Last month, as an amateur writer (I always was and probably always will be), I wrote a piece about January as a pathway for touching on some tidbits of an autobiographical nature, self-reflection, as well as contemporary culture.
And now we are in February, the month of Love, as it brings us both Valentine’s Day, the 14th, and Random Acts of Kindness Day, the 17th.
Gonna geek-out here a bit. February – by virtue of some topics connected to it – is a rather curious month. It has only 28 days, except once every 4 years when it has 29. And thanks to Pope Gregory XIII and his attention to astronomers, the 29th day is not added in years ending in 00 – unless the first two digits are divisible by 4 (hence 2000 – with a “20” prefix – was a leap year, whilst 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not).
Curious indeed, and great reminders that there is no reason whatsoever why the time it takes the earth to make a cycle around the sun should be any simple multiple of the time it takes for the earth to spin around itself one time. {Notes on “years” and “days” below [1] and [2] }
Many ancient cultures had calendars. They were necessary for everything from government administration, to drawing and enforcing contracts, and especially for agricultural cycles. As with much else, we can trace our modern Western calendar – and February – back to the Romans. The Romans had several calendars over the centuries, and sometimes more than one at time.
And we would be correct in guessing that, for quite a while, they had only 10 months per year. The Roman year began with March, as it is the time of spring and new life. We can clearly see this in the names of many months that they left for us: September, October, November, and December. These are ordinal partners for numbers 7 through 10. For parts of Roman history the remainder of the year was a monthless winter period; and would reset as spring approached with March.
Eventually the monthless periods were filled in with January and February … then months number 11 and 12 by the old calendar, and months 1 and 2 by the administrative calendar.
This all changed with Julius Caesar. He made 365.25 days/year the law of the land and fixed the calendar year at 12 months. He named the 5th month after his family (July), and deemed it should be 31 days. So, he nicked a day off the 12th month, February, reducing it to 29. [Not much later, Caesar Augustus did likewise, reducing February to 28). And then he moved the beginning of the year for all to January.
The month before spring was a time of cleansing, to prepare for the year ahead, and for the coming seasons of work – in the fields, vineyards, time to make war, etc. The ritual of cleansing was called “Februa”, related to the verb “to cleanse”: februare. And, voila, there you have it.
As an unverified side thought: It is possible this is related to the Christian similar season of Lent. Just a guess, but we do know Jews had done a spring cleaning of sorts for millennia (it’s probably part of the reason the bread at Passover was unleavened), and also performed a new year spiritual cleansing between Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur.
Moving on. February is Cupid’s month, for it gives us Valentine’s Day, a day to honor the emotion of love and praise the ones we love. For example, Amore. Love.
Dean Martin’s Amoré album cover with his smash single: That’s Amoré
I can’t help but think of Dean Martin singing That’s Amoré whenever I hear that word.
And what about related words? Ami: a good friend or even a lover. Amiable: kindly, friendly, worthy of love. Amity: friendly, affectionate, loving (but don’t forget the story and movie Jaws occurred on and near fictional Amity Island). We also get easily to the words enamored and amorous. And paramour: a lover (although usually used as an illicit lover).
We find it in the girl’s names. Amanda: she who is loved. Amy: a beloved child.
And in the amenities at hotels: things we just love to make our visit a little nicer.
What about that often-pejorative word “amateur”? Pejorative, as in: “Oh, what an amateur mistake”, and “He’s just a rank amateur.”
What’s love got to do with that? Show me some love here.
An “amator” in Roman times was a friend or lover. But by the time it arrived in English centuries later, it had passed through French, picking up both the Frenchy spelling “amateur” and a somewhat new meaning: someone who does something purely for the love of it. That is, for personal passion.
Whether it’s a hobby like golf, playing piano, writing, or gardening; or a service to your community, church or synagogue – to be an amateur is to put effort into activities without any financial compensation. It’s just for the love of it.
To call someone an amateur is not an insult. It is a complement. It is nearly an act of love itself. It is to identify someone as one who does something simply out of love. Is there a better reward than love? Even self love?
So, here’s to February – that weirdest of months. And here’s to cleansing ourselves, spiritually and physically. And here’s to the amoré, the passion, and the amateur in all of us. After all: To live is to love.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] Actually, what we call a “year” is not quite the same as the time it takes the earth to make one trip around the sun. It’s the time from one March Equinox to the next. A perfect 360 degree trip around the sun is a sidereal year; the one we use on our calendars is the tropical year. They are different by about 20 minutes. Why? Because the earth’s axis is precessing at a period of about one cycle each 26,000 years. So, a calendar “year” is not set up to measure the earth’s orbit around the sun, per se. It is set up to measure the seasons. This is the difference between tropical year (seasonal) and sidereal year (by tracking a presumed motionless star background)
[2] There is no reason to think that the time required for a trip around the sun, or from equinox-to-equinox, should be anything like a simple multiple of the time it takes the earth to spin around itself. In fact, a single such revolution is not a day. Not by several minutes. A “day” is the average time from noon until the next noon. The current best estimate of “days” per “year” is 365.2425
The length of a tropical year and solar day even drift and wobble. Perhaps it’s time for a piece on just what “time” really means. And that leaves us with Chicago (or back then, the Chicago Transit Authority): Does Anyone Really Know What Time it is?
Recently the brand new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,
Boris Johnson, suspended parliament at a moment in history that portends a
possible keyhole event: a “Hard Brexit” is
about to occur. Technically the term is prorogue. That is to say: “Johnson has prorogued
Parliament.” He simply sent them home
for a few weeks. Although not
all that uncommon for a new government – it comes shortly after his
placement as PM – the timing has made many
Brits uncomfortable, to say the least.
One supposes that my writing has been sort of prorogued of
late – not much publishing anyhow. I don’t
think many readers are uncomfortable about that.
You can look back through a keyhole, but you can’t go back through one
I have a pair of terms for events that are
so transformational that things can never return to the way they were; not even
ways of thinking can return: Wormholes and Keyholes. Either way, when we pass
through them – either as individuals, families, communities, cultures,
countries or the entire world – a new reality emerges.
A possible alternative to keyhole and wormhole is “Rubicon”; or the full phrase “crossing the Rubicon.” Way back in 49 BCE, a Roman general named Gaius (of the patrician clan “Julia”) took his powerful and famously successful army across the River Rubicon. When he did, he also created a keyhole through which he, his army, and Roman culture passed and could never return.
Rubicon: Reality was irreversibly changed. A civil war ensued. At its conclusion, there was no more Roman Republic, although it had endured nearly 500 years with a slight flavor of democracy. It was replaced with the Roman Empire, to be led by a sovereign head of state named “Caesar” (the first one being the aforementioned general).
“Crossing the Rubicon” is a term that means total commitment, and no turning back. You’ve gone through the keyhole. Although, for Julius Caesar, there was an strong element of personal choice in the matter. That’s not always the case.
Using the theme of keyholes, I will touch upon many a quaint
and curious story of forgotten lore [1], including brief
biographical glances at the lives of three individuals.
These are but three people among countless. Passing through the same keyhole in history. An entire nation of millions was transformed by that keyhole, through which nothing – no person and no part of American culture – could return to their previous state … forever transformed. These three people made history because of their transformations – and society’s – brought about by a major disruption to American national culture.
Hattie had a sweet personality and an even sweeter voice. And she had a quality of magnetic personality mixed with pizzazz, or panache. Today the name “Hattie” is rather obscure – in fact, it almost completely disappeared in the 1950s and ‘60s. It was not an uncommon name at all across American cultures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hattie Caraway (ARK) was the 1st woman elected to the US Senate, in 1932. Our Hattie was born in Wichita, Kansas, to parents who had been slaves. Although the name Hattie would later virtually disappear, her own name would not.
Born and raised of pure German descent, Henry hailed from the German neighborhoods on the southside of the great beer-making city of St Louis. But he usually went by the nickname “Heinie” (or “Heine”), since it was German and rhymed with his last name: Meine. Of course, it was Americanized to “High-nee My-nee”; you can’t get a much more memorable name. Nonetheless, he’s virtually forgotten, although Heinie came through the keyhole and left his name in the record books.
A first generation Italian-American, he preferred to go by “Al” rather than his given “Alphonse.” Born and raised in Brooklyn, he’d make his name in Chicago. Known for many things – including feeding over 100,000 Chicagoans each day during the Great Depression’s early years – Al was not known for being very faithful to his wife. That’s too bad, because she was extraordinarily faithful and loyal to him. At least he was loyal: he treated her well and never spoke poorly of her. That, and his Depression-era food lines, are among the few good qualities we can credit to him. ___________________________________________________________________
On a geological scale, the biggest disruptor to life on earth was almost certainly when the 12-mile diameter Chicxulub Asteroid slammed into the earth at 40,000 kilometers per hour, near the Yucatan peninsula (modern day Mexico) about 66 million years ago. Scientific estimates of the energy released approached one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Hiroshima atomic bombs.
The asteroid event is probably the biggest reason, among many, that between 99.9% and 99.999% of the all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
Dinosaurs had ruled the earth; they had for some 250 million
years through advanced evolution which tracked the earth’s warming climate. (Consider
how far humans have evolved from advanced apes in less than 1/1000th
the time). For most of those many millions
of ”dinosaur” years, the earth was generally a very warm, even rather tropical,
CO2 rich environment. Literally, in a very
few years (perhaps a handful) all had changed.
The world, relatively speaking, became a frigidly cold “ice box.”
The asteroid, as agent of disruption, had altered reality so suddenly, and so irreversibly, that the world and its reality was forever immediately changed. We should be thankful. That stupendously, mind-boggling cataclysmic event permitted the survival and prominence of tiny mammals – and eventually to us: we humans and our many friends like horses, dogs, cats – over dozens of millions of years.
I should hesitate to even suggest candidates for
“disruptors” in the human era – especially in our post-industrial age era. But, eventually we must get to our three
protagonists: Hattie, Heinie and
Alphonse. Therefore, I submit some
examples, starting with —ta da – the internet.
It has spawned on-line commerce and “the sharing economy.”
The “sharing economy” starts with the simple idea that we, as humans in a free-market economy, have assets that are lying dormant. In economists’ terms: non-performing assets. Our houses. Our cars. Our time. The sharing economy idea suggests we can put those assets to work. Over just a very few years, this simple idea has disrupted how we consume, travel, commute and vacation. Many of us now think of Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, CrowdFunding as powerful and preferred alternatives to “traditional business models.” The value of Taxi Cab medallions in New York City has fallen by some 85% since their peak value of $1.3 Million in 2013. Entire industries must now behave differently – or die.
The sharing economy has been co-joined on the internet with
our lust for connectivity and ease. Amazon has put booksellers out of business.
Thanks to the internet, we often now shop in the comfort of our homes, in front
of our computers – often clad only in our underwear (if we are dressed at all –
sorry for the visual).
Merchandise is delivered to our front door, sometimes within hours – while many old and drab strip malls slowly, silently go vacant and “turn-over”, their dull slots replaced by the equivalent of pre-human mammals that are mostly just cheap “creature comforts”: nail salons, micro-liquor stores, tattoo and/or piercing parlors, micro-breweries, tobacco-friendly stores, massage parlors, pot shops (where legal), second-hand and antique shops, etc. And that’s if the vacant spaces are filled at all. There is no telling which will survive to coming generations, if at all: evolution, disruption and their effects have their ways of being unpredictable… that is their very nature. [2]
In American culture, looking back over the past 125 years,
or so, I cannot think of any more forceful disruptor – outside of the Internet,
the Depression, and the Great Wars – than Prohibition.
Prohibition. The 18th Amendment. The Volstead Act. The culmination of decades of effort by the Temperance Movement, the Women’s Movement, and Cultural Conservatives.
I’m sort of a fan of Prohibition. Why? It was, in effect, a vast significant social scientific experiment. It made being anti-government-control very cool. It made counter-culture cool. It made “shoving it in The-Man’s-face” cool. For many cultural icons and movements – from the obvious, like craft beer brewing and craft alcohol distilling, to the Beatniks, to Elvis, to The Stones, to Jay-Zee, to tattoos, to piercings, to sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll, sexual licentiousness, the prevalence of Sugar Daddies, and even NASCAR, (America’s most popular spectator sport) – Prohibition helped paved the way.
To me, on balance, those are good things. But every die comes with many sides: it also gave more profit and respectability to the mafia and the underworld.
Our protagonists: In order of how famous they are today:
#1. In 1913, Young Al dropped out of school at 14, after slugging his teacher. He then worked odd jobs while falling in with various young gangs of hoodlums. Eventually, he got connected to the local mobs, and began working his way up the mob ladder – getting a nasty razor gash across a cheek in one episode – before finally getting in so much trouble that he was sent off to a different “branch of the business” in Chicago, along with his wife (the one he was not quite “totally committed” to) and young son.
Propitious timing: Prohibition was about to start. Chicago is where Alphonse – Al Capone and Scarface to us – made it big. Really big. Prohibition provided almost unlimited opportunity to make money … either through booze itself or through protection schemes. Capone inherited the top position of a major Chicago crime syndicate, at age 26, when boss Johnny Torino retired and went home to Sicily.
After various deals and “take outs”, like the 1929 Saint
Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone’s gang ruled supreme in Chicago and Cook
County.
Al Capone, king of Chicago ~1926-1931
“Scarface” (a nickname he hated) escaped criminal conviction many times. But Prohibition Agent Elliot Ness and the government finally got him on income tax evasion; his lifestyle and braggadocio were just too conspicuous during a time such as the Great Depression. Yes, he daily fed many thousands in the early years of the Depression. But everything ended on October 17, 1931, when Capone was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
While in prison – eventually at Alcatraz – Capone’s old cronies in the Chicago mob did quite well. But he didn’t fair so well himself, even though he was released for “good behavior” after serving only about 7 years of his term. It turns out his good behavior was probably because he developed advanced dementia caused by syphilis. Evidently it had been attacking his nervous system since his teens – considering that his only son, Alphonse Jr, was born with congenital syphilis.
Capone’s wife, Mae, remained loyal, and took great care of him until his demise, in 1947, only one week after his 48th birthday. He was probably not aware of that or much else, as he was given to talking to inanimate things and people not present. Their son Al Jr, an only child – who lived quite deaf since infancy on account of surgery for syphilis-caused infections – changed his name to “Albert Brown” in 1966, to distance himself from the infamy of his father. “Brown” was an alias his father had sometimes used.
2) In 1895 came Hattie McDaniel into this world. She was the
13th and last child born to Susan and Henry McDaniel, both former
slaves. Her father was a freed slave, who fought in the Civil War and suffered
the rest of his life from war injuries.
Originally from Wichita, Kansas, the family moved to Ft Collins, then Denver, Colorado seeking opportunity – as Henry had a difficult time with manual labor on account of his war injury – about the time young Hattie was 5 or 6. There, in school and in church, her phenomenal musical skills were discovered.
By age 14 she had a professional singing and dancing career
… and she also dropped out of Denver East High School. As feature vocalists for various bands, mostly
Blues, Hattie had made something of a name for herself.
In 1930 she found herself in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as part
of a traveling theatre troupe on the Show Boat production. Then,
disaster: The Depression struck. The
show and tour were abruptly canceled, leaving Hattie and the rest of the cast
abandoned … and nowhere near home.
Club Madrid was famous for great entertainment, as well as a great stash of alcohols. It was a place to visit and be seen for politicians, high rolling businessmen and other wealthy gangsters.
Word had gotten around Club Madrid that Hattie was extremely talented; but Madrid was a “whites only” establishment. They kept her in the restroom. Until one night when an act didn’t show. Desperate to keep the lubricated and influential guests engaged, Sam brought out Hattie. She brought the house down … and did so for over a year. Her income and notoriety soared.
Whereupon her skills as a performer were noticed by
Hollywood. She’d go on to a rich film career
of over a decade, most notably as Mammy in Gone With the Wind. In perfect Hattie pose and poise, she was
virtually “playing herself” as the only truly likeable and reasonable person in
the entire saga.
Hattie McDaniel was honored by the US Post Office with her image on a stamp, 2005
For that performance she was justly awarded an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Hattie McDaniel was the first Black to receive an academy nomination, and the first to win an Oscar. Bravo Hattie.
She remained popular, and used that popularity to serve in
World War II, entertaining troops and performing at War Bond rallies.
At the end of the war the role of blacks in America was about to dramatically change. Truman integrated the military with a stroke of his pen. There was a loud popular cry to end the stereotyping of black characters as obsequious, simple-minded submissives in movies. The cry was heard. Unfortunately for Hattie, she had already been well typecast into such roles, and her Hollywood career faded.
Not so for radio, and Hattie signed on to play a maid on the nationally popular regular radio show Beulah. Another first: she was the first black to have a weekly appearance on any media. [3] Her years were running out, however. Too young and too late she was discovered to have breast cancer, and she succumbed in 1952, aged only 57.
And #3. Henry “Heinie” Meine is surely the least famous of the three who actually achieved a significant level of fame. Born in Saint Louis in 1896, he was a sports enthusiast who took to baseball well. He played a lot of local sand-lot and then semi-pro ball as a young man, mostly as a spit balling pitcher.
By 1920 word got around that he was pretty good – especially with his favorite pitch: the spitter. He’d been noticed by legendary scout Charles “Charley” Francis Barrett, and he was signed to a minor league contract with the St Louis Browns of the American League. In 1922 he was called up briefly to his hometown Browns and pitched in one single game — a mop up effort in a late season blow out. Unfortunately for Heinie, the spitball had been outlawed as an unfair pitch; and was now being enforced. His major league career seemed over.
He bounced around the minor leagues for a while, gaining a reputation for a “rubber arm”; he was kind of an energizer bunny, as he regularly pitched 250-300 innings a season during those years in the minors. Finally, Meine just gave up, retiring at the end of the 1926 season after learning he’d be demoted to the Single-A level for the 1927 season. It seemed he had no path to the majors, especially without his spitball. There were other options: he intended to make money in his beer-happy hometown of Saint Louis running a Speakeasy. Prohibition provided opportunity.
Like Pick’s Club Madrid, Meine’s “soda bar” was located just outside
the city limits, in a German neighborhood that was known for some reason as
Luxemburg. His drinking establishment was so popular, he got the nickname “Duke
of Luxemburg.”
When other major league teams came to Saint Louis (the city had two teams then, so it was often), Luxemburg was a frequent stop for refreshment. After a few drinks the players often teased him about being a good minor league pitcher, but not being good enough to make it in the majors.
This was motivation. He’d show them! After a layoff of nearly two years, Meine returned to baseball. He was determined to make it as a “control pitcher”, one who could make the ball move any direction, who could constantly change speeds and hit any spot on the edge of the strike zone. He became an early effective “junk” pitcher. He didn’t strike out many batters; they just hit soft grounders and popups. After a couple minor league seasons, he was eventually acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
As a 33 year-old rookie, Heinie Meine made his major league debut in 1929. Unheard of even in those days. After two moderately successful and contentious seasons with the Pirates (including missing much time with a bad case of tonsillitis) he set the baseball world on fire in 1931, leading the league in wins and innings pitched. A phenomenal record for a Pirate team that managed only 75 wins against 79 losses that year.
Henry “Heinie” Meine
Meine was a holdout for the 1932 season – one of the first
to successfully do so – demanding more money.
Starting the season over a month late, after a contract renegotiation,
he still managed 12 wins and nearly 200 innings.
But Meine was now approaching 37 years old. His rubber arm was wearing out. Still, he managed 15 wins and 207 innings in 1933, impressive totals for any age in any era. All the league’s pitchers with more wins than Meine were aged 31, or younger.
The next year, 1934, would be his last, as Meine was getting past his prime. He still put up a winning record, at 7-6, but he knew the end of his career had come. If he’d stayed for just a small part of the next season, he’d have seen a national superstar who was well past his prime have one last unlikely and very dramatically successful day at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. A very wobbly 40-year old Babe Ruth hit three home runs in one game in late May … the last three he’d ever hit. Then promptly retired a few days later.
But by then Meine had already retired to run his saloon business full time. With Prohibition over and his reputation for Gemütlichkeit, Meine’s career as saloon keeper was safe for years to come. And with some thanks to Prohibition and the customers who teased him, he had made his place in baseball’s record books.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing me at Joe@Girardmeister.com.
[1] With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe fans. Lifted almost verbatim from verse #1 of “The
Raven.”
[2] Strip Malls have a rather interesting history in the US
(and Canada). Briefly: The preponderance
of Strip Malls exploded in the 1950s in North America, along with the expanding
post-war economy and our love affair with cars. Ubiquitous on the edges of urban areas, and within
the new suburban areas, they were a “strip” of available business spaces in a
single building with parking in front. Sometimes
“L-shaped”, they lined major and semi-major roads, near residential areas, but seldom
near central business districts.
They provided convenient, if not “drab”, space for respectable
businesses like pharmacies, butcher shops, barbers, and sellers of fresh
produce and groceries … where everyone seemed to know everyone else and friendly
chit-chat was interwoven with business. In an America that no longer exists.
But cars got bigger and ever more plentiful. Available parking for strip malls was too small. So then came the “Big Box” strip malls, with huge parking lots anchored by one or two major retailers, like Walmart, or Home Depot. The small strip malls lost business, tenants and most public interest. Also came the super malls … and strip malls were just so-o-o 1950s and ‘60s.
If not already scraped away, strip malls still exist, but ever more with spaces that are vacant, or populated by the likes of businesses I listed above. Always drab. Always an eyesore.
[3] At about this time, only about 10% of US homes had televisions. Nearly 100% had radios, and people built their daily schedules around radio shows. By 1960, this had reversed: nearly 90% had TVs, and Americans lives revolved around their favorite shows, on only 3 networks.
Regarding Strip Mall history: One of the better sources I
found was here.
