Laudator Temporis Acti

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks (October 10, 1842):

A long while, indeed, since my last date. But the weather has been generally sunny and pleasant, though often very cold; and I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air. My chief amusement has been boating up and down the river.

Today is a sunny and pleasant autumn day, and I've been chained to a desk since early this morning. Most of the day has thus been wasted, but a few hours of autumnal sunshine remain. I have no boat, but I can walk to the Mississippi River in half an hour, and so off I go.

To impress on his listeners the need for repentance, John the Baptist proclaimed (Matthew 3.10, cf. Luke 3.9):

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

It would be no miracle to hew a tree with an axe and cast it into a fire, but it was a miracle when Jesus by means of a curse caused a fig tree to wither and die (Mark 11.12-14, 20-21; cf. Matthew 21.19-21):

[12] And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: [13] And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. [14] And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it....[20] And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. [21] And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

Luke's Gospel doesn't record the miracle of the cursing of the fig tree, but it does record the following parable told by Jesus (13.6-9):

[6] A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. [7] Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? [8] And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: [9] And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

Simone Weil is supposed to have said, "I never read the story of the barren fig-tree without trembling. I think it is about me."

The fig tree in the New Testament did not bear the fruit proper to it, that is to say, figs. But a tree that at first glance appears worthless may on closer inspection be valuable, as one of Aesop's fables (85 Chambry, tr. Laura Gibbs) shows:

A farmer had a tree on his land that did not yield any sort of fruit whatsoever. Instead, it was a home to the sparrows and the cicadas who chirped and sang. The farmer, however, thought that the tree was useless and decided he would cut it down. He grabbed an axe and prepared to start chopping, but the cicadas and the sparrows all began to wail, shouting these words at the man, 'Listen to us, O master of the tree: we implore you to be more generous. Please do not cut down this reverend dwelling! If indeed you are resolved to do such a thing, what benefit can you possibly hope for?' The man felt no pity for the creatures and showed them no mercy as he struck the tree three times with the axe's blade. But no sooner had the man made a crack in the tree when he found there a hive of bees and honey. He took a taste and immediately dropped his axe, vowing to cherish this tree even more than his fruit-bearing trees.

---

The New Republic magazine (May 19, 1997, p. 12) claimed that August Heckscher "coined the word 'arboricide' for the crime of killing trees." But the first citation (dated 1899) in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is H.G. Graham, Social Life of Scotl. 18th Cent. I. v. 199: "This crime of arboricide was distressingly frequent." The OED defines arboricide as "the wanton destruction of trees." To judge from Google, arboricide today more often means a chemical substance used to kill a tree (cf. herbicide, pesticide).

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Related posts:

• An Impious Lumberjack
  
• Erysichthon in Ovid
  
• Erysichthon in Callimachus
  
• Vandalism

Edward O. Wilson is not what most people would call a conventionally religious man. In his autobiography Naturalist, chapter 10 (The South Pacific), he utters an extraordinary prayer:

Take me, Lord, to an unexplored planet teeming with new life forms. Put me at the edge of virgin swampland dotted with hummocks of high ground, let me saunter at my own pace across it and up the nearest mountain ridge, in due course to cross over to the far slope in search of more distant swamps, grasslands, and ranges. Let me be the Carolus Linnaeus of this world, bearing no more than specimen boxes, botanical canister, hand lens, notebooks, but allowed not years but centuries of time. And should I somehow tire of the land, let me embark on the sea in search of new islands and archipelagoes. Let me go alone, at least for a while, and I will report to You and loved ones at intervals and I will publish reports on my discoveries for colleagues. For if it was You who gave me this spirit, then devise the appropriate reward for its virtuous use.

On the last page of his autobiography, in chapter 18 (Biodiversity, Biophilia), Wilson narrows his focus:

Conventional wildernesses of the overland trek may indeed be gone. Most of earth's largest species—mammals, birds, and trees—have been seen and documented. But microwildernesses exist in a handful of soil or aqueous silt collected almost anywhere in the world. They are at least close to a pristine state and still unvisited. Bacteria, protistans, nematodes, mites, and other minute creatures swarm around us, an animate matrix that binds Earth's surface. They are objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm's length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.

This reminds me of an oft-repeated anecdote about another Harvard scientist, Louis Agassiz. I haven't been able to trace its origin, but it goes something like this. Asked where he had travelled on his summer vacation, Agassiz replied, "Halfway across my back yard, because there was so much to see."

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. I, Sec. 2, Memb. 3, Subs. 15:

How many poor scholars have lost their wits, or become dizzards, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse and bene esse, to gain knowledge for which, after all their pains, in this world's esteem they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting, and mad.

Hermann Usener, "Italische Volksjustiz," Rheinisches Museum 56 (1900) 1-28, described how those deprived of official justice might take the law into their own hands, by publicly insulting the malefactor in front of the door to his house, when they met him in the street, at a public gathering, or otherwise.

The best example of this custom is a passage from Plautus' comedy Pseudolus (357-369). Here is the background. The pimp Ballio promised to sell the courtesan Phoenicium to the young man Calidorus for 20 minae. But Calidorus couldn't come up with the cash, so Ballio made arrangements to sell Phoenicium instead to a soldier who made a down payment of 15 minae. When Calidorus discovered that Ballio had reneged on his agreement to sell, Calidorus and his slave Pseudolus subjected the pimp to public insult and humiliation (tr. Charles T. Murphy):

CAL. Pseudolus, stand over there on the other side and dress him down for me.
PS. Right, sir! I'll do it faster than I'd run to the magistrates to be set free.
CAL. Give him the works!
PS. I'll give you a tongue-lashing that will cut you into mincemeat. You shameless villain [impudice]!
BAL. That's right.
PS. Scoundrel [sceleste]!
BAL. Quite true.
PS. Whipping-boy [verbero]!
BAL. Why not?
CAL. Grave-robber [bustirape]!
BAL. Sure.
PS. Jailbird [furcifer]!
BAL. Excellent.
CAL. Double-crosser [sociofraude]!
BAL. That's me all over.
PS. Murderer [parricida]!
BAL. Do go on.
CAL. Church-robber [sacrilege]!
BAL. Granted.
PS. Perjurer [peiiure]!
BAL. Old stuff; try a new tune.
CAL. Gangster [legirupa]!
BAL. Very good.
PS. Seducer of the youth [permities adulescentum]!
BAL. Pretty bitter!
CAL. Robber [fur]!
BAL. Bravo!
PS. Runaway [fugitive]!
BAL. Bravissimo!
CAL. You confidence man [fraus populi]!
BAL. Certainly.
PS. Cheat [fraudulente]!
CAL. Dirty dog [impure]!
PS. Pimp [leno]!
CAL. Dung [caenum]!
BAL. What charming voices!
CAL. You beat your own father and mother [verberavisti patrem atque matrem]!
BAL. Yes, and murdered them rather than feed them. Nothing wrong with that, was there?
PS. It's like pouring water into a cracked pitcher; we're wasting our strength.

CAL. Pseudole, adsiste altrim secus atque onera hunc maledictis. PS. licet.
numquam ad praetorem aeque cursim curram, ut emittar manu.
CAL. ingere mala multa. PS. iam ego te differam dictis meis.
impudice. BAL. itast. CAL. sceleste. BAL. dicis vera. PS. verbero.
BAL. quippini? CAL. bustirape. BAL. certo. PS. furcifer. BAL. factum optume.
CAL. sociofraude. BAL. sunt mea istaec. PS. parricida. BAL. perge tu.
CAL. sacrilege. BAL. fateor. PS. periure. BAL. vetera vaticinamini.
CAL. legirupa. BAL. valide. PS. permities adulescentum. BAL. acerrume.
CAL. fur. BAL. babae! PS. fugitive. BAL. bombax! CAL. fraus populi. BAL. planissume.
PS. fraudulente. CAL. impure. PS. leno. CAL. caenum. BAL. cantores probos!
CAL. verberavisti patrem atque matrem. BAL. atque occidi quoque
potius quam cibum praehiberem: num peccavi quippiam?
PS. in pertusum ingerimus dicta dolium, operam ludimus.

Adolph Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, tr. Lionel R.M. Strachan (1927), p. 317, thought that this passage from Plautus' Pseudolus was similar to the vice-list in 1 Timothy 1.8-11:

[8] But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; [9] Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless [ἀνόμοις] and disobedient [ἀνυποτάκτοις], for the ungodly [ἀσεβέσι] and for sinners [ἁμαρτωλοῖς], for unholy [ἀνοσίοις] and profane [βεβήλοις], for murderers of fathers [πατρολῴαις] and murderers of mothers [μητρολῴαις], for manslayers [ἀνδροφόνοις], [10] For whoremongers [πόρνοις], for them that defile themselves with mankind [ἀρσενοκοίταις], for menstealers [ἀνδραποδισταῖς], for liars [ψεύσταις], for perjured persons [ἐπιόρκοις], and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine; [11] According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

[8] Οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι καλὸς ὁ νόμος ἐάν τις αὐτῷ νομίμως χρῆται, [9] εἰδὼς τοῦτο, ὅτι δικαίῳ νόμος οὐ κεῖται, ἀνόμοις δὲ καὶ ἀνυποτάκτοις, ἀσεβέσι καὶ ἁμαρτωλοῖς, ἀνοσίοις καὶ βεβήλοις, πατρολῴαις καὶ μητρολῴαις, ἀνδροφόνοις, [10] πόρνοις, ἀρσενοκοίταις, ἀνδραποδισταῖς, ψεύσταις, ἐπιόρκοις, καὶ εἴ τι ἕτερον τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ διδασκαλίᾳ ἀντίκειται, [11] κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς δόξης τοῦ μακαρίου θεοῦ, ὃ ἐπιστεύθην ἐγώ.

Here are the parallels that Deissmann detected (I've changed all of the words to nominative singular):

ἄνομος = legirupa
ἀσεβής, ἀνόσιος = sacrilegus
ἁμαρτωλός = scelestus
βέβηλος = caenum, impurus
πατρολῴας, μητρολῴας = parricida, verberavisti patrem atque matrem
πόρνος = impudicus
ἀρσενοκοίτης = permities adulescentum
ψεύστης = fraudulentus
ἐπίορκος = periurus

I'm not convinced. Some of the supposed equivalents don't seem all that close to me. Deissmann himself said of ἀρσενοκοίτης and permities adulescentum that "this parallel is not certain." Ballio is permities adulescentum (the ruin of young men) because in his capacity as pimp he ruins young men financially and morally. This has nothing to do with the Greek ἀρσενοκοίτης (a man who sleeps with other men, i.e. a homosexual). Perhaps impurus would be a better match for ἀρσενοκοίτης (see e.g. Petronius, Satyricon 81). The association of βέβηλος (profane) with caenum and impurus seems far-fetched.

Deissmann pairs scelestus (wicked) with ἁμαρτωλός (sinner), but ἀνόσιος means both unholy and wicked, and I would therefore join scelestus and ἀνόσιος, especially since in the Vulgate of 2 Timothy 3.2, scelestus translates ἀνόσιος.

If I were trying to establish connections between Plautus' Pseudolus and 1 Timothy, I would also put leno (pimp) and ἀνδραποδιστής (slave-dealer) together, since pimps were engaged in what we might call the business of white slavery. Gingrich-Danker-Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, suggest "procurer" as a possible translation of ἀνδραποδιστής.

Here is a short bibliography on vice-lists. I haven't read any of the works on it.

• Burton Scott Easton, "New Testament Ethical Lists," Journal of Biblical Literature 51 (1932) 1-12
  
• Neil J. McEleney, "The Vice-Lists of the Pastoral Epistles," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36 (1974) 203-219
  
• Anton Vögtle, Die Tugend- und Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936)
  
• Siegfried Wibbing, Die Tugend- und Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament und ihre Traditionsgeschichte unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung der Qumran-Texte (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1959)

When I was a young boy in school, speed reading was a popular educational fad. President Kennedy was one of its most enthusiastic advocates. We were actually taught, in a systematic way, techniques for reading as rapidly as possible. Fortunately, I've forgotten most of what I learned. Reading quickly is like bolting your food. You can't appreciate or savor what you gulp down in a hurry.

In the preface to Daybreak (Morgenröte, tr. R.J. Hollingdale), Nietzsche says that the essence of philology is reading slowly:

It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading....For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow — it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book: — this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.

In Aristophanes, Wealth 188-197 (tr. anonymous), Chremylus and Cario talk to the god Wealth (Plutus):

CH. Men are never tired of your gifts. They get weary of all else,
— of love ...
CA. Bread.
CH. Music.
CA. Sweetmeats.
CH. Honors.
CA. Cakes.
CH. Battles.
CA. Figs.
CH. Ambition.
CA. Gruel.
CH. Military advancement.
CA. Lentil soup.
CH. But of you they never tire. If a man has thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardor to possess sixteen; if that wish is achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make both ends meet.

Χρ. ὥστ' οὐδὲ μεστὸς σοῦ γέγον' οὐδεὶς πώποτε.
τῶν μὲν γὰρ ἄλλων ἐστὶ πάντων πλησμονή,
ἔρωτος,—
Κα. ἄρτων,—
Χρ. μουσικῆς,—
Κα. τραγημάτων,—
Χρ. τιμῆς,—
Κα. πλακούντων,—
Χρ. ἀνδραγαθίας,—
Κα. ἰσχάδων,—
Χρ. φιλοτιμίας,—
Κα. μάζης,—
Χρ. στρατηγίας,—
Κα. φακῆς.
Χρ. σοῦ δ' ἐγένετ' οὐδεὶς μεστὸς οὐδεπώποτε.
ἀλλ' ἢν τάλαντά τις λάβῃ τριακαίδεκα,
πολὺ μᾶλλον ἐπιθυμεῖ λαβεῖν ἑκκαίδεκα:
κἂν ταῦτ' ἀνύσηται, τετταράκοντα βούλεται,
ἢ φησὶν οὐ βιωτὸν αὑτῷ τὸν βίον.

Cario is Chremylus' slave. Note the difference between the things coveted by a slave (bread, sweetmeats, cakes, figs, gruel, lentil soup) and by a free man (love, music, honors, battles, ambition, military advancement). For more on the insatiable nature of avarice see:

• Avarice and Dropsy
  
• Notes to Myself

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human II, I, 167 (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):

Sibi scribere. — The sensible author writes for no other posterity than his own, that is to say for his old age, so that then too he will be able to take pleasure in himself.

Sibi scribere. — Der vernünftige Autor schreibt für keine andere Nachwelt als für seine eigene, das heisst für sein Alter, um auch dann noch an sich Freude haben zu können.

See also Joseph S. Salemi, The Illusory Audience and the Interior Audience: or Why Good Poets Write Only for Themselves.

Related post: Soliloquies.

Associated Press, Family's License Plates Deemed Offensive:

MERLIN, Oregon (AP) — The state of Oregon has ordered a family to turn in the vanity license plates on its cars because their Dutch last name, which is written on the plates, is similar to an offensive word.

The plates, UDINK1 UDINK2 and UDINK3 are on the vehicles of Mike and Shelly Udink and their son Kalei. Two of the plates are five and seven years old. One was issued last year.

Last summer, Kawika Udink's application for UDINK4 was rejected and the state ordered that the other three plates be returned.

"DINK has several derogatory meanings," Yvonne Bell, who sits on the Department of Motorvehicles panel that approves vanity plates, told the Daily Courier newspaper.

DMV spokesman David House and Bell said the word can be treated as a verb, which gives it a sexual reference, and also can be a racial slur targeted at the Vietnamese.

House said the "U" in the front could be construed as "You."

The DMV denies requests for any combination of letters and numbers that may be viewed as objectionable, in any language, by use of phonetic, numeric or reverse spelling, or when viewed as a mirror image, or that would alarm or offend a reasonable person.

Intimate body parts or sexual or bodily functions are taboo, as are offensive references to race, color, gender, ethnic heritage, or national origin or to alcohol or drugs or paraphernalia.

The panel's ruling surprised Mike Udink, whose name is Dutch. He says it is a common last name in The Netherlands.

"Since when can a panel dictate whether your name's offensive or not?" asked Udink, a lineman for Pacific Power.

House said the state has the right to censor license plates, because the state owns them.

I think that the suffixes -ink and -inga in Dutch names indicate patronymics, so that Udink means nothing more offensive than "son of Udo."

I wonder what the license plate censors of Oregon would think about these names of Japanese prime ministers which suggest "sexual or bodily functions":

• Takeo Fukuda
  
• Noboru Takeshita
  
• Yasuo Fukuda

Gail Hapke at Scribal Terror quotes another blogger as follows:

Montezuma had a nephew named Cuitlahuac, which meant "plenty of poo" or "dry excrement."

Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique lists Cuitlāhuac as both a place name and a personal name, but gives no underlying meaning. On the other hand, the same dictionary defines cuitlahuaquiliztli as "constipation" and cuitlahuaquiztli as "excrément sec." I don't know what connection, if any, these words have with Cuitlāhuac.

Related post: Crappy Names.

Thanks to Peter Watson, who responded to Beeches and Bears by drawing my attention to Richard Mabey's new book Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees, scheduled for publication by Chatto and Windus on October 4.

The European beech is a different species (Fagus sylvatica) from the American (Fagus grandifolia). John Burroughs (An October Abroad, III: A Glimpse of France) preferred the European variety:

I was glad to see my old friend, the beech-tree, all along the route. His bole wore the same gray and patched appearance it does at home, and no doubt Thoreau would have found his instep even fairer; for the beech on this side of the Atlantic is a more fluent and graceful tree than the American species, resembling, in its branchings and general form, our elm, though never developing such an immense green dome as our elm when standing alone, and I saw no European tree that does. The European elm is not unlike our beech in form and outline.

The reference to Thoreau and the instep of the beech comes from Thoreau's Journal (Nov. 7, 1851):

No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.

Thoreau also uses the word instep when describing the beech in spring time (Journal, May 20, 1853):

The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long. It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots beginning to branch like bird's feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick. It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around. Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day, — last year's. There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath.

[Beech leaf and bark. Photograph by Robert H. Mohlenbrock. USDA NRCS. 1995. Northeast wetland flora: Field office guide to plant species. Northeast National Technical Center, Chester, PA. Courtesy of USDA NRCS Wetland Science Institute.]

Thoreau also describes the beech in the fall of the same year (Journal, Nov. 2, 1853):

The beech leaves have all fallen except some about the lower part of the trees, and they make a fine thick bed on the ground. They are very beautiful, fine and perfect leaves, unspotted, not eaten by insects, of a handsome, clear leather color, like a book bound in calf, crisp and elastic. They cover the ground so perfectly and cleanly as to tempt you to recline on it, and admire the beauty of the smooth boles from that position, covered with lichens of various colors, green, etc. They impress you as full of health and vigor, so that their bark can hardly contain their spirits, but lies in folds or wrinkles about their ankles like a sock, with the embonpoint, wrinkles of fat, of infancy.

In Walden Thoreau twice mentions visits to individual beech trees, first in the chapter on Baker Farm:

Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as ... the beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood...

But there is a danger in splitting beech in cold weather (Journal, Oct. 23, 1858):

Minott remembers how he used to chop beech wood. He says when frozen it is hard and brittle just like glass, and you must look out for the chips, for, if they strike you in the face, they will cut like a knife.

In the chapter on Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors in Walden, Thoreau writes:

But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree...

The scientific and the popular names of this tree (fagus and beech) are actually related, despite looking so different. They are separate branches of the linguistic tree whose root is Indo-European bhāgo-.

Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 17.28, wrongly derives fagus from Greek φαγεῖν (phagein = to eat), because its nuts are edible. This incorrect etymology can be found even in modern times, on some otherwise reliable web sites, e.g. on the page for Fagus grandifolia on the web site of the Robert W. Freckmann Herbarium at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point.

Tony Augarde, The Oxford Guide to Word Games (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 117-118:

The game of word-building leads naturally to another game based on the same principle—the very well-known game called Ghosts or Donkey.

The first player thinks of a word of three or more letters, and calls out its first letter. The second player adds another letter, which continues but does not complete a word, and so on, until one player is forced to finish a word. Any player who adds a letter can be challenged by the next player to say what the word will be. Any player who loses such a challenge or completes a word becomes 'a third of a ghost'. When he loses again, he becomes 'two-thirds of a ghost' and the third time he is 'a whole ghost' and is out of the game.

....

SUPERGHOSTS is a variation of the game, in which letters can be added at the beginning as well as the end. James Thurber was an addict of Superghosts, and he described its agonies and ecstasies in an essay entitled 'Do You Want to Make Something Out of It?'

In the essay, Thurber took up a challenge to find words that can be made from the combination of letters sgra, such as disgrace. There aren't many in English, so Thurber invented a series of compounds, to which he added amusing definitions. Among Thurber's invented words is the following:

fussgrape. 1. One who diets or toys with his food, a light eater, a person without appetite, a scornmuffin, a shuncabbage. 2. A man, usually American, who boasts of his knowledge of wines, a smugbottle.

Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 12 (tr. Walter Starkie):

Not far from here there is a place where there are some two dozen tall beeches, and every one of them has Marcela's name cut on its smooth bark, and above her name sometimes a crown is carved, as if her lover intended to declare more plainly still that Marcela wears and deserves the crown of all human beauty.

Edward Hoagland, The Ridge-Slope Fox and the Knife Thrower, in Heart's Desire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 27:

Beeches possess a smooth, grayish bark, almost water-colored, which cuts as easily as the bark of paper birch, but doesn't peel as birch bark does. These were the trees that lovers carved their initials on back in the days when lovers knew the properties of different trees. The beech's skin, as tender as it is, will keep its scars right into old age, which may mean fifty or one hundred years or more...

Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of North American Trees (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), pp. 162-163:

And on the beech was written, probably, the first page of European literature. For, it is said the earliest Sanskrit characters were carved on strips of beech bark; the custom of inscribing the temptingly smooth boles of Beeches came to Europe with the Indo-European people who entered the continent from Asia. Indeed, our word "book" comes from the Anglo-Saxon boc, meaning a letter or character, which in turn derives from the Anglo-Saxon beece, for Beech. So if you find a big old Beech tree in the woods, hacked by some love-struck boy with the outline of a heart and his girl's initials in it, forgive him. He is but following a custom older than Shakespeare, who also records it:

O Rosalind! These trees shall be my books,
  And in their bark my thoughts I'll character;
That every eye which in this forest looks
  Shall see thy virtue witness'd everywhere.

And Virgil asks:

Or rather shall I the sad verse repeat
Which on the beech's bark I lately writ?

An epic line in pure American vein might have been read by all who passed that way, until about 1880, on a Beech tree on Carrol Creek, in Washington County, Tennessee, on the old stage road between Blountsville and Jonesboro.

D. Boone
Cilled a Bar
On Tree
In Year 1760

This tree fell in 1916, the scars of the inscription, but not the exact wording, still visible. It was 28 1/2 feet in girth, and 70 feet high, and its age was estimated by the Forest Service to be 365 years. So it began to grow in the year 1551, half a century before Orlando mooned about Rosalind in Arden, and was an ancient of two centuries when Daniel Boone inscribed his hunter's triumph on it.

Bears, who love to eat beech nuts, also leave the marks of their own writing on the trees, according to Hoagland (pp. 27-28):

[T]he bears, having the trees to themselves, and feeling impatient and proprietary, will climb sixty or eighty feet into the crown of the fall foliage to shake the limbs and hurry the harvest along. In doing so, they leave a ladderlike series of neat claw prints going up (going down, the bear will slide as if the tree were a firehouse pole), incised with a particular fingering that manages to create a personal image of the bear involved....These ladders up the beech tree have a logic to them and are precious for that. The bears are manlike and their marks manlike, and so carry an authority and resonance because they reach way back and yet one can ride forward on the memory of them for a good while.

Timothy Flint, The First White Man of the West: Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky; Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country, chapter 5, tells the story of Daniel Boone's heroic fight against a bear that attacked him. If Boone's inscription on the beech tree was genuine and not a forgery, perhaps it recalls the less courageous killing of a bear that was simply climbing a beech tree in search of food. If so, we can date the inscription not only to the year (1760), but also to the time of year (fall).

The description of this blog reads:

Complaints and quotations about this and that by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).

Quotations about complaints are therefore not out of place. Here is one from Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 8 (tr. Walter Starkie):

"God's will be done," said Sancho. "I'll believe all your worship says; but straighten yourself a bit in the saddle, for you seem to be leaning over on one side, which must be from the bruises you received in your fall."

"That is true," replied Don Quixote, "and if I do not complain, it is because knights-errant must never complain of any wound, even though their guts are protruding from them."

"If that be so, I've no more to say," answered Sancho, "but God knows I'd be glad to hear you complain when anything hurts you. As for myself, I'll never fail to complain at the smallest twinge, unless this business of not complaining applies also to squires."

Don Quixote could not help laughing at the simplicity of his squire and told him that he might complain whenever he pleased and to his heart's content, for he had never read anything to the contrary in the order of chivalry.

Cf. Schiller, Don Carlos, I, 4:

Great souls suffer in silence.

Grosse Seelen dulden still.

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Abraham Cowley's essay The Garden, addressed to John Evelyn, starts out thus:

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature.

And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and entire to lie,
In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.

Or, as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might there studiis florere ignobilis otii, though I could wish that he had rather said nobilis otii when he spoke of his own. But several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish, and without that pleasantest work of human industry—the improvement of something which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am not arrived at my little Zoar. "Oh, let me escape thither (is it not a little one!), and my soul shall live."

In the references to Sodom and Zoar, Cowley recalls Genesis 13.10:

And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.

Cowley expressed much the same sentiments (and even used the same phrase "a small house and large garden") in his poem The Wish:

Well then!  I now do plainly see
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
          And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings,
          Of this great hive, the city.

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
          And since love ne'er will from me flee,
A Mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
          Only beloved and loving me.

O fountains!  when in you shall I
Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy?
O fields!  O woods!  when, when shall I be made
The happy tenant of your shade?
          Here's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood:
Here's wealthy Nature's treasury,
Where all the riches lie that she
          Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.

Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;
Here naught but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter,
And naught but Echo flatter.
          The gods, when they descended, hither
From heaven did always choose their way:
And therefore we may boldly say
          That 'tis the way too thither.

How happy here should I
And one dear She live, and embracing die!
She who is all the world, and can exclude
In deserts solitude.
          I should have then this only fear:
Lest men, when they my pleasures see,
Should hither throng to live like me,
          And so make a city here.

In ancient times, Horace and Martial had similar wishes. The wish of Horace (Satires 2.6.1-4, tr. John Conington) came true:

This used to be my wish: a bit of land,
A house and garden with a spring at hand,
And just a little wood. The gods have crowned
My humble vows; I prosper and abound:
Nor ask I more.

Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus,
hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons
et paulum silvae super his foret. auctius atque
di melius fecere. bene est. nil amplius oro.

Martial 10.47 has attracted many English translators. Here is Ben Jonson's version, followed by the original Latin:

The things that make the happy life, are these,
Most pleasant Martial; substance got with ease,
Not laboured for, but left thee by thy sire;
A soil, not barren; a continual fire;
Never at law; seldom in office gowned;
A quiet mind; free powers; and body sound;
A wise simplicity; friends alike-stated;
Thy table without art, and easy-rated;
Thy night not drunken, but from cares laid waste;
No sour, or sullen bed-mate, yet a chaste;
Sleep, that will make the darkest hours swift-paced;
Will to be, what thou art; and nothing more:
Nor fear thy latest day, nor wish therefore.

Vitam quae faciant beatiorem,
iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
res non parta labore sed relicta;
non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
prudens simplicitas, pares amici;
convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
nox non ebria sed soluta curis;
non tristis torus et tamen pudicus;
somnus qui faciat breves tenebras:
quod sis esse velis nihilque malis;
summum nec metuas diem nec optes.

H.H. Munro (Saki), The Feast Of Nemesis:

"The trouble is," said Clovis to his aunt, "all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encouraged by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one else had failed you at the last moment; if you are supping at a restaurant on New Year's Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands and sing 'For Auld Lang Syne' with strangers whom you have never seen before and never want to see again. But no licence is allowed in the opposite direction."

"Opposite direction; what opposite direction?" queried Mrs. Thackenbury.

"There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe. That is really the crying need of our modern civilisation. Just think how jolly it would be if a recognised day were set apart for the paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one could lay oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured list of 'people who must not be let off.'"

From William Cullen Bryant, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood (1821):

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men,
And made thee loathe thy life.

When I lived in Florida near the beach, many friends and relatives visited me as overnight guests. Since I moved to Minnesota, I've had few visitors. But that may change, now that the Twin Cities have a new tourist attraction.

In Greek mythology the three Fates are Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. When a man is born, Clotho spins the thread of his life, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it. We have a fixed amount of time to live, corresponding to the length of the thread.

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales I, 3891-3894 (Prologue to the Reeve's Tale), represents the allotted span of life in a different way, as the amount of liquid in a barrel. Let's suppose the barrel contains wine, because Chaucer's father was a vintner. When we are born, the spigot is opened, and the wine starts to spill out. When the barrel is empty, life comes to an end. Here is Nevill Coghill's modern English translation, followed by Chaucer's original Middle English:

Certain, when I was born, so long ago,
Death drew the tap of life and let it flow;
And ever since the tap has done its task,
And now there's little but an empty cask.
My stream of life's but drops upon the rim.

For sikerly, whan I was bore, anon
Deeth drough the tappe of lyf and leet it gon,
And ever sithe hath so the tappe yronne
Til that almoost al empty is the tonne.
The streem of lyf now droppeth on the chymbe.

Can we know how long the thread is, or how much wine is left in the barrel? Horace (Ode 1.11) chides Leuconoe for trying to find out:

Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what final fate the gods have given to me and you, Leuconoe, and don't consult Babylonian horoscopes. How much better it is to accept whatever shall be, whether Jupiter has given many more winters or whether this is the last one, which now breaks the force of the Tuscan sea against the facing cliffs. Be wise, strain the wine, and trim distant hope within short limits. While we're talking, grudging time will already have fled: seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quicquid erit, pati,
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

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Genesis 2.19-20:

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.

Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 72:

And of all God's gifts, the best one is language—the power to name and proclaim and identify, to fashion from the noisy void our lexicons for birds of the air, fishes in the seas, what grows in the greensward; and for contempt and affection, pleasure and pain, beauty and order and their absences.

To the examples collected in Time to Go, add Strabo 10.5.6 (on Ceos, tr. H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer):

There was an ancient law among these people, mentioned by Menander. 'Phanias, that is a good law of the Ceans; who cannot live comfortably (or well), let him not live miserably (or ill).' For the law, it seems, ordained that those above sixty years old should be compelled to drink hemlock, in order that there might be sufficient food for the rest. It is said that once when they were besieged by the Athenians, a decree was passed to the effect that the oldest persons, fixing the age, should be put to death, and that the besiegers retired in consequence.

---

Alexandra Juhasz is teaching a course called "Learning from YouTube" at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Tuition, room, and board at Pitzer College cost over $45,000 a year. Maybe they should rename it Patzer College (German patzer = bungler). If I were a student, I'd be ashamed for such a course to be named permanently on my college transcript.

---

Fritz Rienacker, Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament, tr. Cleon Rogers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), p. 89:

For the resumptive pronoun used after a relative, s. W.F. Bakker, Pronomen Alurdans and Pronomen Coniunctum, 39.

I thought at first this was some new exotic species of pronoun, but it's just a misprint for pronomen abundans.

---

Doug Harlow, Fairfield Council to OK town logo contest, Morning Sentinel (September 12, 2007):

Town Councilors will be asked tonight to allow the Economic and Community Development office to go ahead with plans for a town logo contest for the development of a new town seal.

The contest winner will receive a $50 gift certificate.

....

On the idea for a new town logo, [Town Manager Paul] Blanchette said, newly hired Economic and Community Development Planner Roseanna Bradley is hoping for a new look that represents the town and its growth.

"We're looking to develop a new town seal we can use, something pertinent to the town of Fairfield," Blanchette said. "We're looking for ideas and there really are no rules."

I don't know how long the old town seal has been around, but this seems to me to be needless change just for the sake of change. It's difficult for my tired eyes to make out all the details, but the old seal on the Fairfield, Maine web site appears to show a mill on a stream, a plow, and a saw cutting a log, all of which represent honest labor. Will the new seal represent the new economic paradigm, some paper pusher (perhaps an Economic and Community Development Planner) tapping keys on a computer?

---

To the collection of quotations on Children Who Resemble Their Fathers, add this fragment from Menander, Karchedonios (tr. W.G. Arnott):

For no one knows who his own father is—
We all assume it, or take it on trust.

αὑτὸν γὰρ οὐθεὶς οἶδε τοῦ ποτ' ἐγένετο,
ἀλλ' ὑπονοοῦμεν πάντες ἢ πιστεύομεν.

---

Edward O. Wilson, Naturalist (New York: Warner Books, 1995), p. 56:

I turned with growing concentration to Nature as a sanctuary and a realm of boundless adventure; the fewer people in it, the better. Wilderness became a dream of privacy, safety, control, and freedom. Its essence is captured for me by its Latin name, solitudo.