Turkish Moustaches

The curious case of the disappearing Turkish military moustache

I was recently passing a hot afternoon on a guided tour of the museum at Selimiye Barracks in Istanbul. (No one has ever accused me of being normal.)

I was a kind of support worker on a medical tour. We were from a small cruise boat exploring the eastern Mediterranean. Most of the participants were over seventy and some were octogenarians or even nonagenarians. My role was, in part, to help them on their trip, which was primarily designed to visit museums and the ruined sites of archaeological interest, such as asclepieia (healing centres in the ancient world), and it wasn’t the sort of experience I’m likely to forget.

‘Keith, hold on. I can’t find my hat. I can’t go out in the sun without it.’

‘You’re wearing it, Michael.’

‘Ah, yes, good. That’s a relief... Oh, no, it’s not that! I meant my stick. I need my stick.’

‘I’ll get it for you. When did you last have it, Michael?’

‘I’m not sure. It might be with my passport...’

‘Ok, Where’s your passport?’

‘I’ve no idea. I can’t find my passport either.’

Since we visited Istanbul, Gallipoli, Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus, Bodrum, Kos, Rhodes, Syros, Nafplion, Epidauros, Mycenae and Athens in just a couple of weeks, it was all educational and great fun but pretty exhausting. The trip ended in Athens and I remember 87-year-old Rachel leaning, conspiratorially, towards me and saying, ‘I’m so disappointed I couldn’t make it right to the top of the Acropolis. But I’ve been before, many years ago: and that ouzo bar you took me to last night was much better!’

Back to the plot. When we all leapt from the coach at the barracks – you can picture the scene – we were herded into a waiting area, because Selimiye is an active military headquarters and administrative establishment and under strict army rules. You can only get in with special permission.

(As an aside: everyone has to do military service in Türkiye. For six months. Unless you can afford to pay the equivalent of £5,200, in which case you only have to do 28 days. George Orwell was right, of course. As ever. Some are more equal, everywhere you go.)

Anyway, a very smart-looking soldier was to be our guide. He told us to line up, in ranks of four: we were to proceed, in a militarily precise formation, to the museum building. I wonder if anyone reading this has ever attempted to harness the myriad disabilities of forty aged former medical consultants and dentists along two hundred yards of scorched pathways, keeping them in lines, up slopes and round obstructions? No, thought not - but the image of them scattered like disorientated First World War casualties along what seemed a vast expanse of roadway will linger long in my memory.

Finally inside the museum, we stood respectfully in wide corridors where hundreds of injured British soldiers had lain during the Crimean War (1853 -1856), when the Turks were our allies against the Russians. It used to be called the Scutari Barracks Hospital and was where Florence Nightingale began to establish her reputation, having previously run the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Harley Street in London.

I’d visited the place before and knew we ended up climbing a short spiral staircase to the room in which the Lady with the Lamp used to work. It is now much as it was then. Her actual carpet and chair are there, as well as her desk, with her notes upon it; and there are extracts from her handwritten writings, framed, on the walls. The view from the window, right to the Bosphorus, is stunning. She would have been able to look down and see, in the distance, wounded soldiers being unloaded from transports at the wharf.

However, it was the room from which you climb to Nightingale’s study that particularly held my attention on this occasion. It serves as a memorial to Turkish soldiers who died in the Crimean War, the First World War and the War of Independence (1919 – 1923), which was fought in a confusing scenario against the UK, Greece, Armenia, France, Italy and the collapsed Ottoman Empire and which established the Republic of Türkiye. Around two of the walls runs a floor-to-ceiling metal frieze of very human moments from the conflicts, and there are free-standing life-size tableaux, including cannons and the men firing them, and Nightingale is there too.

Florence Nightingale and wounded soldier tableau

One moving representation is of a Turkish soldier carrying an injured British enemy from the battlefield in WW1.

In that war, the man who became the greatest Turkish hero, Mustafa Kamal, known as ‘Ataturk’, made his reputation by repulsing the allied forces at Gallipoli, out-marshalling Churchill and his commanders and, after thousands of casualties on both sides, forcing the invaders to withdraw. The remaining British and Empire forces might well have been massacred during the evacuation, but it’s believed the Turks, who had held the heights throughout eight months of fighting, simply allowed them to retreat.

That is credible, because Ataturk was an unusual and special man.

To slightly mis-quote Shakespeare, ‘he bestrid his world like a Colossus’

When independence was achieved in 1923, he founded the Republic and served as its president until his death in 1938. He was forward-thinking and probably as ‘woke’ as it was possible to be back then. He modernised the country, shifting it into the twentieth century and making it westward-looking. Türkiye became a secular state and he introduced equal rights for women. He was revered and still is today. On the anniversary of his death, the country comes to a halt for two minutes at the time he died. Traffic stops and people stand in silent tribute.

As you stare at the frieze and tableaux in the museum, it is instantly apparent you are looking at Turkish soldiers. Some wear the fez – which Ataturk sensibly decided was no way to protect your head in modern warfare, and banned – and all of them, each soldier, sports a luxuriant and mightily impressive moustache, thicker than a ‘Freddie Mercury’ in every case, better harnessed than a ‘Dave Bedford’ (for those who remember the great runner) and perhaps akin to a ‘Graeme Souness’, so they might all have played for Liverpool FC in the late 1970s.

However, in 1923 Ataturk also banned the wearing of moustaches in the armed forces. It was one very small part of his plan to leave the past behind and focus the state on being part of the new world. As a consequence, all the soldiers we saw at the barracks were immaculately clean-shaven. Traditionally, the Turks had believed that his moustache gave a soldier courage and strength; the more prolific the growth, the greater the resilience of the man wearing it. Ataturk told them that when times get tough what really matters is mental attitude and professionalism. You can’t rely on facial hair to bring you victories; especially, I suppose, when the enemy’s armed with machine guns and tanks...

We left Selimiye and Istanbul and all its glories and sailed south through the Dardanelles and away. Our daily trips from the boat continued, of course, and our brilliantly lucid but extremely antique cruisers coped incredibly well and on a daily basis with the difficulties they encountered on the sites we visited: miles of often extremely rough ground and steps and obstacles, as well as intense heat.

At times it became positively gruelling. How did they manage to cope? Well, a coach carried us to the right location, then it was all down to their mental fortitude, I guess. They certainly didn’t rely on moustaches. There wasn’t one to be seen. Michael didn’t have one. Neither did Rachel. And neither did anyone else.

That Ataturk guy knew stuff.

          A moustache, neither bushy nor trim,

          doesn’t add to your valour or vim:
          so Ataturk said -
          sharp focus instead
          was essential, according to him...

Keith Brindle
www.keithbrindlewriter.com

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Moustaches

It was during the Covid lockdown when I began to question why on earth I was shaving when I wasn’t going anywhere other than along the river path in the early morning and late at night. I’d had a beard for most of my life but ten years before had been encouraged by my girlfriend at the time to get rid of it. Fair enough.

Anyway, I decided to let it grow again as shaving is/was a nuisance. What I’m trying to say is do one thing or the other but growing a moustache is completely bonkers. You have the inconvenience of shaving but still need to control what’s left.

But from the records we can see that moustaches have been fashionable from way back to the Ancient Egypt old kingdom era 2649–2130 BCE.

One of the earliest documents of the usage of moustaches can be traced to Iron Age Celts. According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian wrote that: ‘.... the nobles shave their cheeks but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth.’

In early medieval art the Sutton Hoo helmet, an elaborately decorated helmet sporting a faceplate depicts the style on its upper lip.

I could go on about the various fashions for the moustache and the reasons for them and the people who had them but there would be no point as there is only really one moustache that has counted since 1920 when it appeared for the first time in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

At this time, Hercule Poirot was a refugee, newly arrived from Belgium and nearly penniless, so had not much money to create his incredible moustache. Indeed, it was described as ‘very stiff and military.’

However as his fame as a detective grew so did his bank balance and by the early 1930s it had evolved from being stiff and military into a magnificent, luxurious asset which gained much comment from himself, narrators and other characters within each story. Throughout Christie’s stories, his moustache was described as ‘gigantic’, ‘immense’ and ‘amazing’, pointing to the importance of this physical asset. By 1934 Poirot himself was described as ‘a little man with enormous moustaches’ in Murder on the Orient Express.

Here are a few other references:

“If only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your moustache. If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache– a thing of beauty such as mine.”

- Peril at End House 1932 (UK)

“I assure you, I am really a very humble person.”

I laughed.

“You– humble!”

“It is so. Except– I confess it– that I am a little proud of my moustaches. Nowhere in London have I observed anything to compare with them.”

“You are quite safe,” I said dryly, “you won’t.”
- Lord Edgware Dies 1933

While the Lovely Young Thing made a suitable reply, Poirot allowed himself a good study of the hirsute adornment on Mr. Shaitana’s upper lip.

A fine moustache– a very fine moustache– the only moustache in London, perhaps, that could compete with that of M. Hercule Poirot.

“But it is not so luxuriant,” he murmured to himself. “No, decidedly it is inferior in every respect. Tout de meme, it catches the eye.”

-Cards on the Table

What was even more humiliating was that he had no real ideas, even now, as to what had actually happened. It was ignominious. And tomorrow he must return to London defeated. His ego was seriously deflated– even his moustaches drooped.

-Dead Man’s Folly

“There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.” 

- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

One of the benefits of becoming a famous detective was that with every case, Poirot became more affluent. As the years went by, Poirot earnt a large fortune from his detective work; which he invested a significant portion into the care and maintenance of his favourite personal feature. In The ABC Murders, Poirot reveals that he frequently visits an expensive hairdresser and in Murder on the Orient Express we learn that he uses a little pair of curling tongs on his moustache to give it the ‘upward-curled’ shape. Poirot’s groomed moustache leads Dr. Sheppard to assume that he’s a retired hairdresser, exclaiming “look at that moustache of his” to his sister.

Poirot’s moustache is his trademark. It’s often the first thing people notice about him, and it’s his pride and joy. Poirot takes great care with his appearance from the tip of his shoes to the top of his egg-shaped head, and his moustache is no exception. He believes he has both the finest moustache and the finest brain in Britain – a claim many of his fans around the world would no doubt agree with. Throughout the six decades that his mysteries were documented by Agatha Christie, Poirot’s moustache was described in a number of ways, and was often the focus defining his appearance…

“A little man with enormous moustaches” 

– Murder on the Orient Express

The more Poirot became an established private detective, the bigger his trademark moustache became. By the early 1930s his famous facial hair had evolved from being stiff and military into a magnificent, luxurious asset which gained much comment from himself, narrators and other characters within each story. Throughout Christie’s stories, his moustache was described as ‘gigantic’, ‘immense’ and ‘amazing’, pointing to the importance of this physical asset. By 1934 Poirot himself was described as ‘a little man with enormous moustaches’ in Murder on the Orient Express. By this point and beyond it was clearly his greatest physical attribute, being described as ‘an immense moustache’ in The Labours of Hercules in 1947.

I had to use a few little grey cells myself to get a poem about moustaches. I couldn’t find any decent poems so decided to choose poets with a moustache and it came to a choice between Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve gone with Kipling as my friend C showed me his house in Rottingdean and the poem was written there as part of An Almanac of Twelve Sports. Each month has its own sport and poem. July is about Archery (apparently).

The child of the Nineties considers with laughter
The maid whom his Sire in the Sixties ran after,
While careering himself in pursuit of a girl whom
The Twenties will dub a "last century heir-loom.”

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Moustaches

 

“A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt.”

This saying dates back to Victorian times. The origin is unknown but has been cited to various authors, Rudyard Kipling, Rose Wilder Lane and Jean-Paul Sartre, who is thought to have added “and it is like Good without Evil”.

I remember my dad saying it a lot, when he grew a moustache in his later years. It was just ordinary, nothing stylish. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. He had new glasses at the same time and his whole appearance changed from the happy looking man with a kind face I adored, into someone I felt like I needed to be very wary of. He looked like a cross between the horrid piano teacher I used to have and the equally horrid landlord of a flat I used to rent. Fortunately, my father didn’t stink of stale cigars and his moustache wasn’t stained dirty yellow with nicotine like my piano teacher. Dad disliked the landlord as much as I did and I would tease him about being a copycat. It was a relief when that moustache was shaved off, though the glasses remained.

Each to their own, of course, but isn’t a high maintenance styled moustache over the top and time consuming? Personally, I like a beard attached, but I’m only seeing the results, not looking after it.

The music I favoured in the ‘60s and ‘70s, was progressive rock and symphonic rock. Band members with long hair and often moustaches and beards. I found this poem that took me back to those young, impressionable times. And the music is the same and always there, with a few new bands collected along the way. The poem is by American poet, Gershon Wolf.

Freaky and Weird

We grew our hair down to our shoulders
Hirsute, we were, moustaches and beards,
Turned up our noses at those who were older
‘Cos we were so hip, so freaky, so weird.

Revved up our stereos, going stone-deaf,
Dropped pill after pill, of common sense bereft,
Wore psychedelic threads to match our psychedelic brains.
We thought ourselves ‘free’, but we were really in chains.

Don’t ask me if the Sixties were ‘wonderful years!’
- Just leave me alone with my cigars and my beer.

                                                                    Gershon Wolf

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Dad Jokes

Oh dear, has it come to this? My own dad didn't really do jokes. He wasn't exactly humourless, for he loved the films of Norman Wisdom which had him laughing out loud, but he rarely told jokes. Maybe his sense of humour was more visual than verbal - not something I've considered before -but joke telling wasn't his forté. 

I can only recall one joke that he ever told (and I must have been about ten at the time). It went like this: A trio of West Indian brothers opened a fish & chip shop in south-east London. When they applied to the GPO for a telephone number they were assigned BLAckfriars 123. That made him fair hoot. 

For younger readers I should explain that prior to the mid-1960s introduction of automated Standard Trunk Dialling (with all digit phone numbers), callers would dial a manned telephone exchange using the numerical equivalent of the three-letter id of the exchange and then ask the operator to connect them with the local customer number. A ghostly remnant of the time when telephone dials carried letters equivalent to numbers can still be seen on smartphones today. BLA would have been represented by the digits 252 (should you care to check). By the way, the joke falls down on a technicality because the customer part of the number was always four digits, not three. WHItehall 1212 (the original number for Scotland Yard) is perhaps the most famous example.

What then is the essence of a Dad Joke? It's usually quite short. often in the form of a question and answer, and is frequently based around aa bad  pun or similar dubious play on words, the whole delivery being a tease designed to elicit groans from the hearer for it being 'corny', rather than any appreciation for its wit. 

One thing that did surprise me was to learn that the label Dad Joke is relatively recent (1987 - happy 40th birthday), though the style clearly goes way back to a time when hippos ruled the world.

a hippo dad

At which point, let me regale you with twenty of the  worst 'hippo' dad jokes (though some are not half bad):

01. What do you call a hippo with one leg? - A hoppo.

02. What do you call  hippo with no hips? A potamus.

03. What do you call a lame hippo? A limpo.

04. What do you call a lame hippo who inhabits the Limpopo river? A limpopotamus or limpopopopotamus
05. What do you call a hippo with no legs? It doesn't matter, as he can't come when you call him.

06. What do you call a hippo with a cold? A hipposnotamus.

07. What do you call a hippo that can rap? A hiphopotomus.

08. What role do you give to a hippo that can act? Hippolyta (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).

09. What do you call a hippo with Tourettes? A hippopottymouth.

10. What do you call a hippo who never follows his own advice? A hippocrite.

11. What do you call a non-existent hippo? Hippothetical.

12. What do you call a hippo with no legs swimming in a river? Bob (or clever Dick)...think about it.

13. Why is a hippo wearing speedos like an elephant? They both have large trunks.

14. Hippos can run and swim faster than human beings. Your best chance in the triathlon is the bicycle race.

15. What do you get if you cross a hippo with Snoop Dogg? A smokealotapotamus. 
16. What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One's heavy, the other's a little lighter.

17. Where do hippos go for a grand night out? To a hippodrome. 

18. Where do brainy hippos go to university? The hippocampus. 

19. Why do hippos hate the cold? Because of hippothermia.

20. Why don't you ever see hippos hiding in trees? Because they're really good at it.

Or course I've written a bit of a fun poem for today's blog. When reading it, you'll need to put the stress on the fourth syllable of hippopotamus, making it either a short ä (first verse) or a long ā (pronounced like an r, last verse), hence the diacritic marks. Don't worry, the rhymes in the poem will keep you on track.

Hippopotämus <> Hippopotāmus

Hippopotämus

Don't try to frame us

Defame or fat shame us

Certainly don't blame us

Sad ignoramus

It's Greek of course, for river horse

And we're much better sports

Than any phoney water polo pony

<>

OK, we understand that reprimand

Dismiss what we've been taught

Take this chance to change our stance

He don't alarm us

Delights to charm us

Won't never harm us

No one's as calm as

Hippopotāmus

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Dad Jokes

I went on a day trip to Dumfries last week and hurt my ankle. I went to the hospital and asked for help. I was told “Wee sleket cowerin’ timrous beastie/O, what a panic is in thy breastie.” I’d gone to the Burns Unit.

That was a joke (though I was in Dumfries last week) but is it a dad joke? What is a dad joke? I’m not a dad but the idea is that the above should have induced a groan and/or rolling of the eyes. Why should dads have all the fun?

Come to that why shouldn’t mums have fun as well. Just checked the wonderful mumsnet site and there is this:

Why did the pirate walk the plank? - Because he didn't have a dog.

At which point I began to wonder if there wasn’t a bit more to this than first meets the eye. I went on various sites and the following is a sort of summary of them:

‘I wonder also if it's got anything to do with the typical views of parenting, where dad is the "fun parent" since mum is the one doing the everyday work of childcare and is therefore seen as boring, stuffy, unfun, etc.’

‘In addition...I think this is just a symptom of the "women can't be funny" stereotype.’

‘Quite a strong societal stereotype about moms versus dads. It's not so much a stereotype that dads are funnier, but that they're fun and more of an additional kid then another parent and that somehow is okay.’

‘This is what I think! Once I was cooking for my two roommates and two mutual friends while three of them were playing a game and not helping me at all. The fourth just walked in, stood next to me and I complained, "Well I guess I know why they call me the mum now." He said "Oh yeah totally and I'm the dad."

As the fool I am, I thought that meant I had an ally. Asked if he thought he could get them to help or if maybe I should set a boundary and refuse to cook. He laughed and said "No, I'm the dad, the fun parent!" and went to go play games with them.’.

I thought the British Psychological Society might help and here is Marc Hye-Knudsen in 2023:

‘What, moreover, are we to make of the association of dad jokes with dads? Are fathers indeed more prone to telling dad jokes, and if so, why? It might seem tempting to simply dismiss dad jokes as bad jokes, at the same time accusing dads of just having a bad sense of humour, but that would be a mistake.

When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humour and joke-telling work but also about fathers' psychology and their relationships with their children.’

And that’s as far as I’m going as it gets a bit technical after that.

I’ve read a lot of jokes while doing this and I thought I’d got immune to the ‘simple joke that is not particularly funny or original, often using puns considered typical of jokes made by older men, sometimes intentionally to annoy their children’ (Cambridge Dictionary) but this still got a chuckle. Think of it as the poem for the week:

A Duck walks into a Bar

“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”
“No, and if you ask me again, I’ll nail your beak to the bar”
“Got any nails?”
“No”
“Got any bread?”

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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I'm Printing

Let's call it a happy accident that this week's blog theme is imprinting. With some judicious editorial licence, I've chosen to reinterpret it as I'm printing, in recognition of my second poetry collection getting published. Of course I'm excited. I hope that's excuse enough to devote today's blog to 'Tangerine '.

Those of you who were at the book launch on a sweltering night in Preston on Wednesday will have heard me explain that tangerine is the colour of happiness. In the foreword to the collection I was a bit more expansive: "It's the colour of happiness and a symbol of good fortune. The world needs a lot of both, right now."  

'Tangerine ' has been two years in the making. It runs to 120 pages and brings together the best poems I've written in the last few years. Naturally, as many and more again didn't get a look in, because I like to think I'm quite strict on quality control.

now in print: my second poetry collection 'Tangerine '

Lots of the poems appeared in their original form on the Dead Good Blog, the majority have been road-tested at open mic nights or stanza evenings, and all of them have changed (for the better, I trust) as a result of being out in the world for a while. I hope this collection presents and preserves them as their best selves.

I'm primarily a 'page' poet, rather than a 'spoken word' performer, which is why I'm so pleased to have these 90 poems in print for people to enjoy. That said, I do perform my poems, obviously. They are short, mostly one page, sometimes two. 

I recall going to one open mic night and asking what the form was only to be told "everybody gets to do one poem." Because I was a newcomer, I was given the honour of opening. My 30 line poem took less than a minute. I was followed by a succession of spoken word declaimers, ranters and rappers, none of whose poems clocked it at under seven minutes. All fine, just a different aesthetic. I didn't go back.

If I have a 'style', it's what I term contemporary lyricism, meaning the poems have a flowing rhythm built on lots of assonance and internal rhymes, but not so many end rhymes. I've only ever written one poem in rhyming couplets - though it's in this book (and it's about Ken Dodd's Dad's Dog).

There are poems of love enjoyed, lost, regretted, social satire, ecological concern, political commentary, humour, pathos, wild imaginative leaps (plenty of them), madness, murder, music and much more. And yes, there is a poem about tangerines, which has given the collection it title.

cover art and design by myself

'Tangerine ' is published by the imprint  of Three Piers Publishing. It only comes in physical book form (because I don't much like e-books) and is not available on Amazon, because Jeff Bezos is quite wealthy enough. 

So until I can get it into bookshops (if ever I manage that), it's only available from me, priced £10 - plus postage if you're not local to Blackpool. And what's £10 these days? It's a pint-and-a-half of beer.

Of course, I hope you'd like to purchase a copy (autographed at no extra cost). I accept payment by online bank transfer or PayPal. Email me at: steveg.rowland@btinternet.com and we'll work something out. One day I might even be able to afford a rug for the floor of my garret. 😉

And if you run a poetry night (in person or online) I'd be happy to get a promotional spot if possible.

There's no fresh poem from me this week, as I don't want to detract from the new publication.

Thanks as ever for reading, and thanks for your support S ;-)

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Imprint - It's only words

When I was considering what to include in this blog on the theme of imprint, several things crossed my mind.

The scars left on my face by falling off my bicycle head first and skidding onto a tarmac carpark as it tore into my skin. (After 60 years I still have one scar beneath my right nostril and a piece of stone in my lower lip.)

No, not gruesome memories like that one. Words often leave a more profound impact. 

While I was recovering in hospital with concussion following the afore-mentioned accident, my dance partner (then a girl called Lynn Jones) came to visit with her parents. Without any sympathy for my situation, my scabby face and broken teeth, she pointed at me and declared "That's what you get for telling lies!"

I was terribly upset by this and when I told my dad he reassured me that I need never see her again. He arranged for a visit to Blackpool Tower during the British Junior Dance Festival. There we met a friend of his, former Ballroom World Champion Eric Lashbrook. He took me twice around the floor and told my dad he would be in touch. 

A few weeks later he arranged a 'try out' for me with a boy partner and within months we were successfully admitted to the British Juvenile Team for a trip to compete in Switzerland. But for Lynn's dreadful words, none of my dancing success would ever have happened.

In my teens, my elderly Auntie Effie (short for Ethel) took herself off on a solo trip to Paris, very brave for a woman of 70-plus. She had a career as head corsetter in a local department store and had married late in life. Her husband had recently died. 

She once told me that people place on you half the value you place on yourself. That left an imprint too. Never undervalue your own worth.

My poem today is based on factual personal experience and the lasting imprint of the power of words. My motto is: Always think before you speak.

Imprint

That was the day
the day I decided I’d had enough
the day I chose to leave

I put the children in the car
he took them out again
pushed them back into the house

I tried to get them back
he blocked me
he slammed the door on my arm

He grabbed me
he lifted me up
he threw me at the copper beech

The neighbour was concerned
he called the police
an officer drove me to hospital

He said “think about it overnight
a man’s reputation
is at stake”

The bruise shaped like the door lock
would fade in time
I would be fine

But those misogynistic words
will always remain
a permanent imprint in my mind

Adele V Robinson

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Imprinting

When I glanced at the word imprinting as a topic I was very enthusiastic. I could look into various types of publishing and/or printing and it so happens that yesterday my friend and I were shown how to make a small notebook using paper that had a watermark and finding out about those would be so interesting as well.

Unfortunately, when I started looking into what imprinting is I soon discovered that imprinting is different to an imprint. I’ll take the Chambers definition:

Imprinting: a learning process in young animals in which their social preferences become restricted to their own species or a substitute for this.

‘Imprinting according to the Wildlife Centre of Virginia is a form of learning in which an animal gains its sense of species identification. Birds do not automatically know what they are when they hatch – they imprint on their parents during a critical period of development. After imprinting, they will identify with that species for life. (A bit like football teams?)

imprinting i

Imprinting for wild birds is crucial to their immediate and long-term survival. For example, precocial (word of the week) baby birds (such as ducks, geese, and turkeys) begin the process of imprinting shortly after hatching so that they follow the appropriate adult, providing them with safety.

Imprinting allows baby birds to understand appropriate behaviours and vocalizations for their species, and helps them visually identify with other members of their species so they choose appropriate mates later in life.

The timing of the imprinting stage varies from species to species, and some species of birds are more susceptible to imprinting inappropriately on human caregivers for reasons not fully understood.’

It was first reported in domestic chickens, by Sir Thomas More in 1516 as described in his treatise Utopia, 350 years earlier than by the 19th-century amateur biologist Douglas Spalding. It was rediscovered by ethologist Oskar Heinroth, and studied extensively and popularized by Konrad Lorenz working with greylag geese.

Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a "critical period" between 13 and 16 hours shortly after hatching. For example, the goslings would imprint on Lorenz himself (to be more specific, on his wading boots), and he is often depicted being followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. Lorenz also found that the geese could imprint on inanimate objects. In one notable experiment, they followed a box placed on a model train in circles around the track.

imprinting ii

In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to ‘imprint’ on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that ‘users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems’. The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user's experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.

I love the name of this syndrome.

I can’t find an appropriate poem to fit the bill and I do like the following by one of my heroes Walt Whitman.

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for

         future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and

         traditions;

Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met

         there, who detain'd me for love of me;

Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long

         been forgotten by me;

I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;

Again we wander--we love--we separate again;

Again she holds me by the hand--I must not go!

I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

From the 1860 edition of  'Leaves of Grass '.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Imprinting - Twilight

I was unfamiliar with the term ‘imprinting’ when I read the Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer. I understood it to be a strong infatuation, but it was more than that in the story setting of a supernatural fantasy world. I wanted to know what the teenaged and young adults were reading and raving about. This was a long time ago, when my daughter was fourteen or fifteen years old. The film versions quickly hit the cinema and helped to raise the profile of lead actor, Robert Pattinson. He was an attractive vampire.

Quoting from online information,

“In Twilight, imprinting is a supernatural, involuntary soulmate bond that occurs exclusively among the Quileute shape-shifters. Where a wolf first phases, they may instantly imprint on someone, completely overriding their own free will and severing previous attachments.”

Character Jacob, a wolf, attempts to explain imprinting to character, Bella, wife of vampire. He has previously been in love with Bella, but now is imprinting on her new born daughter, Renesmee,

“It’s not like love at first sight, really it’s more like…gravity moves…suddenly. It’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend.”

 The books gave me an insight into what some impressionable teenagers were reading and watching. As usual with me, I preferred the novels to the films. Imprinting, up to now, isn’t a word in my regular use.

I thought of imprinting as being a family likeness, the way we take after our parents in looks and traits. I met a little girl years ago when I first worked in a school. She was four or five years old and an absolute carbon copy of a girl I had known when I was a child in another town. Many years passed and the little girl was grown up when I discovered that her mother was the girl from my childhood.

I found this poem,

 Imprinting Stare

I sit upon the earthen floor,
Staring up at my first vision.
My true emotion revealed.
But as I imprint,
I am torn away
My delicate eyes burnt beyond the
Purpose of pain.

I am the butterfly,
Waiting to pervade the shell of my cocoon.
I am the spider,
Waiting with omnipotent patience,
To drink my fill.
I am the serpent,
Cursed with the destiny to slide among
The lowest beings.

But most of all,
I am Human,
Blessed with emotion, Cursed with Heartache,
I learn, live and love.
I am Man.
And I shall arise again.

Stuart Logan.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Imprinting

It was the late 1960s. I had recently moved to Riverside, a western suburb of Chicago. I was six years old, in the first grade and innocent. My classmate Jim S. was smart and funny and he was my first love. He would walk me home from school through the park where as I recall we had an awkward kiss. 

Jim lived not far from me in an extraordinary house. Even though I was very young, I knew that the house was something special (as was Jim). The stained glass was beautiful, the built-in furniture unusual and I remember playing inside on the bridge which you can see in the photo.

Image from the YouTube film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJG_RnsPcoQ

Jim’s home was The Avery Coonley House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright who had been inspired by the Midwestern flat landscape of the prairies. The Prairie style residence was originally built for Avery Coonley, a Chicago Industrialist and his wife Queene in 1907. 

The estate included the house, a Coach House and Gardener’s Cottage along with the surrounding gardens and a lily pond (turned into a swimming pool and later turned back into a lily pond to reflect the original design). 

Within the interior, Wright included furnishings to ‘be part of the building itself’. Wright once stated:
      In Organic Architecture…, it is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its
      furnishings another and its setting and environment still another. The Spirit in which
      these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing…The very
      chairs and tables, cabinets and even musical instruments, where practicable, are of
      the building itself, never fixtures upon it…
Frank Lloyd Wright, preface to ‘Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe’, 1910

In the 1950s the estate was divided into five properties. The Main Public Wing is the part Jim and his family lived in. In 1970 the house was declared a National Historic Landmark. 

Both Jim and the house have been forever imprinted on my mind. I have appreciated Jim’s early friendship and the gift he gave me in experiencing his world. Such bliss.

On Coming of Age

My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned
to one object of beauty, do or die.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

I see you for you, nature has designed
perfection and thus, I cannot deny
my eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to one and only one, the you enshrined
within a hopeful soul entwined belie.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind

despite when faces wrinkle, time unkind
I will return to this to sanctify.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned

to keep you close and ne’er leave you behind
in memory angelic butterfly
forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Fluttering wings inside my brain outlined
passion to live immortal till I fly.
My eyes caught you my Love, my heart consigned.
Forever you, imprinted on my mind.

Thank you for reading.

Kate

J

P.S. Another Jim moved into the Avery Coonley house a bit later, Jim Dublinski. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation wrote an article in 2022 about Jim D’s experience living within Wright’s fascinating creative space. Well worth a read. https://franklloydwright.org/growing-up-wright/

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