God and Superstition

Superstition.  noun

su·per·sti·tion

1.  Excessively credulous belief in and reverence for supernatural beings:  "He dismissed the ghost stories as mere superstition."
2.  Unfounded belief, credulity, fallacy, delusion.
3.  A widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation.
Synonyms:  myth, belief, old wive's tale.  

No one wants to be known as superstitious, so gullible as to believe things that are clearly untrue.  We smile with superiority at the person who believes good luck comes from a rabbit's foot, bad luck from a black cat; that toads cause warts and eating fish will make you smart.  We're way too smart to believe in things like that.

And yet no one who believes in God thinks he's being superstitious.  

Speaking of Crosswords. . .

          I bow in admiration to the men and women who construct crossword puzzles, "cruciverbalists."  I tried for a while to construct my own, and did manage to put two or three together, with great pride, I might add, but all I could manage was the bare-bones success of a school boy.  And I knew by constant exposure to the great constructors that I would never be able to match their wittiness and intricate patterning--their genius.  

          So I gave it up and now sit back and enjoy the brilliant puzzles they have put together.  For me.  And you too.  I know most of them don't do it for the money because unless they grind out a great many of them, it isn't likely they can make much of a living with this talent..  They earn part-time money by being fiendishly creative, while I spend a few late night hours, when I am unfit for proper work, by trying to match wits with them.  They're my heroes--and I thank them all.  

          What follows is a sampling of great minds having fun in a 15 x 15 grid. 

From The New York Times Ultimate Crossword Omnibus:  1001 Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times (2003), edited by Will Shortz.

Constructor                 Puzzle No.      Clue / Answer

Ernie Furtado              19                  Eschew food  /  fast

Norma Steinberg         21                 Worthless agreements? /  mtpromises

                                                            Nonchalant view of fortune  / ezcomeezgo

Trip Payne                   27                   Battle types  /  Sopranos

                                                            Express wonderment  /   oohandahh

Chuck Deodene          34                   Cleaned a windshield  /  squeegeed

Wayne Robert Williams  39             Coming out on top?  /  bald

Jim Page                      44                  Turning  /  aswirl

Trip Payne                   45                   What you used to be  /  thou

                                                            Great shakes?  /  hulas

                                                            Camels’ destinations?  /  ashtrays

Bob Sefick                  73                   Clicker that might be used on a trawler?  /  castanet

Harvey Estes               94                   Square meal?  /  ravioli

Harvey Estes               152                 Perform perfectly  /  dotoat

A.J. Santora                155                  Stone-broke  /  assetless

Nancy Joline               161                 Easter preceder  /  nor

Nancy S. Ross             170                 A.M. or P.M., e.g.  /  abbr

Jim Page                      177                 Classics trio  /  esses

Rich Norris                  183                One whose work is decreasing?  /  ironer

Brendan Emmett Quigley  224          Steve Forbes is surrounded by them  /  esses

Bryant White              225                  St. Lawrence sight  /  1001islands

                                                              extremely rare  /  1ina1000000

Chuck Deodene          239                  Outdoor air / serenade

Charles Gersch            269                 Concert finale / ina

Gregory E. Paul          271                  It may be rounded on a diamond / third [base]

Jim Page                      274                  Contents of some sleeves / lps

Elizabeth Gorski         275                  Life in the early days / embryo

Lois Sidway                278                   Make or break, e.g. / verb

Sidney Robbins           293                  Bosom companions  /  bras

Jonathan Schmalzbach  359                Nom de crook  /  alias

Chuck Deodene          363                   Eyesores or eye sores  /  sties

Richard Hughes          379                   Y’s half brothers  /  aeiou

Jonathan Schmalzbach  380                Seagoing departure from a Scandinavian capital? / 

                                                                        osloboattochina

                                                               Aggressive personality in the Far East?  / 

                                                                        taipeibehavior

                                                               South American football player?  /  sandiegocharger

Cathy Millhauser         381                  Like mosquitoes at a camp?  /  maliciousintent

Stephanie Spadaccini  384                   Item filed by a secretary?  /  nail

Alfo Micci                   393                  M  /  firstofthemonth
                                                               O  /  secondincommand
                                                               Y  /  thefourthofjuly
                                                               E  /  beethovensthird

Richard Thomas          428                   Food bar  /  oleo

Harvey Estes               446                   Scoundrel, to Betsy Ross?  sewandsew

                                                               Completely, to a pitcher?  threwandthrew

                                                               Presently, to a shopaholic?  buyandbuy

David J. Kahn             447                    Pavarotti, to fans  /  kingofthehighcs

Martin Ashwood-Smith  460               It turns into a different story  /  spiralstaircase

Randolph Ross            464                   Dressing place  /  cruet

                                                               [clue 54A]  =  /  twoxtwentyseven]

Harvey Estes               470                   Final copy:  Abbr.  /  obit

Randolph Ross            555                   Minnesota twins  /  ens [the letter “n”]

David J. Kahn             584                    “Where’s my watch?” asked Captain Hook____  / 

                                                                         offhandedly

                                                               “Get lost, Toto!”  shouted the Tin Man____  / 

                                                                        heartlessly

                                                               “I’m a beauty,” said Venus de Milo____  / 

                                                                        disarmingly

Lois Sidway                599                    Not dose  /  dese

Bryant White              602                    Coasters for Socrates, e.g.  /  anagram

Kiran S. Kedlaya        627                    Betraying, briefly  /  doublexing

Sidney L. Robbins      646                    Saying  /  saw

Manny Nosowsky       654                    Where exes are made  /  reno

Lois Sidway                668                    Overhead lighting?  /  halo

Norma Steinberg         669                   Marriage?  /  altaredstate

Chuck Deodene          749                    Acupuncturist’s fee?  stickerprice

                                                               Dermatologist’s pronouncement?  rashdecision

                                                               Arthroscopic surgeries?  /  jointventures

Martin Schneider        852                   B  /  cflat

Hugh Davis                 857                    Like some kisses and bases  /  stolen

Bob Klahn                   885                    Fall setting  /  eden

Martin Ashwood-Smith  890               Appropriate cry for Crusoe?  /  tgif

Patrick Jordan             896                   Isn’t on the street?  /  aint

Martin Ashwood-Smith

and Bob Klahn            904                    Hamlet’s relatives  /  towns

William Bernhardt      914                   Peter or the Wolfe?  /  nero

Richard Silvestri         924                   Works on pumps, maybe  /  resoles

Jim Page                      944                   At first  /  onbase

Elizabeth Gorski         955                   Child, for one  /  chef 

Frances Hansen           974                   Result of a burning desire  / arson

Crossword Connoisseur

You Don’t Say. . . Friday, June 6, 2014

I'm an old man now and can see that my life has been in a sense one continuous string of enthusiasms that have grabbed my attention and then held on for long periods of time.  Like crossword puzzles, for example.  I can be diverted for stretches of time by Sudokus and online Scrabble, but only crosswords absorb me so completely that time seems to stand still. 
            My mother worked them daily before me, and so I did too as a young man, never thinking while I junior-puzzled that I was becoming an addict.  I wasn't fully hooked, however, until my wife gave me The New York Times Ultimate Crossword Omnibus in 2003, the year it was published.  "Omnibus" in this context turned out to be 1001 daily puzzles, Monday through Saturday, that editor Will Shortz pulled out of the pages of the Times between 1993 and 1997.  These were the first thousand and one puzzles he edited for the Times, "the cream of the crop," he wrote in the Introduction, "of the thousands of puzzles submitted to me until then."
            Shortz tried to imagine how long it would take a person to go through them all.  He thought maybe two weeks of round-the-clock solving would do it, at about twenty minutes per puzzle--and without any breaks for eating, washing, sleeping, or going to the bathroom.  My more modest goal was one a day, which I stuck to from September 26, 2003 to August 6, 2006.  It took two years, ten months, and six days.  It was a crazy-long commitment--and by the end of it, I was indeed an addict.
            But not necessarily to the Times puzzles, even though they are still the gold standard.  The problem is that since 2006, I’ve been living in central Florida and now have just a weekend newspaper subscription—and I’m not a fan of Shortz's weekend work:  Friday and Saturday puzzles are punishingly hard, which compromises whatever wit and charm they may have been aiming for, and Sunday puzzles are bigger than I like.  Monday puzzles are too easy.  But I do like the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday puzzles, which I usually pick up at the grocery store where I buy the Times for $2.50.  

I tried the online version, but didn’t get along as well with the keyboard as I do with a pencil—or pen.  Using a pen makes the puzzle harder because you have to be very sure before adding words to the grid.  The idea is to make the puzzle as hard as you can but still be able to solve it.  (I read once that Ben Bradlee, legendary editor of the Washington Post from 1968-1991, solved puzzles in his head!)  Every solver has a limit as to how hard the puzzle can be, and part of the fun is stretching yourself out as far as you can in pursuit of that perfect difficulty level.
            Yesterday's Thursday puzzle constructed by Ed Sessa was typically clever, spinning around the answer to 34A:  "1860's novel that is the basis for this puzzle's theme."  The answer was Little Women.  But there were no clues in the puzzle that showed exactly where to find Little Women references.  It wasn't too hard to figure out that they were buried in the four long answers.  17A asked for the "American Moses," which was Brigham Young, but there weren't enough spaces, so I knew at once that one space needed three letters.  It turned out the missing letters were AMY, which provided the pattern for the other Little Women references:  the missing letters in 10D (Shakespeare play setting:  Globe Theater) were BETH; the missing letters in 32D (Ribald humor:  dirty jokes) were JO; and the missing letters in 55A (Baby boomers, with "the":  me generation) were MEG.  And thus the little women were identified and the puzzle was solved.  It's the puzzle within a puzzle that makes all the difference.

Here's another typical Times Thursday adventure, this one by Keith Talon on July 3, 2008.  There are three clues for thirteen-letter answers, each of them with a fiendishly placed error.  20A's clue is "What this answer could use?" which turns out to be PROOFREADINNG.  The clue for 37A is "Like this answer's error," which is TYPOGRPAHICAL.  And the third clue is "This answer contains one":  MISPELLEDWORD.  Not only are the answers ingeniously difficult, they are all spelled wrong.  Brilliant fun.

Thursday puzzles in the Times (and nowadays elsewhere too) are clearly and unarguably the best of the week for me--especially when they contain a puzzle within a puzzle.  And when they do, it's no contest.  They are simply the greatest fun to solve.  Friday and Saturday puzzles are no fun at all, merely being hard for the sake of being hard—and it’s a given that any constructor and his or her editor can make any puzzle harder than anyone can solve--anyone except the Puzzle Prodigies, who walk the earth like mere mortals until crossword puzzles come out and are solved in less time than it takes most of us to sharpen our pencils.  They're a perverse bunch and the less said about them, the better.

It's the Thursday puzzle, then, that packs all the punch, provides more fun per grid than any other all week.  Take it from me, a sort of slightly above average solver--and a genuine, if self-styled, crossword connoisseur. 

        

An Actress, an Author, and an English Teacher: Advice to Young Writers

          There's a short article in the new issue of The Week (March 7, 2014) about the insecurities of British actress Emily Mortimer, daughter of the late and famous lawyer and author, John Mortimer.  She attributes her chronic feelings of self-doubt to the circumstances surrounding her admission to an exclusive private school in London.  It seems she was on the "wait list" until her father took the headmistress out to lunch:  "I'm sure he told her what an attractive, wonderful woman she was and put his hand on her knee, or something, and then I got in."  Making matters worse, "I got him to write all my essays," which was fine, she reported, until the final grades came in.  One of her teachers said that her stories were good, "but that they lack that vital spark of imagination"--which made her father so mad that he had to be restrained from taking the matter up with school officials.
        The anecdote is amusing of course, and perhaps even true, but Emily Mortimer's teacher does make one wonder about English teachers in general.  I spent a lifetime being one, and what I observed was that very few of my colleagues ever wrote a word--and yet felt fully competent to teach writing.  It doesn't compute.  Would you want to learn about car mechanics from someone who never worked on cars?
          My advice to young writers:  keep writing and trust your instincts.  They are probably a better guide than your teachers.
  .

Being Godlike in a Godless Universe

         We are homo sapiens, "wise men," a species seemingly singled out to walk upright, to speak, to think and reason.  We've got a big brainpan.  We're special.  Made in the image of God, according to some.  Godlike.
          That doesn't make much sense when we think about how creepy and klutzy we are as humans, how low-down and scheming and self-serving.  It doesn't make much sense when we think about how fragile we are in these bodies, how many ways there are for them to break down and die before their time.  And even when allotted the full biblical share of "threescore and ten" (not much by modern standards of longevity), eventually the body and mind fail and we are left a pathetic shell of what we once were.  All in less than a hundred years.  That's Godlike?  Surely He could have come up with something better than that, right?  
          And what about all those bodily functions that are smelly and disgusting?  Those are Godlike?  And sex.  What about that?  Heavy and sweaty bodies gasping for breath and clutching each other like animals in heat, explosive orgasms--that's Godlike?  Fornication seems pretty dirty to be Godlike, doesn't it?  No, if the fragile, appetite-driven, animal-like human body is Godlike, we've got to wonder what kind of God He is.  Why couldn't He have done any better?  What was He thinking?  It doesn't add up.
  

          It is argued, of course, that all this "made in God's image" stuff shouldn’t be taken too literally.  After all, we do think and reason, that must be how we are made in God’s image.  And it is true that we have thought and reasoned our way to greatness throughout the entire catalog of human inquiry.  That must surely be Godlike.   

We understand, for example, evolution's role in the origin of the species, although that understanding meant we had to give up the Adam and Eve myth.  We understand cosmology too, or great chunks of it, including the age of the universe, many of the physical laws that govern it, and even its origin, although this knowledge has come to us at the expense of the creation myth in Genesis.  And we also understand quantum mechanics, including the subatomic structures that have explained such mysteries as the formation of matter in the universe, but that unfortunately didn’t leave God with anything to create.
          So now we have a new mystery.  How is it that God gave us reason and intelligence enough to conclude that He has no role in anything--not in the formation of the heavens and the earth, not in the creation of mankind, and not in the basic formation of matter.  The only conclusion that makes sense is that there is no God.
          Which is strangely consoling.  If we are in fact made in God's image, then we have to ask if the evil side of human nature is a mirror image of an evil side of God, which is an unthinkable concept for those who believe He exists.  But if God doesn't exist, then everything makes sense again, for we can readily explain evil simply by looking within ourselves, or by accepting horrific natural disasters as the work of an indifferent universe instead of a vengeful God.  When nature causes human suffering, it isn't personal.  
           And if there is no God, we don't have to worry about the Bible either, which is clearly a work of fiction--now bloodthirsty, now lustful--flights of fantasy co-existing with horrible tests of faith.  It's a good read, a wonderful romp through the ancient world, violent and grotesque at times, lyrical and gentle at other times.  If God doesn't exist, then the Bible can be read as the good book it is, not the Good Book believers cling to in place of reason and common sense. 

            The glory of the human experience is that we are on a solitary journey through time and space and that we have discovered the truths of the universe all on our own.  And while we haven't yet unlocked all the secrets of the universe, we have probed deeply, asked the right questions, and persisted in our work, and one day homo sapiens will figure it all out.  In time.  All of us should be proud to be part of this problem-solving species.  We are merciful and forgiving and infinitely curious about the Big Questions that we have been picking away at for a few thousand years, hardly any time at all when we recall the universe is about fourteen billion years old.  We are remarkable all on our own.
          Cheers to the godless.  Without you we'd still be stuck interpreting tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions as God's displeasure with His chosen people, wondering just where we went wrong and why we needed to be punished.

          Thank God we've grown past all that.

"Buy American"

 For a couple of generations (and probably longer than that), we have been barraged with frantic reminders to buy American products, to put our people back to work, and not to spend our money on products made overseas.  Originally the villain was Japan.  We had to avoid the "rice burners" that were putting the American auto industry out of business, stealing jobs from American workers.  Hondas and Toyotas, however, were such good products that American consumers bought them in record numbers--and forced Detroit into making better products.

More recently China has taken over as the bogeyman threatening American workers by producing cheaper goods than we can produce, cheaper but inferior, we like to say.  China and Third World countries have a monopoly it seems on just about everything we need to buy—and every day or so, I get hysterical e-mails about how we must be ever-vigilant to avoid products "Made in China."  Protect American jobs:  "Buy American." It's outraged self-righteousness that I hear. 

Last week, however, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped some 500 points in two days.  Analysts attributed the losses to the Chinese stock market, which turned up shaky one day and caused a kind of mini-panic in the American market.  So maybe the "Buy American" campaign is finally taking root at the expense of the Chinese manufacturers, ironically causing a dip in the American economy. 

Maybe buying American isn't the answer.  Maybe the free market that has us buying available goods at lower prices has to be considered right.  Maybe buying Chinese actually pumps up the American economy.  An odd thought.