Gimcrack and the Empty Golden Egg

Most people who know me are aware of my passion for nature. I even collect little knickknacks that remind me of the critters that inhabit the green spaces I love. The thing about collections, however, is the dust they attract and the space they occupy. They subvert the feng shui that we're told provides the necessary balance between yin and yang. So why do we collect this gimcrack gold, the curse of a love-hate relationship with things?

Surely that is a question.

Gimcrack (jim crack) objects appear attractive, but in fact they are usually of little value. While two of my pottery birds I inherited from my mother, most of my animal figures are made of natural materials--straw, twigs, feathers, and were not built to last. My three-year-old grandson is proof of that. He enjoys playing with them, gradually decreasing their already short longevity, but when we rearrange them once more in their proper place, they seem no worse for wear. Yet.

But the question remains. What's all this gimcrack palaver about anyway?

This word gimcrack, of Middle English origins, came into use between AD 1325 and 1375, and evolved from ME gibbecrak on through Old French, gibben--to be erratic, and gibber + crak--a bursting sound. Perhaps back in the 14th century, this word assumed the qualities of a cheap bauble crashing to the floor.  Nevertheless, the journey of language acquisition and syntax is indeed an interesting one.

But to return to the question of why we are so enamored with useless trifles--there may be more than meets the eye. That which is flimsy or poorly made, a cheap imitation, maybe even a showy one, continues to be deceptively attractive even now in 2020. Advertising is a good example of this, mesmerizing the buyer with the lure of glitz.

Maybe it's the whole plumage strategy--the showy one gets the sale. It certainly works for birds. Why wouldn't wearing fabulous, if not outrageous, attention-getting plumage work for humans, too?

You see, what glitters may not be gold but it looks like gold and for a moment it feels like gold. Its attraction is irresistible--even when the golden gimcrack is just another empty shell.

Psychologist Carl Jung, however, warns us of living in our Id, that childlike part of our personalities that strips away our patience and good judgment, embracing us in the I want what I want, and I want it now stage.

One of my favorite writers Charles Dickens was adept at  holding up the proverbial mirror to his readers, not just the English but also the Americans of the 19th Century Industrial Revolution. His villains as well as loads of  English folk trying to avoid debtor's prison craved the stuff of golden gimcrack. Not only was image paramount but survival, too, was sealed in everything money could buy--Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, Ralph Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby, Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist. Their greed for gold, image and power wrecked lives, ultimately their own.

How easy it is to fall for gimcrack, but is a harmless version of it really so bad?

Collecting little animals on a shelf seems innocent enough. Marie Kondo agrees with me. If they bring me joy, says she, I should keep them, and I probably will.  But what about my friend's cubic zirconia diamonds and those Jimmy Choo knockoffs she surreptitiously purchased on a back street in NYC? We want to believe that images of quality and expensive good taste can be ours without the price, that somehow even the fake ones have the power to make us seem better than we are.

Or maybe there's a happy middle ground. You can enjoy your gimcrack and still be a person of character and substance with little or no thought to image.

We'll be fine, as long as we avoid the mouse-trap where that delicious cheese (Jarlsberg?) isn't what we thought it was and there's no one to rescue us once we're snared.

Where Are the Halcyon Days of Yore?

Lately I've had a lot of time to think about all the great experiences and adventures throughout my life. Not the least of which are the literary tours to England and Scotland that I led for my students and their families--glorious theatre trips to Stratford and London, tea time in Bath, a train ride through the sheep-dotted Yorkshire moors to the home of the Brontës, an excursion through Canterbury and Dover, tracing the footsteps of Bobbie Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson in Edinburgh. Ah, those were the days. And how could I forget my recently life changing trip to Ireland with my sister--renting a car and driving through eleven little towns and villages along the southern coast. Unfortunately, the coronavirus Covid-19 has put a crimp in the travel plans of many of us.

No matter. Happy memories sustain us and make us remember what we have accomplished and how our lives have been full of purpose. We often look back on them as calm and peaceful, maybe even carefree. Whether or not they actually were all of those things we might not know for sure, for time has a way of healing and softening the hard edges. Our photographs prove how happy we were and allow us to relive those glorious moments.

Our dependency on our halcyon days of yore, however, can be a slippery slope. Living in the past often prevents us from taking advantage of opportunities that lie ahead of us and helping us create new memories. But let's pause a moment to learn more about the word itself.

A word that means calm and peaceful should have a pretty poetic story behind it, and indeed halcyon does. According to Greek mythology, Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, king of the winds. She and her husband Ceyx, king of Thessaly, were so in love that they called themselves Zeus and Hera. Father of the gods Zeus interpreted their pet names as disrespect, and he turned Ceyx into a vulture. Alcyone was hunting everywhere for him when the Olympians in their sorrow for Alcyone turned her into a bird as well, the Alkyona bird. She was condemned, however, to lay her eggs near the cold raging seas of winter rather than spring or summer. Zeus felt sorry for her and ordered sunny weather for fifteen days every January so she could lay and hatch her eggs in calm and peaceful weather. Alcyone--alkyon, meaning kingfisher in Greek, became known and used as halcyon between AD 1340 and 1400. The beautiful bird below is a kingfisher.

As the first wave of Covid-19 lingers, and in fact is spiking in Texas as I write this, we continue to find ways of coping and bringing stability to these irrational months of uncertainty and hardship. We may not have a Zeus whose pity for us ushers in that metaphorical sunny weather, but God gave us the wisdom and patience to be creative in recreating a purposeful life in spite of the obstacles we now face.

How do you achieve peace? Are you responsible for your own state of peace? What can you do to contribute to peace outside your sphere? These are the questions I posed to my family and friends, and they were kind enough to offer some insight. Here's the short list:

• Remove yourself from unhealthy situations (emotional as well as physical)
• Make a commitment to love.
• Communicate your wants and needs clearly.
• Occupy green spaces as often as possible.
• Forgive. Not just others but yourself, too.
• Find order in your life--clean out your refrigerator, pay your bills on time, get enough sleep.
• Let go of the things beyond your control.
• Set boundaries and follow them.
• Learn how to praise others and also how to accept praise. Look for the good in people. This does not mean you have to agree with them or even become best friends with them.
•  Learn more about yourself, your likes and dislikes, and start a new hobby or continue an old one.
•  Take care of your body. Exercise and eat healthy meals for sound body and mind.

One day--yes, maybe it will be a year from now, you will travel again. You will experience those life changing moments and have those incredible adventures once more. Until that day, like Alcyone, we must forge our own individual "fifteen days every January," the halcyon days of now.

Sending love and hugs to all the people who followed me to my beloved UK!

Juggernaut: Forces of Good or Evil?

The connotative study of words can be fascinating as their history and culture enable the word to be not only widely used but also spread and altered over time. The beauty of our language is that it can offer comfort as often as it does despair.  Juggernaut is one of those gems.

Originating from Hindi, juggernaut is derived from Jagannath--a term for the Hindu god Krishna meaning "lord of the world."  It came into common usage in the English language in the early nineteenth century, probably as a result of British colonization of India.  In the Indian town of Puri a festival is held where Jagannath is dragged on top of a heavy chariot through the streets. The image conjures a massive inexorable force that threatens to destroy all in its path.

The British have a similar cultural meaning for juggernaut. A huge lorry barreling down the motorway is frequently referred to as a juggernaut, and no doubt the average UK  driver will cautiously maneuver around any vehicle that size.  On the other hand, this word does not slip habitually off the American tongue, if at all. If you were a Marvel comics fan of the 60s, you no doubt are familiar with the merciless and destructible fictional bad guy called Juggernaut, but where does that leave the rest of us?

The common usage of juggernaut may not be part of the ordinary American vocabulary, but that doesn't mean we don't feel the effects of it, and mightily. I asked a number of friends and family to describe the personal juggernaut--the unstoppable, dominant power, currently dominating their lives. With the exception of two people, their answers pointed to the metaphorical tsunami sweeping over them. The one prevailing trait was the level of restriction and containment of the Covid-19 quarantine, the way it bridled their lives and left people in a quandary ranging from disappointment to bewilderment. The virus, the protests in George Floyd's honor, the BLM movement, and all subsequent life changes have upset our comfort zone as well as the ability to battle everyday stresses. The day to day uncertainty delivered by fear of illness and death, joblessness and inability to feed one's family and take care of basic needs, the injustices endured by POC, the concomitant barrage of bad news from local and national television and social media, the long wait for a vaccine, and the unexpected, painful containment of our lives compelled by quarantine--this is a horrific juggernaut Americans, and even people the world over, have not experienced since the 1940s.

But wait, you ask, what about the two people whose responses were different?

Hmm. Well, they were interesting and definitely worth considering. Although they described their juggernauts differently, both answers amounted to the same power: love. One said her juggernaut was her puppy that she loves with all her heart. The other response was simply "Love IS power." We know all the bad stuff about that steamroller effect of juggernaut, but might there be another unstoppable, dominant power in our lives that we desire, that we actually need in abundance?

Christians believe in a God who sacrificed His Son Jesus out of love for all humanity. They follow the scripture that says, "God is love."  Mothers and fathers, and sometimes grandparents, go to unimaginable lengths to protect and provide for their children. Family members donate their available organs to improve the quality and lengthen the lives of people they don't want to live without. Decades of research show that babies who are loved thrive whereas those who aren't held and loved become weak. We know that the compassion we show to our fellow human beings in their darkest days transfers to them the power to survive. Even beloved pets have the capacity to lengthen our lives, and when they are gone, the love is so strong we feel as if we have lost a dear family member. The power of juggernaut, the same indomitable force that has the potential to destroy, may also have the muscle to change our lives for the good. What if it doesn't always look like that inexorable mass of power headed our way?

Perhaps both the negative and positive connotations of juggernaut provide the necessary balance that allows us to wade through the storm to get safely to dry land. Although Carl Sandburg didn't use the word juggernaut in his poetry, I imagine his portrayal of love in "Little Word, Little White Bird" to be a quiet but dynamic horsepower that energizes us and moves us forward without the burden of anxiety and pain.



And it won’t help any, it won’t get us anywhere,
it won’t wipe away what had been
nor hold off what is to be,
if you hear me saying
love is a little white bird
and the flight of it so fast
you can’t see it
and you know it’s there
only by the faint whirr of its wings
and the hush song coming so low to your ears
you fear it might be silence
and you listen keen and you listen long
and you know it’s more than silence
for you get the hush song so lovely
it hurts and cuts into your heart
and what you want is to give more than you can get
and you’d like to write it but it can’t be written
and you’d like to sing it but you don’t dare try
because the little white bird sings it better than you can
so you listen and while you listen you pray
and after you pray you meditate, then pray more
and one day it’s as though a great slow wind
had washed you clean and strong inside and out
and another day it’s as though you had gone to sleep
in an early afternoon sunfall and your sleeping heart
dumb and cold as a round polished stone,
and the little white bird’s hush song
telling you nothing can harm you,
the days to come can weave in and weave out
and spin their fabrics and designs for you
and nothing can harm you–
unless you change yourself into a thing of harm
nothing can harm you.

Go forth and prosper in the power of love, friends!

Invoking Atticus Finch: We Need You Now, Sir!

If you haven't read the Harper Lee classic To Kill a Mockingbird, you probably have seen the award winning film adaptation of the book. But still, if you aren't familiar with either, you surely have heard of or seen references to the most famous man of American ethics, Atticus Finch, especially the courtroom scene. It is there in his acclaimed summation of the case against a Negro man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a white woman, that Atticus assembles together the truths that distill into the words we all know so well:

"Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal...we know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe...But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal--there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court...our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.

I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty."

Throughout the story of Atticus Finch, his family and friends, and the ill-fated case of Tom Robinson he was destined to take, this man exhibits the quality of sangfroid that makes us long to have a husband, father, uncle, son, or friend just like him.

The word sangfroid originates literally from the French sang--blood, froid--cold, and was first used to mean coolness of mind, calm, having composure between 1740 and 1750. The anglicized version is pronounced sahn frwa.

So how does a person develop sangfroid? Is it a personality trait one is born with? Can the brain reprogram itself to have a consistent temperament of calm coolness of mind? Does experience contribute and does a person need to be open-minded, observant, and perhaps even ethical to remain calm? Or maybe the quality of sangfroid is only the tip of the iceberg for a person of the highest integrity.This blog post will shed a few rays of light on those questions by looking specifically at my favorite character of all time, Atticus Finch--the epitome of father, friend, lawyer, and champion of moral courage.

People who display sangfroid seem to have many of the same qualities. Atticus manifests all of these.

1.  They operate with the quiet spirit of wisdom and experience.
      Scout tells her father that most of the townspeople think they're right and Atticus is wrong for defending Tom Robinson. His response: "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."


2.  They are self-assured but humble.
      Jem and Scout think their father is old and can't do anything special. Their neighbor Miss Maudie  sets them straight.
      "Well, did you know he's the best checker player in this town?"
      "Good Lord, Miss Maudie. Jem and me beat him all the time."
      "It's about time you learned it's because he lets you."

      Later in Chapter 10, Atticus is called upon to shoot a mad dog stricken with rabies. Jem is          astounded that his father is able to hit him. Maudie says,
      "Forgot to tell you the other day that besides playing the Jew's Harp, Atticus Finch was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time."

      In Chapter 11 Atticus teaches Jem an important lesson but the reader also sees another glimpse into Atticus's principled life.
      "--I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose...died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I knew." (Mrs. Dubose freed herself from her morphine addition before she died.)


3.  Clinging to what is right, they are hopeful even in what seems to be a hopeless situation.
      Inside the courtroom, all are waiting for the jury to return with a verdict regarding Tom Robinson's innocence. When the judge finishes polling the jury, who have all voted guilty, Atticus puts his hand on Tom's shoulder and whispers. Imprisoned for a crime he does not commit, Tom tries to escape and is shot seventeen times as he runs. Atticus shares the news with his sister. "Atticus leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'We had such a good chance,' he said. 'I guess Tom was tired of white men's chances and preferred to take his own.'"


4.  They are responsible for outcomes and respond fairly and courageously.
      There is no better example of this than when Scout must explain to her Uncle Jack how to be a good parent when Jack unfairly punishes her for cursing. "Well, in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it--you just lit right into me. When Jem an' I fuss Atticus doesn't ever just listen to Jem's side of it, he hears mine too..."

      When Jem gets angry and destroys his neighbor Mrs. Dubose's flowers, Atticus insists that he take responsibility for it. Jem fights back. "She said you lawed for niggers and trash." Atticus responds that doing that to a sick old lady is still inexcusable.  Scout doesn't understand and again Atticus must explain. "...sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down--well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience--Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man."

   
5.  They are kind and grateful. They are patient and tolerant, and they choose words wisely.
      When Scout begins school, she already knows how to read, but the teacher tells Scout her father has done it all wrong and needs to stop reading at home. She is upset and doesn't want to go back to school, but Atticus shares this now famous advice: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it...If you'll concede the necessity of going to school, we'll go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?"

      After the trial has concluded, Atticus goes home to find the Negro community has loaded his table with food, even as the Depression is in full swing, as a gesture of appreciation for doing his best to defend Tom.  "Atticus's eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment. 'Tell them I'm very grateful,' he said. 'Tell them--tell them they must never do this again. Times are too hard...."

      At the end of the story and the sheriff has shared his decision about Boo Radley with Atticus, he walks over to his daughter who has been listening to them. "'Scout, Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?'
      'Yes sir, I understand. Mr. Tate was right.'
      'What do you mean?'
      'Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?'
      Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. 'Thank you for my children, Arthur.'"


Sangfroid may be just a word we use to describe someone who has mastered a control over the emotions, but the implied importance of the word goes deeper into the inner workings of a truly decent human being. Although Harper Lee's beloved character Atticus Finch is fictional, we would be wise to study him as an exemplar of virtue and moral courage. As we watch the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter movement, with millions of people marching, that is taking place in the midst of an international pandemic in which more than a hundred thousand Americans alone have died, we need leadership of the highest order. Let it begin at home.