Ghandi-like

You all know I'm not a spelling nazi. I understand that spelling is a peculiarly specialised skill which some people (like me) have an inherent knack for but which others (like my sister) simply lack, and that considering it a proxy for someone's intelligence or general level of education is shortsighted at best. At most, in this age of ubiquitous online spellchecking, it might connote a certain lackadaisicalness[*]. So if I remark on the spelling in a post, it's usually a case where the poster is someone I know as an average-to-good speller who is guilty of a typo which results in an amusing malapropism (e.g. "propane" for "profane" and vice-versa).

But proper names are an exception. It's not fair that it should be so, I know, since they're even harder to get right than ordinary words: there are often multiple "correct" spellings depending on the individual involved (e.g. James Caan vs Madeleine Kahn vs Edward Cahn vs Aamir Khan) and spellcheckers are no help. I guess I feel that since these are known pitfalls, people should be making an extra effort to avoid them. Or maybe forty years of having my surname routinely mangled by all and sundry has just made me irrationally embittered in this area?

In any case, all this is no more than an attempt at excusing myself for becoming a troll on Facebook. There's a macro going around of "Ghandi's 7 Dangers to Human Virtue" [sic]. The first couple of times I saw it, I disregarded it. Then vianegativa reblogged it and he's someone I don't mind having a go at, since Matt's a chum who I know won't go ballistic over a little dickery. But the problem with trolling is that you never know what you'll end up hooking and now some perfectly sweet stranger has responded to my comment "So this Ghandi guy, he was kind of like the Bhudda?" with a patient and lengthy explanation of who this "Ghandi" man was and why he finds him inspirational. D'oh!

[*] Had to look up the spelling of this!

Update: The penny has finally dropped! Yay!

Einn dag á eyju

One of the places we considered visiting during our last trip to Door County was Washington Island, which lies across the hazardous strait known as "Death's Door" (a.k.a. Porte des Morts) that gives the county its name. Except in the winter, Ferries leave every hour, but only between 8 and 5. And they're pricey--$15 for a vehicle and $12 for each adult inside, round trip. That struck as too steep for a couple hours of driving around, so instead we went to the shingle and skipped stones as we watched the boat load up and depart.

This time, we came at midmorning on Saturday prepared to spend the day. Traffic was heavy, so they were doing multiple runs, which worked at well for us since we were too far back in line to make the first run. Our boat going out was the Arni Richter, which has room for eighteen cars plus bikes and motorcycles--and there were plenty of those making the journey along with us. In fair weather, it took about half an hour. We skirted the south and west coasts of Plum Island, an uninhabited wildlife reserve, and privately-owned Detroit Island, before mooring in Detroit Harbor in the far southeast corner of Washington.

Originally we had talked about renting bikes for the afternoon, but Dad surprised me by proposing we go to Rock Island instead. At just under 1000 acres, it's barely a 15th the size of Washington Island. Not even bicycles are allowed and aside from the seasonal ferry, the only way to get there is your own boat; the tourist literature calls it "the most remote state park in Wisconsin". Mentally, I had written it off because I thought Dad wouldn't be up to that much hiking since he hurt his foot a couple weeks back and it's healing slowly, but I was delighted to humour him.

Between the two ferry ports, we changed plans again and ended up staying overnight on Washington. (More on that shortly.) This was good, because it meant we were able to catch the earlier ferry on Sunday and take our time. Dad's pace was even more handicapped than I expected, so had we started at 1:15, making the 4:15 ferry back--the last of the day--would've meant a mad rush back to the boathouse. Instead, we had time to tour the lighthouse at the northern tip, see the oldest surviving structure in Door County (an outhouse!), and chat at length with the Ranger Randy Holm. It also meant I had time for runes.

At one time, most of the island was the private possession of Chester Hjortur Thordarson, an Icelandic immigrant who made his fortune in electrical transformers. The centrepiece of his sprawling personal estate on the southern end of Rock Island was a massive boathouse with a fireplace you could stand in and a great hall suitable for the Alþingi to meet in. His dissolute sons either sold (according to the brochures) or gave away (according to the ranger) the handmade furniture he had made for it; amazingly, all but a handful of pieces have been donated back. Each is engraved with a scene from the Elder Edda with a caption in runic script.

Near as I can tell, the version used is the younger futhark with modifications for a fuller range of contrasts (although it still doesn't cover all the phonemes of Old Icelandic). This put me as something of a disadvantage, since the Germanic system I know best is the Anglo-Saxon. I was struggling to understand the divergences until I successfully IDed this ugly feller, which gave me equivalents for n, r, and u. But the real key turned out to be the fireplace itself, which was inscribed with a quote from the Hávamál; crucially, the park service had added a transcription. Armed with this, I was able to identify all manner of mythic scenes, from the assassination of Baldur to the loss of Tyr's hand. I was also able to confirm a hunch about old Thordarson, namely that his "middle name" (gleaned from a tombstone) was actually his birth name. In his office, there was a small vessel with a bilingual dedication and the name on that turned out to be "Hjörtur Þórðarson".

Ranger Holm made Chester sound like my kind of fella, one who put into practice Erasmus' dictum "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." Supposedly he spent $1 out of his $4/week salary winding armatures in Chicago on books; upon his death, his collection of 10,000 volumes--housed in the great hall of the boathouse--was sold to UW-Madison for $300,000 (a steal giving some of the rarities it contained) and became the nucleus of their rare book collection. Several years earlier, he'd invited several professors up to take a look at it. Having had no more than a seventh-grade education, he was intimidated as he walked around, pulling books off the shelves and handing them to the visitors. Apparently he was able to cite page, paragraph, and line in each volume when asking them to take a look at the text and tell him what they thought of it. Two hours of this and it was the professors who were intimidated.

Unfortunately, the island wasn't as interesting ecologically as Washington Island, which itself held fewer wonders than the modest county park on Ellison Bluff I was able to hike on crutches last year. The most curious thing was the lack of an understory; there were low plants--chiefly lower-than-average wild sarsaparilla--and there were some very impressive centenarian trees surrounded by their youthful offspring, but nothing really in between. Several of the older specimens had toppled over (apparently there were severe storms the weekend before which knocked out power to most of the county), which impressed on us the thinness of the rocky soil.

So though initially we thought we'd have lots to discuss at the end of the day with Paul King, the kindly old coot of a naturalist, but that didn't really turn out to be the case. When I came up on him chatting with Dad, he handed us a couple of "wild leeks" (probably what most of us know as "ramps") which I chopped and added to the prepared sauerkraut I fixed for dinner that night. Perhaps a spring visit would be more rewarding? Or maybe it's the dry summer they had which is to blame, though frankly the ferns in the low centre of the island didn't seem so bad off (although not anywhere near as impressive as Paul promised us they'd be).

So I don't know that I'm aching to get back there, but I'm certainly thrilled we saw it. A week later and we wouldn't've been able to--they shut the park down on Columbus Day. The only visitors after that are hunters who get there under their own power.