Two National Icons Pass: Aretha Franklin & John McCain

Within the last couple of weeks, the United States has lost two people who have made their respective impacts on this country, and even on the world.

Aretha Franklin has been a part of the lives of many of us since the 1960s. She has long been one of my heroes and she could stir energy and emotion with her great voice and great music. I cannot type this without tears in my eyes. I'd guess about 2005, there was a guy who turned out to be an outright racist (I didn't know it then), who sang and clapped his hands along with me when Aretha's song "Think" came on the radio one time. Aretha Franklin was one of the balms for our long national wound about race.

Senator John McCain was someone with whom I did not agree on a number of issues, but I respected him. Sometimes we get our feathers ruffled, but we get over it, and such was Senator McCain's relationship with more than a few people. The wife of a cousin of mine, a Republican, called McCain "a traitor to America" to me back when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. The man spent more than five years in captivity in North Vietnam. When I told a friend of mine, also a Democrat, what she had said, his first words were about McCain's time spent as a prisoner of war, and he was puzzled that anyone would say such a thing about John McCain. No matter how John McCain voted on any piece of legislation later when he served in Congress, no one can say he had not sacrificed for his country, and for my cousin's wife to call McCain a "traitor" speaks volumes about her, but nothing about John McCain. The same applies even more so to Donald Trump, a self centered abomination, who is about 5 or 6 inches taller than John McCain in physical height, but who actually remains minuscule in comparison to McCain in both political matters and as a human being.
  
WORD HISTORY:
Hearse-The origin of "hearse" is unknown, and some of its meaning additions/changes are tough to pin down. It goes back to Oscan^ "hirpus," which meant "wolf." This gave Latin "hirpex," meaning, "a type of plow device with a row or rows of teeth (the connection to "wolf"^^) used to tear and cut through roots," a meaning later seemingly expanded to include, "a large type of rake." This later became "hercia" in Latin and passed into Latin-based Old French as "herce." It "apparently" was taken on by the Anglo-Norman speakers in England from French by the second half of the 1200s. Around that time, it also came to be used for a "portcullis;" that is, "a sliding gate, usually of metal bars or framework that could be lowered to stop the entry of enemies" ("presumably" the lowering bars looked like teeth coming down), but this meaning didn't seem to generally make it into English until the early 1400s. It had also developed the meaning in French of, "a chandelier for a church," apparently from the resemblance of a large chandelier to the plowing device? This meaning then led to "a framework for candles over a dead body," a meaning that later transferred to, "a wagon or carriage used to transport a body," as candles were often used on such transports. Of course, in modern times, the name transferred to "a specialized (usually elongated) motor vehicle for transporting a body."    

^ Oscan is a now dead language of the Italic branch of the Indo European languages. Latin is also a part of the Italic branch. Oscan was spoken in fairly large parts of southern Italy, and also somewhat in central Italy, but Latin gradually absorbed it until it was essentially gone by circa 100 A.D.

^^ Just for the sake of comparison, German uses "Fleischwolf" (literally, flesh/meat wolf) as its word for "meat grinder," with the idea of a wolf's sharp teeth lying behind the word's meaning. 

"Salute the Uniform" Can Only Go So Far

Way back when I was a teenager, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement brought some, but certainly not all, younger Americans to begin to question the nation's adults. In those times, that was a "no-no." Back then, a common expression used by adults to avoid the difficult arguments of the young was, "Children should be seen and not heard," an expression that apparently dates to the mid 1400s. It means that children should only be seen, and they should not offer opinions on what were seen as "adult matters." Back then too, adulthood was "often" legally defined as the age of 21 on many matters. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the states in the summer of 1971 and it established the age of 18 as the lowest legal age for voting.

Over the years there have been various allegations about members of the clergy being involved in sexual matters with children, both male and female. The clergy is a group that has benefited by people's trust and the fear that if you criticize a member of the clergy, there is a spot reserved for you in Hell. Now, just days ago, we learned of a major scandal in the state of Pennsylvania involving Roman Catholic clergy. The scandal comes from a grand jury report hundreds of pages long in which it alleges that a thousand children were abused by hundreds of Catholic priests and that Church officials developed a plan to protect the abusers, not to help the children.

I "suspect" the same thing has been true, to some degree, in schools. Teachers have received lots of respect because of the role they are supposed to take in educating children and in preparing them for life. Accusations of misbehavior, especially criminal misbehavior, against a teacher is not something the public will necessarily leap to believe right away, and that was even more so when I was young. Back when I was in high school, a good friend of mine, a girl, talked to me very privately one day. She ended up crying as she told me about a male teacher who had grabbed her and tried to kiss her. It's all been so long ago, I can't remember everything, but she didn't want me to do anything about it. I was a student leader and I was on pretty good terms with the school principal, an ex military officer. I advised the girl to talk with her parents, which I believe she did, but I can't say that with complete certainty, as time has clouded my memory. The thing was, in those times, to accuse a teacher of such an offense was difficult, to say the least, as adults were given the benefit of the doubt and, "children should be seen and not heard" was the prevailing belief. Even today such would likely be the case, but in those times, the chance of breaking through against a teacher would have been very, very low. Not only that, this was not just any teacher, but a man well known throughout the community because of his other job, which was highly public, but not in government. He didn't really like me anyhow, but I didn't particularly give a damn. I don't recall exactly what happened, but he confronted me about something one day, and I threw out a hint that I knew about what he had done with my friend. He was furious and threatened to have me suspended. He always acted as if the principal had died and left him in charge. This is how people in power can abuse that power to cover their asses. And this is why there must be checks and balances on power, including, or perhaps especially, on the power of the president of this nation. I never pursued the matter of his behavior, because the girl didn't want the matter brought out in public, so we went on with our lives, but not too many years later, a family member mentioned that this teacher had been implicated in similar matters with female students. The teacher passed away a couple of decades ago, but with the recent grand jury report, this episode with my friend and the teacher came back to me.

"Salute the uniform" needs clarification. We do not always have to agree with leaders in various parts of society in order to give those leaders respect, BUT if they are breaking laws, they are not deserving of our respect, and I don't care what garb they wear, whether it be a military uniform, some type of religious outfit, law enforcement uniform or the outfit of a school teacher. People need to earn respect by who THEY are individually, not by just serving in some position.    

WORD HISTORY:
Use-The ultimate origin of this word is unknown. The verb form (pronounced in English as if, "youz") goes back to Latin "uti," which had a wide range of meanings: "to make use of, to gain from (thus also, to benefit, to profit), to enjoy, to consume." This produced Latin "usare," meaning, "to use." This passed into Latin-based Old French as "user," meaning, "to make use of, to employ." English borrowed the word as "usen" in the early 1200s. By circa 1400, the word had also come to mean, "to take advantage of," a sense shared to a great extent by the derived words, "misuse" and "abuse" (formed by "ab" + "use"). The noun form (pronounced in English as if, "youss") has the same older history, which then produced the Latin noun "usus," which meant "use, employment, habit, skill," This passed into Old French as "us," meaning "a custom, a habit, the usage of." English also borrowed the noun form in the early 1200s. 

Talk About Tolerance, This Is Tolerance

Back in the latter part of the 1970s a group of American Nazis announced plans to hold a political demonstration in Chicago. The city required a large insurance bond be paid to cover the possible damages that would result from such a provocative demonstration. The amount of the bond effectively terminated the Nazi plans to go forward, but they then decided to organize a march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, an area where not only a substantial part of the community was Jewish, but in those days a large number of Jewish immigrants were survivors of Nazi atrocities and concentration camps in Europe. In an effort to tone down the Nazi march, a local court said the Nazis could not display swastikas, nor wear Nazi Party uniforms, as these things were essentially equivalent to provoking violence.* The whole issue garnered national and even international attention, even more so when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the court ruling as a violation of the First Amendment (specifically the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble). The main attorney for the ACLU was Burton Joseph, who was Jewish and a partner in a Chicago law firm. While it's been so many years ago, my recollection is, a number of other Jewish ACLU attorneys openly supported Joseph's view. After a number of hearings, including by the U.S. Supreme Court, and much coverage by the international media, the march was allowed to go forward, along with the display of swastikas and the wearing of Nazi uniforms. Anti-Nazi demonstrations were organized by many Americans across the country, and the Nazis then asked to change the march back to Chicago, which was granted.

While such actions by the ACLU have not always been popular over the years, and this one was not popular with many Americans, as veterans' groups, among others, also protested, as I recall, such legal challenges bring focus to various decisions, along with the accompanying discussions, sometimes very heated discussions. Democracy is not easy, and I suppose all of us at one time or another would like to stop someone with whom we disagree from expressing contrary opinions. The question is always, "how much freedom do we want?" There are limits to freedom, as for example, we don't have the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, just for the hell of it. Ah, that's not a direct quote.

For Jewish attorneys to defend the right of Nazis to march tells you just how much these attorneys appreciate the law. It certainly doesn't mean they liked Nazis, but they loved the law. To be quite honest, I'm not sure I could do such a thing, but this is how you defeat the crazies and the anti-democracy elements. We can't be so insecure that we are afraid of differing viewpoints. Talk about tolerance, this is tolerance and a respect for law which should earn respect from all of us; of course, there are those racists and haters out there ...

* These are my words, not the court's words, but this was essentially the argument.

WORD HISTORY:
Hate-This word goes back to Indo European "khedo," which had the notion of "strong emotional feeling." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "hatojan(an)," which became the more specific "to hate," in Germanic. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "hatian," which then became "haten," before the modern version. The noun was derived from the Old Germanic form "hatiz," which then gave Old English "hete." Other Germanic languages have (noun then verb): German "Hass" and "hassen," Low German and Dutch "haat" and "haten," West Frisian "hate" and "haatsje," Danish "had" and "hade," Icelandic "hata" (same for noun and verb), Norwegian and Swedish "hate" (same for both noun and verb, with the ending "e" pronounced like "ah").