We were sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Dallas, Texas, when the person next to me asked, “What should I order? I don’t often eat Chinese.”

Without thinking, I blurted, “Moo Goo Gai Pan. Try it. It’s a traditional American-Chinese dish.”

“Moo goo gai pan” derives from the Cantonese words “mohgu” (button mushrooms) and “gai pin” (sliced or cubed chicken). You can hear moo goo gai pan in mohgu gai pin. The dish is a simple stir-fry of chicken, mushrooms and other vegetables in a light white sauce. Very nice, not complicated and a good introduction to Americanized Chinese food for the uninitiated seeking to expand their taste buds to new regions, without the long flight to Guangzhou.

Guangzhou, also known a Canton, is situated on the Pearl River in southern China about 75 miles (120 kilometers) upstream from Hong Kong. Canton is a thriving port, a busy manufacturing center and a global commercial destination with a population of over fourteen million residents. There have always been folks moving into and out of Canton. The Cantonese emigrants are the ones who introduced the world to Cantonese cuisine. In fact, most Chinese restaurants in America began by serving Cantonese dishes, among them, moo goo gai pan.

“How do you like it?” I asked.

“It’s good. Different, but good,” my table-mate responded. “I should try more Chinese dishes.”

“You should,” I responded enthusiastically. “This is just a drop in the bucket.”

“Huh?” the individual questioned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s an idiom.”

An idiom is a group of words having a meaning not deducible from the individual words. I meant to tell the person beside me that this is one of many, the first of a large number of Cantonese dishes you can try and enjoy. The phrase I used is an ancient one. About 2,500 years ago, “a drop in the bucket” was written into the Book of Isaiah, the first book of the Major Prophets in the Old Testament. There, and today, it has the added inference of not only being smaller in relationship to a greater whole, but also of being insignificant or unimportant or trivial. I certainly didn’t mean any of those. I realized I had better correct myself.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean this wasn’t an important dish. I meant this is one of many wonderful dishes from Canton. Sorry again, I probably used the wrong idiom.”

My meal-sharer gave me an odd look. “What’s an idiom and where is Canton? I thought we were eating Chinese and you liked moo goo gai pan.”

“We are and I do.” I punched this web site into my handheld and handed the other diner my phone. “Please read this,” I said. “It will explain everything.”

Whew, that was close. But, how did I know to write this post before I went to dinner?

The Internet is truly amazing and so is Cantonese food.

Here or in China, try some and enjoy.

Grandpa Jim

The flu bug has attacked!!

The doctor confirmed it. With a swab stick stuck quickly and not pleasantly deep in the back of the nose, analyzed and retrieved, our physician announced: “You have the Type A Infulenza.”

But, what is “influenza” and where did it come from, anyway?

The word “influenza” is Italian for “influence.” The idiomatic context is that of influencing on a grand or cosmic or “epidemic” scale. In 1743, it appears people got really sick in Europe from a fever that had started in Italy and spread. This spreading fever was referred to as “influenza di catarro,” meaning an “outbreak of the catarrhal fever.” The Italians had apparently been using “influenza” to describe their grand colds and fevers since around 1504, but that 1743 epidemic was apparently a doozy, got everyone’s attention, and popularized the use of term “influenza” to describe an epidemic outbreak of a very bad and dangerous cold.

“Flu,” of course, is just a short form of “influenza.” I don’t know if the Italians every used “flu” in the 16th through 18th centuries, but that is what we commonly call influenza today.

But, where did it come from, really?

Well, the Italians thought influenza came from the sky. It began out there somewhere, among the distant stars. We think we know today that flu comes from viruses. We also think that the flu viruses originally came from birds and pigs and were transmitted to humans. We humans pass the viruses around and between ourselves when we cough and touch. Very nasty stuff, those viruses.

But, is that really all the story.

And, what, on earth, is a virus?

The short answer for “virus” is, “No one really knows?”

Let’s look at the longer answer. A virus looks somewhat like a living cell, but it has no brain (no nucleus), it can’t grow on its own, and it can’t make its own energy. To replicate and make more of itself, the virus must invade one of your cells and trick your cell’s machinery into making a bunch of new look-alike viruses. Now all those new viruses (none with a brain) escape your first cell (likely with very real damage to that cell) and attack more of your other living cells. The virus, now viruses, is on a roll and is using you to make more look-alike viruses. Your body does not like this and attacks back. Now you are sick from your damaged cells and all your defensive efforts. The process goes on-and-on and can cascade into a full-fledged, all-out war. Now, you are even sicker. Most bodies win and you recover. Unfortunately, it is estimated that some 300,000 to 500,000 people world-wide die each year from the flu and related causes.

All this hurt, damage and pain because of something without a brain.

We have no real answer. In 1938, Jonas Salk helped to develop the first flu vaccine, but this is not a cure. The flu shot lets your body recognize certain flu virus from dead viruses in the vaccine. This gives your body a headstart to prepare to fight back if and when the virus attacks. Wonderful stuff, the flu shot, but not the full answer to the “virus problem.”

What is the answer to the “virus problem”? The answer may be built into the structure of the virus itself. The virus has no real brain. Perhaps the answer is: Find the brain and you can stop the viruses at their source. Maybe, somewhere, there is a master cell, with a brain, that designs the viruses to do their work without individual brains.

Find the brain. Stop the virus.

I like that. The problem is we don’t know where that master design cell resides. It could be in the birds and pigs from which we believe the viruses were first transmitted to humans. Or, it could be somewhere else.

Back to those Italians, one of the more ancient meanings of the origin-word “influenza” is a visitation or influence from the stars. Could it be that the origin of the flu virus is somehow extraterrestrial? This sounds a bit like science fiction, but sometimes the old stories can have a very modern and successful application.

Whatever the answer is, it is not “Run for your lives!” We cannot escape the viruses among us, and flu shots are only a temporary and partial response. If a spacecraft can land on the dark side of the moon, perhaps there is a hidden side of the “virus problem” that has yet to be explored.

Until then, we’ll take our medications, rest, drink plenty of fluids and wait for the battles to stop and our cells to declare victory.

Still, it would be comforting to know where those pesky viruses really did come from and maybe stop them at their source.

Who knows?

Grandpa Jim

Post Script: What about another approach? Maybe, someone could put a nucleus, a brain, into a virus. Maybe too, that someone could program the new virus brain so the new virus would be the “Smart Virus.” Mr. Smart would tell the other viruses to “Get out of town.” And, they would, to some other place or planet or galaxy. Maybe, that was how we got them in the first place. Perhaps, with viruses, fair is fair and far is better — really far, far away. Say, how about the “Gosh I’m Lost” Galaxy in the “Too Far From Here” Constellation? It would be a road trip, but they are viruses (without brains), and besides, we have had them long enough. Don’t you think?

Stay tuned, a new ChildTell Story is on the way.

This one does have an African connection.

There is a dog and a bear and more.

What more depends on weather.

Whether the lost is found.

Check back soon.

A new story.

For you.

Grandpa Jim

Good question.

The Answer is, “It’s taken a while.”

Four thousand years ago, around 2,000 B.C., in ancient Iraq, the New Year began on the vernal equinox in March. You may recall that “vernal” is Latin for “spring” and “equinox” means “equal night” because on that day the hours of light and dark are equal in duration. See the blog post of March 21, 2016.

So, New Year’s Day was the first day of spring (March 20th in this year of 2019), which makes a great deal of sense, because the first day of spring was the start of the new growing year — the grass was sprouting, flowers were blooming, the sun was shining and birds were singing (at least in the northern hemisphere, which is the locus of the present discussion).

But this very reasonable approach didn’t last forever.

In 753 B.C., Romulus became the first King of Rome in what is modern-day Italy. Romulus didn’t particularly like the then current Roman calendar because the counting of the months began on March 1 and ended on the last day of December. There were only ten months (“decem” means “ten” in Latin), and then a long cold dark time between the end of December and the beginning of March, a time with no name — which made some sense because there wasn’t much you could do back up to that time but wait for spring. Still, it was a bit untidy, especially for a growing empire with administrators at work all the time trying to record and date accurately a conquering here, there and everywhere. The expanding empire needed more months.

In 715 B.C., the second King of Rome, Numa Pampilius, fixed that. Numa officially established the months of January and February and stuck those new months right where the long uncharted dark had been. Now we had a regular year. Hooray, Numa Pampilius!

For more background on the new months and Kings Romulus and Numa, see the blog post of February 27, 2014:

Well, those administrators stepped back into the fray again in 153 B.C. and began appointing new Roman Consuls on January 1st. It’s not clear why they did this. Perhaps it was because everyone used to stop their old jobs at the end of December for the winter off-time, and our administrators wanted to keep the empire going by appointing folks to their new positions with a strong admonishment to, “Get to work. Now! No time off in this empire.” We may never know for sure, but Romans had already begun to date their years by these consulships. “Out with the old, in with the new,” you might say. So, the new date of appointing consuls became the date of the new year, and January 1 became New Year’s Day.

Between 153 B.C. and 1582 A.D., a lot of people messed with New Year’s Day. Some accepted the new date of January 1, while others continued to keep the March date of the vernal equinox. After Jesus of Nazareth, there were moves to Christmas Day (December 25th today) and Easter (today the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox — you can only imagine what those Romans administrators would say to a floating date). It all became quite confusing with people asking one another, “When does the New Year start?”

Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII effectively said, “Enough is enough.” Gregory cleaned up the old Roman calendar, which had become known as the Julien Calendar (after Julius Caesar, of course), instituted his newer version, which is called the Gregorian Calendar (the calendar we use today), and restored January 1st as New Year’s Day. Hooray, Pope Gregory!

Still, it took quite a while for folks to accept the Gregorian Calendar and January 1 as the agreed date for New Year’s Day. The British weren’t all in for some time. Even in the early American Colonies, the March date was New Year’s Day. This stopped about 1752. Since then, for some 267 years now, January 1 has been the start of the New Year in what is the modern-day USA.

Whew! That is a long way to 2019, which began on January 1st. Just a few days ago. I hope.

Happy New Year, wherever, whenever and however you celebrate it.

Perhaps, it is the thought that truly counts.

Except for administrators.

Of course.

Grandpa Jim