News flash: Peace declared in Middle East! Trump convicted!….
April Fool’s. Ha Ha.
As they used to say in England back in the 14th century……
“When that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghe of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich liccur
Of which vertu has engendered is the flour…….” Etc, etc.
Happy April. Happy Spring. And since April is the fourth month of the calendar year, Bumbastories continues its march through the numbers. What for? you ask. Or was that “What four?”….
Well, we like numbers. We do. We’re fortunate to have the four. Thank goodness we have the four corners of the universe, the four winds, the four Marx brothers (OK, it was five with Gummo), the four horsemen, the four musketeers, and the George Foreman grill. Then there’s the four-bagger, the home run. And don’t pass over the four questions of Pesach, the four seasons, and the Four Tops. One- two – three – four. Hurray for the four! Hurray four tesselations. Have a pleasant walk down the quadri-symmetrical sidewalk in the photo gallery.
There are a million applications of the four. Think of all the quadripeds, our four-legged friends: all those doggies, and horses, lions, sun-bathing lizards. Think of all those herds of zebra standing around on four legs thinking about the fourth dimension.
Four, which is 2 squared, luckily manifests itself in space. Think of all those squares and rectangles! The square makes for easy tesselations, as you can see.
So we’re fourtunate to have the four. And fortunate that it’s spring, a new year upon us. Happy Spring!
03/01/24
Happy March! Happy Third Month of the Gregorian Calendar!
Hurray for the Three! The Triad! The Triangle! The Holy Trinity! The Three Graces…….
To get spiritual about it:
The Two (the number two, the concept of duality) splits unity (the One) into our world of opposites: life and death, present or absent, matter and energy, up and down, back and forth, figure/ground, yin and yang, Etc and etc
When you connect two points you have a line: One dimension. Connect three points you have a plane. Two dimensions. Now we’re getting somewhere. Well, it was plane to see. So three points make a plane, and there’s interplay between three points, three forces or vectors.
The intersection of two circles –the vesica picsis – generates the equilateral triangle. The three is created by the intersection of the two. Thus we obtain the triangle! We were introduced to the triangle in geometry class. Remember? Congruent triangles, similar triangles, isoscoles, and right angle ones? The triangle is the cornerstone of trigonometry – and the main character in Euclid’s plane geometry – which has provided scientists and the rest of us with the template for logic – a system where you need to prove things before you think they’re true .
Once again, hurray for the triangle! Hurray for its strength of structure!
More on the three: We grow up listening to stories about the Three. The Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs. Three wishes! As adults we encounter the Three Musketeers, Three Coins in the Fountain, Three Days of the Condor, Three Dog Night, the Three Stooges, and the Tri-State area. In basketball there’s Phil Jackson’s triangle offense and the Triple Double (which sounds like an oxymoron). Baseball has the triple play (it’s a treat to see one. I saw one once at Dodger Stadium). Baseball has three bases to touch or tag (the fourth base is called Home), and three strikes (and you’re out!). Hey, baseball season is fast upon us. It’s spring season! It’s spring, the time of rebirth, the time to plant seeds, the time of renewal and new beginnings.
Here’s a song that doesn’t mention the three, but it’s in 3/4 time, which is the best I could do. Sing along! Admittedly, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry is one of Hank Williams’ saddest ones. But one his most beautiful ones too. And one plus two is three, so I’m out of here.
February is a short month, a consequence of fitting 12 months into 365 days. Somebody, one of the months, had to draw the short stick, and it was February. However, we must be thankful because this year is a leap year and we get 29 days this February. Hurray!
Naturally, with February being the second month, Bumbastories feels obliged to return to a consideration of the numeral 2. A second look as it were. Our March Through the Numbers continues!
The two – the dos, the deux – is the first real number, because one can’t be considered a regular number. After all, One is unity. One encompasses all the numbers, the One is everything, it’s not a true number. But when you get to the two, hey, now you’re starting to count.
Our world, the world of opposites, comes into being with this division: heaven and earth, good and evil, life and death, present and absent, holy and secular, male and female, up and down, true and false, etc. and etc.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Life as we know it began when the first organism split in two. This fundamental process of mitosis has put us in good stead. The cells of our body are reproducing all the time. These things go on whether you know it or not, which is quite a relief. Imagine if you had to sign off on several million mitosises every day.
Two is the first prime number! It is also the first even number! In fact the two generates all the odds and evens. Numbers are either 2n or 2n +1.
The symmetry of the two, bilateral symmetry, is basic to all vertebrates and arthropods, even worms. That’s to say all us more “advanced” animals. Let’s face it: we bilaterals have a definite edge when it comes to getting around. Unlike the clams, oysters,sponges and jellyfish, we have a left and a right. Bilateral symmetry also forces you to think about a front and a back. We humans with our big brains can even get to conceptualize things like “going forward” and “making progress” in our “lives”. Generally it’s considered a good thing to be moving forward. Presumably a jellyfish would have a different point of view.
The yin and yang, the dialectic, the class struggle, the dynamism of the two is how the world operates, and how we see things as happening. Instinctually, we discriminate between figure and ground. When you come down to it, things are either there, or they ain’t. Two is how it is, my friend.
It takes two to tango. The dance, the interplay – and I’m trying to keep this clean – of the sexes, is the greatest game in town. Meiosis and sexual reproduction has accelerated the pace of evolution, which some may regret, but that’s how it is. The Good Lord put two of every animal on Noah’s ark. The ark, by the way used port and starboard, fore and aft, and also used a lot of mops and pails.
So many things come in pairs. How many can you think of? Personally, I can think of franks and beans, corned beef and cabbage, wine and roses, and burgers and fries. Not to mention peanut butter and jelly. In baseball 2nd base is right there in the middle, and a double is a very good hit.
There’s nothing like going for a double! Except going for a triple, but that’s already the next number!
As for the two in our language, there are just too many twos to mention. And please, don’t mention the ballerina’s tutu.
Two tutus! Yikes!
Before we get sentimental about the two, let’s remember that to “speak with a forked tongue” is not a cool thing. Neither are “snake eyes”, second-in-command, or Bi-Polar disorder. To quote Joe E. Brown at the end of Some Like It Hot, “Well, nobody’s perfect”. Neither is the two. It is also incumbent upon me to remind you that “number two” is the well-known toilet euphemism for poop. Well, I won’t waste any more of your time. Except to remind you that 2 is the atomic number of helium, and that Hank Williams said “If you loved me half as much as I love you, you wouldn’t worry me half as much as you do….”Click to twice to hear
Together with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly (who purportedly carried a few souvenir bullets in his belly, but whose real name was Hudie Ledbetter) is considered a founding father of the American folk music movement. Pete Seeger lionized Leadbelly. In the 1930’s Leadbelly introduced traditional blues to the north, to a broader, whiter audience. A charismatic performer, Leadbelly not only played the blues on a booming 12 string guitar, he also sang all the popular tunes of his era, as well as a cornocopia of traditional folk music and slave songs.
The “king of the 12-string guitar” was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in the year of 1888. By age 12 he was playing “professionally” in the Shreveport red light district. By age 20 he had already served several terms in the Louisiana prison system. Legend has it that the folklorists John and Alan Lomax recorded Leadbelly in prison, and attached a phonograph record of Leadbelly’s Irene Goodnight to his parole petition – which indeed was granted in 1934 by Louisiana governor Oscar K. Allen. Such is the legend for what it’s worth.
Certainly, Leadbelly’s powerful voice and 12 string guitar style had an impact on the folk music movement. As I say, his repertoire included ragtime, traditional folk songs, and the pop music of his time. He penned, or is credited with writing such folk favorites as Midnight Special, Pick a Bale of Cotton, Rock Island Line, Irene Goodnight, and a host of other spirituals and blues songs. Thanks to the above-mentioned Lomaxes, many of Leadbelly’s recordings are preserved in the Library of Congress. Click below to hear two Leadbelly songs, the first of which, Pick a Bale of Cotton, was recorded only last week by me and Maybank somewhere outside the Louisiana prison walls (fortunately), and which is not to be found in the Library of Congress (also fortunately).
Pick a Bale of Cotton
Midnight Special is always a good song to play. I think a lot of people think that John Fogerty wrote this song, but it was Leadbelly. Here’s Midnight Special.
Special Report from George Packard, roving reporter for Bumbastories.
Although the rough, colder weather had constained George’s usual journalistic routine of ….well, just bicycling around, usually to the beach, in search of breaking news stories, he had nonetheless continued his quest tireless, or rather tireless quest, and taken to simply walking the streets of Los Angeles. Again, in search of a breaking news story.
Yesterday he was treated to an LA rarity: a sunshower accompanied by a bold clear rainbow, nay double rainbow, for the good part of an hour.
As George walked on, he calculated that the pot of gold must be there a couple of blocks past Fairfax.
Of course, the report about the rainbow yesterday is not news by now and certainly not breaking. However, George felt obliged to at least make report about something nice.
This traditional American folk song says it all for me.
To “roll in my sweet baby’s arms” is undeniably quite an admirable pasttime and a fine ambition in life in my opinion. Likewise “laying around the shack ’til the mailtrain gets back”. What ambition. What lyrics!
Regarding employment: “I ain’t gonna work for no railroad, ain’t gonna work on no farm” pretty much sizes up and I’d say encapsulates my own, personal attitude and feelings toward questions of vocation.
We live in troubled times, terrible times. I’m an old guy and I can’t remember the political outlook ever being so grim, so difficult, so daunting, so “challenging” if you like. These are hard times: a new age of cellular dystopia. People lost. On the phone. Downloading. Democracy threatened all over the world. Disinformation, misinformation. The earth continuing to heat up like a runaway train. Weather catastrophes increasing. Now a war in Israel. Suddenly we are back to 1948.
The cold war, or perhaps a neo-version of it.
””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
It’s depressing, but we’re going to continue our March through the Numbers nonetheless. Perhaps the numbers will provide some relief. I hope so.
In any case, November is definitely the eleventh month……
ELEVEN
Eleven,Onze. A fine number. A prime! Composed of two skinny numerals, two 1’s. Mathematically, the eleven is not particulary interesting, it’s not useful in constructing things. Nothing in nature uses eleven-fold symmetry if I’m not mistaken. But we humans harbour a certain liking for the eleven. We do. We like the eleven. Eleven connotes a certain solidity, a feeling of dominance, or power. Eleven, which is derived in English from “onelef”or “one left over after the ten” appears surprisingly frequently in our languages and in our various cultures. The 7-11 convenience store network comes to mind. And I wish it didn’t.
The Statue of Liberty stands on Bedloe Island in N.Y harbor on what was originally an eleven-pointed island (It has eroded a bit at the corners). What a beautiful symbol. Long may she stand on her eleven-sided island!
The Canadian dollar coin and the Indian two-rupee coin are eleven sided.
Football is played with 11 men. Likewise cricket. Did I mention the 7-11 convenience store? I have to go there later. There’s the 11 O’Clock News, Apollo 11, and Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, and Veterans’ Day – which are commemorated on 11/11, because World War I ended on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month back in 1918. May the memory of those millions who died in WWI be blessed. Looking back at history, we can see that WWI was avoidable. All those millions of soldiers didn’t have to die. May all the fallen soldiers from all the wars rest in peace. And let us always strive to avoid wars and to seek peace.
Welcome to October, the tenth month, the glorious Autumn month in our beautiful, albeit beleaguered, northern hemisphere. October is likewise a beautiful Spring month in the beautiful, not to be downhearted, Southern Hemisphere -where I heard everybody walks around upside down. I suppose they get used to it after a bit.
Now October, just like its calendar mate August, is named after that Octavius/Augustus guy! The emperor of Rome back in the day. The founder of the empire. As a result we use the Gregorian/Julian calendar to keep track of the days – named after Julius Caesar, the head honcho himself, the guy that terminated Roman democracy. Glorious Caesar. Hail Caesar! Oh boy.
I confess I don’t know much about Caesar except that they named a salad after him. I have no idea what they named the salad before him, unless it was appetizers.
I also confess that most of what I know about Roman emperors comes from movies. The Robert Graves I, Claudius books are purportedly fairly accurate accounts, though. The wonderful BBC I, Claudius series comes to mind (Hats off to the BBC, who used to do some tremendous stuff inthe past, not to mention the scholarly Robert Graves, who is definitely passed). Anyhow, getting back to old Octavius, I can’t say I know much at all.
Regarding the number 10 (October is the tenth month. Don’t forget this is the October Magazine), the magnificent Pele wore number ten.
Ten completes the number count. After ten the same 9 numerals are used again. Again and again – and in groups of ten! It’s our decimal system! One of many, though. Over the years, different cultures have used a variety of counting systems – the twenty, and the sixty work just fine. The ten is not the only way to do it. Computers count by twos, the binary system. But counting by tens is the predominant system. After all, we humans have ten fingers, so it’s kind of a natural – unless you enjoy taking off your shoes all the time. Logarithms are expressed in powers of ten. The decimal number system seems to work pretty good. It’s taken us to the moons of Saturn. Now wasn’t/isn’t that something amazing? All by using a base-ten number system. The math and the science go hand in hand, and take us to some beautiful places.
Anyway, getting back to Pele, I did see Pele play at Randall’s Island when he came out of retirement to play with the New York Cosmos. Pele scored a goal, a header, that night.
Speaking of sports, October used to be the time of the World Series, but now we have the division playoffs – which are usually just terrific. Personally, I’m looking forward to some excellent baseball. Baseball, of course, is played in nines. Nine innings, nine players. Ten in baseball would be extra innings.
Ten years ago on a cold dark night
Someone was killed ‘neath the town hall light
(Scroll down to click on song at bottom of page)
Thus begins one of Maybanks’ and Bumba’s favorite songs. As you can see the first word of the song is ten. So, there you go.
OK. More about the ten. A regular ten-sided figure is a decagon. To inscribe a regular decagon in a circle, the golden proportion is used.
The tetractys, the triangle of ten formed by the first 4 numbers, was considered holy by the Pythagoreans. Numbers were sacred to the Pythagoreans, since whole numbers, they thought and fervently believed, could describe everything under Creation. Everything, that’s to say the underlying reality that underlies the physical world, Pythagoras said, was numbers and the “rational” relationships or proportions between those numbers. Those early mathematicians and philosophers were very interesting fellows. Not clear why, but the Pythagorean Brotherhood quickly became a secret society that guarded their precious knowledge. Kinda like the Masons or Knights of Pythias, but without the fancy handshakes. Anyhow, they used the tetractys, that construction of ten pebbles in the sand, in their swearing-in ceremony. Ten was the holy of holies for the Pythagoreans, a tradition pre-dated by the Hebrews who still enjoy ten High Holy Days (And a Happy New Year!) as well as Ten Commandments. Ten is double the five books of the Torah. The Kabbalists later lionized the ten as well. Bowlers also lionize the ten pins. It’s a pleasure to knock ’em all down, ain’t it?
Not to put too rosy a cast on the ten, ten was also the number of years that poor Odysseus, brave and resourceful Odysseus, or Ulysses if you like, had to endure before returning home to Ithaca from the Trojan Wars. There were also ten plagues, don’t forget, and ten little Indians, a rascist nursery rhyme that we recited to learn our numbers when we didn’t know any better. Ten Years After was a fine blues band featuring Alvin Lee. And Elvis himself sung “Love Me Ten Dear”. Or was that “Loan Me Ten, Dear”?
Anywaze…..There’s a lot to do this October. We have to Dump Trump! Again!@!!! Let’s get going. Happy October!
Once in a blue moon, George Packard acquired sufficient inspiration to post something on Bumbastories. It was last night’s moon that so inspired him. It was one of those “blue moons”, a somewhat rare occurence admittedly, when two full moons happen to fall in a single calendar month. But tonight’s full moon was especially bright since the moon was at perigee, its closest point in its orbit. Nothing blue about it, though. More red than anything else, mused George.
George then thought of the 1934 song Blue Moon by Rogers and Hart.
The Marcels’ 1961 doo-wop version of the song is the one George carried in his head, though.
Bom be de bom, be de bom de bom bom be, de danga dang dand be de…… ……..Blue Moon.
“It’s hard to tell, hard to tell, when all your love’s in vain,” said Robert Johnson.
Click on the song to hear Bumba and Maybank doing it.
What more to say about love, unrequited or otherwise? Here’s an excerpt from my novel The Phantom Speaks in which the Phantom, an astral visitor to our planet, who for reasons unknow is also our protagonist Chester Knowles, pontificates on Love:
The full novel(s) are available on Amazon as ebooks or hard copy. Click on Bumba Books above
Love
Love. I heard some biologist say that love is the most powerful and most durable of all the emotional states. Think about it. From an evolutionary standpoint, love serves to attach human beings to each other and link them one to the other. They form friendships, partnerships, family clans, and larger social groups. All of which tend to increase the humans’ chances of survival. You know, they hunt together, then they share firewood. They keep each other warm. Love has definite survival value.
And love is also the thing that everybody feels compelled to sing about. Love. Love. Love. All those songs! Poems, books, movies, broken hearts, tears! Yatta, yatta, yatta. It goes on and on.
I can’t say that I really understand very much about it. Even after all this time, and all these lives, I remain largely in the dark. O.K., I know. Chester told me all about it. Chester was big on the feeling of love. He loved it, if you’ll excuse the expression. And most people love it as well. I’ve noticed that. In fact they treasure love. And they miss it so sorely and painfully when they don’t have it (which is most of the time from what I can see). Most people behave as though they are lacking love (whatever love is, we still haven’t defined it, at least I haven’t) and it seems that the poor things can never get enough of it. It is their fear that would appear to be holding them back, blocking things. Fear inhibits love generally. Fear and Love are almost polar opposites.
As a phantom-like aside, I would say that the key determinant in these matters of love and of psychological health in general seems to be whether or not you were loved as a child. As it turns out, Chester was lucky; he had a happy childhood. Let me add, in another phantom-like aside, that it happens all too often that a child, a baby, is not loved, coddled, sung to, carried around the house and out in the fields, shared with relatives, read stories to, played with, and told that they are good little boys or girls, etc. etc. It happens all too often that children/babies don’t get all that (OK, we’ll call it) love. And then these children grow up to become parents themselves. And how can they provide the necessary love to their kids when they themselves are consumed or absorbed, even obsessed with finding love for themselves? Luckily (or, more correctly, as a result of mammalian evolution) babies tend to be cute and irresistible. So things often work out well. It’s surprising howoften things work out well – despite the odds. We’ll get to the evens later.
So everybody’s looking for love down there on planet earth. They are. And people will go to all sorts of lengths just for a little hug, a caress, a word of praise, perhaps the promise of a good roll in the sack. Especially for a good roll in the sack. Well, thanks again to the process of evolution, the animal, the organism, is wired to have it (call it love): ah, the embraces, the sex, the release, the pleasure, the peace. The company of another and the security of what they call love. And so needy and/or so deprived are the people down there on planet earth that they are more than willing to accept various and sundry substitutes for love: i.e., the various and assorted vicarious experiences: rock n’ roll revues, identifications with saints and movie stars, and the like. Freud called it sublimation, this moving toward, this branching out, into substitute venues.
In short, what this phantom is saying is that love is something very fundamental to the species. It’s quite important. Nothing to sneeze at. I myself, being a phantom, don’t understand too much about it, as I said. It’s like the Amazon jungle to me. Huge and incomprehensible. From what I read, (that’s right, phantoms can read, why not?) according to the schema of raja-yoga, love and the ability to feel for others, to empathize: this energy is centered in the heart, sweet valentine, at the fourth chakra – a spiritual step up (butonly one step up) from the more “animal” centers of appetite and domination.
But, like I say, as a phantom, love is just something that’s out there. It’s a part of the world – just like everything else. It’s out there. It’s in your heart, as they say. And it’s out there too.
An Occasional Story 