Today in History: May 13

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

There were probably many motivations behind Cardinal Richelieu’s decision: sometimes, one does not need one’s dinner guests to always be armed with daggers and knives, especially not at dinner. An angry guest can always retrieve his sword on the way out, the Cardinal may have thought.

It is believed by Henry Petroski, the historian of things, among other writers, that the Cardinal was irritated by the disgusting habit some of his dinner guests displayed of picking their teeth with their daggers and the blades they ate with.

On this date in 1637, Cardinal Richelieu ordered his house staff to grind down and round off the sharp ends of his dinner knives, which led to an instant invention: the table knife, which is used to cut one’s meal but not stab at it and convey the chunks to one’s mouth, and can not be used to settle violent disagreements.
Read More

‘Secularism is the Solution’: My articles about Raif Badawi

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

This is an up-to-date list of the articles and columns I have written concerning Raif Badawi. Each one was first published here, in The Gad About Town website; several were subsequently linked to and quoted in other media outlets, including the Raif Badawi Foundation’s website itself. (I am not an impartial reporter, so it was an honor to see my work there.)

The ongoing diplomatic silence regarding Raif Badawi is perplexing in the face of the global outcry. Last November, Yves Rossier, Switzerland’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, told a Swiss newspaper, La Liberté, that Raif Badawi’s sentence has been suspended.
Read More

‘The Last Year of My Youth’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The phrase must have been much on Elvis Costello’s mind the summer of 2014: he was going to perform a set of solo shows at Carnegie Hall in June and he had even titled the shows “The Last Year of My Youth.” But he did not have a song with that title.

He did have a song that addressed aging, the folly and wonder of being middle-aged, a song called “45” that he debuted on The Tonight Show in the 1990s and then performed on his 2002 album, When I Was Cruel. He was around that age at that time and found for himself a wealth of metaphors to being 45, from the end of World War II in 1945 (“bells are chiming in victory”), to 45 RPM records and what rock singles meant when he was young: “Bass and treble heal every hurt.” One reviewer, also in his mid 40s, wrote that “45” hit him so hard at the time, “I was shaking at the end” of the song. When I hit 45, I understood this thought about the song and I also understood the song; I also found that I understood the song better than I had the day before, when I was still 44.

The summer of 2014, Costello was turning 60, because math happens, and that phrase—”the last year of my youth”—must have been much on his mind.
Read More