Let’s Settle this Damn Thing 

By Patrick F. Cannon

I am not an economist, nor really an expert on anything except perhaps Chicago architecture, the Thoroughbred horse and the history of everything. So, the economics of health care are beyond me. I do know, however, that we are currently in one hell of a mess and it looks to get even worse.

What we’re faced with is this: a deeply flawed health care system is about the be replaced with another deeply flawed health care system, which – if the Republicans lose control of Congress as they surely will someday – will be replaced with yet another deeply flawed system, and so on and so on and…

So-called Obamacare was cobbled together to include insurance companies as the actual providers. Most of them soon found that they couldn’t afford to stay in the program without either raising premiums to unacceptable levels or losing money, so they began opting out (a significant number of counties have only one provider, and a growing number, none). Many of the young and healthy decided it was cheaper to pay the penalty than the high premiums, so they rolled the dice and sat out, thus sticking the insurers with both an older population and those with existing conditions. (Medicaid is another expensive piece of the program.)

Although anathema to most on the right, including me until recently, I see no way out of this mess without a single payer system based on the Medicare or similar model. Now, Medicare pays about 80 percent of health care costs, including annual physicals. For seniors with no income other than Social Security, it gives them immunity from catastrophic illness costs. My wife and I also have supplemental insurance that pays the balance, as well as prescription drug coverage. Our out of pocket costs for all of this runs about $10,000 a year.

Before we retired and no longer had to pay it, our Federal payroll tax included a 1.5 percent charge for Medicare, matched by the employer. What if this tax, which everyone pays regardless of income, were doubled? Would six percent of the total income of every working American pay for universal health care? I have no idea, but isn’t it worth exploring? If it could, we could eliminate Medicare and Medicaid and have one health care system for all Americans.

Many are going to immediately scream “socialized medicine!”  With their undoubted talent for euphemisms, I give Congress permission to instead call it “The People’s Incredible Medical Plan” with no credit to me required. By the way, if religious and other non-profits were taken out of the equation, then they wouldn’t have to agonize over paying for birth control and other services which they oppose. Let Congress decide whether the plan pays for birth control; for abortions; and so-called “gender reassignment” and cosmetic surgery. In my view, the answers would be “yes”, “maybe” in rare cases, “no” and “only” to repair the results of accidents and congenital disfigurements.

A little personal history. My parents never had health insurance. When someone got sick, they went to see the doc and he got paid directly, likely in cash. By the time I got my first real job (1956), employer-paid health insurance was more common. As it happens, until I retired from the daily grind in 2001, every one of my employers provided health insurance through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Toward the end, however, increasing costs led them to charge me a portion of the premium as a payroll deduction. Now, of course, I have Medicare, with a supplement through – you guessed it – Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

The United States spends about $10,000 per person per year for health care, by far the highest in the world. For this, we get what many people will call the best health care system in the world (for those who can afford it). And it’s certainly true that most of the advances in health care, including miracle drugs, have originated here. But are these benefits shared by the entire population? Our life expectancy for both sexes is currently 79.6 years; in both Canada (82.2) and the UK (81.2), people live longer.

Finally, let me throw this into the mix. The average tax burden for all developed countries is about 34 percent. The Danes and French pay nearly 50 percent, and the Mexicans, 15 percent. The Canadians and Brits pay 32 percent. Our average – and that includes Federal, state and local taxes – is 26 percent. I get the argument that every dollar that goes to taxes is a dollar that is lost to the real economy. But I also think that getting rid of all the middle men that clutter our current health care system might not result in increasing our 26 percent much beyond what our neighbors to the north pay.

As I see it, the alternative to national Medicare is a patched together system that still won’t cover everyone, and whose costs will continue to skyrocket. Maybe someone has a better answer, but I haven’t seen or heard of it. Have you?

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

The Age of Discovery, Part 1

By Patrick F. Cannon

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue

It took so long, it must be said

That his crew would often wish him dead

He finally reached land, but found no gold

While others got rich, he just got old.

Anon. (understandably)

Because Christopher Columbus (or Cristiforo Columbo as he was known to his proud parents) “discovered” the Americas, he has become the best known of the explorers who changed the face of the world between 1450 and 1550 (more or less). This is particularly true in the United States, which would not exist were it not for Columbus. Of course, in China no one has ever heard of him.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. After all, Columbus just didn’t wake up one day and decide he’d like to discover new continents.

For thousands of years, people had looked at the heavens and wondered who and where they were. After language was discovered, they pretty much knew who they were, as names became quite common. The smarter among them, Aristotle for example, noticed that the Sun and Moon seemed to be round, and that when the Earth got between the two of them (what we now call an eclipse), it cast a curved shadow. He thus supposed that the earth was round too.

While everyone considered Aristotle a smart fellow for figuring this out, it didn’t seem to make much difference in their daily lives. While rich Greeks might take a boat ride across the Mediterranean to see the pyramids,that was about as far as they wanted to go. Frankly, while they might agree with Aristotle in public (even now, Greeks stick together), they had a nagging suspicion that if they traveled too far they might fall off and end up in Hades or some such place.

We now know this was nonsense. They actually would have ended up in the Sudan, which was bad enough and has often been called a “hell on earth.”

Some Greeks, Alexander the Great for example, were more adventuresome. He went as far as modern Kashmir before turning back. Because he had been a student of Aristotle, he probably was aware that if he just kept going east he would eventually end up back in Greece. While he admired his former teacher, he probably thought: why take the chance? And who can blame him? He had already met his share of Pakistanis and Indians and might have wondered what else might be in store.

Several hundred years later, Claudius Ptolemy was born to a mixed marriage. Because he was half-Roman and half-Egyptian, he was shunned by his schoolmates so had plenty of time for reflection. One of the first “geeks,” he became proficient in astronomy and mathematics and soon had the earth pretty much figured out. Not only did he know it was a sphere, but he knew where all the continents were. He also decided that the place he lived was on the top half of the sphere (human nature at work), which he called North.

Even a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, for it turns out Ptolemy was a little deficient in geometry. He calculated that the earth’s circumference was 18,000 miles, when we now know that it’s almost twice that. As we’ll see, this was to cause a good deal of trouble.

Long before the Portuguese and Spanish began their explorations, legend tells us that the Vikings and the Irish may well have discovered North America. We know that Eric the Red and his relatives and friends settled what are now Iceland and Greenland and may well have pushed further on to Nova Scotia. While their homelands were pretty cold, Iceland and Greenland were even colder, so Eric might well have concluded these new areas weren’t really an improvement, especially considering the voracious Polar Bears wandering around. The evidence of their explorations is fairly convincing, but as they didn’t leave any signs behind saying “Eric the Red was here,” some historians have been skeptical.

Ancient Irish sagas tell stories of similar explorations, but are a bit vague, much as your typical Irishman is after a long night at the pub. While they apparently didn’t leave any convincing evidence, no one has ever adequately explained why there are so many Irish in Boston.

(Next – Henry begins navigating!)

                                                            #####

Copyright 2107, Patrick F. Cannon

 

Mentioning the Unmentionable 

By Patrick F. Cannon

Hard upon the recent decision by the Supreme Court in Jockey, et al vs. the National Council of Purity in American Life, I am at last free to add underwear to my ongoing history of apparel. I can only regret that the American Society of Apparel Historians chose not to submit an Amicus Curiae brief in this landmark matter. I can tell you that my resulting resignation shook that august organization to its very foundations (no pun intended).

My many years of undercover investigations into this heretofore taboo subject may now bear fruit. A full exploration of the subject must await publication of my forthcoming book, Beneath the Surface: Underwear Through the Ages.  In this space, I can only hint at the riches to come.

As we now know, the human species (humanous ridiculous) first appeared in what is now known as Africa (named after Scipio Africanus, the Roman Consul who was responsible for introducing Lions to the arenas of the Empire, thus providing the gladiators with more sporting opponents). Early humans didn’t know where they were, but it was generally hottish, so they didn’t need clothing of any kind, much less the layered look. When nature called, they answered it wherever they happened to be without the need to pull their Jockeys down. When the area became too malodorous, they moved on; thus, the beginning of nomadism.

It was only when their wanderings took them out of Africa to colder climes did they begin to consider covering themselves against the cruel winds. We do not know the name of the first human to cover himself with leftover animal skins, but his name if ever discovered should be enshrined in the costume galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with Christian Dior and Robert Hall.

You can just imagine the glee that greeted the slaying of a Mastodon, thus insuring warm winter clothing for the entire tribe. Alas, diligent digging by generations of archeologists have failed to discover any evidence that these early humans wore underwear. It is only with the Egyptians that we begin to see something that appears to be underwear. I must, however, demur. Here we must differentiate between shorts and scanties. Bas reliefs and other temple scratchings from 2,000 BCE show men wearing what appears to be fabric wrapped about their privates and bums. To show how fashion trends come and go, no less a notable than Mohandas Gandhi sported similar apparel 4,000 years later!  In neither case, did the subjects wear anything under these wraps, so no underwear yet.

Once again, it was the Romans who were the innovators. As you are surely aware, it was they who invented the arch, water and sewer systems, tenements, and the thumb screw and rack. You will also have noticed that even Roman men wore something very like a dress. Now, for most of the year, this was sufficient, but when the winter winds came down from the Apennines, it tended to find its way under their skirts, causing them to become crotchety. Roman Legionnaires, with their far shorter leather skirts (early kilts?), had another reason for wearing undies – free swinging manhood was an attractive target for bloodthirsty barbarians.

You must await my multi-volume history to learn what happened between Rome and our own day. Let me just say that first it was a process of creating ever more layers of underwear, culminating in the Victorian age. Ever since, just the opposite has happened. Nowadays, underwear is so tiny that it can barely be seen. There are many theories about why this has happened, but I suspect it must have something to do with global warming.

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

 

 

R.I.P., Myron Cohen 

By Patrick F. Cannon

Myron Cohen (1902-1986) was a well known comedian from the 1950s until his death. He was best known for his dialect jokes, primarily done in a Yiddish accent, but with a sprinkling in Italian and Irish dialects too. They were done affectionately, and were really short stories rather than the typical one-liners of the time. Before becoming a full time entertainer, he had sold fabrics to the New York garment industry, and said his story telling set him apart from his competitors. (Only Billy Crystal today reminds me of him.)

He appeared fairly regularly on Ed Sullivan’s variety show, and later on both Jack Paar’s and Johnny Carson’s Tonight shows. I remember three of his short stories in particular, and I’ll try to do them justice here, but of course his delivery and accents added much to them. (By the way, I don’t recall that he thought his sex life was so fascinating that anyone would want to spend an hour listening to its gory details. Why this has become the norm with comedians today escapes me.)

Stage Delicatessen

Sam was a waiter at New York’s legendary Stage Delicatessen. His boss, the manager (maître de is perhaps too fancy a word for that place), was named Max. They had both been there for some 25 years, and had never said a kind word to each other. Their feuds were legendary, and indeed the customers thought their constant bickering was part of the delicatessen’s essential ambiance.

Then one day at closing, Max took Sam aside and said: “Sam, I know we haven’t always gotten along {a massive understatement}, but I know you’re a hard worker with loyal customers, so effective immediately, I’m giving you a raise.” To say that Sam was thunderstruck would be an understatement. He was actually almost struck dumb and could only reply with a very weak “thank you.”

When he got home and told his wife, she was amazed and said maybe Max wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Anyway, Sam had a spring in his step the next morning when he arrived at work. He went to the back room to put on his white jacket and apron. Max entered, walked over to him and said “Sam, you’re fired!” “Fired,” the stunned Sam replied, “yesterday you praised me and gave me a raise. How can you fire me?”

Max smilingly replied: “You should lose a better job!”

Watch Out!

O’Hara was a motorman on New York streetcars when such things still existed. He had been assigned to a route in Queens for many years, but then got transferred to a route in lower Manhattan. Being a bachelor, he decided to move to an apartment in the lower east side, so he could be within walking distance of the street car barn.

One day, he noticed his watch seemed to be losing a couple of minutes a day. Since an accurate watch was important in his job, and he had a day off, he decided to have it fixed. As it happened, he had noticed a shop down the street with a large watch in the window. Assuming it was a watch repair shop, he entered and went up to the counter. Behind it was an elderly man with a beard.

“My watch is losing time,” says O’Hara, “and I wonder if you could adjust it?”

“I don’t fix watches, I’m a mohel,” replies the bearded one.

“What’s a mohel, for God’s sake?”

“I circumcise little Jewish boys.”

“But why do you have that big watch in the window if you don’t fix watches?

“So, what do you want me to have in the window?”

Goldberg and the Pope

We’re back at the Stage Delicatessen. One table has for many years been set aside for a group of garment industry men who gather every week day for lunch. Not everyone comes every day; but on a typical day seven or eight show up. Two of them, Goldberg and Pearlstein, show up most days. They are both competitors and old friends. Over the years, Goldberg had become known as a name dropper. If you mentioned Frank Sinatra, for example, he would claim that he helped Frank get his first job singing in a club in Hoboken.  In fact, almost every time a lunch mate mentioned a famous person, it turned out that Goldberg knew him or her from somewhere.

So one day his pal Pearlstein says to him that he knows someone he can’t possibly know. “I bet you don’t know the Pope!” Now, at the time, John XXIII was pope. Without batting an eyelash, Goldberg replies “Of course, I know the Pope. We’re pals from a long time ago.” A hush came over the table. After a pause, Perlstein challenges his old friend: “I’ll tell you what. Let’s take the wives to Rome on vacation. If you can prove you know the Pope, I’ll spring for the whole trip, but if you don’t, you pay!”

To everyone’s amazement, Goldberg agrees. Two weeks later, the couples are in Rome, seeing the sites and eating lots of pasta. Goldberg tells his friend that in two days the Pope will appear on his balcony in St. Peters Square to bless the multitude. “I’ll give you a pair of binoculars and when he appears, you’ll see me come out behind him.”

On the given day, Pearlstein joins the huge crowd waiting for the Pope to appear. He trains his binoculars on the balcony. The double doors open and the portly Pope steps out. Then, just behind him, who should appear but Goldberg. Pearlstein’s jaw drops in disbelief. He is transfixed, but he feels someone pulling on his sleeve. Next to him is an elderly man, who says to him: “I can’t see too well anymore. Could you please tell me who is that man standing on the balcony with Goldberg?”

#####

Copyright (sort of) 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

 

 

Temples of Ego

By Patrick F. Cannon

I find it amusing that former President Obama is going to put part of his Chicago presidential library (or center, or whatever they call them these days) on actual park land, when George Lukas was prevented from building his museum on land that has long been a paved parking lot, and was never part of the park system.

As a child, I lived across the street from Jackson Park and still know it well. Until recently, I went regularly to Hyde Park and drove on Cornell Drive, which President Obama would like to close and make part of his “campus.” As a former resident of Hyde Park himself, he must be aware of how this closing will affect local traffic, especially during rush hours. But the needs of presidential ego must be served, right?

The proponents of the center tout its positive effects on the neighborhoods adjacent to it. Economic development and jobs for locals must inevitably follow, they claim. But are there not other areas of the city even needier? As someone who knows the city better than most, I can tell you that there are vast empty areas on the west and south sides once filled with homes and factories that need economic development just as much and perhaps more than Hyde Park and Woodlawn.

Simply put, I believe the former President doesn’t find them as visually attractive as Jackson Park, designed as it was by Frederick Law Olmstead, creator of New York’s Central Park. Nor does it hurt that the Museum of Science and Industry will be right down the street, providing the basis for another Chicago “museum campus.”  (As a matter of interest, I note that Metra is already planning to increase service to its Hyde Park stations, at the expense of other south side lines.)

I don’t mean to pick on President Obama. He is just the latest in a long line of United States’ presidents who have sought to put the best possible light on their terms of office by telling the story themselves. From relatively modest beginnings with Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, the “centers” have become increasingly more elaborate and expensive. To be fair, they have largely been built with private funds; but to be honest, most of the money for them was raised before the subject left office. You may read into that what you will (see the Clintons especially).

Because they have become repositories of the President’s official papers, they are technically the property of the citizens of the United States, so most of the cost of their operation is paid by us through the National Archives. This amounts to about $80 million per year, not a huge amount by current standards, but as the legendary Senator Everett Dirksen once said “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

In my opinion, presidential papers should all be in the same place, where their cataloging and availability would be consistent and more available to scholars. If the former presidents then want to build temples to their ego, let them have at it. To be honest, I can’t wait to see what the current occupant might have in mind.

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

The Immortals 

By Patrick F. Cannon

Within view of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Ile de la Cite in Paris stands an ancient building, one of whose stately rooms overlooking the River Seine serves as the meeting place for the Academie Francaise, protector of the sacred French language. Members of the Academie are called the “immortals” because of their eminence in the countries public and cultural life. Established by Cardinal Richelieu in the 17^th Century, no word may enter the language without their approval (they are at particular pains to root out “Americanisms”).

At a regular meeting not long ago, as they ran through the alphabet, they paused to reconsider the term “savoir faire.” While they knew it as a quality only the French have, they decided to seek specific examples. One of the newer members, a novelist whose own work even he didn’t understand, decided to give an example.

“Here we have a young married couple, Pierre and Marie. They live in a charming cottage in a small village just outside of Paris. Pierre, a junior executive at the Ministry of the Interior, goes into Paris every morning by train. He leaves his office at promptly 1700 hours to take the 1730 train to his village and walks through his front door at 1815, where Marie awaits him with an aperitif. One day, however, the Ministry had a power failure, which could not be remedied until the late evening. The Minister decided to bow to the inevitable and let the staff go home at 1230.

Pierre thus is able to catch the 1330 train and is delighted that he will be able to surprise Marie by coming home early. He arrives at the village station at 1400 and strolls home, whistling happily as he goes. When he enters his cottage, he calls out “Marie!’ but there is no response. Ah, he thinks, she has gone shopping. He decides to change into country clothes and climbs the stairs to the bedroom. When he opens the door, he is surprised to see his Marie in bed with another man. He stares open mouthed for a moment, then says “excuse me” and closes the door.

“There,” exclaims the noted novelist, “that man has savior faire!”

“No, no,” responds an older man further up the table. He is in the uniform of a Marshal of France, which he earned by once almost winning a battle. “That’s fine as far as it goes, but there must be more. Let us take the same situation. Pierre returns early, only to find his dear wife Marie missing. As you suggest, he climbs the stairs to change his clothes. He opens the door to find Marie in bed with another man. And yes, he says “excuse me,” but before closing the door he adds “please continue.”

“Now that is savoir faire!”

Everyone now looks satisfied, but at head of the table, a weak and reedy voice intrudes, emanating from the oldest member of the Academie, a 99-year-old former president of the Republic. “We have not yet arrived at the essence, which requires further refinement. To continue the narrative, young Pierre arrives home early, hoping to pleasantly surprise his darling Marie. And not finding her, yes he decides to change into his country clothes, perhaps thinking to stroll in the nearby countryside. So, he climbs the stairs and opens the bedroom door, only to find dear Marie in the arms of another man. “Excuse me,” he says, “please continue. And the man in bed with Marie does continue. Now, that man has savior faire!”

Exhausted by their labors, the Immortals adjourned for the day.

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

Fake News 

By Patrick F. Cannon

I think we can define “fake news” as news we don’t want to hear. President Trump hears a lot of it, which makes me wonder why he just doesn’t turn off his television sets and cancel his subscriptions to the New York Times, Washington Post and National Enquirer.

I should have thought – like most of his dwindling list of supporters – he would limit himself to Fox News and the more reliable right wing commentators like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the reliably annoying Ann Coulter (although some of them have begun to wonder what they have wrought). But he seems to revel in wallowing in every news report about himself as a means of seizing many more opportunities to yell “fake news!”

In a way, I suppose you have to give him credit for watching and listening to news outlets that cover him closely (I doubt if he himself actually reads anything). Most of his supporters don’t want to read or hear anything that might cast doubt on their beliefs and opinions. One hears endless complaints about the New York Times and Washington Post being biased in their coverage of the President; this from people who probably have never read either of them.

If you get your news exclusively from either Fox or MSNBC, supplemented on the radio by the loudhailers of the right and left, your view of the world will be narrow and incomplete. Unfortunately, the numbers of people who regularly read a daily newspaper continues to decline. A common complaint posits that newspapers can’t be trusted because all journalists have a liberal bias. Certainly, more journalists tend to be politically liberal than conservative.

I have been reading newspapers for more than 60 years. The only one I now read every day is the Chicago Tribune, but over the years I have also regularly read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.  All of these venerable institutions have made mistakes in their coverage, some grievous. But each generally strives to get the facts straight and publish them in a coherent manner in their hard news columns. The editorial and opinion pages are just that and readers understand that the publisher may use them to express one view or another. As it happens, both the Tribune and Journal have conservative bents, while the Times is reliably liberal. All of them, however, give opinion space to alternative views.

Publishing a daily newspaper is an expensive business. Dwindling advertising and circulation revenue have put many out of business and caused almost all to tighten their belts. As they go away, there is no one left to do the digging that other media depend upon for their own coverage. Do you really think the network news programs do all of their own reporting? In any event, how much news can you possibly cover in 20 minutes once a day? And local television news is mostly a joke. By the time they cover the weather and promote their network’s entertainment shows, they have very little time left to cover real news, even if they actually know what it is.

So, people need to ask themselves this question when they complain about the media – just exactly who is the biased one here?

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

 

 

Just Askin’ 

By Patrick F. Cannon

In his short career as the president’s press secretary, Sean Spicer has been required to defend the indefensible. I have never seen him less than uncomfortable doing it. I suspect he knows his boss is incapable of telling the honest truth about even the simplest thing. Yet he continues his fruitless efforts to explain the unexplainable. To his credit, it must be almost unbearable to face a White House press corps that has lost all respect for both his boss and him.

In my career as a publicist, I was never asked to lie for my employers. With one exception, my job was to explain their activities to various constituencies, including members, customers and the public. That one exception was a short stint as director of public information for the City of Chicago’s Department of Public Works. My superior was the legendary Earl Bush, the first Mayor Daley’s press secretary. His City Hall office was unmarked, and looked like the lair of a chronic hoarder. On the few occasions I submitted news releases for his approval (mandatory), I never heard of them again. It took me a few weeks to figure out that his job was to prevent the press from getting stories. I then understood what all those piles of paper were.

In a long life, almost everyone is occasionally faced with a moral choice. Should I take the expedient but morally dubious choice, or simply do the right thing? In looking at his biography, I see that Spicer has spent most of his career working for political campaigns, for members of the House or Senate, and for the Republican National Committee. In that last job, he even spent some time denigrating the candidacy of none other than Donald Trump.

His turnabout reminds me of a story I’ve told many times.  Early in my career, I worked in general management and marketing for a small institutional beverage company. Although the office was located in the Chicago area when I started, they decided to move it to the plant location in Lake Mills, Iowa, a farm community of some 2,500 folks. The business was seasonal to an extent, and during the winter we hired farmer’s wives for the packing lines. The plant manager, a local man, fired one of them for reasons I can’t now recall.

The aggrieved woman consulted a local lawyer. Now, he was an older man and had been one of the last lawyers in the state to pass the bar before you had to graduate from law school. Anyway, lawyer Larry (as I’ll call him) showed up one day and asked to meet with the plant and personnel managers, who worked under me. I attended the meeting, along with the comptroller. Larry then proceeded to list all the horrible and unfair things the plant manager had done to his client, suggesting that a law suit might well be her only recourse unless we paid her a handsome sum instead.

Having heard him out, the plant manager and then the personnel manager went through long lists of her sins and omissions. It took awhile and when they were done, lawyer Larry sat in stunned silence for a moment. Then, recovering his aplomb, he said: “Well, I’ll tell you what. If you want, I’ll slap a suit on that cookie!”

Sean Spicer has spent too long working for politicians. His moral compass has been skewed by the magnet of being close to the center of power. When his boss lies, he seems able to swear to it. Will he ever reach the point when even he gags on his own words?

Just askin’

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

(This week finds me in Florida helping my son with some stuff. Busyness or lethargy – take your pick – has prevented me from doing something topical, so here’s a chapter from my as yet unpublished history of the world. It on the short side, so shouldn’t tax your patience too much. As always, you have the option to ignore.)

Chapter Three

Greece – Birthplace of Democracy and the Olive Burger

By Patrick F. Cannon

While the Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babbleonians and their ilk (including the pesky Israelites) were battling among themselves for supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, to their left (if they were facing north) the great Greek city-states that would ultimately conquer them were developing.

The blind poet Homer was describing their exploits at around 800 BC, so that we know the famous Trojan War must have occurred before then. You will recall the bard’s description of the famous Trojan horse, left outside the gates of Troy, presumably as a peace offering, but in actuality containing a group of bloodthirsty Greeks. When the unwary Trojans dragged the horse into the city, the Greeks leapt out and laid waste to the hapless populace. Here, of course, we have the reason for the famous saying “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” This has caused endless trouble ever since, particularly for those marrying into Greek families.

As the city states developed, they began inter-city sporting competitions called the Olympic Games, named after Mount Olympus, which was the nearby birthplace of the Gods, who got in free. Many of the events are still contested today, including foot races, discuss throwing, wrestling, the javelin toss and the rock (now shot) put. Contestants, all men, wore no clothes because they were so proud of their muscles. This unashamed nudity eventually became the downfall of the Olympiad, not because of public prudery (which was in any case strictly a Judeo-Christian concept) but because there was no place to put a sponsor’s logo. When the Olympics were revived in the later 19^th Century, the organizers made sure that everyone was fully clothed and fully sponsored.

Athens and Sparta soon became the dominant cities. The Athenians invented democracy, philosophy, art and the corner restaurant. Sparta invented only militarism, but it was generally enough to sway the balance in their favor

It is Athens we think of when we think of Greece. Its Golden Age is typified by the great orator, Pericles, whose wisdom brought forth the first flowering of democracy. Great architecture and sculpture appeared, not to be surpassed for the next 2,000 years, when the fig leaf was once again discarded. Drama, as we know it today, was perfected. To playwrights like Aeschylus and Sophocles we owe the basic tragic plot (hero makes love to mother, loses eyesight); to Aristophanes the essentials of comedy (hero makes love to mother, who thinks it’s a hoot).

The Greeks also invented mathematics, philosophy and the oliveburger. Socrates came up with the revolutionary idea that truth actually existed, or as he put it: “I walked into a tree and broke my nose; therefore I must concede the truth of the tree.” He was so busy declaiming his ideas, he didn’t have time to write them down. This chore was handled by his graduate teaching assistant, Plato, who later came into his own as the author of The Republic and teacher of Aristotle. Aristotle was a true Renaissance man, although no one was aware of it at that time. He made advances in biology and mathematics and was the inventor of logic. (Who can forget his apt example: if A hits B and B hits A, then A better hit B again or run away.)

Aristotle in his turn was the teacher of the greatest Greek of them all, Alexander III, conqueror of the known world. To the Greeks, of course, the “known” world included only Spain on the west and Persia on the east. Alexander didn’t know about India, so he declined to conquer it. He also didn’t know about China, although the Chinese knew about themselves, but not about the Greeks. To the Chinese, the known world was China, an attitude they retain to this day.

Alexander was the son of Phillip II of Macedon, who had united all Greece under his sway. Not everyone was willing to swing to his tune, so he was assassinated in 336 BC. Alexander inherited the throne and soon had all Greece swinging and swaying in perfect harmony. But like many young Greeks, he decided to emigrate in 334 BC and took his army along for company.

Persia was Greece’s ancient enemy and Alexander set about conquering their extensive empire. Even though the Persian forces under Darius were far more numerous, Alexander’s brilliant generalship always seemed to catch them napping, or eating lunch. The campaign took 10 years, mainly because the Greeks expected regular time outs to rape, loot and pillage. Nevertheless, they got as far as modern Kashmir before Alexander’s soldiers had had enough. They had been away from their wives and families for 10 years and were understandably concerned about their constancy. They had also reached the frontier of the known world and were a little edgy. Even though Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to conquer, he wasn’t silly enough to go it alone, so he turned back.

Alexander died in 323 BC. It was believed he was poisoned, but without DNA testing, we’ll never know. What we do know is that his generals were soon squabbling among themselves with predictable results. While the empire soon broke up, they did leave behind many interesting ruins, a boon to tourism to this day.

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon

 

Keep Your Pants On! 

By Patrick F. Cannon

If you’re as fascinated by history as I am, you will have no doubt been puzzled by the undoubted fact that belts appear to have existed before pants were invented in the 15^th Century by the Chevalier de Pantaloon. I have therefore taken it upon myself to remedy this shameful lapse in the historical record.

First of all, it would be well to define just what is meant by the word belt. As with so many English words, multiple meanings are available. As you know, one can belt out a song, or belt a fellow in the snout, or even belt a home run into the bleachers at Wrigley Field. These uses do not interest us. What we are after is a length of some material long enough to span ones waist.

Astonishingly, little was available in the historical record until Cicero, in his famous Commentaries Upon the Domestic Habits of the Noblest Romans, mentioned in what should have been a more noted aside, that aristocratic Romans had taken to putting golden cords around their waists on windy days to prevent their skirts from flying up and exposing their less noble parts. You see, underwear had yet to be invented.

Well, as you may have already guessed, what started as necessity soon became fashion.  When Plebeians began emulating their betters, the Roman Senate passed a law specifying from which materials these cords could be made. Only Senators were permitted to don golden cords, while the Plebs had to make due with hemp. The ladies, for obvious reasons, were forbidden to cinch their skirts.

As usual, there’s a dark side to the story. It seems to have occurred to a few aristocrats that the cord could be adapted to hold a knife. Thus, on those fateful Ides of March, Brutus, Cassius and their pals had their knives ready to hand when Julius Caesar unwittingly paused to greet his soon to be former friends.

It is to the Romans that we also owe the transition of the waist cord into what we now call a belt. It seems that the first Roman to spot the trend and cash in by making and selling ever more elaborate cords was Flavius Beltus. As happened later with products like Kodak and Xerox, the company name became synonymous with the product, and so the waist cord became the belt.

Taking a leaf from Brutus and his crowd, the Roman Legions decided that the new belt could be adapted to hold any number of weapons in addition to knives. Hanging from their sturdy belts were not only knives, but swords, axes, maces, finger snips, eye gougers and even a flagon of Chiantus. The barbarians initially had no answer to this, but soon were emulating the Romans with weapons belts of their own, except their flagons contained Burgandus or Rhinelandus.

Belts changed little over the centuries. But when the Dark Ages subsided, newly wealthy nobles and merchants began to adorn their belts with rare fabrics and jewels. Women, for the first time, were permitted to belt themselves. They soon abandoned its practical uses, and the belt became purely a fashion statement, which it has remained to this day.

(I see I’ve neglected to mention the infamous chastity belt, designed to prevent wives from straying when hubby was away at the Crusades. I have often wondered how the poor women were able to go to the bathroom if the key was in far off Jerusalem, but decided there were some things one is better off not knowing.)

One suspects that belts were common during the Renaissance, but men’s waists were typically covered by short jackets, so visual evidence is lacking. It was only when the cutaway coat became fashionable in the 17^th Century that the belt reappears in all its glory. As a man, I’m rather ashamed to say that the men of the period wore even fancier clothes than the women. In addition to belts, paintings by Van Dyke and others even show that the upper classes took to wearing garters. A Knighthood of the Garter was even created, still bestowed by the British monarch. Strangely, Winston Churchill refused a peerage, but did become a Knight of the Garter. When I saw a photograph of Sir Winston with his Garter regalia, I couldn’t help asking myself if he’d taken leave of his senses.

As to the present, I’ll leave it up to you to observe the current state of this once practical accessory. You’ll find that some people even persist in using one to hold up their pants.

#####

Copyright 2017, Patrick F. Cannon