Mason

Mason (pronounced mey-suhn)

(1) A person whose trade is building with units of various natural or artificial mineral products, as stones, bricks, cinder blocks, or tiles, usually with the use of mortar or cement as a bonding agent.

(2) A person who dresses stones or bricks.

(3) A clipping of Freemason (should always use an initial capital but frequently mason and variations in this context (masonry, masonism etc) appear; a member of the fraternity of Freemasons.

(4) To construct of or strengthen with masonry.

1175–1225: From the Middle English masoun & machun (mason), from the Anglo-Norman machun & masson, from the Old French masson & maçon (machun in the Old North French), from the Late Latin maciō (carpenter, bricklayer), from the Frankish makjon & makjō (maker, builder; to make (which may have some link with the Old English macian (to make)) from makōn (to work, build, make), from the primitive Indo-European mag- (to knead, mix, make), conflated with the Proto-West Germanic mattijō (cutter), from the primitive Indo-European metn- or met- (to cut).  Etymologists note there may have been some influence from another Germanic source such as the Old High German steinmezzo (stone mason (the Modern German Steinmetz has a second element related to mahhon (to make)), from the primitive Indo-European root mag-.  There’s also the theory of some link with the seventh century Medieval Latin machio & matio, thought derived from machina, source of the modern English machine and the medieval word might be from the root of Latin maceria (wall).    From the early twelfth century it was used as a surname, one of a number based on occupations (Smith, Wright, Carter etc) and the now-familiar use to denote “a member of the fraternity of freemasons” was first recorded in Anglo-French in the early fifteenth century Mason is a noun & verb, masonry & masonism are nouns, masoning is a verb, masoned is an adjective & verb and masonic is an adjective; the noun plural is masons.

The noun masonry was from the mid-fourteenth century masonrie, (stonework, a construction of dressed or fitted stones) and within decades it was used to describe the “art or occupation of a mason”.  It was from the fourteenth century Old French maçonerie from maçon.  The adjective Masonic was adopted in the 1767 in the sense of “of or pertaining to the fraternity of freemasons” and although it was early in the nineteenth century used to mean “of or pertaining to stone masons”, that remained rare, presumably because of the potential for confusion; not all stonemasons would have wished to have been thought part of the order.  The stonemason seems first to have been used in 1733.  An earlier name for the occupation was the fifteenth century hard-hewer while stone-cutter was from the 1530s (in the Old English there was stanwyrhta (stone-wright).  The US television cartoon series The Simpsons parodied the Freemasons in well-received episode called Homer the Great (1995) in which the plotline revolved around a secret society called the “Stonecutters”.  Dating from 1926, Masonite was a proprietary name of a type of fiberboard made originally by the Mason Fibre Company of Mississippi, named after William H. Mason (1877-1940 and a protégé of Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who patented the production process of making it.  In 1840, the word enjoyed a brief currency in the field of mineralogy to describe a type of chloritoid (a mixed iron, magnesium and manganese silicate mineral of metamorphic origin), the name honoring collector Owen Mason from Rhode Island who first brought the mineral to the attention of geologists.

The Mason jar was patented in 1858 by New York-based tinsmith John Landis Mason (1832–1902); it was a molded glass jar with an airtight screw lid which proved idea for the storage of preserves (usually fruits or vegetables), a popular practice by domestic cooks who, in season, would purchase produce in bulk and preserve it using high temperature water mixed with salt, sugar or vinegar.  The jars were in mass-production by the mid-1860s and later the jars (optimized in size to suit the quantity of preserved food a family would consume in one meal) proved equally suited to the storage and distribution of moonshine (unlawfully distilled spirits).  Much moonshine was distributed in large containers (the wholesale level) but the small mason jars were a popular form because it meant it could be sold in smaller quantities (the retail level) to those with the same thirst but less cash.

A mason jar (left), Mason jar with pouring spout (centre) and mason jar with handle (right).

For neophytes, the classic mason jar can be difficult to handle either to drink from or to pour the contents into a glass.  Modern moonshine distillers have however stuck to the age-old jar because it’s part of the tradition and customers do seem to like purchasing their (now lawful) spirits in one.  South of the Mason-Dixon Line, “passing the jar” is part of the ritual of the shared moonshine experience and, being easily re-sealable, it’s a practical form of packaging.  To make things easier still, lids with pourers are available (which true barbarians put straight to their lips, regarding a glass as effete) and there are also mason jars with handles.

The Mason-Dixon Line and the Missouri Compromise Line.  

The Mason-Dixon Line was named after English astronomers Charles Mason (1728–1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779) who between 1763-1767 surveyed the disputed boundary between the colonial holdings of the Penns (Pennsylvania) and the Calverts (Maryland), one of the many boarders (New South Wales & Victoria in Australia, Kashmir in the sub-continent of South Asia etc) in the British Empire which were ambiguously described (or not drawn at all) which would be the source of squabbles, sometimes for a century or more.  The line would probably by history have little been noted had it not in 1804 become the boundary between "free" and "slave" states after 1804, New Jersey (the last slaveholding state north of the line) passed an act of abolition.  In popular use “south of the Mason-Dixon Line” thus became the term used to refer to “the South” where until the US Civil War (1861-1865) slave-holding prevailed although, in a narrow technical sense, the line created by the Missouri Compromise (1820) more accurately reflected the political and social divisions.

A mason’s mark etched into a stone (left) and and image created from one of the registers of mason’s marks (right).

A mason's mark is literally a mark etched into a stone by as mason and historically they existed in three forms (1) an identifying notch which could be used by those assembling a structure as a kind of pattern so they would know where one stone was to be placed in relation to another, (2) as an mark to identify the quarry from which the stone came (which might also indicate the type of rock or the quality but this was rare within the trade where there tended to be experts at every point in the product cycle) and (3) the unique identifying mark of the stonemason responsible for the finishing (rather in the manner of the way the engineer assembling engines in companies like Aston Martin or AMG stamp their names into the block).  With the masons, these were known also bankers’ marks because, when the payment was by means of piece-work (ie the payment was by physical measure of the stone provided rather than the time spent) the tally-master would physically measure the stones and pay according to the cubic volume.  Every mason, upon their admission to the guild would enter into a register their unique mark.

Reinhard Heydrich (second from left, back to camera) conducting a tour of the SS Freemasonry Museum, Berlin, 1935.

Freemasonry has always attracted suspicion and at times the opposition to them has been formalized.  As recently as the papacy of Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), membership of Freemasonry was proscribed for Roman Catholics, Pius disapproving of the sinister, secretive Masons about as much as he did of communists and homosexuals.  In that he was actually in agreement with the Nazis.  By 1935, the Nazis considered the “Freemason problem” solved and the SS even created a “Freemason Museum” on Berlin’s Prinz-Albrecht-Palais (conveniently close to Gestapo headquarters) to exhibit the relics of the “vanished cult”.  SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant-General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) originally included the Freemasons on his list of archenemies of National Socialism which, like Bolshevism, he considered an internationalist, anti-fascist Zweckorganisation (expedient organization) of Jewry.  According to Heydrich, Masonic lodges were under Jewish control and while appearing to organize social life “…in a seemingly harmless way, were actually instrumentalizing people for the purposes of Jewry”.  That wasn’t the position of all the Nazis however.  Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945 and Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) revealed during the Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) that on the day he joined the party, he was actually on his way to join the Freemasons and was distracted from this only by a “toothy blonde” while during the same proceedings, Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970; President of the German Central Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and Nazi Minister of Economics 1934–1937) said that even while serving the Third Reich he never deviated from his belief in the principles of “international Freemasonry”.  It’s certainly a trans-national operation and the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or has never denied being a branch of the Freemasons.

In an indication they'll stop at nothing, the Freemasons have even stalked Lindsay Lohan.  In 2011, Ms Lohan was granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan, the order issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a PhD there for someone.

The problem Ms Lohan identified has long been known.  In the US, between 1828-1838 there was an Anti-Mason political party which is remembered now as one of the first of the “third parties” which over the decades have often briefly flourished before either fading away or being absorbed into one side or the other of what has for centuries tended towards two-party stability.  Its initial strength was that it was obsessively a single-issue party which enabled it rapidly to gather support but that proved ultimately it’s weakness because it never adequately developed the broader policy platform which would have attracted a wider membership.  The party was formed in reaction to the disappearance (and presumed murder) of a former Mason who had turned dissident and become a most acerbic critic and the suspicion arose that the Masonic establishment had arranged his killing to silence his voice.  They attracted much support, including from many church leaders who had long been suspicious of Freemasonry and were not convinced the organization was anything but anti-Christian.  Because the Masons were secretive and conducted their meetings in private, their opponents tended to invent stories about the rituals and ceremonies (stuff with goats often mentioned) and the myths grew.  The myths were clearly enough to secure some electoral success and the Anti-Masons even ran William Wirt (1772-1834 and still the nation’s longest-serving attorney-general (1817-1829)) as their candidate in the 1832 presidential election where he won 7.8% of the popular vote and carried Vermont, a reasonable achievement for a third-party candidate.  Ultimately though, that proved the electoral high-water mark and most of its members thereafter were absorbed by the embryonic Whig Party.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie (pronounced val-keer-ee, val-kahy-ree, vahl-kerr-ee or val-kuh-ree)

(1) Any of the twelve beautiful war-maidens attendant upon Odin who rode over battlefields, gathering the souls of slain warriors chosen by Odin or Tyr and taking them to Valhalla, there to wait upon them.

(2) Code name for the civil-military conspiracy against the Nazi German government, culminating in the attempt coup d'état of 20 July 1944 during which an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

(3) A frequently used name for high performance machinery (eg Aston Martin Valkyrie, North American XB70 Valkyrie).

1768: From the Old Norse valkyrja (literally "chooser of the slain") and cognate with the Old English wælcyrie (witch).  The construct was valr (those who fell battle, slaughter (and cognate with Old English wæl)) + kyrja (chooser (and cognate with Old English cyrie)).  Kyrja was from the ablaut root of kjosa (to choose), from the Proto-Germanic keusan, from the primitive Indo-European root geus- (to taste; to choose).  The Old English form wælcyrie, strangely was less prevalent in Anglo-Saxon tales than in Scandinavian myths although linguistic anthropologists have suggested this may be a consequence of the better preservation of old texts.  Köri was an alternative Norse form of kyrjam, from the ablaut root of kjosa, from the Proto-Germanic keusan, the earlier form of which was geus (to taste; to choose) from which English ultimately gained gusto.  Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) modern German Walküre was directly from the Norse while the word was first noted in English as a proper noun (valkyries) in the 1770s and as a common noun (valkyries) since the 1880s. Valkyrie is a noun & valkyrian is an adjective; the noun plural is valkyries.

Rides of some Valkries

Valkyries Riding into Battle (1838) by Johan Gustaf Sandberg (1782–1854).

The Valkyries now get quite good press but in heathen times they were thought rather more sinister.  The literal translation of their name (choosers of the slain), referred to them choosing who gains admittance to Valhalla, the Norse resting place of fallen warriors, but in some tellings of the myth they decided also who died in battle and used their malicious magic to ensure their preferences were brought to fruition.  The tales of them writing their ledger of death are recounted in Edda, (an Old Norse term that refers to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems now known as the Poetic Edda.  Assembled in Ireland during the thirteenth century and written in Icelandic, they comprise material reaching back to the Vikings and are the main sources of medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland and Norse mythology), their most gruesome side illustrated vividly in the Darraðarljóð, a poem contained within Njal’s Saga.  In the saga are depicted a dozen Valkyries prior to the Battle of Clontarf, sitting at a loom and weaving the tragic fate of the warriors using intestines for their thread, severed heads for weights, and swords and arrows for beaters, all the while chanting their intentions with ominous delight.  That might delight some radical feminists but part of the myths is also that having carried the fallen to Valhalla, there the twelve beauties waited upon them hand and foot, attending to their every whim.  Readers have always been able to take from mythology what they will.  The artists of the nineteenth century however were always evocatively romantic when depicting the Valkyries, perhaps recalling the  Nietzschean visions in the thirteenth century Norse Saga of the Volsungs in which beholding a Valkyrie is compared with staring into a flame.

Valkyrie and a Dying Hero (circa 1877) by Hans Makart (1840-1884).

The imagery exists also in the folklore of other Germanic peoples.  In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the valkyries (wælcyrie in the Old English) were female spirits of carnage and the Celts, with whom the Norse and other Germanic peoples associated for centuries, had in their mythology similar beings such as the war goddesses Badb and the Morrígan.  Whether in their loving or bloodthirsty modalities, the valkyries are part of the complex of shamanism that permeates pre-Christian Germanic religion. Much like the ravens Hugin and Munin, they’re projections of parts of Odin, semi-distinct entities part of his larger being.

Hitler’s other Valkyrie

Unity Valkyrie Mitford (1914–1948) was one six daughters of a right-wing father from the English aristocracy, five of whom, had they lived in the modern era would have been among the most prolific on social media and staples of celebrity gossip sites; they were “content providers” and “click bait” before their time.  Diana (1910–2003) became the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980), founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists and the mother of Max Mosley (1940–2021; president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) 1993-2009); on the day she died she was the last person alive to have known both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Jessica (1917-1996) became a communist, Nancy (1904-1973 an author of note and Deborah (1920–2014) ended her life as Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.  Only Pamela (1907-1994) enjoyed what might be thought a “normal” rural life.  The only brother (Tom, 1909-1945) was killed while on active service with the British Army in Burma, one of several theatres in which he fought, declining to take up arms against Nazi Germany, his choice of deployment the sort of indulgence the establishment were extended.

Adolf Hitler & Unity Mitford taking tea during the annual Wagner Festival, Bayreuth, Germany, July 1936.

Unity became besotted with admiration for Hitler and although various theories have been offered to account for the attraction which seems to date from her attendance at the 1933 Nuremburg Rally, there’s no doubt about her methods.  While the legend was that after taking up residence in Munich in 1934, she stalked him, making her presence known at the restaurants & cafés where he was a habitué until she gained an invitation to his table, she was a socialite who knew how the system worked and actually gained a meeting by more traditional “networking”.  Hitler was intrigued, not only by her obvious personal (the depth of her political knowledge is contested) devotion but also her family’s historic connections with notable figures of importance in German culture including the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and the proto-Nazi author Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927).  Telling one confidant that being next to Hitler was “like sitting next to the sun”, she became part of the court circle which surrounded Hitler where the Wagnerian touch of her middle name gained her the nickname “the Valkyrie” and some historians have speculated the second (and rather-half-hearted) of Eva Braun’s (1912–1945) two suicide attempts during the 1930s was at least partially motivated by her jealousy of Unity.

Perhaps already mentally unstable, Unity was distraught at the thought of Britain and Germany being at war and on 3 September 1939 (the day the British declaration of war was delivered), shot herself in the head.  She joined the surprisingly long list of those who survived such an act although, badly injured, she was never again the same; repatriated to the UK via Switzerland, she died in 1948 from complications related to the bullet which remained lodged in her brain.  Even in the 1940s conspiracy theories were a thing and there were several about the already strange tale of Unity Mitford, something encouraged by veil of secrecy her family draped around her.  The most bizarre was that shortly after returning to England she was admitted to a private maternity hospital in Oxford where she gave birth to Hitler’s child.  The origin of the claim was said to have been the sister of the hospital’s former manager who passed it on to her daughter, the niece revealing it some years later.  Unfortunately, it appears the hospital “neglected to register” babies born during the war, something quite unusual and another element onto which the conspiracy theorists latched.  Historians have dismissed the possibility Hitler had a child.

North American XB-70 Valkyrie.

Even while the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962) was in still in production, the Pentagon was planning its successor.  The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was nuclear-armed, long-range, deep-penetration strategic bomber, capable of cruising at Mach 3+ (circa 2000 mph (3,200 km/h)) at an altitude of 70,000 feet (circa 24 km), performance which would have rendered it close to invulnerable to both ground-based anti-aircraft fire and short-range fighter interceptors.  However, by the late 1950s, while the XB-70 was still in the prototype stage, the introduction of surface-to-air missiles put this near-invulnerability in doubt and this, coupled with the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) meant the brief era of dominance by the big strategic bomber was over although the platforms, re-purposed, remain in use to this day.  In 1961, after two Valkyries had been built (one of which was lost in an accident), the project was cancelled, viewed as a flying dreadnought overtaken by technology.  President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961), a practical military man who had over the decades seen many weapons rendered obsolete by advances in technology, thought the Valkyrie was like "bows and arrows in the gunpowder age".  The end of the dominance of the big strategic bomber had earlier been predicted by the man who more than any remains associated with the once often-expressed advocacy of the platform which alone could win wars: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris (1892–1984; head of RAF Bomber Command 1942-1945) noted during World War II (1939-1945) the "...day of the heavy bomber will pass as it did for the cavalry charge and soon will for the battleship".  The admirals weren't best pleased to hear that but he was right although, seventy-odd years on, the B-52, much updated, remains in service but it has been re-purposed, no longer envisaged as something to fly over Russian or Chinese targets, dropping gravity bombs.     

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Specifications

Length: 189 ft 0 in (57.6 m)

Wingspan: 105 ft 0 in (32 m)

Height: 30 ft 0 in (9.1 m)

Wing area: 6,297 ft2 (585 m2)

Airfoil: Hexagonal; 0.30 Hex modified root, 0.70 Hex modified tip

Empty weight: 253,600 lb (115,030 kg; operating empty weight)

Loaded weight: 534,700 lb (242,500 kg)

Take-off weight: 542,000 lb (246,000 kg)

Fuel capacity: 300,000 pounds (140,000 kg) or 46,745 US gallons (177,000 L)

Powerplant: 6 × General Electric YJ93-GE-3 afterburning turbojets

Dry thrust: 19,900 lbf (84 kN) each

With afterburner: 28,800 lbf (128 kN) each

North American XB-70 Valkyrie Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 3.1 (2,056 mph (3,309 km/h))

Cruise speed: Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph (3,200 km/h))

Range: 3,725 nautical miles (4,288 mi (6,901 km)) on combat mission

Service ceiling: 77,350 ft (23,600 m)

Wing loading: 84.93 lb/ft2 (414.7 kg/m2)

Lift-to-drag: About 6 at Mach 2[116]

Thrust/weight: 0.314

End of an era: The Aston Martin Valkyrie

The days of such things may be numbered but the manufacturers of petrol-fueled hypercars are hastening, while they still can, to offer the rich a way amusingly (and given the aftermarket, often profitably) to spend the quantitatively-eased cash governments have given them this past decade.  In August 2021, Aston Martin unveiled the Valkyrie Spider, an open-roof version of the Formula One-inspired hybrid hypercar, the coupés produced in 2022, the Spiders the following year.  Revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, the Valkyrie Spider differs from the coupé in having a removable carbon-fibre roof panel, two hinged polycarbonate side windows and front-hinged dihedral doors rather than the closed version’s gull-wings.

The powertrain of both is essentially the same, combining a 6.5 litre (397 cubic inch), Cosworth-designed, naturally-aspirated V12 and a single electric motor for a total output of 1160 bhp (865 kW) in the coupé and 20 bhp (15 kW) less in the spider, Aston Martin not commenting on the difference.  Drive is to the rear wheels through what’s described as a seven-speed “automated manual” transmission and though the coupé is slightly lighter, performance for both is said to be similar with a 0-60 mph (100 km) time around 2.5 seconds and a top speed around 217 mph (350 km/h) although it’s noted removing the roof sacrifices about 12 mph (20 km/h).  Eighty-five Valkyrie Spiders will be built, these in addition to one-hundred and fifty coupés and twenty-five race-track only specials and while pricing hasn’t been announced, leaks from the factory suggest something over US$3 million.  Interest is said to be strong although the loss of the lucrative Russian market presumably saw some adjustments in national allocations.  On the car's webpage, the factory summed up its estimate of the performance by concluding "Any faster and it would fly."

Less is more: Underside of the Aston Martin Valkyrie. 

Actually, even were it able to go faster it still might not leave the ground.  While the aerodynamic techniques visible in the bodywork are orthodox by contemporary standards, the Valkyrie also generates much "virtual downforce" by the sculpturing of the underside, significant parts of which are effectively "hollow", the channels using the fluid dynamics of the air-flow to "suck the car to the ground".  The technique has been used for decades but the Valkyrie is the most extreme implementation yet seen on a road car.

Camarilla

Camarilla (pronounced kam-uh-ril-uh or kah-mah-ree-lyah (Spanish))

(1) A group of unofficial or private advisers to a person of authority, especially a group much given to intrigues and secret plots; cabal; a clique.

(2) The confidential advisers to the Spanish kings.

(3) By extension, an unelected individual in a position of influence in government.

1830-1840: From the Spanish camarilla, the construct being cámara (chamber; room) + -illa, the diminutive Latin suffix.  The Spanish cámara was from the Old Spanish camara, from the Vulgar Latin camara, from the Classical Latin camera (a vaulted building; arched roof or ceiling), from the Ancient Greek καμάρα (kamára) (something with an arched cover, a vaulted chamber).  A doublet of cambra, the Latin was the source also of the Italian camera, the French chamber, the Old Church Slavonic komora, the Lithuanian kamara and the Old Irish camra.  The suffix -illa was an inflection of -illus (nominative/vocative feminine singular & nomminative/accusative/vocative neuter plural).  The suffix -illā was the ablative feminine singular of -illus, itself a misinterpretation of the diminutive suffix -lus on such nouns as sigillum (signum + -lus) and used freely.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns.  Literally translated from Spanish it means “little room” and, in English, the origins of the cabinet, the “kitchen cabinet” and Privy Council are not dissimilar.  Outside of the formal workings of the Spanish court, word tends to be used with suggestions of something secret, sinister and conspiratorial and from this Modern English picked up cabal.  In Italian, camarille is the plural of Camarilla, a feminine proper name, from the Latin, feminine of Camillus, cognomen of several members of the gens Furia, from camillus (noble youth attending at sacrifices), possibly from Etruscan.

Camarilla of regret and renown

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) & Martin Bormann (1900–1945), the Berghof Terrace (1942).

Bormann attached himself to the Nazi Party in the 1920s and proved diligent and industrious, rewarded in 1933 by being appointed chief of staff in the office of Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) where he first built his power base.  After Hess made his bizarre flight in 1941, Hitler abolished the post of Deputy Führer, assigning his offices to Bormann and styling him Head of the Parteikanzlei (Party Chancellery), a position of extraordinary influence, strengthened further when in 1943 he was appointed Personal Secretary to the Führer, a title he exploited to allow him to act as a kind of viceroy, exercising power in Hitler’s name.  Known within the party as the “Brown Eminence” (an allusion to an éminence grise (literally “grey eminence”) one who exercises power “behind the scenes” and the brown Nazi Party uniform), he maintained his authority by controlling access to Hitler to whom his efficiency and dutifulness proved invaluable.  He committed suicide while trying to make his escape from Berlin in 1945.

Sir John Gorton (1911-2002; Australian prime-minister 1968-1971) & Ainsley Gotto (1946–2018), Melbourne, Australia, 1970.

Aged 21, the picturesque Ainsley Gotto was appointed personal private secretary to the prime-minister, something which raised eyebrows at the time though had it been reported (the press then more restrained in their intrusions into people’s private lives), that she was at the time having an affair with the leader of the opposition’s chief of staff, that would have been a sensation.  Gorton was less conventional than his predecessors and made no secret of his fondness of sometimes having a drink with younger women so unsubstantiated rumors of course followed.  Also alleged was that she exercised undue influence, one sacked minister blaming his demise on: “It wiggles, it's shapely and its name is Ainsley Gotto.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) & Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), Washington DC, 1941.

Harry Hopkins held a number of appointments in the Roosevelt administration (including at cabinet level) between 1933-1940 before being attached to the White House staff as the president’s personal advisor, especially in the key aspect of managing the US contribution to the British war effort at a time when the country was a non-belligerent and a substantial part of public and political opinion favoured maintaining neutrality.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, his role in foreign affairs became more overt and he functioned essentially as Roosevelt’s personal emissary to both London and Moscow.  His influence waned in the later days of the war as US preponderance in military matters in the Pacific & Atlantic theatres and the supply of materiel to the Soviet Union meant political negotiations moved to the background.  Additionally, his health was failing and he died within a year of the end of the war.  In the post-war years he was criticized for being at least naïve in his estimation of comrade Stalin's (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) intentions and the very nature of the Soviet state but that was something which could be said of many at the time, including Roosevelt.

Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) & Dominic Cummings (b 1971), London, 2019.

Although he had for years been circulating in populist right-wing politics, Dominic Cummings really came to nation attention for his role in supporting a yes vote in the Brexit referendum (2016) which led to the UK leaving the European Union (EU).  One reward for this success was being appointed chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson upon his assumption of the premiership.  Johnson would have had his reasons but it’s suspected Cummins rather though the prime-minister might prove “the empty vase into which I poured water” as Spike Milligan (1918-2002) once said of Peter Sellers (1925-1980).  Things didn’t quite work out like that although sections of the press were never subtle in ascribing a to disproportionate influence which some hinted verged on the improper.  In the end it was not constitutional impropriety but denials and cover-ups over COVID-19 related lockdown transgression which saw his role in government sundered.  He wasn’t the first camarilla to have squandered the extraordinary possibilities offered by occupying a position of power without responsibility.

George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009) & Karl Rove (b 1950), Washington DC, 2007.

Coming out of the roughhouse of Texas politics, Karl Rove was described usually as a political strategist but his range was extraordinary, encompassing everything from data miner & analyst to campaign manager and media handler.  He masterminded a slew of Republican victories in Texas and beyond but is most associated with George W Bush’s gubernatorial and presidential successes.  Bush was generous in naming Rove the “architect” of these victories but in private also bestowed the most illustrious of all Texan terms of endearment: "Turd Blossom".  Although serving as White House Deputy Chief of Staff (2005-2007), the essence of his role was as Senior Advisor to the President and during these years he came to be described as “W’s brain”.  Historians mostly haven’t yet gone that far but do acknowledge his success in mobilizing the reticent Republicans and evangelicals and others to emerge from their basements and vote in 2004, narrowly gaining Mr Bush his second term.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015) and Peta Credlin (b 1971), Canberra, Australia, 2014.

Peta Credlin drew interest when employed as Chief of Staff to Tony Abbott as leader of the opposition but was a lightning rod when she fulfilled the role when he was prime-minister.  Anyone who doubts misogyny exists in politics can’t have been paying attention to the treatment Ms Credlin endured, the rumors of affair between her and Abbott utterly unsupported by even a scintilla of evidence.  It was wasted effort really because her reactionary politics of hatred, division and dog-whistling surely offered sufficient scope for critics of her brand of shark-feeding populism.  The office however probably constrained her a bit because in her new role as a commentator on the Murdoch-run Sky News, there’s much more latitude, the business model to say something outrageous or in some way actionable, enjoy the reaction and then issue an apology, if need be accompanied by an out-of-court settlement.  Still, she did come up with one really good line: Her labelling of Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; Australian prime-minister 2015-2018) as “Mr harborside mansion” was better than anything a man could think of so there was that.

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921) & Colonel Edward House (1858–1938), New York, 1916.

Colonel (a non-military, honorary title) House was President Wilson’s closest advisor between 1914-1948 and despite lacking a background in European affairs, was the senior US diplomat at the Paris Peace Conference (1919).  Disappointed and feeling deceived by some of the decisions taken at Paris and agreed to in his absence by House, Wilson broke with him; after returning to the US, they would never meet again.  To his dying day House believed his estrangement from the president was engineered at least in part by the second Mrs Wilson, the "blame the wife" theory appearing many times in in dynastic and political history.

Belladonna

Belladonna (pronounced bel-uh-don-uh)

(1) In botany, a poisonous Eurasian perennial herb, Atropa belladonna, of the nightshade family, having purplish-red flowers and poisonous black berries (sometimes also called deadly nightshade).

(2) In clinical pharmacology, a drug from the leaves and root of this plant, containing atropine or hyoscyamine and related alkaloids; used in medicine to check secretions and spasms, to relieve pain or dizziness, and as a cardiac and respiratory stimulant; the alkaloids affect the nervous system by blocking the effects of acetylcholine.

(3) A female given name (now rare).

1590-1600: A compound word, from the Italian belladonna, from the Medieval Latin blādōna (nightshade) which may have been of Gaulish origin.  The construct was bella (a stantivization of the singular feminine form of the adjective bello (beautiful)), from the Latin bellus (beautiful, pretty, handsome, pleasant, agreeable, charming) + donna, from the Late Latin domna, a shortened variant of the Latin domina (lady, mistress of an estate or household), from dominus (master), from domus (home) and a doublet of dama (dame).  Belladonna is a noun and is capitalized if used as given name or as the taxonomic genus within the family Solanaceae–Atropa (this largely archaic except as a historic reference).

Vesicaire rempant: A print of Henbane-Belladonna, woodcut on laid paper by an unknown illustrator in Commentaires de M. Pierre Andre Matthiole medecin senois sur les six livres de Pedacion Dioscoride Anazarbeen de la matière médicinale (1572) by Dr Pietre Andrea Mattioli, published by Guillaume Roville of Lyon.

The belladonna plant seems first to have been so described by Italian physician Andrea Mattioli (1501–circa 1577) who used the form herba bella donna.  Dr Mattioli was a pioneer in botanical classification and a diligent scientist who admitted (and corrected) his errors although some of his research methods would today shock, the data he published documenting the effects of poisonous plants gained by testing them on prisoners languishing in various royal dungeons.  Apart from the value to botanists and students of medical history, his texts and the high quality artwork they included have provided much source material for social historians interested in matters as diverse as the dyes used in clothing and the produce regionally available to chefs; his texts contain the first documented evidence of tomatoes being grown in Europe.

Belladonna: Lindsay Lohan in "deadly nightshade" print fabric.

The term belladonna introduced to English by the London-based botanist John Gerarde (circa 1545-1612) who almost certainly acquired from one of Mattioli’s textbooks and quickly it seems largely to have displaced the native English forms used for the plant including dwale, (from the Old English dwola (connected with the Modern English “dull”)) & morelle (from the Old French morele, from the Latin morella (black nightshade)).  Gerarde’s epic-length (1484 page) Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597), was one of the standard texts in English until well into the seventeenth century although it was later found substantially to be a plagiarised translation of Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597) by the Flemish physician Rembert Dodoens (1517–1585), a work translated into several languages in continental Europe.

Amaryllis Belladonna.

In eighteenth century Italian use, belladonna (literally "fair lady"), was understood to convey the meaning "beautiful woman" and, supposedly, the use in botany came from the cosmetic eye-drops women made from the juice (atropic acid) of the plant known in English as "deadly nightshade", the desired quality the property of dilating the pupils to create the alluring look young ladies desired.  The mid-nineteenth century explanation that it gained the nomenclature because it was used to poison beautiful women appears to have no basis in any European legal records and was likely a folk etymology alteration.  The Italian belladonna was certainly altered by folk etymology to bella donna (beautiful lady)) the original Medieval Latin being blādōna ("nightshade" and written variously as besulidus, belbulidus, belulidus or belhulidus), the meaning shift again motivated by the cosmetic use of nightshade for dilating the eyes and the authoritative German-Austrian Romanist and linguist Ernst Gamillscheg (1887-1971) suggested it was ultimately of Gaulish origin, the Italian botanist Luigi Anguillara (actually Luigi Squalermo, circa 1512-1570) using the spelling biasola.

Highly qualified content provider Pandora Kaaki (b 1998): Pulchra domina sed tribulation (the Latin for "a beautiful woman but trouble").

In modern use, Italian men note the legend that the more beautiful the flower of a belladonna, the more deadly its poison although this has no documented basis in botanical study it's never been disproved (were such research possible) so, according to the scientific method, it's not impossible there may be a link.  Attracted by the logic of this, the folk tradition in Italy was more beautiful a woman, the more problems she’s likely to cause, nulla altro che guai (nothing but trouble) the common vernacular form although one probably often uttered in hindsight.  Belladonna is known to have been used for medicinal purposes since Antiquity although it was the use to enlarge the pupils by women in Renaissance Italy for which lent it the romance.  The more sinister name (deadly nightshade) hints at its other chemical role and the dark berries the plant yields were known variously as “murderer’s berries”, “devil’s berries” & sorcerer’s berries, many suggesting it was the poison in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1596) which made Juliet appear dead.  Things of course ended badly for the star-cross'd lovers but despite that belladonna remains in use as an ingredient in a number of medications, sold as a supplement and best known still for being in the drops used to dilate the eyes.

Romeo (Leonard Whiting (b 1950)) finds Juliet (Olivia Hussey (b 1951)) lying in a death-like coma after taking a potion, Franco Zeffirelli’s (1923–2019) production of Romeo and Juliet (1968).

Although so toxic that ingesting even a small quantity of its leaves or berries can be fatal (just a touch of the plant can irritate the skin), the medicinal benefits are real if the active chemicals (atropine & scopolamine) are correctly prepared and while there’s some overlap in their use, atropine as a muscle relaxant is more effective and useful also in regulating the heart rate.  In industrial applications it’s used as an antidote for insecticide poisoning and in chemical warfare agents.  Scopolamine has many sources apart from belladonna and is helpful in reducing body secretions, such as stomach acid and is an ancient sea-sickness treatment, thus the application to help with motion sickness, available in convenient skin patches.  Lethal though it can be, belladonna products are widely available as over-the-counter nutritional supplements in pump-sprays, ointments, tablets, and tincture (liquid).

Doomsday

Doomsday (pronounced doomz-dey)

(1) In Christian eschatology, the day of the Last Judgment, at the end of the world (sometimes capital letter); the end of days; the end of times.

(2) Any day of judgment or sentence (sometimes initial capital).

(3) In casual use, the destruction of the world, since the 1950s, by means of nuclear weapons.

(4) As doomsday weapon(s), the device(s) causing the destruction of the world; anything capable of causing widespread or total destruction.

(5) Given to or marked by forebodings or predictions of impending calamity; especially concerned with or predicting future universal destruction.

(6) As Doomsday Clock, a symbolic warning device indicating how close humanity is to destroying the world, run since 1947 as a private venture by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Pre 1000: A compound from the Middle English domes + dai from the Old English construct dom (judgment) + dæg (day), dōmesdæg (sometimes dōmes dæg) (Judgment Day) and related to the Old Norse domsdagr.  Dome was borrowed from the Middle French dome & domme (which survives in Modern French as dôme), from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae) (literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías); doublet of domus.  Dom was from the Proto-West Germanic dōm and was cognate with the Old Frisian dōm, the Old Saxon dōm, the Old High German tuom, the Old Norse dómr and the Gothic dōms.  The Germanic source was from a stem verb originally meaning “to place, to set”, a sense-development also found in the Latin statutum and the Ancient Greek θέμις (thémis).  Dai had the alternative forms deg, deag & dœg all from the Proto-West Germanic dag; it was cognate with the Old Frisian dei, the Old Saxon dag, the Old Dutch dag, the Old High German tag, the Old Norse dagr and the Gothic dags.

In medieval England, doomsday was expected when the world's age had reached 6,000 years from the creation, thought to have been in 5200 BC and English Benedictine monk, the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735) complained of being pestered by rustici (the "uneducated and coarse-mannered, rough of speech"), asking him "how many years till the sixth millennium be endeth?"  However, despite the assertions (circa 1999) of the Y2K doomsday preppers, there is no evidence to support the story of a general panic in Christian Europe in the days approaching the years 800 or 1000 AD.  The use to describe a hypothetical nuclear bomb powerful enough to wipe out human life (or all life) on earth is from 1960 but the speculation was the work of others than physicists and the general trend since the 1960s has been towards smaller devices although paradoxically, this has been to maximize the destructive potential through an avoidance of the "surplus ballistic effect" (ie the realization by military planners that blasting rubble into to smaller-sized rocks was "wasted effort and bad economics").

The Domesday Book

Domesday is a proper noun that is used to describe the documents known collectively as the Domesday Book, at the time an enormous survey (a kind of early census) ordered by William I (circa 1028-1087; styled usually as William the Conqueror, King of England 1066-1087) in 1085.  The survey enumerated all the wealth in England and determined ownership in order to assess taxes.  Domesday was the Middle English spelling of doomsday, and is pronounced as doomsday.

Original Domesday book, UK National Archives, London.

The name Domesday Book (which was Doomsday in earlier spellings) was first recorded almost a century after 1086.  An addition to the manuscript was made probably circa 1114-1119 when it was known as the Book of Winchester and between then and 1179, it acquired the name by which it has since been known.  Just to clarify its status, the Treasurer of England himself announced “This book is called by the native English Domesday, that is Day of Judgement” (Dialogus de scaccario), adding that, like the Biblical Last Judgment, the decisions of Domesday Book were unalterable because “… as from the Last Judgment, there is no further appeal.”  This point was reinforced by a clause in the Dialogue of the Exchequer (1179) which noted “just as the sentence of that strict and terrible Last Judgement cannot be evaded by any art or subterfuge, so, when a dispute arises in this realm concerning facts which are written down, and an appeal is made to the book itself, the evidence it gives cannot be set at nought or evaded with impunity.”  It was from this point that began in England the idea of the centralised written record taking precedence over local oral traditions, the same concept which would evolve as the common law.

The Doomsday Book described in remarkable detail the landholdings and resources of late eleventh century England and is illustrative of both the power of the government machine by the late medieval period and its deep thirst for information.  Nothing on the scale of the survey had been undertaken in contemporary Europe, and was not matched in comprehensiveness until the population censuses of the nineteenth century although, Doomsday is not a full population census, the names appearing almost wholly restricted to landowners who could thus be taxed.  It was for centuries used for administrative and legal purposes and remains often the starting point for many purposes for historians but of late has been subject to an increasingly detailed textual analysis and it’s certainly not error-free.

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe.  Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BOTAS), the clock was created as a metaphor for threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons.  On the clock, a hypothetical global catastrophe is represented as the stroke of midnight and BOTAS’s view of the closeness to that hour being reached by the number of minutes or seconds to midnight.  Every January, BOTAS’s Science and Security Board committee meets to decide where the second-hand of the clock should point and in recent years, other risk factors have been considered, including disease and climate change, the committee monitoring developments in science and technology that could inflict catastrophic damage.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

These concerns do have a long history in philosophy and theology but the use in 1945 of nuclear fission to create atomic weapons focused the minds of many more on the possibilities, the concerns growing in the second half of the twentieth century as the bombs got bigger and proliferated extraordinarily to the point where, if all were detonated in the right place at the right time, almost everyone on Earth would have been killed several times over.  At least on paper, the threat was real and even before Hiroshima made the world suddenly aware of the matter, there had been some in apocalyptic mood: Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) “finest hour” speech in 1940 warning of the risk civilization might “…sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.  It had been a growing theme in liberal interwar politics since the implications of technology and the industrialisation of warfare had been writ large by the World War I (1914-1918).

HG Wells’ (1866–1946) last book was Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), a slim volume, best remembered for the fragment “…everything was driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity”, seemingly describing a world which had become more complicated, chaotic and terrifying than anything he had prophesized in his fiction. In this it’s often contrasted with the spirit of cheerful optimism and forward-looking stoicism of the book he published a few months earlier, The Happy Turning (1945), but that may be a misreading.  Mind at the End of its Tether is a curious text, easy to read yet difficult to reduce to a theme; in his review, George Orwell (1903-1950) called it “disjointed” and it does have a quality of vagueness, some chapters hinting at despair for all humanity, others suggesting hope for the future.  It’s perhaps the publication date that tints the opinions of some.  Although released some three months after the first use of atomic bombs in August 1945, publishing has lead-times and Wells hadn’t heard of the A-bomb at the time of writing although, he had in 1914 predicted such a device in The World Set Free.  In writing Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells, the great seer of science, wasn’t in dark despair at news of science’s greatest achievement, nuclear fission, but instead a dying man disappointed about the terrible twentieth century which, at the end of the nineteenth, had offered such promise.

In 1947, though the USSR had still not even tested an atomic bomb and the US enjoyed exclusive possession of the weapon, BOTAS was well aware it was only a matter of time and the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.  Adjustments have been made a couple of dozen times since, the most optimistic days being in 1991 with the end of the Cold War when it was seventeen minutes to midnight and the most ominous right now, BOTAS in 2023 choosing 90 seconds, ten seconds worse than the 100 settled on in 2020.

The committee each year issues an explanatory note and in 2021 noted the influences on their decision.  The COVID-19 pandemic was a factor, not because it threatened to obliterate civilization but because it “…revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens.  As a result, many hundreds of thousands of human beings died needlessly”.  COVID-19 they noted, will eventually recede but the pandemic, as it unfolded, was “a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage nuclear weapons and climate change, which currently pose existential threats to humanity, or the other dangers—including more virulent pandemics and next-generation warfare—that could threaten civilization in the near future”.  In 2023, the adjustment was attributed mostly to (1) the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, (2) climate change, (3) biological threats such as COVID-19 and (4) the spread of disinformation through disruptive technology such as generative AI (artificial intelligence).

The acceleration of nuclear weapons programs by many countries was thought to have increased instability, especially in conjunction with the simultaneous development of delivery systems increasingly adaptable to the use of conventional or nuclear warheads.  The concern was expressed this “may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension”.  Governments were considered to have “…failed sufficiently to address climate change” and that while “fossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided”, instead “…fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase”.  Political factors were also mentioned including the corrosive effects of “false and misleading information disseminated over the internet…, a wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace” of conspiracy theories often “driven by political figures”.  They did offer a glimmer of hope, notably the change of administration in the US to one with a more aggressive approach to climate change policy and a renewed commitment to nuclear arms control agreements but it wasn’t enough to convince them to move the hands of the clock.  It remains a hundred seconds to midnight.

The clock is not without critics, even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) expressing disapproval since falling under the control of Rupert Murdoch (b 1931).  There is the argument that after seventy years, its usefulness has diminished because over those decades it has become "the boy who cried wolf": a depiction of humanity on the precipice of the abyss yet life went on.  Questions have also been raised about the narrowness of the committee and whether a body which historically has had a narrow focus on atomic weapons and security is adequately qualified to assess the range of issues which should be considered.  Mission creep too is seen as a problem.  The clock began as a means of expressing the imminence of nuclear war.  Is it appropriate to use the same mechanism to warn of impending climate change which has anyway already begun and is likely accelerating?  Global thermo-nuclear war can cause a catastrophic loss of life and societal disruption within hours, whereas the climate catastrophe is projected to unfolds over decades and centuries.  Would a companion calendar be a more helpful metaphor?  The criticism may miss the point, the clock not being a track of climate change but of political will to do something to limit and ameliorate the effects (everyone having realised it can’t be stopped).