Smarter from a third-grader

My son is finishing up the third grade this week, and he has a few projects to wrap up. The last one is on Greek mythology. Tomorrow his class has "Sculpture Garden" where he will stand outside like a sculpture of Hermes until someone taps on a box that's in front of him. Then he will tell, as Hermes, his life story.

Hermes' gold-painted Vans modified for speed, with Caduceus and helmet at the ready.

Helping with his costume, I pointed out that the Caduceus that Hermes (or Mercury, since "Caduceus" is a Roman word) carries is a medical symbol. He asked me an obvious question: "If Hermes is the god of travel, trade and thieves, then why is that used by doctors?"

I had never thought about it before, and it makes no sense at all. Hermes had nothing to do with medicine, and he wasn't even all that interested in helping people. He was fast, and he's often associated with athletics, but that doesn't translate to medicine. Perhaps he was linked to alchemy, but not physicians.

So, of course, we googled it.

It turns out that the Caduceus, with its two snakes entwining it, looks a lot like the staff of Asclepius in many drawings, which has only one. Hermes' staff sometimes had wings at the top and sometimes did not, but it seems that Asclepius's never did. [Asclepius's staff also looks a bit like the serpent of Moses, which often represents healing.] You can see both together in the engraving below.

Mercury (Hermes) & merchant approach disapproving Asclepius and the Graces (Meditrine, Hygeia and Panacea). Engraved from an original by Aubin Louis Millin, Paris 1811.

The two staffs are similar enough in most cases that the Caduceus sometimes looked like a fancier version of the same thing, at least apparently it did to a lot of mostly American medical publishers and doctors about 100 or so years ago. And thus the confusion of the Caduceus with the staff of Asclepius that continues to this day. Both the American and the British Armies' medical corps use the Caduceus as a symbol, and in fact the US Army's use of it may be what first cemented its reference to doctors.

Rod of Asclepius in the Star of Life.

American paramedics however, display the rod of Asclepius within the "Star of Life" on almost every badge and vehicle, which sets up an interesting comparison. The simpler single-snake staff is worn by emergency workers in the field, with the elaborate winged double-snake staff representing universities, labs and office visits. There's a subliminal implication that the fancier symbol relates to a higher level of education and cost. While the single-snake rod may suggest a more workman-like approach, it's actually the one that makes a correct reference to history and myth. It's actually the one to be trusted.

These staff designs are thousands of years old, so I'm going out on a limb here to suggest that this may not matter much any more. But even so, if doctors from a century ago had consulted with third-graders and been asked an obvious question, they may not have set up a symbol for trade, travel, trickery and thievery as a symbol for medicine today.

CNN on the Steubenville trial

I finally watched CNN's full report on the Steubenville verdict, and it really is as horrible as it has been described. “A very serious crime,” Poppy Harlow said, but it’s true that all of the sympathy in this report was clearly directed at the criminals, and not the victim. Both Harlow and Candy Crowley need to watch the video themselves and see how they sound. In fact, it gets worse and worse the longer you listen.

The report didn't have to be that way.

It’s important to show these two boys and talk about their promising futures. It’s not bad for the news reports to show one of them giving his tearful apology and breaking down. It could be helpful to tell us these boys had everything going for them. In fact, everything about this report could easily have been well-done even while emphasizing the boys’ good grades and bright prospects.

But those boys’ lives were not ruined by the charges or by the verdict, as the report strongly and offensively implies. Their lives were ruined when they decided to humiliate and rape a helpless girl. They did this themselves, not the girl, not the judge, and not the law. They did it, and the verdict can and should be a good lesson for others that may have such arrogance and inhumanity, including those that have yet to be charged.

The CNN report, instead of giving us a lesson about consequences, conveyed the message that these boys are still heroes deserving our sympathy, victims of a youthful mistake fueled by alcohol.

Bullshit. People don’t commit rape unless they are truly disturbed. If you do that, you deserve to go to prison and have it seriously affect your entire life. You deserve to have to register as a sex offender, and the community you live in needs to know you are there. A decent person helps; he does not laugh or join in.

We can be sad that these boys turned out so poorly, we can lament that they wasted a promising life. We should do that. What we should not do, and what CNN needs to apologize for doing, is to lament that they were punished for it.

Late train home

Last night I took a later train home from work. A lot of people knew each other on the platform, seemingly from having ridden together for some time, greeting and saying hello, complaining about others at work, asking about life. In general it’s a louder and more jovial group than I see just after rush hour.

As is often the case, I was one of the only white guys on the train. It’s sometimes interesting to be in the minority, to get a small sense of what it’s like to be in that situation, but I rarely feel threatened.

I only feel nervous when there’s a clearly unstable person in the car, because I stand out as being alone, and therefore, a target. Perhaps a group of extremely loud young men that want to poke fun at others in the car will make me tense up, but again that usually comes from looking alone.

Last night some men in their 30’s or 40’s were sitting behind me laughing extremely hard at someone else. “Remember that guy from Starsky & Hutch?! That’s him, that’s him!”

I don’t remember the show well enough to call up the characters in my head, but my first thought was paranoid. Ok, I’m the target here because I stand out, I thought, but then I couldn’t think of what they could be laughing about. So I just sat there and read, and didn't turn around.

When I left the train, I immediately saw who they found so funny. He was sharp and smartly-dressed. A young black man with perfectly clipped hair, a tightly-tailored suit in a dark purple, and coordinated shirt, socks and pocket square stared stoically ahead as he walked to his connection.

Wow, I do have it easy, I realized, vaguely making the tv show connection in my head with the young man’s purple suit.

He was the biggest target because he looked possibly effeminate. He evoked howls of derisive laughter from older men because of his style. No one noticed me. I doubt anyone even remembers me being in the car.

The amateur anthropologist in me couldn’t help but observe the situation. My societal privilege as visibly straight may have just outweighed the ones I’m more accustomed to as white, and as male.

Why should I care about your beliefs?

After listening to decades of commentary and debate by theists, anti-theists, religionists, atheists, pretenders to agnosticism, spiritualists, ethnic travelers, and myriad others, I’m left with one thought:

“All of you, just shut the hell up already.”

Who cares what you think? Why do you feel the need to hijack a conversation about the Curiosity Mars Rover with your observations about the infallibility of God, or your insults at all world religions? Why do you think I or anyone else cares? I don’t know you, and I don’t care about your insistent demands that I agree with you.

Flemming Rose said this:

“If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.”

What I would add to Rose’s comments is that this also applies to other believers; outspoken Christianists and others demand submission from those whose faith is even marginally different. And atheists aren’t immune from making those same sorts of demands in debates, commonly under an assumption that any political liberal will back them up. What debaters most often seek on this topic is submission, if not actually humiliation. Are you looking to find one of those things? Then sit by yourself for a few hours and ask yourself why.

Here’s what I personally believe: Jesus was a real person who taught some extremely radical ideas for his time. They are still fairly radical today, and many of us would do well to live by them. I call myself a Christian. Do you care what I think or what I call myself? If you have any self-awareness at all, then I strongly doubt it and certainly hope not. If you do, well I suppose that's your problem.

I also believe in evolution, climate change, and that the earth is billions of years old. I love science. I think that if you aren’t fascinated and inspired by science, but you claim to worship God, then you must not care a whole lot about what you call his amazing creation, and your religion must be a farce.

Is there a God? Was Jesus his son? Was there a virgin birth? As I get older, I steadily care less and less about the answers to these questions. They don’t honestly affect how I live my life. (In fact, the story of Jesus is a more compelling read if you actually DON’T believe in the virgin birth, or even in his miracles.) It’s not that I’ve given up on answers, but that I don’t think my own knowledge of this actually matters. It doesn’t matter to me, it doesn’t matter to you, and frankly it doesn’t matter to any God that I can believe in.

If there is a God, I think he is too big for my response to these questions to bother him, because if it does, he is apparently a petty and cruel God that’s much too small for this universe. If there is not a God, then I can content myself with studying what a follower of Jesus would do, this radical teacher that taught loving your neighbor (even sinners), building community (even with people from other places), healing the sick (even gay people) and feeding the poor (even if they—the horror—may have squandered their money). He doesn’t mince words on these topics. Debating whether God did this or said that, or intended this or intended that only serves to obscure a real and important message that we simply love one another in this brief life.

Frankly, I think that is often the exact point of those debates, to obscure any uplifting message and accentuate differences and creeds, the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. They are part of a power struggle, not a concern for humankind.

Now, despite all of the above, I do actually love to talk about religion. I find it fascinating just like I find politics fascinating. It’s a window into thinking throughout history, around the world, and in our communities.

But if you’re compelled to tell me (or anyone else) what I have to think, or that we’re idiots for not agreeing with you, or we’re not using the right words, or any other annoyances based on your limited and shallow assumptions, just go away and stew in your own thoughts. You are like a mosquito in a bedroom, contributing nothing but an annoyance and pain. Your desire for validation through submission or humiliation isn’t useful, or appreciated.

I leave you with this from Hafiz:

Dear ones,
Beware of the tiny gods frightened men
Create

To bring an aesthetic relief
To their sad
Days.

You can, of course, decide what your own particular god is, tiny or not, and whether spiritual, philosophical, physical or ethical. But I will be wary of him if I listen to you at all.

All my best,

Ron

Happiness can be harder to grasp

"Even When She Was Sad," Marilyn

12"x24" rusted and sealed steel

“She was a girl who knew how to be gay even when she was sad. And that’s important—you know ”
― Marilyn Monroe, referring to Sadie Thompson

Many people who repeat this quote from Marilyn Monroe substitute the word "happy" for the word "gay," in order to bring her sentiment into modern speech, since the meaning of "gay" has obviously changed over time. But "happy" never had the same definition as "gay," and it misses the point. Gay implies an activeness, an embrace of life and its pleasures. Happiness can include that, but doesn't necessarily, because happiness can also mean content and satisfied; it is a deeper state of mind.

To be gay meant to be cheerful and merry, and that makes her quote a bit darker and a bit more melancholy than it first sounds. It implies a much more active avoidance of deeper feelings than "happy" would suggest. The wisdom that comes from depression, or even from deep sadness or grief, teaches us that gaiety is no substitute for happiness, and may keep it at bay, since, with gaiety, we can get by without confronting our deepest problems.

"An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine."
― Marilyn Monroe

I often think of Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge together. Movie stars from the same era, they were friends when they were young struggling actresses. Now, they both show us a difficult and dark side of glamor in their own ways. They obviously suffered from that wisdom that we all want to avoid, the long stare into an abyss of self, that overwhelms so many good people.

Dandridge had a brain-damaged daughter with her long-term first husband, then a poor second marriage, and problems with alcoholism to self-medicate her depression. Monroe was treated as a plaything by powerful men, even the president, ultimately ending her life with her own overdose on barbiturates. Each needing happiness but reaching instead for what they could, reaching for gaiety--which they could have in abundance. Happiness is much harder to grasp, and can take years to find.

"If I were white, I could capture the world."
― Dorothy Dandridge

Monroe did capture the world as Dandridge implied (and I would argue that both women did, and still do), but at such great cost. Both women, in retrospect, seem as if they were required to pay for their glamor, for their beauty, for their fame.

There's a melancholy and a corrosion that often seems to come with the brightness of glamour, or of fame, and this ongoing series of steel portraits intends to reflect that.

Summer shoes

In the summer of ‘94 I was walking along 42nd Street (or was it 41st?), headed to Grand Central. The amount of tourists increased as I zigzagged north and east, and I weaved my way around them. They poked along, blocking the way for those of us in a hurry, as is always expected.

The day was sunny and beautiful, so I didn’t really mind. I passed a jewelry store on the corner, with gold lettering and gold-colored trim and came up against a late-middle-aged crowd of that was waiting for the walk sign. They all wore the tourist’s uniform of brightly colored short-sleeve shirts, embarrassing shorts and brand-new tennis shoes with white socks. Their clothes annoyed me, since I doubted any of them would dress so silly back home.

That’s when I heard the screaming.

At this particular corner there was some scaffolding up, and a few of the tourists had stepped into the gutter to sidestep its dingy blue columns. A woman with auburn hair, wearing a white shirt and navy shorts, was shouting and screaming hysterically at the back of a southbound MTA bus. The walk sign lit up, but the crowd didn’t move the way it normally does, it was stuck to the sidewalk all around the auburn-haired woman.

Vans by Diogo Potes

Her white canvas shoes looked too delicate for a city dweller, and sure enough the right one was ripped in half. The front half of her foot seemed to be gone with it, or mangled beyond recognition by the weight of the bus and what must have been a quick slide or spin of the tire. It was hard to tell what was left, the blood was flowing so fast.

Her eyes were almost glazed as she stood screaming at the bus. The bus, for its part, lumbered along, like some mindless beast that had pushed her aside without knowing she was there. Yet she screamed as if it would stop, come back, and return her foot to her. Her tour group all seemed to have the groggy look of people waking from a long nap, interrupted by their friend’s horror.

I crossed the street while those nearest to her converged on her in cautious slow motion.

I wondered where she was from. Ohio, maybe, I thought. Or perhaps central Pennsylvania. She probably was leading the rest of the group to Grand Central Station, to see the soaring spaces and be surprised by the art exhibit that was there that month. She may have had tickets to a Broadway show that night. In fact, for some reason I feel confident that she did.

But I imagine she was in a hospital room that night instead, sedated, hating New York, the big city, that horrible place with the bus that took her foot. Healing and learning to balance would take time before it could even start. She wouldn’t get her prosthetic foot, her souvenir of the big awful place, for a while yet.

I suppose she’s wearing it now.