Piping A Story

Fred Friendly was as close to being a moral philosopher as anyone I met in Journalism School. Yet, he acknowledged that, at times, he felt as philosophically conflicted as the rest of us mortals in a profession that requires truth to be served fresh everyday without seasoning. Somehow, it seemed, that he was always able to get up in the morning to approach life fairly, forgetting the unevenness of the day before. He had a great sense of perception into the human soul; could criticize and accept criticism, never losing his wonderful sense of grace: he didn't need to, he was an old fox in a familiar chicken coop. Above all, he was honest; for that reason, he earned my respect.

It was he who taught me the expression, "Piping a story," or simply, "Piping," an expression from journalism's not-to-ancient past which meant writing a story based on creativity not reportage. Editors, when suspecting that a reporter had inflated his/her story with fantasy, might ask: "Have you been smoking the opium pipe?" I suspect that the editors of the NYT may have had cause, three years ago, to use that expression several times to one young reporter who, through some strange psychopathology, threw away the opportunity of a lifetime: an opportunity for which many of us would have gladly given an essential body part. During that scandal, I thought of Fred Friendly and "Piping." I could laugh; I could shake my head; I could rue the vagaries and vicissitudes of a life in which the Gods share a greater sense of humor than we.

Perhaps, that young fellow was really hitting the opium pipe. Just a thought.

Without reaching for Webster's, it's probably not too much of a stretch to assume that the term "Pipe Dreams'" has its root in the same soil. How about Popeye? What was it that he always had in his pipe that allowed him to feel like a super sailor? poppies?

The late 19th century cartoon strip, "The Yellow Kid," and the Spanish-American War gave rise to the term "Yellow Journalism." They could have just as easily called it, "Poppycock." N'est ce-pas?

In Hungary, the Poppy, rather its seed (Mak), is as integral to its culture as the Apple Pie is to America. Hungarians eat: poppy seed bread, poppy seed cake, poppy seed rolls, and a myriad of other different foods which have poppy seeds as an ingredient. You have to understand that even before the Ottomans were here, the Magyars had, for centuries, been influenced by things Turkic. Hungary was prepared not to join the EU if they were not allowed to grow and eat poppy seed. The EU relented and allowed Hungary a special dispensation to continue their poppy culture. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, however, continues to cast a wary eye toward Hungary. Let me ask you this: "If you have received a package from Hungary through the mails, how long did it take? Was the package obviously opened?" Many Hungarians complain, bitterly, that packages that they mail to the States, are often returned to them with no apparent explanation.

All this, then, has been a prologue to what really set me off in this direction, namely, "Kubla Khan" (whose 54 lines I had put to memory years ago) and its author, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Most of us know the story of how the poem supposedly came to be written. Coleridge claimed, for public consumption, that he had been ill; had retired to a country house to recuperate, and, while there, was given a prescribed drug, an "anodyne" he called it, that eased his pain and allowed him to slip into a prolonged slumber in which he had the vision that led to Kubla Khan. The "anodyne" was most likely opium which was all the rave among the creative crowd in that period. In fact, Coleridge had confided with his friends, chaps by the name of Wordsworth, Lamb and Byron that he was playing around with opium. That was probably a lot of poppycock. More likely, he was using opium as an excuse to justify a long unproductive period to his close and curious friends.

Allow me to digress. (More?) While the literati were dabbling in Great Britain and France with opium and hashish (In France, Duma quickly comes to mind), some sources mention Charles Wilson Dodgson, a.k.a., Louie C., with eating funny looking mushrooms and liking little girls: however, at the same time, the Lumpen and the working class were juicing it up with gin and blissing out on arsenic. (Long sentence? Tough! You can do whatever you like when you don't have an editor skulking around.) That's right, arsenic. It seems that one can get pretty wasted on arsenic. The only problem, however, is that the body can't excrete it fast enough and that which can not pass, is stored in the liver. As it happens, one day the liver reaches its saturation level and the abuser dies. Often, during the 19th Century, so did his/her spouse: usually, it was the wife..

You see, forensic medicine had come far enough in the 19th century, that medical examiners or coroners -- ( from the word "Crowners" the gentlemen that King Henry VIII, used to send out to investigate suspicious deaths. If it was found that the victim died from suicide, Hank would claim all the victim's property. Cool!)-- could determine if someone had died of arsenic poisoning.

"It was in the name of Justice and Pure Science, they all said,
That they stretched out the poor women's body from her head,
A Crowner had determined that, to her husband, poison she had fed.
For, as bitter tasting as arsenic may be,
Far worse, was to be hanged on Albion's Tree.

"An innocent she had been through years of poverty and strife,
The victim, you see, had kept his addiction a secret from his wife,
But, Alas and Alack she, too, reached a bitter end to her wretched life.
For, as bitter tasting as arsenic may be,
Far worse, was to be hanged on Albion's Tree." (Perez)

Sorry about that.. Sometimes, I get carried away We were talking about Coleridge:

Coleridge was not a consistent worker like Wordsworth (Cool name for a poet), he liked to take time off... to think.(?) Have you read, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?" He had to have had a lot of free time to come up with that. One of my life's ambitions which I am actually working on is to put it entirely-- and perfectly-- to memory. Every line is complicated and suffused with difficult and archaic language.

I used the word "Eftsoons," recently, and one listener called me up and said that he knew what the word meant, (Liar, I know he used a dictionary), "after soon/soon after." The challenge was why did I have to use such old words. "Wherefore?" I replied. Because it is English, that's wherefore! Although English is not really my mother tongue, I am working hard to get it. The corpus of the English language is full of thousands of unused and unspent words that it flies in the face of credulity the rationale for adding newer words (Dissing and Props readily come to mind) to the modern lexicon while there are words already in existence that still can do the job quite nicely.

The problem, I have found, lies in the same root cause that is responsible for English speakers on both sides of the water from learning new languages. From Brixton to the Bronx to Bushville, English speakers for what ever reason, are inherently lazy when it comes to studying their own language, forget bothering to learn a completely different language. For the most part, hidden behind a veneer of arrogance, is that most English speakers, hither and yon, are actually speaking a patois of English... I'm afraid it "bees" that way.

Perhaps, English is as difficult a language as some non-English speakers have always maintained. Shazam! Maybe that's my problem? It's not that English is not my mother tongue but, simply, English is difficult. It makes one stop and think

It is my practice not to discuss American politics from this perch, but I do want to make one very positive comment about Bill Clinton concerning something that happened while he was still the Prez.

It was during a running press conference in the midst of one of the scandals (call them puffs of smoke in the wind) which plagued his administration that a reporter shouted out to the President, as he was actively fleeing their presence, "Mr. President, could you disabuse us of.....?" I apologize for not remembering what else the reporter said. Maybe, he never finished his question, because Bill (he likes to be called "Bill"), turned on a dime in such a fury that you could tell he hadn't rehearsed his reaction and shouted back as if he was ready to punch the guy in the nose. "Disabuse?" And then went on in what I thought was a little over acting. What I was happy about was that he knew what the word meant.

Or did he? I know that he went to Yale, but that was just for law school, and it was Hillary "Her lips were red her looks were free, her locks as yellow as gold. Her skin was as white as leprosy, the Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold." (STC)and not he, that was on top of the class. Still, I would like to think that he knew, after all, English is his mother tongue.

*Atque haec qua celeritate gesta sint quamquam videtis tamen a me in dicendo praetereunda non sunt.

Unfair? Okay, literally translated: " And these things, with what swiftness they were accomplished, although you see (this), nevertheless (they) must not be passed over by me in speaking."

Better rendered in English, "And, although you are well aware of it, I would like to emphasize the swiftness in which these things were accomplished." In other words, Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks!

*From a speech by Cicero in the Roman Senate praising Pompey's military skill and recounting his many successes in suppressing piracy. Class dismissed!

Szia,
From Budapest