The Paper
Katia’s Friend Cont. from Page 3
doned by adults who couldn't take care of them or simply didn't want them. Others were placed there by welfare agencies due to abuse at home. Or they were taken off the streets where they wandered, selling chewing gum and cheap trinkets to tourists . Katia was one of them, a tiny victim of circumstance, a little girl in a faded sweatshirt who peered around a corner and cast her magic upon me. Before I had a chance to avoid any type of a relationship, she looked up at me and I was her captive, defenseless against huge brown eyes and a bashful smile. She pointed to her name written in childish scrawl on the front of her shirt and whispered, “Katia.” I could offer her nothing in return but my own condescending smile, and that inability to express myself in such an unpretentious manner as hers left me wallowing in a great emptiness. Then solemnly, softly, she walked away, but her presence was already forever imprinted on some undetermined locale where I store major occurrences of a pleasant nature. A short time later, she crept back into the room where we adults had gathered to make our inspections and comments while taking notes for the newspaper stories the sponsors wanted us to eventually write for charitable reasons. She tugged at my sleeve to get my attention, then placed her tiny hand into mine and led us away from the others. Attached in that fashion, we walked a short distance to a corner of the room where she seated herself on the dirt floor. She patted the ground and motioned that I should sit beside her. With great concentration, she used a forefinger and sketched her name into the bare earth. When she finished, she waved her small hand across her work and said with great pride, “Katia.” Aware that she wanted to show me something of great importance, I sat cross-legged while she knelt on the dirt floor of the orphanage and slowly unrolled a well-used red kerchief. One by one, she removed her treasures – a collection of empty Tootsie Roll wrappers – and carefully placed them on the ground in front of us, gently smoothing each before bringing out another.
She directed my glance toward the wrappers and gestured, as if to say, “It's all right. You may touch them.” So I picked them up, one by one, carefully examined each, then handed them back to her. When every wrapper had been carefully inspected and placed back into their proper order, she returned them to the secrecy of the old bandanna and tied the ends of the kerchief together. Then she ran her hands across the cloth's surface and wistfully held it up to me for my final approval. For most of the morning, Katia sort of hung around, staying in the background while we adults looked and poked and talked about what the orphanage needed before agreeing
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that money and volunteer labor were paramount to the task. Occasionally, she'd catch my eyes, just to let me know that she was still there, waiting to resume our friendship. Then she'd disappear around a corner, but soon she'd be standing in a doorway or coyly peeking through a dusty window, never in the way but always there. At lunch time, she walked resolutely to my side, took my hand and led the way to a rough wooden table where the staff had laid out sandwiches and an unfamiliar liquid. We were friends now, even though I had been given no choice in the matter. She sat close to me and when I went to take my first bite, she gently touched my arm so I would look down at her, then bowed her head and clasped her hands together, an indication that we should pray first. And so we did. She whispered her pre-meal blessing in Spanish, I mumbled mine in English. We ate then, and Katia made certain that my napkin was folded just right and that my glass was always filled with what turned out to be a very weak lemonade. When the meal ended, she removed my plate and cup, took them to what served as a kitchen, and returned to again take up her seat close by mine. We talked for a while, neither of us quite understanding what the other was saying but both perfectly understanding what the other meant. And when my time at the orphanage was over, she clutched my hand and walked me to the car that would take me back to Arizona and out of her life forever. I tried not to look back, but it was futile so I turned and waved and made a silent vow to come back some day.
She smiled a brave smile; I returned it. But we could not hide the moment of sadness that fell upon us because we both knew we would never see each other again. True to the fates so commonly involved in situations like this, our unspoken assessment of how this chance meeting would end did materialize. We never saw each other again. Katia was adopted by a family in Pennsylvania; I asked but was never told where. Sometimes, it's the way things were meant to be.
The author, Sam Lowe, is a veteran newspaper reporter, columnist and editor. A product of the mid-west, he no lives in Arizona in semiretirement. But we have more stories from Sam, comikng soon!
Fourth of July’s Secrets Cont. from Page 2
ing chapters in U. S. Presidential history! WHICH U. S. PRESIDENT AND “FOUNDING FATHER” SPOKE THE MOST FOREIGN LANGUAGES? A. George Washington. B. Thomas Jefferson. C. John Quincy Adams.
This is a very tricky question! So, don’t feel bad if you missed it. While most people might pick Thomas Jefferson right off the bat, it was actually “C,” John Quincy Adams who (fluently) spoke the most foreign languages (of all U. S. Presidents)!
While it is true that Thomas Jefferson spoke and read several languages, it was John Quincy Adams, our 6th American President, who still holds the record for speaking the most languages, including French, Dutch, Russian, Latin, Greek, German, and Italian, among others! In total, John Quincy Adams became (fluent) in as many as 8 different languages! As a child, John Quincy Adams traveled with his father on diplomatic assignments all over the world. The young Adams was born with a most uncanny mind to quickly learn languages.
Most early American presidents that served during the 18th and 19th centuries, studied Latin, and sometimes Greek, in their classical education but, even then, they were not always (truly fluent) in both speaking and reading these languages.
While historians can confirm that Thomas Jefferson was said to speak 5 foreign languages, foremost scholars are quick to point out that Jefferson often exaggerated his (fluency) in each of them. Linguistic experts evaluate Thomas Jefferson speaking some of these foreign languages on a “conversational fluency” level only, but, not on a “proficiently fluent” level. Nevertheless, Jefferson had an eclectic library including dictionaries in a wide variety of world languages, including Arabic, Gaelic, and Welsh (though historians agree he was not fluent in all of them). Jefferson was widely-known to exaggerate his fluency in foreign tongues.
Thomas Jefferson’s own contemporaries, such as John Adams, knew the twinkle in Thomas Jefferson’s eye whenever Jefferson would overly-embellish his linguistic talents. Jefferson once bragged that he learned Spanish fluently in just 19 days while on a sea journey to France, to which John Adams amusingly quipped: “But, Mr. Jefferson tells large tales.” The world’s most august scholars agree with John Adams regarding “Thomas Jefferson’s proclivity to
overly exaggerate his linguistic skills.”
THE QUINTESSTIAL AMERICAN PATRIOTIC SONG “YANKEE DOODLE” WAS SUNG BY THE BRITISH MILITARY! A. True, believe it or not! B. False, never from our enemy at the time! This question seems ridiculous and impossible to even be asked, and yet the shocking answer is “A” true!
An almost completely unknown fact to nearly everyone is that the popular and patriotic quintessential American song, “Yankee Doodle,” was widely sung by the British military officers even before the American Revolution!
The “Yankee Doodle” tune was already well-known by the 1750s, but tradition records that in 1756 a British doctor named Richard Schuckburg penned new words to mock his American allies. And it was NOT sung to salute Americans, but to ridicule and poke fun at us. The song portrayed the colonists as: “rude, crude, and cowardly.” However, twenty-five years later, after the Continental Army forced the British to surrender at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, we had effectively won our independence, although the fighting would not formally end until 1783. (Kennedy Center, Education Dept. of History & U. S. Military.)
Although the British used Yankee Doodle early on to mock us, we eventually won the war – so no hard feelings towards our British cousins and our closest military ally today.
OUR MOST BELOVED STAR SPANGLED BANNER DID NOT BECOME OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM UNTIL: A. Over 75 years after it was written. B. Over a century after it was written. Surprisingly, it took a very long time for us to accept the Star Spangled Banner as our official U. S. National Anthem. So, “B” above, is the correct answer! On three counts, it is surprising for most Americans that the Star Spangled Banner was written as a poem, and never intended as a song!
Secondly, it took 112 years after it was first composed, to finally be accepted as our U. S. National Anthem, well over a century after the fact! Written on September 14, 1814 as a poem by 35-year-old lawyer and poet, Francis Scott Key, the Star Spangled Banner was later adopted in song version by President Woodrow Wilson, but only as a popularly accepted song, not a song recognized by law. It wasn’t until 1926 that it was formally passed by Congress to
Fourth of July’s Secrets Continued on Page 6
