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Did you ever get a thought in your head that you just couldn't shake?

This, as I suspect is true for most people, happens to me all of the time. Sometimes it's a song that keeps playing over and over like a tape-loop; sometimes it's a name which has a catchy ring but that I know not to whom it belongs; and sometimes it's just an interesting word.

This week it was the latter, a word, that got stuck in my craw. I can't find the article and I don't even remember where or exactly when I read it, but it was about NATO forces apprehending (killing one) Bosnian war criminals. In that article, the writer said that the "rubicon" now crossed: NATO must continue this effort.

I immediately looked up rubicon in my American Heritage dictionary:

Ruùbiùcon (rUU'bi-kahn') n.

A limit that when passed or exceeded permits of no return and typically results in irrevocable commitment.

It is not at all out of the ordinary for me to look up a word with which I am not familiar. Most of the time I go on with my reading and don't think twice about the addition to my lexicon.

After contemplating the meaning and possible uses for the word on and off all week long, I finally asked Julie to look it up in a friends dictionary while we waited for him to finish a telephone call. I don't know what dictionary it was, but it went into a more detailed definition which included the origin of the word: A river in Italy which when crossed by Julius Caesar in 49 B.C. started civil war.

Still unsatisfied, I turned to the internet for more information.

As usual with the internet, I found a seemingly inexhaustible amount of information from ancient texts to personal home pages.

I learned a great deal about Caesar and ancient Rome. Much of this I had studied before in school, but for some reason I'm more interested in knowing about it now than I was then.

Of course I had to wade through many obscure references like a 1774 speech by John Hancock on the Boston Massacre of 1770, and "The End Of Democracy," which had something to do with our judicial system. Anything that came up in my search got at least a cursory read. Some of them, required a text-search to find the reference to the word in question.

Rubicon is used as a name for several businesses.

One business, Rubicon Inc., Sounds as though it could be of aid to my employer. They are "in the business of helping our clients successfully implement change." They couldn't do any worse than the others who have come before in that capacity.

If you are in the Pikes Peak area maybe Rubicon H.R.T. Inc. can help with your human resources needs.

There is also a company called Rubicon Products. And speaking of food, the famous owners of Rubicon Restaurant, in San Francisco: Robin Williams, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro are likely to drop in. Perhaps they will be wearing Julius Caesar T-shirts and discussing Melrose Place.

In northern California, there is the world renowned Rubicon Trail where, if you are into 4-wheeling, you can run the "Rubithon."

Rubicon is also the name of a run-a-bout on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which became the namesake for a Star Trek fan club.

One thing I didn't find however, was a band named "Rubicon." Not even a song-title. If anyone out there is looking for a name for their band, this is it -- just tell 'em you saw it here first!

I've never researched a word so thoroughly before and the importance of writing was never so clear to me. There are many rubicons, or turning points in our lives and each one requires serious thought prior to casting the die.

I think that it is my tenacious attitude towards my current employment situation which has me pondering this word.

The rubicon long since crossed, the gauntlet must now be run ... to the end.

Appended July 22, 1997

Appended July 25, 1998