Fredese in favor of the proposition that water could evaporate witches. Prophet thought this was crap. He told Fred so. Fred told Prophet he would kick his butt if he continued to think it was crap. Mary mumbled something into her left hand about fire being better than water. Saul said that there ain’t no sure way to kill a witch.
Cindy Lou’s voice finally broke through the general upheaval of noise and offered to recite her King James Version of the story.
“O.K.,” said I.
“There was this little girl who got blown away in a rainstorm,” she started.
“That ain’t the way it was,” said Jimmy Sue.
“How was it then, you old ugly self?” Cindy Lou shot back.
“Ain’t no rainstorm, sister.”
“Damn right it was a rainstorm.”
“No, girl, it was a tor-nay-do.”
“Yeah,” the class agreed, “it was a tornado.”
“Same thing,” claimed Cindy Lou.
“No, girl. Tor-nay-do take your head clean off,” offered Mary.
“You tellin’ the story, girl?” Cindy inquired menacingly of Jimmy Sue.
“No.”
“Then you keep your mout’ out of it.”
“This girl got blown away by a wind and the house she was in hit a bad witch on the head and kill her dead. Then the girl and her little dog go marchin’ down this yellow-brick road ’til they meet this chicken lion who try to act tough.”
“No,” a chorus of voices shouted.
“No, what?” Cindy Lou asked.
“That girl don’t meet no lion,” said Samuel, in one of his first vocal contributions of the year.
“Sure she meets a lion.”
“No, girl, first she sees the scarecrow. Ain’t got no brains.”
“Yeah, scarecrow first,” the class agreed, acting out the chorus in this impromptu drama.
“You tell the story, cockeye.”
“Call me cockeye and I bust your head,” Samuel shouts, clenching his fists.
“Don’t call Samuel cockeye, Cindy Lou.”
“He is cockeye.”
“Yeah, he cockeye,” the chorus agrees.
“No,” I say.
“I bust your head,” Samuel warns the whole class.
“You cockeye,” the class chants.
“The scarecrow first,” says Richard. “Let me tell the story.”
“Oh boy, Richard, give it to us.”
So Richard rendered his version of Oz. Then Oscar, then Frank, then Mary, then Sidney, each adding their own peculiar interpretations, each emphasizing a different part of the story, and each feeling perfectly free to combine incidents from the Wizard of Oz with incidents that occurred in other television programs. Sidney got Oz confused with an episode from “Bonanza.” Hoss Cartwright battling the witches of the Purple Sage. According to Oscar, Oz and Disneyland were somehow related. Richard somehow got Captain Kangaroo confused with the wizard, and Mr. Greenjeans confused with the scarecrow.
Ethel, a purist in the group, strutted to the microphone and began a long, precise, but monotonous epic, which was technically unflawed and accurate except that everyone in the class believed she was making the stuff up. In the middle of her story, Top Cat got up and started singing a new song just released by swing-man James Brown. He hopped and swayed what he called a “new jive” while the kids clapped their hands and tapped their feet until the great head of Mrs. Brown appeared in the window, flashing a look the Romans must have worn on their faces when turning thumbs down on some prostrate Christian. But even though the kids quit responding and reverted back to their classical pose of scholars erect in their desks and lusting for knowledge, Top Cat gyrated on, a grin like a jack-o’-lantern carved on his face and eyes raised in adoration of some muse deep within him.
When Top Cat finally subsided and sank back into his desk, Prophet of the unknown tongue continued the interrupted marathon of Oz, an untranslatable potpourri of grunts and monosyllables, punctuated only by Prophet’s beautifully effusive smiles.
When the afternoon was over and the bus ambled into the schoolyard, and the kids had filed out of the room, I had on tape the story of Oz as it had never been told before—a new Oz, a land that Judy Garland had never entered, but one especially created on a December afternoon by children of an island ruled by a river, and possibly another wizard, with perhaps a greater claim to credibility.*
Ms. Sauma writes, “Everyone has their own Oz.”
You know what?
I think that’s true.
Ms. Sauma closes her 2019 article writing, “The Wizard of Oz doesn’t sugar-coat the truth: there are monsters out there, and the only things that matter are fellowship and home, wherever you find them – a message as relevant now as it was in 1939.”
I agree.
Got to end this now as it has gone on long enough and I want to check under the bed for flying monkeys.
*The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972).
important that one not say any foolish things if he can help it
I appear before you, fellow-citizens merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while, at least, were I to commence a speech.
I do not appear before you for the purpose [of speechifying] and for several substantial reasons.
The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make.
It is somewhat important in my position that one should not say any foolish things if he can help it and to help it is to say nothing at all.
Believing that that is my precise position this evening, I must beg you from saying “one word.”
Abraham Lincoln in response to a ‘serenade’ from the crowd on the night of November 18, 1863 as reported in the Gettysburg Star & Banner.
The next day, after spending the night in Gettysburg, Mr. Lincoln would deliver his short remarks in dedicating a cemetery on the site of the battle.
Gabor Boritt, in his book, The Gettysburg gospel : the Lincoln speech that nobody knows (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), writes:
In 118 or so words, Lincoln acquitted himself: his first Gettysburg address. The following day, he would speak in a different vein and would not need many more than twice the number of words to say his piece. This night the crowds got the bantering, vintage Westerner, funny and humble. They applauded long when he finished. Thursday, the 19th, would be another day.
Young Hay wrote in his diary: “The President appeared at the door said his half dozen words meaning nothing & went in.” Lincoln knew better. He had shown the people that he was one of them. That was not unimportant. That his opponents would fault him, “the great American humorist,” he also knew. And if he had even more serious purpose in coming to Gettysburg, he understood that the throngs came in no small measure to enjoy themselves. Nor would all of them make sharp distinctions. Local butcher Harvey Sweeney heard Lincoln that evening and on the next day, too, and in a letter to his brother ten days later would lump it all together as “noble speeches”: “the greatest of the great men,” whose words “endeared him to the hearts of the people and added thousands of friends to him….“
When Lincoln went back indoors after his speech, he could hear people whooping, singing, carrying on, and going next door to serenade the next dignitary. In the Harpers’ house, the Secretary of State was the most honored guest. Seward had been the president’s stand-in until a few days ago. On the train, had the two men talked about what they would say? They were heading into a festive town and Seward knew that he would be asked to speak, too. He had his backup speech ready.
once made, no step could ever retraced; once headed path would never bend
The horse plodded stumble-footedly up the hill and the old man walked beside it.
In the lowering sun their giant shadows flickered darkly behind them.
The grandfather was dressed in a black broadcloth suit and he wore kid congress gaiters and a black tie on a short, hard collar. He carried his black slouch hat in his hand.
His white beard was cropped close and his white eyebrows overhung his eyes like mustaches.
The blue eyes were sternly merry.
About the whole face and figure there was a granite dignity, so that every motion seemed an impossible thing.
Once at rest, it seemed the old man would be stone, would never move again.
His steps were slow and certain.
Once made, no step could ever be retraced; once headed in a direction, the path would never bend nor the pace increase nor slow.
From The Red Pony by John Steinbeck with illustrations by Wesley Dennis, (New York: Viking, 1945).
Once made, no step could ever be retraced.
Once headed in a direction, the path would never bend nor the pace increase nor slow.
I like to think of a feller named Potiphar.
For those of my readers who didn’t have the benefit of a Sunday School education, Potiphar was the captain of the guard for Pharaoh and when caravans arrived in Egypt with a slave for sale named Joseph, a poor kid sold off by his brothers up in Canaan land, Potiphar bought Joseph and put him to work in his household.
The story of Joseph takes off from there but its Potiphar I think about.
There is so so so much in the news today about money money money and wealth wealth wealth.
In the days of Julius Caesar, the richest man in the world at the time, a feller named Crassus, said the sign of true wealth was your own private army.
Crassus owned the major fire departments in Rome and when you needed them, they would arrive and then tell you how much it would cost to put the fire out.
Closer to our time, the financier John Pierpont Morgan was asked how much his new private yacht cost. This is the Morgan who put together the syndicate that formed US Steel as well as the ship building conglomerate that launched the Titanic and her sister ships Olympic and Britannic. Anyway, when asked about his yacht, the Corsair (which was later converted by the US Navy into a warship for the Spanish-American War) what it cost, Morgan said if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it.
Today the fellers have private air fleets, private islands and private homes all over the world that proving, each day to be less private then these rich people ever thought.
Back to Potiphar.
Fitting into my definition of the rich person, the Bible tells us that Joseph turned out to be a good purchase and Potiphar turned over his household operations to Joseph and with a good man running his affairs and his position as Captain of guard for Pharaoh, Potiphar …did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
All Potiphar had to do each day was think, ‘what do I want for lunch?’, with full expectation that anything he wanted for lunch today is what he was going to have for lunch today.
How can having $1 Million or $100 Billion in the bank improve on that?
You can’t eat more than one lunch today.
I had a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich for lunch yesterday.
A sandwich made on bread I baked the day before.
How can having $1 Million or $100 Billion in the bank improve on that?
I am as well off as Mr. Morgan, Crassus or Potiphar.
So you ask, what does this have to do with the quote from the Red Pony?
As I recall, the Red Pony was one of the books read to my sixth grade class by our teacher who started the day with 10 or 15 minutes of reading.
I don’t often think of our teacher, Mr. Vanderwheel, as a liberal type but to read the Steinbeck to a bunch of 6th graders …
But I digress.
Here is the point for today.
I put it to you that the truly well off are those folks who do not concern himself with anything except the food they eat.
What will I have for lunch?
And I put it to you that the only real decision anyone can make each day is what you will have for lunch.
We are all there, because, truly, all the other decisions have been made.
The steps are slow and certain.
Once made, no step could ever be retraced.
Once headed in a direction, the path would never bend nor the pace increase nor slow.
To think we have any control … well Boy Howdy.
All I can say is I hope you enjoy your lunch as this is way too much to think about for a Monday morning.
Oh and BTW … I cannot write about how happy I might be without enormous wealth without thinking of an interview I saw between Dick Cavet and Orson Welles. Mr. Cavet asked Mr. Welles what he would do if he was given a fabulous amount of money, millions of dollars, and Mr. Welles immediately responded, ‘Give it all away!‘ There was a pause and the camera stayed on Mr. Welles and he tucked his chin into his chest, smiled and said very quietly something along the lines of, “… of course my answer would probably be different if it ever actually happened.”
No Haiku For You 