Our charming government

I never thought I would be singing the praises of the recent postage rate hike, but if I hadn’t had to buy some make-up stamps today I would have missed a great pleasure. I bought two packs of fifty one-cent stamps from a postage machine and they appeared in the most elegant form, folded accordion-style and sealed in a tiny wax-paper envelope with a sticker. To think, people who pay their bills online will never see or feel this.

Above: Pepe fingers the packet, to reveal scale. The photo does not, however, capture the exquisite density of the packet. You must buy one yourself.

Also, I am meaning to post soon about two books: Possession by A. S. Byatt and Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp. I just haven’t had the time to write something that does them justice. Maybe I should just say I loved them both and highly recommend them, in case I don’t succeed in posting anytime soon.

Forests of symbols

I’ve been reading Steven Fischer’s A History of Writing ever since Christmas and finally finished it. It’s sort of hard to follow (I think he could have used a more systematic editor), but it has prompted much reflection on the nature of writing.

Writing fascinates me. Learning new alphabets is fun; handwriting is important enough to experiment with and remodel from time to time. Letters are exciting. Living in another era, I would have been temperamentally inclined to credit the myths that described writing as a sacred gift from the gods.

In truth writing probably began with accountants, who made knots in ropes, scratched notches on sticks, or inscribed clay tokens to symbolize unwieldy animals. It was when the marks they made assumed a phonological significance apart from the objects they represented that this became complete writing. Fischer emphasizes that this was a groundbreaking technological innovation, not an evolutionary process. He suggests that complete writing was invented only once in all history: a rare idea indeed. All the diverse instances of it around the world, from the most awkward to the most ingenious, are variations on the unique idea of complete writing that popped up in Sumer around 3700 BC:

1. Its purpose is communication.
2. It consists of artificial graphic marks on a durable surface (or electronic medium).
3. It uses marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech.

It is not that unromantic that we owe accountants for the concoction of letter magic. After all, what is a story but an account? In French, a compte rendu is a summary of something you’ve heard. And a conte is a pure fairy tale.

To populate our tales (a word that used to mean counts, just like tallies,) we need all the races of letters―gothics and grotesques, romans and moderns and humanists, capitals and uncials and minuscules. We delight in their anatomy of bowls and crossbars, ears and crotches, legs, arms, apices, vertices, tails, terminals, hairlines, stems, spurs, and spines. Not to mention heng, shu, and the other limbs I haven’t learned yet, to make beautiful creatures I mentioned earlier.

With picayune pecunia we assemble the words that form our armies of arguments. We can take nothing for granted in our accounting. The tale of writing is rich.

Simple patio or vast estate?

Tonight I installed a cuter (and hopefully more reliable) modulator-demodulator. I am filled with good humor at being able to post, and at a happy ending to my long, heroic battle with the Enemies.

I have discovered that you get better results with “I need this replaced. It doesn’t work and it’s under warranty” than with a reasonable articulation of the problem. At the Apple Store it got me an appointment with the less than enthusiastic Geniuses (have you heard of them??) after they were officially closed, and at the cable place it got me the cute new modem, no questions asked. I was delighted at the force with which the taciturn employee hurtled the old one into a bin in a cabinet plastered with “LUV YA” and “SWEET BOY” hearts. I was expecting they would test it, it would work, and I would drive the 45 minutes back home crying.

I have always prided myself on being reasonable, but now I am beginning to appreciate that unreasonable and closed-minded women may be more highly evolved for today's society.

So anyway, since I am in a good humor, I think I will postpone my planned post on life as a long defeat (which gets ever more confusing the more I think about it) and just share some silly things that have amused me lately.

I.
I was driving to work this week and heard two delightful radio ads, one after the other. One was for an outdoor lighting installation service that will meet your needs “whether you have a simple patio or a vast estate.” That made me laugh. Alas for them, I have a simple patio that is already amply lit.

II.
The other ad was for some kind of car-leasing arrangement, I think. I wasn’t really listening. At one point the man said, “How would you feel about buying a pre-owned car whose previous owner wasn’t a person?” He goes on to explain that the previous owner was the car dealer, but not before my mind had pictured King Kong or some large muddy reptile at the wheel of my fine automobile.

III.
So, speaking of strange creatures, I just have to share these wonderful peoplemals. My favorite is the octopus.

One of my childhood friends drew a silly picture of a person once. For a long time I kept it because I couldn’t help laughing every time I saw it. I have no idea what is was about that picture. I still have it somewhere, backed with cardboard and stuck to a popsicle stick. I hope these peoplemals have a similar effect on you when you see them. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to link to them for a long time, but do you ever need an excuse for this?

IV.
I love it when you buy a head of lettuce and the metal twist tie around it says, “Eat 5 a day for better health.”

Those are all the funny things I can remember right now (that are appropriate to share with my vast and diverse readership). I should have kept a list.

Here Be Dragons

For someone who had always pictured Kings Richard and John of England as cartoon lions, Sharon Kay Penman’s book was an enlightening read. I thought John was especially well portrayed. I want to read more about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

For me the great value of this book was in the details about life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For instance, they spread rushes on the floor as a sort of carpeting, and changed them when they needed to be changed. I might try that one of these days. It might beat vacuuming.

The most shocking thing for me was that they only had one meal a day in Wales, in the evening. I would have died. I was comforted that it was a significant adjustment for the main character, too.

Pictured above is one of several small scenes I encountered upon coming home yesterday. My guest―a delightful friend who sows beauty and poetry wherever she goes―had posed my penguin with his wing in the almond jar. She’s also the kind of guest who replaces certain disapproved-of items in your pantry with higher-quality or less-toxic varieties. It cracks me up. I appreciate her audacity... and generosity.

This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in The Book of Lights by Chaim Potok. But I don’t want to spoil the scene for people who haven’t read it. What do I do? I guess I will have to keep quiet. Some kind of blog.