I keep hearing “emergent situation” or similar phrases used in place of “emergency”. This is incorrect; “emergent” means something like “coming into existence” or “coming into view” and does not, by itself, imply urgency or crisis. Although before taking to my blog in anger I had only heard this usage rather than seen it in print, a quick visit to the search engines reveals the poisonous weed taking root in (where else?) the offices of state bureaucrats and educationists. In the New Jersey Administrative Code, Chapter 53B (Jursidictional Assignments for Railroad Overhead Bridges), we find the phrase explicitly defined thus:

"Emergent situation" means a sudden, urgent, or unexpected occurrence or occasion that interferes with the free and safe movement of traffic over a railroad overhead bridge, which requires immediate action.

This same production informs us also of the possibility of “emergent bridge repairs”, whatever that means. Are the repairs emerging in some way? Is the bridge?

New video! I rescue this X-Carve CNC router by tearing it down, cleaning it up, putting it back together, and building a "torsion box" tabletop for it to live on. Part 1 of a series!

Frederick Douglass, Andrew & Ives, 1863

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

In this, the first of his three (!) autobiographies, Douglass tells the tale of his early years in captivity and of his escape to freedom in the northern states, an escape facilitated by his identification of the power of language and of the written word. Forbidden to learn how to read and write, he taught himself by any means necessary, from the surreptitious to the psychological:

“when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing”

Douglass was a slave at birth, illiterate until 12, a free man at 20, an author at 27, and an international figure soon after that. By the end of his life he had been a diplomat, a publisher, a real estate developer, the most famous man of his race in the world, and “the 19th century's most photographed American”. If that isn't self improvement I don't know what is!

Unlike some of our other selections, The Narrative isn't necessarily practical advice from our point of view; we all know how to read and came by it easily. Nobody in this club is likely to have to escape from slavery, or to be whipped for mere clumsiness. But this book gives us something else: inspiration, and with it maybe even a motivating dose of shame. After all, will any of our excuses stand up to the scrutiny of a boy that had to bribe other children with stolen bread for reading lessons?

That should give us all something to think about!

We will reconvene at 7PM on September 8 at Vino's, as usual. See you there!

The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine. Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1864–1865

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Here's something fun for a change: Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Self Reliance” (note the quotation marks around the title, this one is short). Many of our selections demand much of us, and by that I'm referring to more than the page count. Consider Nietzsche: “Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths...” Consider Marcus: “Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness”. Consider Ecclesiastes: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” But Emerson offers you something you want to believe:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so

As you can see, Emerson has no time for false humility. He wants to see you escape conformity, cast off any expectations that are holding you back, and become exactly yourself, acting and creating as only you can. Heady stuff, and although it's suspiciously easy to hear, it has the virtue of being not very easy to do; the voices in our heads of, well, everyone but ourselves are no quieter now than they were in Emerson's day, and after all, OSSI's membership are mostly well-behaved adults. So we'll risk it.

Here's the full text: Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you'd like to read it in print, it's often collected with his other essays, or in collections of transcendentalist works alongside Thoreau, etc. Any of these should do just fine.

We will meet as usual at Vino's, on August 11, and “thank the joyful juice for all [we] know”. See you there!

Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Some time ago I created something called the Old School Self Improvement Book Club on meetup.com. Here's the pitch:

Are you interested in improving yourself? In watering the seeds of virtue and pulling out vice by the roots? Are you looking for guidance but the self-help section at the bookstore looks like shelves of unproven fads and nonsense that was invented ten minutes ago?

We agree: the old ways are still the best!

The Old School Self Improvement Book Club will meet once a month to discuss a selected time-tested work of practical philosophy, psychology, or advice for living. We'll come together somewhere in the greater Fort Lauderdale area to make it as easy as possible for anyone from Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach counties to attend.

Since June 2023's meeting for the Enchiridion of Epictetus, we've met almost every month and almost always at a wine bar in Fort Lauderdale called Vino's, which has graciously hosted us on Monday nights in a side room named "Napoleon's Parlour" and decorated with images of the emperor himself, very appropriate for our Count of Monte Cristo meeting (It was our group's only excursion into fiction)! I'll start cross-posting the meetup notifications here as well; after all, it's a good way to ensure at least one blog post per month!