Whose Right Is It, Anyway?

Photo by David Veksler on Unsplash

The weeds are my sweet spot, etymologically speaking, and so we’re wading in. The subject is a constitutional principle that came up in the news today.

In a Senate hearing, Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, was asked to define habeas corpus. She said, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” The former governor of South Dakota thinks the Constitution gives the President the right to deport people, and she thinks that right is called habeas corpus.

Kristi Noem was a governor of a state, and she does not know the meaning of habeas corpus. A phrase which the founders put into the Constitution of the United States.

You don’t have to know Latin to know that habeas corpus is a citizen’s right, not a President’s right. A version appeared in the Magna Carta, an English charter of rights from 1215. That’s the Magna Carta. In 1215.

AI explains the concept like this: “A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial order forcing law enforcement authorities to produce a prisoner they are holding, and to justify the prisoner’s continued confinement.” People, in other words, that is, humans (that is, not necessarily US citizens) have the right to a public hearing notifying them of charges against them. The Constitution decrees that if you’re arrested, you’re entitled to a timely hearing, so that the court can evaluate the legality of your imprisonment.

Here come the weeds. The phrase is Latin, and if you know anything about Latin, you know it’s all about the endings. The verb habere means “to have.” The form habes means “you have.” But in the legal phrase, it’s spelled habeas. That a makes the verb subjunctive, a particular kind of subjunctive called iussive, meaning “command” or “order.” Habeas translated literally means “may you have” or “let you have.” It’s a let that’s more than a suggestion, as when your teachers used to say, “Let’s be quiet now.” They meant, “Be quiet!”

The direct object corpus means “body,” with its obvious English derivatives such as corpse, incorporate, corporal, and so on. The Constitution is not messing around. It’s telling law enforcement and the justice system that if you arrest someone, you have to produce that someone in court. A writ of habeas corpus says, “Let you have the body” in the courtroom. You can’t arrest someone and leave them to rot in a cell indefinitely without charges, without letting them come into court and to hear what they’re up against. Then the court can decide further steps.

I remember looking this phrase up many years ago and being startled at its simplicity and bluntness. Habeas corpus. Let you have the body. You must produce the living body of the prisoner in a courtroom.

The colonial British government didn’t have to produce a body before a judge. It had no obligation to give American colonists the right to a hearing. Neither do the modern governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea. People get sent off to prisons there and are never heard from again. No court ever evaluates trumped-up charges.

We have an administration proposing that we formally suspend habeas corpus, saying that from now on, it’s up to the government whether someone gets a hearing or not. As of now, some 50,000 immigrants are in detention in the US, without hearings. No one knows for sure how many people have already been deported to prisons in El Salvador and other countries, with no hearings and no notice and no legal representation. Habeas corpus is already being suspended.

Thoughts?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/20/kristi-noem-habeas-corpus-definition-senate-hearing/83744183007/

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Fan Mail, Reversed

Circa September, 1976, I received an astonishing postcard in the mail. Its handwriting was unfamiliar, the postmark said “Bellingham, Washington,” and it was signed, apparently, by Annie Dillard, my favorite writer. Or certainly one of the top five. I knew she lived in Bellingham.

I would quote the text verbatim, but I can’t put my hands on it right now. It should be tucked into my battered 1974 copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but it’s not there, which I’m trying not to worry about right now. Anyway, the postcard wished me a happy birthday, and the writer added that her wishes frequently come true. A postscript read, “John Ewing loves you.”

I knew there was no way Annie Dillard would send me a birthday greeting at my home address in Canton, Ohio. I was painfully aware that Annie Dillard had no idea where I lived or who I was or how much I loved her. That P.S. was my only clue, so I immediately rang up my boyfriend, John Ewing.

I began by asking something like, “How did you manage to send me a postcard from Bellingham, Washington?” I was imagining John’s conniving with some WA acquaintance who could forge a signature and arrange for the appropriate postmark.

John replied, “Oh, she did it? I had given up!” This was happening a week or two after my birthday.

“C’mon,” I insisted. “How did you do this?”

John said, “Really. I wrote her a letter telling her how much you liked her and asking her to send you a birthday greeting. I can’t believe she did it.” He worked at a library and had contrived somehow to find her address.

Eventually, he convinced me that the missive had come to me from Annie Dillard’s actual hands. I kept it safe lo these many years, until now, when I don’t know what became of it. I treasured it because of Annie Dillard, of course, but even more because of John’s creative and sweet gesture.

A few years later, I wrote to Pauline Kael, John’s (then) favorite film critic, and made a similar request. I enclosed a stamped, self-addressed postcard, hoping to guarantee success. Like Annie, Pauline sent John a friendly greeting.

Some years after that, I attended some talks and workshops Annie Dillard presented at Oberlin, when her daughter was a student there. In a smallish group setting, I asked her if she remembered sending me that message. She responded that she didn’t remember, but that she received similar requests fairly often and tried to respond to them. She liked to encourage romance, she said.

Writing this, I was pleased to discover a David Remnick New Yorker interview with Annie Dillard from 2016. Even when she was young, she was cranky, and in her seventies she’s a little more cranky. A crank who encourages romance.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/david-remnick-speaks-annie-dillard

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Arabic Words in the News!

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The English word tariff dates from the late sixteenth century. It referred to an arithmetical table or an official list of custom duties and derived from the Italian tariffa, meaning “a price or assessment.” That word came from the Latin tarifa, a list of prices, which derived from the Arabic ta’rif, which also described an inventory of fees. That Arabic word stems from a verb meaning “to make known.”

Or. Tar’if ‘became tarifa when it named a medieval town on the southern tip of Spain where ships were paid to pass through. My research doesn’t definitively explain which came first, the payments or Tarifa, the town.

Hundreds of words with Arabic origins have entered English, such as albatross and Alcatraz from last week. Some others are kismet, lacquer, and magazine. Hence, my frequent correction of well-meaning people who tell me, “Latin is the root of all languages.” Sometimes I bite my tongue.

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Albatross Around Our Neck

Who knew Alcatraz, the former prison in the San Francisco Bay, would be in the news, like so many other improbable and repellent items entering our consciousnesses these days? Alcatraz, at least, has two (nearly) redeeming features: one, the name has an interesting derivation, and, two, it coincidentally appears on my list of possible words to write about.

If you’ve ever seen the 1962 classic film starring Burt Lancaster, The Birdman of Alcatraz, you’ll appreciate the word’s irony. The movie’s a highly fictionalized bio-pic of an inmate named Robert Stroud, played by Burt Lancaster, a convicted murderer who became a self-taught ornithologist while in prison. The birds that Stroud studies symbolize, of course, freedom. What most viewers don’t realize is that the prison itself is named for birds. How about that?

Alcatraz is a earlier form of the word albatross. The prison-island is named for the birds who lived there, who were actually pelicans. Okay, pelicans and albatrosses are different species, but they’re similar and often confused.

The Spanish or Portuguese word albatros is an alteration of the earlier alcatraz, originally meaning a web-footed sea bird, or pelican. This name might come from the Arabic al-ghattas “sea eagle” or from Arabic al-qadus, which meant “jar.” This term, referring to an object that could hold water, might refer to the pelican’s pouch.

Follow my example. Next time you’re distracted or troubled by the news, turn your distress into something good. Or at least harmless. Ignore the moral and economic ramifications of disturbing dispatches. Instead, explore some etymologies.

Next time, we’ll be taking a look at tariffs!

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Telling a True Story

Tricia Springstubb’s new novel tells a true story, only in fictional disguise. Her heroine Amber, a sixth grader, is smart but ordinary, cute but not gorgeous, and quietly funny. She has two best friends. Lottie is brainy, and Mariah is a soccer superstar. Amber’s beloved older brother Gage is beginning to grow away from the family. Minor characters, like little sister Clancy, the popular kids, and Amber’s Aunt Noreen, weave in and out, behaving plausibly and entertainingly. Their story, intended for middle schoolers, challenges any reader to think about the importance of telling the truth, and of kindness, and of honest communication within families. (Tricia is a friend and lives in Cleveland Heights.)

A disaster sets the plot in motion: Amber’s house burns to the ground. The community rallies around the family, but mysteries hover over the action. How did the fire start? How will the family rebuild? Will Amber’s parents, Gus and Meg, be able to bridge the worsening rifts between them? And on top of everything else, Amber faces everyday middle-school questions, such as where she’s going to sit in the cafeteria.

Bigger, heavier issues dog Amber and her brother Gage. They face hard choices about telling the truth and keeping secrets. Hard truths abound, and the kids behave like real kids–sometimes heroes and sometimes falling short. Like Tricia’s previous books (Every Single Second and Looking for True, for example), How to Tell a True Story provides an emotionally true and satisfying story for the young person in your life.

I wrote about another enjoyable YA novel last year, The Kings of B’More by R. Eric Thomas (March, 2024). Have you read any books created for young people? What are your favorites from the near or distant past?

Baltimore Boys

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More about Science

Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash

Hydrogen’s chemical symbol is H, and oxygen’s is O. This sensible state of affairs makes Chemistry 101 a little easier (for us English speakers) than it might otherwise be. The periodic table is not always so self-explanatory, however. You probably already know that the chemical symbol for iron is Fe, from the Latin word for iron, ferrum. Similarly, Ag stands for silver, which in Latin is argentum. Tungsten is a similar outlier, with its symbol W.

W stands for wolfram, an old Germanic synonym for tungsten. Wolfram‘s derivation is problematic, but it might mean “wolf-raven,” a German name. Wikipedia devotes an entire page to people named Wolfram. I have never met such a person, but the name has a dignified ring. And what red-blooded American boy would not like to be named Wolf Raven?

The word’s history is fuzzy, though. W0lfram might instead derive from wolf-soot,” a derogatory term for an ore less valuable than tin. Part of the tin is lost when the tungsten-tin ore is smelted. Apparently, in this scenario, miners were pissed off by wolfram.

More straightforwardly, tungsten combines the Swedish words for “heavy” and “stone.” If you’re guessing tungsten is a heavy metal, you’re right. It’s in fact the heaviest. The website of the company Xometry gives tungsten this encomium: “As the heaviest known engineering metal, tungsten has earned the crown for strength, weight, and conductivity.” Yay, tungsten! It’s truly a heavy stone!

Tungsten lent its name to an entertaining 2001 memoir by Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. Sacks’s Uncle David acquired the nickname based on the company he worked for, Tungstalite, which made light bulbs with tungsten filaments. This charming and sometimes sad book reveals Sacks’s extreme precociousness and scientific passion. And, get this, Oliver Sacks’s middle name is Wolf.

Who knew this English major would have two chemistry books to recommend? The other is The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, a chemist, memoirist, and survivor of Auschwitz. This 1984 collection consists of about twenty essays, each nominally devoted to an element, but wandering into personal reminiscences. The Royal Institution of Great Britain, I just read, voted it the best science book ever written in a 2006 poll. You will probably want to read the Best Science Book Ever.

We’ll have to forgive Levi, who–with essays on tin, arsenic, argon, titanium, and others–overlooks tungsten altogether.

Let us know in the comments. What’s your favorite science book? What’s your favorite element?

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Damocles in the News

Photo by Cassiano K. Wehr on Unsplash

Now and again, classical derivatives and mythological allusions arise in the news cycle. Regarding the case of New York mayor Eric Adams, the sword of Damocles keeps recurring in pundit parlance.

First, to review the news story so far, Mayor Adams, a Democrat, was indicted in September of last year, during Joe Biden’s administration, on charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. To be clear, being indicted means that a federal grand jury, consisting of 16-23 citizens, heard evidence presented by prosecutors, and at least 12 of them found the evidence sufficient for the prosecution to go forward.

As you no doubt know, there are new wrinkles. The Trump Justice Department has moved to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning that the charges could be refiled at any time. Prejudice, a Latin derivative (of course), means “judgment in advance.” So a dismissal without prejudice means that the judge is not deciding guilt or innocence, but rather is dismissing the case without that judgment, leaving open the possibility that the charges can be resurrected. As you may also know, Mayor Adams is now requesting that the case be dismissed instead “with prejudice,” which sounds like a bad thing, because isn’t prejudice a bad thing? Not for Mayor Adams. With prejudice means his charges would go away, i.e., with advance judgment, meaning it’s over and done with, naturally preferable for the accused mayor.

A dismissal without prejudice, as proposed by the Trump Department of Justice, would place a sword of Damocles over Mayor Adams’s head. Anyone can decipher the meaning of the phrase, which calls to mind that expression about having an ax over one’s head. Adams would be free from prosecution only as long as his behavior (meaning enforcing immigration policy) pleases the Trump DOJ. If he steps outside the lines, he could be facing prosecution once again.

So who was Damocles anyway, and why did he have a sword hanging over his head? The stories come from various sources, including Cicero. They’re probably largely apocryphal.

Dionysius was a 4th century BCE king of Syracuse in Greece. Damocles, a member of his court, attended a royal dinner, where he proceeded to flatter his king’s power and prestige. Dionysius offered his throne to Damocles for a momentary thrill, so that he could see how it felt to wield such power. But Dionysius hung a sword, suspended by a horsehair, over Damocles’s head, and said something in Greek along these lines: “How’s it feel now, buddy?” The ax could fall at any time. The sword of Damocles evokes a feeling of dread and imminent peril.

Cicero wrote that Dionysius, known for his brutality, feared to have a barber come near him with a razor and so taught his daughters to cut his beard and his hair, because he knew people wanted to kill him. As Shakespeare put it in Henry IV, “uneasy is the head that wears the crown.”

Mayor Adams wants the sword, the ax, to be permanently removed. Can he convince a judge? Is his promised cooperation with the Administration a valuable enough bargaining chip? In the meantime, a sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of Internal Revenue accountants, employees at the National Parks, secretaries and office workers and other federal employees. It hangs, more literally, over the heads of President Zelenskyy and his people.

In fact, although none of us wears the crown, we’re can sense it, at least some of the time–a sword over our heads, hanging there by a thread.

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Hoarding and Other Family Secrets

I wrote this review for our area monthly paper, The Heights Observer, to spread the word about Deb’s book Lost Found Kept and to invite people to our talk together on Saturday. Comment below with your wisdom, insights, and difficulties regarding dealing with a family member’s mental illness. If you live in Northeast Ohio, hope to see you at Mac’s Backs.

In 2016, Deborah Derrickson Kossmann was living her own episode of “Hoarders,” emptying junk from her mother’s house in suburban New Jersey. It had been almost twenty years since anyone was allowed inside, and nothing, not even a PsyD. in psychology, had prepared Kossmann for what she found. She writes,

“(T)here hadn’t been trash put outside for the last fifteen years. All that garbage is here, not only her own excrement but containers filled with leftovers like a liquified turkey club sandwich. There are chicken bones, apple cores, empty milk cartons, and a half-eaten jar of peanut butter, all of it just thrown on top of piles. She’s made her life a literal dump. Why is she unable to part with her own trash?

In the newly published Lost Found Kept: A Memoir (Trio House Press), Kossmann reveals her mom’s mental illness and her stepfather’s abuses. It shows Kossmann’s contending with her memories, her anger, and her grief over infertility. The memoir’s vivid writing conveys not only the shocking detritus in her mom’s home, but also the strength and humor she passed on to her daughters. Amidst the junk, it movingly portrays the profound love of her family. During the cleanup, Kossmann and her husband Marc hold each other, clean each other up, and sometimes dissolve into dark, hysterical laughter.

A mutual friend (and blog subscriber), Fran Lissemore, brought me and Deb together, because my 2016 memoir, Missing: Coming to Terms with a Borderline Mother (Red Giant Books), shares many of Deb’s themes: a mother’s mental illness, a challenging childhood, and our attempts as adults to, as much as possible, “part with (our) own trash.”

Deb and I will appear together at Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry, 1820 Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights, on March 1 at 5:00 pm, to read from our books, answer questions, and talk about mothers and writing. Earlier that day, Deb will read and sign books at Fireside Book Shop at 29 North Franklin Street in Chagrin Falls at 1:00 pm. Come see us, and check out our websites: www.lostfoundkept.com and www.kathyewing.com.

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A Woman’s Wit

Upon a friend’s recommendation (thank you, Doreen!), I read Judi Dench’s Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. Over four years, Dench’s buddy and fellow Shakespearean thespian, Brendan O’Hea, interviewed her about all the Shakespearean roles she has played, numbering close to thirty in all. These performances include many media. She’s appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and dozens of theaters around the world. On TV, she portrayed Lady Macbeth and Cecily, mother of Richard III, in the BBC series The Hollow Crown. Her Shakespearean film credits include Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mistress Quickly in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, and she appeared in the Shakespeare-adjacent film Shakespeare in Love.

How charming is Judi Dench? Let me count the ways. Now 90 years old, she’s funny as heck and irreverent. She sometimes breaks up laughing on stage and likes to pull pranks on her cast members. (You can see her prank her Richard III costar Benedict Cumberbatch in this ad.) Her language is salty. Her memory is prodigious. In some interviews, she recites speeches that she learned decades ago, sometimes even speeches of other characters.

Extremely hardworking, she repeatedly cites the importance of “doing your homework,” that is, preparing for a role before the first rehearsal. The book is filled with Dench’s delightful drawings from her scripts, where she doodled impressions and costumes. She can be acerbic about actors and directors who haven’t done their homework, but she’s never gossipy. She speaks fondly and admiringly of, for example, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, and Daniel Day-Lewis, and directors Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall. She refers frequently and fondly to her fellow actor and husband Michael Williams, who died in 2001.

She provides down-to-earth, relatable analyses of Shakespeare’s characters. About Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, she says,

She has no interest in marriage. She’s down on her knees every night praying it’ll never happen. Who needs a man? . . . (Beatrice advises her young cousin Hero) to think for herself, to make her own decisions, and not to let anybody push her around. . . It shows Beatrice to be an unconventional heroine–non-conformist, modern, very forward-thinking.

Dench made me want to read plays I’m not familiar with, such as Measure for Measure (she played Isabella), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Mistress Quickly), and The Winter’s Tale (Hermione). She hates The Merchant of Venice, calling it “an ugly play” for its obsession with money and its anti-Semitism.

For a memorable taste of Judi Dench, watch this excerpt from the Graham Norton show, where she was promoting this book and recited, spell-bindingly, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29.

Do you have a favorite Judi Dench film or appearance? Favorite (or least favorite) Shakespeare? Comment below.

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Let’s Look at One Another

Photo by Monica Bourgeau on Unsplash

In my previous post, I mentioned having read a number of good books recently, so here are two more.

Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town could be a companion piece to the two volumes about near-death experiences in that post. Read it if you haven’t, or if you haven’t read it since high school, or watch it on YouTube. My friend, Sarah, a theater director, recommends the Paul Newman version (referring to the actor playing the Stage Manager). After rereading it last month, I watched the Hal Holbrook production, partly because I like Robby Benson’s and Sada Thompson’s performances. Or, like Sarah, you could travel to New York to see the well-reviewed current production with an interracial cast starring Jim Parsons.

My book group discussed Our Town because it’s the backdrop for Ann Patchett’s most recent novel Tom Lake, largely set in a Michigan summer stock theater. The novel is also set in a cherry orchard. (Get it? A Cherry Orchard?) And Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love is in there, too. I like a book with a lot of literary references, but you could enjoy the novel without an intimate knowledge of those works.

Patchett wants you to read the play. Her Author’s note reads,

I thank Thornton Wilder, who wrote the play that has been an enduring comfort, guide, and inspiration throughout my life. If this novel has a goal, it is to turn the reader back to Our Town, and to all of Wilder’s work. Therein lies the joy.

Edward Albee called Our Town “the greatest American play ever written.” So you have two pretty powerful recommendations, in addition to mine, of course. Both Patchett and Wilder urge us to look around, see each other, and try to appreciate how strangely miraculous life on earth is, even an ordinary boring life like most of us are living. Near the end of the play, Wilder’s Stage Manager tells us that “everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.” Even skeptics like NDE writers Sebastian Junger and Bruce Greyson suspect this is true. Might as well take some comfort.

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