Pish on posh

This word's apocryphal acronymic association is absolutely absurd. The story is that "POSH", an acronym for Port Out, Starboard Home, was printed on 1st Class tickets for travel between England and India issued by the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The original folk etymology suggested that the port side on the trip out would have the coolest cabins ... a curious theory since it assumes that the microclimate of a ship is capable of providing a significant temperature differential. It does not take into account the position of the sun, the direction of the wind, or the fact that as the ship sails South to Cape Horn the port side will face East on the other side of the cape, sailing North the port side faces West. If the trip is through the Suez Canal, the time of year is more likely to be a temperature factor. This being the case an alternate theory was concocted. This suggested that the port side would always be in view of the shore and therefore the scenery would be better. But ships, especially large passenger ships do not hug the coast. There are too many possibilities for disaster from weather or shallows. Putting the death blow to this story is the fact that no tickets with POSH on them have ever been found, and the company records show no evidence of the phrase. Merriam Webster puts the earliest publication of the acronym story in the London Times Literary Supplement of October 17, 1935. But "posh," meaning a dandy, dates back to 1867. Some think it derives from a Romani word meaning half (used in monetary terms). Others, including Partridge, think it may be a contraction of polish. To spin this etymological circus out yet further, I could make a case for some other derivations as well. Posh -- from pasha a middle-eastern title for a ruler. Folklorically, pashas lived in great splendor and luxury. Luxurious items were sometimes described as "fit for a pasha." The phrase degraded and shortened to "pash" or "posh". Posh -- a variant of pashe or paishe which itself is a shortened variant of "passion". Posh -- a term used to indicate the luxurious decorations and vestments used in the church at "Pasch" or "Pasche" meaning Easter (Paschal season).

Common Tears

It is a mild December day in the commons. A good day for a walk, With an unlicensed cigarette. The trees provide their skeletal memories, And the pigeons poke forlornly, In the debris near the trashcans. On one of the benches (so odd that people stop To look, to think perhaps, and then Move on) Are three large translucent plastic bags Full of wrapped gifts. Abandoned? The next bench is 20 feet away. On it sits a man. His clothes are woodsy, chic, And new. He is sitting very still. Tears are streaming down his face. Rolling off his chin, Dripping on his plaid shirt, But he never lifts his hand to wipe his eyes. People pause at the bags of gifts, And hurry past the tears. I take a deep puff, And do the same.

The Joke

I sit on a bench, Amused by knowing that it is my cigarette That gets me out of the office, Pushes me out amongst the living, To anthropologize in the park. I know I seem receptive, so when a man In raggedy clothes comes up to me It’s just a matter of waiting for the opening line. When it comes, it’s excellent. “Tell you a joke for a buck?” Cool, very cool . . . I hand him a dollar. He tells me a joke, But doesn’t finish it. And turns to walk away. I say, “Hey that wasn’t funny.” He says, “The punch-line will cost you five.” I laugh and give it to him. He laughs and tells me the punch-line. We both laugh and he walks away. It was an old joke, But I was happy to hear it again. It was worth the money To hear it told that way.

More proof of my lack of compassion

The guilt had gotten to me. The guy in the wheelchair at North Station, the insistent quasimodos in Salvation Army uniforms tintinabulating at every street corner, the stocky old man in tattered jeans who sang to me, "I need some money, I need some money bad," had set me up. Stoically, with my eyes in a thousand-yard gaze mode, I had passed by them all. My hand in my pocket clutched my change to keep it from jingling. I felt awful. I was a liar and a cheat and an ungenerous son-of-a-bitch, but I had made it through the gauntlet with enough money for a cup of coffee and a hard roll. The coffee shop was steamy and friendly. They knew me. Usually I joke around a bit with the ladies there. This time I just smiled and grabbed my paper bag and left. I could see another panhandler on the corner so I cut through the alley to the next street and my office. The building was still locked, but, as I got out my keys I suddenly remembered a doctor's appointment this morning. I turned and headed for the subway. As I passed a doorway further down the street, someone stepped out. "Spare some change for a cup of coffee mister?" Her timing was perfect. I handed her the paper bag and said, "I'll do better than that, you can have this coffee." She shrank back and wouldn't touch the bag. For a moment I thought she was frightened. Then she said, "It's probably not black." I laughed. "Yes it is," I said and handed her the bag again. This time she took it and stepped backward into the doorway as I headed down the steps to the Red Line. Suddenly I heard her voice again. "Hey mister, didn't you get any butter for this hard roll."

Green Line -- BU to Park Street

He sits, hand shielding his eyes against the snow-amplified sunlight. Then the trolley squeals into the tunnel. His commuter face set blankly against eye-contact, he lowers his hands to the back of the empty seat in front to brace against the sharp turns. The screech of brakes predicts a station. The dim light slides past the window, the glass so fogged and filthy that only vague shapes can be seen outside. Doors hiss open; bodies flow in. Deep in insularity he ignores the new passengers. Then he jerks in shock. His hands still clutch the top of the forward seat. Now a mass of brown curls, smelling sweetly of shampoo, cascades from under a raspberry colored knit cap and over his hands tickling sweetly. He starts to pull back from the intrusive sensation, but hesitates, and settles back in the seat looking at the hair. He blinks. A single tear reflects the fluorescents from the corner of his eye. He sits savoring the inadvertant contact. He glimpses her face in the window's reflection. It’s pleasant, blank, a commuter face. The stations ooze by outside, like a slow slide show. At one station he tenses and starts to stand, then settles back never taking his eyes off the curls. After two more stops, the woman turns her head and stands. Caught by surprise, he makes a small sound. She turns, looks down at him and at his hands. She smiles. The smile transforms her face. Momentarily she is startlingly beautiful. “Sorry,” she says. His mouth quirks at a corner. "It was nothing," he says.

On the line

A cold front is scudding towards my home from the Northeast. Outside my window I see a mass of clouds in the distance over the maple and spruce trees. It will probably rain. If it does I'll have to take the clothes in. My house is the only one in the neighborhood with a clothesline. I expect the other people here consider it an eyesore, just barely short of a prosecutable offense. These days the use of clotheslines is restricted to television commercials as a symbol of a chemically constructed "fresh scent" added to a detergent or fabric softener. I mourn the dearth of clotheslines. They are poetic and insprational. The implicit democracy and ethics of hanging out one's no longer "dirty" linen, the explicit green attitude of using the most efficient solar-powered dryer provide one level of meaning. On a sensory level we enjoy the squeak of the pulley, the creak of the line under the weight of the wet clothes becoming a low thrumming note as it tightens like the string of a bass viol. The joy of using a clothespin, and remembering that it was the Shakers who developed and perfected them. The Shakers danced prayers to the Lord shivering in His spirit like drying clothing quivering in the wind. Before I hung the clothes out today, a goldfinch perched on the line. He jittered his head and wings, obviously enjoying the sun. He stayed there a while to let me admire his beauty. Now that the bottom line sags with the weight of waterlogged shirts, jeans, socks and underwear. the top line makes a sharp, straight, white line against the green of trees and grass. But, if I look carefully, I see dragonflies, their small bodies spaced a few inches apart, resting from flight. They are spaced so evenly that they look like inch markings on a thin white ruler. The clouds are almost overhead. The maple leaves are turning upside-down. The birds are calling for rain. It's time for me to go take in the laundry.

Malfunction

Something is wrong with this hammer. Watch this! I'll set the nail with a tap. Now thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk . . . See that That nail bent right over. What a shame. The hammer must be weighted wrong Y'know Or the handle's out of balance. The nails are good. It must be the hammer.

A Pretty Girl is Like a Malady

I was standing in a convenience store one day, talking to a friend at the counter, when I noticed her looking over my shoulder. I turned to watch the following scene. A shapely young lady in her early twenties was browsing the drink cooler. She was wearing sandals, strategically torn jeans that included a tear high in the crotch that made it clear that she was not wearing underwear and that she had passed puberty. her short-sleeved leotard top was also torn revealing the fact that the store's air-conditioning was set a little high. She was wearing about three dozen rings, blue lipstick, red eyeshadow, several large safety pins through one ear, and what looked like a prescription bottle through the lobe of the other ear. One side of her head was crewcut and bleached blond, the other was shoulder length bright red with purple streaking. You could tell that somewhere under there she was a pretty girl. We were unobtrusively watching here when a young man, probably about her own age, bustled in wearing a business suit and swinging a briefcase. Faced with this vision he stopped dead, his mouth agape. She looked over at him. Her face twisted into a scowl. "What the hell are YOU looking at a--h---!" she growled. My self-control was admirable. My friend. however, had just taken a sip of coffee with which she proceeded to short-out the register.

Brains but no Backbone

The Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy also includes a public aquarium. (One of the features was an electric ray in a petting tank. You couldn't get away with that in the US.) We had a large a large octopus in one of the display tanks who disappeared one night. The catwalks we used to feed the display animals were simply a set of boards laid over the tops of the tanks.

When we went searching, we found sucker marks drying on the boards and followed them. The octopus had gone past the dogfish tank (dogfish love to eat octopus) past the moray eel tank (morays also find octopus tasty), past the sea anemone tank (pretty but inedible) and dropped into the crab display where he reposed on a pile of empty crab shells radiating pleasure and satisfaction.

Many people don't realize that an octopus can clearly show its emotion. It is relatively easy to tell when an octopus is happy, sick, scared, curious or even horny by the texture and color of its skin, which it can control almost instantaneously.

After a few similar incidents, we moved this guy to a large tank in the common area of the research facility where he became a pet.

For those of you who may still doubt the intelligence of an octopus, let me continue. Our new pet loved being fed by hand. He also liked to grab my arm to get lifted out of the water and taken for a walk. They can survive cheerfully in the open air for longer than you might think.

His favorite game was to watch the door to see who came into his area. Octopods have extraordinarily good vision. If a stranger entered, he would quietly ease himself up and slightly over the edge of the tank (it was open at the top) and wait for his opportunity. Then he would use his siphon to jet a stream of cold seawater 15 - 20 feet to douse the unwary intruder. Then he dropped back into his tank an display the strong colors and hornlike skin protruberances that were his equivalent of giggling.

Bumblepuppy

According to the OED, bumblepuppy is an alternate name for "nineholes" or bagatelle, a billiards-type game in which balls are struck with a cue towards a set of nine holes arranged at the semicircular end of a special table. A variant uses marbles or lead shot, presumably aimed at holes in the ground.
It is used generically as the name or descriptor of a game in which chance plays an inordinate role. As such it appears in a high tech version "centrifugal bumblepuppy" in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Here is the description:

"The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome-steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught."

Other Definitions

• In E.M. Forster's A Room with a View" it is a form of tennis, that is described as, "an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net and immoderately bounce"
• William Howard Taft called his golf game "bumble puppy" golf
• It is also a form of the game of whist characterized by bad play. It is mentioned in Emily Post's ""Etiquette" in 1922.
• In Las Vegas it is a slang term for an inexperienced or careless player.
• It is also the name of a tied fly for fishing.

The Technical Writer's Lament

a Shakesperean sonnet

When in disgrace with software engineers, I all alone beweep the redesign, Of interface and face the deadline fears, Foreknowing that the blame will be all mine. To move each menu item every day, To satisfy some ill thought change of spec, And shuffle all the tabs as if to play A game of cards, with just a partial deck. Each tiny tweak betokens a cascade, Of faults, like moths that relays have entrapped, Until production schedules are delayed, And with a crown of scorn my brow is capped. I wait to hear the knock upon the door, To tell me that they've changed the thing once more.

The Loneliness of Technology

A Rondel

I sit here thinking in my room, Monitor glowing in the dark. The white expanse awaits the spark Of inspiration from the gloom.

My poetry has lost its bloom, The images are far too stark, The shadows darken, then they loom, Monitor glowing in the dark.

Electronically I see my doom, The static pun, the brain's dull spark. Again I see I've missed the mark, And trapped inside a poet's tomb I sit here thinking in my room, Monitor glowing in the dark.

Gone with the Tide

A Sonnet in the Italian Form

The pasta's gone, I've eaten all the bread. The waitress comes to take the plates away, And bring espresso to me so I'll stay. Tonight I need to write, not go to bed. The bitter brew will work up to my head, And help me when I set my words to play, In scribbles on the napkins. Like a jay I stuff them in my pockets to be read.

But when I find my shirt upon a hanger, The pockets full of paper, pulped and massed, The inked words gone, diluted and dispersed, Upon whom can I vent my anger, The laundress who upon the ocean cast, My poems? I cannot, yet still she's cursed.

The Original Anatomy

It occurs to me that not everyone knows of Robert Burton's book. It is not easy reading. I keep it on my nightstand for those times, more frequent these days, when I cannot sleep. This is not to say that he is a soporific, rather that he is a writer to whom you must pay attention and give him hours of concentrated effort.

Burton had a classical education from which he drew quotes and references in abundance. My classical education is drawn primarily from his. To use his erudition in my essays would be redundant. Those quotes I use will be contemporary, and I will leave the classics to Burton, who knew them better.

My intent is not to parrot his work, but search for an escape from my melancholy in somewhat the same way. However, I am more engaged in externals than he was. I am married with children. I have not the time provided him as a scholar and a clergyman to sit and muse, observing life from a distance.

All the tools I have are my autodidactic tendencies, my library, my senses and my wit (what there is of it). If I write in an archaic style it is because I love writing. If I think and declaim curious ideas, it is because I think in curious pathways. If you do not enjoy my essays, you are free to ignore them. They are not written for you. They are written for me.

I am tired and I am sad. I look at politics and I see children playing "king of the castle." I look at religion and I think of Aesop's fable of the dog in the manger. I am weary of those who know they are right, and I can find no trace of those who know that they may not be.

I am disturbed at the ease with which people stop thinking in order to follow a leader. I am disgusted by the cant of art critics who praise for fear that condemnation will show that they know nothing of their subject.

Discussion has been abolished in favor of certainty. There is no conversation, there is no thought. The new mantra is, "if you do not think as I do, you are wrong." I have no problem with those who are passionate about their ideas. I am disheartened by those who think that there should be no opposition.

It is so easy to think that you are the only one who knows the truth. It is even easier to think that the person you idealize is the only one who knows it. Blind faith allows no argument. It is too easy to take refuge in the evangelical argument, "If you do not believe as I have been told to, you are damned."

I place the blame on the complexities of modern society. There is so much to know, so much to understand. Blind faith removes the complexity. It is too easy to dismiss other world views. It is too hard to think for ones self. It is so easy to discard logic. Logic is messy, faith is easy.

Leashes

I was walking with my dog in the woods the other day. Perhaps I should say walking against her since she has never learned the discipline of obedience. She strained against the leash until her breath rasped, tail flailing metronomically, desperate to make the aquaintance of some woodland creatures. I was sorry that I could not trust her to return when I called and could not let her go where she wanted.

The area that we were enjoying together, during the odd moments when she was not trying to rip my arm from my shoulder while simultaneously strangling herself, is a local farm that is now a nature preserve. Dotted throughout this area are strange monuments, ornately decorated, pyramidical spires.They look like wayposts on some fantastic web of ley lines.

My dog is inordinately interested in the bases of these spires. I keep looking for the vestiges of ancient sacrifices, as does she. But while I search for the blood of the victims of pagan rituals, I believe she merely senses thinner body fluids of her canine predecessors.These odd constructs are actually spires that once adorned the roof of a demolished library at Harvard University.

After an exhausting journey of cross-purposes we rested at the base of one of these spires, she panting and drooling, I meditatively drawing doodles in the dirt with a stick, when we heard a voice in the distance. As it grew louder, I wondered at the oddity of sitting in the midst of nature while overhearing a madwoman rant about the stock market.

It was no surprise that, as the source of the voice appeared, she held a retractible cord leash attached to the collar of a well-behaved dog in one hand. In the other hand she held her own collar with a retractible cellular leash. I nodded and smiled as she passed. I am sorry to say I received a glare in return.

Perhaps I over-analyze, I have often been accused of this sin, but it seemed as if both my unruly, but friendly dog and my inoffensive, silent acknowledgement of her presence threatened to increase the carefully balanced tension of her leashes.

As I continued my stroll and my dog continued her suicidal lunges toward the depths of the woods, I imagined that the unsocial passer-by was also a waypost of ley lines. She was a node with lines of force pulling at her from all directions but whose stability was threatened by any uncontrollable external event such as a smile or an undisciplined dog.

We are all leashed. The forces of family, society, work and money pull at us from every direction. That is what life is all about. It is as if we hold the loops of innumerable leashes, each with its own dog and each dog with its own squirrel in view. We wear collars too.

As the dog and I walked in our own tug-of-war through the woods, I was thankful that I had the capacity, or perhaps the freedom to reduce my battles to a single one, if only briefly. I can find a simplicity that lets me enjoy the quiet woods, the gurgle of the brooks, the soft compression of the mass of pine needles underfoot ... The respite of a single leash.

Why?

I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.
Robert Burton