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Once upon a time many many years ago--back around 621 B.C.--in a land called Greece in a city called Athens there lived an evil evil man called Draco--a member of Greek nobility and therefore ignorant of the plight of the common man. It has been said this propensity continues to this very day ... hard as it may be to believe. Draco was a giver of laws and the laws he gave out were so severe and harsh that there were those who thought they were written in blood.
If you owed money ... the punishment was enslavement. However if you stole or lied or did some on-the-sly coveting ... for all other infractions in fact ... trivial or not ... the punishment was death. He lamented--it is said--that he had no greater punishment for the more important crimes.
This attitude of cruelty ... named after its founder Draco ... became known as Draconian ... a word we now hear quite often when referring to today's corporate obliviousness to the plight of this country and its people as they (the corporations) continue to blithely soak us dry with draconian callousness.
Interestingly enough ... in what may well be the greatest segue of all time ... it is from Draco and his monstrous edicts that is derived the word to describe that most fearsome of all creatures: The Dragon. I would venture to say that a draconian dragon is redundant. This last little bit is for thems amongst you wot loves etymology.
As to the dragon ... well ... of course ... they ain't all bad. How many of you remember Puff? And then there's the Tang dynasty--when bronze was in full vogue and dragons did handstands. Yes they did. It was back back in ancient China around 618 - 907 B.C. Back then the dragon was a symbol of the emperor and was very important to followers of Daoism.
As to dragons doing handstands ... they were quite adept at it. Perhaps in a moment of hedonistic amity a dragon may well have once posed for the royal sculptor of the day. Oh Irving, he may have said. Sculpt me while I stand on my hands and you will have an image that will live through the centuries. Irving--the royal sculptor for the emperor--could not resist. And he passed an image of the sculpture on to his children and they passed it on to their children till it finally landed in the hands of one of the royal descendants of the Tang dynasty ...a man of the royal courts by the name of Tyler who ultimately passed it on to me.
You--dear souls--are the fortunate recipients of my heritage dating back to my blue-blooded relatives during that time that preceded the modern age. So. You wanna see a bronze dragon doing a handstand? I promise you it's a stunner.
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And there ya have it. That's it for this week folks. Catch you all next week. Benjamin Mark
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