2019 - Day 130/235 - Friday...Recalcitrant...

Meeting our colleagues in South Texas was an absolute treat for me. I have never been to the valley, and even though the trip was really quick and really jam packed, it was a great trip, I learned a lot, and I hope I was able to share some good information with the colleagues I met there. Deborah and I worked really well together (or maybe she was just trying to make me feel good), but I thought we did pretty good jobs with our presentations, and the groups we presented to seemed to really appreciate that we were there with them. And, you just never know what to expect sometimes. At the end of the presentation this morning, we got to have our picture taken with the mascot of one of the groups. And a good time was had by all. The flights back were no real problem, a few delays here and there, waits, false starts, just stuff like that. Pretty much all weather related, but I made it back, and looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight.

Recalcitrant -- Adjective. 1. obstinately defiant of authority or restraint. 2a. difficult to manage or operate. 2b. resistant. "A wily and recalcitrant defendant could...use the slowness of the system to hold onto land unjustly for up to eighteen months." Norman F. Cantor, Imagining the Law, 1997

Did You Know? Long before any human was dubbed recalcitrant in English (that first occurred, as best we know, in one of William Thackeray's works in 1843), there were stubborn mules and horses kicking back their heels. The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it-recalcitrare, which literally means "to kick back." (Its root calc-, meaning "heel," is also the root of calcaneus, the large bone of the heel in humans.) Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded-as attested by various Latin words meaning "stubborn"-but it wasn't until later that writers of Late Latin applied recalcitrare and its derivative adjective to humans who were as stubborn as mules.