This Week in Cultural Appropriation: Rarebit Fundido

A beery cheese sauce spiced up with salsa and completed (if desired) with leftover taco meat, cooked in the microwave in the bowl you're going to eat it from. Perfect for a night when the lady of the house is out doing something and you're fixing a fast, simple, tasty for yourself for while you watch old horror flicks on Svengoolie wearing an old T-shirt (because you'll dribble).

Ingredients:
Beer, one bottle: I suggest a strong, dark one like a porter or stout
Cheddar cheese, probably 6 ounces (150 grams)
Salsa: maybe half a cup. Check the expiration date on the jar.
Flour: about a quarter cup
Tortilla chips
Optional:
Garlic, one clove, crushed
Leftover taco meat, to taste


Procedure

Use a microwavable bowl, and--important!--it needs to be tall enough to hold the cheese and beer and still have about an inch of room left at the top. You don't want it to boil over in the microwave.

Grate the cheese into the bowl. Toss in the flour. Shake the bowl up and down and toss the cheese with the flour with your fingers. The goal is to coat the cheese with flour and hopefully not have much flour left. The fat from the cheese and the flour make a kind of roux, without needing butter.

Pour enough beer over the cheese to cover it and stir it around. This will not require all the beer in a bottle, so you will have to find another use for the rest of it. Sorry, forgot to mention that. Hope it doesn't make difficulty. If using garlic, crush it into the mix. Then put it into the microwave for one minute.

After one minute it will be a little melted but not smooth yet. Stir it with a spoon and then microwave it for another minute (take the spoon out).

After the second minute, stir again and it should be smooth. If it isn't, you can try mending it by sifting in a bit of flour, stirring to incorporate it, maybe a bit more, stirring again, and then microwave another minute. It's hard not to get lumps doing this. But usually it comes out pretty well for me.

After you have it smooth, pour in salsa to taste: I glop in a good half cup.

Then stir it up and microwave for another half minute or minute, and remove from the microwave.

If you want to add leftover taco meat, heat the meat in the microwave till hot through, and then pour a layer onto the top of the cheese sauce. Arrange chips around it on a plate if taking a picture for a blog, otherwise just grab the bag and head for the TV set.

Sunday, Fun Day

Reading: DRACULA, for the first time. Astounding Frontiers #2. I’m torn: I want to read John C Wright’s NOWHITHER straight through, and it’s serialized. So I’m skipping it until more of it comes out, though it hurts.

Writing projects underway:
“The Kings of the Corona”: 17000 word story: finished, accepted for the upcoming anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. Publication date not yet scheduled. Anthony showed us a draft of the cover art, by Dawn Witzke, and it looks great. Probably not long now. #Fantasy #Arthurian #YoungAdult
“The Stowaways” (working title) projected as 8000 word story, or maybe 6000 if I can whittle it down: work in progress. I have about 3000 words so far. #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera




My weekends these days are mostly taken up with work connected with closing Mom’s estate, but I want weekends to be fun days. Here are a joke and a number curiosity.

A Joke

Remembered this old chestnut this afternoon. Modified it slightly:

A young man in the heart of the South wanted to instill his love of his region’s history in his young son, and walked through the park with him one day to the statue of Stonewall Jackson, flourishing his saber, mounted on his horse, frozen in a tableau of dramatic action.

“That, son, is Stonewall Jackson,” he said.

“Wow!” said the little boy.

The statue at once became the boy’s favorite spot in the park. His father noted with pride as the years passed that his son would still return there every Sunday to admire the memorial.

At last the boy graduated high school, and was about to set off for college far away. He and his father went for one last walk through the park to visit their favorite statue one more time, and they stood in silence paying their respects to it.

When they turned to go home again, the young man said, “Dad, I’ve always wondered something.”

“What is it, son?”

“Do you happen to know—who is that man with the funny beard sitting on Stonewall Jackson?”



Recreational Math

Here’s an arithmetical curiosity I noticed that has a pretty good “gee whiz” factor.

It begins with a pleasant little “find the number” puzzle: There is only one number (not counting 1, which is rather a ‘degenerate’ solution) that has this property: it is the product of the first and last digits of its square. Find the number.

To clarify the idea, if you’re not used to how I put these things (so few people are!), if you were to try the number 17 you would square it, 17 x 17 = 289, and then multiply the first and last digits, 2 times 9 = 18. We were hoping to get our 17 back: nope, close but no cigar. In case you want to try finding it, see Answer 1 is below, not to be confused with Answer 2 below.

For a second puzzle, kick the idea up a notch by taking two digits at a time: Find a number that is the product of the 2-digit number at the left and right ends of its own square.

Again, to clarify: if you were testing 2,656, you would square it: 2,656 x 2,656 = 7,054,336. Then you would take the two-digit numbers from the left and right of the square and multiply, hoping to get your 2,656 back: 70 x 36 = 2,520. Nope.

I would think you’d want to use mechanical help to work on this one. A spreadsheet is quite adequate, and it’s a nice little exercise in writing formulas.

The interesting thing is that the one number that answers this puzzle has a curious relationship with the number that worked in the first puzzle.

Okay, you've looked at the answers? Now here's what puzzles me, and I don't have an answer: Why in the world would the numbers that answer the one-digit and two-digit problems have this pattern, where the two-digit answer just repeats the digits of the one-digit answer twice? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, or maybe there’s a mathematical reason I don’t see.

And no, repeating digits three times doesn’t work for the 3-digit version of the same puzzle.




ANSWER 1: The number is 28. 28 x 28 = 784 and 7 x 4 = 28.





ANSWER 2: The number is 2,288. 2,288 x 2,288 = 5,234,944, and 52 x 44 = 2,288.

Thursday Review: ADVENTURE CONSTANT by Jon Mollison

ADVENTURE CONSTANT: A Tale of the Planetary Romantic, by Jon Mollison

The explanation of the title of this exuberant adventure comes about three-fourths of the way into the book, and is so original and droll—well, and so outlandish—that when I came to it I laughed out loud. By that point, our hero, Jack Dashing, has been in, oh, a half-dozen fights, several chases, a couple rescues, and put a roomful of pompous asses in their place…always acquitting himself honorably and well.

The action begins early, the minute Dashing, a NASA astronaut, finds himself shifted into this parallel Earth as the result of an experimental FTL spacecraft not operating as expected. He is immediately caught up in international intrigue in a mission to rescue beautiful Princess Okanamokoa from the  nefarious agents of the Red Collective, and along with that to find the ambiguous Dr. Abduraxus, the only man who could understand how he came to be here and might get back home. The pace continues throughout the book, which I guesstimate at about 70,000 words, and the conflicts are varied and interesting. It might be easier and less spoilerific to list what it does not have. No vampires; no werewolves; no airplane dogfights. That’s all I can think of offhand.

The characters are colorful and memorable, if not particularly deep: good guys are honorable and sympathetic and you care what happens to them, bad guys are despicable and you're pleased when they get what's coming to them. But I didn't note any agonizing moral choices to be made that would reveal and develop them.

But this book is more about action and adventure and the panoramic setting of Mollison's parallel Earth: a globe divided into the Red Collective, the Shogunate of the Red Dawn, the Machine Empire of Europe, the Allied States, the Hashishim Moonies, and undoubtedly more not yet mentioned (hopefully there will be sequels). The world’s history resembles our own just enough to be vaguely familiar, but as if it had been conceived by a Martian counterpart of Edgar Rice Burroughs creating a setting for tales of exotic derring-do on the Blue Planet.

And that’s the whole idea, of course: Jon Mollison is one of the pulp revolution’s most enthusiastic participants, and hits his stride in this one. ADVENTURE CONSTANT only begins to sample the possibilities of this world, and while it wraps up the story by the book’s end, it still leaves enough characters with mysteries unrevealed that I’m eager for a sequel.

This Week in Cultural Appropriation: Taco-Stuffed Zucchin

Tacos filling used to stuff a zucchini: lower in carbohydrates than the usual tacos in shells made from floured grains. You’ll need one or two large flat rectangular casseroles, like lasagna dishes.

Ingredients: makes 12 “tacos”, enough for 6 people

6 large zucchini
2 cloves garlic, or a small onion: optional
2 pounds ground meat
Taco seasoning to taste (packets, or see my mix recipe below)
12 ounces (340 g) grated cheese of your choice (I used cheddar)
Salt, pepper, olive oil
Taco toppings you like

Procedure

I wasn’t hurrying when I made these, so at the time I didn’t look for ways to parallel-process and save time. But I’ll try to make time-saving directions here. I think this could be done in an hour and a quarter, with the last half-hour as baking time that you could use to prepare a side dish if desired.

I started with preparing the zucchini because it takes awhile: you carve and parboil them before filling and baking them. Parboiling was time-consuming for me because they wouldn’t all fit in the skillet I used. If you want to save time, I’d suggest as your first step putting on a big pot of water, or multiple skillets, to boil while you get the zucchini ready. You could also start browning your ground meat, taking time to stir it now and then.

Split the zucchini lengthwise and chop off the ends. Then use a paring knife to cut around the edge, as though making a little dugout canoe, leaving a shell about a quarter-inch thick (6 mm).

Next, scoop out the insides with a metal spoon. If you have a grapefruit spoon, with a serrated edge, that would be ideal. Don’t cut all the way through, and keep a layer of pulp on all sides, as if to keep the canoe watertight. Reserve the chunks of white zucchini pulp in a bowl.

Heat some water in a skillet or pot that’s big enough, and parboil the zucchini shells about five minutes, in batches if necessary. Set the finished ones flat in a rectangular casserole. For six zucchini I used two big 9x13 inch casseroles.

While parboiling, you could use another skillet to brown your ground meat. I used turkey, but I’m confident beef or something else would be delicious: follow your own inner light. Then of course you drain it and add taco seasoning to it, the same as for regular tacos. I’m not going to give special instructions for that. If you’d like my recipe for taco seasoning mix, I include that below.

While both skillets are perking along, chop the chunks of zucchini pulp, rather fine. Then heat yet another skillet (unless you’re ready to reuse one of them), pour olive oil in it untiul your conscience tells you that you have poured enough, and sautee the pulp. Add crushed garlic andor minced onion, if you‘re using those. My family doesn’t like onions so I used garlic. Give it a stir and then cover it and wait a few minutes. It will reduce in volume quite a bit. I think ten or fifteen minutes should demoralize it pretty completely.

Meanwhile, grate the cheese. If you want to add a little cream cheese to the mix, I won’t tell anyone.

When the pulp has become all mushy and looks a little dry, combine it with the meat in a bowl, and stir in about two-thirds of the grated cheese. This is the filling that goes into the zucchini boats. Time to start heating the oven to 350 F (175 C).

Put a little filling in the first shell, then equal in the next, etc., until they all have a little, then go back and put a little more, and so on till the filling is used up. You always think there will be too much filling, but there never is. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.

I covered my casseroles with foil before baking, but I’m not sure whether covered or uncovered is best so let freedom reign. Put the casserole(s) in the oven and bake for 25 minutes.

Add toppings as desired. I used chopped tomatoes and baby spinach, sour cream and taco sauce from a bottle.


We liked these a lot, a light but satisfying meal. I missed the crunch of usual taco shells, but that seems to be a general problem with low-carb food. You could get a little crunchy texture by adding a bread-crumb topping before baking, I suppose. Perhaps a better option would be to have a crunchy side like chips with refried beans. Refried beans and spanish rice on the side would make this a hearty meal.


Taco Seasoning Mix

I don’t usually measure this out when use it, I just add what looks like enough and taste-test it. You’ll also want to add salt to taste when you use it, unless you prefer to add some while making the mix.

English measurements:
¼ cup chili powder
3 tbs paprika
2 tbs onion powder
1 tbs garlic powder
1 tbs ground cumin
1 tbs oregano
2 tbs cayenne pepper
1 tbs black pepper

Combine all ingredients and store in airtight crock. Makes about 1 cup.

Metric measurements:

60 ml chili powder
45 ml paprika
30 ml onion powder
15 ml garlic powder
15 ml ground cumin
15 ml oregano
30 ml cayenne pepper
15 ml black pepper

I suppose that would make 225 ml.

The Wood Where Things Have No Names

This is one of those all-too-common weeks where the airwaves and the Web are so full of rancor, so much of it aimed at figuring out whom to call a “White Supremacist” or a “White Nationalist” or a “Nazi”, whether “Alt Left” is a suitable name, whether “mainstream conservatives” believe this or that, and have we denounced everyone belonging to some named group strongly enough—without specifying whether they belong to the group because they say so themselves or because someone else says it of them, or because they fit one person’s definition of the group, or the current dictionary definition, or the definition that held for fifty years until 2008, or what—that it reminded me of this peaceful section from Chapter 3 of Lewis Carroll’s THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS.

It could be a bit of fantasy flash-fiction on its own, but I notice today that in the book it comes just before Alice reaches the Eighth Square, where she becomes a Queen. Was Carroll suggesting this experience of things-in-themselves, without having their names to remember our prejudices about them, was an important step before becoming a mature adult? It's a very thought-provoking passage, to me; I think it's deep enough to be worthy of the excellent Sci Phi Journal, if they published vintage content. I thought it was an especially refreshing read today.


The Wood Where Things Have No Names

She came very soon to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: “for I certainly wo’n’t go back,” she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.

“This must be the wood,” she said thoughtfully to herself, “where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of my name when I go in? I shouldn’t like to lose it at all—because they’d have to give me another and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be, trying to find the creature that had got my old name! That’s just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose dogs—‘answers to the name of “Dash:” had on a brass collar’—just fancy calling everything you met “Alice,” till one of them answered! Only they wouldn’t answer at all, if they were wise.”

She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it looked very cool and shady. “Well, at any rate it’s a great comfort,” she said as she stepped under the trees, “after being so hot, to get into the—into what?” she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. “I mean to get under the—under the—under this, you know!” putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. “What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it’s got no name—why, to be sure it hasn’t!”

She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then she suddenly began again. “Then it really has happened, after all! And now, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!” But being determined didn’t help much, and all she could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was, “L, I know it begins with L!”

Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened. “Here then! Here then!” Alice said as she held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at her again.

“What do you call yourself?” the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!

“I wish I knew!” though poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, “Nothing, just now.”

“Think again,” it said: “that wo’n’t do.”

Alice thought, but nothing came of it. “Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?” she said timidly. “I think that might help a little.”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll move a little further on,” the Fawn said. “I ca’n’t remember here.”

So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arms. “I’m a Fawn!” it cried out in a voice of delight, “and, dear me! you're a human child!” A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.

Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow-traveller so suddenly. “However, I know my name now,” she said, “that’s some comfort. Alice—Alice—I wo’n’t forget it again….”

Censoring the Past

I was watching the 1934 movie GENTLEMEN ARE BORN on TCM the other day, and came to a scene where one of the young women, who had been working in a library, was called on the carpet by her stern old boss. It seems she had heard a report that the young lady was no longer living with her female roommate; and so WHERE might she be living now? The library must not have scandal attached to it, after all.

The young woman pleaded that she needed this job, because…she had just gotten married the other day.

Why didn’t you tell me this? demanded the boss lady. Then of course you cannot continue to work for us. You know the policy.

Terrible, right? A young woman, one of our main sympathetic characters, thrown out of her job because she had gotten married! And then the boss lady said this:

“You have been depriving some other girl with no outside means of support from obtaining a position here.”

Huh.

There was a reason for this policy…and the reason, whatever we may think of its effect on our heroine, was…to take care of society’s less fortunate, according to the economic and social circumstances of the time.

It was an interesting moment. That’s why I went back and played it again, and noted the exact words that I reproduce here. It’s not terribly deep, but it stopped me for a moment, and made me think a bit. It made me sympathize with the cross old termagant with her hair in a bun: she knew what was right, and it was right in her eyes because it was one of the few measures they could take to spread scarce jobs around in a world where people were going hungry for lacking them. The past is a different country, as someone famous has said.

Another allegedly famous person (at least he has a blue checkmark in Twitter) is John Levenstein, and he also said something just Wednesday, as the nation is in a frenzy of statue destruction:

“Now that we’re talking, there are casually racist +sexist +homophobic moments in classic movies that don’t need to be classics anymore.”

I suppose the moment I just described is one of the ones Mr. Levenstein would like to get rid of.

Of course, making people think is the last thing the modern SJW wants to do.

Socrates and the Hugos

Writing projects underway:

• “The Kings of the Corona”: 17000 word story: finished, accepted for the upcoming anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. Publication date not yet scheduled. #Fantasy #Arthurian #YoungAdult 
• “The Stowaways” (working title): projected as 8000 word story. #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera

Socrates and the Hugos

I was at the agora the other day buying some baklava and some ripe olives stuffed with feta and nuts when I ran into my old friend, Socrates, and we fell to talking about the Hugo Awards. Our dialog went something like this:

JUSTIN M TARQUIN: It depresses me that the Hugo Awards nowadays can go to mediocre works as long as their authors espouse popular leftist political viewpoints, or have personal identities that the political left associates with a “victim group”, rather than to works that deserve the award.

SOCRATES: Is there, then, some quality a work can have, besides giving homage to leftist political causes, that would better deserve the award?

JMT: Why, of course, Socrates. I think the Hugo award should go to science fiction that’s fun to read, and that excites the imagination, inspires wonder, draws the reader to a sense that the world is grander and finer than he might have supposed.

S: Such an award would be useful for guiding readers who desire such science fiction! But, of course, then it would not be useful for leftist readers who prefer science fiction that echoes their political views and congratulates them for holding them.

JMT: Surely, Socrates, you do not suggest that such puerile sycophancy is as suitable to an award called “the most prestigious in Science Fiction” as the criteria I have mentioned.

S: That does seem an odd state of affairs, does it not? Perhaps there is something to be learned from considering the question. Here, let us sit upon this bench and snack on our olives while we talk. Well then: the matter before us is what is ‘suitable’. I believe we are agreed that suitability is a quality that depends on its object.

JMT: What do you mean, Socrates?

S: I mean what you already implied when you questioned the suitability, not of political bias per se, but bias in a particular object: namely, in an award called the most prestigious in Science Fiction. Are not the robes of a king suitable to a king?

JMT: Of course.

S: But would they be suitable for a shepherd?

JMT: Clearly not, Socrates!

S: Or a shepherd’s tunic, would it be suitable for a surgeon?

JMT: No.

S: Or again, would a surgeon’s outfit be suitable for an olive-picker?

JMT: Not at all.

S: But the garb of each of these men would be suitable to himself, or another in his station?

JMT: Correct.

S: Then suitability is a relationship that matches a subject and an object?

JMT: You make it perfectly clear.

S: But what if a shepherd’s master were pleased to call him a king. Would royal robes then become suitable to him, while he remain a shepherd?

JMT: Why, no.

S: Or say that a surgeon’s patient insists upon calling him a shepherd. Would it then be suitable that he perform surgery in the stained and dirty tunic of a keeper of flocks?

JMT: No, no.

S: Then what is suitable depends not on what a thing is called, but upon what it truly is?

JMT: Clearly so, Socrates.

S: Then to inquire whether awarding the Hugo to works that tickle the egos of leftists is suitable or not, we must determine what the Hugo Award actually is: and not merely what it is called. As you have remarked, the award is called “the most prestigious award in science fiction,” but is it that in reality? And again, does “prestigious” mean that it is in reality the award most worthy of respect, or only that people believe it so or call it so? There are layers of shadow and illusory perceptions to be peeled away before we arrive at the reality of what the Hugo Award really is, my good Tarquin.

JMT: But, Socrates, here we are only returning to what I began by saying: I want the Hugo Award to go to science fiction that is fun and uplifting. One might say, to works that are enjoyable to read and enjoyable afterward to reflect upon.

S: Then let us begin there our inquiry into what the Hugo Award is. Is the Hugo Award bestowed to such works?

JMT: It once was. But not for many years, no.

S: Let us confine ourselves to the Hugo award of today, since that is where your complaint lies. Do you determine how the Hugo is bestowed?

JMT: No; though I may vote.

S: Is your vote dispositive of the result?

JMT: No.

S: Then many others also vote?

JMT: Certainly.

S: Do these others share your desires for the Hugo?

JMT: Sadly, most do not.

S: Is it widely known that those who vote for the Hugo do not share your notions of merit?

JMT: Quite so. Indeed, the news criers hail the results of each Hugo ceremony as a victory for trendy left-wing victim groups.

S: Then do even the winners of the award see it as a prize for political views and group identity?

JMT: None that I know of have said so explicitly, though some have made public statements after winning that indicate what is uppermost in their mind is not the qualities of the work they wrote, but rather their personal identity as a member of a group underrepresented among Hugo laureates. Possibly they were led in their remarks by the agendas of those who reported their words. But it would seem impossible they are not aware and approving of how their personal identities influence the decision.

S: What of people like yourself who object to the present nature of the Hugos?

JMT: There was a movement called the Sad Puppies that strove to nominate works that did not meet the left-wing political criteria; but though they succeeded in gaining nominations, the results of the election among the nominees chose “No Award” over any non-left-approved works.

S: And the authors whose work is passed over by this system, do they understand the nature of the award?

JMT: They do, indeed. I have even heard an author I favor say in a podcast that he would be embarrassed to win and thereby join the ranks of the recent winners, their work is so unimpressive.

S: Why then, all the world appears to understand the meaning of this award. The organizers know, the fans who vote for leftist works know, the Sad Puppy sympathizers know, the authors whose works do not win know, even the authors whose works do win Hugos appear to know that the point of the award is to gratify the political left’s view of the world. And therefore, you are wishing the award to signify what the world does not expect it to signify. Indeed, if works that satisfied your definition of merit were to win Hugo awards, the public understanding would be that the authors belong to leftist-approved groups, and that the works promoted leftist-supported positions, which they do not; and why would you wish the public to be so deceived?

JMT: But, Socrates, I think you misunderstand. The Hugo award is supposed to be an award for the best science fiction, chosen by the fans themselves.

S: You must explain this to me. When you say “supposed to be”, by whom is it supposed that the Hugo award is given to science fiction that first of all provides the most enjoyment to readers? For we have just established that it is generally understood by all involved that the Hugos are awarded politically.

JMT: Why, but the other is what the organizers of the Hugo award themselves say of it.

S: Ah, yes, it is then a boast that certain people make of their own project.

JMT: Well, yes.

S: In my life I have heard many who made boasts for themselves, and when I have inquired into the basis of their vaunting I very often found it lacking. But has the practice of self-puffery vanished since my more active years?

JMT: Well, no.

S: Is there not, in fact, an entire industry now devoted to self-aggrandizement, wherein fantastic sums of money are expended, and the ceaseless labor of thousand upon thousands of highly-skilled workers, present to the public hundreds of times a day, on every billboard, on every cereal package, every coffee cup, interspersed every few seconds in every television show or radio broadcast, on the margins of every Web site, these self-same substanceless boasts that the secret to happiness lies in consuming the goods and services they offer?

JMT: Indeed, it is so, Socrates.

S: And every two or four years, barrages of similarly vain boasts about candidates for public office?

JMT: You have said a mouthful, Socrates.

S: Then have not the people become skeptical of such claims?

JMT: True, Socrates, and yet if an award like the Hugo is to be seen as a claim about a work of science fiction, are not those who make false claims doing evil by telling falsehoods, even if they are not believed?

S: We can agree, Tarquin, that to speak falsehood, knowingly, is clearly wrong. For the value of language lies in its power to exchange truths among men; to put even a single deliberate falsehood into language is like striking a gold coin with an admixture of lesser metal: the surfeit of counterfeits in circulation debases the value even of the true coins. But when the choice of an awardee is divided among hundreds, they cannot all be held responsible for the choice of the group: but each man is responsible only for his own choice. No more could a man sentenced to die by a jury of five hundred think of the entire jury as his enemies, but only those who cast the vote for his condemnation. But, Tarquin, are not those voting for the winner of the Hugo award asked to vote for whichever nominee they feel should receive it?

JMT: Why, yes.

S: And surely there is no thought of any voter not voting for the work they wish to receive the award?

JMT: Well, no.

S: Then, among the voters it would seem that no question of dishonesty occurs. It is an instance of what you might call “free speech”.

JMT: And yet it still seems to me that the works that win a Hugo award ought to deserve to win it.

S: Why, but whether or not the Hugo winners deserve to win Hugos is a question we have not yet touched upon, Tarquin!

JMT: What do you mean? Have we not been discussing it this whole while?

S: Not at all! Up until now we have only considered to what sort of qualities the Hugo award actually does attest. Now that we have established that it awards works on the basis of stroking the egos of leftists, and is understood to do this both by the fans who vote for it, the people who receive it, the authors who do not receive it, as well as to you and to me, we can at last proceed to the question of whether the Hugo and its winners are suitable to one another.

JMT: And are they, then?

S: Is it not quite clear, Tarquin? The nature of the present-day Hugo award is that it is given to those works voted in by a group who are strongly disposed to favor works that promote leftist ideology and are written by authors who themselves support leftist ideology, by their public opinions and identities as members of groups the political left is pleased to extol. Therefore, works that promote such ideology, written by such authors, are perfectly suitable to the Hugo awards.

JMT: Do you mean to say that the Hugo winners, in fact, do deserve Hugo awards?

S: I think it would be more complete, elegant, and illuminating, to say that these authors and this award deserve each other.

JMT: I confess I am floored by this conclusion, though I can find no fault with the logic.

S: We must follow the argument where it leads us, Tarquin.

JMT: Why, but Socrates, it occurs to me that there is nothing about your argument that is specific to the Hugo awards. This would apply to any honorary award whatsoever—to the Oscars, the Emmies, the Grammies, the Edgars; to the kings and queens of all the proms, all the big-city parades and all the small-town festivals; to prizes that are awarded with rank nepotism, cheating, to contests with slipshod ballot-counting, where errors change the result. Can you say that all of the winners of all of these contests deserve the awards they receive?

S: Absolutely, Tarquin. Though, of course, the honors that they get, and deserve, are worthless in such cases.

JMT: I can only say, Socrates, that this would come as a great shock to the many thousands, the millions, who spend a great deal of time arguing about whether the winners of all these contests deserve their prizes, or whether it should have gone to another.

S: It does seem a great waste of time, when they might be arguing about the nature of beauty, or justice, or of goodness, of piety, or the nature of poetic inspiration, or the immortality of the soul, or of knowledge, truth and wisdom itself.

JMT: Yes, well, most people would consider arguing about all those things to be a waste of time.

S: A waste of time?

JMT: So they say.

S: Discussing truth, beauty, and virtue?

JMT: I’m afraid so.

S: While arguing about who deserves a trophy is worthwhile?

JMT: I can only report what I have heard men say, Socrates.

S: Well. I have nothing to say.

Coincidentally, we had just finished the baklava.

Remembering Mom

We lost my Mom this spring, after she had lived a long, productive and generally happy life. As a high school English teacher she touched the lives of thousands of students, and her personality was the sort that made an impression. She had a way of speaking that made some people ask whether she was British or where she had picked up her “accent”; being a small-town Iowa girl she didn’t quite know how to answer. At last someone, I think an instructor at a course she took when she went back to college for her Master’s degree, told her, “I can identify your accent: it’s called ‘perfect diction’.” That brought on one of Mom’s hearty laughs. 

She was always a lover of learning and literature, of ideas and their clear expression. Sometimes while reading she would come upon a particularly well-constructed sentence and would share it with us so we could appreciate it with her. It might be a figure of speech or a turn of phrase that used language to exquisite effect, or some humorous play on words or juxtaposition of ideas that tickled her. The passive voice in Sinclair Lewis’s remark in Babbitt that “he was married by the first girl he met” delighted her, as did the expression “a bear of very little brain” in Winnie-the-Pooh. She would apply the latter to herself when she forgot something sometimes: she never took herself too seriously.

I had the good luck to attend my senior year in the same high school where she taught, and to have her as my English teacher. She introduced the teaching of composition with writing sentences, went on to paragraphs, and thence to essays. The many books we read for class provided topics for the essays. She taught us what I suppose they now call “critical thinking”, but I remember it being more substantial and useful than what I hear people saying of such instruction nowadays. For instance, when we read Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN [spoiler ahead], she asked the class what we thought of the conclusion, where George kills his friend Lennie rather than let him be arrested and tried and executed. The students invariably would say George had done the right thing. She would invite discussion of the reasoning a bit, and then she would ask them what they would think and do if their next door neighbor were to kill a man. At this, the same students would gasp, and say that would be dreadful, and they would call the police at once. Then she would say, well, but what if the murdered man were simple-minded, like Lennie? Of course that would make no difference!, they would protest. She would add, one by one, the circumstances that they had only a moment earlier seriously argued had exculpated George, and the class rejecting each of them, would become thoughtful. Finally, she asked what tricks Steinbeck had used in his narrative that led them along to a viewpoint that in real life they strenuously reject: continually describing Lennie with comparisons to an animal, juxtaposing his murder with the story of the necessary killing of a beloved dog, and so on. By the end of the discussion, the class had grasped that Steinbeck had written a piece of propaganda that leads the reader along in a rather creepy way. It was exactly the sort of critical thinking that we need more of today.

In her college days Mom had come across St. Thomas Aquinas and had been impressed by his exposition of Catholic theology, which she felt had given her a religious experience. I hadn’t read anything of the Angelic Doctor back in high school, but I think Mom must have had the Summa Theologica in mind when she assigned us to write an essay of opinion, because she specified that we had to explain, fairly, the arguments that disagreed with our own, in the course of showing why our opinion was better. This was one of the essays I had to re-write for her. I chose to write on my opinion that astrology was bunk, and Mom wouldn’t accept my finished product because I had failed to give cogent arguments contradicting my opinion, to show that I had answers for them. 

“Arguments supporting astrology?” I protested. “But there aren’t any!” 

“No argument, no essay!” she shot back, and I had to choose another topic. I’ve thought of that “no argument, no essay” many times since, particularly since internet forums and social media have sometimes tempted me toward completely pointless repartee against ideas that haven’t the slightest justification. Why bother in such cases? If there’s nothing to be said for an idea, why bother knocking it down? If someone holds forth for an idea with NO rational basis, why try to reason them out of it? They’re obviously not going to be swayed by reason or they wouldn’t have that opinion in the first place. No argument, no essay.

I probably resist a good two-thirds of such arguments by remembering this.

There were a number of pithy quotations that Mom found relevant enough to raise them again and again her whole life. One was Edmund Burke’s “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”: she was keen on personal responsibility to stand up to bad guys. Another of her favorites was Henry David Thoreau’s “Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.”

And one of her all-time favorites was from Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” The idea that there is a purpose to all suffering, and a blessing attached to it that we can receive in no other way, struck her as a deep truth. I believe it helped to sustain her during the long, and to her wearisome, years of her declining health.

She was a bear of a very good brain, indeed.