The Lutheress

Katharina von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Katharina von Bora, sometimes called The Lutheress, from the age of five years old until she was twenty three was educated and lived in a nunnery, first as a child and then as a nun. This cloistered life did not suit Katharina. In the year 1523 she sent a letter to Martin Luther explaining her dire situation. She and a couple of her sister nuns wanted only to free themselves from the bondage of Catholicism. It was a tricky moment for Martin Luther. The politics weren't good, there was little prospect of freeing Nuns from Nunneries ever being a winning argument and in the name of the Good Lord what would happen to the nuns once they were beyond the Nunnery Walls. Soon enough Martin Luther came to one of those why not conclusions, he contacted a respectable citizen who delivered Herring to Mary's Thrown, the Nunnery where Katharina was living, and lo Katharina and her sisters were soon hiding in a covered wagon containing empty Herring Barrels being smuggled out of their cloistered world into the enticing world of the Protestant Reformation. Today of course everyone knows the story of how a forty one year old Martin Luther met his twenty six year old wife, and go ahead call me fragile if you wish to, but I'd like to think that when Immanuel Kant was doing his Sunday School and worrying about the spelling of his first name, most of the other children in his class had a healthier interest in the generous Lutheran understanding that we are all sinners, some more lovable than others, there is no currying favor, whether the Lord likes us enough to grant us grace is entirely up to him or her, or something gynandrous such as an Orchid or a Dutchman's pipe.

Kant's Christian Name

This guilty Tom Turkey has just finished ravishing an infinitely respectable Hen Turkey. Without wishing to disappoint anyone I don't think Immanuel Kant was ever arrested for anything. But, while Kant was baptized Emanuel Kant, he changed his name to Immanuel Kant. The vague answer to the question Why bother? is that his name change had something to do with him being a young Lutheran in a Lutheran Sunday School that insisted on reading the central parts of the Old Testament in Hebrew. All kinds of sensible reasons for doing that, including an overwhelming sense of guilt. Oddly enough when I was kicked off Facebook for Jay walking with intent to whistle, I changed my name from Tim to Timothy, in the hope that I might open a new, perhaps more Christian account. But, and this is just an opinion, you'd sort of think Kant had better things to do than go to the effort of formally replacing an Em with an Imm. Back then in the mid to late 1700's, long before the Zuckster and his odious sycophantic clones repeatedly effed with us all, it was probably easier for a person to tinker with his or her name. In the end if Emanuel Kant had been arrested, and maybe tried in a court of Star Chamber, spent time in the stocks, there's a good chance Baxter might not lump him in the same addendum as Plato. There again there's still hope. Emmanuelle is the female version of Immanuel, meaning "God Is With Us". And Emmanuelle Arsan was the pen name of the novelist who wrote Emmanuelle, a book that became a series of somewhat spicy feature films that inspire hundreds of millions.  

Flower Boats and Baxter's Phobias

 

The bloom of Privet

Baxter's finding it hard to believe that during the Second world War My Landlady was paid good money to help get Hannah Arendt out of France into Spain and onto a ship that took her to the Caribbes and from there like so many she was smuggled into a xenophobic USA where she found a new home in New York City. He can't actually remember this Landlady, nor can he remember my life as a car thief, or the strange affair I had with a Doctor of Sociology while being badly used as a practice doll by one of her students who was in training for La Cindy and due to inherit a Flower Boat. I know, it's all very confusing, but even more disappointing Baxter had developed a persistent and irrational fear of Plato's Ideal Forms. And, thanks to Baxter's unhealthy attachment to the wisdom of our Spleen this phobia has been recently transferred to postmodernists generally, he's tired of hearing about them. 

Cato the Elder

"The Victorious Cause pleased the Gods. The Defeated Cause pleased Cato." The quote is from a long, long Poem by a Roman called Lucan. The Cato in question was Cato the Elder, or Marcus Porcius Cato. He was a genuine Roman, not one of those Post Republic Caesar worshiping types who sucked up to Emperors and the wealthy. He was a man who believed in the Senate, thought Greeks were Street Corner Hoodlums, and Carthaginians were dangerous lunatics. Hannah Arendt mentioned him in her book, The Human Condition, and in her book, The Life of the Mind.  Why? For Arendt it had to do with Judgement and what it was to hold a firm opinion and stick to it through thick and thin. For Cato there was often more honor to be had from standing with the losing side. Same with the French Foreign Legionnaires.