Esperanto, the Blue Language, and Mother Tongues

They printed some Esperanto

There was at least one Esperanto speaker in Texas when the Brownsville Daily Herald published an article about it on February 27, 1903, although that one Esperantist lived in far off Brenhan. There are only fifteen Texans who joined the Esperanto Society created by the North American Review in 1907, although Samuel Schlenker (of Brenham) wasn’t one of them. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that the Herald’s article spurred much interest in Esperanto in Texas.

It probably didn’t do much for the Langue Bleue, the proposed international language published by Léon Bollack in 1899. Mr. Bollack wrote that he initially was going to call the language simply “Bolak” (he named it after himself), but decided a better name was needed. It is this language, and not racy talk, that I’m alluding to in the title.

Esperanto for the Blind

Edward K. Harvey
Taught Esperanto to
blind students

The February 26, 1906 item in the New-York Tribune seems wholly misguided, and then there’s the other problem that one statement made in the article is wholly out of date. The topic at hand was a group of students at the Perkins Institution for the Blind who had taken up Esperanto. The Tribune described the whole thing as “unnecessarily cruel,”[1] and compares it to an attempt to defraud a blind beggar. (Oddly, the Tribune doesn’t seem to view it as a problem that blind men were reduced to begging in the street.) Indeed, the word used by the Tribune was “inveigle,” as if the Perkins students were deceived.

This is one of those situations when, from the lofty perch of History, we can know more than what the newspaper reported. Other reports indicate that no one was defrauded. The students had a reason for what they were doing, and I suspect that if the Tribune had reported on it, donations would have flowed from the generous people of New York to those blind students in Boston. We know who convinced the students to learn Esperanto and why they organized a public demonstration in Esperanto.

The Romans — Blogging Doctor Who

This time, Barbara is
the one who needs to be
rescued.

“The Romans” is a bit of a romp, which is surprising when you think that it involves Barbara and Ian being abducted into slavery and Vicki killing a man. Is she a ancestor of Leela? Clearly if she had gotten the drop on Koquillion, she would have finished him off, even if the Tardis had never landed there. The signs of terror were just an act.

You would think that the Tardis has some sort of safety to prevent it from landing halfway over a ravine. For that matter, given that the Tardis really isn’t there (after all, it contains more space than would fit into the exterior form of a Tardis), why would it be affected by outside gravity? They clearly move through areas without gravity without being affected. But the fall of the Tardis isn’t anything more than a surprise (at the end of “The Rescue”) and an inconvenience. Soon, the four are in an appropriated Roman villa with the owners and all their servants conveniently absent.

Roman country villas weren’t just vacation homes for the Roman aristocracy, somewhere to get away from the heat, noise, and political intrigue of Rome. They were working farms and often the source of power in a region. To leave a home completely unattended would have been unthinkable, since it would leave the place vulnerable to someone walking in and taking it over (just the way the Doctor and his companions did). Who was keeping the crops tended? Who was taking care of the animals? And who was keeping wanderers from just taking the place over?

Esperanto in Yorkshire

Add caption

Would the readers of the San Francisco Call on February 25, 1906, had access to a gazetteer or similar reference work that would have told them that the grandly named Keighly Municipal Technical Institute was a trade school in Yorkshire? The article does not make that clear, and so California readers of the era might have found this a grander accomplishment than it really was. Still, once again, better than the American Esperanto movement accomplished in Washington, D.C. (despite repeated tries) or in Connecticut.

And Esperanto in Yorkshire of 1906 allows me to return to my Downton Abbey fantasy that, prior to the series, Lady Edith Crawley took up Esperanto, undoubtably subjecting her to merciless teasing from her sister Mary. Would Lord Grantham found himself contemplating instructing Carson that all letters to Lady Edith from foreign addresses, especially those where the envelope was addressed in green ink, be directed to him instead? I doubt that some future plot point will turn on Lady Edith getting Lady Mary out of a jam by summoning her half-forgotten Esperanto. However, I remain convinced that a neglected copy of the Fundamenta Krestomatio de Esperanto is somewhere on a shelf at Downton Abbey.

No Esperanto for Connecticut Schools

Did the judges speak Esperanto?

You can’t fault the Esperanto movement for trying. Over the years, Esperantists made a number of attempts to get the language taught in schools. One such example would be the attempt by Mrs. Wilbur Crafts to get Esperanto into the Washington D.C. schools. It’s a reasonable thing: it brings Esperanto to a group of people (schoolchildren) who have the time to study it, increasing the number of people who speak Esperanto, thus increasing its utility.[1] School systems look at the actual utility of Esperanto and then say no.

There probably are ways in which the Esperanto movement could get Esperanto into public schools, but someone (not the schools) would have to foot the bill. And probably offer other inducements. I remember reading about a program in which the Chinese government subsidized the instruction of Mandarin Chinese in American schools. I suspect part of this is a question of the sunk cost fallacy. If you’ve spent a year studying Mandarin at the age of eight, why not continue with it when offered a language at the high school level? Why start all over again with one of the standard European languages?

Esperanto and the Bull Moose

Theodore Roosevelt
(from a 1902 stereo card)

There is a page in Wikibooks, under the category US History that describes Theodore Roosevelt as an Esperanto speaker, but I have not been able to discover any sort of confirmation for that assertion. In 1907, the press made the claim that Roosevelt’s vice president, Charles W. Fairbanks had taken up Esperanto, but again, this seems difficult to confirm.

There was a strong Esperanto movement in Washington, D.C. during the Roosevelt administration, and although he left office in 1909, more than a year before the Washington Universala Kongreso, if Roosevelt read the Washington newspapers, he would have seen plenty of references to Esperanto. Indeed, if the President read the Evening Star, he would have seen his name linked to that of Dr. Zamenhof.

During this same time, Edmond Privat was spending time in the United States promoting Esperanto, and on February 23, 1908, the Washington Herald ran a long piece on Privat and his plans to meet with President Roosevelt as part of Privat’s activities promoting Esperanto in the United States. The article is too long to quote in full, but it can be found here.

Chemists and Esperanto

Did Ramsay ever speak to
Ostwald in Esperanto?

A short item in the Aberdeen Herald of Aberdeen, Washington (not Scotland) makes a connection between Esperanto and chemistry.[1] Some of the early advocates of Esperanto were prominent chemists, including Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, whose advocacy of Esperanto helped establish a group at Harvard University. Ostwald even funded a prize for composition in Esperanto, although ironically, soon after it was given for the first time, he left the Esperanto movement and became an equally fervent supporter of Ido.[2]

But another prominent early-twentieth-century chemist remained in the Esperanto movement, Sir William Ramsey. Like Ostwald, Ramsey became an Esperantist before he became a Nobel laureate (but unlike Ostwald, was still an Esperantist at the time he received the medal). Ramsay was the first Esperantist to win a Nobel, but not the last.

The Girl Scouts and Esperanto

What's Esperanto for "Girl Scouts"?

On Wednesday, February 20, 1918 the Evening Public Ledger of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania reported on the plans for the upcoming Washington’s Birthday celebration, scheduled for the following Friday. As there were no further reports, we can only assume it went off without a hitch. One of the highlights of the event was going to be a celebration of Esperanto by the Girl Scouts.

It’s not clear how one goes from “Washington’s Birthday” to “Esperanto,” but the article notes that the Philadelphia girl scouts had taken up Esperanto with something of a passion, and they were going to use this celebration as an excuse to display their skills. The Girl Scouts were a new organization at the time, only having the name since 1913.[1] The Universal Esperanto Association was somewhat older, as it had been founded in 1908. Esperanto was just past its thirtieth birthday, and its creator, Dr. Ludovik Zamenhof, had died the year previously.

The Other Kellerman

Karl F. Kellerman
Biologist and Esperantist

In his day, Edwin C. Reed was probably the busiest person in the United States Esperanto movement. Sure, in their turns George Harvey and John Barrett were president (first and second) of the Esperanto Association of North America, but during their tenures, Mr. Reed was the general secretary, the person who actually took care of EANA business. Let’s face it, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Barrett were titular presidents, hampered by their actual lack of commitment to the Esperanto movement.

At the same time, Mr. Reed’s wife, Dr. Ivy Kellerman-Reed[1] was the editor of Amerika Esperantisto, taking over those duties from the magazine’s founder, Arthur Baker, and making it wholly a magazine of the EANA.[2] But the Evening Star made clear that there was a Kellerman at the head of the District Federation of Esperantists. But not a Kellerman-Reed.

The Rescue — Blogging Doctor Who

Will they be rescuing the
bug-faced guy from the
scary blonde woman?

It’s short and a piece of fluff, but it’s pretty good fluff. They could have called it “The Vicki Show,” since its whole purpose is to introduce the new companion (and Susan substitute) Vicki. Vicki gets a lot of screen time, but she’s engaging and less whiny than Susan.

The Doctor runs the gamut in this one. He’s napping at the beginning (perhaps the attempts of the Daleks to convert him into a Roboman took something out of him) and is asleep when they reach the planet, but then they actually used Hartnell in a fight scene, which is a big surprise as I know his health issues had an impact on the show from the beginning.

Something about a rock Ian hands to him lets him know that the planet is Dido, one that he had visited before (this is, I think, the first alien planet that had a prior visit; dialog in earlier episodes referred to various periods of Earth’s history). You would kinda expect that some random rock would be, well, rock, but okay.[1]

The Radical Electrician, the Socialist Shoemaker, and Esperanto

So, who's the ignoramus?

There seems to be little press attention on the arrest of John A. Bienjavsky, or indeed little attention to Mr. Bienjavsky at all. The Butte Daily Bulletin reported on February 14, 1920 that Mr. Bienjavsky had been arrested in Seattle by the “radical squad,” and that he was in possession of “a trunk load of books on electricity and radio energy, a dictionary in three languages, a collection of essays in English, Russian and Japanese, and much radical literature.” (Although the Daily Bulletin simply marks the arrest as “Wednesday,” which would imply the prior Wednesday, February 11, the Seattle Times reported on the arrest on January 29, a Thursday. Mr. Bienjavsky was arrested on Wednesday, January 28, 1920.)

Mr. Bienjavsky worked as a wireman (that is, an electrician) for the Tacoma line of the Tacoma Railway and Power Company which explains the books on electricity and radio, but maybe the not the “radical literature.” The Daily Bulletin reported that Mr. Bienjavsky was “thought to have been a university professor.” He was born in Russia in 1875, making him forty-four at the time of his arrest. The Daily Bulletin was a socialist newspaper; its masthead bore the words “We Preach the Class Struggle in the Interests of the Works as a Class.”[1]

Spencer’s Sleeping Knight — Faerie Queene, Book 2, Canto 8

Knighty knight.

It’s been a while (again) since I did a post on The Faerie Queene. The book has (seemingly permanent) residence on my desk, and so it hurry it back to its location on my shelves, I really need to get this blog post out. It’s not that I haven’t read Book 2, Canto 8, I have. I read it, started writing, and put it aside.

When I was an undergrad, one of my professors commented that “‘it bored me to tears’ is always a perfectly reasonable critical response.” It bored me to tears. This suggestion comes too late for Edmund Spenser, but perhaps it will save someone else: don’t put your protagonist into a deep slumber. Sure, it worked for Sleeping Beauty, but face it, that story is really about the prince (who has a thing for comatose women).

Like the sleeping princess, stuff happens around Sir Guyon while he’s asleep, but he’s really not involved in any of it. I’m not looking to Elizabethan poetry for white-knuckled excitement, but at least if we had shifted our focus to another character, we wouldn’t have Spenser reminding us, “that guy is sleeping through all of this.” I blame Edmund Spenser for the tardiness of this post.

Esperanto in 1909 Florida

Mr. Pryor played to win

Nellie Jerauld went unmentioned in the article in in the February 17, 1909 Pensacola Journal, but it probably wasn’t necessary to mention her, since her interest in Esperanto was probably well known to her neighbors in the Choctawhatchee Bay area of Florida, and her home got mentioned in the article. She was actually a bit of a latecomer to Esperanto, since the first indication of her Esperanto activity dates to the end of 1908, but by early 1908 there was a group in Pensacola, the “Unufojio Esperanto Societo de Floridio,” (at least what’s what the Journal put into print)[1] although Pensacola might have been a bit far for Mrs. Jerauld.[2]

Mrs. Jerauld named her home “Evoluta.” The Pensacola Journal noted in 1908 that “all of the planning and most of the work for the first two years was done by Mrs. Jerauld and her two daughters.” (There were two sons too, but they seem to have had other concerns.) From accounts in the newspapers, Evoluta seems to have been a combination of farm, boarding house, and arts center. And it was a place for Esperanto.

An Insider’s History of Gay Fandom — The beginning

We eventually made t-shirts.
I got the first one.

As I write this—February 16, 2015—the Gaylaxian Science Fiction Society, the first organized group for LGBT (and friendly) science fiction fans turns twenty-nine. Okay, I could have waited a year and done this on the thirtieth anniversary, but I’ve had a couple recent reminders about the beginning of the Gaylaxians, and thought I’d get some of them set down.

There are certain things for which I cannot lay claim, and even for the things for which I can lay claim, I was not alone. A lot of this was being in the right place at the right time and maybe somebody else would have done. Certainly, between 1986 and 1991, there was a great flourishing of gay fandom, all before the Internet.[1]

The first item to which I can lay no claim is the gay fandom party, or even the open gay fandom party. I later found that there had been gay fandom parties at cons I had attended, but there was no way for anyone to let young John Dumas know that there was a party he’d want to attend. Word did get to me of a gay fandom party at Disclave in about 1982. I’m as equally unsure whether or not it was open as to what year it happened.

Esperanto by Act of Congress

Proposed Esperanto for
D.C. schools

One of the odd bits about Washington, D.C. is that Congress gets some say over some things that anywhere else would be wholly local decision. And so, when in 1908, Sara (Mrs. Wilbur) Crafts went to the D.C. school board to urge that Esperanto be taught (there was some opposition to the idea), maybe she should have taken things up with Congress.

If she were looking for a sympathetic member of Congress, her best best would have been the gentleman from Missouri, Richard Bartholdt. In 1910, Mr. Bartholdt took up Esperanto. Maybe Mrs. Crofts could have convinced him to start earlier.

But it’s not until 1914, nearly seven years after Mrs. Crofts went to the D.C. school board, that Mr. Bartholdt came up with his own proposal. As a member of Congress, he didn’t have to convince the school board, just the other members of Congress. His resolution was H.Res 415, “Providing for the study of Esperanto as an auxiliary language.” The resolution was introduced on February 14, 1914, and was in the newspapers on February 15.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth — Blogging Doctor Who

"We will view the
Tate Modern, and then
exterminate. Exterminate!"

Let me give away my conclusion right at the beginning. “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” is the very best of the first nine surviving Doctor Who stories.[1] As I scan my list of upcoming First Doctor stories, it’s hard to think if this story ever gets beat in the First Doctor’s tenure.[2] Its opening scene in a roboman (as later identified) pitches himself into a river (also later noted as a typical ending for a roboman) is exceeded only when (Spoiler Alert but it’s in the title) a Dalek emerges from those same waters. They never establish what the Dalek was doing under the waters of the Thames, but it’s not like you can go and ask a Dalek that sort of thing.

“Excuse me, Mr. Dalek, but just what were you doing right now on the bottom of the Thames?”

“You will be exterminated! Exterminate! Exterminate!” Daleks are lousy conversationalists. Don’t bother inviting them to tea.

Esperanto Correspondence for Socialists

John M. Work

John M. Work, the Socialist activist was also an energetic advocate of Esperanto.[1] He not only substituted for Arthur Baker when Baker wasn’t able to make a Salt Lake City speaking engagement, but also put forth a proposal for the Socialists to use Esperanto. That proposal was opposed by John Spago and ultimately failed, but that didn’t stop Mr. Work.

In the February 14, 1909 New York Sun[2] we see Mr. Work again. The Iowa Socialist may have had his proposal that the Socialist Party use Esperanto at their meetings knocked down, but he wasn’t going to give up. Maybe he viewed it as an incremental thing. Start with a little Esperanto and before long, who knows? Maybe he figured that he could get the Socialists to slowly move into using Esperanto.

The Wandering Esperantist Minister

He left not long after.
Was it over the letter from Zamenhof?

The early Esperanto movement has two men who could be referred to as “Reverend Cleland.” The first of these, mentioned only in the Marhcn 1908 Amerika Esperantisto was Reverend F. B. Cleland of Portage, Wisconsin. He, as far as I can determine, was the Presbyterian minister, Frank B. Cleland.[1] But Amerika Esperantisto lists another Reverend Cleland of Portage, Wisconsin, and although I have been able to track him down, there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the two.

Our second Reverend Cleland, who was more prominent in the movement, was John Irvin Cleland,[2] whom Amerika Esperantisto also locates in Portage, Wisconsin, in their August 1908 issue. Reverend J. I. Cleland (the only Reverend Cleland I’m dealing with from this point forward) was clearly associated with Esperanto before 1908, since he’s mentioned in an article in the February 13, 1907 Wilmar Tribune. In 1907, he’s living in Winona, Minnesota (though clearly not for long).

Business Esperanto

It's very practical.

The Omaha Daily Bee raised the question on February 12, 1906 as to who was actually going to learn Esperanto. They handily divided people into the “the educated and the uneducated,”[1] and then looked at the prospects of Esperanto in each class. It was more like a thought experiment, even though some data was actually available to them. After all, by 1906, thousands of people had learned Esperanto.[2]

Additionally, the Bee made the claim (right there in the subhead) that the “champions of new language do not expect it to be literary vehicle.” They seem to have been unaware that Lingvo Internacia, the Esperanto literary magazine had been published since 1895, originally as the newsletter of the Upsala Esperanto Club, but from 1904 it had been published in Paris as an independent literary magazine. If Esperantists didn’t expect the language to be a literary vehicle, why had they been writing literature for the last decade?

Dare Defend the Right to Marry in Alabama

As in 1865,
surrender is the honorable option

If, even a few months ago, I had tried to come up with a list of states that would have marriage equality before a Supreme Court ruling granting it to all,[1] Alabama wouldn’t have made it onto that list. But here we are.

On February 9, 2015, Alabama became the thirty-eighth state to permit same-sex marriage, though like two other states, Kansas and Missouri, that right is not being respected uniformly through the state.[2] That gives us thirty-five states (and the District of Columbia) were same-sex couples can marry, three states where they can get married in some parts, and twelve states where same-sex couples cannot marry.

Arthur Baker Speaks…Eventually

Arthur Baker
Esperantist.
Life of the party.

One of the attractions of covering this news item is that the article comes with a photograph of Mr. Baker, the first I’ve come across. I haven’t noticed any in the issues of Amerika Esperantisto during his period as editor, even when he was including photographs of prominent Esperantists, of which he was certainly one (I suppose modesty forbade). In addition to editing the magazine, selling copies of his American Esperanto Book, and distributing brochures, he gave talks. He had been doing this for some years, since he spoke in New York in 1908, prior to Sehohr Rhodes singing in Esperanto.

In the days preceding his talk in Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune initially described him as “a well-known journalist of Chicago,”[1] but a notice (probably written by the Salt Lake Esperanto group) that appeared in both the Tribune and the Salt Lake Herald on February 10, 1910, described him as “a well-known humorist and entertainer of Chicago.” Perhaps there is more to be found, but what I’ve seen indicates that Mr. Baker’s two main subjects were Esperanto and socialism. He just doesn’t seem the type to be delivering a comic lecture.

Esperanto, Diplomacy, and Duplicity

Increasing need. Increasing resistance

In February 1922, Frederick J. Haskin was back on the topic of Esperanto. He had previously written about Esperanto in 1911. Eleven years later, it was still something for which he saw reason to devote an entire column.[1] As before, his column in the February 10, 1922, Yorkville Enquirer (and wherever else it may have landed) is too long to quote in full,[2] however, the page can be found here.

Haskins was an independent American journalist who sold his various columns to a variety of newspapers. There’s no Wikipedia page on him,[3] and I thought of providing some brief biographical data in my earlier post, but somehow that ended on the (metaphoric) cutting-room floor. Frederick J. Haskin was born in Missouri on December 13, 1873. He was into journalism, eventually starting his own business, calling it “The Information Bureau.” Haskin’s books include The American Government, Answers to Questions, How Other People Get Ahead, The Immigrant: An Asset and a Liability and Presidents and their Wives. According to a catalog record on the HathiTrust website, he died in 1944.[4]

No Romance in the Mail for Iowa Esperantist

The correspondence was about
policing standards.

There have been some Esperanto romances. Couples have met through the Esperanto movement, formed relationships, and even had children who were brought up as second-generation Esperanto speakers.[1] So, perhaps the intimations of romance weren’t completely off base for the Leon Reporter of Leon, Iowa, when they reported and speculated on the mail received by the Leon deputy sheriff. They knew they were wrong though.

The item is sweet and has a suggestion of far-off romance. A mysterious stranger found by chance, although the newspaper did note that Mr. Mullinnix’s initial correspondent was a Japanese man. And though it was a postcard, aren’t the mails supposed to be accorded some level of privacy? Okay, you’re not tampering with the mail if you read a postcard, but talking about it in the paper?[2]

Professor Proposes Esperanto for League of Nations

Professor Murray
Not sure if he's reading
something in Esperanto.

Attempts to get the League of Nations to use Esperanto or another international language (in this case, Ido) kept coming. Although the French diplomat Gabriel Hanotaux tried to put this matter to rest in December 1920, that did not end the matter. In October 1921 (possibly), there was a resolution made by thirteen delegates to consider Esperanto. That resolution doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere (since we know that the League of Nations never adopted Esperanto), but that didn’t stop further attempts.[1]

That brings us to 1922. The Watchman and Southron of Sumpter, South Carolina clearly wasn’t worried about news not being sufficiently new, since their February 8, 1922 article is datelined January 9. I mean, it’s less than a month old. That’s still current right?[2] Though less than a century would elapse before the 24-hour news cycle, its spirit was still a long, long way away. Would a media outlet today cover a month-old story with no new development?

Bloggers Like Perez Hilton

This is an actual magazine.
People read it.
Not people like me.

Well, not this blogger. I actually find celebrity gossip kinda boring.[1] Actually, in context, the phrase meant “such as” or “including.” It did leave me to wonder what constitutes a blogger “like” Perez Hilton. Gay male bloggers? Ouch. That makes me “like” Perez Hilton.[2] Anyone with a blog? Maybe it’s just anyone who blogs about celebrities.[3]

An item on the blog Towleroad has the headline “Lance Bass Says Perez Hilton Bullied Him into Coming out in 2006,” but that’s not what the story says. (This is probably the closest this blog is ever going to get to celebrity gossip.[4]) Hilton is referenced in two statements made by Mr. Bass.[5]

Which Miss Fernald Spoke Esperanto?

The press didn't actually review the play/

I don’t usually start these off with questions, although in this case I think I’m safely away from being clickbait[1] It’s a real (and, based on the resources on hand) unanswered question. In Washington, D.C. in 1911, there were two unmarried women names Frances Fernald, one a teacher, the other a clerk at the War Department. Which of these two spoke Esperanto?

At least one of them did. We know this because one Miss Frances Fernald got her name in the papers on February 7, 1911 concerning a play that she and her friends put on at the Washington, D.C. YWCA. The play was in Esperanto, which leads to the question of how many people in the audience of the play understood the play. (I suppose it also raises the question of how many were in attendance at the play, although in the years around 1910, there was a fairly large amount of Esperanto activity in Washington, D.C.)

A Rival to Esperanto — Commercial Latin

Commercial Latin
spoken here?

So was the apparent claim of a Frenchman, Dr. Charles Colombo. I can find little about him, other than that he was the author of (at least) three books, two of which, De la nécessité d’une assistance sanitaire spéciale pour les blesses du travail and Pour la dosimétrie des rayons de Roentgen, clearly had nothing to do with language and indicate that our Dr. Colombo was was likely a physician.

But that’s not what landed him in the pages of the press. Judging from the article in the New York Sun of February 6, 1904 (I have, by this point, well established that the Sun loved writing about international auxiliary languages), he was probably picked up the the newspapers of his native France, and then in the United States in the Courrier des États-Unis, a French language newspaper which was published in New York from 1828–1938.[1]

Please Don't Dress Me Like That, Mommy — 1909 Edition

Mommy, the boys tease me.

Just a quickie to remind us how fashions have changed. In my research, I ran across the following, an item in the New York Evening World of February 5 1909 under the heading "May Manton's Daily Fashions." It's a boy's suit.

I have friends who are interested in historic fashion (you know who you are), but the thought of some little boy getting dressed up in this thing—even in 1909—just seems ridiculous. He's a little boy, ma'am, not a doll. The text actually says that the suit "allows him to run and race to his heart's content" and describes the outfit as "masculine in effect." Please. Okay, it's more masculine than a pinafore, but come on!

I've included the whole piece below.

Esperanto’s Civil War

Wouldn't have said it in
Esperanto or Ido.

Five score and seven years ago, the Esperanto movement was engaged in its own great civil war. In October 1907, the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language had declared for Esperanto, with such modifications upon which the Delegation had insisted. It split the Esperanto movement, with each side initially laying claim to the word “Esperanto.” (Eventually, the term “reformed Esperanto” gave way to “Ilo” and then “Ido.”) Their battlefields included not only the meetings of Esperanto groups (some of which became Ido groups), but also the pages of various newspapers.

Looking back, it seems somewhat strange that this was played out, in part, in the pages of major daily newspapers. After all, to those who had no intention of learning an international language (or probably any other), whether the proposed language was “primitive” Esperanto (as the supports of the Delegation called it) or “reformed” Esperanto (same) was irrelevant.

The Post in Which I Ruin the Internet

We all agree that cute cat videos are a scourge of the Internet, right? Despite years of being on the web in one way or another, I have to this date never shared a cat video before. Now I've taken one.

For your entertainment, I present my cat, Biral playing with a ping-pong ball.

No Esperanto for Socialists

Yeah, but they voted in English

This was the headline in the Sun on February 4, 1909. Not front page news; the article was tucked beneath an advertisement for pianos on page 2. Nor is it a particularly prominent item, as several articles have larger headlines. Still, the Sun did feel it was necessary to follow up on their article of January 14, 1909 in which it was written that the Socialists were considering making Esperanto “the party’s official language.”[1]

An article in the Montana News reported that the proposal had been put forth by the national committee member of the Socialist Party for Iowa, John M. Work, but it was vigorously opposed by the member for New York, John Spargo.

A Chemist Promotes Esperanto

Wilhelm Ostwald

The early Esperanto movement had the support of many prominent figures of the scientific world, including the great German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. From 1905 to 1906 Professor Ostwald lectured at Harvard and Columbia. Judging from the statements made in the newspapers of the era, this kind of intentional exchange was rare, which isn’t a huge surprise for an era when traveling between Europe and the United States took a week or two.

Ostwald traveled on the SS. Blucher, which left Cuxhaven on September 21, 1905 and arrived in New York on October 2. Oswald made a series of visits to the United States, making less celebrated visits in 1903 and 1904. The shortest of these trips took a week, which made it impossible that any scientist would dash over to give a seminar on another continent and then dash back after.

Esperanto Marching Orders

What's Esperanto for
"crime against humanity"?

The story is probably apocryphal, or to put it more bluntly, fiction. The item below, which appeared in the Point Pleasant Register of Point Pleasant, West Virginia on February 2, 1910, makes reference to King Leopold II of Belgium, who had died the year before. A bit of research shows no indication that the anecdote was current when the king was alive. Posthumous tales, particularly amusing anecdotes, aren’t typically reliable history.

Other signs are the general vagueness of it all. The time in which the the story is set is “once,” which is close to “once upon a time.” Those involved are “the leading generals.” Just who were Leopold’s leading generals? And while it’s probable that in countries with two official languages there might be some issues with military service, it’s not as if Belgium was the first of such countries. I think the typical answer is to group units by native tongue.

Thousands of Esperanto Speakers, Prison, and Other News

No prison record

The history of reporting on Esperanto is filled with some bizarre notions. Did You Know: That Esperanto was created by a Spaniard? (Not really.) That Esperanto was an insidious German plot to destroy the French language? (Not really.) That you can’t swear in Esperanto? (That might have been true at one time.) Of course, newspapers have to get things out on a deadline and are sometimes mislead by sources. (Just because Mrs. Stoner said she was related to British nobility didn’t make it so.)[1]

Sometimes you just have to wonder how such odd notions made their way into print. The odd claim made about Esperanto in the February 1, 1903 Saint Paul Globe made me wonder if they had at any point issued a correction, but none has come to light. Earlier, I found the same claim made years later in the Bisbee Daily Review. Perhaps the Daily Review got their misinformation from the Globe. In between, the story certainly got told a few more times. Did you know that Dr. Ludovik Zamenhof created Esperanto while in a prison? (Not really.)[2]