Relax. It's Not the End of the World

Evangelical Christians, who I have a lot of fun with only they don't know it, believe that Donald Trump's election is one of the heralds of something they like to call "The End Times."  Based on a totally sideways reading of the Book of Revelations,  it's a time when the world will be divided up into warring nations all following false prophets, the environment gets wrecked, some kind of beast shows up (Roseann Barr?) as does Jesus, everybody living and dead will be judged, and 1,000 years of peace and prosperity will follow -no word of what happens January 1 of year 1,001.  To answer this claim, I quote the late 20th century philosophers Frankie Goes to Hollywood and say, "Relax."  Sure, things aren't too spiffy now, but we -as in humanity -have been here before.  And we've pulled through.

It's me, Akhenaten, and really not an alien

Take the New Kingdom period in Egyptian history.  Things were finally looking up for the Two Lands: foreign invaders had been repulsed, monumental building projects resumed, the weather cooperated, and all looked peachy keen.  Until the reign of Amenhotep IV.  Five years into his rule, the Big A got this crazy idea that Egypt's polytheistic religion was a bunch of water buffalo poop and decided to do something about it.  He closed all the temples except the sun god Aten's,  moved the capital from Thebes to a city he was in the process of building, changed his name to Akhenaten (Everything's Great with Aten), and spent all his time bonking his wife, the fabulously beautiful Nefertiti.  Well, you can imagine what happened next! All the out of work priests were pissed, the people were terrified of offending the traditional gods, the new capital at Samarna royally sucked, and Nefertiti got bored with the Big A and took up papyrus origami.  If it wasn't the end of the world, it was pretty darn close.

Luckily, Akhenaten died and after a fumble or two the throne wound up in the hands of an eight year old boy called Tutankhamun -King Tut to you and me.  Now the Egyptians were really screwed, right?  It turns out no, because Tut's vizier was a capable career civil servant named Ay who really had a knack for ruling.  Under Tut/Ay, the capital was moved back to Thebes and the temples reopened, which earned the priestly class' undying gratitude.  And so things went on swimmingly on the banks of the Nile, right up until the 1180's BC, the next time the world turned into a festering pool of excrement.

For many reasons way too obscure to go into here, the entire greater Mediterranean world fell completely apart in the late Bronze Age.  How bad was it?  The Egyptians were totally whupped by a bunch of nasties collectively called the Sea Peoples, but that's not all.  Troy fell -for the fourth or fifth time, I lose track -Mycenaean Greece entered the Dark Ages, the Hittite Empire vanished, Assyria and Babylon were trashed, and even the mighty Phoenicians left town for Carthage, safely far away in present-day Tunisia.  Not one, but several end-of-the-world scenarios were being played out during this time.

Hey, we're the Sea Peoples.  So, Egypt... wassup?

However, eventually the Greeks got it together and invented philosophy, drama, democracy and baklava.  In Mesopotamia, the Persians put together the largest empire humans had managed to create up until that time.  It turned out that the move to Carthage was just what the Phoenicians needed, because they got staggeringly rich pedaling dye, grain, wine, olive oil and adult marital aids all over the known world.  And although Egypt wasn't the world-striding colossus it was during Ramses the Great's time, at least it turned into a peaceful backwater.

Let us next consider Rome, though let's skip the Grandeur part and go right into the Decline and Fall.  After Emperor Marcus Aurelius went on to join his family ghosts on the Elysian Fields, the Roman Empire lurched from one crisis to the next until the whole shebang wrenched apart and the Western half folded like a chump holding only a pair of sevens in a Texas hold 'em game.  Sure, the Eastern half would keep the lights on until the 1453, but for everybody in Spain, Italy, France, England and other smaller bits of Europe, life was shit that just kept on getting shittier.  Barbarians?  You bet: Huns, Vandals, Goths and Picts.  Disease? Yup.  Starvation and hopelessness? Ditto.  End of the world?  Not quite.

Know why it was called the Dark Ages? Because of all the KNIGHTS!!  Bwa-Ha-Ha!

For all the headaches of Western Europe's so-called Dark Ages, a vibrant culture emerged commonly called the Medieval world.  Knights, ladies, monasteries, great cathedrals and tales of chivalry were all hallmarks of this period.  Granted, life was difficult, but it went on all the same.  During this time, the seeds of all the wonderful qualities of Western Civilization were sewn: scientific inquiry, commercial capitalism, nation-states, engineering and exploration.  Democratic liberalism and rational medical treatment still had a long way to go, but at least they were on the right track.  The society produced was even strong enough to survive a series of events that, to their contemporaries in the 1300's, really did look like the end of the world.

In 1347, a merchant ship pulled into Genoa harbor from a trading post on the Black Sea.  The boat had left under fire from the Tatars who were besieging the port.  Among its cargo was the deadly virus Yersinia Pestis, a disease carried by the fleas that infest rodents like rats, mice, gerbils and hamsters, but can also attack humans.  The disease hit Southern Europe with the force of a bomb blast.  After several years of increasingly deadly outbreaks, 30-60% of Europe's population died.  For those that survived, their world view was warped by so much death, starvation, war and sickness that one wonders today how they found the strength to go on.  End of the world yet?  Close, but not yet.

Renaissance Man: six-pack abs and stone junk

Europe shook off the death shroud and donned a cloak of real radiance during the Renaissance
period.  Painters sculptors, poets, playwrights, businessmen, kings, princes, Popes, adventurers and even some ordinary people burst forth in an explosion of creativity whose echoes are still being felt today.  That's really what I admire the most about humanity: push us to the limit and we often show you human spirit at its best.  Granted, the Renaissance was mostly a cultural movement of Europe's political and social elites, but in cities like Florence, Italy, individual citizens were becoming important and valued for their contributions to society.  The years that followed were crowned by scientific achievements in industry and medicine, increasingly participatory governments and even greater artistic creativity, until it all almost destroyed itself in the 20th Century.


Starting with the Great War in 1914 and pausing at the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the blood-soaked 20th Century  actually had the ability to bring about the end of the world as we know it.  World Wars I and II brought industrial efficiency to the practice of killing soldiers and non-combatants alike, with  such crackerjack tech as the machine gun, attack aircraft, poison gas and submarines, finishing up with ballistic missiles and atomic bombs.  The ensuing so-called Cold War brought about a horrifying build-up and proliferation of ever more powerful atomic weapons and rocket delivery devices.  For the first time, humans had the ability to kill off entire populations within hours and to poison the whole planet with radioactive fallout.  Scientists even postulated a "nuclear winter" scenario affecting the climate, leading to mass species extinctions not seen since the KT-Boundary extinction event that wiped out the large land dinosaurs.  End of the world?  Believe it or not, no.

As of this writing, the world and humanity are open for business.  Since 1945, not one nuclear bomb has been used in war, although the USSR and USA came close during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I am also pleased to report that we have passed the dates for the end of the world set by the Jehovah Witnesses, the Mayans and the Heaven's Gate cult.  That said, there are some ominous signs: drug resistant diseases, climate change, the proliferation of radical politics, and the growth of intolerant hate groups.  But there are some hopeful signs as well: recognition of the human role in climate change and the first attempts to slow down and mitigate the damage; the growth of multi-racial, multi-ethnic nations and families; advances in communications technology that literally puts in your pocket the ability to talk to the whole world, at least one person at a time. 

Sorry my evangelical friends. Donald Trump, although he has a highly inflated opinion of himself, isn't the end of the world.  When or if it ever comes, the real end of the world will be way more bigly, really yuge, believe me!

Now?  Is it the End yet?  Ready for me?  Sigh...

Cats! They Walk Among us!

In this, my 41st posting to  the blogosphere, I thought it would be fun to write about cats and how long they have been sponging-off of humans.  I have two spongers now: Mimi and Ebby (short for Ebony).  They are both black American shorthairs, but that's all they have in common.  Mimi is very talkative, can be playful, likes to look at all the birds, squirrels, raccoons, badgers, dogs, elephants and orangutans cavorting around in the back garden; Ebby is invisible.  Most of the time.  And doesn't meow.  And is literally afraid of his own shadow.  Every now and then, especially whenever I am feeding them their expensive cat food --the kind that promotes a healthy feline urinary tract --I find myself complaining to them about the 21 1/2 hours a day they sleep, grouchily saying things like, "And I suppose you'd like it better if we worshipped you two freeloaders as goddesses, just like the Egyptians!" or the equally mean-spirited question, "And just HOW MANY mice did you catch and eat today?"

Truth be told, I suppose I'm a bit envious of my cats.  I'm sure that if I went to, let's say, the Serengeti and tried to move in with a pride of lions, I doubt I'd get fed "human chow" every day and have my hair stroked, or be given bits of leftover bones to play with.  We humans are --with the exception of the sign-language-communicating gorilla named Koko --the only species that keeps pets because we like them.  But was this always the case?  When did humans and cats connect?  And given that there are few "working cats" left in the Western world these days, just why the heck haven't we turned these furry little freeloaders out to fend for themselves?

Not Mimi and Ebby- I have no pictures of them together because
Ebby is too scared to come out from under the bed.  Dipshit!

Domestic cats are descended from the African wildcat, a little guy who lives in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.  In 2004, a neolithic grave was discovered in Crete that contained a human skeleton and a cat skeleton, side-by-side --although I have no doubt that the cat caused the human's death by twining around-and-between the human's legs until he tripped and cracked his skull on a Neolithic rock.  The gravesite was carbon-dated to about 9,500 years old, and it takes a few hundred years at the very least to domesticate an animal species, so cats have been hanging around humans for close to 10,000 years.  That's a lot of cat food cans!  But why in the world would cats choose humans to cozy-up to back in the Neolithic?

No!  I will NEVER be tamed!  I will not be... wait, is that cream?
I like cream.  Hmm... but No! I must not... ooo, is that fish?  Prrr...

It's simple, really.  Cats, both wild and domesticated, are carnivorous, solitary hunters, who nevertheless live social lives, usually with other cats, but who won't turn their noses up at the odd scrap tossed their way.  By the Neolithic period, humans were giving up their nomadic ways in favor of a more or less fixed address, just as long as the fish, fowl, game animals, roots, wild berries, nuts and fruits held out.  A few intrepid bands had supplemented their diets with these weird animals called pigs, cows, chickens and goats that they had managed to domesticate, with the help of Man's Best Friend, the dog.  With all the food hanging around a Neolithic campsite being prepared, grown, caught or eaten, it was just a matter of time before the domestic cat's wild African cousin took notice, and decided to throw her lot in with humans.

"Can I haz a tiny nom of wheeeat?"
"No.  But I can haz juicy mousie, nom nom nom!"

By the time the Neolithic Age had given over to civilizations in the Fertile Crescent, the Nile valley and China's Yellow River Valley, cats were firmly entrenched as human companions, and rightly so, because they had the all important job of helping to guard the grain surplus these civilizations had managed to accumulate, from marauding bands of mice, rats, birds and the like.  This was a totally huge problem, because ancient peoples of the Near East hadn't yet discovered the Midwest Grain Silo, the storage innovation that made it possible for so many Americans today to suffer from wheat gluten allergies.  Given the chance, wheat and grain-eating rodents would reproduce like mad and munch their way through the entire surplus of, say, ancient Jericho without even breaking a sweat.  They were, like, total opportunists.  Luckily, we humans had our own opportunistic animal allies fighting the good fight at our side: felis silvestris catus, a.k.a. the pussycat.  They aren't mentioned in the Sumerian written record, nor do they show up in Mesopotamian clay tablets, but cat skeletons are found at the same level of ancient Sumerian cities, indicating that cats lived and died inside the city walls.  If they lived inside Sumerian households, they probably chased and ate mice and rats that invaded the Sumerian home.  If they didn't it was probably because their services were required at the central granary and Sumerian priests may have had a monopoly on cat ownership.  Which totally makes sense, because across the Sinai desert, the Egyptians had a very close and well documented relationship with cats.

This is a contemporary drawing of the Egyptian goddess, Bast, a.k.a Bastet, shown in her later, anthropomorphic form of a woman with a cat's head.  She carries in her hands a sistrum, a kind of bronze rattle that sounds like a key ring being jangled about, and the ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life.  To her devotees (which I am sure included lots of little old Ancient Egyptian ladies who had a few too many cats at home), she looked after cats (well, duuh!), protected people, and was a source of joy, dance, music and love.  She had an entire temple devoted to her worship, staffed by a bunch of priests who took care of the sacred cats, who were sometimes awarded to lucky supplicants and taken home to protect it from vermin.  This temple was even visited by Herodotus, the dude who actually invented history.  Here's what he had to say about it: 

Save for the entrance, it stands on an island; two separate channels approach it from the Nile, and after coming up to the entry of the temple, they run round it on opposite sides; each of them a hundred feet wide, and overshadowed by trees. The temple is in the midst of the city, the whole circuit of which commands a view down into it; for the city's level has been raised, but that of the temple has been left as it was from the first, so that it can be seen into from without. A stone wall, carven with figures, runs round it; within is a grove of very tall trees growing round a great shrine, wherein is the image of the goddess; the temple is a square, each side measuring a furlong. A road, paved with stone, of about three furlongs' length leads to the entrance, running eastward through the market place, towards the temple of Hermes; this road is about 400 feet wide, and bordered by trees reaching to heaven."

Nice digs for our Egyptian goddess!  I, however, was somewhat surprised that Herodotus neglected to mention anything about the temple litter box, which must have been extraordinary as well.

I told you to get the cat a meatball!  What the Hades
is she going to do with a yarn ball, you twit?

There is no doubt that cats were purring, scampering, chasing balls of yarn and otherwise on the hunt for mice and moles in Ancient Greece.  One of the most important things that a Greek housewife did, especially if she was a noblewoman, was to prepare and weave wool into all kinds of useful things, like clothes, curtains, wall hangings and blankets.  With all of that yarn around to chase, I have no doubt that somewhere, on some lovely Greek island, there was a cat in the middle of it, making a hilarious muddle of things, much to the enjoyment of the lady of the house.  At least one Greek potter put this cute domestic scene on one of his pots.  

If you close your eyes, it's easy to imagine cats all over Ancient Athens: prowling the Acropolis for mice trying to steal the food offerings to Athena, sideling their way through the Agora on watch for any dropped kibbee or discarded fish, sitting on Socrates' lap as he peppered Plato and his other students with his socratic questions.  Now open those eyes, and if you're in Athens, you can see descendants of those Classical Cats ranging all over the city!  I visited Athens in 1981 and was astonished to find myself trailed by no fewer than three cats wherever I went.  They were kind of like my personal feline Greek homies.  I ended up always having a spare bit of kebab on hand as a little treat for them.  Abandoned and scruffy as they were, they always politely waited their turn for their treat, and never bit or scratched me.

The Romans had cats, and so possibly did the Etruscans, the Romans' neighbors to the north, who conquered and ruled the Romans for a while before the Romans got their act together and took over 7/8ths of the Known World.  We know without a doubt that cats were in Ancient Rome around the time of Christ, because an archaeologist recently found cat paw-prints on a section of clay roofing-tile, dated about 2,000 years ago.  I wonder what that tile-maker's cat looked like, and what it was doing strolling across damp roof tile.  Speaking of tile, before Mt. Vesuvius blew its top and turned Pompei into the ancient world's biggest ashtray, there was a place called the House of the Fawn that had some pretty great mosaic artwork.  The most famous piece is Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus, the one where the Great Al totally kicked the ass out of the Persian Empire's army and just about snagged the King of Kings, Darius, off of his retreating chariot.  A lesser known mosaic is this one here, presumably of the family's felis silvestrius catus:

Ego sum: Fera pessima bestia formidetur!

Although the claws are a little fanciful, the mosaic shows a really pretty kitty with orange fur and black tiger stripes.  Unfortunately, every human, dog and cat died when Vesuvius erupted.  But cats were in the empire to stay, and wherever the legions went, cats either followed or were already there once the legion pitched camp.  And when the empire fell apart and was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy courtesy of the Goths, cats stuck around to help chase the mice out of the barns and help themselves to any medieval handouts that came their way.  It was during the middle ages, however, that cats find their way into the written record.  Literally.  During the 14th century, an Italian manuscript called Lettere e commissioni di Levant, Vol. 13, has inky cat paw prints across a couple of pages.  Why the scribal monk who wrote this book didn't fix this feline desecration is because in order to do so, he would have had to trash hundreds of hours of meticulous, hand-written copy.  Better to just beat the cat instead.

There are strange appearances by cats in medieval literature, with people talking to cats and the cats talking back, cats being associated with angels and devils, cats being chased by dogs and cats chasing lions (and catching them, too!)  But there are sweet portrayals of cats as well.  My favorite one is this poem by an Irish scribe/scholar about his pet cat, Pangur Ban:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Watch out, you moussesss!  Pangur Ban is in da houssssse!

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

During the Age of Exploration, cats hooked a ride on many a caravel and pinnace and found themselves in some pretty exotic locations.  Sailors really liked having cats on shipboard because they ate the mice and rats that ate the sailors' food, such that it was.  Once on shore in the South Seas or the Spanish Main, cats found themselves among fauna that had never met them before.  And that fauna, in some instances, suffered for it.  Biologists estimate that domestic cats are responsible for 32 species of New World birds going extinct.  Forever.  But the sailors didn't know what they were doing, and cats were just doing what they had always done, so although regrettable, we can't really blame cats for everything that went down.  And sailors being the superstitious crowd they are, no cat on a ship, no crew. Cats were literally that well respected.

Wherever Europeans set up colonies, cats came along to police the grain supply and to ingratiate themselves with people who owned warm fireplaces.  Although there is no mention of cats at Monticello, Mount Vernon or Paul Revere's house, it's not a huge leap of imagination to picture a grey-and-white tabby sitting on John Hancock's lap in the front parlor of his Boston home, having her ears scratched by the hand that wrote the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence.  Hey, even this lady had a cat.

He's stuffed.  That's because he wouldn't
sit still for his portrait.

Which brings me to a very dark part of the feline/human relationship: the belief that cats are evil spirit-familiars who carry plague and kill children in their sleep.  While it is true that cats are disease carriers --hey, so are you! --they are certainly NOT carriers of bubonic plague.  They, like humans, were victims of plague, but only if they were bitten by an infected flea.  They were also collateral victims of medieval medical quackery that went something like this: plague was spread by the bad air breathed-out by cats and dogs, so kill all the cats and dogs and your town will be plague-free.  You can see where this is going.  Without cats and dogs around killing the host animals of the Bubonic Plague-infested flea, those fleas will jump onto humans, bite them, kill them, and > poof!< one-third of Europe's population is on their way to meet Jesus or Satan, depending on their level of medieval faith.

As for killing children in their sleep, the theory was that cats would crouch on a child's chest at night and steal their breath, thus killing the hapless child.  The reality of the situation is that cats like a warm place to sleep (who doesn't?), and it just so happens that humans radiate a lot of heat from their heads, which are usually outside of the sheets, blankets, duvets and duvet-covers at night, unless there are monsters under the bed, in which case the child's head is under the covers.  This is why I often wake up in the morning with a cat sleeping peacefully on my head.

Onto the part about cats being the familiar spirits of witches, warlocks, demons and that crowd.  As stated in the fourth paragraph of this article (scroll up- it's next to the picture of the African wildcat), cats are social creatures.  This means that they like to hang-out with people and other cats.  You could say that cats are familiar with people who feed them, clip their claws, play with them and stroke their fur.  When an old, ugly lady who had a couple of cats for mousing-purposes and for companionship was accused of being a witch, one of the exhibits for the prosecution would always include the poor little pudddycats, who would be put to death as well.  Such a raw deal!  Usually these cats were completely screwed if they happened to be black cats, the Devil's favorite color.  The sad part about this is that presently, people will cat-nap and torture black cats around Halloween, or sacrifice them in satanic rituals they make up by pulling some random occult shit right out of their asses.  This is why my two black cats are NOT allowed to trick-or-treat by themselves anymore, even though most of my neighbors are probably not closet satanists.

Actual autographed publicity-shot of Felicitte, the
French astro-cat

Finally, neither NASA, the Russian space program nor the European Space Agency have any current plans to send a cat into space, although dogs, monkeys, rabbits, mice, rats, frogs, frog eggs, fruit flies, a guinea pig (really?  using a guinea pig as a guinea pig? how droll), parasitic wasps, flour beetles, one tortoise, white flies, meal worms, spiders, a couple of fish, nematode worms, a stick insect and I am so totally not making this up, a couple of newts, have made it into space.  Only the French had the sense to send a cat into space.  The date was October 18, 1963; the place was some grotty French launchpad.  On board the Veronique sounding-rocket was Felicitte, a black-and-white stray cat from Paris.  Her flight lasted 15 minutes and she went 97 miles into space!  Her capsule was recovered with the chat blanc et noir safely inside, although the miserable French had stuck electrodes into her brain and recorded her brain activity, which probably went something like this:

"C'est dommage, there are no souris in this place to chase and ironically play with.  Et bien, I will nap for a... mon Dieu, what the hell was THAT noise?!?  I shall float over to the fenêtre for a look.  Ah, la beauté de la Terre is so, how you say, breathtaking this day.  Excuse me, I must see to my toilette."  There is no documentation from France's space program whether of not any litter box was included in the original mission specs, but I doubt one was due to the only 15 minute mission length.

Just because there has only been one cat in space so far, I firmly believe that as people venture off this lovely planet we call home and colonize miserable, airless, rocky, ultra-violet-light-bathed worlds completely hostile to life as we know it, sooner or later, a couple of mice will sneak along with us, making cats a necessary mission specialist for future space travel.  And since it takes a long time to get to the planets that are just in our own solar system, future astronauts would no doubt appreciate the company provided by a good cat.  Sure, something will have to be done about their shedding and feeding them in a weightless environment, but cats are adaptable creatures, so I bet they can hack it.  Besides, cats like cheese, and I hear that the moon is made of cheese... or was it Lunar Regolith?

"Mission Specialist Skeeter here.  I am stepping off the lander platform now.  The surface is loose and granular, perfect for liquid and solid waste disposal.  Will continue E.V.A. for 30 minutes, then return for some lap-time and a few treats."

Ya Say Ya Want a Revolution?

Today's post (the first one as Ex-Prof!) is all about revolutions and how they're usually democratic, except when they aren't.  But first, let's define our terms: a revolution in this sense is an overthrow of the existing political power structure in favor of a different power structure.  This means that I don't mean "revolution" in the same sense as "Industrial Revolution" or that giant of professional sports, the New England Revolution soccer team (sorry if I offend both of their fans). The reason I'm interested in revolutions today is because I was listening to a couple of talking-heads on NPR Radio (NPR: No People-listening-to-this Radio-show), complaining about the ongoing revolution in Egypt.  Specifically, there was much hand-wringing over the fact that the Egyptian military and 97.33% of the Egyptian people were sick of the Muslim Brotherhood D-baggers they had elected (just after they had thrown out their last dictator), so sick of them that the Egyptian people had told the army to arrest the president, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and some guy named Hakim who was just hanging around Tahrir Square trying to sell t-shirts that said, "Come See the New Egypt: No More Pharaohs Around Here!"

"Don't worry, Hakim -Egypt has democracy now!"

You see, Talking Head #1 was sad that a democratically elected government had been overthrown by the army; and Talking Head #2 was angry that anybody was feeling sorry for the Muslim Brotherhood, who were a bunch Taliband-wannabees that wanted to impose strict Islamic Sharia law on an otherwise secular society, so good riddance to bad rubbish.  That got me to thinking: just what is a revolution in the first place? --are revolutions compatible with democracy? --are all revolutions, to some degree or other, democratic?  But most importantly: what designer-wear looks are today's hottest revolutionaries sporting this year?

I am so totally for whichever rebels she's with

In the beginning (shortly after Pangea broke apart), rebels and rebellions didn't usually fare too well.  They were generally ordinary farmers who were sick and tired of putting up with whatever brand of authoritarian rule was being dished-out, armed with a few tricked-out farm tools, and going up against some ancient king's armed and trained soldiers.  And the results were predictable: defeated, enslaved peoples, flayed human skins, piles of skulls --the whole horrible scene.

The first successful revolt recorded by history was in about 2380 BCE (Before Calcium Emulsified) when the Sumerians of Lagash got rid of King Lugalanda and installed King Urukagina in his place.  Turns out that the big U was quite the reformer.  However, the Lagashians were still stuck with a king at the end of the day (democracy, communism and buggerocracy hadn't been invented yet), so how much of a revolution was it?

However, it's important that the people of Lagash --and not a rival city-state --were at the heart of the regime change, thus making the first successful revolution a popular one, if not a democratic one.  Between 2380 and 508 BCE (Because Cats are Excellent!), there were a few coups and military takeovers, but not a whole lot of popular involvement until the people of Athens, Greece took up arms against tyranny --and won!

I am so effing-smart --and aristocratic.

It seems that a real tyrant, Peisistratus, started out ruling Athens in the name of the people, but let the power go his head and turned into a colossal dick-weed.  There was nothing left for it but take it to the streets and hunt down Peisistratus and his supporters.  After the bloodletting and pottery-smashing stopped, the Athenians all took a collective deep breath, had a slug of wine and a few olives, and turned the whole problem of what to do after a successful revolution over to the smartest man they could find, an aristocrat named Cleisthenes.

What Mr. C. managed was a complete restructuring of Athenian society.  You see, before Cleisthenes there was another reformer named Solon (reputably smarter than Cleisthenes) who prevented a revolution by organizing society around the lines of a military unit.  At the top were the chiefs.  Anybody could be a chief, as long as their annual income was worth 500 bushels of wheat or more (Athenians liked wheat so much that they often used it as a currency.  Poly want a cracker?)  Next came the equestrian class, anyone whose annual income was 250-499 bushels of wheat.  This was supposedly enough bread --err, cash to keep a cavalry horse and rider in the field.  Next came the thetes, which is Greek for everybody else.  When not at war, this society actually got together and voted on civil questions, such as how much should we pay the Athenian dung-haulers (this was way before septic systems) or what to do with the colonies of feral cats infesting the local temples (the Ancient Greeks were not acquainted with Chinese cuisine).  Great system, right?

What's wrong with rule by Mafia?
It works for me...

The problem was that the people voted in tribes --that is, they all voted in political units dominated by a powerful extended family and its allies.  This meant that the most powerful families --there were 6 of them --could control the government of Athens and ride roughshod over everyone else.  Think of living in a state controlled by 6 Mafia families and you'll get the picture.

Enter Cleisthenes.  The thetes of Athens were on a total rampage, destroying shops, homes and killing aristocrats.  If he couldn't stop the civil unrest, Athens would become a wrecked slaughterhouse.  What he did was simple on the one hand, yet brilliant on the other: he changed the system of voting from tribes to locations (Acropolis, Agora, Harbor, Plains, Outskirts, etc.)  This broke the power of the ruling families and allowed Solon's reforms to function as a true direct democracy.  Add to it a popular assembly of all citizens (adult, male, non-slave, bisexual) and a jury of 501 citizens, and you've got the world's very first democracy.  Hooray for Athens!

Vive l'Revolution! uhmm, coup d'etat!
Whatever, vive me!

But now we must deal with with the fine distinction of just what makes a democratic, or at least popular revolution and what is just a mere coup d'etat, which is French for "Affair of State" (leave it to the French to be having affairs during political uprisings, those horny little frogs!)  With a coup d'etat, you're really just changing one ruling faction for another.  For example, when Napoleon Bonaparte got rid of France's government of the Directory and installed himself as First Consul for Life, he was merely showing the Directors the door and snagging himself some nice new office space --as well as assuming the rule of the entire country of France.  A revolution must be more: more people, more change, more time spent doing it, and more suffering for everybody involved.  This is what makes revolutions popular, and that is why so many of at least the modern ones have been democratic.

With me so far? Good; now let's turn our attention to a revolution we all know and love, the American Revolution.  My favorite Bay Stater from history, John Adams, was quoted as saying that "[the] American Revolution was accomplished long before the first drop of blood was spilled at Lexington and Concord --and that was the revolution in the hearts and minds of the American people."  By this, Adams meant that before any shooting started, the King's subjects in the part of British North America that wouldn't later go on to dominate the sport of ice hockey had gotten it into their heads that they were somehow different from your average run-of-the-mill Englishman from England.  They were, in fact, thinking of themselves as American Englishmen (to distinguish themselves from native Americans [called Indians then], African Americans [called slaves or Negros then], or Franco Americans [called miserable dirty rotten French bastards then]).

There's no friggin' way we can lose this one!
-oops, we did.  My bad.

However, Adams wrote this a few years after the successful conclusion of the American Revolution when he and everybody else in short pants, knee socks and a whig was feeling overly optimistic.  During the revolution, he wrote that the people of America could be roughly divided into thirds: one-third that was for independence, one-third that was loyal to the British Empire, and one-third that was working so friggin' hard to put a beer and a burger on the dinner table every day that they couldn't care less who ran the country --just as long as it wasn't anybody who was Catholic.  And this is where most people totally miss the whole point of the American Revolution: it was not ever, in any sense of the term, a sure-thing.  In fact, it's the best proof I can think of that God does exist and does care about what goes on around here, because by all rights, we should have lost our war for independence on at least 5 occasions: Bunker Hill, the Evacuation of New York City, the Occupation of Philadelphia, Valley Forge and the Treason of Benedict Arnold.  Each of these five pivotal points will be the subject of a subsequent blog post (good news for you Revolutionary War junkies out there!)  But it's a curious event at the end of the war, when the Continental Army was in winter quarters around Newburgh, New York, that I want to examine, because if things had gone the other way, we might have found ourselves facing the same situation the Egyptians are facing today.

"And we're all just going to stand at attention in the snow until whomever
threw that flaming bag of poop at Congress steps forward!"

The scene: Newburgh, New York (for the second time).  Previously, the Continental Army and their tre's fort French allies had beaten the snot out of Lord Cornwallis, basically ending the war, but for the fact that there were still tons of British soldiers in America and there was as of yet no formal peace treaty.  George Washington's officers had had it up to here with Congress because they had never fully provided for the army during the course of the war, making it necessary for soldiers to march without shoes, make camp without tents, and, yes, even go into battle without a musket.  In their frustration, the officers offered to make George Washington king of America.  After considering their offer for a whole three seconds, Washington politely declined, reminding everybody that they just fought a war against a king, so if it was ok with them, he'd just become the first President.

Just for a moment, let's imagine what might have happened if ol' George took his officers' offer up and became king of America.  No doubt Congress would have had something to say about that, not to mention all the pissed-off current and former soldiers who fought to rid America of kings.  So, what probably would have happened next is the American Civil War, four score and seven years earlier than it really happened.  This would have put America at a severe disadvantage vis a vis the rest of the world, prompting Britain to grab Maine, France to grab everything east of the Mississippi and west of the Appalachians, and Spain to grab Georgia.  As bad as that might be, it could have happened; only the strong character of George Washington prevented it.

Revolutions are not tidy things --those are coup d'etats --so don't give up on Egypt's revolution just yet.  They just might end up with a better, more democratic government than they used to have.  Heck, we managed it somehow.   After all, the pyramids weren't built over the weekend; nor will democracy appear over night.  And out of protests and arrests and general unrest could result in a genuine democracy for Egypt.  But whatever we in the United States must do, we must NOT interfere.  After all, the Egyptians left us to work out our differences in 1776.  They deserve the same respect.

All You Need is Love

All You Need is Love

Julie, my first-ever reader, told me that I have been guilty of "angry-blogging," so Adjunct Proff's blog today will be all about L.O.V.E. --its history, its present state and some fearless prognostications for the future of Love (because Love does have a future if humans keep living together in families and communities, instead of virtually connecting via Second Life avatars)

Take a look at these magical breasts!

Back in cave-man-cave-woman times, there really wasn't much spare time to devote to love.  People lived close to nature and... just did what came naturally.

In fact, anthropologists and even the odd historian believe that early societies were completely matriarchal because, well, women were magical.  Hey, women could produce children.  And even better, they could feed these brand-new human beings from great tasting milk from their own breasts, so it was a good two or three years before these new humans even wanted any scarce food.  What could possibly be any more magical?

You see, early man probably didn't make the connection between sex and child birth because, hey, it took at least two to three months between copulation sessions (sex) and any evidence of pregnancy.  And given the loose clan structure of early societies, the now visibly pregnant woman may have mated with several other members (heh heh, members) of the clan, so there might not have been any certainty of who the baby-daddy was, even if they had made the connection.  So, matriarchy, with a particularly prolific mother-grandmother at its head, is a quite reasonable assumption about early human societies.

All of this was about to change, unfortunately for these peaceful matriarchal societies, with the arrival of agriculture --more specifically, animal husbandry or herding.  Prior to this, early humans had only been around animals long enough to stalk and kill them.  As herdsmen, they were around sheep, goats and piggies all the time --even when they were "makin' bacon."

So that's where babies come from!
Mommy said they came from her magical vagina...

It wasn't too much longer before men connected the dots: Man + Woman + Sex = Babies.  And this is where the power of women based on their ability to have children vanished.  Now, women were treated like livestock, fed if they proved good baby makers, or worked to skin-and-bones if they were unable to have children.  This is probably why early civilizations like to show their fertility goddesses as big, fat ladies, because well nourished women always had the healthiest babies.

Yeah bee-at-chez, I gots it all goin' on!

 And this is where women's status pretty much stayed, from the Dawn of Civilization to the Middle Ages (approximately 4,316 years).  Oh sure, Spartan women could own businesses and rich Roman women had some heavy clout, but these were the exception rather than the rule.  I'n not saying that there was no love during this time in human history --quite the contrary.  Check out this hot love-poem from ancient Egypt:

Come, my Soul, swim to me!
The water is deep in my love
Which carries me to you.

We are in the midst of the stream,
I clasp the flowers to my breast
Which is naked and drips with water.
But the moon makes them bloom like the lotus.

I give you my flowers
because they are beautiful,
And you are holding my handIn the middle of the water.

Wanna pet my pussy-cats?  Didn't think so...

If you want to know where, when and who invented romantic love (love-letters, mash-notes, flirting, etc.), read on.  The where was France (it figures!), Poitiers, to be specific; the when was 1168 to 1173; the royal who was the most extraordinary women of the entire Middle Ages, Elanor of Aquitaine.  Queen E lived fast and BIG.  During the course of her 75-80 year life (Queen E always lied about her age), she would inherit a fortune and a kingdom (Queendom?), get married, get an annulment, get married again, have a couple of kids and a totally dysfunctional family, be imprisoned, widowed, and eventually die with a champagne bottle in one hand and a royal flush in the other (ok, maybe not the champagne and cards bit).

I am a totally bitchin' medieval babe!

At Poitiers, Queen E set up what cultural historians have since dubbed "The Court of Love."  She did this by surrounding herself with really handsome knights, really knock-out-pretty ladies-in-waiting, the best of the troubadour  poets, and some pretty sexy unicorn tapestries.  And what did the denizens of Queen E's court do all day?  Well, Love!

Ladies dropped handkerchiefs and sleeves for knights to fight over; lovers intrigued with everyone in order to hook-up with each other in secret; lots of love-poetry was written, read out-loud, performed to medieval musical accompaniment, and even scratched onto the castle walls.

But by far, the most influential writing to come out of this period was a book called The Art of Courtly Love, a kind of medieval dating do's and don'ts.  This book was, essentially, the first ever rule book for that competitive, contact sport known as "The Battle of the Sexes."  Among the rules contained therein was the one that said "women should be placed on a pedestal, the better to be worshiped and admired by all."  Sounds like women are climbing back to their place of prominence, right?  Unfortunately, no.  Elanor's Court of Love was a mere blip on the radar of history.  Human society would remain pretty male-chauvinist-piggy for quite a long time to come.

Hey Princess, while yer up, gimmie another beer!

Let's get real here: there can be no love between men and women until there is equality between men and women: social, political, economic, cultural and sexual equality.  And there is not much doubt when THAT happened: sometime during the 1970's in the United States of America.  

Following the invention, distribution and general use of the birth control pill in the 1960's, women finally had a handle on their own reproductive matters.  Add to this the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade making abortion legal, and the fact that Mary Tyler Moore made it socially acceptable for a woman to have a career and not a husband, and you've got the makings of the Sexual Revolution.  It wasn't long before Gloria Steinem was burning her bra, Masters and Johnson were publishing their report on human sexuality, Jane Fonda was supporting edgy political causes, and Edith was talking-back to Archie on All in the Family.

I said you were singing flat because you were singing flat, you dick-head!

 So, love today: Well, there's a lot of nudity available on the internet.  And non-traditional families are on the rise: single mom, single dad, two mommies, two daddies, sister-wives with one patriarch [only in Mormon towns] and moms and dads who are transvestites or transgender.  Kind of makes the Father-Son Pancake Breakfast a way-more interesting affair than it was in the 1950's.

Guys, we're so hilarious that ABC should make a hit-sit-com about us!

So, what's love's future?  Adjunct Proff thinks that Love and technology will have a bea-utiful future together.  Instead of skyping, lovers who are parted by distance might be able to have virtual make-out sessions using holograms and virtual-reality environments.  Instead of Match.com, people will be able to go on virtual dates before actually meeting and discovering he's a balding, 50-something pudgy guy who lives with his mother.  Robot surrogate mothers may make motherhood possible for women in their 60's.

What won't change will be the blush at a compliment, that delightful nervousness right before a first kiss, and the catch-at-the-heart that a groom feels when he catches his first look at his bride as she marches down the aisle --with both of her dads.

My mom only had to deal with one mother-in-law