Friday, December 31, 2010

I have been getting more spam from China recently that has snuck under Google's spam filter. Yesterday I got the following:


我是中国普通的中国人,我知道宋要武(也就是那个宋彬彬)是不是她还在美国呢?      不过我想她可能还在吧。我想也许她不能也不可能回来。         卞仲耘的事可能她忘记的。
 我希望你能交流


No, I have no idea what the hell it says but I thought, "Another goddamn discount cigarette offer."  Something, a lull in the day or whatever, made me Google Translate it rather than do a no-look pass to trash:


"I am a Chinese general of the Chinese people, I know to Wu Song (that is, the Song Binbin) is not she still in the United States? But I think she might still be right. I thought maybe she could not and can not come back. Bian could she forget something.
I hope you can exchange."


"HOLY SHIT!  Song...Bian...and from a Chinese GENERAL!"


I sent the email to a Chinese-American friend and asked her to verify.  This is the translation of the translation:


"I am an ordinary Chinese. I would like to know if Song Binbin is still in the States. I think that she may be still in the States. Perhaps, she cannot or is not allowed to return to China. Probably, she has forgotten Bian Zhongyun.

I hope that I can exchange ideas with you."



In other words, "general"=ordinary, not "GENERAL."


Swine Google Translate.


And the writer didn't leave a name, so it may still be spam. 


Happy New Year world, and especially to friends...and enemies. It is a wonderful world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I

Miss you, Iz.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

I rolled out of bed this morning and somnambulated over to the bagel shop. Bruce, the owner, looked at me as I walked in and immediately called to Mercy, "A dark cafe con leche, please." (pause)  "The kind we use to wake up the dead."

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Seeking the Soul

And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

I live in a neighborhood called "Little Israel."  I am a frequent patron of the local bagel shop and the owner has become a friend. He is a good man, and thoughtful, and when he speaks I listen; sometimes I ask questions. He talked to me the other day about friendship.  He said his dad had told him to always find the good in others and that once that good was found everyone could be a friend.

It is good to have friends, and I believe that there is good in everyone...but it's a matter of weighing.  There are other things in us all besides good. In some of us those other things outweigh the good.  In that case they must become enemies. It is good to have enemies.

Monday, December 13, 2010

"We Are Coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More."

                                                                       


It's been an entire year since this series was begun. 


Because "Public Occurrences" is non-interactive, i.e. with no comments sections, readers have to email.  The effect of that over eight years has been to create readers who are contributors.  That has greatly improved  "Publocc."  It has also been a source of happiness for me personally. I have "met" a lot of people and they have become friends. 


Last year at just about this time I received two emails of the kind described, pretty much back to back, I think one the day after the other. Some readers may remember the song "We Rise With Our Dreams," last profiled here on December 11, 2009. One of the emails I received concerned that song and it resulted in an email kind of interview with the singer, John Jarvis. 


Then I received another email. It concerned the Battle of Fredericksburg.  It provided links to a trove of documents that had just been put online.  And I began to write what I envisioned to be a roman a clef on the battle.  I only got three posts into it before other matters, principally China, occupied me.  I have had Fredericksburg on my mental "to-do" list for a year and have not publicly thanked the reader, for reasons relating to the structure of the series as I envisioned it. However, it's been a year. 


It was just about now, at this time of day, on December 13, 1862 that General Andrew A. Humphreys led his fatal charge across that barren field.  It was the last charge the Union armies were to make in the battle. Some of Humphreys' men survived the rain of balls in the field and began to ascend the rise toward Marye's Heights. 


I would like to extend belated, apologetic thanks to reader Steve Shipe for forwarding the link to the documents that he did last year. And I remember the one condition that Steve put on my public thanks to him, to credit the transcribers at usg.archives who did the work to make this information available online. Thank you.




I




In the summer of that year the man heeded the president's call for a second wave of volunteers to save the country from the rebellion. His was the 133rd regiment-sized* group of men from his state to volunteer.
The man left his farm and his wife and child. The parting of husband and wife may have been sorrowful, or it may not have been. Many of her gender have a fondness in the loins for men in uniform and she must have for she later gave birth to a boy who could not possibly have been fathered by the man and who was probably the issue of one of the many other young men coming and going and marching and looking heroic and virile that summer.
The man, Nathan Bracken, mustered in on August 15 as part of Company F.** And almost immediately he was bucking authority.
On August 23 he (and fifty-eight others) signed a letter addressed to their Company's Second Lieutenant assuring him that they did not “bear any disrespectful feeling,”
“But knowing your incapability of discharging the duties required of you…we [declare] our unanimous wish that you will resign your office, so as to enable us to place a competent person to teach us the duties which we [have].”
The Second Lieutenant stayed. And Nathan didn’t give up.
Three days later he and some of the men sent a second petition, this time to the Colonel of the regiment who, they wrote, they knew “to be a gentlemanly officer who will deal justice to the privates under your command.”
The privates, stating their willingness “to serve our country, and die in its behalf if such requirements will be asked of us,” prayed the Colonel remove the offending Lieutenant because, “...before we enter upon the field of battle, we want to be efficient in the knowledge of drill…in the manual of arms,” which efficiency does indeed seem reasonable to expect if privates are to serve their country, and to avoid, if possible, dying in its behalf. The privates, “Hoping to hear from you soon,” closed their letter to the Colonel.
The privates’ hopes to hear from their Colonel soon were met, for three days after hearing from him they sent a third petition, on August 26. The men were then encamped in Washington, D.C. For many ever since, and perhaps then, the proximity to power of residence, however briefly and whether encampment or residence is the technical term for it, in the capital of the New Republic has proved an intoxicating experience. Perhaps thus fortified the privates bypassed several intervening links in the chain of command and directed their third petition to their state’s Governor. Writing that they were “compelled much against our will, to trouble the highest authority that a soldier [ed note: they had been "soldiers" for eleven days.] can appeal to,” the soldiers got right to the point:
“We have a Second Lieutenant, whom we are anxious to see removed.”
“We wish to have officers who are able to instruct us in the present drill, but our Second Lieutenant cannot do this.” Intuitively grasping the strategy, essential to success of all privates appealing to highest authorities, that it is wise to always propose a solution to a stated problem, the petitioners proposed that Lt. Francis Flannagin be replaced (by petitioners’ election, not highest authority’s selection) with “a man who is thoroughly acquainted in the knowledge of drill.”
“Such a one,” they proposed helpfully, “is to be found serving as a private in our company, Richard M. Jones.”
Although petitioners’ own vetting of Private Jones was good enough for them they indirectly acknowledged the uncommon Leap in rank that they were proposing and pointed out that Jones had been “commissioned, by your honor, in April 1861, as a Lieutenant” and “served with credit to the regiment and himself, for three months.”
It must be said that this summary of Private Jones’ resume surely proved unhelpful to petitioners’ cause for it alerted Highest Authority Curtin that he had once before appointed Jones a Lieutenant, in which position Such-A-One lasted only three months, and whose subsequent fall down several rungs to private went unexplained by petitioners.
At this point the innate forensic and literary abilities of the men appear to have been exhausted; they were, after all, only farm boys for the most part. Alternatively it could be that it was not proximity to power that proved intoxicating. The soldiers could have attempted to augment nature’s gifts with essence of rye or like substance and as they neared completion of their third formal letter in nine days the affects of the latter became deleterious to the former. However it was, after this point the cogency of the appeal worsened beyond reason:
“His [Jones’] business affairs m (sic) from enlisting in the three years service but when he found a (sic) country in actual need of all able body (sic) men, he, unhesitatingly came forth…”
Highest Authority could have been forgiven if he had put the letter aside and opened some other mail at this juncture for it seems doubtful that the press of business should have kept Richard from enlisting earlier in a contest that threatened the existence of the country in which he was doing that business; or that Richard had ever possessed the skills—or any skills whatsoever—to succeed in commerce seeing as how they had not prevented him from falling from Lieutenant to Private in three months time; or for doubting whether Richard, and his champions, were “able mind men” whatever the condition of their bodies. The unhappy sentence above concludes with the men repeating themselves, that it is their great, good fortune that their deliverer from inefficiency in the knowledge of drill in the manual of arms--just such a one--“is now to be found in our midst.”
Lieutenant Flannigan stayed. Richard remained a private. And Nathan Bracken became a Sergeant (elected, not selected). Together they and the other members of Company F of the 133rd Regiment Volunteers continued their march south, to war.
*1,000 men.
**100 men.

to be continued.

Friday, December 10, 2010

By the time I got out of law school I had moved from a small, rural town (which doesn't exist by that name anymore (which in case I haven't mentioned previously greatly annoys me)) to three cities--all clustered in the northeast of the US&A. By the end of that "odyssey" I was Done. I could have ended up in Timbuktu, I wasn't moving again.

A Chinese-American who I have corresponded with frequently in the last few years is retiring from her profession. I emailed her my congratulations and commented that she had lived such an eventful, fascinating life. Her response is below.

We American "natives" don't have lives like this. However, our fellow citizens who CHOSE to be here have these incredible stories.  In my own family, my mother's people came from England in the 19th century (they were coal miners from the northeast around Newcastle upon Tyne, came to the New World for a better life...and moved to the northeast of the US&A where they became coal miners (which decision-making greatly annoys me since there's a genetic component to it)). As was typical at the time, the man came first, got settled, and then sent for the rest.  His wife and children (one was born on the ship) arrived and had something like the following MapQuest directions: " Go to Timbuktu, western Pennsylvania."  That first night they made it as far as Lancaster or someplace in southeast Pennsylvania. She and her children had no money to stay anywhere and so a family took them in for the night.  Eventually they made their way to Paradise upon Susquehanna. "Honey, how was the trip?"  But even that was a Sunday drive compared to what my friend experienced:

"You are so right. Sometimes, I look back my life: being born to Buddhist parents, being educated in a Baptist school, forced to be an atheist, sent to labor camp, becoming American by choice, being re-baptized as a Christian, disgusted by the tele-evangelists, turning out to be an indedpendent thinker... Whatever has happened to me, I believe honesty and sincere, I believe in human conscience, and I believe in science, so finally I have found my own religion. Maybe that is what you have been searching for in the Chinese soul. At least I believe that is my spiritual life. I will lose sleep if I know I have wronged people. I am ready to face God, be He whatever kind, with a clear conscience. I'll enjoy my retired life. I will write something to praise good people and expose bad ones.
I am an American and think like an American. I wish Chinese are doing well and will do what I can to push in that direction. However, I did some research on the differences in culture. I like one definition of culture: "culture is a web which people have knitted for themselves to hang on." If they as a whole are sluggish to change, there is nothing you can do about it. How many Chinese who have physically moved to this country but insist living in China in their mind? For that reason I am against exporting democracy like the Iraq War.
Friend, I respect Americans like you for opening your heart to people of other cultures.

Monday, December 06, 2010

WikiLeaks

                                                                            

WikiLeaks is the most important website on the internet. It's the most important website that's ever existed.  It will win a Nobel Peace Prize one day. http://wikileaks.ch/

Sunday, December 05, 2010

Seeking the Soul

The story of the Circassian chief is recounted in two major works on Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, pp.747-8, and Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, p. xiii, from which the account posted earlier is taken nearly verbatim.

It is that it is the Circassian chief’s story--and not Leo Tolstoy’s--that gives the story its power, that knowledge of Lincoln had reached such a remote corner of the world.  But this was Tolstoy’s take on Lincoln:

“This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become.  Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes?  He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character…Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world.” (Goodwin, 748)

How did America produce an Abraham Lincoln?  Why has China never? 

Seeking the Soul

                                                            

"His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America."

Saturday, December 04, 2010

Seeking the Soul

A year before he died, Leo Tolstoy told the following story:

“Once while travelling in the Caucasus, I happened to be the guest of a Caucasian chief of the Circassians, who, living far away from civilized life in the mountains, had but a fragmentary and childish comprehension of the world and its history.  The fingers of civilization had never reached him nor his tribe, and all life beyond his native valleys were a dark mystery.”

Tolstoy told them of the industries and inventions of the outside world.  When he turned to the subject of warriors and generals and statesmen, the chief said, “Wait a moment, I want my neighbors and my sons to listen to you.”

“He soon returned, Tolstoy said, “with a score of wild looking riders and those sons of the wilderness sat around me on the floor and gazed at me as if hungering for knowledge.  I spoke at first of our Czars and of their victories; then I spoke of the greatest military leaders.  My talk seemed to impress them deeply.  The story of Napoleon was so interesting to them that I had to tell them every detail, as, for instance, how his hands looked, how tall he was, who made his guns and pistols and the color of his horse.  It was very difficult to satisfy them and to meet their point of view, but I did my best.” 

When Tolstoy finished, the chief lifted his hand.  “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world,” he said gravely.  “We want to know something about him.  He was a hero.  He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were as strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses.  The angels appeared to his mother and predicted that the son whom she would conceive would become the greatest the stars had ever seen.  He was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life." 

Friday, December 03, 2010



Above is Megan a painting by Weimin Mo.  Below is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

                                                        

Compare the eyes, the "windows to the soul," in the two paintings.  I would recognize Megan if I saw her on the street.  I would not recognize Lisa del Giocondo.

It is often said that artists have a "sixth sense," that they can see what we cannot.  The Impressionists abstracted slightly away from the realism of the Renaissance.  That is apparent to us now but at the time it was not a slight change. It was a radical departure.  We can see now that we did begin, in the 19th century, to experience--see-- the world the way that Monet, et al showed us: The world had sped up as the Industrial Age began, it became a blur of light and shadow and outlines and shapes, and that's the way that the Impressionists painted it:

                                             Monet, St. Lazare

                                         Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand-Jatte.

                                          Pissaro

                                                     Degas, The Absinthe Drinker.

Shunned in their own time, the Impressionists have now become the most popular artists in the world.

Weimin Mo paints in the style of the Impressionists but with spectacular verisimilitude. He has a sixth sense for his portrait models' souls.  It's all about the eyes: the models', and Mr. Mo's.

                                                    Weimin Mo, Elyssa.