Category Archives: History Undusted

December 17, 2025 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: The CB Radio

You know how your brain fires off random thoughts as you fall to sleep, or combines odds-bods into dreams forgotten as soon as you wake up? For some reason, 10-4 popped into my head in those moments last night. It sent me down the rabbit hole I now present: The history of the CB radio.

The often-forgotten or overlooked inventor of the Citizen’s Band (CB) radio system, along with inventions such as a patented version of the walkie-talkie (originally invented by the Englishman Donald Hings), the telephone pager, and the cordless telephone – all precursors to today’s cell phones, was Al Gross (1918-2000): Born in Toronto, Canada, he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. The son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, his love for electronics was sparked when, at the age of nine, he was travelling by steamboat on Lake Erie; he explored the ship and ended up in the radio transmissions room, where the operator let him listen in. Eventually, he turned the family’s basement into a radio station built from scraps. During his higher studies, he experimented with ways to use radio frequencies.

During World War 2, he had some involvement with developing a two-way VHF air-to-ground communications system for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, known as the Joan-Eleanor system, and after the war, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated a few frequencies for the Citizens’ Radio Service Frequency Band, in 1946. Gross saw the potential and founded the Gross Electronics Co. to produce two-way communications systems to make use of these frequencies; his firm was the first to receive FCC approval in 1948. For more about his other inventions, just follow the link on his name above. For now, let’s focus on the CB:

The CB radio became an international hit back before cell phones and computers became a thing (despite the prevalence of cell phones, CBs are still around; truckers still communicate about road conditions, etc. Its usage was also revived by the Covid lockdown, when people began reaching out to meet and talk to others outside of their own four walls). It was, and is, a way to communicate with others long-distance from home or on the go.

My dad was always interested in the latest technological gadgets; in the mid-70s, we got a laserdisc player, the precursor of CDs, and DVD/Blu-Ray players. I remember watching films like Logan’s Run and Heaven Can Wait on that format. Laserdiscs never really took off, and only about 2% of US households had one (it became more popular in Japan at the time). Around that time, we also got a CB radio in our VW van. My dad had a chart with all of the CB slang words and codes, and I memorised it, fascinated by the lingo. On long road trips, I would get on the CB and chat with truck drivers. My handle (nickname) was Spider-Fingers, as I liked spiders and had long fingers (long fingers has the connotation of thief, so I didn’t want to use that!). Here is just the tip of the iceberg, a smattering of the codes and slangs used by CB radio enthusiasts, truckers and handymen:

There were dozens of slang terms for law enforcement officers: Bear (police officer); bear trap (speed trap, radar trap) taking pictures, also called a Kojak With A Kodak; bear bait (an erratic or speeding driver); bear with ears (listening to CB traffic); bear in the air/flying doughnut/Spy in the sky (helicopter radar traps), baby bear (rookie), fox in the henhouse/Smokey in a plain wrapper (policemen in unmarked vehicles); honey bear, mamma bear or Miss Piggy (slangs for female police officers); Brush Your Teeth And Comb Your Hair (a law enforcement vehicle is radaring vehicles – as if preparing for an official photo). A Driving Award was a speeding ticket. To wish someone Shiny side up meant that you wished them safe travels (keeping the vehicle upright).

There were slang terms for objects or events, such as Bambi, meaning that there was wildlife near the road and to take precautions; a crotch rocket was a fast motorcycle; double-nickels was a 55-mph speed limit area; a fighter pilot was an erratic driver who switched lanes frequently, while a gear jammer was someone who sped up and slowed down frequently; Alabama chrome was duct tape; an alligator/gator was a piece of blown tire on the highway, as it looked in the distance like a gator sunbathing. Convoys had front doors and back doors – the front or back truck in the group that would keep an eye open for bear traps. Motion lotion was fuel; the hammer lane was the fast lane (hammer was the gas pedal, and to hammer down was to drive full-speed). Break/breaker: Informing other CB users that one wanted to start transmission on a channel; a handle might be introduced, or requested if someone was looking for a CB friend. “Breaker, this is Spider-Fingers, over.” Asking for a comeback meant that you couldn’t hear the last transmission or wanted the other driver to talk. Break check meant traffic congestion ahead, slow down. A Bumper Sticker/hitchhiker is a vehicle that is tailgating another vehicle.

Aside from hundreds of slang terms, there was a whole list of codes (I guess you could say that the codes were the precursors of emojis!):

10-4: Agreed, understood, acknowledged

4-10: The opposite – asking for agreement or if a transmission was received.

10-6: Busy, stand by

10-7: Signing off

10-10: Transmission completed, standing by (you’ll be listening)

10-20: Location – What’s your (10-)20? Home-20 was asking for a driver’s home location/base.

10-33: Emergency traffic, clear the channel. CB code for Mayday for trucks and police cars.

10-42: Accident on the road

3s and 8s: Well wishes to a fellow driver. Borrowed from amateur ham radio codes “73” (best regards) and “88” (hugs and kisses).

The lists go on and on! I love the dry sense of humour reflected in the slang, and I think our everyday language could be a bit livelier if we included a few phrases that looked at things from a different perspective. Everyone could do with more 3s and 8s, 4-10?

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December 3, 2025 · 12:38 PM

History Undusted: Canning Jars

My quirky brain went down a rabbit hole last week; as I was putting away groceries into glass jars (for that explanation, please click here), I wondered who had been the genius behind the thread around canning jar lids, or, as most of my jars use, the bail closure.

Just to clarify terminology: Here is a threaded jar, a type of screw-on lid that is either one part or two:

Here is a jar with a bail closure, aka flip-tops, lightning jars, known also by their various brand names, e.g. Fido, Le Parfait, Kilner:

A third type of jar, German-made, is the Weck jar, with metal clips and a glass lid. I don’t like using these, so you won’t find them in our house.

5000-Year-Old Pharaonic wine jars found intact at Abydos – Egypt Museum

Closures have been an issue for thousands of years; ancient amphoras, which were used to transport wines and oils, were sealed with wood, cork, or a ceramic or pottery lid sealed with a type of mortar. Archaeology has many examples of clay or pottery pots with lids, Norse ornate metal containers with lids, and even ancient Egypt’s canopic jars, with their ornate lids. Another variety of closure is found on wooden barrels, which have side holes called bungholes, plugged with a cork or other wood.

The threaded jar lid was invented by the tinsmith John Landis Mason in 1858. Prior to his invention, a glass lid was laid atop an un-threaded canning jar and sealed with hot wax. It was messy, and if it wasn’t done right every time, it could allow dangerous bacteria into foods. Before refrigeration, the only way to preserve garden produce was basically to can with a wax seal and take your life into your hands. There were other preservation methods, such as drying, salting, smoking or pickling, but the new way of preserving offered a convenient, faster alternative; Mason’s threaded lids, combined with a rubber ring and a threaded glass jar, revolutionised canning. Unfortunately, he was not a savvy businessman, and though he filed a patent for the threaded screw-top jars, he failed to patent the rest of the invention, such as the rubber gaskets. He let the patent expire in 1879, and manufacturers took the idea and ran with it. Mason never made a fortune; in fact, he died in poverty in 1902. But his name lives on in the common term, “Mason Jars”. The concept is now used with countless products, from drinks to shampoos to household cleaners.

The invention of the bail closure design is a bit murkier: In the early 1840s, the Yorkshireman John Kilner invented the Kilner jar, using the rubber seal and wire bail closure.

In 1893, beverage bottles began using the Hutter stopper – a porcelain plug with a rubber gasket held in place with a metal strap.

In the 1930s, the La Parfait jars began production in Reims, France, by Verreries Mécaniques Champenoises, a historic French glassmaker.

The Bormioli family is an Italian name associated with glass-blowing since the Middle Ages; among their many brands is the Fido airtight jar, using the bail closure, which began production in 1968.

I personally have Kilner, La Parfait and Fido bail-closure jars, as well as many screw-top jars similar to Mason from these companies.

Do you use any such jars for storage in your home? Do you use them for canning or storing dried goods, or both? Please comment below!

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November 5, 2025 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: Radium Girls

I’ve been thinking about writing on the topic of the Radium Girls for some time now. In our home library, the book by Kate Moore, The Radium Girls – The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women (2017), has been glowing at me (not literally, thank goodness!). The book is a fascinating history of the women who worked in watch-making factories across the States, and the groundbreaking battle for workers’ and women’s rights, which helped shape labour laws that would protect future generations from shameless exploitation.

Curie is the unit of measurement for radioactivity, named for both Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie (co-winners of her first Nobel Prize, in Physics, 1903); Marie went on to win a second in another field (Chemistry, 1911). Their oldest daughter, Irene Joilet-Curie, won the Nobel Prize (with her husband, Frédéric) in 1935, also in chemistry. Marie Curie died from the effects of exposure to radiation on 4 July 1934 (her husband would have had the same fate, but he was killed in 1906 in a road accident). Even today, her papers and even her cookbook are so radioactive that they are stored in lead boxes, and anyone examining them must be fully protected. I could do a whole history of the Sklodowska and Curie families; the women were intelligent, educated, ahead of their time and left their marks on history in several fields of science. [I don’t know if the book would be available where you live, but the youngest daughter of Marie, Eve Curie, wrote a biography about her mother, published in 1937 in several languages (I have the 1938 Swiss edition, in German). The book can be found in e-book formats as well.]

Marie and Pierre Curie experimenting with radium. Drawing by André Castaigne. Notice that they are all handling the radioactive material without protective gear…

Radium, discovered by the Curies in December 1898, caught public fascination; soon, Radium was touted as the cure-all of the new century. It was sold as healthy, as something that would make your skin glow. It was said to cure ailments and recharge your physiological batteries with pure energy. It was put into toothpastes, face creams, soaps, bath salts, makeup, and pure energy drinks. And it was painted onto the face of watches: Each painter would mix her own paints in a small crucible; they each had a camel hair paint brush and were instructed to keep their brushes pointed with their lips: Lip, dip, paint. The girls at the factories would paint their nails and faces with the paint for fun.

And then people started getting sick. Eaten from the inside out, their bodies started disintegrating, and they started dying. And at the time, workers at factories were earning a penny per watch face painted; they were too poor to quit, and too sick to work. And the company big boys denied all responsibility, medical aid or financial compensation. Eventually, though some of the Radium Girls tried to sue the United States Radium Corporation, the company dragged the case on so long that most of the women were bedridden by the time the company forced them to settle out of court. It was too late for those girls and those like them still working in the factories; their bones will glow for a thousand years. But public opinion was already on the side of the women, and it fueled a turning point in protective legislation, not only in America but in Europe as well.

For a fascinating insight into this topic, here are two links:

Radium Girls, Wikipedia

The film: Radium Girls (2020) (1:37)

Oh, and by the way: If you find an old, glow-in-the-dark watch face for sale made any time before 1971, give it a WIDE berth.

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October 22, 2025 · 10:38 AM

History Undusted: MacGyver and Blue Peter

This week’s topic arose from a conversation with my husband; we were discussing a temporary fix we had made at his mother’s home to make something usable until we could find a permanent solution. I said that we had “MacGyvered” it, and he had never heard the word before. That led me down a rabbit hole to naval flags, a card game, and British tele.

First, MacGyver: Though I knew the term, I had no idea what its origin was. The name comes from the eponymous character in a US television series that ran from 1985 to 1992; Angus MacGyver was a non-violent, resourceful genius, and his favourite tool was, of course, a Swiss Army knife. Though I was living in the States at that time, its running years explain why I didn’t know of the origin: In 1985, I was in college, having finished high school a year early (I took my final two years in one); I was too busy to watch television. In 1986, I moved to Hawaii to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM), and went from there to the Philippines, where we worked in the red-light district of Olongapo. 1987 was a year of multiple jobs, earning money and hanging out with college friends – again, TV was not a priority. In 1988, I emigrated to Scotland.

The traits mentioned above made MacGyver a verb; when something is “MacGyvered“, a simple yet elegant solution to a problem is employed by using existing resources. At my mother-in-law’s home, we needed to level a new microwave that was sitting tilted atop the welded inserts that fit the original one. Our solution was to use an actual leveller, removing the end caps to make it fit inside the metal frame.

Now, down the rabbit hole: In the time of British ships of sail, when a blue flag with a white square or rectangle in the centre flew alone, it served as the sign for imminent departure (signifying P, leaving port); any passengers and crew in port would then return to the ship. The flag came into use in 1777, and by the turn of the century had become known as the blue peter. I have my suspicions that the term may have come from the card game of whist, in which a strategic manoeuvre known as the “blue peter” calls for trumps by throwing away a higher card of a suit while holding a lower one. No one can say for sure which came first, the ship or the card, so to speak, but the connection is likely.

The British children’s television programme, Blue Peter, first aired on 16 October 1958; the name was inspired when Owen Reed, the producer, was inspired by a radio programme for children (produced by Trevor Hill) that began airing on television once a month; it was launched aboard the MV Royal Iris ferry on the River Mersey, Liverpool, with presenter Judith Chalmers standing at the bottom of the gangplank to welcome everyone aboard. Reed was so captivated by the idea, and with the blue peter flag, that he asked to rename the programme (then called the Children’s Television Club) and take it to London.

Blue Peter, catering to younger children, is the longest-running children’s TV programme in the world; over the years it has changed with the times, and its content is wide-ranging, but they still give a nod and a wink to that original blue peter flag by giving out badges in the shape of a shield with a blue ship of sail on a wave. It is awarded to viewers for achievements, efforts, or creative work. There are different levels of badges, with the gold badge being the most prestigious; this is usually given to presenters upon their retirement or to people who have accomplished something extraordinary.

Among other things, the show is famous for its segments of “makes” – demonstrations of how to make useful objects, or how to make something to eat. This is the element that linked the term Blue Peter to MacGyver in my mind, so now ya know!

What is something that you have MacGyvered? And do any of my British followers know if “Blue Peter” is used as a verb in a similar fashion? Please comment below!

Blue Peter Badge

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September 10, 2025 · 10:00 AM

Obsoletusvocabularium…  Up with Archaism!

English is relatively young, as languages go. Like a sponge, it absorbs words and meanings from other languages, then squeezes them out in a similar (or widely different) form.  In other words, English is a survivor; it has survived the attempts to destroy it by the Danish Vikings, the French (Normans, aka Vikings disguised as French), and the Germans. These historical encounters give me high hopes that it will survive the age of the Cell Phone.  With each skirmish, it has come out stronger, more versatile and more flexible.  When the Pilgrims packed up English and crated it off to the New World, it was locked, as it were, in a time capsule. British English absorbed a few bad habits from the French before they thought better of it and distanced themselves during the French Revolution, but in the meantime, contentious pronunciation differences to that time-capsule relative over the Pond had crept in and persist to this day. One example: The American pronunciation of schedule (/skedju(e)l/) is from the original Greek pronunciation, which was used in Britain for onk-years until they took on the fancier French-ified pronunciation of /shedju(e)l/.  For a fascinating glimpse into how Modern English was formed, William Caxton (~1422-~1491) is your man.

While English pilled through the pockets of invaders stealing loose grammar, we also lost a few words along the way:  Some words are known to us in one form but not the other, while other words have been lost altogether due to a more convenient absorption or form arising.  You know of disgruntled (adj.), but what about gruntle (v.) or disgruntle (v.)?  And dis– in this particular case is not used to form the antonym of gruntle, but means exceedingly gruntled.  And I don’t know about you, but conject as a verb makes more sense than “conjecture” to me.  And shall we vote to bring back “Oliphant,” as J.R.R. Tolkien saved it from extinction through his use of it in Lord of the Rings?  What about pash (n.), contex (v.), or spelunk (n.)?  We know of fiddle-faddle, but what about plain ol’ “faddle” (to trifle)?  Some, admittedly, are not missed; toforan is better served with heretofore, in my humble opinion (IMHO).  Needsways is a Scottish word, obsolete in England and America perhaps, but alive and well north of the Border.  There are some deliciously eccentric words which deserve resuscitation, such as loblolly, bric-a-brac, sulter, pill (v., to plunder, pillage – ought to come in handy, that), quib, bugbear, uptake (as a verb), wist (intent), or sluggy.  If Sir Walter Scott can save words such as doff and don from extinction, so can we.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the word archaism, it means “retention of what is old and obsolete.”  So twinge your language to include these mobile words and their meanings, and revelate your intelligence! And if you’re curious, yes, Grammarly and spellcheck were going batship crazy with this post!😎

(Comic from xkcd used under a Creative Commons license)

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August 27, 2025 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: Code Talkers

Navajo code talkers, Cpl. Henry Blake Jr. and PFC George H Kirk, who served with the Marine Signal Unit.
Source: Public Domain

Code talkers were Native Americans from various tribes who were employed by the US military during World War 2 as radio operators; their native tongues were indecipherable to anyone listening in, and as a result, their transmissions of sensitive messages were invaluable in allied victories on every Pacific island, including Iwo Jima, as well as in Europe in decisive battles.

Codes were developed based on the languages of the Assiniboin, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Cree, Crow, Fox, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Navajo, Ojibwa, Oneida, Osage, Pawnee, Sauk, Seminole, and Sioux peoples. These men could transmit over open radio channels, knowing that the enemy would be unable to break their code. If a military term did not exist in their languages, a phrase was used in its place: A submarine became an iron fish; a fighter plane became a hummingbird; a squad became a black street. In all, throughout WW2, over 400 terms were developed and needed to be memorised by each code talker.

The code talkers continued to be used after the end of the war, which delayed their recognition by the wider public – until documentaries about their service finally began to emerge in the 1990s. In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the Code Talkers Recognition Act, followed by a similar act in 2008 to honour the tribes who used their languages in the wartime service of the United States.

The use of code talkers was a socially complex one: The languages that were so invaluable to the US military were the very tools that the US government had been trying to eradicate in the name of cultural assimilation. Between 1880 and 1905, boarding schools were established, in which Native American children were taken from their families and educated; they were taught to reject their Native values, languages, traditions and anything to do with their native culture. They were punished, sometimes severely, for using their native tongues; they were forced to dress like the “white man”, and were not allowed to wear their native garments or have any vestiges of their tribes. Some 100,000 Native Americans were forced to attend such schools. Parents who resisted the kidnapping of their children were imprisoned; several from the Hopi tribe were even imprisoned on Alcatraz Island. Though most of these schools had been closed by the 1930s, the cultural and psychological damage had taken its toll on many native people groups, many of whom still struggle with their cultural identities today. At the time these young warriors were called into military service or chose to join after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many were not even legal American citizens, yet they fought for their land and their families.

With that background in mind, the dedication and ingenuity of the code talkers are all the more astounding. They were often in the first wave of soldiers deployed as they were needed to pass on messages for the strategic planning and execution of driving back the Japanese from the Pacific islands. In addition to the Pacific arena, the European front also benefited from the code talkers’ ability to communicate directly with each other: Comanche code talkers were assigned to the 4th Infantry Division when it landed at Normandy in June 1944. In this context, some of the Comanche substitutes were turtle for tank, a pregnant bird for bomber, and crazy white man was their term for Adolf Hitler – a more insightful term has never been more aptly applied.

For a fascinating look into a history largely forgotten, please click on the following video recounting code talkers telling their stories firsthand as they return to the Pacific Islands with their families and find peace after decades of PTSD. The video is 1:10, but well worth the time when you can take it: Navajo Code Talkers of World War II (2018) | Documentary

Other sources:

https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-cultural-genocide/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/code-talker

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July 30, 2025 · 10:00 AM

Geology Undusted: Rock vs Stone

Today’s topic is the kind of thing that flashes through my brain at 4 a.m. when I’m dropping off to sleep.

Sometimes rock and stone can be used interchangeably, depending on the context of science, society or conversation; but some phrases are intuitively either stone- or rock-rooted: We say rock road, rockslide and rock salt, but stonemason, stone wall and Stonehenge.

In geological terms, a rock is a naturally occurring mass of minerals, particularly those with a distinctive composition (e.g. granite, bedrock, igneous, or features such as Ayers Rock). Other geological terms range from clay, silt, sand, pebble, gravel, cobble, boulder or glacial erratic (material moved by geological forces from one location to another) to mountain in size.

In Archaeological terms, rock refers to a geological formation, while stone refers to any rock that has been placed or modified into a tool by humans (ergo, Stonehenge, not Rockhenge). When an archaeological dig is underway and they pull out a rock, trained eyes can spot signs of scarring, or scoring, such as on a core, which is a piece of rock that has been worked by a stone tool referred to as a hammerstone (for obvious reasons), used to shape another rock into a tool, such as in the process of flint knapping (the more refined the knapping process, the more refined the tools become, such as using antler or copper nubs to chip away finer areas of an arrowhead or hunting barb). In Kansas, where I grew up, arrowheads are still discovered occasionally; I have a small collection, along with a few obsidian arrowheads.

In archaeological excavations, what might appear to be a natural rock formation may turn out to be an ancient boundary wall, with stones intentionally stacked for a specific purpose. In that sense, though a rock road has intentionally been placed, it is not stone – it is placed for a purpose, yes, but its arrangement is left as it falls, so it is referred to as a rock road.

Years ago, when my husband and I were walking along a rocky riverbank in Ticino (in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland), I picked up a stone; it had obvious signs of human activity, with smoothed sides where hands held it, and scrapes along the top and bottom, such as might be caused by sharpening a tool – whether antler or arrowhead. As it was washed down from its resting place in the rapids, it was no longer in situ and therefore would have no archaeological significance.

So which is it, stone or rock? For me, the answer is this: When it has been modified or intentionally placed or ordered by humans, it’s stone; when it’s naturally occurring, it’s rock.

I’ll leave you with a few idioms carved in stone or rock:

Set /carved in stone

Living under a rock

Leave no stone unturned

On the rocks

Heart of stone

Kill two birds with one stone

Have rocks in one’s head

Cast the first stone

As solid as a rock / As solid as the Rock of Gibraltar

Written in stone

Like getting blood from a rock

Between a rock and a hard place

A stone’s throw

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July 16, 2025 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: Fiddle-Faddle

Sometimes, my husband and I discuss history, and an odd topic here or there pops up; I’ll often delve into the history or etymology of a phrase, word, or idiom and share my findings here. So, no more fiddling about; let’s get to it.

A reduplication in English is a word or sound that’s doubled or altered the second time for effect; there are a few kinds of reduplications: Exact repeats, like bye-bye or night-night; rhyming, like okey-dokey, easy-peasy, or higgledy-piggledy; ablauts, like chit-chat, criss-cross, splish-splash, or wishy-washy; there is even a series of -shm reduplications, like fancy-shmancy, laborday-shmaborday, or work-shmerk. Some reduplications emphasise the first term to focus on the prototypical or normal form of something, e.g. ‘I just was a salad-salad (not bean salad or tuna salad)’. Many such words have become standard in English, such as flip-flops, wingdings, or zig-zag. Every language probably has such words; German has krimskrams, schnikschnak, mischmasch, larifari, Wirrwarr and more. Italian has a few that have slipped into use in other languages, such as piano piano (very slowly), Mamma mia (literally, my mother, but used as an expression of surprise, frustration, or even delight, similar to ‘Oh my goodness‘), or bric-a-brac (knick-knack).

Have you ever said (or heard someone else say) Fiddle-faddle? It first appeared in English in the 1570s, meaning trifles, or to talk nonsense or speak of something not worth serious attention. Fiddle is another word for violin and is the more colloquial/casual of the two; as such, it has long been associated with less important things. Georgette Heyer uses fiddle without faddle to mean trivial or nonsense; the reduplication would merely emphasise the meaning of the first word, so she chose to drop the second.

John Milton Edwards (the pen-name of William Wallace Cook, 1867-1933) wrote, “There’s a lot of fiddle-faddle wrapped up in that word ‘inspiration.’ It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing...”

It was also used as an adjective to describe a troublesome person, such as a nit-picky, ceremonious old woman. As a verb, to fiddle-faddle means to dally, which leads us to another reduplication: dilly-dally, which means to loiter, delay, or trifle! A fiddle-faddler is a person who trifles or dallies.

No dilly-dallying, let’s get to the point: Which reduplications have you used? Have you ever known a fiddle-faddler or a dilly-dallier? If you know of more such words, please put them in the comments below!

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July 2, 2025 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: Engadin Sgraffito

I know that, for most of you, neither Engadin nor Sgraffito have made you any wiser as to what this blog is about, so first, I’ll start off by explaining where and what they are, respectively.

Engadin (pronounced En-Ga-Deen) is a long, towering Alpine valley in the Romansh-speaking canton of Graubünden in southeast Switzerland. The first mention of this valley was in Latin as vallis Eniatina in AD 930; in the Romansh language (one of the four national languages of Switzerland), it is Engiadina. The river running through the valley is called the En or Inn, and it is the only river in Switzerland that runs (via Austria) into the Black Sea. The region is usually divided into lower and upper Engadin, and it is connected to the surrounding regions by several mountain passes.

The second word, Sgraffito, describes a plaster technique that is traditional throughout Engadin: Layers of plaster of contrasting colours are scratched through, creating intricate designs on the facades of buildings (many of the buildings in Engadin towns were built (or rebuilt) in the late 1500s to early 1600s). The word comes from the Italian graffiare, which means to scratch; it can be traced back to the Greek word graphein, meaning to write (from which we also get any words containing the prefix, suffix, or derivative of graph (graphite, typography, graptolite, parallelogram, holograph, etc.). Sgraffito is not only used on buildings to make them look decorative, but it also serves the purpose of making a small feature look larger; on one building, the same floor had different-sized windows, likely installed over generations; the sgraffito was used to give a more uniform look to the façade. The decorations also make a plain building look grander, giving a more opulent impression. One building, pictured below, obviously had two occupants with very different characters back when they were originally decorated…

The basic technique for architectural features is to plaster the façade with the base colour; once that has set, it is then plastered with a contrasting colour; once that has set just enough, the scratching, or carving, begins. This is also a technique used in pottery and in creating stained glass effects (just click on the links if you’d like to see how these crafts are made).

One thing to note is that many old buildings here in Switzerland have dates listed on them: Of when they were originally built, and when they’ve been renovated. Part of the history of such renovations may include fires that swept through villages, or avalanches that buried a layer, or wars, such as the Swabian War and war against the Habsburgs, and the subsequent renovation or rebuilding of the towns or individual homes. Sometimes, along with the dates, a list of past and present occupants will also be displayed, preserving their names and memories within the history and changes of the building itself.

Below are a few pictures taken in Engadin during our recent summer holidays. Enjoy! Feel free to zoom in on the pictures to see the details.

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June 4, 2025 · 10:00 AM

Who’s Who in Quotes: John Bertram Phillips

Deciding who to highlight here in this space sometimes comes down to a moral choice; some of the people I’ve investigated as a result of a quote from my collection have turned out to have lived lives that are, frankly, not worthy of my spending time and effort to share their history. One was a multi-billionaire who was a womanizer and a miser who loved tormenting people under his control. He lived a miserable life and died a lonely death. As Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Others, while they may have lived lives worth remembering, made strings of unwise choices that led to scandals and/or dodgy associations with corrupt foreign powers. While a quote or two from such a person might hold a grain of truth or wit, I personally find it difficult to un-see the stains behind the curtain, as it were, and so I choose to highlight lives that have something worth learning from or from those people who’ve done something worthy of our respect.

The person I’d like to highlight today is John Bertram Philips (1906-1982), best known for his translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament into modern English. This work wasn’t done in a stuffy theologian’s office, but in the bomb shelters of the London Blitz of World War 2. During that war, he was the Anglican vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London, and he realized that the young people in his church had difficulty relating to, or understanding, the Authorized Version of the Bible, aka the King James Bible, which was first published in 1611*. By the mid-1940s, English had changed fundamentally, and it has continued to grow and adapt; the older version of the biblical translation was and is (for most people) stuffy and unrelatable. [For those of you wondering which version of the Bible is most accurately translated from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts, the NIV Bible adheres most closely to them; 2011 saw a major revision to the NIV translation, based on recently published critical editions from biblical scholars.]

[*The history of how The King James Bible came to be the king’s Bible is long and sordid, littered with spies, political intrigue and betrayal, ending in the gruesome martyrdom of William Tyndale, whose translation was basically appropriated after his death, which is ironic, as he was tried because his translation was illegal…”unauthorized” by the Holy Roman Empire political elite… but that’s another story.]

Encouraged by his friend, C.S. Lewis, Philips published the first section of the New Testament, starting with Paul’s letters to the churches, in 1947, with the Gospels following in 1952. The final compilation of the New Testament was published in 1958. In the 1960s, he translated and published parts of the Old Testament, though this was never finished within his lifetime.

As a minister and translator, a communicator at heart, it’s no wonder that there are numerous quotes taken from his writings, sermons, and letters written during his lifetime; in some ways, like Tyndale, he was ahead of his time in his understanding of God and our relationship with Him. As the saying goes, we today see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Whether or not you believe in God, if you live in any nation with Judeo-Christian foundations, you benefit from those shoulders in more ways than you know.

If you’d like to read more about the life of this complex man, who struggled with clinical depression most of his life and yet remained firm in his faith, please click on the link to an article titled, A Bruised Reed Firmly Planted.

Without further ado, here is a selection of quotes from John Bertram Phillips:

  • “The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference can, in fact, never be neutral.”
  • “Christianity is not a religion at all but a way of life, a falling in love with God, and through him a falling in love with our fellows (fellow man).”
  • “Christ is the aperture through which the immensity and magnificence of God can be seen.”
  • “God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job.”
  • “All poetry and music, and art of every true sort, bears witness to man’s continual falling in love with beauty and his desperate attempt to induce beauty to live with him and enrich his common life.”
  • “It is refreshing and salutary to study the poise and quietness of Christ. His task and responsibility might well have driven a man out of his mind. But He was never in a hurry, never impressed by numbers, never a slave of the clock.”
  • “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.” (from his NT translation)
  • “There is… no easy answer to the evil and suffering problem and no easy road to its solution. But Christ tackled the matter radically and realistically by winning the allegiance of a few men and women to a new way of living…They were to be the spearhead of good against evil.”
  • “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.” (from his NT translation)

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