Is there a right to privacy?

There is this curious passage in the New Testament Book of Luke, Chapter 12, Verses 2&3:

“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed,

nor secret that will not be known.

Therefore whatever you have said in darkness

will be heard in light,

and what you have whispered behind closed doors

will be proclaimed on the housetops.”

I think most politicians know this verse — or are in the process of learning it.

But is there a right to privacy?

* * *

A “right” is a moral or legal entitlement to have something. “Privacy” is being free from public attention. So a right to privacy is an entitlement to be free from public attention. But from where does this right derive?

A “moral” right is a right based on fundamental principles of right and wrong. In the Old Testament Book of Exodus, Chapter 20, Verses 2-17, we have the Ten Commandments, one of the most fundamental statements of right and wrong. In fact, the Old and New Testaments are widely considered a foundational compendia of moral rightness and wrongness.

But the verse from Luke quoted above is clear that all private matters, secret sayings and muffled whisperings will be made public. From this we can infer that there is no moral entitlement for our actions, words or writings to be free from public attention. So, if there is a right to privacy, it must be a legal entitlement and not of moral origins.

* * *

In the United States, the US Constitution does not contain a stated right to privacy. Judges have suggested that a right to privacy can be found in the various Amendments to the Constitution. However, judicial pronouncements reaching for a right to privacy from those sources have been limited in interpretation, controversial in application and not of significant reach for use by the general public.

Largely, the various statutory rights to privacy has been narrowly drawn in written laws enacted by the US Congress, the State Legislatures and local governmental authorities. These laws punish people who let go of certain of your information and allow it to reach the attention of the public. Doctors and hospitals must keep your medical records private. Governmental employees must not release certain information in your file. Financial institutions must limit who can access parts of your credit history and its analyses.

These laws penalize certain folk who do not keep from the public some of your tightly defined “private” information, but none of these laws help much once the information is released. The bad actors may be subject to administrative fines by the agencies, criminal prosecutions by the authorities and civil suits by you for damages, but once your information is released, it’s released.

Released private information is published information, and there’s no pulling back that which has been published and entered the public domain. The secret is no longer secret. The private is no longer private. Even if the laws somehow allow you to try to go and get it and hide it again, we all know that doesn’t work.

Once out, always out. Such is the world of today’s data. Once public, it’s public again and forever. Thank you, Amen.

As Luke suggests, this may be the natural state of human affairs: The concealed, revealed; the secret, known; that said in darkness, bright under the spotlight; and that whispered behind closed doors, proclaimed to the world — and beyond to the ethers of time and space.

* * *

Why fight it? If it’s worth saying, shout it to the housetops. If it’s worth writing, put it on the Internet. If it’s not, don’t.

As Cosmo Castorini (Vincent Gardenia) said to his daughter, Loretta (Cher — who received the Best Actress Oscar for her role), in the 1987 movie, Moonstruck: “They find out anyway.”

They find out anyway.

Grandpa Jim

At the end of the meal, I put down my chopsticks and picked up the fortune cookie.

Fortune cookies are not Chinese or Japanese.

Much debate surrounds the location of emergence of the first small folded golden-brown cookie with the saying inside. Some say San Francisco. Some say Los Angeles. No one says Beijing or Tokyo. The Chinese and Japanese words for the crisp little treat are the English words: “Fortune Cookie.” Sometimes the name speaks for itself.

There is common agreement that around 1900 fortune cookies started to be served as a hand-made novelty and complimentary finish-to-the-meal at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco and the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles. The cookie craze captivated the culinary community and continues to this day.

Today, some three billion fortune cookies are automatically filled, baked and sent with fortunes intact around the world each year. One manufacturer in Brooklyn is reported to create over 4.5 million cookies each and every day. That’s a lot of fortunes to fill.

I yawned and cracked my cookie.

The white slip of paper fell to the tabletop.

There was the “LEARN CHINESE” symbols for “Pear” (with a pronunciation guide) above my “Lucky Numbers.” I did get a “7!” I always like the numbers and I always find a lucky one. Fortune cookies are reliably good for good fortune.

I turned the slip over.

“All generalities are false.”

I laughed aloud, glanced down and stole a look at the surrounding tables to see if I’d been noticed.

Good, my fortune was secure from spies.

I returned to the small piece of paper.

This fortune was unusual for not directly predicting something pleasingly good, positively uncertain or encouragingly unsure. It was not bad, of course – none I’ve experienced have been. But what this short statement said started a surprising slide into seeking and saying suspense.

If all generalities are false, then this generality is itself false. So, all generalities are not false. But, that in itself is another generality. So, the next logical step in the progression is that all generalities are not not false, which I think brings us back to all generalities are false (two negatives make a positive), which is where we started, which is funny, like the 1993 movie “Ground Hog Day” (Bill Murray) is funny to watch for his repeats, but not to experience over and over again. I laughed again (softly) and decided not to try to figure further for fear of hurting my head.

This was a worthy fortune.

I like these cookies.

On August 21, 2013, the Japanese idol girl group AKB48 released its successful single “Koi suru Fortune Cookie,” which can be read to mean “I Love Fortune Cookie.” I like the following excerpted parts of the translated lyrics:

Love Fortune Cookie

The future ain’t that bad

Hey! Hey! Hey!

You gotta show your smile to get some of that luck

Heart-shaped Fortune Cookie

Let’s start making our luck better

Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hey! Hey! Hey!

Life ain’t all that bad

A surprising miracle will come in a surprising way.

Now, that’s not all bad.

Listen closely, Hey!

You may catch

A smile and

Surprise.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAPUyEqcMrY[/embedyt]

Grandpa Jim

Water on Mars?

That’s been known for years.

To date, there have been at least seven landers placed on the surface of the Red Planet. Those rolling robots have prowled about taking samples and analyzing data. Here’s a selfie by the most recent robot recorder, Mars Rover Curiosity.

Above Curiosity in orbit, there have been at least six circling spacecraft taking pictures and recording data. The one with the pictures causing the current stir is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO.

Weather working on the ground or in the air, Curiosity, MRO and their buddies have acquired a wealth of information. All that data and all those pictures have shown that Mars has ice.

Frozen Martian water is nothing new.

Flowing Martian water is new.

That’s the new news.

Take a peek at

This pic.

That’s a far distant and barren Martian ridgescape. It looks pretty inhospitable. But notice the lines down the slope fanning to darker tones. The astroscientists squinting at the picture call those lines “lineae” — an old Latin word meaning, you guessed it, “line.” Those are fancy Latin lines on the planet named for the Roman God of War.

Well, those scientists watched and watched those lines. They noticed in Mars summer, the lineae reach and extend down the slope. In Mars winter, the lineae stop where they reach, extend no more, and turn a darker shade of gray.

In another picture, the studious studiers followed gullied rivulets cutting and cascading down a sandy fall.

Abandoning their Latin, the smart guys in the back room slowly stood on their chairs with hands raised to the stars and shouted, “That’s liquid water! It flows, evaporates and leaves behind a darkened residue. It cuts, shapes and forms a carved canyonet. That’s liquid water, and it’s flowing!”

Not bad. It only took four years, but not bad. A graduate student spotted the liquid lines in 2011. In the back room, things take time.

“Was ice, now water. So what?” you say.

Good question. Simple answer.

Living organisms, as we know them, need liquid water to form, grow and survive. We humans are in the range of 60% liquid water. Yes, we are mostly water; and without water, we would be mostly gone. Considering how little liquid water there is on Mars these days (and the intermittent lineae would seem to confirm the sparcity), this may explain why our curious rover has found no wild men, white apes or Princess of Helium on Barsoom (the name Edgar Rice Burroughs gave the Mars of John Carter).

Still, there may be bugs. Bacteria may thrive where hominids dare to travel. Bacteria are simple one-celled organisms who are themselves 80-90 percent water. For their smaller size, the bacterial bugs are more resistant and less demanding than larger creatures. Importantly, though tiny, they do constitute “life” as we know it, which is why the scientists are so excited. Liquid water may mean bugs, and bacteria may mean life and a living planet.

Now those with the pocket protectors and taped black glasses are standing higher on their chairs, reaching and chanting: “Life on Mars. Life on Mars. Life on Mars.”

What’s all the fuss.

Some have known that.

Just ask Marvin the Martian.

Disney had this figured out long ago.

Grandpa Jim

Today in Persia (modern Iran) when you wear a belt around the waist, you are wearing a kamarband. Kamarband derives from the Persian words kamar (waist) and band (closed). You have closed your pants with a kamarband.

In the early 1600’s, the British military officers in India began to wear lighter kamarbands for waist sashes in place of the heavier and hotter waistcoats brought from the cooler British Isles. When those officers returned home and attended formal functions in their dress uniforms, they wore their cool Indian kamarbands, which they renamed cumberbunds. The cumberbund was an earned badge of Colonial service.

The English formal elite was quite taken with this new dress idea and designed their own cumberbunds to wear with tuxedos to black-tie events.

Of course, as eveningwear the cumberbunds of the nobility were designed with the pleats facing up to stow and show the best tickets to the evening’s play.

It was all a bit of show and nonsense. Good clean fun. Tending somewhat to the funny and unusual in appearance and nomenclature. Even today, at formal festivities, the men in black are often held in place by cumberbunds. “Quite odd,” you might say with a chuckle, “what men do wear and name their clothes.”

There was another British fellow who was himself quite famous for fun and nonsense naming.

Edward Lear is the father of literary nonsense. He had a knack for mis-applying and even inventing words, especially words with a funny sound or unusual form of their own. Perhaps his most famous nonsense poem is the “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which contains these memorable lines of an avian sage and fanciful feline at their wedding reception:

So they . . . were married the next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

“Runcible” has itself become one of the most loved non-words in the history of rhyme. While, the dancing phrase “ by the light of the moon” has come to embody an affable, fanciful and dear-hearted play at words and life.

After they fell into the sliding-roofed gymnasium pool in 1946 at the start of Frank Capra’s film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” James Stewart and Donna Reed wander home hand in hand in borrowed clothes and wrapped towels singing loudly this song to their sleeping neighbors:

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

Come out tonight, Come out tonight?

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

And dance by the light of the moon.

It’s that owl and the pussy cat again. Pure unrestrained nonsense. No fear here.

Lest you be overly consoled, there can be in nonsense verse a worrisomeness around the strange words that there do appear. You thought the cumberbund a belt of lowly origin and haughty status. Could it be something else entirely unimagined?

When Edward Lear visited India, he saw in his own words what was really that fearsome sash squeezing so tightly.

Drawing a deep breath and exhaling quickly, the author on June 22, 1874 published in The Times of India (Bombay edition) his truer understanding of the clamping cumberbund in “The Cummerbund – An Indian Poem.” Here is a selected sampling of the lines, followed in turn by a curious reading of its own:

She sat upon her Dobie,

To watch the evening star,

* * *

Below her home the river rolled

With soft meloobious sound,

* * *

And all night long the Mussak moan’d

Its melancholy tone.

* * *

When all at one a cry arose, —

“The Cummerbund is come!”

In vain she fled: — with open jaws

The angry monster followed,

And so, (before assistance came,)

That Lady Fair was swallowed.

Oh owl, cat and buffalo gals, run, run, run!!!!

For by the light of the moon, the Cummerbund is come.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47u5HOwQr1A[/embedyt]

Grandpa Jim

Flying Piano Discovers Dog.

On January 19, 2006, the New Horizons interplanetary space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to discover who Pluto really is. At the time of the launch, Pluto was the ninth planet from the sun in our solar system. Some nine months later, on September 13, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially reclassified Pluto as a minor or dwarf planet. The hue and cry has not abated to this day, and it is reported that the New Horizons launch team has never accepted the diminished status of their goal.

New Horizons is about the size of a flying piano, with additional bells, whistles and assorted gadgetries – of course. On July 14, 2015, just over two months ago, the flying piano passed Pluto and the pictures were snapped. Many pictures were snapped. Because of the distance and technology involved, those shots are being rationed back to earth. They show an incredible and unsuspected landscape.

Curiously, in these pictures there appear to be vast regions of lighter colored dunes. It is not known if these dunes are composed of sand or ice particles; and, on a planet with no known winds, it is not known how dunes could have formed. Nonetheless, dunes are there to be seen; and those dunes — of whatever origins they may be — form bright areas. One of those areas has an interesting, intriguing and perhaps unsuspected outline.

On March 24, 1930 (less than a month after the discovery of the celestial object on February 18, 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh), the new planet was named Pluto by eleven-year-old Venetia Burney in a contest she gracefully won. In ancient Greek mythology, Pluto ruled the deep earth, while his brother Poseidon ruled the sea and his other brother Zeus ruled the sky. Young Venetia said she chose the name Pluto because the planet was dark and far away like the mythological ruler of the underworld.

At the time of its naming and until the recent fly-by, the planet Pluto was little more than a smudge on the end of a telescope with no discernible surface features – or so it was thought.

Enter Pluto the dog.

Pluto is one of Disney’s biggest stars. He is Mickey Mouse’s pet, and he first appeared in the film The Chain Gang in September 1930. At that time Mickey’s dog was not called by a name. In fact, Minnie Mouse called the kind canine Rover a month and a half later – but we don’t know if Minnie knew the dog’s real name. It wasn’t until 1931 in The Moose Hunt that Mickey in his endearing high-pitched voice called Pluto to his side and the world knew the true name of the lovable mutt.

Venetia Burney never deviated in her claim that she did not name the ninth planet after the dog Pluto. Supporting her position are the facts that Pluto did not make his cinematic appearance until about six months later and Mickey did not call his dog by the name Pluto until over a year later. Walt Disney, a close friend of both Mickey and Pluto, never said a word about when or why Mickey’s dog was named Pluto.

So, why was the dog named Pluto and why is the planet (now dwarf) named Pluto?

Enter the Lincoln-head cent, the current USA penny in wide circulation.

This penny is called the Lincoln cent because the face on its surface is the face of President Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States of America.

Now, take another look at the new picture of the planet Pluto and the face on its surface.

The face of the dog Pluto is on the planet Pluto, and the name of the dog Pluto is the name of the planet Pluto. Though its seems to defy logic, the only logical conclusion is that the planet, like the penny, is named for the face on its surface.

I do not know how this can be so, but I can see now that it is irrefutably so.

The flying piano discovered the dog on the planet that bears its name.

* * *

With due respect to Ms. Venetia and Mr. Disney and their motives and motivations — whatever they may have been and whatever sources the two may have been privy to, the planet itself speaks louder than their words or their lack of words.

* * *

After 85 year, we now know that Pluto is Pluto.

We may never know why, how or who.

But we know with new certainty:

The universe is truly an —

Amazing place.

Grandpa Jim

Ipomoea obscura, the obscure morning glory, blooms profusely on the white dunes of the Florida panhandle where it binds in place the sands, holding them back from the beaches and breaking waves of the Gulf of Mexico.

This blossom is the same shape, color and form as that of Ipomoea alba, the moonflower, the tropical white morning glory that blooms only at night. The two are identical in appearance, but not in size. The beach morning glory is 2-3 inches (5-8 centimeters) across. The night moonflower can grow to 10-12 inches (25-30 centimeters), the size of a plate.

Ipomoea is a Latin word derived from the ancient Greek words for snake (ipo) and like (moea). The snake-like vines trail, twist and twine along the ground, up the mound and onto lattices and fencing. I have grown the intertwining vines of the morning glory and moonflower on the fences of Texas. Both love the sun. The morning glory is early out. The moonflower delays its night blooms until late in the summer season when the heat has built and the nights grow longer with the approach of fall. It is slow to bloom but larger still.

* * *

The light through the window woke me from sleep. I slipped from my bed, crept quietly through the house and peaked carefully around the curtains and out the window. Under the full moon, the moonflowers waited wide and sparkling white. A shadow raced past and back to hover in fast motion before a bloom.

* * *

The night moth is the size of a small bird. For years, I didn’t know what it was. I know now it is the hawk moth or hummingbird moth. The ones I watched under the full August moon were larger than hummingbirds and never sighted during the day. Fairy dust and moonglow, the zip, dash and hover of their flight was the twinkling of starlight to starflower and the memory of moonflower.

There is another thing about that blossom. Day or night, look closely. Do you see it?

It’s there: The five points of a star. The shaped points of the pentagram rest and reach in that blossom that lights the night and greets the day.

The pentagram or five-pointed star is the oldest of the human-scrivened stars. In the Uruk of Gilgamesh, 5,000 years ago, a pentagram was inscribed on a clay tablet. A 1,000 earlier in the desert sands of the Negev, 6,000 years ago, an ancient artisan sketched the five-pointed star in one fluid motion on a flint scraper.

By our ancestors and children, the pentastar is easily diagramed (pentagram) in five connected lines.

For the life of our kind, there has been the five-pointed star of the morning glory and moonflower. We are the components of that star: head, hands and feet. When we extend and reach, we are the five points and the interlocking triangles of the pentagram. It is the star of our form. We find the point and shape in the lights of the night sky, the blooms of our vines, our selves and the forms of our family members. For its place, the pentagram has fascinated mankind since the beginnings of time.

Carlos Santana has a sound of his own. From Woodstock to today, the mystery and movement of his guitar acoustics have fascinated audiences with the quick flights and slowed motions of sounds that can be heard and sometimes, if you are quiet and watch closely, seen. “Moonflower” was released as a double album in 1977, and the song “Flor d’Luna (Moonflower)” is the second cut on side three.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5b3VBUW2ok[/embedyt]

Grandpa Jim

What are “bots”?

The bot is the larva of a bot fly, which is a parasite, but that is not the “bot” I want to talk about.

“Bot” is a shortened form of “robot”, and that is the bot we should talk about.

As I sit at this computer typing and searching sites for information, I am the start of a bot. As I sit here wishing I could type faster, reach more sites and retrieve more information, I am wishing I had a robot to do these tasks quicker and more efficiently. I am wishing for a bot.

That bot would be a version of me. It is software to do something for me. It is a program written by people to do things people want to do quicker and more efficiently.

You want to buy all the good seats to the upcoming concert, but you can’t type fast enough to accomplish the task. You write a software program for your computer to visit the theatre site and buy the best ticket, and visit the site a nanosecond later and buy the best ticket remaining, and visit and visit, and buy and buy. In no time, you have purchased all the best tickets. I should say your robot software, your bot, has purchased all the best tickets. Enjoy the show.

Internet bots or “Interbots” are programs that visit and do, visit and do. Sometimes they do good, and sometimes they do bad.

When the stock markets crashed recently, some blamed hoards of frightened Interbots for selling stocks as prices fell, and selling more and more, as prices fell more and more. A crescendo of cascading bot pac men chewed and chomped value from a perfectly good market — tumbling the tapes to new depths.

Bots can do good. Some bots protect the virtual verbiage on the net by removing words of little value. Other bots retrieve valuable bits and pieces of widely scattered information to progress research to improve the human condition.

Bots themselves are not things. They are an activity launched from a solid computer located somewhere. Bots are talk spoken over the Internet. Bots do have the properties of communication, but they do not have standard dimensions. A bot has no discernible height and weight. Yes, they are similar to speech, but they do not have a form and mass you can readily grasp. They are the messages you send when you type on your keyboard, just many many more moving much much faster.

Nanoparticles, on the other hand, are true particles. They are vey small. A “nanometer” is one billionth of a meter. That is very small.

Nanoparticles are real particles for real things. They can be nanobots when they interact with the things they are designed to react to – like a thermostat reacts to a change in temperature. In computers, nanobots can be micro-micro switches that read and react to digital signals.

In Michael Crichton’s book “Prey”, nanobots swarm together and evolve into an artificial intelligence (AI). Those nanoparticles infect and control the humans who designed and made the small things. That is a far-fetched thought from the far-fetched creator of “Jurassic Park.” Most nanoparticles are helpful coatings and constituents of things we use everyday. They improve our lives. Still, they are bots, and we all know bots are changing the Internet.

Interbots and nanobots are bits and pieces that have affected where we come from, how we live and where we’re going.

You may say it’s just a game and not a big thing, but the nano’s often leave pain, and sometimes nothing seems to ever go right.

“Bits and Pieces” was released by The Dave Clark 5 in 1964. The song climbed to #1 in Canada and Ireland, #2 in the UK and Australia, and #4 in the Netherlands and USA. One writer referred to the tune as rocky, raucous and meaningless. Nonetheless, 1964 seems to have been a good year for the meaning of life and the new beginnings of the robots.

Grandpa Jim

What is life?

Helen Keller lost her sight and sound at 19 months of age. A baby, she was deaf and blind. Her parents sought the help of Alexander Graham Bell. Alexander was working with deaf children. He referred them to the Perkins Institute of the Blind and a young instructor, Anne Sullivan.

Helen did not understand that every object had a unique word identifying it. Anne Sullivan would place an object in one of Helen’s hands and trace the letters of its name in Helen’s other hand. Helen Keller did not understand and would hurl the objects away.

One day, Anne Sullivan ran cool water over one of Helen’s hands while tracing “w a t e r” on the other hand. It was then Helen understood the motions symbolized the idea of water. Freed of the frustration of a dark and lonely silence, Helen Keller shed a tear of real joy.

Years later, Helen Keller would say: “Life is a daring adventure or nothing.”

The young girl came from nothing. There were no sounds or sights. Now, every touch was an adventure, and she cried for joy. She would not go back. In 1904, she graduated from Radcliffe College, the first deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The deaf-blind girl went on to become a famous writer, speaker and activist known the world over.

Carl Sandburg was hailed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as “the voice of America.” A writer and poet, his words and his poems hold the joys and tears of a young nation. Of the motions and signs of the passing years, Carl Sandburg shared this: “Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”

Sometimes you weep, and sometimes your picture is in the paper. That happened for Carl Sandburg on February 12, 1959, when he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. His was a life well lived, full of tears, joys and media attention.

Ogden Nash, the lyricist and witticist, said of another person in the limelight of the media’s kinder attentions: “Her picture’s in the paper now, and life’s a piece of cake.” Life is a piece of cake. It’s pretty fantastic. Now, every minute seems to require so little effort. Everything is so easy.

It can be that way. As some have felt, it may not be so easy. Life may not always be a piece of cake.

Forrest Gump was not very smart as smart is; but, as his mother taught him, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Forrest did not do stupid. He did quite extraordinary in his quiet, humble, unsuspecting, determined and accepting way.

The movie “Forrest Gump” was the Best Picture in 1994 and Tom Hanks was Best Actor for his portrayal of Forrest. The movie starts and ends with Forrest sitting on a bench at a bus stop with a box of chocolates in his lap telling those who sit down beside him the story of “Forrest Gump.” With the remembrances, there is always the offer of a chocolate, accompanied by this line: “Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

Life is like a box of chocolates. In Forrest’s life, Jenny was the love of his life. She was the sweetest touch, the happiest tear and the very best birthday surprise. Jenny dies young. Forrest, beside her grave, wonders if life has a meaning or purpose, or if it is entirely random? Forrest is truly extraordinary. He has a feeling that, somehow, “maybe it’s both.”

An adventure or nothing,

An onion and a tear,

A picture in the paper,

A piece of cake,

Meaning or purpose,

Or random as a box of chocolates?

I’m with Forrest.

In some mysterious way, maybe it is all of the above.

I think that’s what he learned from his Jenny.

Trees swaying in the summer breeze.

Standing, talking, touching.

Dreaming of her.

Grandpa Jim

There is something oddly comforting about cracked concrete.

What is concrete?

Concrete is the whitish grayish hardish stuff you walk upon, reside under and are surrounded by. In composition, concrete is a slurried mixture of water, aggregate (small rocks and sand) and a glue of various chemicals (the “concrete” from which the name derives) which, when dried, hardened and cured, is of the strong and solid form of a seasoned weight lifter. Much of our modern world leans on and is leant its strength by concrete.

Not always so pervasive, concrete aged slowly.

The first concrete held water. The ancient Nabataeans (Bedouins) of now southern Syria and northern Jordan discovered how to make a concrete some 8,500 years ago (6500 BC). That first use was limited. The desert dwellers constructed underground cisterns of a waterproof concrete of their special making, and they kept the location of their water supplies a company secret. Those hidden basins may be the one big reason the Nabataea traders thrived in the dry lands while others and their wares faded and were lost from view.

The Greeks elevated the process some 3,300 years ago (1400 to 1200 BC), employing concrete in their royal palaces and other edifices of note.

The Romans took the whole concrete thing to a new level. From 300 BC to almost 500 AD (a span approaching 800 years), Roman engineers went on a worldwide concrete-building spree: roads, aqueducts, bridges, huts, houses and hotels. You name it, the Roman built it with concrete. The Coliseum in Rome is largely concrete, and the dome of the Pantheon in Rome is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome on the planet — if not in the solar system and the space beyond.

Then, as concrete does, it cracked and started to come apart.

With the fall of the Roman Empire around 476 AD, the technological know-how to mix, make and manage concrete was lost to the Dark Ages.

And, during that time, the cracks begin to travel.

A crack is a curious thing. It is “a line on the surface of something along which that something splits without breaking into separate parts.” With time and inattention, the line separates farther and becomes an empty space. Without the knowledge to repair itself, things become “Lost in Space” as the Robinson Family did in their first TV episode in 1965. Space separates. A gap appears and widens to a hole.

From line to space to gap to hole, our world fragmented and lost its original identity. Many things crumbled and were lost. Yet, the human spirit is a resilient thing.

Politicians appeared.

On stumps, they pointed and argued: “Are all cracks connected?” “Is there a conspiracy of cracks and dirt?” they queried. It was an election year. “What’s around the corner?” they warned. And the new old tune that plays so well: “Change is needed!”

It was, and it was a long-winded race.

Until finally, about the mid-18^th Century, concrete was rediscovered and reapplied. Our world hardened and was revitalized.

Many blame the politicians for many things; but they, for their part, did their part. They kept the dialogue going through the worst of times; and, in that way, it was perhaps the best of times. We waited, and for our wait, there was the return of concrete.

Yes, there is something oddly comforting about cracked concrete.

Even, if not especially, in an election year.

Grandpa Jim

“The Book Thief” is a 2013 film that follows a young German girl from the borrowing of her first book at the graveside of her little brother, through her formative years in a backwater German town whose citizens fight a minute-to-minute battle to survive World War II, to the start of the writing of her first book in the basement and the loss of her family upstairs and her closest friend next door.

My favorite line is a response voiced twice in the movie: “It wasn’t always mine.”

Her new Papa asks her if the “The Gravedigger’s Manual” (the first of the line of her borrowed books) “is yours?” Later, the young girl asks the refugee hiding in the house if the book he carries is “your book?”

On each occasion, the response is the same: “It wasn’t always mine.”

It wasn’t always mine. Two books. Borrowed.

Two thieves?

Books have been with us for a long time.

The definition of “book” on the Internet is: “A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.” Today, we have e-books you can read on hand-held, pad and tablet. We have recorded books for playback and listen-up. None of these meet the Internet “bound” definition, but they are nonetheless “books” and equally enjoyed for the boundless stories they present.

The first book ever written may be “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” That book didn’t meet the Internet definition either. King Gilgamesh of Sumeria and his amazing adventures were recorded in cuneiform writing (chiseled wedge-shaped characters) on clay tablets. The oldest fragments of this first written story date to around 2100 BC — roughly 4,000 years ago.

That was the first “book.”

Who was the first “thief?”

By the way, a “thief” is defined on the Internet as “a person who steals another person’s property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.” Today, most thieves, unlike many books, would probably slip within the Internet definition.

The first thief is in the book most often guessed to be the oldest book. The Bible is not the oldest written story – though many believe it to be. The Bible is old. The oldest section of the Bible is the book of Job. The sufferings of Job were likely scribed around 600 BC – some 2,700 years back from the future.

Retuning to the Bible and the first theft, in the first book of Genesis, the third chapter, the text reads: “She took some and ate it.” That was Eve, the wife of Adam, plucking fruit, at the Serpent’s suggestion, from the forbidden tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” There you have it! The first theft was committed by Adam and Eve as co-perpetrators.

Though it was recorded later in time in the book of Genesis than the earlier writing of the Gilgamesh saga, the story in the Garden had to have occurred at an earlier point. Adam and Eve were Gilgamesh’s first parents and necessarily older — if not much older.

Interestingly, the scene of the first crime, the Garden of Eden, may be at the same general location as that of the first book. Gilgamesh’s Sumeria and Eve’s Eden are thought to have been situated somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is modern-day Iraq. There, King Gilgamesh ruled in the City of Uruk around 2700 BC (almost 5,000 years ago), long before his story was first chiseled into clay. This suggests that the written story was itself pilfered from a much older oral tradition, as was the theft of Adam and Eve, which necessarily was taken from an even older oral tradition.

We see, then, that the first story in the first written book wasn’t always the author’s: The writer borrowed Gilgamesh from another more ancient source.

We see, also, that the first thing taken in the oldest story wasn’t always the thieves’: Adam and Eve borrowed the fruit from another more ancient source. In turn, we see that the story of the theft was itself appropriated from an older tale of another’s first telling.

Like the borrowings of the little girl and the refugee in “The Book Thief,” the story of the first book and the story of the first theft appear to have similar origins: “It wasn’t always mine.”

In all the cases, the response is to something borrowed from someone else that by the act of the borrowing changed completely the course of things to come.

Perhaps, there is little that is truly ours, most is borrowed, what we have wasn’t always mine, and by the actions of our transfer we have become involved and, to some extent, accountable for what did and will happen?

Grandpa Jim