[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings on Wednesday

[gthewlis at comcast.net]

** Out of town unplanned

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Norman Mailer

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.
Russell Green

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
Kenneth Tynan

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
Ring Lardner

God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project.
Anonymous, Graffito

First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
Greek Proverb

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Column

The source of column is the Latin columna, which had a syllable break between the m and n, so both letters were pronounced. It appeared in English like that in the fifteenth century, but it was a rather unEnglish looking (and sounding) word, and it went through a lot of changes and different spellings in the following 250 years.

The most characteristic change was to drop the ending altogether, so leaving a word with roughly the same pronunciation as we use now, but spelled colum. However, the spelling varied a lot at this period: others added a b to make it colomb; some kept the last syllable of the Latin word, but respelled it as columne.

The spelling seems to have settled down to our modern form from the latter part of the seventeenth century onwards; an early example is in John Milton’s Samson Agonistes of 1671: “As in a fiery column charioting His godlike presence”. One of the last examples of the old forms appears in the diary of the antiquarian Thomas Hearne for 1712: “The Colum erected in Memory of the Dreadfull Fire of London”.

The n seems to have been added back by classically educated scholars wanting to match the spelling of its Latin original. The pronunciation was unaffected, so the n has always been silent (in fact, it would be impossible to sound it following the m without making an extra syllable of it, as the Romans did). However, it is sounded in compounds like columnar.
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Peanut gallery

Originating in America at the end of the nineteenth century. The peanut gallery was the topmost tier of seats, the cheapest in the house, a long way from the stage. The same seats in British theatres were (and still are) often called the gods because you were so high you seemed to be halfway to heaven, up there with the allegorical figures that were often painted on the ceiling.

On both sides of the Atlantic, these seats attracted an impecunious class of patron, with a strong sense of community, often highly irreverent and with a well-developed ability to heckle, hence the modern figurative meaning. A significant difference between the American and British theatres is that American patrons ate peanuts; these made wonderful missiles for showing their opinion of artistes they didn’t like.

Most Americans of a certain age will know the phrase because it was used in a slightly different sense in the fifties children’s television programme, the Howdy Doody Show. There it was the name for the ground-level seating for the kids, the “peanuts”, though the phrase was almost certainly derived from the older sense. They were just as noisy and irreverent as their theatrical forebears, or indeed the groundlings of Shakespeare’s time, with a liking for low humour and a total lack of sense or discrimination.

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Ulysses S. Grant went into battle with another future U.S. president: Zachary Taylor.
Grant fought in the Mexican-American War under General Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor, who went on to become the 12th president of the United States in 1849. Taylor led Grant in his first military battle, along with thousands of troops, at the Battle of Palo Alto, with Grant going on to fight in nearly every major battle of the war. As regimental quartermaster during the Battle of Monterey, Grant rode through heavy Mexican gunfire to deliver a message for much-needed ammunition after Taylor’s troops ran out of bullets. In his memoirs, Grant recalled how he admired Taylor for the same traits that he would be known for, including how Taylor “knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words” and how his general’s style “[met] the emergency without reference to how they would read in history.”

Ulysses S. Grant wasn't a military man at the start of the Civil War.
 The war hero of the Mexican-American conflict was far from those accolades when the Civil War broke out in 1861. After his resignation, Grant took to a series of civilian jobs without much success. He spent seven years as a farmer, real estate agent, and rent collector, and he even sold firewood on St. Louis street corners. When the Civil War was announced, Grant was working in his father’s leather store in Galena, Illinois. 6. Ulysses S. Grant turned his occupational failure into military success.
With a newfound patriotism at the outbreak of war, Grant attempted to enlist, but was initially rejected for a military appointment due to his previous indiscretions. Illinois congressman Elihu Washburne took a chance on Grant and arranged a meeting with the governor of Illinois, Richard Yates. Grant was appointed to command a volunteer regiment, whipping them into shape well enough that it eventually earned Grant a spot as brigadier general of volunteers. (Grant later reciprocated Washburne’s favor by appointing Washburne to U.S. secretary of state, and later minister to France.) Grant is credited with commanding two significant early Union victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, which earned him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender Grant."

Ulysses S. Grant almost lost his post at Shiloh.
After the dual victories of Henry and Donelson, Grant faced harsh criticism for his leadership during the Battle of Shiloh, one of the costliest battles in American history to that point. Though the Union came out victorious, both sides suffered a staggering 23,746 total casualties—a majority of which were Union soldiers. On April 6, 1862, Grant’s army was waiting to rendezvous with troops led by General Don Carlos Buell, with the goal of overtaking a major Confederate railroad junction and strategic transportation link in nearby Corinth, Mississippi. But before Buell arrived, Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston’s forces attacked Grant's troops. Caught off guard, the Union soldiers spent most of that day being beaten back by Confederate forces, to the point of being nearly overrun until Buell’s army showed up to provide reinforcements. The Union won, but Grant’s lack of preparedness immediately brought about demands for his removal. Pennsylvania politician Alexander McClure visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House to call for Grant’s removal, saying, “I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and, in giving my reasons for it, I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land against Grant’s continuance in command.” McClure later recalled that Lincoln responded, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.” Despite rumors that his early blunder at Shiloh was because he was under the influence, Grant assured Julia in a letter, dated April 30, 1862, that he was “sober as a deacon no matter what is said to the contrary.”