Herman Melville Likes Your Beard

Beards: They're not for everyone. But those who get it, get it.

 Herman Melville gets it! 

Tolstoy, Whitman, Dostoyevsky, Hugo—none of them said anything of note before they grew their beards. Still, we all know what happens to a man’s facial hair when he’s aboard a boat for too long. 

Here are 25 unique words or phrases that Melville used to describe beards in two chapters (84 and 85) of White-Jacket or The World in a Man-of-War, his 1850 novel based on experience crewing a U.S. frigate, the USS Neversink, in the South Seas for 14 months.

Melville’s Alternative Names for Beards:

1. the crop

2. suburbs of the chin

3. homeward-bounders

4. fly-brushes

5. long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some aged oak

6. love-curls

7. Winnebago locks

8. carroty bunches

9. rebellious bristles

10. redundant mops

11. yellow bamboos

12. long whiskers

13. thrice-noble beards

14. plantations of hair

15. whiskerandoes

16. nodding harvests

17. viny locks

18. the fleece

19. fine tassels

20. goatees

21. imperials

22. sacred things

23. admiral’s pennant

24. manhood

25. muzzle-lashings

I selected just 10 of Melville’s 25 evocative words or phrases for my beard meme. I might pick a different set of 10 on another day. Which 10 would you choose?
 

Our Muse

Herman Melville

(1819-1891)

The Bard of Beards

Here is a little context for Melville's whiskery vocabulary. The Captain of the USS Neversink issued an unpopular decree. All sailors with long hair must cut it short, and all those with long whiskers must trim them down to Navy regulations. This decree was met with various levels of consternation from the crew, ranging from reluctant obedience to out and out mutiny.

In Chapter 85, The Great Massacre of the Beards, Melville recounts the story of Jack Chase as he took his turn with the barber. About to be shorn, Jack gave a soliloquy to his beard:

“My friend, I trust your scissors are consecrated. Let them not touch this beard if they have yet to be dipped in holy water; beards are sacred things barber. Have you no feeling for beards, my friend?

"This beard has been caressed by the snow-white hand of the lovely Tomasita of Tombez—the Castilian belle of all lower Peru. Think of that, barber! I have worn it as an officer on the quarter-deck of a Peruvian man-of-war. I have sported it at brilliant fandangoes in Lima. I have been alow and aloft with it at sea. Yea, barber! it has streamed like an Admiral's pennant at the mast-head of this same gallant frigate, the Neversink! Oh! barber, barber! it stabs me to the heart.—Talk not of hauling down your ensigns and standards when vanquished—what is that, barber! to striking the flag that Nature herself has nailed to the mast!"

Melville, the Bard of Beards! At one point he complains that the hair and beard regulation is "directly opposed to the theocratical law laid down in the nineteenth chapter and twenty-seventh verse of Leviticus, where it is expressly ordained, "Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard." But legislators do not always square their statutes by those of the Bible."

As Melville aged, he cited that Bible verse to justify a rather distinctive squared-off beard style.

“Ye shall not shave the corners of your head round, 

neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.”

—LEVITICUS 19:27

Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance

 

Today's Meme of the Day is inspired by a conversation between comedian Russell Brand and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Billed as a "debate," this conversation is no battle or fight. It seems to me to be more of a spirited conversation between two intelligent people with slightly different views. I enjoyed this excerpt from Russell Brand's Under The Skin Podcast #46 With Jordan Peterson

At 3:10 in the excerpt, Brand raises the issue of how people in the media can misinterpret a speaker's words or intentions. Brand posited that both he and Peterson had been misunderstood at times, and he wanted to attribute this controversy to a lack of nuance in reporting. In turn, the lack of nuance in reporting can be attributed to either editorial direction or the short attention span of the audience, or both. The resulting tendency is for people to force other people into ideological categories (left, right) too quickly. 

Brand had worked with the Maysles brothers on a documentary film. (Interestingly enough, the subject was reportedly Donald Trump.) Brand recalled Maysles' quote during this portion of the conversation. Peterson was not familiar with the quote but took an immediate interest. Peterson remarked, "there's no nuance in ignorance but it's excusable because you just don't know any better. But when it's deliberate, that's a whole different story."

Ignorance, simply being unaware of the facts, is forgivable. Willful ignorance, choosing to remain ignorant in spite of facts, is certainly an offense against the pursuit of truth. deliberately obscuring facts from others keeping them ignorant would be worse still. Tyranny is even more nefarious for its subtlety, leaving facts but removing nuance. 

The lesson is to search for the truth, to ask questions, to trust only what is verified, and to be suspicious of motives until they are plainly exposed. Not coincidentally, these were the principles of the Maysles brothers' pioneering style of documentary filmmaking known as cinema veritas.  

For more information about Albert Maysles and his brother David, feel free to read this New York Times appreciation of their award-winning approach to documentary filmmaking. Albert died in 2015 at the age of 88. His brother and collaborator, David, died in 1987 at the age of 54. PBS published a list of their seven most important films. How many have you seen?

• “Psychiatry in Russia” (1955)
• “Salesman” (1968)
• “Gimme Shelter” (1970)
• “Christo’s Valley Curtain” (1974)
• “Grey Gardens” (1975)
• “When We Were Kings” (1996)
• “Iris” (2014)

Don't Worry, Be Happy--Right!?!

Today's Meme of the Day is inspired by the "Woman Yelling at a Cat" meme template that is all the rage today.



On December 5th, 2011, episode 14 "Malibu Beach Party From Hell" of season two of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV series premiered in the United States. In the episode, cast member Taylor Armstrong cries during an argument, with cast member Kyle Richards attempting to calm her down.

On June 19th, 2018, Tumblr user deadbefordeath posted a photograph of a white cat (later revealed to be named Smudge) with a confused expression sitting in a chair in front of a plate with vegetables in it, titling the post "he no like vegetals." The post gained over 50,300 likes and reblogs in one year.

On May 1st, 2019, Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL made a post containing both images, writing "These photos together is making me lose it.“ The tweet gained over 78,900 retweets and 276,800 likes in two months.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/woman-yelling-at-a-cat

If you haven't seen this meme template yet, you will! 

Game Five lands on a Scherzday!

Forget about "best of 3" let alone best of 7. 

Don't worry about Games 6 or 7.

Game 5 is all that matters...

Let's go 1 and 0 tonight, Nats!

Aníbal Sánchez Game 3 starter...

Aníbal Sánchez will make his 3rd start of the Postseason in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night in Nationals Park. Wear BLUE! Go 1-0 one more time! 

Merry Strasmas!

Scherzday

Meme of the Day: No such thing as a long-sleeved T shirt!