The Dash

The Dash
by Linda Ellis

I read of a reverend who stood to speak
at the funeral of his friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning . . . to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
that she spent alive on earth . . .
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own;
the cars . . . the house . . . the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard . . .
are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left.
(You could be at "dash mid-range.")

If we could just slow down enough
to consider what's true and real,
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives
like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
and more often wear a smile . . .
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy’s being read
with your life's actions to rehash . . .
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent your dash?

Men will never cease from toil and misery by day and night

From Peter Jones' column, Ancient & Modern in The Spectator, August 7th, 2010.

The 7th century bc Greek farmer-poet Hesiod laid down the marker when he lamented that he lived in the age of iron, when men 'will never cease from toil and misery by day and night'. The reason is that, in the pre-industrial ancient world, there were, effectively, no such things as 'jobs'. Virtually everyone, bar the rich, lived off the soil. So 'work' was not a matter of choice. If you did not work, you died, though an epitaph highlighted the benefits: sweet repose, no fear of starvation, permanent, rent-free accommodation - so never in debt! Popular morality rammed home the point. Aesop contrasted the ant who worked to prepare for the winter with the grasshopper who sang the summer away and paid the price.

Further, if you did work for a wage, you would be working for others. That implied you could not stand on your own two feet. You were dependent on someone else, i.e. no longer free. It was as if you were the lowest of the low - a slave. In other words, you were not regarded as a free man, freely and proudly selling your labour: you were in fact selling your person. Better to see yourself as a noble, hard-working, self-sufficient farmer - an image Romans keenly polished - than that.

A Roman word for 'work' makes the point with a terrible precision: negotium (cf. negotiate), from nego 'I deny' and otium 'leisure'. Far from being dignified or positive, work was a denial of everything man longed for - leisure to enjoy himself as he chose.

Where human judgment abdicates

From A Jacques Barzun Reader by Michael Murray, the essay Toward a Fateful Serenity:

Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine give relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. Any ossified institution - almost every bureaucracy, public or private - manifests the mechanical. So does race-thinking - a verdict passed mechanically at a color-coded signal. Ideology is likewise an idea-machine, designed to spare the buyer all further thought. Again, "methods" substituted for reading books and judging art are a perversion of what belongs to science and engineering: "models," formulas, theories. Specialism too turns machine-like if it never transcends its single task.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!

In his essay The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and English Genius, George Orwell mentions a couple of times the condition of English teeth (circa 1940).

The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd.

[snip]

Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life.

Living in England in the 1960's there were still many fascinating instances of teeth absent, teeth oddly positioned, teeth disturbingly colored, to fascinate a young child. Coincidentally, I found myself having to explain the orthodontic history of England just the other day. I was working with a group of inner-city Boy Scouts. We have been exploring all sorts of forms of stories: jokes, riddles, poems, nonsense verse, sketches, stories, etc. I had brought along a collection of Spike Milligan's poems, Silly Verse for Kids. I had read a couple of poems which were well received. As often happens, each of the boys then wanted a chance to read from the collection so I handed it around, each picking randomly a poem to read. One of them picked the poem, Teeth.

Teeth
by Spike Milligan

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And suasages half done.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them -
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

Gathered around were some of the poorest children in America but each with a fine mouth of straight, beautiful ivories. My explanation of the dental condition of England sixty years ago when it was at the height of its world dominance elicited blank stares of incomprehension. And they were right. It is almost as incomprensible for things to have changed so much in sixty years as it is to have encountered two instances in a couple of days of English writers incidentally commenting on the condition of English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!

The first key to wisdom

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) the romantic lover remains reasonably known today, at least in some circles. Peter Abelard the forward scout of the Enlightenment remains lesser known. Paul Rosenberg has a post, Heroes of Liberty: Peter Abelard, that traces Abelard's role in the intellectual evolution of the West. Abelard's autobiography, Historia Calamatatum (The Story of My Misfortunes) is also available at Gutenberg.

What sent me searching for Peter Abelard was the following quote:

Constant questioning is the first key to wisdom. For through doubt we are led to enquiry, and by enquiry we discern the truth.

The quote is from the prologue of Abelard's Sic et Non, a boldly progressive step forward to expanding the boundaries of knowledge and wisdom in an era when all the weight of society supported certainty and stasis.

Where the pools are bright and deep

From James Baldwin's Fifty Famous People, in the chapter, The Ettrick Shepherd:

A Boy's Song
by James Hogg

Where the pools are bright and deep,
Where the gray trout lies asleep,
Up the river and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the blackbird sings the latest,
Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
Where the hay lies thick and greenest,
There to trace the homeward bee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the hazel bank is steepest,
Where the shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Why the boys should drive away,
Little maidens from their play,
Or love to banter and fight so well,
That's the thing I never could tell.

But this I know, I love to play
In the meadow, among the hay -
Up the water, and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

It does not require that scientists be unbiased

From Jonathan Rauch, In Defense of Prejudice:

"One of the strengths of science," writes the philosopher of science David L. Hull, "is that it does not require that scientists be unbiased, only that different scientists have different biases." Another dirty secret is that, no less than the rest of us, scientists can be dogmatic and pigheaded. "Although this pigheadedness often damages the careers of individual scientists," says Hull, "it is beneficial for the manifest goal of science," which relies on people to invest years in their ideas and defend them passionately. And the dirtiest secret of all, if you believe in the antiseptic popular view of science, is that this most ostensibly rational of enterprises depends on the most irrational of motives--ambition, narcissism, animus, even revenge. "Scientists acknowledge that among their motivations are natural curiosity, the love of truth, and the desire to help humanity, but other inducements exist as well, and one of them is to 'get that son of a bitch,'" says Hull. "Time and again, scientists whom I interviewed described the powerful spur that 'showing that son of a bitch' supplied to their own research."