Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

"John Holmes" <holmes@smart.net.au> wrote on 03 Jan 2004:

[...]

Is that what 'Sequenced by...' signals? I didn't know. I copied it from
some Website and thought I'd leave in all the guy's credits. The only
time I sing along is when I play my 1950s doo-wop collection at 1 or 2
a.m. when I've got the headphones on and can't hear myself or I'd think
it was one of the local cats, but my wife always complains it was too
loud when I finally do wop into bed or maybe the next morning.

Maybe I heard it mentioned once. You and I, both in Europe, will hear a
lot of American references, but we're bound to miss some.

You keep bringing up aggressive, pugnacious, etc. These people on the
flight were ordinary people, innocent civilian hostages with a difficult
choice to make -- essentially to bring down the plane now (there was
only a small chance of survival) or to be used as a living bomb against
Washington DC within hours. They gathered info (that's where the phones
helped), they prayed, they took action. Songwriters are drawn to
examples of ordinary people faced with extraordinarily difficult
choices, and they hope their songs will keep the memory of such heroic
acts alive.

So I'm having trouble identifying what sounds so aggressive to you. If
it's this:

    No one has the answer,
    But one thing is true,
    You've got to turn on evil,
    When it's coming after you
     
Then I'd say that depends on your notion of evil. I don't think it's so
aggressive to say that the one one thing that is worth fighting is
genuine presence of evil. But I gather that the whole concept of "evil"
has been trivialized these days, to the point where some people don't
believe there is such a thing. It's certainly hard to agree on what it
is.

Tony Cooper schrieb:

IIRC, this goes back to the story of Noah's Ark: At the end of his
journey, Noah let a dove fly to search for land and it returned with a
twig. The whole thing ended with God's promise that there will never be
a flood like that again and the rainbow as a kind of seal for this promise.

Andreas.

Tony Cooper filted:

It's a poor symbol...anyone who's ever watched doves peck each other bloody over
the right to splash around in a particular puddle would choose almost any other
creature first....

"May the capybara of peace bless you always"....r

Just a language thing, not an ornithological matter, I think. Pigeons
are doves, and vice-versa, but we've come to restrict "dove" to white
ones because that's the iconic convention. Town pigeons, for example,
are feral descendants of domestic descendants of European rock-doves;
the European wood-pigeon has the alternative name "ringdove". I
haven't looked it up, but I'd guess there was once a language or
dialect in which all were called something like "pigeons", and another
in which all were called something like "doves", and we are the
confused beneficiaries of language-fusion.

Mike.

A pigeon is a dove, a rock dove. Columba livia.

I don't know why a dove was chosen as a symbol of peace, nor for how
long it has been so. All I can think of at the moment is the discussion
of how the eagle is not very noble and the turkey would have been a
better national symbol. (B. Franklin?)

There's a famous dove in the Noah's ark story (with an olive branch,
too), but that's not about peace between men but more like hope, God
giving man another chance:

    8   [Noah] sent forth a dove from him, to see if
    the waters were abated from off the face of the
    ground;
    9   But the dove found no rest for the sole of her
    foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for
    the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then
    he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her
    in unto him into the ark.
    10   And he stayed yet other seven days; and again
    he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
    11   And the dove came in to him in the evening;
    and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off:
    so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off
    the earth.
    12   And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent
    forth the dove; which returned not again unto him
    any more.

Bartleby shows that Shakespeare associated the dove with peace, (Hen
IV-2), as did 19th century poets like Whitman. But I see that Brewer's
Phrase and Fable, 1898, does not:

    The dove, in Christian art, symbolises the Holy
    Ghost... It also symbolises the human soul...

Nothing about peace. I think it may have been consciously adopted by
20th century peace activists, conscientious objectors, Vietnam
protestors, and the like. More research needed.

Back to the question of the bird's natural behavior. I don't know, can't
find anything on it, and can only guess. It lent itself to taming, it
made soft coo-ing noises, and it probably engaged in some "lovey-dovey"
behavior that was considered gentle. The fact that it also was as
aggressive at times as any other animal, well, that was forgiven. To use
a really peaceful animal as a symbol, you'd probably have to go to the
shellfish. (And ignore what they do on a microscopic level, and also on
the mass aggregate level). How aggressive is a razor clam, really?

Pigeons are also in the general category that is included in doves.

They are rather aggressive birds among themselves, but they don't usually prey
on other species of birds.

Steve Hayes
hayesmstw@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm