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61st entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
October18th
1925 Melina Mercouri Athens Greece, actress/politician (Never on a Sunday),even Camilo Sesto made her a song, wow
1939 Lee Harvey Oswald JFK assassin, born to be a scapegoat for the magnicide of John F.Kennedy
died
1931 Thomas Alva Edison inventor, dies in West Orange, NJ, at 84, the light bulbs were turned off for one minute in his honor, too bad he killed so many animals experimenting his direct current
THE PERCENTAGE OF GENIUS
When Edison said that genius is 10 percent inspiration and the rest of it perspiration,I think he told us a great truth, starting by his example. That phrase has inspired me all the time, whenever I felt more like doing anything except open a book. I sit down to write about a man whom I can never forgive for having killed so many animals while he was testing his direct current-a battle which his rival George Westinghouse won with his alternate current-and who was so callous to his first wife that on the wedding night he went into his lab and forgot his shaky bride was waiting for him in the nuptial chamber,crying,thinking he was slighting her. I don`t like him as a man. But the light bulb which warms me and allows me to be writing this for you came out of his head. No wonder when he died on a day like today, everyone turned off their lights for one minute to salute him.
Edison was a man who knew the value of knowledge. He knew because his mother had shown him the way when he was kicked out of school. His first teacher said he would never learn.Those are the historical mistakes that astound anyone. The dyslexic, “useless” kid grew up to be the greatest inventor that has ever exited. Sometimes kismet,or destiny,or karma or whatever you choose to call it, really laughs in our faces.
I will never understand the so permanently repeated excuse posed by most Nicaraguans and third world citizens:I cant. WE are unlucky,we are poor,we are weak…we have had bad times. The policy of the hammock,always being pushed because we never try to improve on our own. People are as stupid as their laziness wants them to be. As my associate in one of my webpages, Adolfo, says,”Constantly helping the weak will make him a cripple for he doesn’t learn.” Edison would have said the same thing.
Edison would have lost his patience here in my country. Three slaps, kicks or shoves have to be duly administered to people here, even to get a phone call back for something that you are paying for. In some companies, you get the impression that the customer is the beggar and his money is not worth anything, although their payroll comes from each customer they have. They do nothing to keep the customer happy,it is not worth the effort! Then when their sales digits go down, there comes the panic. There may have been inspiration at the moment the company was founded, but the continuity of everyday perspiration has been lost. Or it never was there.
In 1984, I had a chance to help organize a music festival here in Nicaragua. Nicaragua Musica 84. I was assigned to be the simultaneous interpreter for the French singer Maxime Le Forrestier. His visit here was a series of frustrations, one after the other.Lodged at a posh hotel,Hotel Camino Real, he couldn`t even get fresh towels from the administration,in his room. Perhaps the chambermaids believed the old wive`s tale that Frenchmen don`t bathe, and thought it was utterly unnecessary. Maxime spent his week and a half in Nicaragua complaining,sounding like the most cantankerous man in the world. 90 per cent of the time he was right, because he couldn’t get an international call, nor fresh vegetables, nor anything although he was paying for all that. Everything in Managua semed to be against his wishes,and he would just growl at me,”Nicaragua est un pays qui ne marche pas.” Nicaragua is a country that doesn`t work at all,doesn`t function. So one afternoon he sang the same tune again,but I had my period,I had had a big fight with my mother,and I was upset.So I finished his noise off by kicking him into the swimming pool, which fortunately was full of greenish water or I would have killed him if it had been empty. He ogled me furiously,coming out like a big skinny frog out of the murky water. He had been kicked for repeating a universal truth and that rankled. He knew most things went wrong because people didn`t put any effort into giving a good service. I knew it but was tired of hearing it rubbed into me. IN apologized quickly and he did the same, but both of us knew we were lying out of that polished hypocrisy called courtesy. We both knew that we were facing little perspiration in our people from Nicaragua, and it ashamed both of us.
Along life, the same attitude of laissez faire, of slumping and waiting for things to solve themselves on their own, has been met by me on different people and situations. When you tell me the same happens anywhere in the Third world, I know it is like an impending doom that has fallen on a good portion of humanunkind. For many people, finding a job is the worst punishment destiny can give them. They have barely signed the contract when they start making up excuses for not reporting themselves to work…the piddling salary, the hard conditions, the regulations. Everything is like a thorn on their side. Getting the job is the worst thing that has befalling them, like being raped by a horde of furious baboons in the middle of a duststorm. We often ask ourselves why we do the same thing over and over, like automatons. WE wonder why we don’t get lucky.I don`t believe in luck, like Edison didn`t either.You forge your own luck by hard work. Not praying because even if god did exist he may be in Chechenia and not listening to you, nor hoping because even though it is the last thing one loses, it doesn`t run far.But by rolling up your sleeves and getting down to business. But hard work is not everyone`s plate of cream. Pople prefer to believe in fairy tales,which only take the effort exerted by the shiny wand of a fairy, charmingly shaken with a lipstick smile over someone`s head, really.
In real life, things happen in the lab, or the office or the battlefield. And the one who had the best idea and got it working. He or she is the one who will reap the real rewards of the imaginary gold pot at the end of effort`s real rainbow.
October18th
1925 Melina Mercouri Athens Greece, actress/politician (Never on a Sunday),even Camilo Sesto made her a song, wow
1939 Lee Harvey Oswald JFK assassin, born to be a scapegoat for the magnicide of John F.Kennedy
died
1931 Thomas Alva Edison inventor, dies in West Orange, NJ, at 84, the light bulbs were turned off for one minute in his honor, too bad he killed so many animals experimenting his direct current
THE PERCENTAGE OF GENIUS
When Edison said that genius is 10 percent inspiration and the rest of it perspiration,I think he told us a great truth, starting by his example. That phrase has inspired me all the time, whenever I felt more like doing anything except open a book. I sit down to write about a man whom I can never forgive for having killed so many animals while he was testing his direct current-a battle which his rival George Westinghouse won with his alternate current-and who was so callous to his first wife that on the wedding night he went into his lab and forgot his shaky bride was waiting for him in the nuptial chamber,crying,thinking he was slighting her. I don`t like him as a man. But the light bulb which warms me and allows me to be writing this for you came out of his head. No wonder when he died on a day like today, everyone turned off their lights for one minute to salute him.
Edison was a man who knew the value of knowledge. He knew because his mother had shown him the way when he was kicked out of school. His first teacher said he would never learn.Those are the historical mistakes that astound anyone. The dyslexic, “useless” kid grew up to be the greatest inventor that has ever exited. Sometimes kismet,or destiny,or karma or whatever you choose to call it, really laughs in our faces.
I will never understand the so permanently repeated excuse posed by most Nicaraguans and third world citizens:I cant. WE are unlucky,we are poor,we are weak…we have had bad times. The policy of the hammock,always being pushed because we never try to improve on our own. People are as stupid as their laziness wants them to be. As my associate in one of my webpages, Adolfo, says,”Constantly helping the weak will make him a cripple for he doesn’t learn.” Edison would have said the same thing.
Edison would have lost his patience here in my country. Three slaps, kicks or shoves have to be duly administered to people here, even to get a phone call back for something that you are paying for. In some companies, you get the impression that the customer is the beggar and his money is not worth anything, although their payroll comes from each customer they have. They do nothing to keep the customer happy,it is not worth the effort! Then when their sales digits go down, there comes the panic. There may have been inspiration at the moment the company was founded, but the continuity of everyday perspiration has been lost. Or it never was there.
In 1984, I had a chance to help organize a music festival here in Nicaragua. Nicaragua Musica 84. I was assigned to be the simultaneous interpreter for the French singer Maxime Le Forrestier. His visit here was a series of frustrations, one after the other.Lodged at a posh hotel,Hotel Camino Real, he couldn`t even get fresh towels from the administration,in his room. Perhaps the chambermaids believed the old wive`s tale that Frenchmen don`t bathe, and thought it was utterly unnecessary. Maxime spent his week and a half in Nicaragua complaining,sounding like the most cantankerous man in the world. 90 per cent of the time he was right, because he couldn’t get an international call, nor fresh vegetables, nor anything although he was paying for all that. Everything in Managua semed to be against his wishes,and he would just growl at me,”Nicaragua est un pays qui ne marche pas.” Nicaragua is a country that doesn`t work at all,doesn`t function. So one afternoon he sang the same tune again,but I had my period,I had had a big fight with my mother,and I was upset.So I finished his noise off by kicking him into the swimming pool, which fortunately was full of greenish water or I would have killed him if it had been empty. He ogled me furiously,coming out like a big skinny frog out of the murky water. He had been kicked for repeating a universal truth and that rankled. He knew most things went wrong because people didn`t put any effort into giving a good service. I knew it but was tired of hearing it rubbed into me. IN apologized quickly and he did the same, but both of us knew we were lying out of that polished hypocrisy called courtesy. We both knew that we were facing little perspiration in our people from Nicaragua, and it ashamed both of us.
Along life, the same attitude of laissez faire, of slumping and waiting for things to solve themselves on their own, has been met by me on different people and situations. When you tell me the same happens anywhere in the Third world, I know it is like an impending doom that has fallen on a good portion of humanunkind. For many people, finding a job is the worst punishment destiny can give them. They have barely signed the contract when they start making up excuses for not reporting themselves to work…the piddling salary, the hard conditions, the regulations. Everything is like a thorn on their side. Getting the job is the worst thing that has befalling them, like being raped by a horde of furious baboons in the middle of a duststorm. We often ask ourselves why we do the same thing over and over, like automatons. WE wonder why we don’t get lucky.I don`t believe in luck, like Edison didn`t either.You forge your own luck by hard work. Not praying because even if god did exist he may be in Chechenia and not listening to you, nor hoping because even though it is the last thing one loses, it doesn`t run far.But by rolling up your sleeves and getting down to business. But hard work is not everyone`s plate of cream. Pople prefer to believe in fairy tales,which only take the effort exerted by the shiny wand of a fairy, charmingly shaken with a lipstick smile over someone`s head, really.
In real life, things happen in the lab, or the office or the battlefield. And the one who had the best idea and got it working. He or she is the one who will reap the real rewards of the imaginary gold pot at the end of effort`s real rainbow.
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