Lather, rinse, repeat

So, as I tried to think about an end-of-year post for 2021, all that came to me is recycling last year's post, including the banner, to wit:

It seems that in many ways, 2021 was just a reply of 2020, innit? We're still battling the Virus  and the Republicans still seem determined to pull the country into fascism.

At the college, the Interim President thing has been a slog rather than a romp. I think we have done some good stuff, but the ever-changing posture in response to the virus and the struggles with our computer system transition project and the increase in personnel issues as folks become more and more exhausted and the recent weather-related troubles (floods and freezing) have certainly rocked us on our heels. We're still standing, but I really can't say much more than that. As one of my colleagues put it, it would be nice to come to work one day and not have to be scrappy.

Still, we can try to savor the good bits that come our way. On top of this list is that the sisters came out for a visit during the socially-distanced summer, and it had been a long time since we had been together. We also managed some al fresco get-togethers with a number of old pals we hadn't seen in person for months, but only on Zoom.

Speaking of Zoom,  I met in an online game session with my Boston pals on most Wednesdays of the year, a remarkably consistent and rewarding gaming experience.

I maintained my exercise regimen for most of the year, even though I was thrown off my pace by a broken wrist. I've completed a zillion crossword puzzles and read a few books, some of them even good. I got some new tattoos and bid farewell to my favorite ink artist; I worked on some art projects and am a bit closer to having a consistent creative practice of my own.

Selkie didn't get sick from eating almonds or pistachio shells or anything else that requires the liberal application of Benjamins to cure; for a 19-going-on-20-year-old cat, he's doing pretty well.

And of course, I still get to share every day of my life with Coco the Wonder Wife, who has done mighty work all year on her counseling master's degree and in re-upping her massage license.

Clockwise from upper left: wearing the my hat that she hates and looking totally cute; 

soaking up the sun that she loves with the cat that she loves; frolicking in the frosty air;  

prodigious and prolific pandemic puzzler.

So I guess, all things considered, I'll move forward into 2022 trying, as the song says, to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Not thinking that there won't be adversity and struggle and hard work, but rather knowing that we can face it all with hope.

I am going to buy this here because this guy is great.

A scaled-down Godzilla-fest (heh, see what I did there?)

So, two years ago we started a new holiday tradition here: Godzilla-fest, the screening of Godzilla movies as we hang around on Xmas Day. In 2019 it was the Toho collection of the Hisei-era films (13 Godzilla movie and couple Mothra flicks), and in 2020 it was the Criterion Collection of the earlier Showa-era films (15 movies). This year, the film festival was a bit smaller: just one movie.

Shin Godzilla, released in 2016, is a different kind of Godzilla movie. First of all, while previous films either were sequels that directly followed (or retconned) the continuity or the earlier films or were reboots that ignored all the earlier films except the original 1954 Gojira, Shin Godzilla presents the big monster attacking Japan for the very first time. There's even a scene that drives the point home completely: after discovering a vanished scientist's notes that refer to the creature as Godzilla, one character Googles the name and only gets one hit - a regional folklore term meaning God Incarnate.

The movie also differs in tone: while there is significant kaiju vs. building and kaiju vs. Self-Defense Force action, the story really focuses on how the bloated bureaucracy of the Japanese government gets in the way of effective action, as every decision requires a committee meeting first, ministers protect their political careers before providing for public safety, and experts hedge their conclusions to avoid saying anything wrong and wind up saying nothing of substance. The chief of staff's first action to respond to the crisis is to re-organize the crisis response team; I laughed out loud.

This approach is all deliberate, of course: just as Gojira was a melancholy reflection on the Hiroshima bombing, Shin Godzilla is a critique of the government's response to the  Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which drew considerable criticism from different quarters.There are some selfless heroes who do the right thing for the right reasons, but to do so they have out-maneuver or flat-out ignore protocols and proper channels.

So, no struggles against MechaGodzilla or battles with King Ghidora, and no swooping Mothra to help or hinder Godzilla's plans; there was destruction aplenty, no doubt, accompanied by a thoughtful rumination on what it takes to be a public servant.

Perfect for a snowy Isaac Newton's Birthday afternoon.

Solstice grinch

So, as some of you might know, I am an early riser, usually up, like today, within a few minutes on either side of 5:00 am. This gives me an interesting perspective on the winter solstice.  You see, it's pretty darn dark this time of year up here snugged against the 49th parallel, and right around this time people start saying desperately hopeful things like "Well, it'll start getting lighter soon!"

Yeah, not so much. A little more so for normal folk, but not at all for the earlybirds. Take a look at the numbers for my locale:

First, for everybody else: solstice falls on the 21st, in just a couple days. True, sunset occurs a minute later, hooray. But you know what? So does sunrise. So there's no net gain of daylight for the day. In fact, there's no net gain of daylight until five days later, on Isaac Newton's Birthday. So maybe temper  that optimism just a touch.

Now, for my own personal woe: Look at the sunrise. Tomorrow the sun rises the same time as today, but the next three weeks are actually darker in the morning than now! We don't gain any morning daylight until Rubber Ducky Day on January 13!

So you'll forgive me if I exude nothing more than the Bellingham-traditional subdued excitement on the occasion of this calendrical landmark. It's gonna be a while before I notice a difference in my morning routine.

Oh look - the sun is finally up. See ya.

All right

So, follow along with me here.

This is an oft-quoted saying from Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. To be precise, it is from Book 12, Section 17 of his Meditations, a collected summary of philosophical principles that he wrote more as a diary or self-study guide than for publication.

I resonate with these words, so much so that they will be my next tattoo project - the first phrase on my left bicep (between the "Beau Geste" rose and "Justice") and the second phrase on the right bicep (between the "Mot Juste" heart and "Truth"). (My tattoo planning leans toward the symmetrical, perhaps too much.)

But of course, Marcus did not write these words in English; as was the custom of educated Romans of the time, he wrote in Koine Greek. I wasn't sure whether I wanted the saying in Greek or in Latin, which Marcus would have spoken and which is a little closer to my heart, since I took that very lively "dead language" in in high school.

There's a ton of modern Greek translations of this saying all over the intarwebs; it seems every third Greek Twitterer uses it for a bio. The modern Greek looks like this:

αν δεν είναι σωστό μην το κάνεις 

αν δεν είναι αλήθεια μην το λες

But modern Greek isn't any part of this, so I did a little digging and found an academic site that had the original Koine:

εἰ μὴ καθήκει μὴ πράξῃς

εἰ μὴ ἀληθές ἐστι μὴ εἴπῃς

That was great - but I was still leaning toward the Latin. I dug around some more, but could not find a Latin translation of the Meditations online. The best I could do was this, from a Redditor:

Si fas non est ne feceris,

si verum non est non dicunt

Even though this checked out okay, I was mindful of all the horror stories of bad-translation-tattoos, and I needed a better source. So I contacted that even-better-than-the-Internet source: the library. Through the totally magical system of Inter-Library Loan, they got me this:

Yep, all the way from Rochester, New York, an 1840 edition of a French volume collecting classical works in Latin. The Meditations were in there as what we used to call a trot - Koine down one side of the page and Latin down the other. Perfect.

Here's the Latin version of 12.17 in that book:

Si non covenit, noli id facere,

si non est verum, noli id dicere.

A bit different in both vocabulary and syntax, but the important distinction is the verb in the first phrase: convenio, which in this context means fit or suited for. Quite a shade of difference with the straightforward right, although there is a connotative connection, innit?

The Redditor's Latin translation uses fas, which translates as right - it seems to me this might have been an English-to-Latin translation.

The modern Greek that's all over the place uses σωστό, which also translates simply as right.

Ah, but the Koine uses καθήκει   - that took some digging but it translates as fitting!

So, the modern English (and Greek) simply say right - but the sense is more like the archaic meet, which carries the nuances of fitting, proper, right, and just.

So, 19th century Institut de France trot for the win! As a final check, here's the actual trot from the book, showing the Koine and the Latin:

All that said, although I will get the tattoos in Latin (especially after this adventure!), I will use the common English translation, since I think it works best.

There - due diligence that my tattoos won't become a listicle item. All those years of teaching research writing with my librarian pal Jackie have made it so I can't do much without verifying my sources. 

And that is meet.

Technostalgia

 

That there is the Nokia 3310, probably the best mobile phone ever made. The battery lasted for days and if there was a signal to be had, this little unit would find it. It was small enough to slip in any pocket and practically indestructible. I got one of these when they came out at the turn of the millenium and it served me well for a long time.

Now this one is the Sidekick "hiptop" - my upgrade when I was in transition out of grad school a few years later. Look at that physical keyboard! And that low-res black and white screen! Beautiful. I could stay connected via email and surf the World Wide Web - that scroll dial on the right moved the cursor from active spot to active spot on each site. I stayed in touch during my first academic job search using this device.

Now I have the latest in a series of whoop-de-doo smartphones sitting on my desk, with its touch screen and two cameras and huge memory and more computing power than NORAD had during the Cold War. Each iteration of this device gets "smarter" and more complicated to the point where it's doing things without me.

This is a Timbuktu vertical Blogger Bag. There was a time in the aughts when I carried this everywhere I went, so I could always have my laptop with me as I moved from coffee shop to coffee shop grading papers. I can't remember the last time I took a laptop anywhere - my Mac Air is buried in a drawer now. That smartphone does for me.

I guess this is progress. But sometimes I long for a simpler time, when it took a little more effort to stay connected, and there was less temptation to use miraculous technology to waste time falling down rabbit holes of listicles and cat pictures, even while waiting in line, and doomscrolling wasn't a thing.