izzy from snot

FROM SNOT TO IZZY

A very roundabout trip that I took to get to the uniqueness of certain things, including my name, Doctor Izzy Sommers, of all things.  This could easily be an oratorio or madrigal, if I were Handel or Mendelsohn, which I’m not.  I’m thinking it’s a little egoistical.  Sorry…

By Izzy Ess Of Single-Ness

Significant postnasal drip and sinus drainage is a trip for people who have sinusitis and are forever snorting and just sniffing to avoid just dripping on the table, eh?  All food is tasteless and so bland unless it’s over salted, over peppered, over bittered or just over sweetened.  Even sexual strong signals, ordinarily just sniffed as pheromones, from males or females, are completely blocked and having sex is far from being carried out.  Of course, if one indulges despite all the nasal turn-offs, the orgasm can clear your sinuses with the rush of pure adrenaline and hydrocortisone.  It’s the old adage, “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache!” which should be, according to the best statistics from the Montreal Neurological Institute, “Yes, my dear, tonight because I have a headache and sinusitis!”  Go figure, eh?  I vote to get off this small issue and try another one, the War in Syria.

It seems to me that USA and Russia are involved in deadly games, the one supporting rebels and the other, the incumbents.  Luckily, a more experienced Vladimir Putin, finessed Barack Hussein Obama by stepping in and publicly advising the President of Syria to stop his use of gas which causes mass destruction.  It would be quite ironic if the gas was bought from Russian agents, but the purchasing was never mentioned, to my knowledge.  With the temporary ceasing of hostilities, the Third World War was averted once again by someone who’s been reading history.  As you recall, the WWI was started by an assassination of Prince Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo.  Austria declared a war on Bosnia and Russia, by a previous agreement, declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Then all the countries of the world lined up to take a side and that was that, the start of WWI, the War to End All Wars.

During Christmas, 1914, the first year of the War, an event occurred which showed how ordinary soldiers were confused about who was fighting whom.  In a trench not far away from enemy trenches, German and some British soldiers joined each other with some rationed drinks and Christmas cookies to sing “Silent Night,” in German, “Schtille Nacht,” in English, together, while the rifles were left lying in the trenches.  This story, whether true or not, has oft been told.  No such incident was reported in the second year of fighting, nor thereafter, or before, in any other war in history, I believe.  The English and the Germans are historically closely linked, beginning, I believe, with the Anglo-Saxons who were ancient Brits from England and ancient Huns from Saxony, a Western Province of the country, Germany, adjacent to the English Channel, who got together in the past and made a culturally quite important population, the so-called Anglo-Saxons.

In 1066, in Hastings, England, the Conqueror, le Roi Guillaume de France, King William of France, did defeat the Anglo-Saxons and then started an infusion of French culture, language, religion and civility, which was more important than the German influence, apparently.  The language of the Anglo-Saxons changed to mainly French and the religious aspect of the Roman Catholics did prevail.  I believe this didn’t change dramatically until Henry VIII, in the sixteenth century, discarded Catholicism in favour of the Protestantism to allow himself to get divorces and thus marry several women in a quest for a male heir.  His version of Protestantism was thereafter called Anglican and hence, it became the Anglicanism, that is known today.  The daughters who inherited the throne of England were Mary, Queen of Scots, a staunch Catholic, and Elizabeth, who preferred her father’s Anglicanism and it persisted thereafter once her half-sister Mary, was apparently forced to give up the throne for Queen Elizabeth, then Queen Elizabeth the First, a talented bright woman who probably wrote both the King James Version of the English Bible and all the plays by William Shakespeare, a contemporary and an actor in the Globe.  Her talent was in poetry, important to the Bible and the Folios of William Shakespeare.  In those days, it was not nice for women to publish anything, including poetry, just because she was a woman.  It’s sad, but true.

The English then basically ruled the world and their language is now the predominant language of finance, an important aspect of any nation.  It could easily have been Spanish or Portuguese, were it not for the defeat of the Spanish Armadas by the British.  It could have been the Swiss-French, Patek-Philipe, who invented a portable time-piece which is essential for accurate navigation on the high seas.  It was the British who standardized the entire map of the world by drawing a line through Greenwich, England, and arbitrarily calling it zero longitude, made the equator zero latitude and the poles where are the lines of longitude converged at 90 degrees, latitude, both north and south.  This allowed a galleon with a clever navigator to “fix” the position of his ship with a watch and a sextant, an instrument allowing measurement of the angle of the sun to the earth.  He could then call out his position with so many degrees of latitude and so many degrees of longitude.  Recognized landmarks were, of course, important, but without them, the clock and sextant were essential.  More accurate maps followed and British Navigation and control of the Seas was established.

The Spaniards and Portuguese were not driven from the seas for a long time.  Spanish Galleons were important trading vessels for the Old and New Worlds, where Spanish Colonies abounded and needed galleons to transport things like sugar cane from Cortez’ ranch in Buena Vista, near Quirnevaca, Mexico, back to Europe to be sold.  In the opposite direction, European, Asian and African goods, transported to New Amsterdam and then New York for the American Colonists came in Spanish Galleons and traded with doubloons, gold doubloons, which could be cut in halves, quarters and eights.  Hence, the speculators in the harbours of New York bid on the value of the galleon’s contents in eights, a system which persisted until recently when it was converted to tenths and hundredths to be more easily handled by computers, on the world’s stock exchanges.

The British Empire based on British colonization of huge territories including Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, America and many smaller areas like Auckland and Hawaii, used English, of course, for most matters having to do with governance, trade and education.  That it still remains the main language of trade around the world is no wonderment.  Indeed, except for French, it is the primary and secondary languages of most of the world.  French is a hold-out for Korea and Viet Nam, I believe, since the French were the main colonizers of these areas for a significant length of time.  Spanish and Portuguese are still widely spoken in the New World, especially Central and South America.  In most big cities of North America, one can get around with Spanish just as easily as one can get around in English.  Chicago and New York are good examples.

I was fortunate to get to know a physician from Dominican Republic while I was staying in Denver, for two years.  He taught me how to swear in Spanish and how to read some important books in Spanish and Portuguese, including Ecu da Quiroz. O Crimo del Pardre Amaro, About the Sin of Father Love.  This book had been written at the risk of his life, by da Quiroz about the internal machinations of a young priest in Portugal trying to justify his looking for a mistress.  He quoted a deleted section of the New Testament indicating that Jesus had a girlfriend, Martha with the flaxen hair, with whom he sat on the hill, while stroking her golden hair.  It also quoted a deleted passage that indicated Jesus had an active family life with siblings that he loved.  Da Quiroz lived at the end of the rule of Roman Catholicism within his country which had imposed the Inquisition, forcing folks who were not Catholic to convert or be killed or exiled.  My associate was sure that his family was one of the Jewish families that had converted to Catholicism for their own safety, because his middle and last names had a Jewish sound.  In fact his middle name was the same as mine, Isaac, the English equivalent for Yitzchok, the Hebrew name for Isaac, the Jewish son of the patriarch, Abraham.  The registrar at the Catholic hospital at which I was born, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, who, apparently, refused to write Yitzchok and wrote instead my father’s suggestion, Izzy, the frequently used anglicised nickname of many Yitzchaks, Itzaks, Isaacs, Isidores, and Irvings.

Irving Berlin, Isaac Stern and Itzak Perlman where all Izzys to each other and called each other Izzy in public.  During a PBS production of the Three Violinists, Isaac Stern, Itzak Perlman and Pincus Zuckerman, they interviewed each other and called each other Izzy, Izzy and Pinky.  At a rehearsal of the Buffalo Philharmonic whose guest was Perlman, I approached the stage of the Kleinhans Orchestra Hall where Perlman and Joanne Falleta, the conductor, were relaxing.  I happened to catch the eye of Perlman and I waved and greeted him as Izzy.  He smiled and guessed my name by returning the greeting, “Hi Izzy.”  Maestro Joanne Falleta looked at me and asked. “Do you know him?”  I told her the story of Izzy, Izzy and Pinky and she laughed and thanked me for the story.

Later, I read some of Joanne Falleta’s rather poetic descriptions of her upcoming and original International Classical Guitar Competitions.  With very few changes except for a word or two, here and there, I converted her three paragraphs of prose to three sonnets, fairly easily, and sent an email with them, through her website, to her office in NYC.  She returned a very gracious email to me with two free tickets to her first round of competitions in Buffalo, which I enjoyed greatly.

I grew up in a non-Jewish neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario.  My fights were always due to my being taunted as a “Jesus Killer!” or a “Dirty Jew!”  I was not a fighter and I suffered many bloody noses before I ran for the protection of my home or classroom.  Luckily, my nose was never broken and is still in good shape except for recurrent sinusitis.  Also luckily, I was proud of my name, Izzy, which, for the neighbourhood was quite unusual and labelled me as a Jew.  In a Jewish neighbourhood, of course, it is quite common.  My kith and kin called me Irving and I was even registered as Irving in my school.  When I successfully made the basketball team in High School, I was required to get a birth certificate to prove my eligibility, mainly based on age.  To my surprise, my real name was “Izzy Sommers!”

I remember feeling a sense of pride in my unusual name.  In medical school, I stubbornly stuck with the name despite encouragement by many to change it before I graduated when it would be “engraved in stone,” as “Doctor Izzy Sommers.”  The uniqueness of this name was borne out many years later when I lived in Countryside, Illinois, USA.  I had had many changes of address and many changes in my life, when a very old friend called me at the office, in Countryside from her new address in Sante Fe, NM, USA.  I had seen her last at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, in 1967.  This was 1987.  The receptionist at the desk said her name, which I recognized immediately.  I asked her how she had found my phone number, knowing that my home number was unlisted.  She said that she had called information and they had connected her within 30 seconds because “there is only one Dr. Izzy Sommers, in the entire North American Telephone Directory!”

So there you have it, my dear reader.  From “snot” to “Izzy” in one easy lesson.  It must be time for

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

November 25, 2013

ADDENDUM

Since writing this essay, this morning, I heard an account, this afternoon, of the activity of German and English soldiers in the opposing trenches in the Christmases of 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917.  The account was given by a man I met incidentally at Macdonald’s here on Niagara Street in Welland, where I had come to use the free internet to enter my blogs for the day.  He was reading an account of WWI concerning a native Canadian sniper and it was his grandfather who told him of his experience in WWI.  He related that the Germans and British stopped fighting each Christmas Eve for the rest of the war and put down their rifles to sing Carols and share food and drinks and play soccer.  He said the Generals on both sides were very upset.  He reminded me that the Germans were the main Monarchs of Britain and that there were many relatives of both sides that lived in the other country.  He said he knew of no other war in which this kind of thing had occurred, which matched my impression of history.  He was pretty sure it happened the first three years of WWI but was not sure of 1917.

I played chess with a German Ace Pilot of WWII in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, which were the cities of New Berlin before WWII.  He said he was shot down over England and parachuted to safety.  He said he was captured and imprisoned and sent to a prison near Kitchener-Waterloo for the duration of WWII.  He said that he met a Canadian woman who later became his wife.  He said that he felt free to wander about Kitchener-Waterloo and talk to Canadians who would talk to him.  He told me that he was sent back to London after 1945 to stand trial and was found guilty of war crimes.  He said he was imprisoned there for a short period and then released and was allowed to travel back to Canada to meet his girlfriend.  He said he’d lived a happy life in Canada with his wife and family and enjoyed chess and education and a lucrative job repairing airplanes and being a test pilot.  He beat me at chess and was the most interesting person at the tournament.  He still had a slight German accent and we spoke in German without inhibition and he enjoyed the opportunity to do so.  He was not arrogant, at all.  I thought of him as a gentleman of high education, intelligence and culture.