The Devil in Disney May 23, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
A book was recently sent anonymously to Beachcombing named The Dark Side of Disney: Utterly Unauthorised Tips, Tricks and Scams for you WDW Vacation (Leonard Kinsey). Beach cannot really write a review of said work; as he is not an expert in the field. He has very vague memories of Disney World from a childhood visit and most of that involves students dressed as Disney characters with terrifying rictus smiles. But as strangehistory celebrates the curious this seems the place to signal to readers that a piece of extended writing exists that ‘shines a light into the roachy shadows of Walt Disney World. With 33 years of experience storming the gates of the Magic Castle, Leonard Kinsey has explored every possible option for a low-cost Disney vacation ranging from the immoral to the downright illegal. Packed with all the tips that Disney was hoping you wouldn’t discover, like free parking and bottomless beverage scams, this book also teaches you how to get free airline drink tickets and bar/pool hop around the high end Disney resorts like Hollywood glitterati.’
Beach, of course, felt morally obliged to hurl the book into the bin when he read this, but was just too intrigued. He decided, in fact, to give the contents a go and things got worse/better from there. And after seeing such titles as ‘How to Find Someone to Have Sex With’, ‘Front of the Line With a Wheelchair’ and ‘Top 5 Best and Worst Places to Get High’ there was no stopping him. Beachcombing has lived a sheltered life as far as sex, wheelchairs and ‘getting high’ (whatever that means) are concerned. But he was fascinated to flick through this pages of thieving wisdom that might have come out of a Victorian rookery, applied strangely to the sterilised, pat world of Brother Bear and the Seven Dwarfs.
The best part of the book is, at least for Beach, the interview with urban explorer Shane Perez and the description of his ‘trip to Discovery Island, Walt Disney World’s long-abandoned nature park. Discovery Island, located in the heart of Bay Lake, was left to rot years ago when the opening of Animal Kingdom effectively rendered the previously well maintained zoo obsolete. Instead of bulldozing the property, Disney simply decided to leave it as-is and let nature take its course, turning it into an overgrown urban ruin that was an irresistible destination for Shane and his fellow Urban Explorers.’ Memories here of illegal climbing in Cambridge. A highlight within a highlight was Shane and his adventurers bumping into some vultures on Discovery Island…
Mickey above is clearly not the cover, but then the real thing would get us black listed by google!
Beach is always on the look out for unusual books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com This one shocked but did not disappoint him.
Transvestite President? May 19, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary, Modern
Beachcombing isn’t big on cross-dressing but this fabulous pastiche of poor old Jefferson Davies’ capture caught his attention. Some accounts – Union accounts it should be noted – claim that Jefferson tried to escape wearing his wife’s clothing. This comes from the New York Times.
To Maj. Hudson was given the duty of surrounding the tent of the great rebel. He picked fifteen of his best men and proceeded to execute the order, which was done with consummate skill, and to the entire satisfaction of his superior officer… After the order had been properly executed of surrounding the tent, the Major proceeded to the tent of Davis, where he was met by Mrs Davis somewhat en dishabille. She inquired if they intended to invade the privacy of a lady’s apartment. The Major thought not. At this juncture an individual having the appearance of an antiquated grandam, dressed with a lady’s waterproof cloak and shawl, minus the inevitable hoop skirt, however, accompanied by a young negro servant girl, bringing a small bucket, emerged from the tent, apparently for the purpose of going to the spring for a bucket of water. This was an ingenious device of Mrs Jefferson Davis to get her husband through the lines. The ruse failed, and Jefferson Davis was discovered. The servant girl ran back to the tent, and Jefferson Davis was soon effectually procured. For some time he remained sulky, very much after the fashion of an old lady in need of her usual compound extract of strong tea; but the ‘President’, after a while, got over his ‘fits’, and became quite communicative; conversing freely on ordinary topics, but maintaining a prudent silence on current military and political events.
Here is another Union account this time from Harper’s Weekly.
The captors report that [Davis] hastily put on one of his wife’s dresses and started for the woods, closely followed by our men, who at first thought him a woman, but seeing his boots while he was running, they suspected his sex at once. The race was a short one, and the rebel President was soon brought to bay. He brandished a bowie-knife and showed signs of battle, but yielded promptly to the persuasions of Colt’s revolvers, without compelling the men to fire. He expressed great indignation at the energy with which he was pursued, saying that he had believed our Government were too magnanimous to hunt down women and children.
Note the differences. The northern press clearly found the story so irresistible that they began to make hay with it. Within a month Barnum was actually running sketches of Davis stumbling in dresses before circus crowds.
And so the Confederacy ended not with a bang but bangs and a petticoat.
Here, instead, is a letter from the always formidable Varina Davis describing the moment of her husband’s arrest. Essentially, if we are to believe her words – and they are pretty consistent with the report in the NYT – she was responsible (perhaps accidentally) for making her husband into a woman. Though note she quickly jumped on the cross-dressing bandwagon by calling him her ‘mother’. JD always passionately denied he had put on women’s clothing and his wife’s account suggest that he may not have realised what was happening.
Just before day the enemy charged our camp yelling like demons. Mr Davis received timely warning of their approach but believing them to be our own people, deliberately made his toilette and was only disabused of the delusion when he saw them deploying a few yards off. He started down to the little stream hoping to meet his servant with his horse and arms. But knowing he would be recognized, I plead [sic] with him to let me throw over him, a large waterproof which had often served him in sickness during the summer season for a dressing gown, and which I hoped might so cover his person, that in the grey of the morning he would not be recognized. As he strode off I threw over his head a little black shawl which was round my own shoulders, seeing that he could not find his hat and after he started sent my colored woman after him with a bucket for water, hoping that he would pass unobserved. He attempted no disguise, consented to no subterfuge, but if he had, in failure is found the only matter of cavil. Had he assumed an elaborate female attire as a sacrifice to save a country, the heart of which trusted in him, it had been well. When he had proceeded a few yards, the guards around our tents with a shocking oath called out to know who that was. I said it was my mother and he halted Mr. Davis, who threw off the cloak with a defiance and when called upon to surrender did not do so – and but for the interposition of my person between his and the guns would have been shot. I told the man to shoot me if he pleased to which he answered he ‘would not mind it a bit’, which I really believed.
It is, in wartime, the duty of POWs to make for the hills and Davis was trying to do just that and his shame at women’s clothing is curious: though looking at these cartoons…It should go without saying that a long line of men from Achilles, through Bonny Prince Charlie, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Charles II and a half dozen other famous individuals owe their lives to a skirt: any others, drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com.
There is also, Beach notes, a recent trend among Islamists to use burkas to evade capture, most notably Hamdi Adus Isaac, one of the failed London bombers, who, in 2005, got to Rome relying on the multicultural sensibilities of Britain’s border police. Hamdi got back to London thanks to an international arrest warrant.
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27/May 2012: John M writes in. It seems that the Jeff Davis in a dress story is a spurious legend with no credible evidence to back it up. Cobblers, I think you call it? A most telling paragraph from this article: The arrival in Washington of the so-called petticoats proved to be a big letdown. When Stanton saw the clothes, he knew instantly that Davis had not disguised himself in a woman’s hoop skirt and bonnet. The “dress” was nothing more than a loose-fitting, waterproof raglan or overcoat, a garment as suited for a man as a woman. The “bonnet” was a rectangular shawl, a type of wrap President Lincoln himself had worn on chilly evenings. Stanton dared not allow Barnum to exhibit these relics in his museum. Public viewing would expose the lie that Davis had worn one of his wife’s dresses. Instead Stanton sequestered the disappointing textiles to perpetuate the myth that the cowardly “rebel chief” had tried to run away in his wife’s clothes. The above account seems to originate from a relatively neutral source, but I’m sure you could suss that out more adequately than I. more on the story, can be found on the lost museum and memory (scroll down a bit). thanks John M!
Nashville Debutante Fights Imperial Japan May 15, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
***With thanks to Larry***
A wish-i’d-been-there moment from 1941. Cornelia Fort was a twenty-three-year-old pilot and instructor flying a Cadet out of Honolulu in that year. Incredibly though CF had only been flying for a matter of months she was already deemed good enough to work as an instructor, putting a young Hawaiian through his paces. And that’s what she was doing at dawn on 7 December with the American Pacific fleet (thankfully minus Enterprise and Lexington) spread out below her.
In one of CF’s surviving letters she writes that she was happiest in her life behind the controls of a plane in the peaceful early morning sky. Well, of course, 7 December was to be anything but peaceful… Pearl Harbor has many memorable moments, not least the radar crew dismissing a splodge of red on their radars as birds and rushing off for breakfast. But for Beach this marvelously spirited flapper gliding into the Japanese attack beats them all.
Cornelia spotted a silver airplane surfing in from sea straight towards her. She, at first, registered irritation and then her instincts fired. She took the controls from her trainee and climbed as fast as the throttle would allow her. She was only just in time. The Japanese plane – its imperial insignia clearly visible – swept under her and rattled the civilian craft. If anyone doubts that she was in terrible danger consider this: as she landed another instructor and trainee were torn apart on a Japanese strafing run.
Cornelia Ryan was only at Honolulu through a technicality. The youngest of four children from a wealthy Nashville family, Cornelia’s father had, many years before, called her three brothers into his study and had required them to give their oath on the Bible that they would never fly. The old patriarch did not believe for a moment that Cornelia, a girl, would take to the air, though that what is she did in 1940, the year of his death. When one of her brothers objected she pointed out that she had never been asked to swear to anything: even if she had watched from the hall as the oaths were given. Cornelia had a point.
As to flying she was a natural. This skill would take her to Hawaii and then into the wartime air-force (she is pictured above, the highest of the four with a raw, natural beauty) where women ferried military planes from one part of the country to another. Her talent would finally take her to her death in 1943 when she was caught up in a mid-air collision while in Texas. CR was to be the first woman to die on active service in the US armed forces.
Today an airfield is named after her, she appears fleetingly in Tora! Tora! and there is a book Daughter of the Air. For a short, though charming documentary, hop over to Youtube and for a longer article visit the Airspace Magazine.
Beach is always on the look out for Wish I’d Been There Moments: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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23 May 2012: Nathaniel writes in A quibble with your “Nashville Debutant Fights Imperial Japan” post’s statement about a radar crew mistaking the incoming Japanese planes for a flock of birds. Per Wikipedia: “As the first wave approached Oahu, a U.S. Army SCR-270 radar at Opana Point near the island’s northern tip (a post not yet operational, having been in training mode for months) detected it and called in a warning. Radar had been in use in a training mode by the U.S Army Hawaiian Department for some time, but was not fully operational.[62] Although the operators, Privates George Elliot Jr. and Joseph Lockard,[63] reported a target, a newly assigned officer at the thinly manned Intercept Center, Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler, presumed it was the scheduled arrival of six [U.S.] B-17 bombers. The direction from which the aircraft were coming was close (only a few degrees separated the two inbound courses),[64] while the operators had never seen a formation as large on radar;[65] they neglected to tell Tyler of its size,[66] while Tyler, for security reasons, could not tell them the B-17s were due[66] (even though it was widely known).[66]” Lt. Tyler was cleared of wrongdoing because he was newly assigned and had not been trained. Somewhat more complicated than your post implies, and one of the many misfortunes of war.” thanks Nathaniel
Review: I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student May 13, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite
University campuses have seen many changes in the last fifty years: digital technology, new teaching methods, ‘political correctness’… But the change that really matters has been the extraordinary growth in student numbers. Take the UK and the US. About 60% of young men and women now undertake third-level education in these two countries, whereas in the 1950s this number was well under 10%, and in some regions and among some classes it was substantially lower. The effect of this growth has been both catastrophic and beneficial: the standard of studies has fallen, but the number of those educated (albeit to a lesser level) has grown. What this means is that today most universities – with the exception of elite institutions – represent a continuation of high school rather than another kind of education (you need a doctorate program for that). For teachers there are two strategies. Either you accept, as Beachcombing has in his teaching, the reality of the situation and begin to do high-school ‘plus’ courses (with space for the best students to show their mettle); or you, like Cu Chuliann, fight the waves and continue to teach university level courses, a generation after universities, as our parents knew them, ceased to exist.
Patrick Allitt is one of the warriors who fights on. And, in his book, I’m the Teacher You’re the Student (Penn State 2005) he describes one semester at Emory University (Georgia) in a witty diary of his day-to-day pleasures and battles while sharing history with students. It is an outstanding read and articulates the experience of a ‘university’ level teacher, put together by someone who is clearly very good at what he does. (In a strange way Beach is an alumnus of PA. He once listened to an audio course the good professor had created and was absolutely charmed: even the sound engineer could be heard laughing at some points).
We have the exam howlers, the sociology of late homework (the shift from dead grandparents to broken computers), plagiarism, evaluations, reading assignments and the difficulty of understanding whether students have actually looked at these assignments. But this book also comes closer than anything Beach has ever read to, let’s call it, the metaphysics of teaching: the way, for example, that an unkempt rather intimidating bunch of late teens in the first lesson become a cohort of promising young men and women by the end of the course and the object of affectionate memories.
How precisely does PA fight the waves? Well, first of all he rejects the natural camaraderie of the classroom, a camaraderie which is open to anyone teaching American students. This is summed up in that title ‘I’M THE TEACHER, you’re the student’ (‘my station and its duties’).
Second, PA uses images and music and extensive readings to examine different periods of history, while demanding a certain standard of knowledge of maps, dates etc. In doing so he rejects text books and naff power points. But he also deprives students of a corpus that they can study: the hardest-working student will have no guarantee that they’ve effectively covered everything, notwithstanding lecture summaries handed out in each class. Here there is a bias towards ability rather than effort.
Third, PA cares about the execrable English of his students. This means explaining that not all books are ‘novels’, raging about tense sequence and daring to name the pluperfect. More about PA’s English lessons in a moment.
The result of this trio is that students get lower grades than they might expect from a history class. But, in recompense, they come closer to the essence of history and perhaps get to improve their written English into the bargain. Does this make PA a hero for the ages or an intolerable reactionary? Well, probably both. He certainly doesn’t qualify as a high-school plus teacher.
Let’s take now the example of English style, something that fascinates Beachcombing because it is the area where Anglo-Saxon education has so conspicuously failed; not helped by the insane orthography of our mother tongue. Beach has taught about six hundred American university students in the last five years. Of these perhaps fifty wrote good English. About two hundred and fifty could get by. And the other three hundred were an indictment of US secondary education: their high-school English teachers deserved a little gentle, non-therapeutic lynching.
In those five years Beach has never marked a student down for bad grammar or spelling. And, ever the pragmatist, he only troubles to correct English grammar and spelling when students hand in drafts for final papers (few do) as, in one-on-one encounters, he (believes he) can make a difference. He also had one experience of taking a student through a special studies paper, over a semester, where he was able to revolutionize said student’s prose: she’s now working in publishing…
PA on the other hand holds his students to far higher standards. The Saxon genitive is defended (the Germans do without the apostrophe so why can’t we?), tense sequence matters, good spelling is celebrated… But sometimes perhaps PA wades a little too far into the water in his sword-fight against the waves. Take this passage by PA’s student X and judge for yourself how well it is written.
‘In a time when the United States was vying to be a colonial power and prove supremacy in the western hemisphere, Cuba’s cry for freedom from Spain was prefect. At the first sight of risk for Americans and their property, McKinley consented to send in the troops. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy, having been steadfastly urging the war and craving to fight in it, rather quickly organised a team of skilled volunteers to fight under his command. When called, they joined the regular cavalry and infantry units in embarkation in Cuba. Some units were, to their disappointment, denied leave for lack of room.
If we could create an education system where the average student was able to write to this standard then it would be time for fireworks and champagne. PA is, however, damning.
‘It could be worse. [The student] covers a lot of points quickly and is grammatically sound – he even uses the apostrophe correctly. But like most students’ writing it shows every sign of inexperience. There are too many participles (‘vying’, ‘urging’, ‘craving’). There are too many adverbs and adjectives (‘steadfastly’, ‘rather’ [in rather quickly], and ‘skilled’ should go). The first sentence should begin with At rather than In, and he should tell the reader when this ‘time’ was by using a date. [There follow another eleven sentences of critique!]. I do not write any of this nitpicky criticism of the paragraph on the paper – I can’t possibly devote that much time to every paragraph, nor do I want to crush students to the ground with impossible high demands and my own sometimes quirky editorializing. On the paper I write an ‘S’, for satisfactory, mark a couple of grammatical infelicities further on, and leave it at that.
An ‘S’! What must be remembered is that most academics in the humanities and particularly in the social sciences write prose that is little better than the passage quoted here!! Fifty years ago it would have been worthwhile taking student X to one side and giving him some advice (while complimenting him) because, back then, there were only ten students in the class, and they were all bright and motivated. You might even slip your arm in his and invite him over to the hall to take some port and discuss Roosevelt’s opportunism. Today, the high-school plus teachers have other battles to fight: the wyrms of administration, the dragon heads of mandatory courses, not to mention the thrashing snake tails of indifference.
Beach is always looking out for unusual books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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13/05/2012: KMH has a radical suggestion. ‘The university concept must continue to change and change profoundly. Here is one future change I think will eventually happen at the undergraduate level: separating the teacher from the tester. Real learning occurs in an environment friendly to learning. This is where the teacher is the ‘friend,’ mentor, and advisor for his students, rather than also acting as a final judge in assigning grades to those in his courses. Imagine a separate testing facility for each university where students go to be given the standard tests (several per course) appropriate to the courses they are taking. The testing faculty does not teach these courses but it does make up the tests (or acquires them from outside sources) and grades the papers. The standards for grading are set in advance and there is no grading “on the curve.” It is then possible for everyone in a class to get a higher grade. This separation allows the teacher to gain better rapport with his students, and because grading on the curve is not allowed, students can also be more helpful each other. The final grade is based on testing results with accompanying remarks by the teacher attached to the grade itself describing classroom participation, general attitude, the student’s potential, etc. I hope I am making the grade.’ Thanks KMH!
The Last Invasion of Britain? May 5, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
***Dedicated to Kithra***
It is sometimes said that the last invasion of Britain took place 22 April 1778 at Whitehaven in Cumbria. On that date, John Paul Jones, a Scot and an American patriot led his ship, the USS Ranger, against the small Lakeland Port (another post, another day) in an unlikely annex to the War of Independence. However, this was not the last invasion on British soil, for the simple reason that Jones himself launched a later attack on St Mary’s Isle on the Solway Firth in Scotland (pictured). So obscure is this raid that even its date is not clear: it was probably carried out 24 or 25 of the same month. However, Jones’ logic in attacking was straightforward enough. Dunbar Douglas 4th earl of Selkirk had his home on the isle and Jones wanted prisoners, particularly important unionists. It should also be mentioned that Jones’ father had worked for the Earl’s family: there may have been a bit of Freudianism in this descent. The true last invasion of Britain began, in any case, as an attempt at kidnapping and ended as something rather different. Here are Jones’ own words.
On my return on board the Ranger [after Whitehaven], the wind being favorable, I set sail for the coast of Scotland. It was my intention to take the earl of Selkirk prisoner, and detain his lordship as hostage, in conformity to the project already mentioned. It was with this view about noon of the same day I landed on that nobleman’s estate, with two officers and a few men. In the course, of my progress, I fell in with some of the inhabitants, who, taking me for an Englishman, observed that lord Selkirk was then in London, but that her ladyship and several ladies were at the castle.
Note that this ‘invasion’ was so fearsome that the locals did not even realise that they were being attacked! We then have evidence of that strange ‘keep-the-gloves-on’ chivalry that generally characterised the American forces, though not sadly always British forces, in that war.
On this [news], I determined to return: but such moderate conduct was not comfortable to the wishes of my people, who were disposed to pillage, burn, and destroy every thing, in imitation of the conduct of the English towards the Americans. Although I was not disposed to copy such horrid proceedings, more especially when a lady was in question, it was yet necessary to recur to such means as should satisfy their cupidity, and at the same time, provide for Lady Selkirk’s safety. It immediately appeared to me, to be the most proper mode to give orders to the two officers to repair to the castle with the men, who were to remain on the outside under arms, while they themselves entered alone. They were then instructed to enter, and demand the family plate, in a polite manner, accepting whatever was offered them, and then to return, without making any further inquiries, or attempting to search for more.
It should be mentioned that Jones had serious problems with his crew who were a mutinous bunch. After this pleasant interlude in Scotland, indeed, Jones reports that he ‘ran no small risk of being either killed or thrown into the sea’ by his sailors and officers.
I was punctually obeyed; the plate was delivered; lady Selkirk herself observed to the officers, that she was exceedingly sensible of my moderation; she even intimated a wish to repair to the shore although a mile distance from her residence, in order to invite me to dinner; but the officers would not allow her ladyship to take so much trouble.
Next we see the strangely quixotic character of Jones himself. A savage man at times, who had flogged, earlier in his life, a sailor to death and who would later be accused of rape, he could also act like the perfect Scottish gentleman: he despised, for example, slavery.
At the time I had been obliged to permit my people to take Lady Selkirk’s plate, I determined to redeem it out of my own funds the moment it should be sold and restore it to the family. Accordingly, on my arrival at Brest, I instantly dispatched a most pathetic letter to her ladyship, in which I detailed the motives of my expedition, and the cruel necessary I was under in consequence of the English in America, to inflict the punishment of retaliation. This was sent open to the post-master general, that it might be shewn to the king of England and his ministers… During the course of the war, I found it impossible to restore the plate belonging to the Selkirk family; I, however, purchased it at a great price, and at length found means to send it by land from l’Orient to Calais, by means of M. de Calonne, who transmitted to me a very flattering letter on the occasion; in short I at length received a very flattering letter from the earl of Selkirk, acknowledging the receipt of it.
Those damn Yankees, blast their eyes for their horrid inhumanity!
Any other unlikely acts of chivalry in war? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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5 May 2012: Very quick is Southern Man this morning who writes: ‘I know this story and would like to share with you a passage from an anti-Jones publication. This describes how one of the officers at the castle was polite and the other rude. It also gives more details of the plate’s return. ‘Several years elapsed without [lady Selkirk] hearing from jones, and all hope of the realizement of his promise had vanished; but, in the spring of the year 1783, to the great and agreeable surprise of her ladyship, the whole of the plate was returned, carriage, paid, precisely in the same condition in which it had been taken away, the tea-leaves remaining in the tea-pot as they were left after the breakfast on the morning of their visit to the castle.’ I love the detail of the tea-leaves. Seriously though I think the elapse of years speaks strongly in favour of Jones the gentleman rather than Jones the flogger or (supposed) rapist.’ Thanks SM!
Lost in Transmission May 4, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern
Words echo through the centuries like coins dropped down an infinite well. And as they are passed on they are smoothed and confused in the mouths of the people. The best examples we have of this are, of course, placenames: in the space of eighty generations Londinium becomes London, Mamucium becomes Manchester and Euboricum becomes York. After a while the words cease to make sense: people no longer realise that when they say York or (Eourwic or one of the in between states) that they are talking about a yew tree.
Now this collapse of knowledge is particularly evident with place-names, but it can also be found elsewhere when words are dumbly repeated. A random example: in the mid-nineteenth century a Devon folklorist comes across the following verse at the end of apple harvest:
‘What zeal! What zeal is in all our town!
The cup is white and the ale is brown’.
Understandably she suspects that ‘zeal’ (pronounced ‘aus-ale’!) is not really zeal at all. Could it be, she suggests, ‘wassail’ (waes hael), the punch-like drink that is made (usually with ceremonies) and that takes place (you’ve guessed it) after apple harvest. She is almost certainly right. Somewhere, let’s surmise, c. 1750 wassail had dropped out of use in this corner of the county and the Devonian rustics were repeatingm empty syllables that they turned into something that they could at least understand. Zeal appears in a couple of south-western placenames, where it has been corrupted from Old English sele, ‘hall’: so the word is not as erudite as it might at first seem.
Another example, this time from Cornwall at the end of the nineteenth century. A doctor is visiting a patient out in the sticks and gives her some news.
My chief piece of intelligence on the day in question was that a relation of my own, whom she had once seen, was about to be married. The old woman was greatly interested and asked the name of the bride. On hearing that it was Margaretta, she at once assured me that was a lucky name, and begged me most earnestly to let the bride-groom known how to reap the full advantage of the luck; he must, it seemed, pluck a daisy on the eve of the marriage, draw it three times through the wedding ring, and repeat each time, very slowly, the words, ‘Saint Margaretta or her nobs’.
And what enough does this formula mean. Beach was slow here though not as slow as the doctor who was almost home when it clicked.
It was not until far on my homeward journey that it flashed suddenly into my mind that the words were a prayer, ‘Sancta Margaretta, ora pro nobis’, a genuine Latin intercession, handed down from Catholic times [almost four hundred years before]. Who knows with what rapture of devotion in days long past Saint Margaret’s prayer had been repeated in that very farmstead by the lips of men and women taught to feel a personal devotion to the Saint; and though now even the holy character of the words is forgotten, yet the fact that they have been kept in memory through so many generations, in never so corrupt a form, proves the strength of the feeling which once sanctified them, showing that in some one’s mind the prayer was stored up not to be forgotten, with a lingering trust that it would bring a blessing yet.
The inhabitants of that house are unlikely to have had any heirlooms that were three hundred and fifty years old: apart of course from ‘Margaret and her nobs’ that will have died with the old lady.
Beach is on the search for other examples of repeated phrases that have no meaning (anymore). It strikes him that a particularly fertile place to look would be where languages collide: after all, misunderstanding is at the root of most of these re-renderings.
Beach spent some time in his teens on a ranch in North America where third-generation Norwegians spoke to their cattle in garbled phrases that clearly came from the tongue of their ancestors who had crossed the great water sixty years before.
‘Hokey pokey’ was (before it became a dance) the word for ice-cream on the streets of London and New York: ‘here come the ‘hokey-pokey men!’ the children would scream. The etymology of this phrase is much debated but it is probably an Englished version of the Italian ‘Ecco un po’!’ [here’s a little], uttered by the ice-cream sellers.
Any other examples? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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5 May 2012: Patty writes: one that gets me here in the states having grown up hearing the full? version: “The proof is in the pudding” from “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”. One that I did hear a lot growing up was “Waste not, want not”, which makes perfect sense as is, but my grandmother would add “the old lady said as she piddled in the sea”. I’m sure there were many colourful variants to the first quote!’ Then Wade: In further searching for phrases that have lost their original meeting, I found this blog site. I included a couple of interesting posts. It struck me that it is somewhat similar to Bizarre History, but focused on language. Seems pretty interesting, and I thought you might like to bookmark it.Thanks Wade and Patty!
5 May 2012: Rayg writes: ‘What zeal! What zeal is in all our town! The cup is white and the ale is brown’. To middle-aged folkies, that’s instantly recognisable as what’s generally known as the Gower Wassail (from its 1947 collection by A.L.Lloyd) or the Somerset Wassail (from its 1895 collection by Baring-Gould). It’s kind of hard to believe “wassail” could drop out of use in Devon; it being cider country, there are wassail traditions all over. More likely the folklorist just didn’t “get” the accent: I’ve heard elderly local people here pronounce “s” in exactly a way – “s” as “z”, with a slight glottal stop in front – that could make “wassail” sounds like “what zeal”,. I hesitate to mention a classically-cited example: the one that the Hokey-Cokey is a parody of Catholic mass (“Hoc est corpus”). It’s just too damn pat, and I don’t think the attribution trail is terribly convincing. The ones I always like are Billy Ruffianisms – the rendering of foreign names into Anglicized soundalikes, as classically done by Nelson-era sailors: the Bellerophon becoming the Billy Ruffian, Amphitrite – ‘Am and Tripe, Iphigenia – Niffy Jane, etc.’ Thanks Rayg!
6 May 2012: Word Angel writes in with this quotation from Rustic Speech by Wright. ‘A few Latin phrases have made their way into the dialects, where they have assumed curious forms and meanings. For example : hizy-prizy (Nhb. Yks. Chs. Der. Som. Dev.), a corruption of Nisi prius, a law-term. It is used to signify any kind of chicanery or sharp practice, or, used as an adjective, it means litigious, tricky ; and in the phrase to be at hizy-prizy, it means to be quarrelsome, disagreeable. The plural form momenty-morries (Nhb.), skeletons, stands for memento mori, remember that thou must die, the name given to a small decorative object containing a skeleton or other emblem of death, cp. ‘ I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a Death’s-head or a memento mori,’ 1 Hen. IV, in. iii. 35. The Latin nolens volens appears as nolus-bolus (Wil.), nolum-wolum (Wil. Dev.), hoylens-voylens, oilins-boilins (Cum.). A mother sending off an unwilling child to school will say : Oilins-boilins, but thee shall go. Nominy (Nhb. Dur. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Nhp.) represents the Latin nomine in the formula In Nomine Patris, &c., the invocation used by the preacher before the sermon. It means : (1) a rigmarole, a long rambling tale, a wordy, tiresome speech; (2) a rhyming formula or folk-rhyme. Stan over at Cowpath writes meanwhile: One that comes to mind is Riding, Farthing, Reeve & Sherriff Related to this phenomena is true folk etymology – where a foreign sounding word is changed to familiar sounding words even if they make no sense. I wrote about them August 10. Thanks Word Angel and Stan!!
14 May 2012: John writes in: ‘I think we could find a lot of these words in the way people communicate with farm animals — the ‘sounds’ that we make to soothe/call cattle and horses might have their roots in older languages with the sound form lingering on past the meaning… I remember my mother telling me the proper way to call cattle, and thinking it made no sense at the time. This is from rural Ontario, from a family seven generations from Northern Ireland, but the words still remained. The approved cattle call was: ko boss……. I know that bos is an old Indo-European root of the word cow (hence bovine …). What other forms of addressing farm animals might hold ancient roots?’ Thanks John!
Zombie Planes May 3, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
***Dedicated to Ricardo***
Beach is properly modest about his knowledge of aeronautics – apart from perhaps the prehistory of flight. But he is as moved as the next man to see the spitfire test in First of the Few or (1.37.40) or, for that matter, Corky sweating in Tales of the Golden Monkey as a zero races out of the sun. And, now, thanks to Ricardo, he has some new images from the annals of aviation archaeology to add to his mental collection.
First up are these beautiful shots of a Kittyhawk that was discovered in the Egyptian desert this March (2012). The plane came down in the WW2 apparently being flown to a repair depot (this still has not been confirmed). What the sands of Egypt did to the pilot is not yet known. But there can be no doubt that, after the initial tussle of landing, they treated the plane well. The colours and the cockpit are happily preserved. And looking at them brings back, with frightening immediacy, the desert war and long distance runs over the heads of Eighth Army against Rommel’s Afrika Corps.
Another 1942 wreck comes from the far north. In that year, a squadron of eight planes (six P-38s and two B-17 bombers) were forced to land in the desolation of east Greenland en route to Iceland. That all eight planes came down on the ice without a death is in itself a small miracle; that the crew members were taken out of Greenland without life-threatening frost-bite and gangrene is also pretty extraordinary. But what needn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about plane nuts is that the plane was retrieved in the 1990s from 250 feet of ice, piece by piece! (see the picture at the head of this post). It was then reconstructed, named Glacier Girl and then finally in 2007 it set off on the the mission it had been sent on 65 years before, attempting to fly to the UK.
Actually it had to end its flight in Newfoundland because of a coolant leak. And Beach can’t help thinking that GG just didn’t want to go anywhere near that bloody ice massif again.
ù
If the desert and tundra are good for preserving planes a league of salt water must be pretty handy too. But Beach hasn’t found that many examples of historic underwater plane wrecks. (There is, of course, the horror in these cases that the pilot is almost certainly still sitting hunched over his instruments.) This final picture of a Japanese fighter (1942?) was taken off of Papua New Guinea. Any other well preserved planes, zombie or otherwise? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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4 May 2012: Southern Man writes in: Beach you forgot one of your earlier posts: the watery grave of Brian Lane. Jonathan Jarret from A Corner confesses: ‘you hit on a child’s interest of mine with this one [always a good sign!]. Deep water appears to be the thing; the Norwegian fjords have turned up a number of German WWII fighters in the last decade, and this YouTube video and its attached links are quite evocative. (The pilot seems to have got out, don’t worry.) The other place that I wish someone would mount some salvage in is Loch Ryan in south-western Scotland, where there was during the war a flying boat base. At the end of 1946, with the mighty `Flying Porcupine’, the Short Sunderland, leaving service as land-based aircraft finally matched its range and warload, the half-squadron of them that remained on the Loch were scuttled rather than waste time scrapping them, and they’re still down there. Divers report that they’re deep enough that there’s very little oxygen in the water and so their preservation is allegedly marvellous. There are some Sunderlands in museums but no flying ones and I for one would put up more than the usual airshow ticket price if one could be got into the air again. I can’t find any footage of those, but a similar thing occurred at Pembroke Dock and there there is dive video: The other place that has turned out to be surprisingly good for warbird preservation is Siberia: a fair few little Russian warbirds have made their way west ever since the locals realised that mad Westerners would pay for them in sufficiently good condition. I can’t find a good webpage on that process exactly, but if you will take my word for it that this is the story behind this machine. You will see that some of these `zombies’, like the Focke Wulf in first link, may well live twice. Googling for the Siberian stuff, by the way, also brought me this on abandoned fields which seems as if it might catch your attention.’ Next up is Wade: ‘You may have already seen this, but if not…in recent news, an American has researched and located a dozen to as many as twenty Spitfire Mark XIV planes with the more powerful Rolls Royce Griffon engines, still crated as they were originally shipped to Burma just at the end of WWII. Rather than having them returned to Great Britain, the decision was made to bury them at the Burmese airfield. Tacitus from Debris writes in: Look at this now on display at Chicago OHare and in swell shape. Remarkable details of preservation, and I like the story of the faux aircraft carriers on Lake Michigan. Then Invisible: ‘You’ll find many tales of zombie planes here including the 20 Spitfires found buried in Burma [see Wade above] and the remains of an RAF pilot discovered with his Spitfire 5 metres under a French farm. Here at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, there is a poignant display, with some parts of the plane, about Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator (wikipedia), lost in the Libyan desert during the Second World War. Tragically, the crew thought they were bailing out over the Mediterranean instead of the desert and walked in the wrong direction, not knowing that the plane, with a working radio and some supplies, could have been reached. When found, the plane was incredibly well-preserved. The remains of the crew were not recovered until the 1960s. Thanks to Wade, Tacitus, JJ, Invisible and Southern Man!!
14/May 2011. Judith W (aka Zenobia) writes in: This just appeared, with a wee bit more information and the pilot’s name….: You might well also be interested in some of the extraordinary pictures of the Kittyhawk P-40 crashlanded in the Egyptian desert (via CassandraVivien). They were taken by Jakub Perka, the Polish oil worker who discovered the plane. Sadly, that was a month ago and the plane is now being stripped of its parts by locals for scrap. While this is obviously a remarkable find, I remember horseriding in the desert many years ago, not quite as far as el-Alamien, and the horse kicking up all sorts of army kit, empty food tins, spent ammunition, an amazing collection all lying under a few centimetres of sand. I’m sure it’s all still there, untarnished by time.’ Thanks Judith!
Human Confetti in the Jungle of Guyana April 23, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beach prides himself in getting together some of the most striking photographs possible to show his students at uni. However, he is dismayed how often good photographs require dead bodies: a revolutionary Spanish soldier with his head disintegrating, Aldo Moro curled in a fœtus in the back of that fiat, Jesse James laid out, the living dead – the to-be victims of the Omagh bombing in the last minute of their lives, Maximilian’s execution shirt… And another picture from this dismal series might be this extraordinary shot taking from the air following the Jonestown Massacre, 17 November, 1978.
Jonestown was the single greatest sect killing in history. Jim Jones was a charismatic sociopath with maturing paranoid tendencies: the kind of man, in short, you pray not to sit next to on the bus. He had created, by his sixties, a religious community of almost a thousand American nationals in the badlands of Guyana. And he was convinced that the United States was attempting to undermine this community, based as the community was on a heady mix of Stalinism, Christianity and, what might be called, ‘Jonesism’.
In an attempt to protect himself and his community he began negotiations with the Soviet Union so as to seek a haven there: Beach can’t help reflecting that the Soviet Union, or Jones’ other preferred destination, North Korea, would have been more effective at dealing with Jim Jones than the federal government. But he also explored other options that he and his flock voted on including fleeing deep into the jungle and committing collective ‘revolutionary suicide’: a phrase that came from Huey Newton, a black panther whose cousin was, incidentally, one of the very few to survive Jones’ death orgy.
It is not clear how Jones justified revolutionary suicide to his flock. But he got them word perfect. Indeed, on one occasion he gave the thousand a red liquid drink, told them that they would die in the next forty five minutes and when they drank this he explained the ritual away as a test of loyalty.
By the autumn of 1978 with Jones’ health declining rapidly and the fury of relatives of sect members back in the States mounting it was maybe only a matter of time. When a visiting US congressman, Leo Ryan came to investigate a number of community members – perhaps a dozen, hardly the numbers that you would have expected – pushed forward to ask to leave. Ryan gained Jones’ permission. But Jones saw even this small defection as a betrayal and ordered that a vat of cyanide be prepared.
It is worth stating that when told to drink poison, the vast majority seemed to have done so without questioning the orders given. If this was murder, it was not the kind easily found in the penal code: that definition should be reserved for the visiting journalists and ‘defectors’ who were killed, with the senator, at the air strip. The result, in any case, were bodies spread through the floor of the jungle like so many bits of confetti. Jones ended his life (or did he ask someone else to do it for him?) with a revolver. An agent of Jones in nearby Georgetown killed two of her own children with a knife on hearing that Jones had spoken. Back in the jungle perhaps fifteen escaped death by various stratagems.
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26/Apr/2012: KMH writes ‘Jim Jones had a similar charisma to Hitler who was often accused of being possessed. The same would apply to Jones even though his community was basically religious -communist. He and his followers were convinced that the Northern Hemisphere was destined for nuclear destruction, but life would go on more or less in the south. His followers drank the Kool-Aid (Flavor Aid) readily because they had drunk it ritualistically (for death) a number of times before with no cyanide, of course. This is where the phrase “don’t drink the Kool-Aid” originated. Kool- Aid and its imitators is made with sugar and mixed with a fruit flavour that came in an inexpensive packet of dry concentrate. In the fifties it was popular in the USA. Today we would call Jim Jones a classic example of a false prophet. The question is, did he have any real spiritual gift besides mesmerizing his audience with speaking ability. The evidence isn’t entirely conclusive. If so, he would fall into the line of Simon Magus of Acts 8:9-24 and qualify as a precursor to the false prophet of Revelation. Thanks KMH!
Coincidence in Jersey City April 22, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern
Following on from a recent post Beachcombing has had several extraordinary emails about coincidences among our governing classes. He thought, meanwhile, that today he would premiere another of his favourite coincidence stories: the good works of Edwin Booth (obit 1893). In 1909 an American citizen wrote the following letter to The Century Magazine with an account of how, in August, 1864 [there is some slight disagreement about the date], he had been saved, as a young man, by a celebrity at Jersey City train station (pictured as it is today).
The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the care. The platform was about the height of the car floor and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.
Edwin Booth was the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln: JWB would strike a year later. And like John, Edwin was a theatrical star and so the young man knew the name of his rescuer as soon as he saw Edwin’s face. It would be the equivalent of a tall dark stranger pulling you out of a drowning wave on a surfing beach and you opening your eyes to see Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt.
So where is the coincidence here: after all, celebrities do meet members of the general public, accidents happen…? Well, it arises from the fact that the young man who was saved was Robert Todd Lincoln (obit 1926), the elder son of Honest Abe. If Beach had come across this story in a gutted form on a list of ‘Ten Weird Civil War tales’ then he simply would not have believed it. But the only way out of this extraordinary tale is to suppose that Robert was a liar. Certainly, it would be interesting to find some earlier pre-1909 documentation that stood up to scrutiny: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com But, for what it is worth, Beach’s instinct is that this is the real deal.
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26/4/12: An old friend of the blog George T writes in: I discovered another coincidence that also involved the Lincoln family that might interest you. As background, in 2004 the first Transit of Venus since 1882 occurred. I was going to be in Africa when it would happen and remembered that in 1903 the Canadian/American astronomer Simon Newcomb had written about observing the 1882 Transit from Wellington, South Africa and expressed a desire to have someone observe the 2004 event from the same location (quote below). I located a South Africa astronomer who had a similar idea and after some sleuthing involving the US National Archives we were able to pinpoint Newcomb observing location and fulfill his request. “On our departure we left two iron pillars, on which our apparatus for photographing the Sun was mounted, firmly imbedded in the ground, as we had used them. Whether they will remain there until the transit of 2004, I do not know, but cannot help entertaining a sentimental wish that, when the time of that transit arrives, the phenomenon will be observed from the same station, and the pillars be found in such a condition that they can again be used.” While researching for this project, I found out that Julius Ulke, the photographer of the expedition, had, along with his more famous brother Henry, lived across from Ford’s Theatre. After Lincoln was shot he was brought to their boarding house and both brothers aided in the efforts to save him by boiling water and bringing it to his bedside. After Lincoln died, Julius took the famous photo of Lincoln’s death bed. In 1881, Simon Newcomb attempted to locate the assassin’s bullet in President James Garfield using a metal detector he had invented. He was unsuccessful, according to some accounts because he was unaware that Garfield had installed metal spring mattresses in his quarters Link. So by coincidence, of the four members of the expedition, two had been involved in unsuccessful attempts to save assassinated US presidents. They must have had some interesting conversations. Rhys writes: There were some other presidential coincidences involving Robert Lincoln. He had been invited to join his father at the theatre on the night of Abraham’s assassination but declined. Had he gone, he would most likely have been seated where John Wilkes Booth would have encountered him first, perhaps giving him the opportunity to intervene. Some years later he witnessed James Garfield’s assassination and later still, was at the Pan-American Exposition when William McKinley was shot. You might also like this photograph of Abraham Lincoln during his second inaugural speech with, supposedly, John Wilkes Booth, other co-conspirators and possibly the owner of Ford’s Theatre looking on: Next up is Wade with proof: Lincoln Booth further citations towards the bottom of the discussion, Bonnie lists Chicago Tribune 25 April, 1865, The Washington Post 28 November, 1886, and Century illustrated Magazine, November,1893. Wow! I think we need to recruit Bonnie to Bizzare History!‘ Thanks Wade, Rhys and Howard!!
Freedoms Fliers by J. Todd Moye April 15, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Wars have the habit of shaking up the social order in a way that a hoary old conservative like Beachcombing finds rather disturbing. Children join militias: think the moving photographs of fourteen and fifteen year German ‘soldiers’ guarding the Atlantic wall or ‘that scene’ in Doctor Zhivago. Gender relations are bent in knots: women are removed rudely from households and thrown onto tractors and into factories. And racial and ethnic respect is burnt like kindling on the barbecue: see every war in the last two hundred years in the Balkans. But let’s say that gender or race relations are no hot shakes to begin with, perhaps war does everyone a favour? Certainly many women recall new freedoms that the World Wars offered them (in their tractors and factories). While for Afro-Americans the pre-war status-quo was hardly worth defending: cue J. Todd Moye’s Freedom Flyers: the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II the book that Beachcombing has devoured most readily in the last month and its moving story of the first black combat fliers.
If you were black and American in the 1930s the chances are that you would have mixed feelings about your country. If you lived in the southern states you had to bear the disgusting tyranny of Jim Crow and if you lived in the north prejudice was ingrained in society, in the economy and in culture. Come WW2 then black patriots felt understandably torn. On the one hand, they wanted to fight for the flag and American freedoms against some of the most ghastly regimes the human race has ever vomited onto the card table. On the other hand, the flag was oppressing African Americans at home with a uniquely American version of fascism. Not surprisingly many of these soldiers articulated their fight then as a double ‘victory’: against Nazi Germany and other monsters from the deep, but also against attitudes and regulations at home. ‘We find it hard to fight Tyranny in the midst of Tyranny’ as one contemporary put it.
This was all sharpened by the fact that the American armed forces were unquestionably and institutionally racist. For example, there is the incredible fact that blood taken from black and white servicemen was kept separately, though there was and is no scientific justification for such an absurd procedure. With this kind of nonsense we can trace attitudes but there were also actions: the reluctance to use black infantry in battle with the same being employed as something equivalent to Liberty’s navvies. Nor unfortunately did things change very much in the course of the war: one of the most striking passages in this book describes a black pilot being momentarily taken up in the patriotic joy of a welcome in an American harbour only to arrive at disembarkation and be told that he has to walk out onto the dock on a ‘black’ gangplank. This was one of those men who had served his country, risked his life and who had disproved the absurd notion that black men could not fly. And here was his spit-in-your-face homecoming.
Many Second World War books (pioneers in this regard) thrive on witness statements of battles. But Freedom Fliers offers a richer take on the same. As the author is not just tracing the experience of war but also backgrounds and aftermaths – an important part of the book are the changes in life for black Americans – the reader goes deeper. He or she will feel at the end that they’ve read a Russian novel rather than a trashy throw away murder mystery because so much more ground is covered. And Beachcombing should say that if the lives honoured here begin with intolerable domestic conditions they end with an invitation, as guests, to Obama’s inauguration. The Tuskegee airmen took that familiar road from outsiders, to heroes, to icons. And, on the subject of icons, those who enjoy the perversions of history will particularly relish a bit of cobblers in part exposed by this book: the notion that the Tuskegee fliers never lost a plane while escorting American bombers. This claim, which is simply untrue, is a nice example of a half truth becoming a useful lie. The author in one brilliant passage expresses the outrage in popular culture over challenges to this claim thus: ‘But they didn’t every lose a bomber! It says so right here on my T-shirt!’
Beach is always looking out for outstanding WW2 books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
