Folly of the Faithful Canine

The six-point star, or hexagram, is widely known today
To mean the Jewish folk or faith in many a display,
But Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist art makes use of it as well,
Especially in diagrams (what for, I couldn’t tell).

In early Christian churches, it can signify creation,
And Mormon temples have it stand for reconciliation.
To alchemists, it melds the classic elemental signs.
Occultists try to block or conjure spirits in its lines.

In Jewish and Islamic lore, it’s on the Seal or Ring
Of Solomon to indicate the power of the king
To order jinn and demons and communicate with beasts.
Historians dispute when this began in the Mideast.

The seal was also called the Shield of David, words that came
From somewhere in the Talmud as the Lord Almighty’s name.
It’s thought to have emblazoned shields of David’s army troops
And coins from when bar Kokhba led a Jewish rebel group.

So how’d it turn distinctly Jewish? See medieval Prague:
A Holy Roman Emperor said Jews could have a flag.
They chose the star, which spread ‘cross Eastern European Jews.
Then gentiles found the five-point star much handier to use.

Some folks would like to see the star replaced with a menorah
Or other Jewish symbol, like a scroll that’s labeled “Torah.”
They deem the star too sullied by its use for other stuff.
But I believe it now is recognizable enough.

Sorry, Tom Clancy fans, but I gave up on Red Storm Rising. After nearly 250 of about 750 pages, I noticed I was plagued not by boredom but by apathy. There's not-so-Cold War action, all right, but I forgot the sequence of events and why I should care about any particular character. No wonder it became a video game but never a movie.

For a replacement, I picked up my first book by the late Tom Robbins and the only one I'd heard of besides Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. It's also the only book ever recommended to me by a tour guide. I don't recall how much I'd told him about what I like to read, but it sounded pretty quirky.

( I didn't know the half )

I might as well throw in a bonus review of what I read alternately and finished at the same time: The Language Lover's Puzzle Book by Alex Bellos. The 100 puzzles range from simple Pig Latin translation to admittedly super-challenging inferences for languages I'd never heard of. About a quarter of the time, I didn't even try before turning to the answer section, which is almost as long as the rest. For me, the main joy was in learning trivia, not least about conlangs. Made for a nice break from my other reading.


Next up is The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. I'm going from a novel about living indefinitely to one where lots of people young.

Adolphe Quetelet was a mid-19th-century
Belgian in multiple scientist fields.
He made an eponymous index in search of
The average man as a social ideal.

This index was not called the body mass index
Till nearly a century after he died.
By then, it was favored for medical usage,
In essence a rough adiposity guide.

In light of its origin, one may well wonder
Why doctors still use BMI to this day.
Indeed, many people have said it’s a poor
Rule of thumb that should really be fading away.

For starters, dividing your weight by the square of
Your height makes no sense if you’re not fully flat,
So tall and short people aren’t fairly assessed,
And it makes no distinction twixt muscle and fat.

What’s more, Quetelet based his formula mostly
On data from soldiers of Scotland and France.
It ought to be different for others, especially
Black folks. Do they get called healthy? Fat chance.

A bunch of alternatives have been proposed.
Quetelet even offered a change of his own.
The “new BMI” has a 2.5 exponent,
Scaled to be close to the mean that we’ve known.

The corpulence, Rohrer’s, or ponderal index
Just swaps out the square for a cube. Fair enough?
But tall people tend to be narrow in frame
Next to short folk. Determining fairness is tough.

The BMI Prime compares actual stats with
The threshold beyond which one’s deemed overweight.
Some doctors will focus on visceral fat,
So they measure the waistline (an obvious trait).

A Body Shape Index includes many factors,
The Surface-based Body Shape Index still more.
The modified body mass index has serum
Albumin involved, but don’t ask me what for.

In short, if you don’t trust the most common method,
There’s plenty to choose from for gauging your risk
Of health problems stemming from excess of fat
(Tho some claim the connection just doesn’t exist).

A slang phrase, tho American and certainly far from new,
Is the name of a post-punk British band: It’s 23 Skidoo.
I’m not sure who still uses the phrase for having to exit fast,
But the early 1900s had it become a big part of our past.
At first it was two words separately, with meanings much alike.
In 1906, many ads would give the joint expression a spike.
The “skidoo” part’s pretty simple as a variant of “skedaddle,”
But where’d the “23” come from? Explanations leave me addled.
One theory notes the Flatiron Building on New York’s 23rd Street.
Its shape yields swirling winds, which might make exits extra fleet.
The trouble is that the building was finished only in 1902,
Three years too late for “23” and one too late for “skidoo”
(Altho What Happened on Twenty-third Street, a short from 1901,
Depicts a Seven Year Itch-style upskirt draft for racy fun).
In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a man to be beheaded
Is called by his number, 23—how bland for a fate so dreaded!
A jockey claimed that a track was only 22 horses wide.
A 23rd horse would start behind, with a need for speed implied.
It might be a telegraph shorthand code to mean “Away with you,”
But Western Union has it for “All stations copy”; that won’t do.
Perhaps Skidoo, California, stood some 23 miles away
From a water source on Telescope Peak; the town is gone today.
Another Death Valley town, perhaps, had 23 saloons.
A man might visit them all to have the greatest time in moons.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of the theories behind the term.
Just know there are a lot of them, and none are yet confirmed.

In modern times, the only day we’re apt to call “the ides”
Is March 15; in ancient Rome, it typically applied
To 13th days of months, except in those with 31:
March, May, July, October. Yeah, that calendar was fun,
With winter months unnamed for 61 unnumbered days.
I know folks didn’t farm then, but the thought can still amaze.
In broader use, “the ides” could well include the prior week,
Which followed on the nones (Day 5 or 7). How oblique.
The kalends was Day 1; that seems more worthy of a name,
But counting back from each of these evokes a tricky game.
Why subdivide like that? To match the phases of the moon,
Its fullness on the ides. Of course, it wasn’t quite in tune.
The Romans later talked about “the last year of confusion”
Before they changed the calendar. I’d reach the same conclusion.

I’ve written of foods that are secretly fruits.
Now I’d like to move on to the berry.
It too has a certain botanical meaning
That differs from one culinary.

We tend to apply the term “berry” to fruits
That are edible, pulpy, and small.
But strawberries, raspberries, blackberries—these
Are not actual berries at all.

For starters, a berry is simple and fleshy,
With seeds but without a hard pit.
It comes from one flower containing one ov’ry
And lacks special lines for a split.

Thus, berries include avocados, bananas,
Tomatoes, persimmons, grapes, currants,
And various melons, along with the fruit
Of the nightshade, which has its deterrents.

The bulk of U.S. presidents
Have had some pets in residence,
Most often dogs and cats, of course,
And early prezes rode a horse.
A bunch kept several types of birds
And livestock often found in herds
And rabbits, fish—but let’s move on:
A badger on the White House lawn?
Raccoons, opossums, lions, bears,
A bobcat and hyena there?
Some alligators lived there too.
Some pets delivered to a zoo:
A wallaby, a little duiker,
Elephants, and two young tigers—
Then again, the last may be
A hoax with similarity
To someone else’s real-life gift.
Those days were ripe to make a myth.
Exotic pets were mostly dealt
To rugged Teddy Roosevelt
And Calvin Coolidge; since their days,
There’s not been nearly such a craze
For presidents collecting pets
That call for very special vets.

Conceptions of Cupid have varied a lot.
A cherub-type angel? Initially not.
As Eros to Greeks, he resembled a teen,
Still youthful for gods, and was gen’rally lean.

So why’d later artists see fit to reduce
His evident age? We suspect an excuse
To fear the god less. He was once seen as cruel,
Until folks decided that romance was cool.

And where did he come from? It used to be said
That he was the third oldest god, never bred.
How odd that he looked like the youngest by far.
Now brace yourself; details get much more bizarre.

The same Greeks declared his a typical birth
By gods, but which ones? Were they Heaven and Earth?
Or Ether and Nyx? Aphrodite and Ares?
The Rainbow and Zephyr? It totally varies.

The Romans said Cupid was Venus’s son,
Unsure of his dad if he even had one.
Yet Cicero spoke of three Cupids all told.
Three Venuses, too—what a sight to behold.

To think that a pagan god shows up in art
For Valentine’s Day! He was never a part
Of Christendom’s dogma; the saint would decline
To honor him. Still, modern use is benign.

In lore, ancient China’s Jade Emperor hosted
A race for all critters within his domain.
The first twelve to finish would garner the honor
Of years in the zodiac bearing their name.

The end of the race involved crossing a river.
The ox took his buddy the rat for a ride.
The rat then hopped off to place first with the ox
A close second. Their friendship regardless abides.

You’d think that the dragon would fly to first place,
But it stopped to make rain for a village in drought,
Then blew on a log for a rabbit to ride
Into fourth, with the tiger just beating it out.

The horse didn’t notice the snake wrapped around
A front hoof till it reached the home (literal) stretch.
The sight of the snake shocked the horse, who would settle
For seventh. And I thought the rat was a wretch.

The monkey, the sheep, and the rooster teamed up.
In some tellings, they somehow acquired a raft.
The sheep came in eighth place, the monkey in ninth,
And the rooster in tenth. Did he sit at the aft?

Eleventh place went to the dog, who took time
For a bath in the river. And lastly, the pig
Had stopped for some food and a nap, but at least
It completed the dozen. The honor was big.

The 1770s saw the first use
Of the dollar sign, when it referred
To the Spanish American peso, although
“Spanish dollar” was frequently heard.

You might think the dollar sign looks like an S
With a stroke or two drawn down the middle
Because the initial for “Spanish” is S,
But that’s not how to answer the riddle.

One theory’s that folks would abbreviate “pesos”
To P with a superscript S,
Which soon overlapped till the P disappeared.
That transition must look like a mess.

An alternate theory: The Pillars of Hercules,
Wrapped in a ribbon, appeared
On certain coins made in Bolivia and looked
Like the dollar sign. Gee, that sounds weird.

That mint in Bolivia had also perhaps
Used the monogram “PTSI.”
The S may have come with a line down the center
On coins, though I’d like to ask why.

The other strong theory: The Joachimsthaler
Was sim’lar and bore S and J,
Or else it depicted a snake on a cross,
But these coins can’t be found to this day.

Some five other theories existed at one time,
But experts discredited those.
It’s not from “US” with U’s bottom cut off,
As the fans of Ayn Rand might suppose.