Those who rule the symbols

 The council in Cork, Ireland, is considering building a statue honoring the mosquito that allegedly infected Oliver Cromwell with a fatal dose of malaria.

I know this because I read Julian Girdham’s wonderful newsletter The Fortnightly. Girdham cites the story as an example of how people can have a toxic legacy that endures for centuries.

I read the story is an example of how we use symbols to make sense of our experiences, especially the toxic ones. I thought of this line, which my father used to quote:

 

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols. For this reason, we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.

 

Since I live in a part of the world that is still debating Confederate monuments, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if we took the statues off their bases and replaced them with figures that were, say, 5 mm high.

• Sources: Julian Girdham’s site is here:

https://www.juliangirdham.com/the-fortnightly

Liz Dunphy, “World’s Smallest public statue’ proposed for Cork mosquito linked to death of Oliver Cromwell”; Irish Examiner, May 14, 2025. It’s here:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41844780.html

Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelean Systems and General Semantics; Lancaster, Pa.: International Non-Aristotelean Library Publishing Co., 1933, p. 76.

Election Day

 Today is election day in Georgia. The primaries are making news, but Georgia also has judicial races — allegedly nonpartisan — that are on the same ballot.

Democrats are in court, arguing that judicial candidates should be labeled by party. It’s an argument for truth in advertising. I agree, but as a practical matter it’s not hard to figure out. Incumbents on the state supreme court tried to undermine the election in which Biden defeated Trump in Georgia. At least one candidate for appellate court was on a committee investigations legal action against people who tried to undermine elections.

If you know that, you probably know all you need to know.

I’m interested in all the elections. But I think that democracy presumes a judiciary. I don’t care much about the usual modifiers that suggest what kind of judiciary: strong, weak, activist. If we had any kind of judiciary, we wouldn’t be worried about the rule of law.

Having an instinct for it

 I used to have a dog named Satch who was famous for rolling in nasty stuff.

My friends often claimed that their dogs had the most revolting habits. But after seeing and smelling Satch, they had to admit that their dogs were amateurs. My oft-bathed dog set the standard.

The ability to find something horrific and then get it all over you is not an intellectual pastime — it’s an instinct. It’s not something that can be analyzed.

When I lived in Texas and was baffled by horrific events that I couldn’t understand, I’d look to some public figure who had an instinct for scandal and make sure I was on the other side.   

I’ve been horrified and fascinated by the Republican Party’s fight for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. A political action committee is running millions of dollars of ads accusing the heir apparent, Lt. Gov. Bert Jones, of corruption. The ads allege that Jones, who has been endorsed by Trump, used his connections to enrich his family.

Jones says one of his Republican opponents — Rick Jackson, a billionaire — is behind the ads. Jackson denies that and says that he would be Trump’s favorite governor. The political action committee that claims to be bringing transparency to Georgia voters is a dark-money outfit. People in Georgia who want to know who’s behind it found a lawyer in Ohio connected to the organization, but that was it.

Jones’s record for public service stinks. Jackson’s campaign stinks. The whole business of using dark money to make accusations stinks.

I can’t reason this out. I can’t rank the stink. I can’t say which is the lesser of evils.

I can only note that Newt Gingrich endorsed Jackson.

What I missed

 The Wise Woman saw a hawk rise out of the underbrush and sail off through the woods, a 4-foot snake trailing from its beak.

How did I, standing beside her, miss this wonder? Was I searching the forest floor for blooming vervain, in genus Verbena? Was I lost in thought?

Many notes in this collection are about paying attention and noticing things. Sometimes it seems a wonder that I notice anything at all.

Wittgenstein's cottage

 Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations was published posthumously. In his last years, he was trying to get the manuscript into a form that satisfied him.

From November 1947 to June 1949, he was in Ireland. From April to August 1948, he was at a cottage in Rosroe, County Galway. The place was owned by the older brother of Maurice O’Connor Drury, one of Wittgenstein’s ablest students.

I have known some of that story since I began to read Wittgenstein in college. But I recently ran across a sketch by the artist Peg Smythies of “Wittgenstein’s Cottage” in History Ireland. The image delighted me. In the accompanying article, Professor John Hayes includes a description based on a memoir by Richard Murphy, a poet who rented the cottage three years after Wittgenstein:

 

Heat came from a turf fire. The fuel was stored in a galvanised shed in the backyard, where there was also a chemical toilet. Candles gave light after dark. Drinking water had to be drawn by bucket from a nearby well. The kitchen furniture was made of deal. The beds were of cast iron with horsehair mattresses.

 

I hadn’t realized the cottage was quite so spartan. But Wittgenstein’s accommodations were always spartan. He was not looking for comfort but for solitude.

• Sources: John Hayes, “Wittgenstein’s Irish cottage”: History Ireland, n.d. It’s here:

https://historyireland.com/wittgensteins-irish-cottage/

Passing the field lab

 I’ve been watching a sandbank along the South River near Panola Mountain.

I’ve seen it scraped like a construction site — nothing but sand — after a flood. But this week it was knee deep in grasses — including some ryegrasses that were introduced by European settlers. There were knee-high thickets of sweetgum sprouts and one belt-high tulip tree.

The seeds that stock this place come in by air, water and animal. Sometimes, after the flooding currents have scraped the sandbank bare, you see grass. Sometimes you see rivercane.

We visit this place only occasionally. I wish that a younger version of myself could visit it daily, study it for years and record the succession of plants. I think I could learn a lot — almost get an education — from this quarter acre.

After the fire

 The foresters burned what local folks call a prairie between Panola Mountain and the South River. The fire killed the small pines and sweetgums that were growing in the tall grasses, as well as the tall grasses.

The dead and decaying vegetation in grasslands is so thick it makes for hard walking and spectacular fires. What’s coming back after the fire?

I expect to see the tall grasses again, but other plants have a head start. We saw some extensive stands of crownbeards, just putting out buds. Eight species in genus Verbesina are native to Georgia, and the experts were probably hoping to see them. We also saw some impressive stands of Japanese stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum. This plant often comes up when biologists discuss the most damaging invasive species.

I, an old retiree, can call it an impressive stand of stiltgrass. If I were a government biologist, I’d have to call it an infestation. I’m wondering what the experts will do now.