Crowds

Last night, I shifted into Huntz Hall from the old Bowery Boys movies and watched TV with Big Dope. We were watching some documentary films of the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg back in the 1930s. Big Dope says to me, “I think that mob mentality leads to many of the atrocities in history. What do you think?”

Well, he asked didn’t he? I stared at the scene of thousands upon thousands of people standing and watching Hitler speak, I said, “I think that there must be at least one person in that crowd who needs to go to the bathroom real bad.”

He called me an idiot. Me, a visitor to this strange planet.

186. Myths

I found C.W. in my favorite chair surrounded by piles of paper. He was in his “college professor” form, complete with corduroy pants, sweater, and bow tie. He was frantically scribbling notes.

“What’s up, Galactic Wonder?” I said.

“Shut up. I’m busy.”

“My,” I said. “Aren’t we being a good example of interstellar love today?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I have a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.”

“Hmmm.” I said. “Sounds like you have a problem.”

“Why do you repeat what I say so often?” He wrote furiously and then looked up.

I said, “So what’s your problem?”

“I’m in trouble with the Elders.”

“The Falloonian Elders?”

“Who else?”

“So,” I said. “Did they find out about your experiments with the ‘wacky weed’ and your secret stash of Twinkies?” (Sweets make him as silly as martinis make me).

“No,” he said. “They have accused me of confusing facts with allegories.”

“They found out that I really can’t walk on water?”

He sighed. “It all started with this,” he said. He rummaged in the stack of papers and retrieved a newspaper clipping. He held it before me and I read that 60 percent of Americans believe the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark and the universal flood is literally true.

“And?”

“They say I must learn that, with your species, statistics like this are meant as allegories.”

“Allegories?”

“Yes, their purpose is to present universal lessons, in this case the tendency of your species to prove points with mythical statistics.”

“And the point here is?”

“They think it has something to do with your love of the printed word and its almost magical effect on your sense of homeostasis.”

“So the statistics are not meant to illustrate actual occurrences?”

“Give me an interrupt,” he said.

“Uh, you mean ‘give me a ‘break,’” I said.

“There you go again.”

“So you don’t really think anyone believes that two of every species of life on the planet, with the necessary food and water for more than a month’s captivity, fit on a wooden vessel 400 feet long?”

“Don’t you have something to do?” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “my job today is to have fun and I’m doing it.”

He groaned. “Well, at least help me.” He thrust a pile of papers into my hands. “Find me something that I can use in my report to show them that they may be correct in assuming you, that is your species, uses statistical references in a purely allegorical sense.”

It seems to me that you view statistics as a
 bunch of monkeys in a tree. Get them down and
treat them right, they'll do anything you want. - C.W.

“Doesn’t that go against your position?”

“One never wants to urinate the Falloonian Elders off.”

“Quite right,” I said as I began rummage. It only took a second. “Here’s something. You know of course that there are more than 350,000 separate species of beetles on earth.”

He grabbed if from my hand and read. His entire face brightened. “Thanks,” he said. And then he began to copy the following.

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Midweek Special
Found Big Dope asleep at his desk this morning with this on his computer. Enjoy. - C.W.

“If I should not get to come home I want you to try
 and take the best care you can of yourself and the children,”
Thomas Goode Clark to Margery Clark - 1863

While waiting on the Muse to arrive this morn I revisited the sad history of the 42^nd Mississippi Regiment of Davis’ Brigade, one of 15 regiments that were, in a classic example of insanity, ordered to assault Cemetery Ridge in the face of entrenched riflemen and massed artillery on the third day at Gettysburg. When Albert Clark of that regiment fell, he became the third Clark man to die during the three days, his father Thomas and brother Albert having died at McPherson’s Ridge during the first day’s slaughter, during which the unit suffered 50 percent casualties.

The brave survivors lived to see the Richmond newspapers, and a manipulated history, give all the glory of the third day’s assault to three regiments in a division that had not seen action until that third day. In a final insult, Virginia historians changed the assault into a “charge” and named it after one of the three division commanders, ironically, the one that had not participated before the final action. (It helped that the Division Commander’s wife lived into the 1930s and spent the remainder of her life aggrandizing his role in the battle).

This misrepresenting of history occurred despite the fact that the Mississippi and North Carolina regiments, with one lone Virginia unit on the left of the assault may have made it farthest up the hill and in the presence of terrible flanking fire.

They often say that histories of war are written by the victors but the immediate history of the Civil War was written by Virginians, who, if I remember correctly, were the losers. So, it wasn’t a “charge” and it wasn’t Pickett’s. What BS we carry with us as we race through history.

By the time of Appomattox three years later, seven of the original 750 men of the 42^nd were left standing.

With the death of her husband and two sons, Margery Clark was left a widow with six surviving children on the family farm. It is said that she “cried and shouted all night long” when she heard the news of her men.

176. Rain

C.W. was in a rare pensive mood. It was raining and rain makes him homesick I think. He says it rains more or less constantly on his home planet of Falloonia, a fact which supports my belief that his actual “shape” is closer to what we would call an aquatic creature than a human-based form. Today though, he chose the shape of the young student he likes so well. He is the one who can swing between being delightfully inquisitive and a totally pain in the keester, sometimes in the same sentence.

Now, he was turned on the couch with his chin resting on its back. He was staring into the dark morning listening to the rain. Without moving, he said, “How long is it going to rain?”

I looked up from my book, thought, and said, “How the hell should I know?”

“Will it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, do you suppose?”

“I doubt it. Why?”

“Just wondering,” he said. “It did once you know. All over the world. At the same time.”

I said, “According to numerous myths.”

“No, according to your Bible.”

“Have you been studying religion again?”

“It drowned everyone except one family,” he said, ignoring me.

“And one pair of each species,” I said. “Including a pair each of more than 50,000 species of beetles and with tigers and wildebeests bunked side by side for several months.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Kinda neat, huh?”

“Very neat,” I said. I returned to my book.

“But,” he said and I knew it was coming. “All of the precipitation that falls originates as water vapor that has evaporated from the surface of the Earth.”

“Sounds right,” I said, silently hoping for the miracle of peace and quiet since it was an awfully good book I was reading.

No such luck. “So where did all the water come from?”

I said, “In myths, one can make up the pre-existence of water.”

“Did all the little children that didn’t belong to the chosen family drown? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Myths don’t have to pass any test of moral fairness and they often don’t.”

“Why do you call it a myth?”

I closed my book and said, “Because the story of a world-wide flood appears in many cultures, even Chinese, going back as far as 4,000 years B.C.E.”

“Before the common era,” he said as if explaining something to himself.

“Yes.” I opened my book again.

“Benjy Shanon’s daddy is a preacher and he says his flood really happened and you are going to hell if you don’t agree.”

“I thought Benjy Shanon’s daddy worked on a county road crew.”

“He does, but he preaches too.” He resumed listening to the rain. “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed,” he said.

I said, “That’s interesting. Did you learn that in school?”

He paid no attention to my question, but said, “So where did all the water go after everybody drowned?

Didn't one of your military officers make the comment
during the Vietnam War that "The only way to save that
village was to destroy it? Must be a cultural thing. - C.W.

“It went up Benjy Shanon’s dad’s …” I stopped myself. “I told you it was a myth, a myth designed to establish hierarchies, a myth used to explain things before we had science, a myth designed to keep social groups in line.” I stopped and made myself relax. “So why don’t you read a book or just contemplate nature?”

“May I pray for you?”

“Pray do,” I said. “Just do it silently.”

Outside it continued to rain.