Kamikaze

Kamikaze (pronounced kah-mi-kah-zee or kah-muh-kah-zee)

(1) A member of a World War II era special corps in the Japanese air force charged with the suicidal mission of crashing an aircraft laden with explosives into an enemy target, especially Allied Naval vessels.

(2) In later use, one of the (adapted or specifically built) airplanes used for this purpose.

(3) By extension, a person or thing that behaves in a wildly reckless or destructive manner; as a modifier, something extremely foolhardy and possibly self-defeating.

(4) Of, pertaining to, undertaken by, or characteristic of a kamikaze; a kamikaze pilot; a kamikaze attack.

(5) A cocktail made with equal parts vodka, triple sec and lime juice.

(6) In slang, disastrously to fail.

(7) In surfing, a deliberate wipeout.

1945: From the Japanese 神風 (かみかぜ) (kamikaze) (suicide flyer), the construct being kami(y) (god (the earlier form was kamui)) + kaze (wind (the earlier form was kanzai)), usually translated as “divine wind” (“spirit wind” appearing in some early translations), a reference to the winds which, according to Japanese folklore, destroying Kublai Khan's Mongol invasionfleet in 1281.  In Japanase military parlance, the official designation was 神風特別攻撃隊 (Shinpū Tokubetsu Kōgekitai (Divine Wind Special Attack Unit)).  Kamikaze is a noun, verb & adjective and kamikazeing & kamikazed are verbs; the noun plural is kamikazes.  When used in the original sense, an initial capital is used. 

HESA Shahed 136 UAV.

The use of kamikaze to describe the Iranian delta-winged UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, popularly known as “drones”) being used by Russia against Ukraine reflects the use of the word which developed almost as soon as the existence of Japan’s wartime suicide bomber programme became known.  Kamikaze was the name of the aviators and their units but it was soon also applied to the aircraft used, some re-purposed from existing stocks and some rocket powered units designed for the purpose.  In 1944-1945 they were too little, too late but they proved the effectiveness of precision targeting although not all military cultures would accept the loss-rate the Kamikaze sustained.  In the war in Ukraine, the Iranian HESA Shahed 136 (شاهد ۱۳۶ (literally "Witness-136" and designated Geran-2 (Герань-2 (literally "Geranium-2") by the Russians) the kamikaze drone have proved extraordinarily effective being cheap enough to deploy en masse and capable of precision targeting.  They’re thus a realization of the century-old dream of the strategic bombing theorists to hit “panacea targets” at low cost while sustaining no casualties.  Early in World War II, the notion of panacea targets had been dismissed, not because as a strategy it was wrong but because the means of finding and bombing such targets didn’t exist, thus “carpet bombing” (bombing for several square miles around any target) was adopted because it was at the time the best option.  Later in the war, as techniques improved and air superiority was gained, panacea targets returned to the mission lists but the method was merely to reduce the size of the carpet.  The kamikaze drones however can be pre-programmed or remotely directed to hit a target within the tight parameters of a GPS signal.  The Russians know what to target because so many blueprints of Ukrainian infrastructure sit in Moscow’s archives and the success rate is high because, deployed in swarms because they’re so cheap, the old phrase from the 1930s can be updated for the UAV age: “The drone will always get through”.

Imperial Japan’s Kamikazes

By 1944, it was understood by the Japanese high command that the strategic gamble simultaneously to attack the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor and the Asian territories of the European powers.  Such was the wealth and industrial might of the US that within three years of the Pearl Harbor raid, the preponderance of Allied warships and military aircraft in the Pacific was overwhelming and Japan’s defeat was a matter only of time.  That couldn’t be avoided but within the high command it was thought that if the Americans understood how high would be the causality rate if they attempted an invasion of the Japanese home islands, that and the specter of occupation might be avoided and some sort of "negotiated settlement" might be possible, the notion of the demanded "unconditional surrender" unthinkable.

HMS Sussex hit by Kamikaze (Mitsubishi Ki-51 (Sonia)), 26 July 1945 (left) and USS New Mexico (BB-40) hit by Kamikaze off Okinawa, 12 May 1945 (right).

Although on paper, late in the war, Japan had over 15,000 aircraft available for service, a lack of development meant most were at least obsolescent and shortages of fuel increasingly limited the extent to which they could be used in conventional operations.  From this analysis came the estimate that if used as “piloted bombs” on suicide missions, it might be possible to sink as many as 900 enemy warships and inflict perhaps 22,000 causalities and in the event of an invasion, when used at shorter range against landing craft or beachheads, it was thought an invading force would sustain over 50,000 casualties by suicide attacks alone.  Although the Kamikaze attacks didn't achieve their strategic objective, they managed to sink dozens of ships and kill some 5000 allied personnel.  All the ships lost were smaller vessels (the largest an escort carrier) but significant damage was done to fleet carriers and cruisers and, like the (also often dismissed as strategically insignificant) German V1 & V2 attacks in Europe, resources had to be diverted from the battle plan to be re-tasked to strike the Kamikaze air-fields.  Most importantly however, so vast by 1944 was the US military machine that it was able easily to repair or replace as required.  Brought up in a different tradition, US Navy personnel the target of the Kamikaze dubbed the attacking pilots Baka (Japanese for “Idiot”).

A captured Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (Model 11), Yontan Airfield, April 1945.

Although it’s uncertain, the first Kamikaze mission may have been an attack on the carrier USS Frankin by Rear Admiral Arima (1895-1944) flying a Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Allied codename Judy) and the early flights were undertaken using whatever airframes were available and regarded, like the pilots, as expendable.  Best remembered however, although only 850-odd were built, were the rockets designed for the purpose.  The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (櫻花, (Ōka), (cherry blossom)) was a purpose-built, rocket-powered attack aircraft which was essentially a powered bomb with wings, conceptually similar to a modern “smart bomb” except that instead of the guidance being provided by on board computers and associated electronics which were sacrificed in the attack, there was a similarly expendable human pilot.  Shockingly single-purpose in its design parameters, the version most produced could attain 406 mph (648 km/h) in level flight at relatively low altitude and 526 mph (927 km/h) while in an attack dive but the greatest operational limitation was the range was limited to 23 miles (37 km), forcing the Japanese military to use lumbering Mitsubishi G4N (Betty) bombers as “carriers” (the Ohka the so-called "parasite aircraft") with the rockets released from under-slung assemblies when within range.  As the Ohka was originally conceived (with a range of 80 miles (130 km)), as a delivery system that may have worked but such was the demand on the designers to provide the highest explosive payload, the fuel load was reduced, restricting the maximum speed to 276 mph (445 km/h), making the barely maneuverable little rockets easy prey for fighters and even surface fire.

Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka.

During the war, Japan produced more Mitsubishi G4Ms than any other bomber and its then remarkable range (3130 miles (5037 km)) made it a highly effective weapon early in the conflict but as the US carriers and fighters were deployed in large numbers, its vulnerabilities were exposed: the performance was no match for fighters and it was completely un-armored without even self-sealing fuel tanks, hence the nick-name “flying lighter” gained from flight crews.  However, by 1945 Japan had no more suitable aircraft available for the purpose so the G4M was used as a carrier and the losses were considerable, an inevitable consequence of having to come within twenty-odd miles of the US battle-fleets protected by swarms of fighters.  It had been planned to develop a variant of the much more capable Yokosuka P1Y (Ginga) (as the P1Y3) to perform the carrier role but late in the war, Japan’s industrial and technical resources were stretched and P1Y development was switched to night-fighter production, desperately needed to repel the US bombers attacking the home islands.  Thus the G4M (specifically the G4M2e-24J) continued to be used.

Watched by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945), Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) presents test pilot Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979) with the Iron Cross (2nd class), Berlin, March, 1941 (left); she was later (uniquely for a woman), awarded the 1st-class distinction.  Conceptual sketch of the modified V1 flying bomb (single cockpit version, right).

The idea of suicide missions also appealed to some Nazis, predictably most popular among those never likely to find themselves at the controls, non-combatants often among the most blood-thirsty of politicians.  The idea had been discussed earlier as a means of destroying the electricity power-plants clustered around Moscow but early in 1944, the intrepid test pilot Hanna Reitsch suggested to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & of state 1934-1945) a suicide programme as the most likely means of hitting strategic targets.  Ultimately, she settled on using a V1 flying bomb (the Fieseler Fi 103R, an early cruise missile) to which a cockpit had been added, test-flying it herself and even mastering the landing, a reasonable feat given the high landing speed.  As a weapon, assuming a sufficient supply of barely-trained pilots, it would probably have been effective but Hitler declined to proceed, feeling things were not yet sufficiently desperate.  The historic moment passed although in the skies above Germany, in 1945 there were dozens of what appeared to be "suicide attacks" by fighter pilots ramming their aircraft into US bombers.  The Luftwaffe was by this time so short of fuel that training had been cut to the point new recruits were being sent into combat with only a few hours of solo flying experience so it's believed some incidents may have been "work accidents" but the ad-hoc Kamikaze phenomenon was real.

According to statics compiled by the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2021, globally, there were an estimated 727,000 suicides and within the total: (1) among 15–29-year-olds, suicide was the third leading cause of death (2) for 15–19-year-olds, it was the fourth leading and (3) for girls aged 15–19, suicide ranked the third leading.  What was striking was that in middle & high income nations, suicide is the leading cause of death in the young (typically defined as those aged 15-29 or 15-34.  Because such nations are less affected by infectious disease, armed conflicts and accident mortality that in lower income countries, it appeared there was a “mental health crisis”, one manifestation of which was the clustering of self-harm and attempted suicides, a significant number of the latter successful.  As a result of the interplay of the economic and social factors reducing mortality from other causes, intentional self-harm stands out statistically, even though suicide rates usually are not, in absolute terms, “extremely” high.  Examples quoted by the WHO included:

Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea): Among people aged 10–39, suicide is consistently the leading cause of death and that’s one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development, sometimes called the “rich countries club” although changes in patterns of development have compressed relativities and that tag is not as appropriate as once it was.

Japan (no longer styled the “Empire of Japan although the head of state remain an emperor): Suicide is the leading cause of death among those aged 15-39 and while there was a marked decline in the total numbers after the government in the mid 1990s initiated a public health campaign the numbers did increase in the post-COVID pandemic period.  Japan is an interesting example to study because its history has meant cultural attitudes to suicide differ from those in the West.

New Zealand (Aotearoa): New Zealand has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the developed world, especially among Māori youth and although the numbers can bounce around, for those aged 15–24, suicide is often the leading or second leading cause of death.

Finland:  For those aged 15-24, suicide is always among leading causes of mortality and in some reporting periods the leading one.  Because in Finland there are there are extended times when the hours of darkness are long and the temperatures low, there have been theories these conditions may contribute to the high suicide rate (building on research into rates of depression) but the studies have been inconclusive.

Australia: Suicide is the leading cause of death for those in the cohorts 15–24 and 25–44 and a particular concern is the disproportionately high rate among indigenous youth, the incidents sometimes happening while they’re in custody.  In recent years, suicide has road accidents and cancer as the leading cause in these age groups.

Norway & Sweden: In these countries, suicide is often one of the top three causes of death among young adults and in years when mortality from disease and injury are especially low it typically will rise to the top.

Kamikaze Energy Cans in all six flavors (left) and potential Kakikaze Energy Can customer Lindsay Lohan (right).

Ms Lohan was pictured here with a broken wrist (fractured in two places in an unfortunate fall at Milk Studios during New York Fashion Week) and 355 ml (12 fluid oz) can of Rehab energy drink, Los Angeles, September 2006.  Some recovering from injuries find energy drinks a helpful addition to the diet.  The car is a 2005 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 (R230; 2004-2011) which earlier had featured in the tabloids after a low-speed crash.  The R230 range (2001-2011) was unusual because of the quirk of the SL 550 (2006-2011), a designation used exclusively in the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).

Given the concerns about suicide among the young, attention has in the West been devoted the way the topic is handled on social media and the rise in the use of novel applications for AI (artificial intelligence) has flagged new problems, one of the “AI companions” now wildly popular among youth (the group most prone to attempting suicide) recently in recommending their creator take his own life.  That would have been an unintended consequence of (1) the instructions given to the bot and (2) the bot’s own “learning process”, the latter something which the software developers would have neither anticipated nor expected.  Given the sensitivities to the way suicide is handled in the media, on the internet or in popular culture, it’s perhaps surprising there’s an “energy drink” called “Kamikaze”.  Like AI companions, the prime target for the energy drink suppliers is males aged 15-39 which happens to be the group most at risk of suicide thoughts and most likely to attempt suicide.  Despite that, the product’s name seems not to have attracted much criticism and the manufacturer promises: “With your Kamikaze Energy Can, you'll enjoy a two-hour energy surge with no crash.”  Presumably the word “crash” was chosen with some care although, given the decline in the teaching of history at school & university level, it may be a sizeable number of youth have no idea about the origin of “Kamikaze”.  Anyway, containing “200mg L-Citrulline, 160mg Caffeine Energy, 1000mg Beta Alanine, vitamin B3, B6 & B12, zero carbohydrates and zero sugar, the cans are available in six flavours: Apple Fizz, Blue Raspberry, Creamy Soda, Hawaiian Splice, Mango Slushy & Rainbow Gummy.

Intertwingle

Intertwingle (pronounced in-tur-wing-guhl)

(1) To confuse or entangle together; to enmesh, to muddle.

(2) As intertwingularity, in computing and systems analysis & organization (of documents, data etc), to interconnect or interrelate in a complex way which appears to a user simple and lineal.

Late 1800s: Thought to be a portmanteau word, the construct being a blend of intertw(ine) + (interm)ingle and of interest to students of linguistics because it appears independently to have been coined at different times in different places.  The prefix inter- was from the Latin inter- (between, amid), a form of the prepositional inter (between).  Twine was from the Middle English twyn, twine & twin, from the Old English twīn (double thread, twist, twine, linen-thread, linen), from the Proto-West Germanic twiʀn (thread, twine), from the primitive Indo-European dwisnós (double), from dwóh (two).  The construct of mingle ming (from the From Middle English mingen & mengen, from the Old English mengan (to mix, combine, unite, associate with, consort, cohabit with, disturb, converse), from the Proto-West Germanic mangijan (“to mix, knead”), from the primitive Indo-European menk- (to rumple, knead)). It was cognate with the Dutch mengen (to mix, blend, mingle), the German mengen (to mix), the Danish mænge (to rub), the Old English ġemang (mixture, union, troop, crowd, multitude, congregation, assembly, business, cohabitation)) +‎ -le (a frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness).  It was cognate with the Dutch mengen (to mingle, mix) and the German mengen (to mingle, mix).  Interwingle is a noun & verb, intertwingling & intertwingularity are nouns and intertwingled is an adjective; the noun plural is intertwingularities.  By implication, the nouns intertwinglism & intertwinglist should exist but seem not to have been used.

Lindsay Lohan, who has led an intertwingled life.  The publicity shot for Just My Luck (2006) was wholly serendipitous and did not come from a session.

Intertwingle was used by Manmatha Nath Dutt (1855–1912) in The Dharma Sastra (Volume 1, 1896), one of his collections of translations into English of ancient Sanskrit & Hindu texts; under the Raj, he was a prolific translator and author and his use appears to the first known coining.  As a comic device, it was used by Montgomery Gordon Rice of Bradley Polytechnic Institute in a performance of Esmeralda (a fictional character in Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) novel Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482 (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831)) conducted during the April 1901 graduation ceremony and many instances of use have been jocular.  As a noun, the author Henry James (1843–1916) applied it as a nickname for a group of his Emmet female cousins (all of who were painters) and the use in that sense was in the vein of the way Admiral Lord Charles Beresford (1846-1919) would use “the souls” of some female acquaintances he thought discussed their feelings entirely too much.  For the US portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) it was his nickname for his early twentieth century genre paintings of his nieces, the Ormond sisters.  Sargent’s reference was to “element interchangeability”: his use of shawls as a motif and the easy substitution of one model for another, their artistic presence defined less by individual identity than the convoluted poses.  Coincidentally, as well as being one of Henry James’ “intertwingles”, the US artist Jane Emmet de Glehn (1873–1961) was one of Sargent’s muses. )

As the twentieth century progressed and in a number of fields there emerged a new literature exploring the concept of “everything being connected to everything else” and Tracy Baldwin Augur (1896-1974) found it handy (apparently as an eye-catching linguistic novelty) in a 1954 paper discussing urban planning, a discipline where truly there is much intertwingling.  Between 1933-1948 Augur had been principal planner for the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and by the 1950s he was working for the URA (Urban Renewal Administration) and HHFA (Housing and Home Finance Agency), the proliferation of the alphabet soup of acronyms which had begun under the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) not slowing in the post-war years.  In the discipline of town-planning the phrase “inextricably intertwined” was used in many contexts so perhaps the appearance of intertwingle was inevitable.

The use in IT and the analysis & organization of documents, data and such was in 1974 described as “intertwingularity” and defined as the deep and complex interconnection or interrelation of digital objects of any kind, and in a teleological sense the purpose was to make the connections permanently stable and accessible to users in a way which would seem seamless and lineal.  The noun intertwingularity was coined by US sociologist Dr Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson (b 1937) and it appeared first in his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) which discussed the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.  Dr Nelson’s most enduring legacy is Project Xanadu which, remarkably, has been in development since 1960, the objective (which evolved eventually) being a kind of macro-network, unifying all data, accessible through a simple, intuitive user interface.  Conceptually, that does of course sound like the vision imagined when the www (world wide web) was bolted onto to the internet but Dr Nelson’s critique of that sprawling, ubiquitous thing is that its “web page” approach is inherently flawed because, as IRL (in real life) when pages can be thrown away, deleting a page means a dozen or a billion hyperlinks once active around the planet are rendered instantly “broken”; what’s lacking is global content management to keep track of it all.  The project’s roots in 1960 envisages what would later be understood as hypertext but acceptance of Dr Nelson’s ideas took some time because he was speculating about hardware and software which did not then exist and would not for decades attain critical mass and the landmark Computer Lib/Dream Machines, while fleshing out the details, did so in a discursive manner better suited to modernist experimental fiction.

Conceptual illustration of intertwingling from Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974).

Dr Nelson seems always to have liked the word “everything” (although he does allow that for some things, “most” is better”) and the most intriguing speculation, built on the notion of “everything being intertwingled”, was tied up with quantum entanglement which suggests connectivity need not be based on proximity or visible connection.  In this theory, what is now described as “dark energy” (the thus far undetectable stuff in the universe which the math of what has been detected suggests must exist) is thought potentially to be “time” itself, the universe’s most fundamental framework where it’s not so much that everything is “entangled” but that everything is (on a grand scale) a singularity and everything is happening at the same time with only the operation of (distance-based) relativity creating an observer’s perception of difference.

Applied Intertwingling: In fields like political science or organizational behaviour, the intertwingling of objects is often illustrated in ways which depict not only the existence but also the nature of a relationship.

Intoxicatingly simple in concept, the practical implications of the Xanadu resulted in something which became more complex as layers were implemented because each made obvious that more layers still were needed.  Lacking resources, Dr Nelson, cognizant of developments in computer networking, announced Xanadu should be thought a mechanism for handing information (regardless of physical location) as if existed in a unified repository.  While he didn’t use the phrase “virtual library” that seems to be how it would now be understood and in an interesting harbinger of how Facebook would in the twenty-first century describe its curated macro-space, he described Xanadu as a “docuverse”.  That was an interesting vision but development required cubic money and it wasn’t until the early 1980s when the adoption by business of the original IBM PC (1981) as a kind of corporate standard that funding was found, building on a file addressing system based on “tumblers” which were an implementation of transfinite numbers.  Transfinite numbers exist in the branch of set theory, a fundamental area of mathematical logic that studies collections of objects; set theory is the formal framework onto which infinity can be mapped.  For Xanadu to be scalable to an infinite number of documents, the numbers in use needed to be infinite but because one layer of the process was indexing, those numbers needed to be distinct in size and order, thus the utility of the transfinite.  Except in some vague conceptual sense, it’s really only (some) mathematicians who understand all this.

Xanadu’s original 17 rules

(1) Every Xanadu server is uniquely and securely identified.

(2) Every Xanadu server can be operated independently or in a network.

(3) Every user is uniquely and securely identified.

(4) Every user can search, retrieve, create and store documents.

(5) Every document can consist of any number of parts each of which may be of any data type.

(6) Every document can contain links of any type including virtual copies (“transclusions”) to any other document in the system accessible to its owner.

(7) Links are visible and can be followed from all endpoints.

(8) Permission to link to a document is explicitly granted by the act of publication.

(9) Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies (“transclusions”) of all or part of the document.

(10) Every document is uniquely and securely identified.

(11) Every document can have secure access controls.

(12) Every document can be rapidly searched, stored and retrieved without user knowledge of where it is physically stored.

(13) Every document is automatically moved to physical storage appropriate to its frequency of access from any given location.

(14) Every document is automatically stored redundantly to maintain availability even in case of a disaster.

(15) Every Xanadu service provider can charge their users at any rate they choose for the storage, retrieval and publishing of documents.

(16) Every transaction is secure and auditable only by the parties to that transaction.

(17) The Xanadu client-server communication protocol is an openly published standard. Third-party software development and integration is encouraged.

By the early 1990s it was clear Xanadu “worked”, at least at the scale existing hardware made possible but the emergence of the www (World Wide Web) diverted the industry’s attention and by 1995 when it was clear the Web had gained critical mass, the view seemed to be Xanadu might be a slightly better or slightly worse mousetrap and soon comparisons were being with the “OS (operating system) war” between Microsoft’s Windows NT and IBM’s OS/2.  Dr Nelson however was not deterred and successive releases of implementations of parts of the Project Xanadu model were in the twenty-first century released until OpenXanadu was in 2014 made available on the Web.  Explaining how it differed from hypertext as it was done on the Web, Dr Nelson claimed HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) was inherently flawed because, the metaphor being one of bound pages, it was so prone to broken links as one page was torn off, that meaning collectively an array of dozens (or millions, trillions etc) of dead links to other dead pages.  What tumblers did was provide an address able to maintain linkages to not merely a single object (which HTTP envisages as a “piece of paper”) but an infinite set of links, achieved because transfinite numbers can handle what can be visualized as a cascade of information, the linkages between which are unlimited; this was the inheritance of the “docuverse”.  Those impressed by both the potential and drawbacks of the Blockchain will be struck by the overlaps.

Knowledge Nation, which at the time seemed a good idea but wasn’t suited to the banality of modern politics.

For the 2001 federal election in Australia, a part of the opposition Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) platform was “Knowledge Nation”, a summary of its education policy, developed by polymath and former minister for science Barry Jones (b 1932).  During the campaign, what was substantive in Knowledge Nation was little discussed because the government immediately attacked the illustrative chart which was a representation of the many components connected within the education system.  Derided as “Noodle Nation”, it was an example of why it’s no longer wise for politicians to offer anything much beyond a TWS (three word slogan).  The reaction today to a political party circulating something like The Federalist (a collection of 85 articles and essays (1787-1788) advocating the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) would be something like the “noodle nation moment”.  These days, intertwingling is best neither seen nor heard.

Pillow

Pillow (pronounced pil-oh)

(1) A bag or case made of cloth that is filled with feathers, down, or other soft material, and is used to cushion the head during sleep or rest.

(2) Any similar construction used to cushion the head; a type of headrest.

(3) In lace-making, a hard cushion or pad that supports the pattern and threads in the making of bobbin lace (also called lace pillow).

(4) In ship-building, a supporting piece or part, as the block on which the inner end of a bowsprit (a spar projecting over the prow of a sailing vessel to provide the means of adding sail surface) rests.

(5) In geology, as “pillow lava”, the rock type resembling the shape of a typical pillow, formed when lava emerges from an underwater volcanic vent or a lava flow enters the ocean.

(6) In engineering, as “pillow block”, a piece of wood or metal, forming a support to equalize pressure (historically known also a “brass”, an allusion to the alloy once commonly used for such purposes.

(7) In engineering, the socket of a pivot.

(8) A kind of plain, coarse fustian (a coarse fabric made originally from cotton and flax and now a coarse fabric of twilled cotton or a cotton & linen mix).

(9) With and without modifiers (love pillows; dirty pillows etc) and usually in the plural, yet another slang term for the human female's breasts.

(10) To rest on a pillow.

(11) To support with pillows.

(12) To serve as a pillow for some purpose.

1450s: From the Middle English pillow & pilow, (a head-rest used by a person reclining, especially a soft, elastic cushion filled with down, feathers etc), from the earlier pilwe, from the Old English pylwe, pylu & pyle (cushion, bed-cushion, pillow), from West Germanic noun pulwi & pulwin (source also of the Old Saxon puli, the Middle Dutch polu, the Dutch peluw, the Old High German pfuliwi and the German Pfühl), from the Proto-West Germanic pulwī (pillow), borrowed (possibly as early as the second century) from the Latin pulvinus (a little cushion, small pillow) of uncertain origin but some etymologists have speculated the construct may have been the Latin pulvis (dust, powder) +‎ -īnus (-ine) (in the sense of the filler of a pillow).  The suffix -īnus (-ine) was from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European –iHnos and was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  In use it was added to a noun base (especially a proper noun) to form an adjective conveying the sense “of or pertaining to” and could indicate a relationship of position, possession, or origin.  The modern English spelling dates from the 1450s.  Pillow & pillowing are nouns & verbs, pillowed is a verb & adjectice and pillowless, pillowy, pillowlike & pillowesque are adjectives; the noun plural is pillows.

Pillowslips (left) in the typical combination of (1) a pair in a matching set with sheets & (2) a pair in a set matching the duvet cover and a quartet of pillowshams (right).  

Use of the pillowcase (washable enclosure drawn over a pillow and known also as a “pillowslip”) probably long predates the first known use of the term in 1745 but the emergence in the 1860s of the “pillowsham” is likely indicative of the tastes of the rising middle-class.  The pillowsham can be thought of as the archetypal middle class accessory and while structurally similar to a pillow case, in the jargon of interior decorators they are distinct.  A pillowcase (or pillowslip) is a basic and close-fitting cover which encases a pillow to protect it and provide a comfortable surface for sleeping.  Typically, pillowcases are made from soft, washable fabrics like cotton, linen, or microfiber and usually feature an open end with a flap; most are simple in design although there can be frills (though not fringes which are restricted to cushions) and the fabric tends to be either a solid color or matching the rest of the bed linen (ie as part of a set).  A pillowsham is a decorative cover for a pillow, often used on beds to add style rather than for everyday sleeping and some shams placed over pillows for decorative effect are removed or placed at the back when someone is sleeping.  Pillowshams are much associated with intricate designs (embroidery, ruffles, textured fabric and worse) and usually have an opening at the back, often closed with buttons, a zipper, or an overlapping flap to hide the closure.  Sham (intended to deceive; false; act of fakery) is thought probably to have been a dialectal form of shame (reproach incurred or suffered; dishonour; ignominy; derision) from the Middle English schame, from the Old English sċamu, from Proto-Germanic skamō.  Thus, while interior decorators may have no shame, they certainly have shams.

Pillowsham is the generic term for these items (whether put over a pillow or cushion) and “cushionsham” is not part of the jargon; the terms pillowcase, pillowslip & pillowsham appear variously also as separate words and hyphenated.  The pillowsham is notorious for its use as a platform for kitsch and Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) mountain home (the Berghof in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria) featured many, sent to him by his many female admirers.  At the aesthetic level, he of course didn't approve but appreciated the gesture although they seem never to have appeared in photographs of the house’s principle rooms, banished to places like the many surrounding buildings including the conservatory of Hans Wichenfeld (the chalet on which the was Berghof based).

Hitler's study in the Berghof with only matched cushions (left) and the conservatory (centre & right) with some pillowshams (embroidered with swastikas and the initials A.H.).

In the US, Life magazine in October 1939 (a few weeks after the Nazis had invaded Poland) published a lush color feature focused on Hitler’s paintings and the Berghof, the piece a curious mix of what even then were called “human-interest stories”, political commentary and artistic & architectural criticism.  One heading :“Paintings by Adolf Hitler: The Statesman Longs to Be an Artist and Helps Design His Mountain Home” illustrates the flavor but this was a time before the most awful aspects of Nazi rule were understood and Life’s editors were well-aware a significant proportion of its readership were well disposed towards Hitler’s regime.  Still, there was some wry humor in the text, assessing the Berghof as possessing the qualities of a “…combination of modern and Bavarian chalet” styles, something “awkward but interesting” while the interiors, “…designed and decorated with Hitler’s active collaboration, are the comfortable kind of rooms a man likes, furnished in simple, semi-modern, sometimes dramatic style. The furnishings are in very good taste, fashioned of rich materials and fine woods by the best craftsmen in the Reich.”  Life seemed to be most taken with the main stairway leading up from the ground floor which was judged “a striking bit of modern architecture.”  Whether or not the editors were aware Hitler thought “modern architecture” suitable only for factories, warehouses and such isn’t clear.  They also had fun with what hung on the walls, noting: “Like other Nazi leaders, Hitler likes pictures of nudes and ruins” but anyway concluded that “in a more settled Germany, Adolf Hitler might have done quite well as an interior decorator.”  There was no comment on the Führer’s pillows and cushions.

Whatever Life’s views on him as potential interior decorator, decades later, his architect was prepared to note the dictator’s “beginner’s mistake” in the building’s design.  In Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled:

“A huge picture window in the living room, famous for its size and the fact that it could be lowered, was Hitler s pride.  It offered a view of the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, and Salzburg. However, Hitler had been inspired to situate his garage underneath this window; when the wind was unfavorable, a strong smell of gasoline penetrated into the living room.  All in all, this was a ground plan that would have been graded D by any professor at an institute of technology. On the other hand, these very clumsinesses gave the Berghof a strongly personal note. The place was still geared to the simple activities of a former weekend cottage, merely expanded to vast proportions.”

He commented also on the pillowshams: “The furniture was bogus old- German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression.  There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of "eternal loyalty."  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: "I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them."

Life’s assessment of Hitler’s alternative career path as an interior decorator wasn’t the first time the observation had been made of a head of state & government.  Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921) had gone to the Paris Peace Conference (1919) determined above all to secure the agreement of all parties to the creation of the League of Nations (1920-1946) and this he pursued with a vigour not matched by other leaders present, all of who had a focus on the immediate needs of their own countries.  Wilson, knowing political pressure on him was rising in the US and whose health had long been fragile, found the negotiations exhausting and doctors in recent years have concluded he likely suffered several small strokes while in Paris, a prelude to the major event later in the year which substantially would incapacity him for the remainder of his presidency.

Wilson’s personal physician (Cary Grayson (1878–1938) had accompanied him to the conference and in his diary noted one manifestation of what he described as “the strain” when, after hours of “intense discussion” on matters ranging from tiresome US senators to the treaty terms sought by the delegation from Japan to the arraignment of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941; German Emperor & King of Prussia 1888-1918), the president suddenly made an announcement.

“I don’t like the way the colors of this furniture fight each other. The greens and the reds are all mixed up here and there is no harmony.  Here is a big purple, high-backed covered chair, which is like the Purple Cow, strayed off to itself, and it is placed where the light shines on it too brightly.  If you will give me a lift, we will move this next to the wall where the light from the window will give it a subdued effect.  And here are two chairs, one green and the other red.  This will never do.  Let’s put the greens all together and the reds together.”  He went on to relate to his doctor how at the “Council of Four” (the leaders of France, Italy, the US & UK) meeting how “…each delegation walked like schoolchildren each day to its respective corner.  Now, with the furniture regrouped, he said each country would sit according to its color.”  Dr Grayson attributed the “aberrant behaviour” to “stress” and prescribed only going for a drive in an automobile, remarking to his patient: “I think if you ever want a job after leaving the presidency you would make a great success as an interior decorator.”  Wilson concurred, answering: “I don’t mean to throw bouquets at myself but I do think that I have made a success of the arrangement of the furniture.”

Woodrow Wilson’s bedroom in the Washington DC townhouse where he lived after leaving office.

Mrs Wilson fitted-out the bedroom on S Street, Kalorama almost to exactly replicate the one he’d used at the White House, down to the footrests, pillows and reading lights.  Mrs Wilson commissioned the bed to be exactly the imposing dimensions (8 feet, 6 inches x 6 feet, 6 inches (2590 x 1981 mm)) of the White House’s Lincoln Bed; built in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a colonial revival style, it's made of mahogany.  After his stroke in October, 1919, Wilson substantially was confined to his bed and it was in this bed he died on 3 February, 1924, aged 67.  He was buried at the Washington National Cathedral, the only US president whose body lies in the national capital.

The "furniture incident" is now assessed in the light of the knowledge of the president’s previous neurological issues and analysts since have compared the behaviour to that of the anorexic who takes control of their diet because it is one thing they are able completely and immediately to control, in contrast to other aspects of their life which they have come to believe they are unable to influence and neurologists who have written on the subject do seem to agree a stroke would likely have induced the episode.  In October 1919, shortly after returning to the US, Wilson suffered a major stroke, us stroke, leaving him paralyzed on his left side, and with only partial vision in the right eye.  Despite this, he continued in office until his term expired in 1921 though he was physically isolated and few were able to see him except his wife and doctor, a situation not greatly different from the situation in 1953 when Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) son-in-law for months acted as something of a prime-ministerial proxy in the aftermath of Churchill’s massive stroke.  The ad-hoc apparatus constructed by Mrs Wilson and Dr Grayson had led some claim she was, in effect, the nation’s “first female president” and while that’s drawing a long bow, it was something discussed in 2024 when Joe Biden’s (b 1942; US president 2021-2025) descent into senility was a topic of interest.  The roles played by of Dr Grayson, Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977, personal physician to prime minister Winston Churchill) and Ross McIntire (1889–1959; personal physician to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945)) remain controversial and reflect the sometimes conflicting duality of responsibility a physician has (1) to their patient and (2) their patient’s position as head of government.

Lindsay Lohan themed pillows are available.

“Pillow dictionary” was a synonym of “sleeping dictionary” (a sexual partner who also serves as a native informant or language teacher for an outsider).  It was thus something of a euphemism for a tutor in a foreign language who, as is implied, gives “tuition in bed”; the term said (as might be expected) to be used more commonly used by men of women than vice versa.  Those who practice hypnopaedic techniques use a different kind of dictionary.  Hypnopedia (or hypnopædia) was a form of “sleep-learning (or sleep-teaching) and was an attempt to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep.  Because the role of sleep in memory consolidation had come to be understood, the hypothesis of hypnopedia was not unreasonable but it has been wholly discredited.

The “pillow fight” (a form of domestic mock-combat fought using pillows as weapons) is presumably a most ancient practice but the first known reference is from 1837.  Pillows being much associated with beds, in idiomatic use, the pillow naturally features in phrases associated with sex.  The slang “pillow talk” (relaxed, intimate conversation between a couple in bed) is doubtlessly more ancient still but the term may not have been used prior to 1939 and it now carries the implication of some indiscrete disclosure, often in the context of politics or espionage).  A “pillow word” was a calque of the Japanese 枕詞 (makurakotoba) and described the use in Waka (和歌) (Japanese poem) of a poetic device in which a certain introductory phrase is commonly used to allude to something else.

Jeremy Thorpe arriving at Minehead Magistrates Court, 4 December 1978, for the famous "pillow biter" trial.

The matter was committal proceedings against him and three others on charges of conspiring to murder former male model Norman Scott.  Ultimately Mr Thorpe was acquitted of all charges.  The car is a Rover 3500S (P6).  3500S was the original designation of the 3500s sold during the model's abortive foray (1970-1971) into the US market but elsewhere was used to designate the version offered with a four-speed manual transmission (1971-1977), the original introduced in 1968 exclusively in automatic form.  Grace Kelly (1929–1982; Princess Consort of Monaco 1956-1982) died while at the wheel of (an automatic) Rover 3500, crashing of a steep mountain pass, apparently after suffering a stroke but the conspiracy theorists have other explanations.

A “pillow queen” was a woman concerned only with her own gratification during sex and interestingly, the equivalent creature among lesbians was apparently more often a “pillow princess”, both classified as “takers” rather than “givers”, the synonyms in the vernacular including “stone”, “rock”, “slate”, “cold fish”, “dead fish” and “starfish”.  The more evocative phrase “pillow-biter” seems first to have entered general use after it was used by Norman Scott (b 1940) when giving evidence in the 1979 trial of Jeremy Thorpe (1929–2014; leader of the UK Liberal Party 1967-1976), the witness describing the way he handled his unwilling participation as the alleged victim of Mr Thorpe committing upon him what in some jurisdictions used to be called “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery”: “I just bit the pillow, I tried not to scream because I was frightened of waking Mrs Thorpe.”  A pillow-biter is thus (in certain circles of the LGBTQQIAAOP communities) a “gay man who engages in passive anal sex”; a “bottom”, as opposed to Mr Thorpe who allegedly was a “top”.

Pillowbook describes a journal-type book kept to record sexual dreams and escapades, most intended only for the eyes of the writer.  It was a specific form of a quite commonplace book which appears to have originated in Japan as a compilation of notes & jottings, those periodic or occasional writings that might go into an extended diary.  The most famous example (and among the earliest extant) was the The Pillow Book (枕草子) (Makura no Sōshi) (Notes of the Pillow), a volume of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon (清少納言), circa 966–circa 1020, a lady of the court to Fujiwara no Teishi (藤原 定子) 977–1001 (known also as Sadako), an empress consort of the Japanese Emperor Ichijō (一条天皇) (Ichijō-tennō), 980–1011; 66^th emperor of Japan, 986-1011; the last entries in the book were made in the year 1002.  According to Japanese legend, the origin of the pillow book lies in a bundle of unused notebooks being brought to the empress who began musing on what should be done with them.  The lady-in-waiting suggested she should have them and make them into a pillow (which meant putting them into the drawers of “a wooden pillow” (a part of the Japanese sleeping apparatus).  Subsequently, she filled the notebooks with random facts, lists and discursive jottings and from this tradition came the traditional Japanese genre zuihitsu (随筆) (occasional writings) which exists still, describing a form of literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmentary ideas typically influenced by the author's surroundings and daily interactions with them.

1972 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency brochure.

“Loose pillow” upholstery had been in furniture for a while, implemented usually as detachable cushions designed to be removed for cleaning but it was Oldsmobile which first used the concept for automobiles.  Since the mid 1960s “luxury” versions (as opposed to mere “deluxe” editions which often included just a bundle of options anyway available on a “standard” car at a discount compared with ordering them individually) had begun to appear and this would evolve into what came to be called “the great Brougham era”.  That term seems to have been invented by Curbside Classic, a curated website which is a gallimaufry of interesting content, built around the theme of once-familiar and often everyday vehicles which are now a rare sight until discovered by Curbside Classic’s contributors (who self-style as "curbivores"), parked next to some curb.  These are the often the machines neglected by automotive historians and collectors who prefer things which are fast, lovely or rare.  According to Curbside Classic, the “great brougham era” began in 1965 with the release of the LTD option for the mass-market Ford Galaxie and that approach was nothing new because even the Galaxie name had in 1959 been coined for a "luxury" version of the Fairlane 500, a trick the US industry had been using for some time.

1972 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency brochure.  When the tufted, pillowed option was chosen in red velour, it was known casually as "mid-priced bordello chic".

Once, Detroit’s most elaborate interiors had been restricted to the top-of the range models (Cadillac, Lincoln & Imperial) but when Oldsmobile in introduced the “Regency” option for their Ninety-Eight range, it was quite a jump in middle-class opulence and it must have been galling for Cadillac: Oldsmobile, two notches down the GM pecking list from Cadillac had in one stroke out-done Cadillac’s interiors with not just tufted velour upholstery but the novelty also of the welcoming loose pillow style.  Cadillac had nothing like it but scrambled to respond, offering in 1973 the d'Elegance package, a US$750 option which included pillow-style velour seating as well as a more plush carpeting and bundled a few of the otherwise optional features.

1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman rear compartment in blue velour with optional pillows.  The pillows (which many would have described as "cushions") were also available on Talismans trimmed in leather.  The world should have more leather pillows but, unfortunately, while "Cadillac pillows" are available, they come only in fabric.  The so-called "holy grail" among Talisman collectors is a 1974 model in blue leather which was listed as a factory option but no such machine has ever been sighted and Cadillac's production records don't provide a color breakdown.  It's thought likely none were ever built.

However, all the d'Elegance bling did was match what others were doing and there was still the corporate memory of the Cadillac mystique, a hankering for the time when Cadillac had been the “standard of the world”, a reputation built in the 1930s on basic engineering such as almost unique sixteen cylinder engines and maintained a generation later with cars such as the Eldorado Brougham, times when the name stood for something truly impressive.  By 1974 the world had changed and such extravagances were no longer possible but what could still be done was to add more gingerbread and for 1974, Cadillac announced the Talisman package.  Much more expensive than the d'Elegance and consequently more exclusive, the Talisman included an extended centre console, the front section housing an illumined writing tablet, the rear a storage compartment.  This had been done before but never with this opulence although it had the effect of reducing the huge car, a size which historically been a six-seater, into something strictly for four.  The interior was available in four colors in "Medici" crushed velour at US$1800 or in two shades in leather at US$2450 at a time when the Chevrolet Vega, GM’s entry-level automobile of the era cost US$2087.  The Talisman additionally gained matching deep-pile interior carpeting and floor-mats, a fully padded elk grain vinyl roof, exterior badge identifications, a stand-up, full-color wreath and crest hood ornament and unique wheel-covers.  For those who needed more, for an additional US$85, a matching pillow and robe was available although the robe unfortunately wasn't cut in leather.  Optioned with the leather package, a 1974 Cadillac Talisman cost about US$13,200, matching what the company charged for the even bigger Fleetwood 75 limousines.  The additional gingerbread wasn’t all that expensive to produce; what Cadillac was selling was exclusivity and the market responded, 1898 Talismans coming off the production line that year, all sold at a most impressive profit.  Most prized today are the relative handful trimmed in leather, the urban legend being all were in medium saddle with none in the dark blue which was on the option list.  If any were sold with the blue leather, none appear now to exist and Cadillac’s records don’t record the breakdown.

1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (left) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “fine Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the motif.

Fashions change and the 1997 Buick Park Avenue (right) was the last of the "pillowed cars".  The loose pillow style certainly caught on although the name was a little misleading because the pillows were loose only in the sense of moving a little to accommodate the frames sitting on them and were not removable.  In the showroom they looked good and attracted many buyers but were noted also for the propensity to trap crumbs, small coins and the other detritus of life in the many folds, tufts and crevasses.  The fad lasted for more than a generation and Detroit’s last fling of the pillow was the 1997 Buick Park Avenue.

Built-in foam pillows: 1972 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (left) and 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop (right).

Chrysler corporation’s implementation of the “loose pillow look” was the industry’s most sumptuous and on the more expensive in the range, the look extended even to “built-in foam pillows” affixed to the C-pillars, a luxury for dozing customers and these were the sort of cars which were famous for “floating” effortlessly down freeways so probably it wasn’t uncommon for folk in the back to be lulled into sleep; the huge machines of the 1970s were nicknamed “land yachts” with good reason.  The pillows also proved to be dual-purpose.  Between 1969-1973, the Imperial’s rear map-reading lamps (maps used to be printed on paper) were located next to the rear windscreen and while they worked as intended, they had a sort of “stuck-on” look which didn’t suit the ambiance of the interior.  When illuminated, they also glowed in the driver’s rear-view mirror and because the stylists were anyway intending to better integrate the units, it was decided to do so in such a way that would make the light unobtrusive for the driver, removing a potential distraction.  The new design made it debut with the 1974 range.

1974 Imperial LeBaron brochure featuring "built-in foam pillows and lavaliere straps".

Chrysler made many mistakes during the 1970s but the basic engineering was usually sound and the new map-reading lamps were indicative of the approach.  Not only did the new lamps offer “increased luminosity” but the glow was now “warmer and softer” which sounds like advertising “puffery” but the terms are an accepted part of the jargon of light and the wider aperture of the lens meant what was cast was in a broader beam, better suited to maps or anything else being read.  The shape of the built-in foam pillows was used also to ensure the light couldn’t distract the driver, the engineers devoting some energy to working out just how much padding should be used to achieve this, while not detracting from the lamp’s functionality.  On the four-door models, there was also on each C-Pillar a “lavaliere strap”.

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) in Cadillac presidential limousine demonstrating the correct grip of a lavaliere strap.

“Lavaliere” is a term from jewellery design which describes a pendant (typically with a single stone) suspended from a necklace and presumably Chrysler’s marketing department thought that sounded much better than the more brutish “grab handle”, typified by the later Subaru BRAT, a vehicle in which admittedly they were essential.  On his Californian ranch, Mr Regan kept a Subaru BRAT but removed the tariff-dodging jump seats so didn't have the pleasure of using the grab handles.  The jewellery style was named after Françoise-Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of La Vallière and Vaujours (1644–1710) who was, between 1661-1667 (a reasonable run in such a profession), the mistress of Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715); it’s said the adaptation of her name for the pendants was based on the frequency with which the accessories appeared in her many portraits.

1977 Chrysler (Australia) Valiant Regal SE.

In the era, Chrysler's Australian outpost did cut a few corners when implementing the “pillowed look”, economies achieved by (1) using fewer buttons for the tufting of the fabric or optional leather and (2) attaching the tufted “feature sections” directly to the cushion & squab rather than creating an emulated “pillowed” look (in which a separate piece appears to sit atop the structure).  Even by the time of the release of the CL range (1976-1978) the feeling was the writing was on the wall for the once popular Australian Valiant (1962-1981) and the top-of-the-line Regal SE was created in the Q&D (quick & dirty) way by including all the lesser Regal’s options (including the 318 cubic inch (5.2 litre) V8) as standard equipment; only the tufted upholstery and optional leather was unique to the model.  Sales were modest but there remained a devoted following for the Valiant which was durable enough to endure the sometimes harsh environment and it was highly regarded for its towing capabilities, even when fitted with the lusty six cylinder engines which were the best produced by the local industry.  Built on the US A-body platform, when production ended in 1981 it had lasted a half-decade longer than the Plymouth and Dodge versions sold in the home market and only in Mexico would use continue until 1988.& frozen water), were quixotic.

White Rabbit © Copperpenny Music, Mole Music Co

Surrealistic Pillow album cover, 1967.

White Rabbit was a song written by Grace Slick (b 1939) and released on the album Surrealistic Pillow (1967) by Jefferson Airplane, the lyrics inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871).  It was the psychedelic era, a time when drug references were common in popular music and in the case of White Rabbit it may have been appropriate if the speculation the books been written while the author was under the influence of Laudanum (a then widely-available and popular opiate-infused drug) is true (there's no evidence beyond the circumstantial).  Given the imagery in the text, it’s not difficult to believe he may have been on something and among authors and poets it was a common resort to stimulate the imagination, inspiring at least some of one of the most beloved fragments of English verse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) Kubla Khan (1797) which ends abruptly at 54 lines.  According to Coleridge, he was unable to recall the rest of the 300-odd which had come to him in an opium-laced dream (the original publication was sub-titled “A Vision in a Dream”) because he was interrupted by “a person on business from Porlock” (a nearby Somerset village).  Grace Slick would have sympathized with an artist being intruded on by vile commerce.

White Rabbit lyrics:

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall

 

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call

Call Alice

When she was just small

 

When the men on the chessboard

Get up and tell you where to go

And you've just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice

I think she'll know

 

When logic and proportion

Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen's off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head