TRICOTEUSES and MYRMIDONS

When I was in the 10^th grade, my folks sent me off to a quaint thing called the Presbyterian Guidance Center.

Now you’re thinking I was some kind of  “juvenile delinquent,” aren’t you.

You see 20^th Century protestant inquisitors looking like they’ve overdosed on quinces, don’t you.

But that was not it at all.

The PRC’s were actually places where 10^th-graders worked through batteries of serious psychological tests aimed at determining one’s likely vocations.

One reason I qualified for this opportunity is that I was a licensed amateur radio operator –what passed for “geek” in the 50s. I and a small cabal of my school mates did short-wave radio as a hobby, a hobby that still thrives and is one of the nation’s primary backups for communication during disasters like hurricanes, marathons, and urban parades.

The logical assumption may have been made – I always had my suspicions – that some adults might have seen my hobby as a front for clandestine black ops training of some sort.

I mean -- in The Day there was the Red Threat, you know. Senator Joseph McCarthy reminded us almost daily that there were Commies under every other rock (not counting the one he had come out from under, of course.)  And it might have made sense for some to assume that  Das Hitlerjugend could clandestinely have lived on as teenage ham radio operators, and a Boy Scout to boot --  kids who knew Morse code!

But no, the sponsors of the Guidance Centers were Southern Presbyterians – the Presbyterian Church in the United States, which would merge in the 80s with the PCUSA to form the national denomination we know today. But in the 50s some saw the PCUS as a refuge for Confederate remnants of Presbyterians. And living in Richmond, Virginia didn’t help assuage that notion.

But those were just whispers in dark corners.  It was a great church to grow up in , and the Guidance Centers did a lot for me, to wit:

In groups of five or six, we went through two consecutive Saturdays of psychological tests in the psychology departments of either Hampden-Sydney or Mary Baldwin Colleges – brother and sister institutions under the tentative but vigilant auspices of the PCUS. (Despite the religious connection, of course, if you visited either campus you learned quickly how --  well -- theoretical that concept was).

I was fascinated by the testing, how the questions were asked and then asked 17 questions later in a different way (to see if you were paying attention). The cool part came at the end when we each got to sit with one of the psych professors at the college where we were tested, and the professor would explain the results of two full days of testing in detail, The conclusion listed a number of professions or occupations that made sense as a result of the testing.

If ax-murderer were one of the results, they would come and take you away, of course, for some remedial Southern Presbyterianism.

But that did not happen with us.

Mine ended up hitting the nail on the head. One of the occupational segments my tests pointed to was “journalist and writer.” And that’s just about exactly what happened.

Only problem was that my vocabulary scores showed up at an 8^th grade level. I clearly needed to do some work on improving my vocabulary. So I started what has become a lifelong study of words…and a lot of reading.

When I came across a word that puzzled me, I wrote it down in a notebook. Later I looked it up in the dictionary. But first I tried to discern -- from its context and how it sounded -- what it meant.

The reward was that by the time I enrolled as a freshman at Hampden-Sydney College, I was put through the same battery of tests. And this time my vocabulary had improved to the level of a college senior.

Not one to rest on laurels, though, I kept going with word study. And when I learned Latin and Greek etymology – the study of the origins of words – I got rather sophisticated with the word-learning thing.

As I've read I’ve continued to write down words I had questions about or did not recognize .

I do not do this for every word I fuzz up on, but for the few that I do, the procedure is the same as it’s always been. I write the word, think about its possible origins, consider the context and guess what it means. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes not. And I check my thoughts with a good dictionary.

Just for fun, here are two extreme examples showing how that’s worked:

TRICOTEUSES – Hair-suckers? Context and from thrix, Greek for hair?

Nope – tricoteuses were women who sat and knitted…preferably during public executions. The term originated during the French Revolution.

MYRMIDON – Weird sentinels who “murmured” amongst themselves.

Wrong again – myrmidons originated as names for those who followed Achilles in the Trojan War. By extension, they were “loyal followers,” [Merriam-Webster’s 11^th Collegiate].

(For what it’s worth, I still like my original thoughts about tricoteuses and myrmidons – They’re out there, you know.)

 

BOOK REVIEW:

 

It's going to take a while for me to digest this, the first Cormac McCarthy book I've read. I've put it off because I was off-put some time ago by a couple of reviews I read. They did not seem to know what they were talking about. Superficial reviews, I'd say. They thought it was just another drug-dealing "thriller" or something.


That might be a part of it, but it’s a minor part of the art. McCarthy's unique voice and process in telling the story serves up the art; and, oh yeah, there’s a pretty good story there too. See?


It seems to flow along like magic on two tracks at once -- one the story, what's happening; the other a miraculously floating odyssey of evil counterbalanced by faith, honest integrity, and a real love story -- all at the same time set against a dystopian backdrop.


Let me be honest about this though -- I think my words are inadequate to fully make the point...so why don't you read it and let me know what you think. I found it hard to put down. And it haunts me now that I have.

A Bend in the Road

The times are ever-changing, I think we'd all agree. And so am I, but less because of culture than  just because it's me.

I have matured past almost two whole careers, and now a new one beckons. Or rather it does not so much beckon as compel me to pay attention. And follow a new road.

 

I started seeing this bend in the road from far away. I knew change – both cultural and personal were imminent. And unavoidable.

What do we do when we're at such a point? Take inventory of our pluses and minuses -- what we do well and what not so well -- comes first. And while we’re at it, we do the most important thing: we learn where our passions lie.

 I’ll never forget one scene in Chariots of Fire, the multiple-award-winning movie about Eric Liddell and his quest for a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics – Eric, a committed Christian, is telling his disappointed missionary sister that he cannot return with her to China to serve again until he runs in the upcoming Olympics. He tells her he must compete and run because when he does, “I feel God’s pleasure,” he says. That’s what I mean by passion.

[Read the late, great Roger Ebert’s reviewof the 1981 movie here]

So there was I six years ago. I started writing because I felt God’s pleasure in the gift he had given me. I may not execute divinely, but I love trying.

And it explains why two years later I began a four-year quest to pen my first book, a memoir called WAR BABY.

If you want to write a book , a great place to start is a memoir. The research was mostly done. I had lived it, after all. There were just a few facts to check.

And now the result is here.