Ed Teach's Sword, Discovered

2011.01.15
135 Days Remaining

01. Today I walked (having decided that I need the exercise) to the grocery store. The walk to the store was only slightly more strenuous than normal (I probably walk there as much as I drive - according to Yahoo Maps it's approximately 2.25 miles each way) due to the ongoing lack of consistent plowing or shoveling along my route, but I have no particular issue with walking carefully on packed snow, or climbing over small disorganized hills of plowed snow. The walk back, on the other hand, was somewhat more difficult, as I purchased more than I had intended upon setting out. I mention that not to complain about my sore arms and hands (carrying those plastic bags any significant by hand is a royal pain), but to mention that as I was walking up a hill along my route, a man pulled up beside me and asked where I was going, offering to drive me. I had the same thing happen (though with a different man) back in October when I was doing the same walk (though there wasn't snow on the ground, and I wasn't carrying so much that time). So that's two people who've spontaneously offered to help me out when seeing me carry heavy loads. I just thought I'd mention this, as evidence that people can be nice for no other reason than to be nice.

02. I enjoy spending money. Not throwing it away on ridiculous things. I like the feeling of paying bills and buying goods or services and saying, "I paid for that." One of the things I can't (or won't because this place feels so temporary) do here is stock my kitchen fully and properly. When I left my ex-wife I kept only a small portion of our foodstuffs, including the spices, flour, etc. So I'm working without anything like a functional base when cooking. Add to that the lack of proper pots and pans, and I feel like a wet-behind-the-ears college graduate, rather than a man in his mid-30s. Today at the grocery store, thinking of my limited cabinet space and restricted functionality, I looked at things I would like to buy, of recipes I don't have the means to cook, and of the cookware I don't currently own. Someday. Tomorrow, anyway, I'm having pancakes, having bought maple syrup today.

03. Lavinia emailed me today to say that her Black Lab puppy, Zeke, was undergoing surgery because apparently he ate some sort of stuffed animal stuffing and was unable to digest it. She indicated that he was apparently coming through surgery okay, but I feel for both her and the dog that this happened. Poor little guy. Speaking of dogs, on my walk today I passed a couple out walking their Corgi, who is so short that it can't see over the shoveled snow. If I wasn't directly behind them, I would have thought they were using one of those silly "invisible dog" rigid leashes. It was very cute.

04. The semester is coming up quickly, and one of the events of the Spring has already started: requests for recommendation letters for next year's semester abroad programs. I don't particularly mind doing the letters, but I sometimes wonder how seriously they're taken. I suspect the letters are just a pro forma part of the application packet.

05. Oh! I forgot to mention yesterday that Iunia lost her first baby tooth two nights ago. My girl is getting bigger all the time. I remember being excited when she got her first baby tooth.

06. YahooNews posted an article from the ongoing excavation of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of Blackbeard, my all-time most favoritest pirate ever. Apparently a sword was found which, for some reason, the excavators think may have belonged to Thatch himself. A word of explanation: many (though not all) of the pirates in the early 18th century had noms de guerre to prevent the stigmatization of their families, and Blackbeard was no exception. He was actually known by the name Edward T-ch (variously spelled "Thatch," "Teach," "Tach," "Theatch," etc.), but that was probably not his birth name, and then it got even more complicated as his fame spread and he was given the nickname "Blackbeard" (because, interestingly, he had a black beard worn long - onomastically imaginative, the early 18th century press was not). So why is he my most favoritest pirate ever? Because, despite his fearsome reputation, he actually mostly scared the living hell out of people, rather than being a butcher (he was very media-savvy, and cultivated the image of a monstrous murderer, but in fact seems to have preferred not murdering people whenever he could avoid it). His crew was found, during their trial after his death (he commanded several ships, and while everyone with him on his last day died, 16 other crewmen were arrested later elsewhere) to be racially integrated, an interesting example of why the pirates of the Caribbean are worth more study and thinking - there's one school of thinking that pirate ships were more like republics than dictatorships (fictionalized accounts notwithstanding, pirate crews served under what was called "free suffrage" and were not subject to the captain's autocratic whims), and more egalitarian, in racial and socio-economic terms, than anything else in European cultures of the time.

07. Anyway, despite all of his apparent preference for threat over violence to achieve his goals, when the chips were down, Blackbeard went out like nobody's business. From the firsthand accounts, when he was captured and killed on 22 November 1718, he was one of the angriest human beings on the planet, possibly ever. After the entire rest of his crew were dead, it took all of the remaining British soldiers involved to wrestle him down and kill him. The official report noted that he had been shot 5 times (and we're talking pistols and muskets, the latter of which leave grapefruit-sized holes in people) and stabbed/cut at least 20 times. He had to be actively wrestled down after someone came up behind him and slit his throat with a knife. He individually sustained wounds that would have killed several other people if the wounds were distributed one per person. In one later retelling, it only stopped when they actually cut off his head, and he couldn't bite the people holding him down anymore. I mean, JESUS CHRIST. If you're going to go, go hard.

08. Speaking of Blackbeard, he'll be portrayed by Ian McShane in the upcoming fourth Pirates of the Caribbean films, subtitled On Stranger Tides (based on the excellent novel by Tim Powers). I mention McShane because I've been thinking about television the past few days, having spent so much time over the past semester watching old shows on Netflix. Last semester one of my students asked what my favorite TV show was, and I didn't have a ready answer, but I do, in fact, have two shows I would consider my favorites, different though they may be: The Adventures of Pete and Pete and Deadwood (starring Ian McShane, among others). In tone, focus, and them, these shows have nothing in common other than being non-big 3 network productions (AoP&P was done by Nickelodeon, and Deadwood by HBO), but AoP&P depicts a world that I wish were real, and Deadwood just has some of the most psychologically complicated and artful storytelling I've ever seen (including the final episode of the first season, which is actually my single favorite episode of any television ever).

09. I shaved off my beard a few days ago, mostly because I've decided to grow it all out, instead of just the Van Dyke, for the winter months, and it's less of a nuisance to just start it from scratch rather than having a multi-tiered beard for several weeks. But, and I always forget this, it itches in the early stages of growth. Blackbeard, I am not.

10. And that's about it.