Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-02-09:

"I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?'" -- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

(submitted to the mailing list by Brian K. Read)

"Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession." -- Charles Lyell

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2009-03-29:

Well, I pray for the miner that digs the metal
that makes the kegs and the caps for the bottles
that are taken to the place
where they bring the ingredients
grown in the mountains of beautiful Bavaria
and brewed in the kettles till they reach perfection
and taken by the wonderful magnificent distributor
and loaded on a truck by a guy with a forklift
driven to the taverns and the clubs and the bars
where the taps are pulled by the sacred bartender
living on tips while the waitress carries
that glistening golden glass through the crowd
and thinking about her final exam she lowers it gently
dripping down in diaphanous light to the table in front of me and

I like having a thumb that's opposable
I like having a mouth and ears
I like the pirates who are sailing on the ocean and
I like the people who bring me beer

-- Bill Clapham and Dinty Child, the "Beer Prayer" from their song Beer Town, as recorded by Session Americana. [ http://www.sessionamericana.com/index.php?page=songs&category=Beer_Town-scol-_The_Table_Top_Collective_Volume_3&display=459]

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

There's actually a theme that ties these unrelated quotations together on this day -- it's a personal one, not something clever, calendar-aware friends will go "aha!" at, so I ask you to indulge me ...

Some of my favourite memories from childhood are of evenings perched on a kitchen counter discussing philosophy and comparative religion with my father, an accountant and systems-analyst by trade, as he enjoyed his nightly beer. Sometimes he talked about flying, describing a tricky approach to an airport he used to fly into (he'd given up flying before I was born, so when it came to that I only got old stories ... which I did enjoy, and which made me want to learn to fly (maybe someday)). Or interesting bits of science (as I got a little older and started swiping his Popular Science, Science News, and Scientific American before he got to them, the science conversations gradually shifted from him explaining things to me and answering my why-and-how questions, to me describing to him some fascinating thing I'd just learned, whether a new discovery or something nifty in the "50 and 100 Years Ago Today" column).

The beer harmed him in the end, and he switched from Budweiser to O'Doul's after his doctor discovered he had practically no liver left, but despite the negative associations from knowing what it eventually did to his body, it would seem odd to me to leave his enjoyment of beer out of happy memories of his healthier days.

Ten years ago I was in the process of moving from Silver Spring to Baltimore a car-load at a time, and my father was unconscious and in very in bad shape at Union Memorial Hospital. After my mother made repeated attempts to call me on the landline in Silver Spring, one of my brothers said, "Wait, didn't Glenn just get a cell phone?" So I got word in time to get to the hospital and try to make my peace with the fact that my father was dying. In that emotional time, I started wanting a guitar in my hands very badly but I had not brought one, but fortunately my then-girlfriend lived near the hospital and was able to bring me one. My mother thought that my wanting a guitar was really bizarre, and I don't think my siblings quite got it either, but my girlfriend understood that it mattered. (Dad liked her; she made him smile.) Dad died around one in the morning, as I recall (so, uh, ten years and four and a half hours ago ...), and when I had the room to myself, I softly played "Lamento di Tristano", a late 13th Century Italian lament, over his body, and bade him farewell.

Wow: ten years already. In some ways it feels like two lifetimes ago, in other ways it feels like it can't possibly have been anywhere near that long yet, and in still other ways I feel like I'll always be, in some respect, that little kid perched on the kitchen counter next to the stove, tossing theological, philosophical, and scientific ideas back and forth with my father the way some kids and fathers tossed footballs around in the back yard -- subtly teaching me to catch and throw, practicing in a fun, low-key setting that felt like nothing more than relaxed play. I know he knew I learned a lot from him -- that is the way it's supposed to work, after all -- but I sometimes wonder whether he realized how much, or which things I was learning. Or, in the subjects in which I later surpassed him and became the local expert, how aware he was of the ways the things he'd taught me earlier set me on that path. And God knows there's still an awful lot he could teach me, and advice I could use, if he were still around.

It still amuses me a bit that my father, an ex-trombonist (US Air Force bandsman) wound up raising two guitarists. Learning to play brass is still on my to-do list.

If you've read this far, thanks for indulging me. Taking the time to write this has made a few things clearer in my head, such as the "tossing ideas like footballs" metaphor and how much I learned in those conversations beyond the topic we were chatting about at the time.