Today is my birthday. A few ruminations on growing old, plus the Thanksgiving birthday pattern

I was born on November 22, 1948; for those of us born between the 22nd and 28th and have always wondered, here's how it works: the Thanksgiving Birthday Pattern.

A few quotes and poems, mostly gloomy,  on the subject of old age:

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

~ H. L. Mencken

Experience teaches that no man improves much after 60, and that after 65 most of them deteriorate in a really shocking manner. I could give an autobiographical example, but refrain on the advice of counsel.

 

~ H. L. Mencken (Baltimore Sun, 7 November 1948) 

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.  I can look back upon three-score and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed, a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress.   

 

~ Dr. Samuel Johnson (letter to Hester Thrale, 21 September 1773)  

Old age is like being on a plane flying through a thunderstorm.  Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. 

 

~ Golda Meir (attributed)

  

Growing old is no gradual decline, but a series of tumbles, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another.  Yet when we pick ourselves up, we find no bones are broken; and not unpleasing is the new terrace that stretches out unexplored before us. 

 

~ Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia, "Last Words") 

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

~ Agatha Christie

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.

~ Clarence Darrow

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young -- or slender.

~William James

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

~ Dr. Johnson

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

~ Thomas Jefferson

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young -- or slender.

~ William James

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age. 

~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.

~ Plato

So Life's year begins and closes;

Days, though short'ning, still can shine;

What though youth gave love and roses,

Age still leaves us friends and wine.

~ Thomas Moore, Spring and Autumn

But as usual, Shakespeare says it best:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.  At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.  And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow.  Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth.  And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.  The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.   Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 (As You Like It, Act II, Sc. 7)

Before it was Veterans Day it was Armistice Day, for the fallen of the First World War: here's some history

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

~ Lawrence Binyon (wiki), For The Fallen

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as “the Great War.” Commemorated as Armistice Day beginning the following year, November 11th became a legal federal holiday in the United States in 1938. 

In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, Armistice Day became Veterans Day in the U.S. (and Remembrance Day in British Commonwealth nations), a holiday dedicated to veterans of all wars. 

So, the First World War was what Veteran's Day was once really about... 

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion. 

~  Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) (of World War I, The Guns of August, "Afterward") 

Are these weeks... months... years going by? No, really only days. We see time passing us by in the colorless faces of the dead; we shovel in our food, we run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie around. We are weak and apathetic, and we only endure because there are those who are weaker, more apathetic, and even more helpless, who look wide-eyed on us as Gods, because we have outrun death so many times.

~ Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) (All's Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 6)

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

~ A.E. Housman (1859-1936) ("Here Dead We Lie")

As a lover of truth, the national propaganda of all the belligerent nations sickened me. As a lover of civilization, the return to barbarism appalled me.

~ Bertrand Russell (wiki) (1872-1970) (of World War I, Autobiography, Vol. 2, Ch. 1)

Today is the anniversary of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, when at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, the First World War came to an end after more than four years of carnage. (Armistice Day became Veterans' Day in 1954.) Described by British historian Corelli Barnett as a war that had "causes but no objectives, "the "Great War" left a legacy of disillusionment in its wake and made a shambles of the rest of the 20th century. All told, there were ten million military dead and seven million civilians killed. 

The resulting economic collapse, the draconian terms of the Treaty of Versailles (wiki), and the conviction of many Germans that they had been "stabbed in the back" led to an even more destructive rematch only two decades later. One could argue - and I do - that World War I was the greatest misfortune that ever befell Western civilization.

It destroyed the West's belief in inevitable human progress. It brought down the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman empires, bankrupted France and England, and put the British Empire on the skids. It was the proximate cause of the triumph of Communism in Russia and the formation of the Soviet Union, drove the United States into two decades of international isolation, and instilled in Germany a thirst for revenge that led directly to the rise of the Nazis and World War II.

Moreover, in the Middle East, Britain's and France's cack-handed and self-serving division of the remains of the Ottoman Empire was largely responsible for all the turmoil we suffer there today. On hearing the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany's much-maligned Kaiser Wilhelm II noted from exile that, 

"The war to end war has resulted in a peace to end peace." 

Here's a casualty chart for World War 1:

Country/Region	Mobilized	Killed	Wounded	Total K and W	Casualties
Africa	55,000	10,000	unknown	unknown	-
Australia	330,000	59,000	152,000	211,000	64%
Austria-Hungary	6,500,000	1,200,000	3,620,000	4,820,000	74%
Belgium	207,000	13,000	44,000	57,000	28%
Bulgaria	400,000	101,000	153,000	254,000	64%
Canada	620,000	67,000	173,000	241,000	39%
The Caribbean	21,000	1,000	3,000	4,000	19%
French Empire	7,500,000	1,385,000	4,266,000	5,651,000	75%
Germany	11,000,000	1,718,000	4,234,000	5,952,000	54%
Great Britain	5,397,000	703,000	1,663,000	2,367,000	44%
Greece	230,000	5,000	21,000	26,000	11%
India	1,500,000	43,000	65,000	108,000	7%
Italy	5,500,000	460,000	947,000	1,407,000	26%
Japan	800,000	250	1,000	1,250	0.2%
Montenegro	50,000	3,000	10,000	13,000	26%
New Zealand	110,000	18,000	55,000	73,000	66%
Portugal	100,000	7,000	15,000	22,000	22%
Romania	750,000	200,000	120,000	320,000	43%
Russia	12,000,000	1,700,000	4,950,000	6,650,000	55%
Serbia	707,000	128,000	133,000	261,000	37%
South Africa	149,000	7,000	12,000	19,000	13%
Turkey	1,600,000	336,000	400,000	736,000	46%
USA	4,272,500	117,000	204,000	321,000	8%

Armistice Day, Remembrance Day and Veterans Day - what's the difference?

Here's a 6 minute overview of World War I:

A 3 minute time-lapse video of the changing front lines:



An 8 minute video on The Treaty of Versailles and its consequences:

And, on a broader scale, 1000 years of war in 5 minutes:

Related posts:

April 25th is ANZAC Day - the Battle of Gallipoli was 100 years ago.

100 years ago today Austria declared war on Serbia, the first declaration of World War 1.

Wilfred Owen, the best of the WWI "War Poets", was born 121 years ago today.

Gorgeous set of WW1 posters.

June 6 is D-Day: quotes (Shakespeare, Eisenhower, Churchill), videos (footage, FDR's and Reagan's speeches), lots of links.

It's V.E. Day: 70 years ago today, World War 2 ended in Europe.

Kurt Vonnegut's May 29, 1945 letter home after imprisonment in an underground slaughterhouse (specifically, Slaughterhouse Five) during the Dresden bombing.

The assault on Iwo Jima started 70 years ago today: quotes, history, and a documentary.

If you're interested in further information on the subject on the First World War, there are hundreds of books and films - the best books I know of (although I'm no expert) are Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (which won a Pulitzer back when they meant something) and John Keegan's The First World War. 

Parts of the text above are adapted from my late, great partner's Quotation of the Day, available before his passing only via email. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.

August 9th is the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae

If you want a quick and dirty understanding of the battle of Thermopylae (wiki), the movie The 300 (or the comic version on which the movie was based) will do in a pinch, and the History Channel videos posted below do a pretty good job.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,

mors et fugacem persequitur virum.

nec parcit imbellis iuventae

poplitibus timidove tergo.

~ Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace, 65-27 B.C.) (Carmina, III, ii, 13)

(To die for the fatherland is a sweet and admirable thing.*

Death is at the heels even of the runaway, nor spares the haunches and back of the coward and malingerer.)

Go tell the Spartans, thou, that passeth by, that here, according to their laws, we lie.

~ Simonides of Ceos (556-458 B.C.) (epitaph for the Spartan dead at Thermopylae)

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, 1814.

Today is the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Thermopylae is a pass in east central Greece between the cliffs of Mount Oeta and the Malic Gulf, and in ancient times, it was a principal entrance into southern Greece from the north.

It was there that the Greeks confronted the third Persian expedition of the Persian Wars - an army of as many as a half-million men under Xerxes. When they found that their position had been turned, however, the Greeks retreated precipitously - all except for a 300-strong Spartan contingent under their king, Leonidas, and 700 Theban allies. (The latter are often overlooked in references to the battle.)

The pass of Thermopylae today - the road to 
the far right is built on land reclaimed from the sea

Leonidas and his men fought a delaying action in the narrowest part of the pass until they were overcome by the Persians and slaughtered to a man. In book VII of his The Persian Wars, the Greek historian Herodotus (484? - 425? B.C.) wrote,

"...they defended themselves to the last, such as still had swords using them, and the others resisting with their hands and teeth; until the barbarians, who had in part pulled down the wall and attacked them in front, also had gone round and now encircled them on every side, overwhelmed and buried the remnant left beneath showers of missile weapons."

Thermopylae has ever since been celebrated in song and story as one of the legendary battles of western history, although George William Curtis (1824-1892) places it in a larger context:

"Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they cannot conquer."

Here's a rather well-done documentary.

* N.B. Two contrary views:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

~ Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) ("Dulce et Decorum Est")

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.

When I felt the bullet enter my heart

I wished I'd stayed home and gone to jail

For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,

Instead of running away and joining the army.

Rather a thousand times the county jail

Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,

And this granite pedestal

Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."

What do they mean, anyway?

~ Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) (Spoon River Anthology, "Knowlt Hoheimer")

This whole discussion reminds me of the Patton quote, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”

Weird anti-drug PSAs

My personal favorite of these anti-drug PSAs is The Chicken Club - here's the youtube info:

This is a legitimate anti-drug music video (from the 80''s) conceived and created to let youngsters know that if they were confronted with the temptation to do drugs they could say "no" with confidence. Even if the person propositioning the child called them a "chicken" (as a last ditch effort to persuade the kid to change their mind) the youth could fire back with the completely unexpected answer, "That's right, I am a chicken and it's OK because there is this sweet music video that told me that it's cool to be a chicken. So your taunts, jeers and name calling will not make me change my mind, in fact they only strengthen my resolve. I'm not only a chicken...I'm in the Chicken Club!"

I would really like one of these Surfing Monkey Banks, please - story below the video:

Dangerous Minds had a post about the Surfing Monkey PSA in 2012 and heard from the creator, Greg Collins:

I’m one of the creators of that surfing monkey spot you threw up on Dangerous Minds this afternoon. Thanks for doing that.

Apparently you can buy these now.

That spot actually dates back to 1999. A buddy of mine and his wife totally smoked out one night. The next morning, they woke up on the sofa, their ribs and stomach muscles were hurting. They didn’t remember much of anything, other than laughing their asses off.

About a week later, a UPS guy knocked on their door, bearing some boxes from QVC. While they were all gassed out, they bought a Star Trek collector’s plate, a Chi-Wash-Wa home car washing system and a Michael Jordan in-flight pewter statuette. All in all, about $400. That must’ve been some great weed.

When they told me the story, I thought that’d make an awesome commercial, but all of that was too much to put into a :30 spot. We needed to drill it down to one item for simplicity and comedy’s sake. My buddy Greg hit on the idea of something really ridiculous like a surfing monkey coin bank. We shot the spot for like $300 and sold it through to the Partnership For A Drug-Free America. It ran in 1999-2000, and, to this day, remains one of their most beloved and recalled commercials.

And once you've moved on from the madness of reefer, here's LSD, A Case Study (turn down the sound - there's a very loud screaming hot dog):

via Flavorwire, where you can find more.

If the Trump Assassination Attempt were a movie script.

 From Joseph Mallozzi on X.

Thanks for the script.  Overall, the plotting feels contrived and, at times, defies logic, so we’re going to require a fairly extensive rewrite for the second draft.

Our biggest issue with the script is the characterization of the Secret Service who come across as so inept that it defies credulity.  Specifics to follow.

Could we put the building that the shooter climbs onto OUTSIDE a proper security zone instead of the current Pac Man configuration that only excludes his position?

The Secret Service Director character seems to lack the intelligence one would expect from someone in their position.   Please have her come up with something more plausible than the “too slopey!" excuse for why no armed agents were stationed on the rooftop.  Let’s work a little harder to create a more clever explanation for the egregious lapse in professional conduct, one that our audience could buy into.  Maybe the shooter incapacitated the agents inside the building through non-lethal means, say a knock-out gas or drugs in their water supply.  This could also explain how the shooter could have carried the ladder over, propped it up to the building, and climbed up without being noticed  by law enforcement.

Speaking of the ladder, can we make it a lightweight retractable model instead of the 20 foot heavy version he is currently lugging around in the script?  Or, better yet, could it already be there?  Maybe the security personnel were planning to use it to climb onto the roof later or repairs were being effected to the roof earlier that morning.

Could we come up with an alternative explanation for why the Secret Service is curtailed rather than the current “He had to share with the President’s wife”?

I’m bumping on the idea of the Secret Servie outsourcing the protection of a Presidential candidate to a local police detachment of 12 officers.  Can we double that number?

Can we lose the scene where the shooter passes through the security screening hours before the shooting with a rangefinder and is clocked by the Secret Service  but nobody does anything about it?  It makes them look incompetent.

Also lose the beat where the shooter’s family contacts law enforcement to warn them that their son has gone missing with an AR-15 three hours before the assassination attempt.

Can we not have the shooter spotted on the rooftop by the attendees?  While I appreciate your attempt to ramp up the tension, having 30 minutes pass between the moment people point him out to when he finally takes the shot really feels like a stretch.  Instead of all these people spotting him and shouting at authorities to no avail, how about making it a lone child instead?  Say a three year old loses their balloon and watches it drift skywards, past the rooftop, where he sees the man on the roof.  He turns to his mother and says: “Mommy, there’s a man on the roof!”  But when his mother looks, there is no one there as the shooter has ducked down and the roof fully obscures him.  His mother, of course, dismisses her son's comment as the product of a child's imagination.

Still bumping on why the sniper takes so long to shoot if he has spotted the threat (20 minutes earlier! Come on.).  As a trained professional, he would have never allowed the shooter to get those shots off.  The explanation that he was awaiting the green light from his superiors is a huge buy.  I’d suggest some sort of communication breakdown but even that doesn’t really feel right.  Let’s think on it.

The fact that the Secret Service allows the Presidential candidate onto the stage after an alert about the shooter goes out on an “all tactical channel" is a huge plot hole.

The shooter character feels cliche.  Single young white male, bullied through high school, elects to act out by…trying to assassinate the Presidential frontrunner?  Why?  Let’s dig into his motivation a little more, come up with something that doesn’t rely on the tired “crazy loner” trope.  Also, I have to admit to laughing out loud with the reveal that he is a registered Republican, an unintentionally hilarious twist that, I’m afraid, feels a little perfunctory and is not going to fool the audience.  Having a record of him donating to a progressive committe just muddles the backstory here.  The explosives in the car and bomb-making materials at his home also feel a little on the nose.  Finally, could we get this guy SOME sort of internet presence?  After all, he’s 20-years-old, not some octagenerian Luddite.  Maybe an unremarkable instagram account or occasional post on reddit. If you want to lean into the “crazed conservative” angle, maybe give him an account on the X platform and have him retweet Mitt Romney or Adam Kinzinger.

Having the media break a story, days later, of a plot by Iran to kill the Presidential frontrunner is confusing, unncessary, and, when you think about it, actually makes the Secret Service look even worse because you’re effectively saying they were expecting an attack, heightened the security detail, and were STILL caught with their pants down.  Suggest swapping out Iran for Russia in keeping with the current trend.

The DHS Secretary feels like your typical cartoon villain.  Is there a way to humanize him a little?  Maybe give him a funny dog?  One of those Chinese Cresteds would be great!

The t.v. host that hints at the possibility the assassination was staged is great goofy comic relief!  Just be careful not to make her too over-the-top delusional/loopy.  A little goes a long way here.

I do have to admit that the revelation shadowy individuals shorted millions of shares of the Presidential frontrunner’s company to, presumably, cash in on his expected demise was very interesting as it adds another layer of intrigue, hinting at that broader, more insidious conspiracy you’ve already layered in.  Would be great to hint at their comeuppance, the significant financial loss they incurred when their plans fells through.

That’s it for now.  Looking forward to seeing how you address these notes in the rewrite!

July 14 is Bastille Day

If you're here for Jonah Goldberg's classic article on the subject, here you go: The French are Revolting.

Arise children of the fatherland

The day of glory has arrived

Against us tyranny's

Bloody standard is raised

Listen to the sound in the fields

The howling of these fearsome soldiers

They are coming into our midst

To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions

March, march

Let impure blood

Water our furrows

~ Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836) ("La Marseillaise", first verse translated into English. Six more follow, all more or less equally bloodthirsty. *

The Storming of the Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals - apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. 

~ Mark Twain (1835-1910) (Anderson, ed., Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Vol. 2, Notebook 18)

Old France , weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal.

~ Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) (War Memoirs, Vol. 3, Ch. 7)

The Bastille was later demolished - the Place de la Bastille

 sits where the fortress once stood

July 14th is Bastille Day (wiki), which commemorates the storming of the ancient royal prison of that name in Paris on 14 July 1789, an event which marked the beginning of the French Revolution. That storming was, of course, more symbolic than substantial - as Jonah Goldberg points out in his classic Bastille Day column, it consisted of "the capture of an almost entirely empty prison, the cold-blooded murder of six unarmed soldiers, and the execution of one French governor already captured by the mob". On that day the Bastille held only seven inmates: four forgers, two madmen, and a young rake who had displeased his father. All were freed.

The Marseillais volunteers departing, sculpted on the Arc de Triomphe

Formally known as the Bastille Saint-Antoine, the fortress was built during the Hundred Years’ War to defend the eastern approaches of Paris from English attacks. It Consisted of eight 100-foot high towers, all linked together by equally tall walls, surrounded by 80 foot wide moat. By 1789 the Bastille was actually little used and was scheduled to be demolished, part of the reason why there were so few prisoners there that day.

*La Marseillaise, France's stirring national anthem, was written in Strasbourg on 25 April 1792 by French captain Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle and originally titled the "Marching Song of the Army of the Rhine." It gained instant popularity as a rallying song and gained its latter-day name from being first sung in the streets of Paris by newly arrived troops from Marseilles. The remaining verses are available at Wikipedia. 

La Marseillaise was banned in both Vichy and German-occupied France during World War II, and also during the 19th-century French Empire under Napoleon III because of its revolutionary sentiments.  

Has there every been a more stirring rendition than the one at Rick's "Café Americaine" in Casablanca?

Related post: French King Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793. Here's Allan Sherman (because if you're of a certain age it's inevitable to think of Allan Sherman when you hear La Marseillaise: