Comparing Self to Others

"Comparison is the thief of joy."  This quote is variously attributed on the internet to Mark Twain, Dwight Edwards, even Theodore Roosevelt.  Maybe those authors did say it, or something very like it.  But maybe they were all paraphrasing some other more arcane quote.

How often do we read something that gets filed in the memory in the form of a paraphrase?

Many educated people, civil war generals and others  habitually and continually have read their Marcus Aurelius.  In the Meditations, they encounter quotes like this:

Now much time and leisure doth he gain, who is not curious to know what his neighbor hath said, or hath done, or hath attempted, but only what he doth himself, that it may be just and holy? or to express it in Agathos' words, Not to look about upon the evil conditions of others, but to run on straight in the line, without any loose and extravagant agitation. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Number XV)

(No I don't know who Agathos is.) A number of editions of the Meditations are still in print.  The classical stoic may be an accessible handle on life for people in business and politics.  I would rather have them all reading old Marcus than old Marx, to tell you the truth.

To return to our quote about the thief of joy.  What is more precious than time? What is more pernicious than someone or something that robs us of valuable time? While Marcus Aurelius made the comment positive with respect to time and negative about comparing or curiosity, the succinct aphorism attributed without documentary citation of attribution turns it into a positive about curiosity (comparison) and negative (a thief) about joy/time/value.

Viva Marcus (Aurelius) and Mark (Twain)!  Oh, and down with Marx.

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I was born under a wandering star, the song said.

Actually I was born under 48 very stable stars.

The 48 star flag of the United States was used from 1912 until 21 August 1959, at which time I was a chubby little crumb cruncher working with a dozen or so teeth.

I followed a truck all the way home from work

Some dude in some kind of Chevy or GMC 2005 plus or minus half a decade SUV ended up going my way for several miles.

His truck had wider-than-standard tires that stuck out beyond the fender wells by a couple of inches, which used to be a fix-it ticket offence in California. The front wheels tracked about three inches to the left of the rear wheels, like a one-eyed dog trotting down the sidewalk.  That's how I know it was a Chevy type product.  Never seen a Ford or a Dodge do that.  There was a throaty hole in his exhaust system somewhere, or a cut-out system, and the engine was at a stage that we used to call "Yeah she burns a little oil."

I pretty much merge toward the slow lane after the intersection of the interstates, and then I stay there.  It's not a long commute, so if I take a low key approach and let every merging vehicle in, miss every light, and end up behind every overloaded truck trying to make it to the dump before it closes, it still loses me very little time.  What's a minute and a half, three minutes?  So I don't press and don't stress.

The Chevy SUV took a different tactic.  He would roar up to the slow landfill-bound truck and tailgate for a while, then roar out two or three lanes and try to pass some people.  But every time, he ended up just one space ahead of me.  It was like going for a walk with a hyperactive retriever that doesn't know how to heel, but goes roaming around about and back with his tongue hanging out -- and trotting along with his front paws a bit to the left of his rear ones.

We parted ways just before I turned left on the Crowndot street of residence.  Somebody in front of Mr. Chevy turned up the hill, giving him a clear path ahead, and off he roared in a cloud of partially burned diesel and motor-oil soot.

Bottom line:  I don't want to hear a damned thing about MY carbon footprint.

Summer Solstice, Midsummer, &c.

Where I reside, at approximately 38° North Latitude, the actual length time between sunrise and sunset is identical (within half a minute) from 15 June to 25 June (and maybe beyond that, I didn’t check). Namely we have about 15 hours 32 minutes between sunrise and sunset – it seems longer because of long morning and evening twilight and often a lingering glow from atmospheric conditions in summer. 

In modern astronomical terms, the solstice is defined in terms of the position of the earth in its orbit around the sun, as measured against the background of the fixed stars.  So in 2017, the solstice occurs at 9:24 PM PDT on 20 June.  

In ancient observational astronomical terms, the solstice is literally the apparent “standing still” of the sun at either end of its travel, over the course of the year, north and south on the ecliptic.  Seeing the sun come up in the same spot for ten or more days is remarkable, compared to the day-to-day changes in equinoctial seasons (more rapidly changing position of sunrise/sunset as well as many minutes per day longer or shorter time of daylight).  So the ancients marked the year with Midsummer celebrations at Summer Solstice, and with Midwinter celebrations (Yuletide) at the Winter Solstice.   

Let me beat my “First Day of Summer” drum.  In my attuned-to-ancient-Celtic brain, the first day of summer was the cross-quarter on Cinco de Mayo, more or less.  First Day of Spring is Groundhog Day (Lunar New Year, more or less, depending on whether you’re a sun kind of person or a moon kind of person). First Day of Winter is actually around Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, plus or minus.  And First Day of Autumn is August 6, Hiroshima Day – or if you prefer, the day on which the racist American President Lyndon Baines Johnson was dragged kicking and screaming and forced into signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Mil Spec

Every competitor in a new field simultaneously tries to maintain complete start-to-finish and top-to-bottom control of their niftiestness, and tries to become the standard to which all other competitors will have to comply.

VHS vs. Betamax?  19th century railroad gauge conflicts? Phillips vs. Pozidrive deck screws? JIC vs. SAE vs. DIN?  Apple vs. Microsoft?

The plum to be plucked in some of these conflicts is government contracts. "MIL Spec" can be a golden ticket for a company, such as when Break-Free CLP met the "Un-meetable Spec" for a Pentagon-approved firearms lubricant.

Competition is a good thing. Open Sources is also a good thing -- giving rise to even more competition and creativity for after-products such as Androd apps.

But the .gov influence can get in the way of development, don't you think?  I'm thinking of, say, how MIL-Spec ECWCS polar fleece stays expensive and crowds out development once it's THE spec.

Korean Cease-Fire 1953

27 July marks the anniversary of the signing of a cease-fire agreement in Panmunjom in 1953.

The Korean War Conflict never ended.

The Kim dynasty continue their version of Two Steps Forward One Step Back.

But the Forgotten War continues to be forgotten by most in the West or allied to the West.

Feast of the Presentation of Jesus

For the past year or so when I think about the Feast of the Presentation -- a recurring theme while meditating on the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary -- the character that calls out to me is the prophetess Anna.

Anna was a constant presence in the temple, and served God with fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37). By grace coming to the place where Simeon was speaking to the Holy Family, Anna was also led to recognize the Savior.

And what does Anna then do?

Anna becomes a kind of new Isaiah, speaking comfortingly to Jerusalem (Isaiah 40:1-2) about the Christ child.

Having maintained a kind of static watchfulness for so many years, Anna is rewarded with the One she has sought and hoped for.  The Presentation of the Lord moves her to great change. Think of this old lady, probably considered pitiful by most who see her, suddenly filled with great joy.  Think of this old lady, always locked in silence of prayer and mortification, now suddenly bubbling over with a spirit of thanks and praise.

There is no Canticle of Anna.  Yet Anna's witness is antiphon to Simeon's song.

Yes, our God is True!  This baby!  This one here!  He is the One!

For Simeon, it is "now let your servant depart in peace" -- depart into the sleep of death peacefully, having seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.  For Anna, the move is to depart not immediately to death but to depart from the temple, into the neighborhoods and dining rooms of all who look in hope for the coming of the Savior of Israel.

I can almost hear her:  "Yes! The prophecies are true!  Look for Him, all of you.  When the boy grows up -- oh, look for Him!  It will be after I am gone, but look for Him!"