War and Peace, a tale of class warfare

I had a Russian teacher once who didn’t much like me.  In her defense, I did not attend class with particular regularity.  In my defense, this was because she had committed two terrible indiscretions, the second being worse than the first:  she had a class favorite, and it wasn’t me.

Instead of witnessing such wrong-headedness, I took to lolling about in the park with my friends.  But come the final exam, I made sure to attend.  I am nothing if not a model of propriety.

It was an oral exam, and it was worth the bulk of our grade. 

“Ruth,” she said, “as you may have heard, we read War and Peace in class.”  I had not heard this.  To have heard this would have required me to associate with my classmates.

Instead of answering, I genteelly scraped my jaw off the floor and rearranged my features into a stretched, sub-par variation of “oh, did you not notice me in class?”

All this time she was looking at me from the top of her eyes, and I was steadily smiling back.  Maybe overly widely.  Never show fear, shock or complete consternation to the enemy.

“Ruth,” she said, “please tell me about Prince Andrei and Natasha.”

I nodded.  Like many a Russophile, after all, I HAD read the damn book, or at least the Peace part of it.  But in English, my friends.  Not in Russian.  Not after but three months of the language!  I could not FATHOM how the class had done it.  But fake it, I would. 

And so, with a polite cough, I passionately brought Tolstoy down a notch, to my simpleton’s grasp of Russian.

Once upon a time, there was a Frenchman called Napoleon.  Napoleon did not like Russia.  No!  Napoleon told himself, Russia must—suffer!  Russia—bad!  (This is Napoleon, not I.  I like Russia.  But Napoleon—No!)

Napoleon with many Frenchmen came to Russia, and then Napoleon—with pistols!  Bad!  Very bad!  Many pistols!  More than before!  The Russian people—sad!  War!  Many men come in to war!

Prince Andrei also.  But Prince Andrei loves Natasha!  Natasha additionally loves Prince Andrei’s!  They have met each other to dance in a nice place.  She is beautiful.  He is—there!  They dance!  And they love each other.

Then Prince Andrei asks Natasha to—live with him forever!  Natasha agrees!  Prince Andrei is in the war!  It is bad!  Natasha is at home.  France is bad!  Napoleon!  War!  Pistols!

Suddenly, Prince Andrei is—A gun!  No!  Pain!  In his body!  Prince Andrei—it is very sad!  Prince Andrei’s soul!—leaves him!  Forever!

It is very sad.  There, that is the anecdote of Prince Andrei and Natasha in War and Peace.  Thank you.

She looks at me.  I’m sweating and congratulating myself on my genius.  It is incidentally the first time I truly realize how flexible one becomes with a new language when one doesn’t have a full vocabulary.  And that one should always know the verb for dying.

“Ruth,” she says, in English now, “we only read one scene.  When they met, at the ball.  Not the whole book.” 

“Ah,” I say, growing hotter.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Ah, this is great.  I hadn’t realized I would get a vote here.  I am very good at advice.  I lean forward.  “If I were you, I would either fail me or give me an A+.”  I nod.  “I would lean toward the A+.”

She dismisses me.  I don’t get a chance to explain why I would give myself the A+.

My grade comes in two weeks later.  She’s had the audacity to give me a B+.  I fume.  I would have preferred a stronger statement, one way or another.  But I guess this is what she did, nick the pleasure from a high grade, showing ultimately the point is knowledge but also respect.

Years later we met again and I can say I was still not her class favorite.  And once again hers became the only Russian class I ever skipped.

my word for the day (if I can limit myself)

LACONIC

Read its etymology recently?  Originally it refered to people from Lakonia, an area around Sparta, whose inhabitants were famously terse.  Better than terse.

The story goes that when Philip of Macedon threatened them, “If I enter Lakonia, I will raze Sparta to the ground,” the Spartans retorted simply: “If.”

I need to work on my laconic delivery.  Excuse me while I go practice.

I’m just sayin’….

I remember when my good buddy and former Peace Corps sitemate asked me if I knew the Russian for “it goes without saying.”

I looked at him for one long moment.  “Are you sure this is a phrase you need?”

“Yeah,” he answered seriously.  “I say it a lot.”

I admitted I had no idea what the Russian form of this idiom is—if indeed they’ve bothered to have their own version for a basically ridiculous expression—but that I thought he could get by perfectly well by simply omitting the phrase.

Instead of saying, for instance: “It goes without saying that when the sun shines we call it daytime,” he could simply say a) “When the sun shines we call it daytime,” or better yet, b) nothing at all.  Perhaps squint at the sun happily in silence or summat.

My friend felt my answer was lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, and squinted at the sun silently, ruminating perhaps on what else went without saying.

Then again, there also things that require saying.  That require spelling out.  In fact, two years on, I wonder if perhaps I prefer, indeed, to be told what goes without saying over not being told what requires saying.  But what sparks this, you ask, wondering if I will say…

Funny you should ask.

Flash forward to this weekend.  While the snow falls gently outside, I sat reading Paul de Man’s “The Rhetoric of Romanticism.”  I plugged through the book and even found interesting passages. 

Why “even?”  Am I implying the book’s boring or ill-crafted?  No.  But it’s been a long time since I bumped into a book like this.  An “academic” book of “scholarship.”  A book of literary criticism which doesn’t deign to translate the original texts it quotes at length into English.

Which would be fine if, say, the book was entitled “Die Redekunst der Romantik” and intended for German speakers.  Or “La Rhétorique de Romantisme” for French speakers.  Oui, then it would be fine.  Danke, I would say.  (Apologies for, uh, you know, language mistakes.)

You get my point.  Its title is in English, the author clearly prefers to write in English, and English-speakers are reading it.  So why is Holderlin cited only in German?  Why must I glaze past entire paragraphs of French only to find neither footnote nor in-text translation of the foreign material?  Is the literature cited not abundantly important—as in, say, the point of the entire book—such that the author doesn’t deign to translate it for his readers?

Now, when I was in college, I came across this often.  Back then I would curse my ignorance, my feeble mind and derelict priorities, and imagine I was missing the kernel of wisdom that could somehow make me a sufficiently knowledgeable person. 

No longer.  Now I mirror the scholar-author; I raise my own brow in disdain.  The author wants to appear smart, does he?  Or he wants to protect his teaching from the masses; why else would he raise a barrier like that, or rather, seeing it up, feign lowering it (after all he is writing an entire book supposedly elucidating the matter)?  Yes, yes, I know: he’s not writing for the masses. 

Meh.

Must literary criticism remain the domain of the select few who can puff themselves up with allusions and jargon, and feel important in the blank and frustrated gaze of the apes outside their pristine self-erected gates?  How banal.  I try to hush my ire, telling myself this book is from another time, when knowledge was considered the pleasure, office, vestige and flourish of a select few. 

And because I’m stubborn and know there’s what worth knowing in there, I trampled onward. 

Can I curse myself that at age 33, I still don’t know French and German?  I guess so, but the little dingdong hasn’t yet quoted a Russian (were there no Romantic Russians?) and I could quite read that just fine–I’ve traveled the world speaking a variety of languages; I will not blink in the face of French and German and imagine myself an ignoramus because the author treats me as such.  Nay, I will not blink! 

*blink*  Did I just call the author–  Oh.  Not that the author is a little dingdong, of course.  (Did I really say that?)

*imagines a world in which an irate reader calls me a little dingdong*

*realizes this implies I have a reader*

*smiles in bliss*

Anyhows, that journey’s over with now and I’ve gleaned what I could, not knowing any of the Romance languages.  I’ll have you know I tried; I read some poems and passages aloud in the hopes that spoken, the foreign words would conspire with me to share some of their meaning.  I may have made up interpretations wildly off-base.  Or written even better poetry. 

Or maybe not.  Maybe not at all.  Thanks for that ego tripper, de Man, my would-be teacher.

It goes without saying that…  Ah wait, let’s at least have integrity: I shall not say what goes without saying.  Let the phrase keep its honor and truth.  To be robbed of it in the speaking is just painfully wrong, and the more so in the writing.

What about you–any peeves to share? 

In Armenian Turkey--in a long-crumbling church in Ani

In the Beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was…

“Come and translate for me,” he said, and my gut sank.  It’s one thing to translate, you know, unofficially and with only your personal pride at stake.  I lost that a long time ago, linguistically speaking, at least.  But to actually translate at what amounted to an official meeting between representatives of two governments…

Let’s just say I was not thrilled.  Or, if we must cleave to honesty, I was set against it with all of my heart, and made this clear.

He wheedled and pled.  I stood firm.  He pulled puppy dog eyes.  I stood firmer.  He said, “Really, just come there and if I make a mistake, you’ll step in to help.”

Mmph.  I stared him.  Tried to discern his honesty.

“You can speak Russian, you know,” I groused.  He nodded. “Better than me,” I added.  I cut off his objection with a cold glare.

“Will you come?” he asked.

“You will speak.  And only if I think it would be helpful will I add a word here or there.”  He nodded. “And I am not responsible for any international disasters,” I added firmly.  He nodded again.

So the date was set.

And because it was Georgia, it was postponed.  Mind you, for any international development nuts out there, particularly those prone to laughing off all delays on other countries’ cultural foibles, I’ll tell you this was AT LEAST as much due to the expat as it was a local cultural phenomenon.  Let us not cast stones…

Anyway, the day did come.  I was summoned, and I went to the meeting.

“Please let me not cause an international catastrophe,” I prayed to the same God who saw fit for me to freeze during that winter like most of earth’s population.

So the meeting began, and to my surprise and gratitude, the man who’d asked for my help did indeed lead the conversation without expecting me to serve as a real translator.  I began to relax.

Pff.  Never begin to relax.  That is PRECISELY when international catastrophes sense a crack in your armor.

He was describing something and I’d drifted off somewhat.  He turned to me with a frown, his hand gesturing like he was sifting sand through his fingers.  I knew that mildly desperate look in his eyes and leaned forward to hear what word he needed.

“Forestry?” he asked.

Forestry?  FORESTRY?  What, he couldn’t pick a simple word?  FORESTRY?  Who KNOWS that word in a foreign language? Dude, I don’t even know what that means in ENGLISH.

I looked at him poisonously.

That was the only thing he asked of me.  I shrugged helplessly.  I didn’t cause an international scandal.

That night, however, I did look up forestry in the dictionary.  Learnt two different words for it.

I have never used those two words since.

New York

They told me I’d be asked. Told me to have an answer ready

But I was otherwise engaged, and besides, I didn’t know how to answer.  And they were right; people do ask.

“So, what was Peace Corps like?”

Some expect a two-line answer.  Others want to really get into it, to imagine it vicariously through you, sometimes to think on doing it themselves.

Peace Corps… I loved it; even the worst of times was worth it.  The insight gained from those times lingers with me still, a million miles away from those moments.

They say Peace Corps is the toughest job you’ll ever love.

They say Peace Corps is different for everyone.

They’re right; which of course means they’re wrong.  :)  If it’s different for everyone, it stands to reason that for some it’s not the toughest job they’ll ever love.

I never regretted joining Peace Corps.  Not for an instant.  And it was true for me: it was the toughest job I’ve ever loved, and I credit it with so much, personally.

There were times I wept with frustration.  There was even one time when I locked myself into an outhouse to cry, so you can imagine… (!!!)  But there were also times I cried with happiness.

Are my tear ducts too willing to gush, you wonder?

Nay, I say.  They’re about average.

I remember the winter when I cried in the outhouse.  (How could I forget?)  I texted my site-mate to ask if it was safe out; if I could escape unseen.  (A site-mate is a fellow volunteer placed in the same village/town/city.)

“Yes,” he texted back.

Together we ran from the building down the only main street in town.  Well, I exaggerate.  We walked.  But swiftly.  Stumbling, for the ground was cracked and slippery with ice.

My bedroom also, by the way, had ice in it.  I look back now and realize that for the first time I was experiencing seasonal stress, which only seemed to be eclipsed by the frustrations of culture shock.

“I’ve had it,” I said.

“With Peace Corps?” Sig asked.

I laughed. “No, I love Peace Corps,” I said, and then a few more frozen tears eked out.

Again he probably wondered why he’d been paired with me.  With nowhere to go, we followed our feet down the road, eventually reaching my other workplace there.  I was working directly with four NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at the time.  With a sigh, I stumbled into the building.  He followed me.  This place was the only one which had heat…  And in that cold, brutal winter, heat was something precious and not to be turned down when available.  (Have I mentioned the ice in my bedroom?)

We walked into my large shared office.

There was a spread laid out on the table.  Delicious Georgian foods and wine.  I looked at my colleague sitting there.

“It’s been forty days since my relative died,” she explained in Russian.

Ah.  My face grew hot.  That meant it had been 39 days since I’d misunderstood the word “passed away” in Georgian and had told her that her relative would be fine the next day.  This is why she was now reminding me in Russian, my stronger language.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She sighed deeply and nodded at the chairs next to her. “Sit down.  We must toast her and commemorate her with this meal.”

I wasn’t supposed to drink at work, you know.  Peace Corps rules.  But I felt this superseded the rules.  I opened a spot at the table with a shift of a chair, and sat down heavily.

I think I needed to commemorate life and death that day.  And I think I needed a drink.

I toasted loquaciously and many, many times.  In the Republic of Georgia, that’s the only way to drink.  Actually, that’s literally the case. Whereas in the US you sip your wine throughout your meal, in Georgia that is VERY bad form, and no-one would lift a glass without toasting first.  A long toast.  Fortunately, I happen to love toasting, and my Georgian friends loved that about me.  I knew how to honor a glass of wine and the people around the table (and away from it, and passed on, and future generations,–and everyone that one tends to toast at Georgian parties).

So I toasted and toasted and toasted, and soon we were all toasted.

Which was precisely when Sig’s cell rang.  He looked up suddenly.

“Peace Corps is here,” he said.

I lowered my glass. “Huh?”  (See what I mean by eloquence?)

“Right outside the building.  They’re here to inspect my new place before letting me move.”

I sat up. “Sig, they can’t come in!  I’m wearing jeans!”

He looked me flat in the eyes then let his glance travel to my glass.  I lowered it slightly.

“Go on, meet them outside, come on!” I pleaded.

“It’s cold outside,” he grumbled, but he dashed out.

And I toasted him next.  :)

Yeah.  Peace Corps isn’t what you expect.  Good times, bad times, hard times…  Okay, no easy times.  But my God, if you put your all into it, and if you’re lucky and get great colleagues…  It’s all worth it.  One hundred times over.  More.

You know the US Army slogan– “Be All You Can Be”?

That’s EXACTLY what Peace Corps is to me.  A two year increment of your life where you put yourself to the test and you make sure you pass.  Sure, you can do it at home.  But many of us don’t.  We forget to live life to the full, back home.  But make it the whole point of a period of your life, and you can achieve so much.  You can begin to achieve being yourself, the way you want to be.

Just not a particularly well-scrubbed self.

Gori Apartment, Republic of Georgia

Like Lovers Do… Sorta.

I was in Budapest, desperate to find an ATM before leaving to go to Montenegro, which at the time, I was told, did not have ATMs.  I rushed down the windy streets, beleaguered by my imagination, which kept throwing up vivid images of me, broke, hauled off to prison for not paying for my hotel room.  Or worse yet, my colleagues getting a call about the idiot new person in the office, who’d managed to forget to bring the right currency with her.

I’d gotten money out of one ATM, but then it refused to give more, assuming no-one but the most incorrigible crook would require over $200 on any given day.  And I only had one given day.  The other ATMs just regurgitated my card, without nary an effort to access my account.  I was wiped with stress when I finally stopped to question a man on the street.

“I need an ATM,” I said to him in feeble English, gesturing with my arms to show a big box, something that I’m sure explained a lot to him.

He looked at me quizzically but warmly. “Parla italiano?” he asked.

Oof. “No.”  I said this in as Italian an accent as I could. “Vi govorite po Russki?” I asked, hopefully.

“Nyet,” he answered, and then asked, “Parlez-vous le francais?”

I shook my head. “Govorite li Srpski yezik?”  (Serbian)

He shrugged, then asked me another question.  I couldn’t even discern the name of the language, and shook my head.

“Ata medaber Ivrit?” I asked, turning to Hebrew now.

Nope. “Habla Espanol?”

Gah!  I shook my head, and in a small voice asked, because it seemed so in keeping with our pattern of conversation, “Sprechen Sie Deutch?”

Mind you, I don’t speak German.  I just know how to ask it.

Thankfully, he didn’t either.  Finally we just stood there, the wind out of our sails, feeling like weeny little monoglots, almost embarrassed to catch one another’s eyes.  How could we know so many languages between us, yet none at all in common?  In my mind, I know I was thinking, ‘how do you not know Russian? With your history?’ And I wouldn’t be suprised if behind his kind smile lurked the stunned question: ‘how can you not know a SINGLE European language, you mangy fool??’

Then with an encouraging smile, he prompted me wordlessly to repeat my initial question.  I said the word ATM in as many languages as I knew, and phantomimed taking money out of an invisible box.  His face lit up, and he pulled me by my sleeve out of the building.  There, on the corner, he threw out his arms in one direction then another, counting blocks off with his fingers.  It was magic.  Without a word, we communicated.

I beamed at him gratefully, because I couldn’t thank him and he touched his hand to his heart, and with that, and the bows of two happy Westerners, we parted to continue our lives.

So love isn’t the only language that doesn’t require words.  It seems we all sometimes need to take money out of ATMs, at least in Europe and the US, and language fanatics the world over can’t give up on a conversation once started.  Even if in the end we use only the language of the body… though not quite like lovers do.  :)

* I was reminded of this “conversation” when reading Sara’s Blog this morning.  :)

Speak to Me…

I’m thinking about voice now, about how it frames and directs a character, as well as our sense of who they are.

How a person speaks reflects so much: their background, their education, their “themes” in life, their passions, their viewpoints.  When they write, we can “hear them” in their words.

It’s such an integral piece to have down when one’s writing fiction.  So that leads me to a writing question for those of you in the habit of creating characters (or having them pop up unexpectedly and barter/bribe/force their way into your text).

1.  What comes first for you:  a real sense, in the totality, of who the character is, or their voice?
2.  Do certain types of characters take their voices more easily than others, for you?
3.  And if you’ve written more than one manuscript/book, do you find by and large any commonalities in the voices that come easiest to you?

I mentioned a week or so ago that I’d created a new character.  I’d called him an “accidental” character.  One moment I was with my characters escaping the Bloomington rain in a little diner I once huddled in years ago, and the next moment he’d walked across the ether and sat down with us, his motives close to the chest.  I wasn’t sure if he’d last or not, but now I think he’s a keeper.  And one thing I love about him is that he finally did what only my antagonists had been able to do thus far.  He came with his whole self formed.

I mean, I love characters who come fully formed.  Saves me the time and trouble, I tell you.  ;)  But what he also came with was his voice.  Literally the sound of it, its timbre and emotive resonance, its pattern.  Even his pauses.  This makes him so far my strongest voice, but even so, I know it needs development and refinement over the course of my rewrites.  That’s okay.  I’m just glad I hear him.  It makes writing him easier.

For me, the sum of a character has come first each time.  Only when I really sense them can I write them–that is, have them speak using their own voices, and not just my words–and even then, voice does not come easily to me yet.  My two favorite antagonists came fully formed, but even so, their voices are still being refined.  One, I can hear.  I know his style; he’s so cognizant of it, I can’t help but be.

But my heroes, I could shoot them with a brick.  They run from scrutiny.  Their voices are still mine.  To me, that’s the big clue they need more development.

So, what about you–does the character come first, or the voice?  And do you have some voices come easier to you, like my antagonists and this new fellow (bless his soul)?

And for that matter, how easy is voice for you to master?

Nighttime Doorway, New York

Falling Upon the Thorns of Language. Every Language.

It’s one thing to mess up in a foreign language.  And it’s quite another to do it in your own.

The Georgian language is its own language group.  Trust me, I’ve dabbled in enough to know: it’s unique.  Well, and I read what linguists tell me.  Ain’t no way knowing any other language can help one learn Georgian.

So when I made mistakes out yonder and felled nigh near everyone with my errors, I took it quite in stride.  Yes, maybe these were not my prouder moments, but they were, as they say, “teachable moments.”

Experience is the name men give their mistakes.

~ Oscar Wilde

Like the time I was in a hurtling minibus, full to the brim and beyond with villagers, and I meant to tell the driver I needed to get out.  In Georgia, you see, you travel precisely as far as you want to on a route, and then you yell, “Stop for me!”

Unless, of course, you’re me.  In which case you yell something more like:

“Stop me!  Stop me now!  Stop me here!  Stop me!”

As I said, these were not my brighter moments.

But in English, to err feels slightly dumber.  I mean, one has theoretically had years to cull words and expressions and to gain basic reading comprehension.  One ought not sound like one is speaking Georgian, then, you know?

When I was fifteen, I was selected to participate in a rather prestigious English competition of some sort.  (And yes, it’s worse when your mistake happens after you’ve been selected in hopes that you won’t embarrass your school in exactly such a way.)

We were asked to read a book and be ready to answer essay questions on the short stories within.  I was a voracious reader and wasn’t concerned at all.  Until I read the book.  Which was, I declare, full of the least interesting essays I’d ever read.  Mind you, these were travel essays, so it truly is almost unfathomable that I could have been bored so painfully, but I was.

My brain hurt with the effort of not revealing I’d found the stories almost uniformly insipid, uninspiring and turgid.  I was fifteen, and unaware that I was allowed to not like literature.  (I was also perhaps a mite judgmental.)

At any rate, all the shrouding of my true feelings must have exhausted every last gray cell, because I found myself suddenly, agonizingly unable to remember a rather basic word that I needed.  Believe it or not, considering how much I hated the book, I was looking for the word “awe-inspiring.”

Ahem.

So I squinted.  I screwed my eyes shut.  I breathed heavily and hit my forehead against my eraser.  And then I sadly wrote down:

awefull.

Yeah.  Not just the wrong word, but pathetically spelled.

Needless to say, I wasn’t called back for any further rounds.  And thusly ended my short flirtation with literary prestige.  :)

In My Defense: The Georgian Alphabet

Abandon, the First Word

My heart breaks somehow.

How late it was that the first English dictionary was published.  1604.  Can you fathom how late that is?  We’re talking well after Chaucer, and even after Shakespeare began.  The microscope already had been invented.  The MICROSCOPE, people.

Oh, words really flew back then.  Spellings shifted like weather.  Men signed their names in so many different ways.  And books, wow, books…  In the Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries chained books.  Readers could pull the chain taut long enough to sit down nearby and read, but those valuable tomes never walked out into the dusty streets.

Your library is your portrait.

~ Holbrook Jackson

Our first English dictionary was called A Table Alphabeticall.  With two Ls, that’s no error on my part.

The first word in the dictionary was abandon.  Abandon.  What a sad, sad, sad word to start such a vital book, the sum of all our words.

Then again, it wasn’t ever really envisioned as a compendium of all of our words.  Its 2,543 words were selected for a very specific purpose.  It was intended for ”ladies, gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons,” so that they could “more easilie and better vnderstand many hard English wordes, vvhich they shall heare or read in scriptures, sermons, or elswhere, and also be made able to vse the same aptly themselues.“

Generous, hm?

The author, Robert Cawdrey, had been a rector before being forced out of his rectory for his Puritanical leanings, which emerged not least, as you can imagine, in his sermons.  His youngest son would grow up to become a Puritan minister known for religious intolerance. Apparently he believed religious toleration to be “the last and most desperate sign of the Antichrist.”

There’s only one surviving copy of the original Table Alphabeticall.  It’s in Oxford.  I’d love to see it.  To see it, touch it, and turn its pages.  If only it could survive the treatment.

Think of it.  It not only contains words we may not use today, it also includes meanings that we’ve forgotten.

Geometry, for example, is listed as “the art of measuring the earth.”  How magical is that.

First Words, First Page, First English Dictionary

A Bum Rap: Medieval Magic, Ancient Curses, Renaissance Paper and Peace Corps :)

Somebody please tell me Wikipedia loves me back.  Because I have fallen and cannot get up.

There was a time when chemistry, with its roots in observable chemical reactions, didn’t exist as an organized, procedure-bound field.  Instead, there was alchemy.  Some mixed it with magic.  Okay.

Well, that got me reading about what exactly those Medieval magical books, called grimoires, covered.  I won’t even MENTION–she said falsely–that the word “grammar” is linked to this word.  Because why set you on your own Wiki Free-Fall?  No reason at all.

So, these poor folk hiding their grimoires under floorboards and beds, in fear of the Church finding them and meting out punishment–what were they risking life and limb for?  Directions on spell-casting, recipes for medicinal powders and potions, instructions on making personal talismans, and (yikes) lists of angels and demons, as well as information on how to summon them to gain magical powers.   For this they died or were tortured.  Useful information, all.

But there’s more, if you’re willing to trawl history.  (And who isn’t, when such gems await?)

Turns out in days of yore, in this case Greco-Roman days, folks would hire others, consultants if you will, to inscribe “curse tablets” for them.  So, for instance, if my neighbor got away with stealing one of my chickens, I would have a curse tablet written with their name inscribed.

Business must have been good.  These consultants would apparently inscribe a bunch of tablets and have them lying around, waiting for someone to come buy and ask for a specific name to be added in the empty space.  Mass-produced curse tablets.

What will they think of next, our ancestors?

Well, I’m glad you asked.  Our democratic brethren the Greeks had another interesting system in place.  Back in the day before the reams of papers which throttle even our electronic period, they used broken pieces of earthenware pottery as voting ballots.  These were called ostraca.

Wait for it–

If they were voting to banish or exile someone, they would scratch the person’s name on the ostraca, leading to the term– “ostracism.”

MAGIC…..

And now, just because I’ve kept this inside for a whole day already, and truly that’s too long for my mortal coil, here’s an extra tidbit, which I’m going to toss at you as being at least peripherally related to the lack of paper in earlier days.

It’s related to my post yesterday on Cheapside.  I told you was looking up astronomical awareness and magic in the 1500s.  What I didn’t tell you, is that I bumped into Cheapside by means of stumbling over the links in Wiki’s chapbook page.  Chapbooks were pamphlet-like booklets printed during this period (and beyond.)  They were not bound, and not considered high literature, per say.  And today, remaining copies are very expensive and rare.

As Wiki puts it:

“Because of their flimsy nature such ephemera rarely survive as individual items. They were aimed at buyers without formal libraries, and, in an era when paper was expensive, were used for wrapping or baking. Paper has also always had hygienic uses and there are contemporary references to the use of chapbooks as bum fodder (i.e. toilet paper).”

Bum fodder….  What a term.  And believe it or not, I do have a story to relate.  I know, you’re mildly shocked I’m continuing past these gems and into territory so questionable.  I understand completely.  So only follow me if you’re ready.

Ready?

This is the briefest of anecdotes from my Peace Corps days.  I’ve alluded to the varied maladies that strike one in Peace Corps.  One of these, which almost everyone got, was amoebic dysentery.  And when one has dysentery, one doesn’t really have time to run about town looking for soft and luxuriant brands of bum fodder.  Anyway, one’s town or village probably doesn’t carry anything softer than crunched up newspaper.

So, to be brief, it does happen that one simply grabs whatever’s near one, and runs to the outhouse.  One might, for instance, grab one’s language book and run out.  And then one might very, very, very rapidly try to study those words while squatting, realizing that whatever page gets torn out, ain’t no-one ever gonna study those words again later.

Yes, I really did say that.  And yes, that really is Peace Corps.  Welcome, if you’re here perusing for tips on what to do with your spare two years and three months of altruistic feelings.  ;)

I think my photo should feature something completely different, so you can return to your day sprightly and clean.  As always when you leave my blog.  *cough*

Hot Air Ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey