majrodgers

The Donald Trump saga continues to claim the attention as he digs himself ever deeper into the pit of public disdain; it has all the markings of a train wreck that cannot be averted. For me, the most striking part of the open-mike incident during which he was bragging about his manly approach to womankind, was that he referred to himself as a “star”. Of course that was a decade ago and I imagine that he has upped his view of himself to be not just a single star but a constellation thereof, and my guess is that the constellation he likens himself to would be Orion, the Hunter, which these days is bestriding the pre-dawn sky in a similar manner to how Donald hulked over his opponent in the recent debate! Such huge self-absorption can only be marveled at; he must be the most brazen of the ego-maniacs alive today, maybe of all time. One wonders whether the “deplorables” are beginning to have cold feet about their champion.
His dismissal of his raunchy words as “locker room banter” now has the locker room fighting back; the twitosphere is inundated with scores of jocks protesting that vulgar misogyny has no place in their backyard (right!). And today we see that a number of ladies, hitherto not heard from, are coming out of the woodwork to lay claim to his assaulting them over the years, and so it continues.
Like many of you I have watched several of the debates in which Mr. Trump has appeared and I am amazed at the facial expressions he can draw upon. I especially like the one when he is being applauded by his doting supporters; here he puts on a smirk of self-satisfaction and is clearly preening. Then at the other end of the spectrum are the scowls and grimaces when not so pleased by events.
A few years ago when I was in my 20’s I had a job that was located in Cumberland in the northwest of England. There the locals had different folk traditions from those further south, for example, throughout the year, villages would have festivals for celebration of whatever-largely an excuse to party. One of the events that was not for running or throwing stuff was known locally as Girning (maybe Gurning) where the contestants (men and women) would face the onlookers with their head through a horse collar and be encouraged to make the ugliest/funniest/scariest facial expression they could in order to win the prize. Watching Donald takes me back 50+ years to those contests-he would have been a strong contender.

It’s quite the while since I was on my high horse and it seems appropriate to mount up again.
One cannot help noticing that QEII is now a nonagenarian, and a sprightly one at that. I sometimes wonder whether she has decided to outlive the heir presumptive and reduce him to an asterisk in the family history, never having forgiven him for marrying that upstart Diana, the daughter-in-law who outshone QEII’s own family, and then poor Camilla whose tampon (according to contemporary reports) he wished that he could replace-such a princely ambition.
As an octogenarian and putative centenarian myself, I wish the old dear what I wish for myself, viz., happiness and good health in our remaining moments.

There is something Mikado-esque about that last sentence; as I recall it, Nanki-poo, heir presumptive to the throne of Japan, was masquerading as a wandering minstrel to escape the amorous attentions of Katisha, an aging courtesan. His wanderings brought him to the town of Titipoo, where the action is staged. Our hero is searching for the one he loves, “a schoolgirl named YumYum.” At some point he is unfortunately sentenced to death by beheading for the crime of flirting. The sentence is to be carried out in one month by Ko Ko, the Lord High Executioner which inspires a song by Pooh Bah, the snooty Lord High Everything Else, in which he exhorts Nanki-poo to enjoy “Long Life to You -’til Then!”. The Mikado is W.S.Gilbert’s comic satire on politics and institutions in Victorian Britain; what a whale of a time he would have today!
Meanwhile QEII sails on, “long to reign over us” to quote the National Anthem-another of my pet peeves (more on this another day), and long she has done so. I remember the day, as I remember that day when JFK was shot. It was in April 1953, I was a sixth former at Chesterfield Grammar School and the Headmaster, a man named Glister, called a special assembly at which he announced that the king had succumbed to his illness and his daughter Elizabeth was now queen. As it happened she and hubby Phillip were in Kenya at the time of her accession accepting the adulation of her new subjects of color. The special assembly ended in the way all assemblies ended, with teachers and boys (no girls at this school) singing “Jerusalem”, William Blake’s weird paean to England and Anglicism. From that day to this she has reigned over the Brits and a bunch of other dominions, whether they liked it or not!

But as usual I digress.
The lady monarch has an ever-expanding family which is now in the 4th generation, with the latest additions being sired by William (dubbed work-shy Will by irreverent members of the normally respectful press corps), and thus the total number of persons regarded as being royal grows.
This word royal has always mystified me; my dictionary tells me that it reflects the status of a king or queen or their family, thus QEII is clearly royal, as is Charles her son and her three other kids, all having royal blood (and the unearned rank and station that go with it) coursing through their veins.
However, our biological colleagues have convinced us that blood is a fluid whose sole task it is to carry oxygen to those parts of our body that require it-as simple as that. Blood does not convey any physiological, psychological, or any other-ological property to our corpus; this is the job of our genes. Charles, a son of QEII, begat a son (William) with a commoner (Diana Spencer) and William begat a son (George) with a commoner, Katherine Middleton, thus George, a future king, has but one eighth of the gene pool of QEII, or put another way, George’s genetic make up is 87.5 % similar to that of a commoner such as myself. Thus, discounting the “royal jelly” hypothesis that I proposed in an earlier posting, and assuming that there isn’t a super-dominant gene for passing on royal status, then George and his sister will be hard put to produce babies that can be convincingly called royal. No matter how many comic-opera titles you slap on them, commoners are always commoners.
I started this essay with the intent of discussing the progress of British Republicanism, but I abandoned it because it was more fun to dig at the royals. Although I must admit to toying with the thought of English ladies in their twin sets knitting at the guillotine and cheering as the heads rolled-which brings us nicely back to the Lord High Executioner.

The most interesting item of recent news has been the public spat between Mr. Trump and the pope. The former is no stranger to public spats, which have been omnipresent since his appearance on the political scene, and appear to be part of his desire to upset establishment figures. The pope however, at least to those of us who are not privy to the doings within the papal community, is a surprising entrant in such affairs. I am referring, of course to what the pope said in a press interview during which, we are led to believe, he was asked his opinion of those in the US who are in favor of building a super-Fence along the border with Mexico. His eminence responded to the effect that it would be better to build bridges rather than walls, and he identified the wall-builders as being lacking in Christianity. Mr. Trump saw this comment as an attack on him, he being a particularly vocal proponent of the border fence, and he replied that for the pope to question his faith is a disgraceful act. I am neither an admirer of the pope or of Mr. Trump but the contretemps has particular delight for me.

As I understand it, the pope, aka the vicar of Rome, is the head of the Roman Catholic church, the headquarters of which are sited within the walls of the Vatican, a city-state on the west bank of the river Tiber in Rome. Did you get that? Let me reiterate, I wrote “…within the walls of the Vatican…”. So this pope who regards wall-builders as being non-Christian is the head honcho of a Christian global operation that hides itself within walls. Moreover, I can personally testify that these walls are huge structures that are impermeable in the extreme. It seems that Francis is living in a glass house and is throwing stones.

Anyone who travels around Italy outside the tourist link connecting Rome to Florence and Venice will have noticed that Italian towns are surrounded by walls or vestiges thereof, testament to the needs of the inhabitants in former times to defend themselves from invaders intent on looting and pillaging. The Fence has a similar role except that these days the invaders are called immigrants who want to participate in the good life that Americans (most of them) enjoy. In my role as a fervent anti-religionist I am inclined to think that the walls of the Vatican are to prevent invasion, not by barbarians, but by ideas.

Here in the US there is a great deal of solidarity manifest with France and the French after the horrific attacks in Paris last week; flags fly a half staff and one sees signs such as “Pray for Paris” here and there around the town-all very right and proper.

Nevertheless I cannot help casting my mind back to 2003 or was it 2004 when George W. was seeking to build a “Coalition of the Willing” to join him in invading the naughty Iraq, only to find that not everyone was willing enough. France was a case in point and Jacques Chirac, then President of France declined to join the Bush venture. Other nations too, spurned the opportunity, which led Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense of the day, to draw up two categories of Europe, old and new. France typified the snooty old Europe and countries such as Lithuania, went into the “new” camp.

Why you find me recalling this unremarkable chapter of US-Europe relations is that in order to trumpet the contemptuousness that America felt for France and the other wimps of that time, it became fashionable to rename the unassuming victim of the day, viz., the French fry as the Freedom fry. In this way the whole country was able to express its patriotic fervor by marching into McDonalds, Burger King, or Wendy’s according to one’s individual wont and demanding Freedom fries with their burgers.

I do not recall when the Freedom fry became soggy and limp and disappeared from this nation’s cuisine, but for sure the French fry is today firmly back on the menu and standing proud as strains of “La Marsellaise” waft by.

One is inclined to wonder whether the beloved Ballpark Frank suffered a similar fate during WWII?

Just kidding, folks.

Well, it came to town and not without incident. My house is but a short stroll to via Veneto (the one in CDP, not the one in Rome!) and so yesterday at about 4 o’clock I did the stroll and found that the street was separated from the sidewalk by barriers carrying ads, as you can see.

This work was started at about 7 in the morning. I decided not to walk the last 900 meters to the finish line (il arrivo), figuring that it would be very crowded there, whereas right here looked to be a good place for my picture taking, so I took up position outside the pharmacy and, as you can see, there are not many spectators at 4 in the afternoon.

Time goes by and people show up but most walk past my position in the direction of the finish line; I hold my ground. Another holding her ground is Azzurra, my friendly pharmacist, who never wants to see a prescription for my various drug needs.

Eventually we are treated to a parade of cars in the livery of the sponsors, and a local entrant in the penny-farthing class entertained us.

Then, about one hour after I had taken up my position the real event comes into view, cyclist racers in their multi-hued team uniforms go swishing by at an amazing speed and after about 30 seconds it was all over.

I was clicking away on my iPad camera as fast as I could and sorting through later I found that I had actually caught the pink-jerseyed super star, Albert Contador, on a couple of photos. In the photo he is the second from the right wearing the pink jersey.

He was not in the leading group at this point 900 meters from the finish. Another person of note in this photo is the portly gent nearest to me on the sidewalk. This is Gingi who sells me bread (from the mountains, of course) and other basic needs.

Contador had the misfortune to catch up to the front few in the last mad dash for the line and was brought down by another rider who had been felled by a jerk with a big telephoto lens leaning over the barrier and losing control. This idiot is a local professional photographer, I am told. His desire to get a great picture caused the withdrawal of one rider with multiple fractures in an arm and a dislocated shoulder for Contador, who ended up with the new pink jersey that he cannot get over his head because of the pain in his shoulder!

At this juncture I strolled back home and one hour later on my way to my aperitivo I marveled at how fast the barriers had been taken away (presumably to the next day’s arrivo) and the street restored to normalcy.

Footnote: the photos were all taken using my iPad Mini and what surprised me was that I can take photos as fast as I can press my thumb on the button, as distinct from the mini digital cameras that I used previously, which had multi-milliseconds of annoying shutter delay. Moreover, in the Contador picture the riders were flashing by at more than 30 mph and yet they look as if they are as stationary as the buildings in the background, so fast is the exposure!

It starts today (May 9) in San Lorenzo al Mare on the Ligurian coast in the northwest of Italy

and ends in Milan 3 weeks later after covering about 3500 km.

During its journey it touches some of the most interesting places in Italy. And just about everything it touches becomes colored pink.
I am referring, of course, to the Giro d’Italia, one of the famous Grand Tour bicycle races, and this year is its 98th running. To tell you the truth I am not much of a fan of bike racing and you might wonder why I am posting a blog devoted to it. The answer is that this year Castiglione della Pescaia-“my town”-has been selected as the place for the end of the 7th stage, which starts in Montecatini Terme, so the whole circus will come to town on Thursday coming.

A major sponsor of the race is the Gazzetta dello Sport (http://www.gazzetta.it/), the pink-colored daily sport newspaper which, together with the color of the winner’s jersey being pink, probably is the reason why pink is the color of all things that are associated with the race. Gradually all the restaurants, bars and shops in CDP are dressing themselves up in pink artifacts and the town is taking on a definite pinkish shade.
It turns out that towns selected as finishing places are not done so at random as they pay €300,000 for the privilege. I suppose the idea is that the race will bring thousands of team members, fans and tourists who will presumably leave a lot of euros in the pockets of the commercial establishments in town and then the city will take the tax hat around to extract its share while hoping that their investment pays a good dividend, let us hope.
Look out for more on this subject later as the race comes into town.

A little while ago, maybe it was last year, I got on my high horse and posted a piece on how the word “gay’ has been taken over by the homosexual community. I suppose that calling a homosexual person a “gay” is less unpleasant to that person than hearing himself referred to as a homosexual, although for the life of me I cannot think why. I would not turn a long-lost hair on being referred to as a heterosexual. Anyway I am not here to re-hash that discourse, but I do want to remount the high horse and while standing up in the stirrups pontificate out loud on the subject of the use, misuse and abuse of the English language.

Today’s subject is the word “chemistry”.

For something close to six decades I have been closely involved in the study, practice, and teaching of chemistry, so I regard myself to be well-versed in what chemistry is; if asked I would say that chemistry is the scientific study of the nature and properties of atoms and molecules. Better yet is the “definition” found in the Urban Dictionary: [CHEMISTRY: The only natural science that can be broken down into the categories “making drugs” and “blowing stuff up”. Unfortunately, chemistry isn’t all fun and games, mostly because of chemistry teachers, who are always bitching about things like “significant figures” and “molality versus molarity”.]

However, increasingly in recent times, today’s word is being abused (in my less-than-humble opinion) in the sense of describing how persons interact with other persons, a sort of synonym of the word “rapport”. I looked up “rapport” in Wikipedia and the entry starts with: “A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.” It goes on to examine the concept in more detail, but nowhere therein do we find the word “chemistry” as being anything to do with “rapport”. Yet the above definition of “rapport” is exactly what the misguided ones mean when they use “chemistry” as something to do with human interactions.

So it seems that our beloved “chemistry” is on the path that “gay” travelled some years ago, and the generation that are currently in utero, on hearing the word “chemistry” will probably regard it as something to do with sex and not about significant figures and the like. Of course, this could result in chemistry classes being highly populated-at least for the first week.

A thought that occurred while writing the above is what about our foreign friends? Do the French use “chimie” and the Italians use “chimica” when they mean rapport (and rapporto)?

You get the picture.

Those of you who actually read this blog must realize that I have a deep interest in the English language and its usage. I think of myself as a traditionalist, although Dick Weiss and his ilk might prefer to use the alternative phrase “old fart”. For example, I deplore the hardly-recognizable (for me) letter sequences that have been spawned in the media for social intercourse such as twitter (or is it Twitter?) that limit the number of characters that can be used in a message, thus enforcing brevity in correspondence: lol, btw and wtf spring to mind, but there are many such abominations. It seems that to achieve success in the tweetosphere, one must learn another language; a language that has similarities to Croatian in that there is a paucity of vowels. My reason for interjecting Croatia here (they call it Hrvatska over there) is that some years ago I was driving back to Italy from the beautiful island of Krk (see what I mean?) off the coast of Croatia. My route took me towards Trieste, close to the Slovenia-Italy border. While on the Hrvatskan roads I would read signs with indications to a place called Trst and it took quite a while for me to realize that Trst was Croatian for Trieste, minus its three vowels. One wonders whether “frt” is “fart” in Zagreb, or is it Zgrb?

However I digress, the reason I sat myself down today to write a blog post, was to inform my faithful readership that I had learned a new word. This is the second new word that I have learned in the last six months, the first being “selfie” which had to claw itself all the way from the Australian continent to reach my lexicon. Today’s new word was learned from the NYT’s crossword puzzle; it was the answer to a clue that looked like this “?!” I have used this same conjunction of question and exclamation marks myself in various writings, but I had no idea that it had actually been given a name, and one eleven letters long (nice alliteration there).

So my new word for today is “interrobang”. A little research shows that there have been efforts to introduce a new symbol which looks like a question mark overlaid with an exclamation point, but I was unable to find such a thing in the symbol table in Word, where many weird and wonderful symbols can be found.

O what future wonders await us?!

The Winter Solstice this year occurs at 6:03 PM EST today when the sun, as viewed from the Earth, ceases its apparent southward trajectory through the sky and begins its journey northward towards the celestial equator. I say apparent because it is not the sun that actually moves, but what we see is the result of the interplay between the rotational axis of the Earth that always points to the same place in the sky, and the orbital motion of the Earth, which gives us different seasons at different places on the Earth’s surface at different times of the year; starting today the days become longer.

OK, enough of the physics; I have long held, and I am not alone in this, that this turning point, in effect the incipient return of light from darkness, is of great physical and emotional significance to the multifarious manifestations of life on our planet. The Winter Solstice is the true dawn of a new year, and in this spirit I wish you, my steadfast readers, bounteous happiness and good health in the months to come.