Entrepreneur

According to a Web site called theholidayspot, here is how one says Happy New Year in Afghanistan:

Saale nao mubbarak.

In Persia--such as Iran:

Sale-e no mobarak.

In India, where Hindi is spoken:

Naye Varsha Ki Shubhkanyen.

I hope this site is sufficiently trustworthy that I haven't written something like "please chew on a pebble," or worse. If I've misplaced my trust, I apologize.

Happy New Year in Swedish is as follows: Glad nytt år. So "year" in Swedish sounds like "oar" in English. That's what that little circle does to the pronunciation of the a.

In Italian, HNY is buono anno nouvo, I think.

In French: Bonne annee.

Which brings me, because I wanted it to do so, to the word entrepreneur, which springs from the French verb entreprendere, at least according to the OED online. And that verb means "to undertake [something]," but not, I presume, in the sense of what an undertaker does, although of course one could undertake mortuary-work and thereby undertake undertaking and be an entrepreneur.

It is a wee bit ironic that one of American capitalists' favorite words is French, partly because American/French relations have always been composed of "love/hate," but also because Americans tend to think of entrepreneurship as so essentially "American." Further, after France did not fully support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, rightward-leaning American folk became most incensed; you remember the silly "freedom fries" episode in the political spectacle back then.

I remember the comedian Dennis Miller's sounding off at the time. (At some point, Miller decided his views were mostly in line with those of George W. Bush, and he even has a gig on Fox News now, where he seems uneasy.) He said that because of France's absence of support for the invasion, "France is dead to me." I found that statement pretty amusing even though he did not intend as a joke. Of course, it seems to be borrowed from gangster lingo, but for one citizen of a country to say that a whole nation is dead to him or her may reflect an overly expansive view of that citizen's power. I don't think France is worried about "being dead" to one one American comedian with a spotty but extremely entrepreneurial resume. Imagine an American's response to learning that a French mime considered the USA "dead to me."

Oddly enough, "entrepreneur" in English originally referred to someone who organized musical events. That is, it seems to have been limited to "show business." In this sense, one of the earliest references is from 1828, in England. But by 1852, the word in English meant pretty much what it means now. It is always of interest (to me) when a language and/or a culture seems to "need" a word from a different language to fill some kind of perceived hole in the native language. Such is the case with "ombudsperson," for example--a Swedish word, one of the very few imported directly into English.

In business-like fashion, I've attempted to write a poem concerning this word, entrepreneur. I'm afraid I have been too business-like with regard to the title.


Entrepreneur

Think of this poem as a new business.
Welcome! How may I help you?
We're running a special sale
on images, including a blackened
big toe, the variegated fur of a
domestic cat, and a freckle
on a woman's lower back. Will
that be cash or credit?

Alas, this business fails
to turn a profit. Isn't that
just like poetry? --Always
thinking of itself and not
the bottom line. What

was Andrew Carnegie's
favorite poem? . . . Oh, dear:
Thugs sent by this poem's
venture-capital investors
have arrived. They want
their money back, plus
the vig. We must escape.
We'll meet up later in a bar.

A bar. Now there's a real
business: exchanging vessels
of distilled and brewed liquids
for cash, listening to failed
entrepreneurs--and poets
of every kind--tell their
tales of woe, wiping the dark
wooden bar clean. "Last call!"


Hans Ostrom Copyright 1008 Hans Ostrom

To Where Do Conservatives Think of Exiling Themselves?

When Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were elected, I often heard leftward-leaning folks threaten to leave the U.S. Usually this threat was expressed right before the election. "If Reagan gets reelected, I'm moving to Canada"--for example. I don't actually know anyone who ever exiled themselves thusly. I do know one fellow who has insured that he and his family now have dual citizenship in the U.S. and a European nation, just in case self-exile becomes an option.



Someone in class today raised the question of where rightward-leaning folk threaten to move to when elections disappoint them greatly. I owe this person a debt of gratitude because I had never thought about this question before.



As the person and others noted, Canada is probably out because many conservatives like to point to it and its healthcare system as embodying a cautionary tale. Is Dubai a possibility? I have no idea.


I've heard one can stash money in some place called the Cayman Islands, which I think are in the Caribbean, but I don't know if these islands are especially welcoming to conservative Americans.


I presume almost every nation in Europe would be unacceptable. Sweden has a shockingly effective combination of capitalism and socialism. The Swedes have universal healthcare, free college education, generous parental leave, and so on, but they also produce steel and cars, and they have a trade-surplus. They also talk very deliberately, and they listen during conversations, so Sweden is really not a comfortable place for most Americans, who like to talk first and listen later.



I think Swedes make their own jet-fighters, too, so they don't buy a lot of military equipment from us, and ever since the 18th century, they have become positively allergic to going to war--but we must remember that they did quite a lot of raiding for about 200 years way back when, circa 700-900 A.D.E. Maybe they got war out of their system, so to speak. Who knows? And there are only 8 million Swedes total, so with regard to possible invasions, the options are limited. They fought Norway a long time ago, and all the issues were settled. They don't like how Danes speak, but otherwise, I think they're okay with Denmark. They get along fine with Finns. They seem to pretend Russia doesn't exist, except for that terrible Chernobyl thing. They focus like a laser-beam on what to do during the summer. Is that a liberal or a conservative trait?



Conservatives seem to loathe France. Dennis Miller said that "France is dead to me" when the French leader balked at supporting the invasion of Iraq, for example. The French seem to have been unaffected by this announcement. How odd. One would think Dennis Miller's sentiments would hit France like an earthquake. :-)


Alaska is a possibility, I should think, because, well, look who's governor there--and you don't actually have to leave the nation. You just have to take a long flight, and in you're in a state governed by a person who galvanized the Republican base.



Numerous poetic possibilities exist, including "Sailing to Byzantium," in which Yeats dreams of "living" in a kind of permanent world of well wrought art, and Dickinson's poem about dwelling in possibility. Possibility is a very good town indeed.



Probably so-called conservatives and liberals have much in common, including the fact that neither actually exile themselves after a disappointing election, or at least very few of them do so. Also, for a long time, many people have argued that the Democratic and Republican parties are more similar than they pretend to be.



The Republicans may have to work on redefining themselves, however, at least for the purposes of the political spectacle. For a long time, they were very effective at demonizing "liberals" and thereby defining themselves by defining the "Other." They also once at least pretended to stand for fiscal restraint, but Reagan and Bush II pretty much ruined that with massive deficit spending. Ironically, Clinton seemed more economically prudent than they. Also, the Republicans wedded themselves to a particular strain of American Christianity--a mixture of wealth, interest in politics, and fundamentalism, best embodied, arguably, by Pat Robertson, who rails against a women's right to choose abortion, against homosexuality, against liberals, and against feminism, but who has accumulated a great deal of financial wealth (no camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle stuff for him) and even ran for president once.




I wonder if they could go back to their not-so-distant roots and become Eisenhower Republicans. Eisenhower golfed a lot a balanced the budget, didn't he? Also, he didn't like Nixon. I think Eisenhower would find people like Rove, Gingrich, the writers at The Nation, the people on Fox News, et al., as just too petty and mean--and wound up a bit too tightly. I think that after you've directed a war against Hitler, you get some perspective.


The Democrats, of course, will have to learn how to handle success. They tend not to handle it well. (Nor do the Republicans.) If the Democrats were crafty, they would pursue some items on the Libertarian agenda, especially those connected with restoring civil liberties.

I really like discussing politics and occasionally blogging about politics because I know almost nothing about the subject, so I'm unencumbered by knowledge and experience. I especially like talking politics in the presence of one friend, in particular, who possesses a wealth of theoretical, social-scientific, and practical knowledge of politics. I suspect he simply hums songs in his head while I'm talking, and when I stop opining, he says something like, "That's interesting."



I'm not quite through gas-bagging, unfortunately, although undoubtedly you've stopped reading by now. So I'll just add that it is a well known fact that the Democratic Congress did the Democratic President Carter no favors, and I do wonder if the same will happen with Obama. I also wonder if right-wing radio will lower the temperature of their remarks; it's a genre that seems almost addicted to borderline hate-speech. I'd rather listen to a conservative countepart of the more-or-less liberal Thom Hartman, who engages in calm debates with conservatives. It's conversation-radio.



And who shall run for president in four years? Palin? Gingrich? Romney? I do hope Ron Paul runs again. I liked hearing him bring up going back to the gold standard. No one ever seemed to want to engage him on the issue. Go figure.