paraskavedekatriaphobia

That’s the name for fear of Friday the 13th, a word derived from the Greek words Paraskeví (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (meaning fear).

Friday the 13th is considered a bad luck day by many. Traditionally, captains won’t take their ships out of harbour, tall buildings have no 13th floor, hotels no Room 13, airlines don’t offer a Row 13, and a Finnish study of traffic accidents concluded that Friday the 13th may be a particularly dangerous day for women, largely because of anxiety from superstition. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina an estimated 17 to 21 million people are affected. Some are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines, getting on planes, or even getting out of bed.

sources: wikipedia, The American Jnl. of Psychiatry, and my own lack of superstitions.

never too late to admit a mistake

A statue honouring the physicist and philosopher Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is to be erected in the Vatican Gardens. In 1992 the pope admitted the Church’s mistake in forcing Galileo to renounce one of his key discoveries. Roughly 375 years previously, using the first telescope designed in Holland, he proved Copernicus’s theory that the earth rotates around the sun—and not the other way round as was the Church-approved belief of the day. Called before the Inquisition in 1633, Galileo was forced to swear having made a “mistake,” thus avoiding death by burning at the stake. Virtually blind, he spent the remaining nine years of his life under house arrest.

PS: Public statues already exist at the University of Padua (where Galileo taught) and outside the Uffizi in Florence.

to die of a broken heart

What an expression! When I’m asked what my dad died of, I often say “a broken heart.” Along with most of his generation, he went through so much: WW1, the Depression, WW2, 75% destruction of our home town through fire-storms and repeated bomb attacks, four brothers either missing-in-action or dead on the Russian front, wife and third child dead one year after the war,  loss of one-eye sight and brain damage from shrapnel wound, vocation wiped out (no-one needed cavalry riding instructors), loss of … just about everything, including pride, hope, and purpose. All that without a whiff of counselling, rehabilitation, or recognition of what is now known (and treated) as survivor guilt and post-traumatic stress. After many years of being at odds with a man I barely knew–right up and past his tortured old age–my heart finally woke up with compassion for him.

I recalled all this when reading an interview with a Vancouver Children’s Hospital cardiologist*. The interviewer asked: “Do people actually die of a broken heart, both in the literal and metaphorical sense?” To which Dr. Sanatani replied,

“I’ll answer this in two ways, as two different people. First, as a long-time descendant of philosophers and daydreamers, people absolutely die of a broken heart. I mean, we see it when one spouse dies and all of a sudden the previously well [partner] is not the person they used to be, and not long after, they die.

“From the second, scientific point of view, in paediatric cardiology we see some of the most messed up hearts you can imagine. Some of the kids are born with one pumping chamber where there should be two, or one valve where there should be three. And those hearts are sometimes just not compatible with life. So you also die of a broken heart when it started out broken. We just couldn’t fix it.”

* “Gray’s anatomy lesson” in VLM magazine. Feb 2008, p.23. www.vlonline.ca. image: nikhilkumar.wordpress.com

tea cemetery [sic]

I’m still coming across mementos from my December stay in Thailand. A clipping from the December 13 Bangkok Post reports on the New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmadabad, India, which is located in a centuries-old cemetery (“Bustling eatery features milky tea, buttery rolls, and graveside seating”). 

The café has been open for forty years and people are still dying to get in. Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn’t know who is buried in the café floor.

“Our business is better because of the graveyard,” Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. graves are painted green, stand about shin high, and every day the manager decorates each of them with a single dried flower. They’re scattered randomly across the restaurant—one up front next to the cash register, three in the middle next to a table for two, four along the wall near the kitchen. The Hindu notion of death as merely an opportunity for rebirth makes the prospect less frightening than it is in the West, according to Dr. Varis Alvi, a retired professor in Ahmedabad. Although the tea shop cemetery is Muslim—Hindis cremate their dead—most Indians would feel comfortable relaxing in a cemetery, he said. “Graveyards in India are never scary places. We don’t have a nice literature of horror stories so we don’t have much fear of ghosts.”  

Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins. The graves probably belong to the family or associates of a 16^th century Sufi saint whose tomb is nearby, Prof. Alvi said. “We spend all day here,” Mohammed Tafir said between cups of tea. “The graves are holy, they’re good luck. This brings us good luck too.

image: apologies for the mixup: these gentlemen are not waiters at the New Lucky.

eyes (still) on burma

From a report by Avaaz: The overall situation in Burma has deteriorated significantly since the protests last fall. 80% of the leadership of the monk and student networks that led the protests have been caught and jailed. The remaining 20% are on the run, hiding in safe houses and constantly at risk. The Burmese generals have used torture extensively to work their way through these networks. They have also immediately and viciously cracked down on any street protests. One of our original hopes was to break the media and internet blackout that the Burmese generals had imposed on the country. But now, even if we did, there are no significant protests to cover. The public protests have been smothered, for now.

The brutality against monks, revered by all Burmese, was the last straw for the Burmese generals. They have now lost all legitimacy whatsoever with the people — they are holed up in a jungle capital and rule by force of terror alone. There are signs of dissension within the Burmese military, as some senior officers refused to crack down on the protesters. The Junta has been pressured, by the UN Security Council and by China, into fast tracking their (flawed) plan for democratization, and has announced a constitutional referendum to be held in May. 

Click here for more. 

4131 hits later

This blog’s been running for six months now, with an average of 23 visitors a day. I wonder who’s reading these words. If it’s you, I’d be glad to hear from you sometime. Writing here has become a practice of service for me. As I take on sense responsibility for making it interesting for both of us, I also note my own quirkiness as I scurry from topic to topic. 

Deep bows of gratitude to all who visit here.   

image: Coming out of silent retreat at Doi Suthep Monastery near Chiang Mai (Thailand) on Christmas Day. photo by Erin Grace.

just kidding in ohio

According to a statement released by the Ohio Department of Transportation Wednesday, highway maintenance workers are so deeply moved by the elegant pothole located in the westbound lane of Route 50 that they have decided not to defile its pure and powerful form by attempting to fill it in.

“This natural jewel of concrete displacement on an endless stretch of barren highway is too aesthetically pristine to be disturbed,” said Ohio DOT director James G. Beasley, adding that when he first beheld the pothole he knew he had seen the face of God.

“From the delicate lace of cracks running across the radius to the dark and profound depths of the crater below, we must protect this pothole with all of our being. It makes such beautiful use of negative space.” Beasley also claimed that it would be an honor for anyone to have their car ruined by such a masterpiece of asphalt.

source: The Onion–America’s Finest News Source.

let’s (not) kiss / eat icecream / watch teevee …

Upset teenagers in South Africa are planning mass kiss-athons in protest of a section in the recently proclaimed Sexual Offences Act which makes unlawful any sexual activity for citizens under sixteen, including kissing. The Act contains welcome provisions to combat incidents of sexual assault; the less popular no-petting rules is intended to reduce teen pregnancies.

source: DER SPIEGEL

what’s with 108?

I mentioned the 108 beads on a mala (see Dec 31) and the ringing of the bell at midnight to end one and begin a new year (a Japanes tradition). In response, Cecile Petra writes that the body has 108 pressure points. Is 108 the magic number of the universe?

“No, it is not,” writes one observer: “It is a reference frame. What is important is that a system is imposed to guide us through the fundamental struggles encountered in any evolutional process. Otherwise, chaos and anarchy follow and nothing gets done.” Digging just a little in Ye Olde Internet reveals further meanings and applications of the number 108:

* Hindu deities have 108 names. Recital of these names, often accompanied by counting of 108-beaded Mala, is considered sacred and often done during religious ceremonies.  *  Many Buddhist temples have 108 steps. (The one I just returned from in Thailand had 309 steps — just keep us guessing?)  *  The number 108 is used in Islam to refer to God,  *  In astrology, there are 12 houses and 9 planets. 12 times 9 equals 108  * 108 equals the product of the second power of 2 and the third power of 3, i.e. the first non-trivial even and odd numbers multiplied by themselves as many times as themselves (say what? more in this article on 108 in mathematics, geometry, astrology, etc.)

* The diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of the Earth. *  The distance from the Sun to the Earth is 108 times the diameter of the Sun. * The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 108 times the diameter of the Moon. *  In different schools of marial arts, 108 is significant. Paek Pal Ki Hyung, the 7^th form taught in the art of Kuk Sool Won, translates literally to “108 technique” form. It is also referred to as the “eliminate 108 torments” form. Each motion corresponds with one of the 108 Buddhist torments. Yikes!

* 108 is the emergency number in India. * 108 is the ten code for officer down or officer in danger. * 108 is an on-line magazine inspired by the contribution of baseball to American history, culture, and community. 108? The number of stitches in a baseball. *  In Homer’s Odyssey, 108 is the number of suitors coveting Penelope, wife of Odysseus. *  Fourty-four more years and I’ll be 108.years old.  *  108 years ago Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams and German physicist Max Planck formulated an energy theory which becomes the foundation for modern-day quantum physics. *  OK, this is getting silly; nough already.

Do you have examples form your areas of interest?